> The Hollow Pony
>  by Type_Writer
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> 1 - The Hollow Pony
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Warmth.

Deep within, I felt a warmth.

It was not life, but something akin to it. 

Numbness gradually subsided, giving way to pain. A dull pain, like a slow burn. Feeling returned to my barrel, radiating out slowly from the warmth. I felt like I had run a marathon, and had nothing left to give. Yet the warmth spread through me.

I could feel my bones fighting it. They wanted to remain and peacefully decay, so they could return to the sky. But the warmth would not let them. It tore me away from a silent nonexistence, a blissful lack of awareness, of feeling, of anything. Rest was stolen from me, for the fire had decided I would rise.

I didn’t open my eyes so much as became aware of them. Dry, stinging, they had always been open, outside of my deadened perception. Contrast was the first thing I saw, harsh light against gray walls, and darkness creeping back, hiding in the corners, fleeing from my vision, giving me sight. My vision spread like fire through the room, expanding, hungry.

Books, papers, scattered across the floor, the words and covers faded from time and exposure. Grey walls, made of cloud. I recognized those. I had awoken, not in a small room, but what seemed to be the corner of a bookstore. Shelves had fallen like dominoes across the room, but I lay in a crumpled heap in one of the few mercifully clear spots. The light seemed to be coming from the ceiling above, or where the ceiling should have been. A great rift had opened the room to the elements, and blinding sunlight was flooding through.

I wanted to look around, but my head, my neck, was still numb. Like it wasn’t even there. I could feel my body below, but my muscles refused to respond, refused to follow instructions. My head was left exactly where it was, where it lay limply against a wall, as I stared up at the hole in the ceiling.

Panic filled me, sluggishly. Everything was wrong. I should have been able to move, to turn my head, to stand. Nothing worked. Why?

The warmth in my chest flared at the panic, and a muscle in my back spasmed. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. My vision tilted back, then snapped forward as my head flopped limply towards my barrel. I was no less a crumpled heap than before, but now I was doubled over at least. Progress, muscle by sore, aching muscle.

There was a sword in my belly. Surely that hadn’t always been there?

It didn't hurt. That was the strangest part. It should have hurt, sharply. The length of metal should’ve caused everywhere it touched to burn. But it only sat there, harmlessly, as it stuck out of my gut. It felt like red was meant to be leaking from the wound, but I couldn’t exactly recall why, or what the red would have been if it was.

It was a strange sword. I couldn’t identify the metal, but that was more because I was having trouble identifying or remembering anything. I could see it was meant to be held with both hooves, or used by a very large creature, judging from the grip. Red stained the blade, but it was the wrong kind of red. The word “rust” slowly filtered back into my mind, but that couldn’t be right. How long had it been there?

How long had I been here?

My foreleg felt like it was filled with jelly, but it was feeling, of a sort. And I could only feel the shoulder. Agonizingly slowly, I pulled each muscle individually, re-learning how to move my foreleg. The best I could get was a limp twitch, independent of my torso. I struggled again, as pain shot through my elbow. The joint was disused to the point of fragility, but in the pain, I could finally feel definition. I could use it to understand how my leg was connected, and how to control it.

Limply, I pulled my hoof upwards, across the floor. It dragged against the carpet until it touched something fluffy, and at first I thought I’d touched my leg, but then whatever it was skittered away. I jerked my hoof in surprise, and the force made my whole body twitch. Finally, the sword hurt, but only for a moment, as I felt the steel drag against my insides.

My vision was still limited to where my head hung limp, but I focused on the grip and crossguard of the sword, and tried to force my hoof to make contact. My first attempt just banged against it, flopping dumbly and causing it to wobble. My second attempt, I hooked the edge of my hoof against the guard, but then I stopped, distracted now with my hoof right before me.

Was that my hoof? It looked so strange. I had no fur, or rather, what fur was left was so thin and ragged that it looked more like mold than anything that had once been a part of me. The bits without fur weren’t much better; my bare flesh had turned thin and nearly transparent from having lain here motionless in the dark for so long. I could see the muscles I forced to move, as they twitched down the length of my leg. It was fascinating, but the fact that it was my own body repulsed me.

It wasn’t just the physical disgust at a foreign object that happened to be repulsive. It was the fact that it was my own body, so twisted and decayed. What had happened? What made me like this? How long had I been here? Where was I?


...Who was I?

I reached as far back as I could, scrabbling at the corners of my mind like a hungry rat, scouring it for anything. Any memory. Anything that told me where I was, what I was doing here. All I could remember was a figure.

A blurry figure. Dark, a shadow silhouetted in the sunlight. I didn’t know where we were, there was nothing around it. But there was sunlight, and there was the dark, blurry, figure. It was shaped like a pony, but the edges were all wrong. Too sharp, too angular, they continued out further than the lines of a pony had any right to. And the eyes. Eyes that burned red.

My ears heard a quiet keening. A sad, terrified wail, if it could even be described as that. I was making it. I leapt back from my memories as if they’d stung me, desperate to rid myself of that figure. I never wanted to think about it ever again.

My rotted, ragged hoof filled my vision, and I remembered the sword. I pushed my hoof outwards, trying to drag the sword out by the crossguard. Again, that sensation of something being dragged through my insides overcame me, and I wanted to throw up as I fought against everything inside me screaming to stop, that I was doing more damage this way. I didn’t want a sword stuck in my belly, pinning me to the wall I lay against.

Black ooze welled up around the base, where the blade met flesh, and I curled an eyebrow as I pushed again. The black ooze was strange, like liquid, but it moved slowly, like thick mud. It began seeping from around the corners of my wound, and didn’t seem to stop so long as I kept forcing the blade out.

Was this the red I had been dreading? But what was wrong with it? It didn’t look like anything that should be in a pony. I wanted it out. The black ichor from within, and the sword, I wanted them both out of my body.

My hoof flopped limply to the floor as my leg fully extended, and reached the limits of its range of movement. The crossguard was too far away, now. Reaching across my barrel, over the sword, I stained my leg with the black ichor. I needed to find my other leg, touch it, make it feel, so the fire would know where to flow. A moment later, I felt the foreign touch of my own hoof on the unused limb, unsure of where it was in relation to the rest of my body. From there, I worked up to my shoulder, exploring, making the nerves in my chest connect to the nerves in my leg by force.

I found the connection, and pain crept back down my leg like abyssal ice, but I’d rescued my leg from the dark numbness. Still half-asleep, it buzzed as I made it flop across my barrel as well. Together, my hooves pressed against either side of the dull, rusted blade of the sword, and pushed it away.

Sharp pain shot through my chest. I gasped, and black ichor spattered onto my hooves. I tasted iron and rot. But the sword moved. Sliding out, it began to tilt down, and the section still inside my gut tilted up. The length of the blade stung now, just like I’d expected, and I found myself wishing it numb once again.

After a moment, the sword fell free from my body, and a clatter of metal on wood echoed through the room. As the echoes faded, I heard a distinct skittering in one of the far corners, but any kind of search for the source was futile so long as I was blinded by the hole in the roof.

The black ichor was eagerly dribbling down my barrel now, staining the flesh a dark, coagulated red. I watched it as it flowed, and gradually, it stopped, slowing to a trickle, then nothing. It had hardened, or perhaps coagulated, as I watched, for however long that had taken.

More time passed. Eventually, I began mentally exploring outwards again, pulling haphazardly at random muscles I could feel but could not locate, like the strings of a puppet being pulled experimentally. I discovered my hindlegs, before anything else. They had always been there, but I slowly realized I could feel them, and began to pull at them as well. My knee spasmed, the leg pulling inwards as the heel of my hoof dragged along the wood. Flexing it again, I pushed off the floor, and felt vertigo as I tipped over.

My face hit the wooden boards of the floor, and I felt fresh pain, but dulled. My leg, so happy with its accomplishment, spread out and stretched across the floor. But my fore was now trapped, my shoulder numbing once again. My other foreleg crossed my barrel once more, bracing itself against the floor.

Not a bone or muscle in my body would cooperate, but the fire inside me didn’t care. I would rise. I pushed against the floor, and my foreleg was free, but I didn’t stop there. I gathered my numb foreleg under me, joining the first, and forced myself up.

It took every ounce of my strength. I pushed my own body up, away from the crumpled mess I was, away from the corpse I had been before. Shoving the rest of the world away from myself for some space would surely have been easier. But I hauled myself up and away from the floor, and gathered my shaking, numb, emaciated hinds below myself as well.

I stood, under my own power. I was alive, or something akin to it.

My legs shook, rattling the wooden boards beneath me. The world was at an angle, not flat like I had hoped. Very subtle, but enough that I could notice, even with my compromised sense of balance and shaking knees. My neck fought me every step of the way, but I didn’t want to start trying to walk until I had sorted out how stiff it was.

Twisting and stretching, I sought to realign the bones in my neck as they were meant to be. Something in my throat crunched and crackled with the movements, vertebrae separating and sliding so they could set properly. Soon, my legs ached from the effort of standing, but I was nearly done. With a final hollow pop, it all felt right, barring the same dull ache that permeated the rest of me. Haltingly, I tilted my head upwards.

My victory was ruined by the disgusting sensation of something gelatinous sliding down my throat, gone before I could stop it. It didn’t even have the decency to wet my gullet as it went, only tugging at the dry flesh, making me wish for moisture. I tried to swear, gently, under my breath, but all this seemed to do was make the problem worse. Black fluid filled my mouth, splashing across my tongue and spattering across the floor, my mouth still hanging open just as limp as my legs.

Eventually, my lungs calmed down, though I noticed that I didn’t breathe subconsciously any more, nor did I seem to need to. Forcing my lungs to inhale manually drew more ichor, and I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, resolving myself to come back to that later.

I moved back to my legs, testing my weight and the movement of the disused joints, unable to stop my thoughts from flying away like the wind. What was I? Was I dead, or alive? I seemed… trapped, somehow, in between the two states. A moving corpse, at best. I hoped against hope I’d never find a mirror.

Thankfully, it seemed the more practice I got pulling my muscles manually, the less conscious of those movements I needed to be. Mobility was coming back to me, gradually and slowly. I was running no marathons, but I could move, at the very least. Hesitantly, I took a step forward, and nearly tripped over a fuzzy lump. Again I jerked back my hoof, eyes glancing down to see what it was this time, and I paused, sitting back in confusion.

I’d tripped over… a dead bird, it seemed. A falcon of some sort, a hunter, but it looked old and stained with grime and age. The feathers were loose and falling out, and any exposed flesh was red raw. Vermin had been chewing at it, feeding off it. Better it than me, but I couldn’t shake a sense of abstract sadness at such a creature reduced to nothing. Not unlike myself, really.

Beside it, the sword. As I looked at it, I marveled at just how long the blade was, and how a definite skein of rust had marked the depth it had been stabbed into my chest. At least a leg-length and a half, if not two. Gently, I bent down to pick up the sword in my teeth by the grip, then spat it out onto my hooves so I could hold it up closer. It almost looked like something had been engraved into the grip, an intricate decoration, but the metal was warped by time and erosion, blackened somehow. Had it been in a fire? I glanced around the room, but the decaying wood floor had no scorch marks, and no burned books could be seen.

I shook my head, and let the blade clatter back to the floor. There was that skittering noise again, and my ruined ears twitched to follow it. Haltingly, I turned. Every step was a test, my shaking hooves carefully placed in between fallen books. My balance was still terrifyingly unsteady as I began to walk through the bookstore.

The building was an utter mess. Not a single book remained on the shelves, and intermittent rain had fallen through a crevasse torn in the ceiling, soaking the floors in here. Even now, the wood felt slightly spongy, though something about that twinged at me. I stopped by a nearby wall and stared at it, then gently raised a hoof, pressing at it. It gave, pushing inwards and springing back, and a memory returned.

Cloud. Walls made of cloud. Pegasi did that. I was in a cloud-built bookstore?

Pressing on, I made my way towards the front counter, and beside the door. There was another skitter, in the next aisle over, and a furry lump bolted past. It left papers aflutter in the backdraft as it ran for the door, but it was gone before I could get a good look at it. I glanced down the aisle it had come from, and froze.

A body. Another pony.

Hesitantly, I approached. They were splayed awkwardly across the floor, legs askew in a way that seemed unnatural, and they lay face down. They wore the plain, utilitarian steel barding of a soldier, though I didn’t recognize the sigils stamped into the plates, or the faded colors of the under armor. A pouch was attached at their hip, but their sword was several leg-lengths away. It had been thrown aside, or perhaps lost in battle.

Silently, I gave a small prayer to the winds. It wouldn’t help them, but it was better than nothing. I left the corpse undisturbed and turned back to the front door, and made the final few steps to the sunlight outside.

The glass in the door was shattered, the broken remnants left in the frame ground flat by time and wind. It hung half open, and I was showered by wet rust from the frame and the hinges as I shoved it completely open with only a moment of effort. Outside, the door opened haphazardly into a babbling brook, shallow but a few leg-lengths wide. Stepping out into the cold stream of the river, I shivered. I was on more solid ground, however, and level enough, in comparison to the bookstore behind me.

Speaking of… I turned to look at it from outside, and my confusion only mounted. What was it doing here? No sane pony would have built this here, not at that angle. And the front end was crushed, tufts of cotton cloud bleeding into the creek and drifting downstream. I craned my neck up to see if it had fallen from somewhere, but the sky made it impossible to tell.

I guess that the time must have been around sunset, though it was hard to tell. The sun was a bright glow amidst the thick fog that seemed to have enveloped the land around me. Everywhere I looked, there was the fog, too thick to see more than maybe fifty leg-lengths in any direction. It all glowed a bright orange, which was beautiful, but all-obscuring.

Unsettled, I tipped my head down to the brook, grateful at least for the water. Maybe it would clear my head. My dry throat eagerly accepted the water, but more brackish nastiness came up in response, as the river water rehydrated the dust. I coughed again, and then spat a phlegmy black lump downstream, where I watched it bob downstream and stain the water red.

This continued for a little while, taking sips of water and spitting up more bloody phlegm, until my throat finally seemed to have been cleared. Then, I couldn’t seem to get enough water to truly slake my thirst. No matter how much I drank, my throat remained dry, and I began to worry about water leaking through my flesh. Who knows what that sword had pierced?

I shook my head again, and chose to enjoy the endless bounty of the shallow stream. Instead,  I focused on washing as much of the dried blood off myself as I could with my bare hooves. Fur and flesh quickly began to come loose alongside the smeared filth, and I had to force myself to stop. What had happened to me?

Could I even speak? I pursed my moistened lips, and tried to utter a sound. At first, nothing. I needed air to force through my vocal cords. So delicate creatures were we, and yet I remained.

“Kkkkk...“ I gagged, trying to force out anything that wasn’t a horrific rattle, or a coughing wheeze. “Pl…ple…ple…ease…”

Words. Barely. I wanted to cry, more than anything else. But I fought it back down as best I could. The fire urged me forward, to keep moving, and I obeyed. I moved towards the side of the brook, where a slightly steep hill ascended to some sort of road. Hills this steep on legs this unsteady were trouble, I knew, but I had to find something, go somewhere. I could follow this brook for miles and not get anywhere, but roads were pony-made. Roads led somewhere.

I crested the hill, and froze. Another furry shape, another pony. This one… standing. They seemed to be a soldier as well, wearing armor and staring down the road. Maybe... maybe they could help me. I slowly stepped closer, my throat burning already as I prepared to speak.

“H…hel…Hello…” Barely a warble, the words as unsteady as my gait, but it got their attention. The soldier turned around, and my words caught in my throat as I saw their face. He had no eyes, just dull red burning embers hanging in the sockets, fixing me with his undead gaze.

“W-wait,” I stuttered, stepping backwards. The soldier, a stallion, was a unicorn as well, and his horn glowed gently with a thin corona of magic. Held in his aura was a shortsword, like the other soldier inside the bookstore had, and he held it aloft as he began to stagger towards me.

“I-I do…don’t want…any...tr-trouble—”

The stallion let out a snarl as he began staggering faster, and I kept backing up in a futile attempt to keep distance between us. I glanced behind me to watch where my hooves landed, and it was my undoing. Searing pain slashed across my chest in the wake of his shortsword, cutting across my barrel and neck upward, a spray of red, so dark as to be black, spattered across his own muzzle.

I let out a strangled cry as I tried to back away further, and the edge of the hill fell away from below me. My footing was gone, and so I was unable to stop myself as I tumbled back down the incline. Vertigo was a cruel mistress. I hit the water with a splash and a crack, and the back of my head disappeared into blinding pain. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, all I felt was the cold chill of the water splashing around my corpse once more. And then, the darkness closed back in again.


*	*	*


Felt the sharp pain first, but it gradually faded into a dull throb at the back of my skull. The cold chill of death had sunk into my bones, and again, I struggled to move them. Eventually, my eyes opened once more, taking in the brilliantly blinding orange color of the fog above.

I was dying. I was sure of it. Had I blacked out for only a moment? Surely the Stallion was on his way down the hill after me, to finish me off. Better I not see it coming. I closed my eyes again, bracing myself for a finishing blow that never came.

Gradually, the pain subsided almost entirely. I barely felt the cut in my barrel and neck. Confused, I opened my eyes again, and my aching head lifted, looking around. The Stallion was nowhere to be seen. Cold water ran down my head, dripping back into the brook that had so thoroughly soaked me now. Slowly, carefully, I sat up, and pressed a hoof to my breast and neck where I’d felt the cut.

Gone. Like it had never been. I traced the path with my hoof, just to make sure, but there simply was no evidence of any wound. The stab wound from the sword I’d removed from my chest was gone as well. How…? Shaking my head, I rolled to my hooves, feeling the back of my head. It was still sore, but I would’ve sworn I’d split it open on the rock. How was this possible?

I glanced back up the hill. The stallion was truly nowhere to be seen, and had presumably gone back to where he had been standing before I disturbed him. Why had he attacked me? What had happened to him, to make him… almost feral, like that?

I drunkenly rolled to my hooves, but kept my eyes locked on the top of the hill, in case he heard me stand. The water splashed off my soaked body as the chill subsided, and my fire within had already begun to warm my bones. I could try to leave, wander away from this river and the fallen bookstore. I could sneak past him, up the river, find the road again.

Then my eyes strayed back to the bookstore. That other soldier in there, the dead one, they had a sword. And the feral pony would keep attacking anypony who came this way.

I sloshed back across the brook, and stepped up into the dark doorway of the ruined building. My eyes took long seconds to adjust to the dim light within, after I had spent so long in the sunlit riverbed, and as I was blind, I distinctly heard more skittering. Vermin of some sort. Rats, perhaps, feeding off of the soldier’s corpse. Maybe my own, until I had risen. I tried to ignore the sound of the rat’s movement. I had better things to do. As I approached the dead soldier, I took a moment to examine them up close.

She seemed to have been a mare. Her smaller frame looked absolutely miniscule, scattered across the floor as she was. Her armor would be useful as well, I realized. I couldn’t see any buckles on this side, so I pushed my hooves under her and pulled, to try and roll her over. My weakened hooves weren’t enough to do more than rock her from side to side, however, and I glanced around for something I could use as a lever.

Her shortsword would do nicely. Taking the grip in my teeth, I slid the dull, worn blade under her barrel, jamming the end into the mouldering wooden floor, and pushed. With the new leverage, she started to roll well enough, and I reached out my hoof to shove it under her, and fully turn her corpse over.

Then her own hoof grabbed me back. I jumped back and yelped, as I dropped the sword with a clatter onto the floor. The dead mare sluggishly tried to come to life, and clawed at the air mindlessly as she tried to reach for me. She was still alive? How? I slapped the sword away from us both in a panic, so she couldn’t use it, but as I watched her struggle, I began to realize that was as far as she would ever get. She was mindless, like the feral stallion outside, and crippled on top of that, with her body broken from battle. The best she could manage was limp, mindless flailing.

A pang of sadness gripped me, and I pitied the poor mare. We were not so different, she and I. Why had I risen from the dead with my mind intact, but she and the stallion outside had lost theirs? What made the two of us so different?

The flailing was pathetic, and I took the blade back up in my teeth as I approached. No more. I would end her suffering. Intentionally using the sword as a weapon felt wrong, especially how I held it in my mouth like this. The weight was heavy, my head was off balance, and the tip dragged against the rotten wooden floor. It felt like it took me an eternity to line up the length of the blade with her empty eye socket, the embers within glowing dully as we stared at each other. 

I forced my eyes closed so I wouldn’t have to see her, and shoved the sword forward. Resistance and the shock of impact shook the sword, but I kept it as straight as I could, and continued to push it through her skull. Her hoof shuddered, twitching spasmodically, until I felt a crunch, and the sword broke through the back of her head. Then she stilled, and her hoof dropped to the floor with a final clatter.

I didn’t know if I had ever killed another creature before. It felt unnatural, every step of the process. Like I had been doing it all wrong. But now I had killed, regardless if it had been natural to me in my life beforehand or not. A quiet kill, if not exactly a quick one. The mare hadn’t suffered too much, if she could even comprehend pain any more. It had been terrifyingly easy, putting down a dead pony like that.

A dead pony, just like me.

What had happened to the world? I had vague memories of a place, a country… a nation. Filled with ponies like her or me, so many ponies, smiling and happy. But those memories, I couldn’t remember any faces or cutie marks. They were all blurs. Stains of pastel color in what felt like a foal’s drawing of the world before. Equestria. Our nation had been named Equestria, our world Equus. The names were all I knew, and nothing else emerged clearly.

I sighed, and began tugging once more at the grip of the blade. I had to wiggle it inside the mare’s skull to make it come free, but it came loose with a sudden sucking noise, a squirt of black blood staining the blade. I let the sword drop to the floor as I focused on the mare’s armor, searching for buckles or straps or anything that would allow me to remove it. I quickly found the pouch at her side again, though, and pulled it open, unsure of what I even wanted to find.

The interior was black. Not empty, not stained black. Just empty, infinite void. It was as if the pouch opened to the deepest ocean, bottomless and hungry. Confused, and more than a little unsettled, I closed the flap again, resolving to investigate it later.

Eventually I found the straps to her armor on her underside, and I had to use my teeth to tug them loose. I hated every moment of it, shoving my face so close to her corpse, using my rotting, horrifyingly loose teeth for such a delicate job. I was terrified I was going to lose them for such a minor effort, but the straps loosened before my jaw did. The armor fell away soon after, though I had to pull her forward again to get the armor off fully.

She might have been pretty once, I thought. She might have been colored bright blue, but now it had all been dulled gray by time. But now it was far, far too late for her, and blood stained that pretty fur and her eyeless sockets. Out of curiosity, I pulled her leg up, rolling her back over one last time, ignoring the black stain on the floor behind her head.

Her cutie mark was more similar to the bag she was carrying than I cared to admit. It seemed to depict a black spiral, faint lines of color twisting and curling into an inky black point at the center. Looking closer, my eyes started to…blur somehow, like I was looking at something I shouldn’t. The center of her cutie mark…wasn’t fur. I could ascertain that, but nothing else. It was like the color of her fur across her body was being sucked into a hole bored through her flank.

A horrible feeling overcame me, and I turned, stretching out an aching leg to inspect my own flank, then turning to inspect the other. Both shared the same mark as on the mare. This was no cutie mark. I didn’t know what it was, aside from a reminder that I felt utterly alien in the body I called mine. 

I needed to cover it, just so I couldn’t look at it any more. So I could pretend it wasn’t there. Thankfully her armor seemed to fit me, though it was tight, and didn’t quite sit right on my back, for some reason. Still, I was happy to have it.

I rattled as I moved now. The rotten cloth woven through the metal was simply insufficient to muffle the plating clicking against itself. It began to irritate me almost immediately, and I spent a few minutes staggering around the bookstore, tightening straps and tugging at the plating, to no avail. I would simply rattle and scrape at all times when I moved.

With the armor on and her sword nearby, the dead mare had nothing left for me to take. I was as equipped as I would ever be, to fight the feral pony outside. Taking up the grip of the black-stained sword in my teeth once more, I dragged it out through the door, sloshing back across the brook one last time.

This time, as I crested the hill, he was already staggering his way towards me, his own sword again held aloft in the grip of his magic. I was less and less sure of myself as I approached, and fear shot through me. I had slain the mare inside, but she barely moved. I had no idea how to fight, no idea how to kill. I knew the sword needed to stab him, but how in Tartarus would I manage to do that before he stabbed me with his?

The fear made me hesitate, and the feral pony did not. He was already swinging his sword, that same horizontal slash across my front, and I tried to meet him, swing my own sword upwards in a panic to meet it. Pain shot across my front as the armor saved me from the cut of the blade, but not the impact. Then my mouth burned as my teeth were jarred loose—the shock of the clashing steel on steel had knocked my sword free from my mouth, as well as a spray of blood.

I staggered and gasped like a fish, but the feral pony moved without pause. He sought only to kill, and to render me immobile once more. His sword came down from on high this time, and chopped into my exposed neck, where it buried itself half a hoof deep into my flesh. I barely let out a gurgling cry, in pain, in fear and despair, before he shoulder-checked me. Our armor slammed together at the breastplate, and the shock yanked his sword free for him. My torn flesh trailed black blood as I fell back down the hillside, and rolled limply backwards as my body turned numb. I had no doubt my neck was broken, either from the sword blow, the charge, or my own fall backwards.

I felt vertigo once more as the world span, for my head was limply along for the ride that my body was taking it on. I saw a flash of running water and hard, round stones, and then I was blinded by pain. My body had taken too much, and mercifully, I faded from existence once more.


*	*	*


Why couldn’t I remain dead?

The pain in my neck stung, and this time easily matched the pain in my head. Maybe even surpassed it. My face was pressed into the stones and mud at the bottom of the brook, and cold water and silty mud flooded my lungs. Yet I did not drown. I was sliced and smashed and broken, and yet the fire within my belly knit my body back together.

What magic kept me alive? Forced me forward? I wanted nothing more than to fade here. Let myself pass into blissful oblivion at the bottom of this stream. But the fire refused to let me fade. I could not die. I could not even sleep here, rest under the water’s surface. I could only stare at the water as it ran past my eyes, and the orange fog above.

With a groan, I gathered my hooves underneath myself. My jaw hung limply from my face as water rushed out of it, draining from my empty lungs and sinuses. I sloshed as I walked, and stopped only to peer into the river, in case I could see my reflection in the water. But it was too fast, and moved too much, and the lighting was wrong anyway. All I saw was the shimmer of the setting sun above, and my own blurry, muddy form.

I was still leaking water like a rotten sieve. After a moment, I sighed and shook my head. One last try. This time, I hoped he would kill me for good.

As I slogged slowly back up the hill, I thought about how to fight him. He always opened with the same horizontal slash. It wasn’t a wide slash, and the only reason it hit me is because both times I had stupidly let him get close. If I just stepped back when he did, I might have an opening. The only problem now was my sword, which was still up there next to him. Assuming he didn’t just pick that up too, and I wasn’t about to fight a feral pony armed with two swords.

As I crested the hill, I sighed as I saw him once more stumbling dumbly towards me. At least he only had the one sword. Staggering barely faster than he did, I cut a wide berth around him, walking in a circle when he tried to walk straight towards me. Even turning while walking seemed to be too much for him to properly process, and he tripped over his own hooves, stumbling slightly as he tried to follow me. I made a note of that, he did not turn well.

My sword lay exactly where it had fallen before, still stained with my blood. I ran my tongue over the teeth still in my skull, expecting to find gaps and sharp broken molars, but somehow they were all fine. Not a one out of place, but all still loose, and they moved when I pushed them. I wasn’t looking forward to having them knocked out of my mouth again.

Bending down, I picked up my stolen shortsword and held it back up as far as I could. As the shambling corpse limped towards me, I gave the blade an experimental swing. I could just about move it fast enough to make the wind whistle through my teeth, hopefully at lethal speeds.

The corpse closed the rest of the distance while I was reeling from the vertigo of flicking my neck to swing the sword, and I nearly missed that same damned opening slash. Almost. I stepped back just in time, and I felt the gust of wind as the sword whipped past my throat.

I let out as close to a battle cry as I could, which sounded more like a terrified, keening whine through my teeth clenched around the grip. As I did, I stepped forward and swung the sword down with as much force and violence as I could muster. I aimed for his neck, just as he had done for me, but my aim was still off. There was a great clashing of steel on plating as the blade smacked into his shoulder, and my teeth stung, but I kept my grip on the sword tight even as my teeth shifted around it like marbles in my mouth.

My own neck burned from the effort it took to wield the weight of the blade, but I didn’t have the luxury of time. Thankfully, he seemed staggered even by the deflected hit, and he wobbled on unsteady hooves as he flicked his horn around in another downward slash. This time, I sidestepped, and the dull blade of the sword smacked into the hard-packed dirt of the road, ripping out a clod of dusty soil.

This time, I aimed for his head. No horn meant no magic. Thank the wind helmets didn’t seem to be part of the standard soldier’s equipment. I brought the sword up and then back down on his skull, and there was a ‘bang’ as I connected. This time, the blade was jerked out of my mouth anyways, as my neck popped from being twisted so sharply. Reeling, I staggered back, hoof pressed to my aching neck.

This time, I had been dead on target, and the soldier was wobbling from side to side, dull ember eyes twitching wildly. I’d smashed his horn like a cheap bottle, and bolts of magic flickered and sputtered randomly from the ruined and cracked stump, his horn core destabilized. An arc of pure magic lept from the end to his own metal armor, shocking him, and I knew then that I had rendered him helpless.

I wanted to savor my victory, but all I could taste in my mouth was my own ichorous blood. I staggered over one last time, picking up his own sword this time, and brought it down on his head, unwilling to leave the job half done.

The blade dug into his skull, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes as the embers in his eye sockets and his crackling magic winked out for what would hopefully be the final time. I let the blade fall as he did, still buried in his rotting brain, and then spat a mouthful of blood on his corpse. If he cared, he was too dead to show it, and guilt filled me a moment later. That act of disrespect filled me with more satisfaction than I was comfortable with.

Sighing, I said a prayer to the wind for him too. He was just as much a victim as I was, of whatever magic was keeping us alive, keeping us going, long after we were meant to have died. Now, at least, he was still. But I was still alive, on some sort of cosmic technicality.

I stayed there for a little bit, still staring at his corpse. He looked even worse than the mare had, now that I could see one of them in the sunlight. His flesh had been sloughing off, chafed raw at the neck by his armor. His mane was simply gone, all having fallen out a long time ago, and the remaining flesh was thin enough to see the veins spiderwebbed across his ragged muscles. Those same veins had turned varicose throughout his body, and had stiffened as the black blood pumped through them. That same sludge, even now, still leaked from his wounds, and appeared to steam gently when exposed to sunlight, where it wafted away on the breeze.

I tore my eyes away from the sight, and looked to either side, down the road both ways. Where could I go? I knew not where this road came from or led, or even which direction was north so I could orient myself. The forest around was thin, though the trees looked old and gnarled, and they quickly disappeared into the fog around me. This had once been a well-traveled path along the side of a larger, steeper hill, carved out to make a road along the path of the stream. Maybe I could climb the slope?

A quick glance upward tore that notion from my mind. Too steep, too high. I could barely see the peak from here. But as I was staring upwards like that, I did notice a shadow against the fog. It darkened as I followed the sky down, and I realized what the shadow was a moment later.

It seemed to be smoke, far beyond the mist, and a lot of it. Smoke meant fire. Fire meant disparity, or at least led to change. More importantly, they had to have been lit by somepony, or at least something. That meant I was guaranteed to find something in that direction.

I sucked at my teeth, as I picked up my sword again, and searched my armor for a scabbard. When I found it and slid the sword into the moldy leather, I was satisfied it would stay while I walked. I was incredibly thankful I wouldn’t have to carry it in my teeth the entire time.

I watched the sky to follow the smoke, as I began limping down the road, towards the fires far.
> 2 - The Fort
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The aches and pains of my bones never faded as I walked onwards. My gait improved marginally as I learned how to limp with all four of my legs, but it was infuriating. It seemed that the fire that kept me alive, returned me from death, would not see fit to fully heal my bruised and torn tendons. I was trapped in a half-dead limbo, and the magic seemed content to keep me there.

The road pulled away from the steeply vertical hills maybe a mile later, and the fog-drowned land  transitioned to gentle foothills. I wasn’t blind, and I could see through some measure of the mist, but the problem was that its uniform thickness meant I was in a moving circle of maybe twenty leg-lengths as I walked. I turned my eyes back up, peering through the dense fog above, but the smoke had been swallowed, my only landmark lost to the pale miasma.

My chest and forelegs smacked into something, and I gasped, the yelp caught and strangled as it tried to escape my throat, joined by the sound of snapping, rotten wood. I stumbled backwards, and glanced around wildly to see what had struck me. The road had curved while I’d kept the course, and it was nowhere to be found now. In fact, I’d gone so far off the path I’d run into a mouldering wooden fence, built of branches and scrap wood even before the years of decay that had befallen us both.


Beyond the fence, fields of brown grass and sickly, dead trees stretched into the fog. While those dead trees seemed to have been grown in rows, as if planted, at some point since their death they had begun to twist and distort. While the trees themselves had ceased to grow and change, the ambient moisture in the air had continued to twist and distort them. Now, the trees closest that I could see were gnarled and crippled things, hunched over and stabbing their branches into the earth.

One tree in particular seemed to have continued stubbornly growing long after the others, and its branches were nearly as thick as its roots. The original base had split from the weight of the tree toppling over. The new roots held fast in the gentle breeze, not even shuddering as the branches high above did. I found myself staring at this tree for a while; I swore, if I looked closely enough at it, that the roots looked like legs, the trunk a pony's barrel...

The sound of low growling yanked my eyes away from the twisted tree, and I ducked low against the fence. While it was only two horizontal logs for as far as one could see through the fog, it was a better hiding place than anything else. I couldn't keep myself from peering out across the fallow fields out of curiosity, however.

The ground rumbled with slow stomps—heavy feet striding through the fog towards me, yet they moved without any sort of alarm. The steps were constant, and after a few moments, their source presented itself.

A massive quadruped shape loomed through the fog, padding gingerly between the trees, and I could see dark brown fur, speckled with white. A muzzle, big enough to swallow me whole were I stupid enough to look appealing, was tipped with a snout that sniffed at the air. The beast’s eyes were the eyes of a hunter, relaxed, but swiveling quickly to watch all around itself, and intact, not at all like the embers that the feral pony seemed to use now instead. Two ears flicked wildly as the beast turned its head. As it approached, it sought me, by sight, sound, and smell.

It was a massive canine. While I wasn't sure of the breed, it looked not unlike my faint memories of border collies. Farm dogs, for hunting, protection, and herding. Whatever had happened to it, to cause such terrifyingly massive growth? Clearly, we had been afflicted by two different magicks, unless the effects varied incredibly widely. From where i sat, I sensed no heat, aside from that of its breath.

I was frozen, afraid to move, as the beast stopped only a few leg-lengths away, sniffing at my hiding place. It sat, and the ground shook, as it simply stared at me. Eventually, I was able to move a shaking hoof out of safety, and the beast's eyes snapped to watch my hoof intently. Yet it didn't pounce; it only sat still, and watched me.

Shaking, I crawled to my hooves, locking eyes with the great hound. "G… good d-dog…" I rasped, as I held a hoof in front of myself, as if it afforded me some illusion of safety. The hound didn’t respond at first, and simply watched me intently.

When it did move, it was only a small movement. The beast’s lips retracted, exposing twisted twin lines of jagged teeth. Some had continued to grow alongside their host, while others had seemed to have shattered into a hundred smaller teeth, each growing independently as a new tooth within the beast’s gums. Finally the beast let out a low growl that was nearly tectonic.

Still shaking, I started slowly backing away, and the growl faded. Thankfully, the noise seemed to have been a warning. It did not want me here, and I was only too happy to oblige. I continued to stumble backwards as the hound watched me, never moving from where it sat. 

Eventually, my hooves found the road once more. I took my eyes away from the hound to glance down at the hard-packed dirt for only a moment, but when I did, I found that the beast was standing now, still watching me intently. Nervously, I swallowed, and my sore throat rebelled as an all-too-literal lump passed downwards. Then I forced myself to follow the road as I had before, still watching the great hound as I staggered parallel to the fence.

After a few leg-lengths, the ground shook, and I froze—but the beast had only taken a step on its side of the fence, watching me and following along. It seemed it wanted to follow me, and I prayed to the winds that it stopped when I had left the farm behind.

We walked like that for several miles, my steps joined with those of the hound. Eventually, the fence turned away, and I presumed the property line came to an end there. Another field stretched on, just as fallow as the first, but it was at that corner that the dog sat once more.

I continued onward, still watching it, but the beast never crossed the fence. It was protecting it, and I had hopefully made it clear that I had no intention of intruding. So it stayed there, and disappeared into the fog as I walked onwards. It became a looming shadow, then a blurry silhouette, and then faded away entirely as I continued to follow the road.

After another few miles, another great shape began to loom out of the fog before me. As I approached slowly, it gained definition, and I saw great stones, held together with cordage, tree bark, and molding. A wall. It stretched upwards for what seemed like twenty-five leg-lengths, making it unfortunately insurmountable.

Well, that wasn't technically true. I could conceivably clamber atop the larger stones, scale this bulwark, but I had no idea how far it stretched in either direction, and no clue as to what lay beyond it. The wall was clearly constructed intentionally, a non-natural defensive line. A fort, perhaps?

Glancing around, I also noted that the fog seemed to recede from the wall itself, as though repelled. Now that I was right up against it, I could see it easily stretched for a good distance, though I still couldn’t see the ends. They curved away into the fog, and faded from sight. More confusingly, the road seemed to lead right into it, or perhaps it had been built with a complete and utter lack of respect for the road. Trails of hoofprints led from the road and meandered through the mud at the sides of the highway, either following the wall or circling back to go down the road the way I’d come. The majority of them seemed to continue on to my left, however, and I chose to follow the path more traveled.

As I limped along the side of the wall, I started hearing faint noises. Often no more than hoofsteps on wooden boards above, but occasionally there was the rattle of armor or the creak of wood, presumably through one of the thinner sections. Whoever had built this wall, it seemed they still occupied it, and I hoped they were not as far gone as the stallion I’d put down earlier, nor beasts like the great hound.

After some distance, I spotted a small pile of rocks that stood out from the general state of disrepair the wall was in. Approaching it, I was able to examine it in further detail, happy to finally find something.

It seemed here, the wall had been smashed from an attack, or perhaps had never been built properly in the first place, and crumbled under its own weight. Most of the hoofprints I’d been following in the soft dirt ended here; clearly I was not the first, nor the last to make this discovery. Inside the wall, I could see the superstructure of wooden support beams, and inside that, a small room, dimly lit.

I clambered inside, my stiff joints still ill-suited for rock climbing, even for such a small climb. I felt satisfied with my earlier decision; I’d have never made it up the wall. Even now, my balance was terrible, and I tumbled forward into the room with an echoing clatter as my looted armor slammed into the rotten boards. Groaning, I once again began the long process of rolling over and gathering my hooves beneath me to stand up, looking around as I did.

It seemed the wall was hollow through and through, turned into a series of corridors that defenders could use to support weak points while being protected. I’d appeared to have climbed into a ransacked storeroom, presumably where spare weapons, armor, and food would have been kept had they not already all been stolen. Possibly via the same hole I had just entered by. The room seemed to be lit by a string of dull electric lights wired down the corridor, passing through this room, but more prominently by small windows near the ceiling that let the light of sunset take up the slack.

As I was looking around, a shuffling noise made my ears perk up, and I turned to my right just as another pony entered. She was ragged and her eyes were dulled embers like the ponies before, which was quickly becoming the norm. Her equipment seemed to be that of a soldier, but much lower quality. There was barely any metal except those of the fittings, and the leather was ragged, cut roughly. A dull red cloth seemed to be their chosen banner, and one was woven through her armor, a faded coat-of-arms on her sides.

Just in case, I tried to greet her, but it died in my throat as she let out a hiss of “Invader! Thief!” Her hoof snapped up across her chest to her other side, and when she pulled it back, her sword came with it, free from her scabbard. I froze as I realized she wasn’t quite holding it, instead somehow keeping it a certain distance from her hoof, without the aid of unicorn magic. She was an earth pony, and yet, as she staggered towards me on three legs and the fourth already swinging futilely at me, I began to panic, backing towards the other door. How was she doing that?

Trembling, I drew my own sword, feeling silly now as I held it clenched in my teeth. It dawned on me that again, I had no idea what I was doing, and I was going to get myself killed fighting foolish fights like this. Death was no longer permanent, but pain seemed to be, and I had no urge to put myself in the path of more of it.

Then she jerkily leapt forward, stabbing her shortsword at me, and we were fighting.

I dodged, barely, by rearing back on my hinds, and I swatted at her with my fores as she advanced into them, battering her once or twice. That seemed to have little effect, but as I dropped back down to all fours, I swept my head forward, smacking my sword into her shoulder. Her armor absorbed most of the blow, but I cut in slightly, and drew a spatter of slightly more reddish blood. All that seemed to do was enrage her, however, and she jerked her hoof back up in a practiced movement.

Pain shot up my side as the blade entered it, and I yelped, my sword clattering back to the floor as I backed off, leaking black ichor, with more staining her blade. Screw this.

I left my sword, turning and limping quickly down the other corridor. The crazy pony followed me, judging from the growling and snapping, but I could limp faster than she could chase me with one of her hooves holding her sword, so I was gaining ground. Maybe fifty legs of dimly-lit corridor later, I staggered into another room, this one filled with the brighter light and warm crackle of a firepit. The windows near the tops of the rooms suddenly made even more sense; they vented smoke from fires lit within. Clever.

I had no time to appreciate it, though, for the room was occupied. Another pony, this one dressed in the same uniform as the one chasing me, looked up as I entered. I must have been a sight, clad in rusty armor and dripping ichor from a gash in my side. As I limped past, they shot to their hooves, grabbing their own sword with a Corona of magic, and I had two eyeless ponies following behind. This one, I could not outrun.

There was a cabinet by the other door in this room, filled with pots and jugs. Leaping up, I wrapped my fetlock around the mouldering wood and pulled, ducking behind it as it fell. The crashing sound of splintering wood echoed through the corridors, but the room was blocked behind me for a few seconds. I used my stolen time to limp as fast as I could, desperate to widen my lead.

Another crash sounded from behind me, followed by the clatter of hooves on wooden boards. They'd broken through. I pushed myself harder, fighting the pain of my joints, the burn of my muscles, as I approached another room ahead.

Three more Eyeless waited for me, swords drawn and eyes burning like fire. The one in the middle seemed more together than the other two, a moldy leather hat shading her face from the light. As she pointed at me, she let out a cry of her own, “Vagabond! Varmint!”

She unslung a long metal-and-wood rod from over her shoulder, the earth pony again seeming to hold it in her hooves, and leveled it at me. Twin metal tubes, one atop the other, gleamed ominously in the dim sunsetting light. I didn't know what that was, more magic wielded by non-unicorns, but I did not stop for it.

Instead, she stopped me. Her hoof twitched, and fire and pain blasted out of the end. It felt like I'd been bucked, the force of two hooves slamming into my chestplate in a single blow, and red hot sparks and metal pellets scattered around the room. I reeled, screeching to a halt as the other two Eyeless flinched. Smoke from the barrel clouded the room, and everypony turned hazy as it began settling to the floor.

In the echoes and smoke, the middle Eyeless barked again. “Damn straight. I know yer the no-good Hollow bastard that’s been thievin’ our stores!”

I tried to gasp out my defence, a cry of innocence, but all that came was a rasping whine from my abused chest. The embers of her eyes narrowed, burning like white-hot irons. “That's what I reckoned. Waste of skin, oughta put you out of your misery.”

She leveled her weapon at me once more, and as the two Eyeless on either side of her flinched, I saw my chance. To their right, a steep staircase led upwards, opening up to the sky above.

I flinched as her hoof twitched, and as the weapon barked with smoke and fire, I was already clambering up the stairs. The blast went wide, and I felt its heat as I scrambled, but I had evaded the shot. The Eyeless Commander swore loudly as she cracked open her strange weapon, and the other two began to scramble up after me.

The sun felt nice on my face, even as it was filtered through the fog that had overtaken the land. I had not realized how dearly I missed it until I had been without it, even for such a short time.

The top of the wall was no less shoddily built than the interior, with scrap wood tied together with ancient plant cordage, patched in places, and notably unpatched in others. The whole structure creaked and rattled as I fast-limped down its length, running for my unlife as best I could. I noted that from up here, I could see the rooms broke the line of the wall, actually being towers visible from only one side of the structure, protruding outwards towards whatever they were defending.

The other two were right behind me, slowed temporarily by the ladder, but they scrambled up with practiced clumsiness as opposed to my untrained variety. One let out a ragged war whoop as they saw me attempting my escape. The other leapt up, taking to the sky on ragged wings that looked more like feather dusters. They dove over the side of the wall, catching up to me in seconds by gliding.

I braced myself for an impact, but it never came, at least not how I expected. The second after my hoof stepped off a wide wooden board, it exploded in a shower of wood and splinters and the sound of the Eyeless leader's weapon blast. It missed me, but a fragment of wood smacked into the side of the soldier following me, and he plummeted back off the side.

“Consarnit!” The cry came from below, and I knew a second blast would be imminent. I leapt as suddenly to my left as I could, and the next blast missed me as well.Wwhite-hot pellets of metal and smoking wood flew skyward, past my side.

I could only continue to gallop doggedly forward, as I hoped against hope for an avenue of escape. As I glanced to my right, just to finally see what I was working so hard to get over this wall to reach, I was momentarily awestruck.

A village. No, not even something so small. There were too many ponies, even scattered throughout the streets as they were. This was an entire undead burg, of thatched rooftops and smoking chimneys and faded, Hollow ponies. This was no fort I was invading, but an entire township. Sanctuary, perhaps, if I could find a way down to street level.

Another weapon-blast; a double-hooved kick against my armored barrel, served as a jarring reminder. First, I would need to escape its overzealous protectors.

I was fast approaching another tower. I could see more Eyeless ponies running from that direction, armed and armored, and they clearly intended to stop me. In the distance, somepony rang an alarm bell like their life depended on it. This was wrong, I thought. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I would have been happy to talk, if only I could make the damn words form. 

Too late now.

I lowered my head and braced for pain, slamming into the armored Eyeless stallion on the left. Every bone in my neck crunched and popped, and I felt dizzy, but I was still running while he struggled to stand back up. I focused on my hooves, noticed I had begun leaning hard to the left with my skewed balance, and adjusted back right.

Behind me, another blast of the Eyeless leader’s mysterious weapon sounded out, along with a cry from behind. Not in frustration, but in pain—perhaps she’d blasted one of her own soldiers by accident? I focused again on that weapon. It felt so familiar to me, now that I really racked my head. Not like something I‘d seen, but something I’d heard described…

A gone? Or…no, a gun, that was it. She had a gun, a...shot-gun? Vague memories of hearing about hunters in the woods welled up, and I could hazily picture them. That was one question maybe answered, then.

Another blast from the shotgun, this one from below with the sound of splintering wood, jerked me out of my ruminations. I felt the hot embers of burning wood scatter across my back, and a moment later there was a strangled yelp as one of my pursuers fell through the hole.

I was approaching a third tower now. This one, I would not be able to bolt past. A moldy wooden barricade, erected hastily but appearing sturdy, clearly barred my way. Two more Eyeless Pegasi hovered around it, armed with swords. Another unicorn behind me was nipping at my hooves.

I was running headlong towards disaster like a cart out of control, and much like that same cart, I couldn’t stop myself. I grit my teeth, as they rattled in my gums with every thumping clop upon the wood, as I braced myself for impact. Maybe, I hoped, this wood would be rotten too. Maybe, I prayed to the winds, I would be able to plow right through it and keep on running.

Pain exploded across my chest and neck and head, and my vision went white, only for a moment.

I was piled in an ungainly heap up against the wooden wall. Pain shot up my hooves as I tried to move them—my lead hoof was broken for sure, and black ichor dripped down my forehead, staining my muzzle. Lethargically, I spat, keeping it away from my mouth. As if that would do anything.

Above me, I could see my efforts were not in vain. I had managed to shatter a few planks of wood, and the one Eyeless pegasi I could see looked surprised, at least. That faded when the Eyeless pony that had been right behind me finally caught up, undead lungs huffing. “Well… huff… That’s that then… We… puff… finally got her.”

“Reckon the C’mander’ll wanna finish this herself.”

“Eyyup.”

The two Pegasi landed, swords drawn but held lazily. They clearly believed I was not a threat… correctly, sadly. I would be doing no fighting with these broken and battered bones. I struggled, and managed to flop downwards from a limp, broken pile into a limp, broken heap, vaguely pointed towards the town-side of the fortifications. So close, yet so far away.

There was a clatter of hooves coming up the stairs nearby, two at a time. A moment later, the Eyeless Commander emerged, sweeping the tower. Her eyes snapped to me, then the barricade, then the Eyeless standing guard. Slowly, a smile crept across her ragged orange muzzle. “Darn tootin’! Nice work, fellas. Ya get the first pick of the fresh weapons when the next shipment comes in, now that our thief’s been caught.”

Her gaze dropped back down to me, and I withered underneath it. All I could do was gaze up, wishing for mercy as she drew her shotgun once more.

“And you, ya’ll been no end of trouble. Your little raids’ve been deprivin’ Fort Ponyville’s valiant defenders their weapons and armor, ‘n clearly we ain’t the only ones ya been thievin’ from. I recognize your armor, but you ain’t no soldier mare.”

I tried to speak, one last time. All that emerged was a pained, fleeting bleat of pain.

She huffed. “Well, don’t reckon it matters much now. Say goodnight, Sugarcube.” She pointed her shotgun at me again, and I could see all the way down the dark metal tube. I braced myself for the pain. I wondered, for a moment, what it would feel like, catching that blast in the head.

There was a loud click, and a moment later, another one. The Eyeless Commander froze, then cracked open her shotgun again. “Tarnation! Out of shotshells! Knew I’d forgotten somethin’!”

She fumbled with her shotgun, searching the pockets of her leather barding for more ammo, and I saw my escape. If I could just get to the edge, I could throw myself over. Hide somewhere below. It would hurt, but it was my only option now.

I hissed and whined as I forced myself to stand on a broken leg, the Pegasi next to me jumping, brandishing their swords. “Now, don’t go gettin’ any funny-”

Too little, too late; I was already moving. I threw myself at the battlements, making the Eyeless leader jump in surprise. I fell short, but started a mad one-hoofed scramble up over the side of the low wall. I saw the town again, what looked like a market. Many legs below, dully-colored ponies looked up, surely watching me. So close.

“Oh no you don’t!” I had just enough time to turn my head, and look at her as she howled from behind me. She had dropped her shotgun and spun on her fores, hinds facing me, and then both her hind hooves whipped out, fast as coiled snakes. It took a moment for me to register that I'd been kicked, because the next thing I saw was sky, then ground, then rooftop, then sky again.

My whole chest was on fire, ichor leaking from my armor and trailing through the sky behind me. This wasn’t like getting bucked—this was like getting slammed head-on by a train. My barrel felt wet, and as I tumbled through the sky, I caught a glimpse of the metal chestplate. The entire plate was bent inward sharply, too deep. My chest had been utterly crushed by the impact, my ribs pulverized like twigs. The bent and broken armor was the only thing holding me together now.

Then another impact, soft, as I smashed through something. The thatched roof of a building. Dried grass tumbled lazily through the air as I plummeted straight down through the rafters. The last thing I saw was the sunsetting sky, still a dull orange, shining faintly through the thatched roof’s gaps and the hole I’d torn with my impact. Then my back, and the back of my head, slammed against the floor, and I was gone.
> 3 - Ponyville
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I became aware of movement long before I opened my eyes. Below me, something bounced and shifted, carrying me. I think I was on a Pony's back, but it was hard to tell, because the pain began to fade in next, reminding me of my grievous injuries.

And whatever, or whoever, was carrying me was not just warm, but hot to the touch. I could feel it through my dented and ruined armor, as it tried to burn its way in through the metal plating. Somehow, I survived, shaking and rolling while being cooked, as I was carried into the unknown.

Eventually, we came to a stop. Cracking open my eyes, I saw the sunsetting sky, and found comfort in it, before I was gently rolled off and onto the ground. The thump jerked my chest, and I realized how sticky it was as the chestplate shifted my insides. My hoof struggled to move, to hold the chestplate down and keep my torso together, and that seemed to startle whoever had been carrying me, judging by the gasp.

“You're awake! Well it's about time, sleepyhead. Applejack punted you a good while back, it’s a good thing she forgot to check the rooftops.”

I groaned, blinking as my head was tilted for me. I couldn't seem to move it myself. Pink hooves entered my vision, and then her face. 

She actually had a face.

‘Pink’ was the first word that came to mind. Second, third, and fourth as well. Her fur was pink, her curly, fluffy mane was pink, her horn was pink, she even seemed to radiate pink itself somehow. Her only feature that dared to break the streak was her eyes; I almost couldn't believe it, she actually had eyes. She had eyes of the brightest, coolest blue I had ever seen.

And then I felt the fire once more, burning inside her, hotter than the sunset, hotter than the blast of the shotgun. And this was no flash, but a sustained burn. It never dwindled, just kept burning, kept radiating out. It burned like nothing else had before, even greater than the fire inside that dragged me back to life every time I fell. And she didn't seem to mind at all, just kept standing there, fire rolling off her in waves of pink.

She smiled, and it felt like the sunset shone brighter. I would gladly allow the fire inside her to burn me to cinders, would she only ask.

“You okay? You're kinda staring at me. It's a liiiiittle weird but things are kinda weird in general so don’t worry about it.”

It was hard to pull my eyes away from her. She was hypnotic, in the same way a raging inferno was, but her voice made my tongue remember tastes, flavors lost to me. Dough, chocolate, cinnamon?

Eventually, my eyes snapped shut, and I tried to apologize. My lips moved, but the only sound to emerge was a faint keening moan. I could barely will the air through my lips, my lungs crushed and unresponsive.

“Awwww. Yeah, you're all banged up, it's super understandable! Listen, your Aunt Pinkie Pie is gonna do her very best to help you, just don't even worry about it!”

I let out another whine, and that seemed to satisfy her. “Okay! Stay right here, okay? My friend Rockhoof is gonna have a look at your armor while I go get another friend of mine. She'll help us help you!”

There was the crunch of heavy hooves on loose gravel nearby, before a deeper, burlier voice spoke, heavily accented: “Damn, lass, y'weren't jokin’. Can't hardly see where steel ends and pony begins.”

I opened my eyes again, and this time they were greeted by a stallion as thick and rugged as his voice. I'd vague memories of fur-lined coats that couldn't compare to his own natural blue fur, and he wore a steel-and-leather harness that cut valleys through the fuzz. His own face was just as rugged, a broad, muscled neck supporting a solid, bearded muzzle. His eyes were gone, reduced to embers like the others, but there was intelligence in how he used them to take my measure.

In him too, I could feel a fire. Not a hundredth of a hundredth as strong or as hot as Pinkie Pie's, but present and steady. It was a wonder we didn't melt, with her standing beside us.

“Toldja! That kick could make Discord himself stop cold. I ever told you about the time she kicked a dragon so hard she knocked his head clean off? Big sucker, too! Dragon big, not pony big. Anyway, you check the damages, I'll go get Zecora.”

One moment she was there, and the next there was only a Pinkie-shaped cloud of dust, slowly settling to the ground. Rockhoof chuckled as he stepped closer, and I swear the ground shook slightly as he did. “Can ye talk with that metal wedged that deep in ya?”

I shook my head.

He scratched his beard with a hoof as he examined me and the straps of my armor. “Been a good while since I saw a Hollow busted up as y'are. Though it looks like ye didn't have much to lose to begin with, eh?”

He chuckled to himself, then picked up my cold, dead hoof in his own, hot with life. Shaking it for me, he introduced himself. “Rockhoof, Blacksmith and Storykeeper for Ponyville. Weapons and armor and stories are my specialty, leastwise nowadays. You hold still now, but make some noise if'n I shift something I shouldn't.”

I nodded, and he took a seat on the ground beside me, tugging experimentally at the straps. “This looks like New ‘Questrian Army gear... Very solid construction, probably the only thing kept ye from getting fully mashed. A bit too many plates and pouches and pockets for my taste, though. Ye be a soldier, eh?”

Before I could answer, he tugged a loose strap and the breastplate shifted against my collarbone. It didn’t… hurt, as such, but the grinding of metal on bone coming just below my throat was unsettling, and I gurgled as he did, which he seemed to take as an answer. It stopped a moment later, as he found the rusted clip I’d tied together and started working to undo it.

There was a click that echoed through my teeth, and he loosened the skeleton of leather straps that kept the armor on and comfortable. He started removing pieces easily enough, legs and then the barrel plating, but as he moved up, he tugged at the chestplate. My chest shifted, things sliding and squirming and roiling inside. If I had breath, it would have caught sharply, but the best I could manage was a gurgling whine.

He glanced up and nodded. “Aye, just the big one. Good news ‘n bad news; once we get that plate out, ye should be fine. Might could even fix up the armor, if y’got a liking to it. But it’s gonna hurt like Tartarus itself when we pull it.”

“Speakin’ of…” He looked up and nodded, as I could hear hooves crunching over gravel once more, and feel the heat of Pinkie Pie approaching. “Plate’s wedged in there hard, ‘cept where it ain’t. Flesh grew right over the edges, and I reckon the bones did too on the inside. Gonna be a mess when ye pull it off, but both should be recoverable. My fur might go grey ‘afore then, though.”

A zebra entered my vision from the side, examining me as I lazily blinked at her. Slung around her barrel was a ratty pair of saddlebags, worn and fraying, and they clinked as she walked. She seemed to have a stack of golden necklaces tightly wrapped up her neck, and a pair of matching golden earrings, though one was broken and all her jewelry was old and tarnished. Her own eyes were worryingly sunken back, and I could see those same burning embers deep within her pupils if I looked closely.

After a moment, she sighed, looking at Pinkie next to me. “Pinkie, if you keep bringing these hollowed remnants to my door, we will both soon find my supplies are no more.”

She began to leave, but Pinkie leapt in front of her. “Hey hey hey no! I promise, this one’s actually aware and everything! She groaned at me!”

She? At least I had that. It was some small comfort, knowing at least a little bit about myself. They both turned back to look at me, and I tried my best to make some noise. Another sad whining moan barely escaped my lips.

Zecora shook her head and tried to leave again, but Pinkie stood on her hinds, clapping her hooves on Zecora’s shoulders. “Please? Pretty Pinkie please with cherries and frosting on top? I get it, you don’t want me bugging you while you work any more, but you’re already here. Last one, I promise. I’ll even make it a-”

“No!” Zecora interrupted, eyes wide with fear. “I will help as best I can, that’s not needed. I may have something in my bag that can help…” She froze, her tongue seeming to spasm in her mouth. Pinkie tilted her head as Zecora quietly mumbled to herself, eyes dipping down towards the ground.

“...as you plead...ed?” Pinkie offered, as she tried to help.

Zecora nodded, remaining silent as she trotted back to me, opening her saddlebags. She rooted around inside for a moment as Pinkie joined us, a worried look on her face. After a moment, she pulled out a glass bottle, green with age, and a clear liquid that sloshed inside.

“This is one of my more recent brews, the best of my efforts and the plants I could find. But be warned, while it can help restore the body, it cannot restore the soul nor mind. What is lost can never truly be returned, and those further in need can only be mourned.”
 
She inspected the metal plate jammed in my chest again, and then nodded. “Pinkie, look away, you will not want to see this nor get a stain. Rockhoof, please break her neck, so while she heals we can spare her the pain.” Pinkie cringed behind her but nodded, turning around and walking away a few steps, taking deep breaths.

I began to panic. What kind of help was this? Surely there had to be a better answer, a better way to knock me out than this! I felt thick hooves wrap around my neck, draw in tight. I let out a panicked gurgle as I looked around, hoping to find some way out, some method of escape-

Pain filled my neck, and no further, as I felt the crack reverberate through my skull. My vision tilted to the side as I tried to speak, tried to gasp, but nothing came out except my own black ichor once more. I heard words, but they sounded as though I was underwater. Distant, muted. They were slowly fading as my vision did, cold death creeping over me once more.

“We will need to loosen this plate before we pull it free. Push your shovel in here, we will cut…”

*	*	*

Fire filled my chest. Not the warm, embracing fire from within, but a cold, stinging fire, an attack on my senses. It was unnatural, and my own fire fought it. The two warred in my chest as my flesh boiled until it felt like sludge. My body melted under the heat like wax. It was too much.

My eyes shot open as I let out a strained, croaking cry. It met fluid in my throat, and I keeled over on my side as another coughing fit took me. I lay on my side on the ground, hacking and coughing black ichor across the bare dirt in front of me. It stained the soil, pooled on the top without sinking in or wetting it, and I couldn’t stop coughing.

Eventually, it subsided, and for the first time, I drew a shaky, labored breath. My chest continued to burn, my lungs continued to spasm, but I breathed slowly, air in, air out. It didn’t help the burn, and it was too much work to keep doing, so I let my lungs rest once more. At least they were clear, or so it seemed.

The ground was more comfortable than I cared to admit. Even with my cheek pressed against the hard surface, the hard-packed earth was alluring. I could rest here, I thought, for just a few moments. Then, when I was good and ready, I could see what the butchers had done to my body.

Closing my eyes, I focused on the fires warring inside me. Now that I was awake, they seemed to both be subsiding gradually. The twin burns became a scorch, then a simmer, eventually settling into a dull heat. The cold, unnatural fire that had attacked me finally dwindled to nothing, my own internal fire winning out over it, fighting it back. My chest was my own once more.

My attention drifted. Sounds began to filter in. There was the quiet murmur of conversation in the distance, too far to make out the words. Occasionally a set of hoofsteps drifted by, lethargic and unhurried. I couldn’t really tell, but it never seemed like the same pony twice. Nearby, a fire crackled. I was near it, but it was at least twenty leg-lengths away. Over it all, a rhythmic metal clang every couple seconds, of something metal being struck with a hammer.

I groaned as I opened my eyes again, and gathered my hooves below myself. Sitting upright was a struggle, but I managed it eventually, leaning back to inspect my chest. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but the metal plate was gone, as promised. Just like all my wounds before, like it had never been. But underneath, my hide still shifted too easily to be properly attached to my bones, and all the aches and pains from before still burned quietly throughout my body, joined by new ones in my chest and barrel. The only change seemed to be that the fur on my barrel seemed slightly scorched, as if it had been burned a very long time ago but had healed over nicely since.

My eyes were drawn to the fire in front of me, still burning and crackling. It was a decent campfire, but seemed to be fueled by white wood that was easily turning to ashes. Even in the dim light of sunset, it lit up the area, brightening it with calming, flickering light. Oddly enough, a blade had been stabbed deep into the flames, the blade red hot from the heat.

Then a blue hoof grabbed the hilt and pulled it free. Rockhoof was sitting next to the fire, an anvil in front of him and a blacksmith’s hammer in his hoof. He brought the hot blade to his eyes, inspecting it, before placing it on the anvil and bringing the hammer down atop it. Sparks and embers of hot metal scattered off as he pounded a few loose lumps of detritus off the blade, then placed it in a tall bucket to his side. There was a hissing noise and a cloud of steam as the sword cooled, before he turned, picking up a pair of tongs with another red-hot length of metal held in their claws.

He began hammering at the sword, as I stood on wobbly legs, and approached him slowly from behind. What I was planning, I don’t know, but I was angry and scared, and he had killed me before. And deep down, I felt this odd yearning… A strange hunger for fire, like the fire contained within the stallion.

The desire faded as he turned around; he’d heard my hoofsteps as I stumbled closer, and that yearning seemed to fade as we looked at each other. “Ah! You’re awake already, that’s a surprise. Guess Zecora’s brew did work, at least a bit.”

I nodded, and then something next to his anvil caught my eye—a shield, made of stainless steel, or perhaps silver. What really grabbed my attention was that it was polished to a shine, and I could see the slightly distorted reflection of smoke in the sunsetting sky above. His eyebrow raised as I trotted over to it, taking hold and closing my eyes as I positioned it in front of me.

“Lass… Brace yerself.”

I didn’t, and I regretted it. Opening my eyes, I was greeted by the sight of a rotting corpse, barely held together with mouldering fur and sickly flesh. Her face was emaciated, worn down and slackened slightly from time. Her mane was nearly gone, only strands of colorless fur remaining. The rest had all fallen out, lost to the wind. Her lips had pulled back as she decayed, revealing her teeth in a corpse’s rictus grin. Black ichor had dribbled from the corners of her mouth, staining the flesh and trailing down her neck. 

Patches of muscle were exposed to the elements, and as she moved her head around to get a better look, the muscles moved too, the inner workings of the body exposed for all to see. I paused as I reached her body, and I realized her back looked strange. After a moment of staring, I realized it was because there was a pair of wings, folded, mouldering. I never felt them, couldn’t feel them now. Useless limbs, held in place by rigor mortis. Her eyes were the worst part—they snapped back up, and I looked deep into the sockets. They were totally gone, and only the burning embers of the eyeless remained.

She was... I was… one of the Eyeless. I had known, on some level. I had seen my hooves, my body, the condition I was in. I knew I wasn’t a pretty sight. I knew I couldn’t be better off than the others I had seen, the others I had killed. But I had hoped, regardless. Hoped that I had somehow escaped that sad fate, that some trace of my Equinity remained. That I had something left, at least.

The mare in the reflection started to cry, tears welling up from the back of the sockets, and the image became blurry. Strange, the shield had been so well polished only a moment ago…

I don’t know how long I sat there, sniffling and sobbing as every detail burned itself into my memory. I couldn’t force myself to move, nor did I want to. I just wanted to cry.

Time passed. Ponies talked in the distance. More walked past. Always, the endless clanging of hammer on anvil.

At some point, I realized I was curled up in a ball next to that anvil, still sobbing gently. The hard packed dirt I rested against accepted the moisture greedily, as I was occasionally showered by sparks from the endless hammering above. None of it really mattered to me. What was the point?

Deep inside me, I felt a warmth, and I huddled inwards tighter, coddling it with my body. This. I had this fire. That was all I really had, now. It wasn’t much, but it was something. If I could keep it safe, assuming I didn’t just die again, and somepony walking past didn’t take it from me while I was dead.

Time passed. The wind blew the acrid scent of smoke to my lungs, and I coughed gently, shifting in my fetal ball. Sparks showered from above, over and over again.

Then there was pink, and warmth. I was embraced by an inferno, burning my flesh, and I embraced it back, wishing for the fire to consume me. It failed to happen, but the fire did speak.

“Oh my gosh! You’re awake! How long were you sitting here like this? Jeez, I feel terrible, I shoulda been here when you did wake up so I could talk to you and then maybe you’d be okay and not Hollowing out, please please please don’t Hollow out, I swear everything’s gonna be okay, I promise!” 

Pinkie Pie. The mare was hugging me. I felt ashamed, unfit to be hugged. I was ruined, horrifying, and she was so perfect. I felt like I was tainting her perfection just by being near her. But I did not turn away, did not force her back. I snuggled deeper into her shoulder like a foal being held by her mother, desperate for Pinkie Pie’s fire.

We stayed there for a little while, Pinkie scalding me with her hug, before Rockhoof spoke up. “Pinkie, lass. Ye’re crowding my anvil. Hug Hollows all sunset if ye like, but your mane’s gonna catch light where you’re sittin’.”

“Okie-doke.” Pinkie spoke with noticeably less cheer in her voice as she pulled back, gently breaking the hug, as much as I tried to cling to her for dear life. As she did, I looked once more at her face, and noticed it was only shy of the perfect image I thought I had seen when I first met her. The corners of her eyes were creased with crow’s feet, and they were dark as though she hadn’t slept in days. Her mane was fluffy and curled, but more than that, it was a mess, tangled and knotted. She must not have brushed it in a while.

Then she was smiling as she gently pulled me to my hooves, and those imperfections seemed to fade. “See? You’re okay. I gotcha. C’mon, let’s move over here.”

I trailed behind her, finally looking around, taking in the town around me as we walked. This seemed to be the town square of Ponyville, or at least, it had been once. The town hall was a burned-out husk, barely casting a shadow to the east. A few tents and lean-tos cobbled from scrap cloth and junk had been built, and other Eyeless (or Hollows, which seemed to be what Pinkie and Rockhoof had named them) were living out of them. Some lay still, watching the town as well, some stared at walls or the sky, while others talked amongst themselves.

Nearby on a park bench, a green unicorn quietly played a harp while a cream-yellow earth pony sat beside her, both deeply hollowed. Pinkie gave them both a happy wave as we passed, and the cream pony returned it while her friend seemed to be lost in the gentle, tinkling notes.

Something glittering on the skyline caught my eye, and I was in awe for a moment as I saw the sparkling exterior of a grand castle through the smoke that hung over the town. Even from where I was standing, I could see how it gleamed, like violet glass. It was towards the edge of town, away from the source of the smoke, but I resolved to investigate that castle as much as I could when I got the chance.

I turned my eyes back below the skyline. Looking down the street, a market had once been erected, though most of the tents were empty or had been torn down, presumably set up somewhere as housing. A few determined merchants continued trying to hawk wares to ponies with less fur than money, but only a few.

Pinkie paused to nuzzle a faded yellow Hollow manning one of the stands, who had seemed to have fallen asleep until Pinkie woke her up. “Hey Goldie! How's business?”

The Hollow blinked at her dumbly for a few seconds too long. “Uh.. it's, uh… slow. Uh... Pink… Pinkie Pie?”

Pinkie never stopped smiling, but those crow's feet returned. “Yup! Hang in there Golden Harvest, it'll pick up! Whatcha selling lately?”

The Hollow scrunched up her eyes, thinking as hard as she could. After a moment, she sighed, and turned around to look for herself. “Uh… pillows. And some knives, like you'd use to chop, uh… something…”

“Like carrots?” Pinkie offered.

“Carrots! Yeah!” Golden's face lit up, and her eyes flared just a little brighter. Then she looked confused. “I haven't seen any carrots lately, though…”

Pinkie leaned over the counter to hug her, and Golden jumped at the heat, before leaning into it. “It's okay, Goldie. I'm sure there'll be carrots soon, you just gotta keep an eye out and the stall running!”

The Hollow nodded, looking back at her wares as Pinkie pulled away. We continued walking onwards around the square, and I resumed looking around. Houses and buildings, empty shops or abandoned houses, all walled in the streets. Almost all of them had some sort of fire damage, from minor scorches and burn scars, to fully missing their roofs or having been burned down to the foundation.

“It’s not much to look at, I know, but Ponyville’s our home.” Pinkie said, still smiling as we walked around. “Sometimes things from the Everchaos come over the wall, but we can fight them off eventually before they do too much damage. Usually.”

I hadn’t seriously tried to talk before now, between the fluid filling my lungs and the damage to my chest. Even when I had, I had nopony to talk to. Now that I was among other ponies, living ponies, or at least as close as I was seemingly going to get, I figured it was worth another shot. My voice was croaky, and it cracked as I spoke. My throat felt raw, like I’d had a cheese grater forced down it. But for the first time in what seemed like a very long time, I asked a question.

“Ev...Ever...c-chaos?”

“Mm-hm!” Pinkie nodded. “It… well, it used to be called the Everfree, but then this big fire broke out and we started getting attacked all the time, well, more than we were already, I guess. It was already kind of a huge pain in the tuckus, but now it’s super, super deadly and on fire. If you’re curious we can go look at it from the wall!”

After a moment, she gasped. “Oh! Ohmygosh, you can talk!” Pinkie spun around to face me, and her wings flapped in excitement. “What’s your name? Where are you from? Do you remember anything, anypony? Do you remember what your talent is? When’s your birthday?”

I staggered back, startled, and she seemed to get the message, sheepishly backing off. “Ooops. Sorry, hehe, just excited! I was really really worried you were gonna hollow out, and now it really looks like you’re not going to! So, um, seriously though, what’s your name?”

Suddenly, my throat was dry. “Don’t… Don’t kn-know.”

“Aw.” Her face fell “Well… I’m gonna call you Holly, if that’s okay. There’s been a few Hollys before, but Hollyhock’s been missing for a really long time and the others don’t usually remember that I named them that, so…”

“H...Holly?” I asked, tentatively.

“Mm-hm! Short for Hollow Pony. Until we find your old name, or you remember it!”

Holly. It was an okay name. It might have even been mine. I nodded, and that seemed to make Pinkie happy. I bathed in her radiance as we kept walking, passing by a teenaged Unicorn that seemed less hollowed than most. Her eyes were intact, and her coat was not yet too dulled, a very light purple. She was holding a few crystals in her magic, while a hollowed adult unicorn with pink fur seemed to be teaching her about them.

“...and the thing about crystals in general is they just soak up magic like a sponge. This makes them exceptional as spell catalysts or for infusions, though the color of the crystal is surprisingly important in understanding which type of magic and element they’ll- oh, hey Pinkie!”

“Hiya Amethyst! Hiya Dinky! Teaching her about crystals?” We stopped as Pinkie greeted them, the small protege giving us a nod as she examined the crystals in the light.

The adult mare nodded. “Yup. Refresher on the basics, then I'm gonna teach her how to infuse them with basic elements.” She turned back to her student. “Of course, I’d be remiss to not teach you about some of the traditions and history of these crystals too. Take this black quartz for instance.”

She levitated a small bundle of cloth out of her saddlebags, and unwrapped it, revealing the black crystal inside. “Traditionally these are called Separation Charms, and they’re often given as gifts to friends going on long journeys to keep them safe. Quartz is pretty brittle though, so they don’t take charms or spells very well, and infusions don’t last long…”

We began walking away,  Pinkie giving them a happy wave as we left. After we were out of earshot, she turned back to me. “I hope Starlight comes back soon. She’s been gone for a really long time. Dinky’s doing a really good job as the town’s Archmage, though.”

A name I recognized, vaguely, but I couldn’t recall why, and couldn’t put a face to it. The aches of my bones flared again as we kept walking, and we paused by a fountain in the middle of the town square that seemed like it once had water pumping through it. Now, it simply sat as a small concrete basin filled with ancient bits, green with verdigris.

Something had been bugging me since I woke up here in Ponyville. My throat cracked as I spoke, but Pinkie listened intently as I asked, “The… the sun. What’s...wrong with it?”

Pinkie blinked at me dumbly for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“It’s… not right. Doesn’t it ever… move?”

Pinkie stared at me for a good few seconds, and for a moment, I felt silly. It was the sun. It couldn’t change, couldn’t be weird. I was losing my mind.

Then she nodded. “Yeah. Not a lot of ponies remember that, though. It used to rise and set. Doc Brown even used to set his clocks by it.” She shook her head. “Ever since Celestia came back though, it’s stayed put. Supposedly it’s to give the army light by which to fight the demons, but we’ve been fighting for so long… Longer than anypony can remember. Especially since then, because after his clocks started winding down, Doc Brown hollowed out really quickly. He didn’t have anything to set them by any more, you see.”

Pinkie seemed to slump slightly, eyes drifting towards the ground. “He’s… still around, I think. Wandering, crazy, outside the walls. He was attacking ponies when Applejack kicked him out. I… helped her do it, because he just wasn’t himself.”

I hugged her tightly, and she brightened up, after a moment. “You should ask Rockhoof to tell you about Equestria. He remembers it better than I do, I’ve been focusing really hard on Ponyville.”

I cringed slightly. I wasn’t exactly excited to talk to Rockhoof again. He didn’t exactly seem the friendliest sort, but I nodded and broke the hug, looking back towards the burly stallion. He was still hammering away at a piece of metal on his anvil, apparently working through a long order of swords.

Pinkie saw my hesitation, and put a hoof on my shoulder. “I’m sorry about earlier, too. At least Zecora’s medicine worked, right? And Rockhoof’s really nice once you get him talking about history. He’s just…” She sucked in her teeth. “He doesn’t get why I’m trying to keep everypony cheered up, why I keep ’bothering’ with hollowed ponies like yourself. He’ll understand, see you’re not as far gone as the others.”

I nodded, and she smiled, before turning and trotting back towards another group of Hollows. As soon as she was gone, the very air felt cold around me, the fog chilling my fur in a way it hadn’t before. Shivering, I began trotting back to Rockhoof and the neverending rhythmic clang of his hammer on his anvil.

He was doing it too, I realized as I approached. Rockhoof was an earth pony, and yet he held his hammer in his hoof, or nearby his hoof, somehow. It was as though he held it in an invisible claw at the end of his leg. I racked my brain, hoping to remember anything like that from before, but my memories from before the bookstore were as foggy as ever.

He noticed as I approached him again. “Well then. Pinkie give you the tour?”

I nodded, sitting next to him. “Said… ask y-you about... Equestria?”

He paused in mid-swing, looking at me. “You don’t remember either, do ya lass?” Setting it down on the anvil, he turned to face me. “Well… Where to start... “

After a moment, he nodded. “When I was a young lad, back in my village, Equestria was this little kingdom down south. Even back then, there was Princess Celestia. She was part myth, but the Equestrians worshipped her. Built grand cities like Canterlot, great shrines to her, ‘cause the legend was that she made the sun rise and the moon set. When I came here… Ehh, long story, not much in the mood to tell it now. But let’s just say I skipped a thousand years, and she only seemed more powerful when we returned. Armies to her name, great gleaming towers of glass and steel and marble. Equestria was a few million ponies strong: pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns all living together and making it what it was.

“Thing is, a few years after I got back, Celestia started getting sick all the time. Said her magic was getting stolen by the dragons. And Equestria militarized towards ‘em at a moment’s notice, these great armies making war on the big lizards just because she asked it.” Rockhoof shook his head. “That’s when I picked up the hammer and anvil here. We fought ‘em down to the last drake, but Celestia didn’t hardly get any better. That’s about when the Everfree lit up, and these demons started spilling out and attacking all the settlements around it, burning ‘em down to cinders. Thankfully we could hold ‘em back after sharpening our swords on the Dragonlands, but they just keep coming still today.”

“Celestia set out for somewhere out west, then, her golden guard in tow. And her sun followed, setting over the ocean and staying put. I reckon’ that’s when she lost control of it totally, because it hasn’t moved an inch since. Eventually she came back, taking control of the armies again, and fighting back the demons even more fiercely. That’s pretty much where we’ve been since, locked in this stalemate against the demons from the Everchaos with the sun frozen in sunset.”

I nodded, laying down on the ground to think. It was a lot to take in. After a few minutes, I looked back up to where he’d begun hammering again. “Why… Why c-can’t I… d-die?”

He scoffed. “Not just you, lass. Nopony can. We call it the Hollow Curse. Happened a little while after Cloudsdale fell, ponies just started getting back up when they died to the Demons. The more they died, the more corpsey they started to look. It takes a while too. Back when we still had clocks, would take weeks for a dead pony to get up. Like they never stop healing when their heart stops, and eventually their body is satisfied enough to start moving again.”

He paused in his hammering again, looking right at me. “Try not to die too much, yeah? The more you die, you more of yourself ye lose. Things you can’t ever get back once you lost ‘em. Your body, then your mind, your soul. Memories, feelings, anything rattling around in your skull rots and stays rotten. Eventually you’re just a mad Hollow, hurting anypony around you, searching for what you lost.”

After a moment, he glanced over at Pinkie, still wandering around and talking to the other Hollows of Ponyville. “Neither of us wants to see ye go hollow. More than you are, anyways. Think I would’ve already myself, if it weren’t for-”

There was a shout from one end of the square, and we both turned to look. A ragged Hollow, with faded yellow fur and wild eyes, had bolted into the square, shouting about something. “Applejack! She’s comin’, hide!”

Meaningless to me, but it galvanized a few Hollows into moving, pulling others up with them and dragging them away. Some followed, some seemed confused, but the herd began to disperse, ducking into the empty buildings of the town square, running down alleys, or hiding behind rotted barrels.

Rockhoof’s eyes narrowed. “Damn. Lass, ye better hide too. That moron riled them up again...”

Hide? Hide where? Panicking now, I glanced around. Rockhoof had a cart nearby he’d been using to store his tools and weapons he was working on. It was a broken-down mess of rotting wood and rust, with one of the wheels having snapped off at the axle and the cart resting on the remaining one at a perilous angle, but the shadows under it looked deep enough. I dropped to the ground and scuttled under it like a rat, while Rockhoof watched, furrowing his brow at my choice in hiding spots. There was no time to hide elsewhere though.

From under there, I also had a fairly decent view of the town square around me. With only the least-hollowed ponies, or those without any others to take care of them remaining, a heavy silence fell over the square, interrupted only by the slow hammering of Rockhoof back at his anvil. Sound carried well, now.

Pinkie stood in sharp contrast to the Hollows that had fled, striding out to the middle of the square, not far from the little bonfire. She was facing away from me, but I could see her legs shaking as she waited.

She didn’t have to wait long. After a moment, there was a sound, the galloping of hooves, and four soldiers came around the corner like wild dogs, turning sharply as they began to spread out, searching. Instantly, I recognized the Eyeless Commander leading the pack. She kept her shotgun drawn, cracked open over her foreleg, but she slowed down to a stop as she approached Pinkie.

“Howdy, Pinkie.”

“Heya, Cuz.” There was little excitement in her voice now, simply resignation.

If the Commander noticed, she didn’t seem to care. “You see a Hollow come running down the street here? Yellow fur, brown mane?”

“You mean Caramel?” Pinkie asked with a sigh.

The Commander nodded. “So you do know him. Good. Where’s the bastard holed up? Caught him nosing around the south gate.”

Pinkie shook her head. “I haven’t seen him, Applejack. But I do remember him. Don’t you?”

Shrugging, Applejack turned back to the other soldiers at her heels. “Spread out, watch the alleys. Might still make a run for it.” They nodded, and she turned back to Pinkie. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t even remember his name these days, do you?”

Applejack stared at her, the embers of her eyes flickering gently. “Why would I remember a thievin’ bastard Hollow?”

“He used to be your cousin, Applejack. A distant one, sure, but he was an Apple once.”

She snorted. “Apples don’t go hollow, Pinkie. Guess I ain’t never told you that before, or maybe you’re goin’ Hollow yourself. We’re hardy stock, don’t let it get to us. Now, you gonna help us track him down, or you wasting my time?”

“No time left to waste.” Pinkie sighed. “I’m not going to help, Applejack. Please, let it go.”

Applejack snorted again. “Hah! Like Tartarus I will. You know we can’t keep Hollows in town, Pinkie, they’ll make others go hollow, make it spread. We gotta keep ‘em out, throw ‘em out if any get in.” She glanced around the square. “Gonna have to start busting down doors soon, making sure you ain’t hiding any here. You got a problem with that?”

Everything about Pinkie’s body said that yes, yes she did have a problem with that. “I… no. Go ahead. There’s… nothing to hide here in town, Applejack. All the monsters are outside the walls.”

“Reckon we’ll see about that.” In a flash, her hinds snapped out, and a stack of barrels exploded into splinters. She rolled with the move, twisting to bring her shotgun to bear as she swept the debris for anypony who’d been hiding in them. But there was none, and she let out an annoyed snort as she continued investigating the square.

Her eyes swept the cart where I was hiding, and I froze, hoping I was as hidden in shadow behind the axle as I hoped. Thankfully she moved on, nodding to Rockhoof. “Blacksmith. How’re them swords and armor comin’ along?”

“Decent,” Rockhoof grunted. “You get word about when the next resupply shipment is coming? Runnin’ out of old swords to sharpen up and resmelt.”

Applejack made a noncommittal grunt, and resumed her search. After a moment, her embers landed on a lean-to, trailing cloth flapping gently in the wind. She grabbed a flap of the tent with her teeth, before she flicked her head and ripped the canvas away. The hollowed unicorn and her earth pony friend had been huddled together under the cloth, and they withered under Applejack’s gaze while the militia ponies around them drew their weapons.

Applejack guffawed in laughter as she dropped the remains of the tent. “Knew it. Pinkie, y'all got an explanation for this?”

Growling under her breath, she nodded. “Yes. That’s Lyra and Bon-Bon. You’ve known them for years, Applejack. You went to their wedding. Please don’t do anything rash-”

“I don’t recognize ‘em. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, Pinkie, you’re hiding these rogue Hollows! Now, where are the rest?” She drew her shotgun and pointed it threateningly at Lyra, but if the green unicorn noticed, she didn’t seem to terribly care. Slowly, delicately, her hooves twitched at her breast as though she were still playing her harp. At her side, the cream earth pony hugged her tightly, and glared at Applejack harshly enough for the both of them.

Applejack just snorted again as she looked between her captives and Pinkie. “Best tell me, ‘afore this Hollow gets something a lot worse than thrown outta town.”

“I’m going with her,” growled the earth pony, as she pushed herself in front of the Hollowed green unicorn. “Wherever she goes, I go with her.”

“Suits me.” Applejack replied, with a shrug. “Pinkie. Where’s the others?”

Pinkie’s teeth were grit tightly. “There are no others, Applejack. You’re killing the town, you realize that? Every time we do this dance, have this talk, we lose ponies. Ponyville doesn’t have many more to lose, and then we’ll just be ‘-ville.”

“Gonna have less if there’s Hollows here, spreading their damn curse.” Applejack snapped her shotgun’s breech open, to check that it was loaded. “Now, that's your final answer? Ain’t hiding any more?”

Pinkie hesitated, and Applejack only raised an eyeless eyebrow. “Ah can tell when you’re lyin’, ya know. Just so you're sure.”

Pinkie sighed, then looked sadly at the two hollows. “Yes. I’m sure. I’m sorry-”

Applejack cut her off with a snarl. “Don’t apologize, Pinkie. Nothin’ to be done for ‘em.” After a moment, she nodded. “Reckon’ I believe you though. Now, you two, follow behind. You go running or try to fight, y’all are gonna get thrown outside with a belly full of lead. Won’t be outrunning any demons then.”

The other soldiers drew in close as Pinkie started sniffling, and Applejack began leading the pair out of the Square. As they left, we could just hear Applejack drawl, “An’ keep an eye out for that yellow bastard. Might still be around here.”

As soon as they were gone, the sniffling fell apart into full-on sobbing, and Pinkie collapsed against the side of the cart, where I was hiding. I think I startled her when I crawled out next to her, but after a moment, she eagerly hugged me, and pulled Rockhoof in close to join her. As the rest of Ponyville’s residents filtered back out of their hiding places, Pinkie sighed.

“Welcome to Ponyville, Holly.”
> 4 - Hollow
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After Pinkie apologized for everything, profusely, she headed off somewhere, but she told me to stop by somewhere named “Sugarcube Corner;” there was a party going on, and everypony really needed it. There was always a party there, and everypony was always invited. I agreed to come, and then we made our separate ways.

While she started trotting off one way, I began to follow the general direction that Applejack and her guards had gone. For a while, I considered some attempt at heroics, to save those two Hollows, but I was unarmed and unarmored. All that would accomplish would be to get me thrown out alongside them. Instead, I noticed they also seemed to be heading towards that grand, gleaming castle I had spotted earlier through the fog, and I still wanted to investigate that. At least, as much as I could, if they were guarding it.

I stayed what I hoped was a safe distance behind the guards and Applejack, at least until they seemed to be heading past and away from the castle. I broke off there and turned towards the gleaming landmark itself, and spent most of the walk looking at the buildings around it. Occasionally I glanced upwards over the rooftops to make sure I was still going the right way.

I distinctly noticed that the further away I got from the town square, the fewer ponies I saw. At first, I wrote it off, for surely Applejack had spooked them, but by the third street in a row without a soul to be seen, I started to feel distinctly lonely once more. The undead burg also seemed to get more built-up around this end, transitioning suddenly from thatched rooftops and small, one or two-story cottages, into flat cobblestone streets and brick buildings. It was still a mix of small storefronts and cozy houses, and no building was higher than three stories at most, but the air smelled different here. While the thatched-roof buildings had begun to decay, these brick buildings had remained, and only trace scents of rot could be found. And that was… unsettling, somehow, as if this part of town was too clean. It felt artificial.

I was maybe a block or two away from the base of the castle itself, and while it had become considerably easier to see through the fog, I could only see the top half from here. I needed to get higher, above these taller buildings. A nearby apartment block seemed to be one floor higher than the ones surrounding it, and I approached the door, tentatively giving the wood a few knocks with my hoof.

Nopony ever responded. Eventually, I peered through the darkened windows, and saw sunlight in the very back of the building; a door, left open. I decided to try the door just to see if it was unlocked, it was, but still refused to open. Confused, I pushed at it, and the door squeaked loudly. It seemed the ambient moisture in the air had caused the door to expand in the frame, and eventually I had to slam my shoulder against it a few times to shove it open wide enough to squeeze through.

It felt like I broke my shoulder in the process. I limped painfully through the building as I regretted my actions, as surely somepony had to have heard the thumps and squeaks as well.

I found my answer almost instantly, and it barely avoided finding me. I was about to step into the pool of sunlight that filtered through the back door, when a shadow passed in front of it. I froze, then pressed myself against the wall, suddenly thankful that Rockhoof had removed my armor. I may have been much less durable, but I also didn’t clank and rattle when I moved, any more.

“Noooise?” A voice snarled through the doorway. It was a growling, guttural voice, nearly bereft of any Equinity. “Holl… Hollow? I smell…”

There was the sound of sniffing, and I prayed I was downwind of the voice’s source.

“Smells… ragh.” There was a growl that sounded almost dismissive.

A second voice responded to the growl. They were guttural as well, but less so, as if the pony merely had a sore throat. “Don’t smell anything. The wind probably just knocked something over. Come on, let’s get back to our patrol.”

There was only another growl in response, but the shadow stepped out of the light, and I heard the clicking of hooves on cobblestones as the two voices walked away. If I breathed, I would’ve released a breath in relief, but I settled for sliding off of the wall. The old, moldy wallpaper stuck to me as I pulled away, and the old paper fluttered to the floor as I shook it off.

I could see a staircase leading upwards in the dim light, but I wanted to peek around the corner at the open doorway, just to be safe. I was surprised when I did; the door hadn’t been left open, like I assumed, but it had been smashed open. The door itself lay flat on the floor, the brass knob tossed into a nearby corner. This house had been invaded at some point, it seemed.

It was hard to see through the door itself; the darkness of the room and how bright the sun was outside made for a harsh juxtaposition, and I had to stare out for a while before I could see clearly. I couldn’t see much even then, but what I could see seemed to consist of another large square with a fountain, smashed to rubble, in the center. Sets of lightly-armored militia ponies staggered around the perimeter in patrols of two. Wherever I was, it was good I had stopped here. I didn’t think I’d be allowed to just wander into an area they so tightly controlled.

I turned away from the sunlight, and for a moment, I was taken aback by how absolute the darkness within the building seemed to be. I was blind, stumbling through the shadow, and even the light through the door seemed to disappear when I turned back to find my bearings. In fact, all light had disappeared, and I began to feel distinctly unsettled. It was as if I was staring into my cutie mark, or that strange bag again. It was that same sort of dark, the same feeling of total void, absolute… and hungry.

I began to hear whispers. Indistinct voices, voices I didn’t recognize, and I couldn’t understand the words. Some of them were Equuish, I’m fairly sure, but spoken so quietly, or from so far away that I just barely couldn’t make sense of them. I spun and twisted, looking around for anything, but all was Abyss, crushing me. It was like pressure from all sides had forced me down. I was underwater, I was drowning. But there was no water to drown in.

What eventually shook me out of it was the downwards pressure itself. I realized I could still feel the floor, could still feel the old, moldy carpet beneath my hooves. I shuffled over the surface, afraid to lift my hooves for fear they’d never touch the floor again, and eventually they found the molding where the floor connected to the wall. I tried to lean against it for stability, but I nearly stumbled—there was nothing there, except for what my hooves touched. So I used my grounding to shuffle along the wall, slowly, carefully, until I reached a corner, a step.

Slowly, laboriously, I began to blindly ascend the staircase. It only took a few steps before light pierced the veil, and I was blind no more. Something… all-encompassing slid down my withers, but when I jerked away and spun around, nothing was there. Nothing had ever been there. The room was dimly lit by the sunlight that came down the staircase and the ambient light from the broken door below once more.

I couldn’t stop shivering, no matter how much I tried. Some residual feeling of a cold presence, or maybe simple disgust. It had been like I was drowning in my own black ichor. I felt like throwing up, like the clumps in my throat were trying to escape out of my mouth. My cutie mark itched, like I'd never felt before. I didn’t even know for sure what I had stumbled into, if it was a place, or some sort of creature… Or some sort of emanation of a creature…

I stumbled backwards up the stairs, eyes still scanning below, but nothing came for me. I was alone in a dark, abandoned building. Like I always had been.

I couldn’t limp up the rest of the stairs fast enough. I scrambled around the darkened landings of each floor as I passed them, headed for the roof. I would be in the sunlight there, and the sunlight would keep me safe. I knew it, on a level I couldn't explain. I didn’t care who heard me galloping up the old wooden stairs. They could try to chase me through that if they were so desperate.

When I burst through the door at the top of the building, I felt as though I had galloped up a hundred flights of stairs, but the building was only three stories, plus the roof. My chest burned, my bones ached, and my mouth was numb. But I had reached the sunlight, as dim as it was through the smoke and the fog, and I collapsed onto the gravel of the flat roof and simply basked in it for a long while.

Something… It was difficult to describe. Something receded, at the touch of the sunlight. Something that had crawled under my flesh, through my veins. But it crawled no longer as the sun hit; it withered and died, and I felt even the pain of my exertion fading somewhat as I lay before the sun.

When I felt... clean again, somehow, I staggered to my hooves. Bits of gravel had gotten stuck to my flesh when I had fallen, and I brushed them off easily enough. I didn’t need to walk to the edge of the roof to get the view that I needed; the castle was big enough that I could see almost all of it from any part of the roof. I sat more-or-less in the middle of the wide roof, and looked up.

And continued looking up.

If I had thought the town’s sudden shift towards cobble streets and glass storefronts had been a jarring, this castle didn’t seem to fit any architecture that I knew. The exterior seemed to be a façade of glass, or crystal, or at least I assumed it was a façade. Surely, it couldn’t have been made entirely out of whatever that was? That would’ve suffocated an army of glassblowers, or would’ve crippled a legion of carvers. How could such a large building gleam like that? The surface was entirely uniform, with not a seam or crack of shift in color to be seen, aside from the where one section joined another. All of it, seemingly, was crafted from bright purple crystal that reflected the glittering light of the sunset through the foggy skies, and illuminated the streets below in rainbow patterns.

The actual structure itself… It resembled a treehouse, in the strangest way. As if somepony had plucked a castle, foundations and all, and dropped it into the branches of a great crystal tree. All of the mass was so much higher than the town that surrounded it, and it was suspended with ease in branches whose height rivaled even that of the building I was sitting on. The entire mass of the castle tapered impossibly downwards into a single tree trunk, formed out of perfect geometric angles, and towards the base, where a single set of double doors, grand as they might be, seemed to be the only entrance inside.

And yet, even the width of those nearly took up the entirety of the trunk’s space; surely there couldn’t be some sort of narrow staircase leading all the way up into the castle proper? Nor a ladder, which were already difficult for ponies to navigate. How would they move furnishings into the building? What about food? Looking back up at the castle portion, I couldn’t see a crane or any sort of loading dock. Perhaps there was an airship dock on the side facing away from me, and in the name of security, everything went through there? Surely I couldn’t be looking at a purely secondary entrance!

And yet, looking back up at the castle section, I did notice something odd. I looked away, then back, and yet my confusion only grew. The castle… seemed to be changing whenever I looked away. The entire layout of the structure shifted. Rooms grew and shrunk, towers relocated, disappeared and reappeared, and even the branches of the tree seemed to twist and bend to impossibly support whatever illusion was surely going in front of my eyes.

This whole structure seemed impossible. It was made of materials that made no sense, the architecture was as though it had been designed by a foal that couldn’t decide whether they wanted to live in a castle or a treehouse, and the building itself seemed to constantly be in flux, never in the same position twice. What creation of Discord was this? Whatever it was, it was unsettling to look at, but most of all confusing. Desperate for some sense of normalcy, my eyes shifted back downwards, to the city surrounding it.

I only somewhat found that normalcy. While the city square seemed normal enough at a glance, it had clearly been built afterwards, and the castle itself had been given a wide berth—out of respect, or the same distaste I felt now? The oldest-looking structure seemed to be a garrison just to the right of the castle’s base, and in fact placed so close that a path wrapped around that base specifically leading to a bridge, which crossed a shallow decorative pond before the front doors of the garrison. Sadly, it had been drained, though it gave me the impression that the building had not always been as such. Perhaps the steel battlements and reinforcements had been added after the fact? But why retrofit a building, as opposed to simply building one from the ground up? They’d certainly had little problem with the extensive walls surrounding the burg.

The rest of the square finally felt familiar, at least in layout. It was an attractive mix of apartments, restaurants, and storefronts. From what I could read of the signs, they seemed to be selling a wide variety, though a pattern quickly emerged. Ink, paper and scrolls, quills and sofas (I had to re-read that sign a few times, and even then I wasn’t sure I could believe my eyes) as well as other furnishings, such as beds and chairs, or tables and desks. The restaurants seemed to be mostly light fare, and the fanciest one I could see was a gourmet coffee shop. A pizza bakery sat next to an ice cream parlor, and a fast food diner and a grocery store had only a pottery store separating them. What an odd confluence of industries.

It looked like it had been a bustling square, back when ponies still lived here. Now, it was firmly locked down by the Fort Ponyville Militia—the Hollows that Applejack commanded, and who seemed to be running the defensive side of the town. I recognized their armor as the same loose design that I had seen in my mad dash along the wall, and they seemed to be holding this square with no less the same amount of focus. I could see several patrols, exactly like the one I had barely avoided, all circling the square and peeking into the darkened storefronts. Permanent guard posts had been set up to block off alleys, or whole wagons had simply been crammed into the spaces and set alight to form actual barricades. There were several gaps in the buildings large enough to let wagons through comfortably, and I assumed those to be the streets. The only one I could clearly see had the largest guard post of all set up there, with sandbags and some sort of mounted gun, sweeping the street. Whatever weapon that was, it looked hoof-cranked; if the rusted metal it was made of could even still function.

As much as I wanted to know more about the mysterious crystal castle that loomed above this whole square of the burg, I resigned myself to letting it go for now. No amount of curiosity was worth running afoul of this many guards at once, and especially unarmed and unarmored. Maybe if they let me join their militia, I would be allowed closer, or Pinkie worked out some sort of deal, but we still barely knew each other. I didn’t even truly know myself; how could Pinkie vouch for me against Applejack, who seemed unstable and irrational at best?

With a shake of my head, I decided to leave, though that brought my attention back to the doorway from whence I had emerged. I was in no rush to pass back through… whatever strange phenomenon I had encountered on my way up here. Instead, my vision turned to the edge of the building, and I found my hooves drifting in that direction, just to see how far the drop was.

The answer was “further than I was comfortable with.” While I knew it wouldn’t kill me, or rather, that the fall would not kill me permanently, being stuck crawling over the cobblestones with broken legs sounded incredibly unpleasant. For a brief moment, I entertained the fantasy of pitching forward, and intentionally nose-diving into the ground roughly four stories below. While it would certainly get me down there, and I would only feel the impact for only but a moment before I was killed and regenerating, the idea of the ground rushing towards my face made the atrophied muscles of my back twitch unpleasantly. Something instinctual rebelled at the concept—pegasus instincts were trained to avoid impacts with objects so solid. My conscious mind was inclined to agree.

Instead, I followed the edge of the roof to the building adjacent. They had been built as a single unit, likely sharing a wall, so I would be able to drop down from this roof onto that one. I turned and let my hinds dangle off, hooking my fores onto the edge of the roof before letting myself fall. My only injuries amounted to small scrapes and dark bruises—my legs collapsed on impact, but my fears of broken bones were unfounded. Instead, I was simply too weak to land properly, and I staggered a bit as I stood up, shaking my head.

The next drop, from this roof to the street, was only very slightly less daunting than the four-story drop had been. Still, I could improve my odds a little bit, going off of what I had learned from my previous drop. First, I spotted a space where a decorative garden had once been planted, and the fallow dirt was better to land on than hard cobblestones. Second, when I landed this time, I anticipated my legs going out from under me. Again, I dangled my hinds backwards and dropped off, and this time I tried to tuck my head in and roll onto my back.

My success was… mixed. Though I avoided smacking my head into the stones or breaking my legs, I fell sideways, and my hind hip certainly felt as though it had broken. In addition, a fresh layer of scuffs and bruises marked my body, and I spent a great deal of time groaning and clutching my withers as best I could, trying to stifle the pain. I knew it wasn’t broken, because I was able to stand and walk with some difficulty eventually. I left the building behind, and limped with one of my front and back legs each all the way back to the center of town.

It was slow-going, and I took long enough to stagger there that my legs genuinely felt as though they had healed somewhat by the time I actually arrived. Perhaps I had cracked the bone? In any case, I was only limping about as much as I usually did from my general aches and pains by the time I passed back through the town square.

Pinkie’s directions were actually surprisingly easy to follow; I had expected to be struggling to read faded street signs, or ask hollowed townsponies for directions, but her instructions had almost all been visual. Follow the street that had the abandoned wagon parked on the right, looking from town hall, then keep going until I saw the collapsed building, follow the alley on the right side of that, and then go through to the street on the other side, and I was practically there.

Even if I wasn’t able to follow those instructions, I would have heard the music. I had vague memories of music, little tunes I could hum a few bars of, and that hollowed lyre player from before had been pleasant to listen to. But I’d never have expected I would ever hear actual music being played from a record player again. It was a slow tune, but upbeat, and I couldn’t help but smile as I approached, even if I couldn’t hear the lyrics.

Sugarcube Corner was pleasantly bizarre. After seeing so many malformed scaffolds and walls made of scavenged scrap wood, or the sheer alien strangeness of the crystal castle, simply seeing a building that still looked weird in a fun way was a relief. The whole building seemed designed to emulate a gingerbread house, complete with chocolate shingles, frosting-white rain gutters, and a strange addition that sat in the middle of the roof that was decorated like a cupcake. That must have been an additional bedroom, added after the original construction.

My mouth watered for the first time that I could truly remember since I first had woken from my undeath. Clearly, I was not alone in feeling this; the building was covered in small notches and chunks taken out of it. Whole rows of shingles were missing, and one of those cream-white gutters hung off the roof by a single screw. At first, I thought the building had been attacked, receiving superficial damage, but I realized what they truly were after a few moments of staring. The entire building was covered in bite marks and chunks torn out by teeth.

That merchant from before—hadn’t she said something about not having seen carrots in a very long time? And for all the time I’d spent in Ponyville, and all of the fires I’d seen Hollows huddling around… not once had I seen a single cooking pot, or smelled anything being baked. Had everypony forgotten, or was it truly because there was simply nothing left to eat? I even glanced back down the street, which was nothing more than bare earth hardened by the hooves of thousands of ponies, but I could only see the barest patches of yellow or graying grass. Not even while I was out on the road had any plants seemed to be alive. Those trees had stubbornly clung on for as long as they could, but even they were long-dead.

With a sad shake of my head, I wondered how long Equestria had been without food. Surely without plants that could grow in this light or this fog, it had to have started fairly soon. For once, I was glad I was so hollowed—I couldn’t feel even the barest craving for sustenance. I barely felt as if I needed to drink water, and even that seemed to mostly be for the sake of rinsing out my throat. If I were perpetually starving, I think I would have gone Hollow already.

The door of the bakery was left propped open, and I could see shapes moving inside. For once, I did not fear them, nor feel a sense of caution. I trusted Pinkie. My eyes were drawn to the wall beside the door, where a short row of sheathed swords seemed to have been left outside. Maybe she actually banned bringing them inside at all? I did raise my eyebrow at what seemed to be a massive rock that tapered down to a handle, which was wrapped with leather to aid the wielder’s grip. What behemoth of a pony could even wield a giant rock as a weapon? Unless it was left there purely as a joke, a playful parody of the swords beside it.

Stepping inside, I found myself in a warm bakery filled with townsponies in various states of hollowing. Some were seated around tables, a few of them slowly danced to the music, even more were seated in little circles on the floor, and a few more sat by the counter as if it were a bar, tended by Pinkie Pie herself. The exuberant mare’s face lit up as I came in, and beckoned me over with a wave of her hoof. “Holly! You came, you remembered!”

I nodded as I trotted over to the counter. A stool between a gray mare wearing a strange set of armor and a hollow pegasus teenager was available, and I sat there as Pinkie leaned over the counter to give me a gentle hug. Her heat was still incredible, like a boiling kettle had pressed itself against my shoulder in affection, but I didn’t mind. I hugged her back just as tightly. She vibrated happily against me, then pulled away and stood on her hinds, using both her forehooves to point at the ponies to either side of me.

“Holly, this is Maud, my sister, and that’s Pound Cake over there, he owns Sugarcube Corner and keeps me safe. I keep him safe from Applejack though, so it evens out!” The stallion chuckled tiredly, and gently hoof-bumped me. Maud gave me a slow hoof-bump in turn, and her armor ground against itself as she moved.

“Anyhoo, I’m really glad you showed up! The more the merrier, yanno? And it’s always good to have more ponies hanging around to keep the party going.”

Her face scrunched up in frustration. “Sometimes it’s kinda hard to get the spark you need to relight the party after Applejack goes on another one of her meany-pants crusades. I hope Lyra and Bon-Bon are okay out there, maybe they’ll head towards Canterlot.” After a moment, she shook her head. “Gah, sorry, didn’t wanna bring the mood down, I’m sure they’re fine! How about you and Maudie talk? I’m gonna go check on everypony and also I need to swap the record.”

She disappeared under the counter, and Pound Cake gave me a respectful nod as he stood up and trotted over to the record player. Pinkie appeared from around the corner, holding a wooden milk crate filled with record sleeves, and started sifting through them. She looked like she was looking for a specific one, so she’d probably be at that for a little bit. In the meantime, I turned back to the mare beside me. “S-so… You’re P-Pinkie’s sis-sister?”

Almost her whole body seemed to be encased in what must have been fairly thick stone; if I assumed she was actually the same height as me, then it had to have been nearly a full hoof-width of rock she wore everywhere but her head. I also noticed a similarly-stony helmet sitting on the counter in front of her, with holes carved out of the front to see through. Next to it was a frothy mug of water, that she sipped from occasionally.

“Yes. I’m Pinkie’s older sister. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Holly.” The mare herself was a paradox; visually she was only a little hollowed and still had her original eyes, albeit with a lot more wrinkles than normal, and a distinct sunkenness around them. But they were half-lidded, and she spoke as though she were incredibly tired, or had no emotion beyond them. I had actually met more expressive ferals and comatose Hollows on the way here. 

If Pinkie hadn’t told me herself, I wouldn’t have believed her. I waited for a few seconds, waiting for her to continue the conversation, but Maud seemed content to sit there and look at the party. Eventually, I noticed the faintest hint of movement; she seemed to be moving her head up and down, only a hair back and forth. Was she… bobbing her head to the music in microscopic amounts?

“I...uh…” I rasped awkwardly, as she looked back at me. “Interest- interesting arm-armor… you’re w-wearing...”

She nodded, just the slightest of movements. “It’s okay to stare. Or touch the surface. I made it myself. I’m very proud of it.”

With a nod, I gently ran my hoof over the rough surface of her shoulder. It was shaped in sloping plates at the joints, to protect them from strikes, but surely it was incredibly brittle? Not to mention heavy? “Wha-what… is it m-made of?”

“Mostly basalt, which is a very solid core. There’s a protective layer of granite protecting it from weathering from rain, and polished quartz crystals keep the interior from damaging my fur.” She stated this so matter-of-factly that it took me a second to respond.

“I...it’s act-actually m-made of st-tone? Not... m-metal?”

Maud shrugged, and her shoulders ground against her collar with a spark. “Metal is just stone that’s been purified and forged to fit a pony. I can work stone with my hooves, so I made my own armor.” After a moment, her eyebrow raised, just a fraction. “Yes. It’s very heavy.”

Okay, now I believed she was Pinkie’s sister. It also reminded me of the strange weapon outside. I pointed with my hoof at the door. “Did.. Did you c-carve that… big st-stone out there t-too?”

“Big stone?” She blinked at me. “Oh. You mean Avalanche. No.”

“Av...avalanche?” I asked. Had she just found a stone that worked perfectly as a club, or-

“That’s her name. It’s the tooth of a dragon. They’re very hard to carve.”

She said it as though it was the most perfectly normal knowledge in the world, and yet it was one of the strangest things I had heard in my new unlife. And that included the concept that we were all cursed undead with embers for functioning eyes. “How… d-did you g-get a drag...dragon t-tooth?”

She took a sip of her drink. “I killed a dragon. Then I pulled out one of the corner fangs. I wanted to study their bones.” For once, her eyes lit up a little, or at least her eyelids seemed to raise. “Dragons mostly eat gems and ore for nutrients, so their scales, bones and teeth look like stone. But they’re actually some form of organic compound that’s incredibly heat resistant and absorbs impacts. It also conducts electricity really well, but that works against them. It’s very fascinating.” Her eyelids drooped down to their normal position, as the topic wandered away from their biology… or geology, it seemed. “I was studying them, but then we won the war. So we didn’t have any more left to study. I was very sad.”

“...about not hav-having any more dr-dragons to st-study?”

“No. I was very sad during the war. I wish we didn’t have to fight them.” The only part of her expression that changed was that she looked slightly downwards towards her drink. “I think they’re extinct now. They were very mysterious creatures, and some were even my friends, before the war. They retrieved fresh Igneous stone from inside the caldera of volcanoes, where I couldn’t go.”

Slowly, I nodded. “D… Do you kn-know R-Rockhoof?” He was a veteran too, after all.

Again, she nodded very slightly. “After the war, at one of Pinkie’s parties. We’re very good friends. I find raw ore for him, because he’s always running out.” She looked back at me. “Have you seen any rock formations with diverse cleavage or rust-colored patches outside of town? I’m not allowed to go into the caves nearby anymore, according to Applejack.”

I’d barely seen anything through the fog. It was possible that I might've seen some patches along the riverside near where I woke up, and while I knew Maud could handle herself out there, I didn’t want to send her out in that direction for nothing. I told her all this, and she shrugged.

“That’s okay. I was going that way anyways, and it’s not the only thing I’m looking for. Have you seen any unicorns out there? One is an azure blue, and the other is a heliotrope purple.”

Again, I sadly told her I hadn’t.

“That’s okay. It was unlikely anyways, since Pinkie hadn’t seen them.” Speaking of our mutual friend, Pinkie had set a new record spinning on the player, before she began bouncing from group to group. She talked to each pony by name, asked how they were doing and if they were enjoying themselves and the music, and kept hugging everypony before she left for the next group. Pound Cake orbited around her, watching the crowd, but he was relaxed. He was watching the door more than anything else, and I watched as he scanned the occasional Hollow that stumbled in to find the source of the music.

“Wha...What is he g-guarding her f-from?”

Maud slowly looked at Pound Cake, and then slowly back at her drink. “Bad hollows. The ones that have hollowed out entirely. You can tell them by sight. They slouch over and stumble a lot. They don’t have the instinct to hold up their heads or watch where they walk, like we do.”

Quietly, I swallowed, and made a mental note to work on my posture, as well as my constant stumbling. Anything to keep me from going hollow, or to keep anypony from thinking that I had. “B-but doesn’t… Applej-jack hunt th-them?”

Maud’s eyes turned downwards again. “She does. But she can’t get them all. The old buildings are filled with hollows, and sane ponies sometimes stumble in and hollow out.” She sighed. “And Pinkie will just try to hug them while they’re attacking her. Both Pinkie and Applejack’s hearts are in the right place, but neither method works like they’ve convinced themselves it has. Both methods are also incompatible.”

I sunk down onto my stool slightly. Pinkie was trying so hard to keep everypony’s minds intact. She wanted to be everypony’s friend, so they had a reason to stay, and something to remember. But for some of the really bad hollows here in town, Pinkie was all they could remember any more, and everything else was gone. Was it still a town if nothing was made, if nopony was doing anything except sitting around and waiting to die?

“W...why does she t-try s-so hard…?”

Maud shrugged. “My sister is a good pony. And it keeps her sane, most of all. If Pinkie Pie weren’t here, keeping the fires, I don’t think I’d ever come back. It’s too close to the Everchaos and all the ore has been mined.”

We sat for a little while longer, just watching Pinkie hug Hollow townsponies all over the party. One song ended and she swapped records, only for that record to start to skip. She slid it back into the sleeve and placed another on, and then she was a blur of hugs and energy and impossible warmth all over again.

I closed my eyes and began to zone out slightly. As an experiment, I tried to breathe again, drawing air through my nose to fill my lungs. With it came the ancient scent of baked bread. I hadn’t been able to smell it before without breath, but even now, so long after the last loaf of bread that would ever be baked in this bakery had been, the scent still suffused the shop. It was sugary, delicious, and while I still wasn’t hungry, I did begin to miss bread dearly. As a concept, if nothing else.

I wondered if I’d ever been here, in my previous life. Pinkie Pie seemed so familiar, but then, this seemed as if it had always been a fairly major business. All that told me was that I had perhaps been a frequent visitor to Ponyville, if not a resident. I still wouldn’t know, unless my memory returned, or somepony recognized me.

With a sigh, I released the air I had inhaled, and my lungs remained empty. This was nice. I needed this. But I couldn’t stay here, or I might never leave. I had too many questions for that.

Pinkie saw me getting up, but she was mid-conversation with another group. She gave me a smile and a wave, and I returned both, before giving Maud a nod. “Tell… Tell P-Pinkie that I had… had a g-good t-time.”

The very edges of Maud’s lips turned upwards. Not even the ghost of a smile, just the distant shadow of one. But she was smiling, in her own way. “She already knows. But I’ll tell her anyways. I enjoyed talking to you, Holly.” Gently, I hugged the rough stone surface of Maud’s armor, and then left, waving once more to Pound Cake as well on the way out.

I wasn’t really sure where I was going, but the Town Square seemed as good a place as any to start. It was a high-traffic area, if nothing else, and maybe somepony would actually recognize me there. Just maybe.
> 5 - The Tarnished Estate
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wandered the town for a long while. While it was a large village, the square seemed to be where most of the townsponies gathered, and those living in the buildings beyond, or out on the outskirts, seemed to remain simply because they'd always lived there. The town was half-abandoned, and there were far, far too many buildings for me to explore, even if time itself had seemed to stop. So I lived a half-life for a long time, eking out a rotting existence among the other Hollows.

Every once in a while, Applejack, or as the others called her, “The Hollow Huntress,” would stomp through town. Sometimes she’d spotted somepony who got too close to the wall, or they’d been unlucky and ran into her, and she’d go on another crusade through Ponyville. We all hid, terrified of being found and kicked outside.

But every once in a while, I did find myself wondering about “The Everchaos” and the rest of Equestria. Was Ponyville the last bastion of Ponykind, even as far gone as it was? Or were there other towns out there, other places where Hollows were struggling to stay sane? 

I wasn’t going to be able to find out on my own, however. The threat of Demons kept us afraid of the outside, and while the guards on the walls kept them out, for the most part, they kept us in as well. Ponyville seemed as much a prison as a fort, but one we were too afraid to want to leave. And so I fell into the same stalemate as the rest of Ponyville had, unable to stay, unable to go, and waiting to die.

On occasion, the fog surrounding the town and the smoke from the north got thick enough for rain. The skies darkened, if only for a little while, as ashen raindrops hammered the town, and drowned the gutters. One of those times when it was raining, an armored pony, in her late teenage years, entered the square.

She moved through the square confidently, trotting with her shoulders held high. Her eyes were sunken from hollowing, and her faded pink fur seemed well-maintained under her silvery armor. Strapped to her side was a matching helmet, and a rapier locked inside a thin scabbard. No older than her late teens, she walked like a soldier through the township, eyes sweeping each hollow in turn, looking for somepony. Eventually, her eyes landed on me, and she approached.

“You there. I'd like to hire you.”

I blinked at her. “H...hire?”

She scoffed. “Yes, hire. Is your brain rotten like the others?”

I stood, shakily. I could tell from her expression that I wasn’t impressing her, but she didn’t walk away. “What would…I n-need to do?”

She rolled her eyes. “I need somepony who can hold a torch. That’s all. I can’t do it myself, and the bulbs are blown out where I’m going.” She saw my trepidation, and frowned. “Relax, it’s inside the walls. Just not a place anypony’s explored yet.”

Shakily, I stood, and she stepped back in case I fell towards her. When she seemed satisfied I wasn’t going to collapse under my own weight, she shrugged. “Thirty bits, given to you after we’re done. Deal?” Slowly, I nodded, and she pulled out a wide stick, with the end wrapped in cloth. “Hold this.”

She pulled back when I pushed my head forward to bite it. “What are you- Not like that! Don’t you know how to hold things?”

Suddenly feeling very small against this armored teenager, I swallowed as best my dry throat would allow. “H-hold? Like with… magic? I… I can’t, I’m-”

“A pegasus, yes, I can see that.” She shook her head. “Poor bastard, must’ve already forgotten. Or maybe nopony ever taught you, if you came from one of the big cities. It’s Earth pony magic, but Pegasi can pick it up too. Close your eyes.”

Closing my eyes worked just the same as it ever had, as far as I could tell. I didn’t really have anything to compare it to. I didn’t have eyelids any more, but moving the muscles associated with them seemed to dim the embers of my eyes, my vision dimming with it. My body had adapted to whatever magic kept me alive disconcertingly easily.

“Okay. Now, focus on my voice, and yourself. Tune out everything else.”

It had been long enough I’d begun to tune out the constant dinging of Rockhoof’s hammer, but it leapt into prominence again for just a moment, before I forcefully tuned it out once again. Soon after was the mumble of ponies, fading to nothingness. One by one, all sources of sound, all sensation was tuned out, as I tried to shut it out, shut it all out, except for the teenager’s voice. Then, I was alone, in a sea of darkness.

The teenager didn’t sound impressed. “Well?”

“I… I don’t un...understand… What… do you-” My eyes opened slightly, and she curled her lip as she saw me do so.

“Look, I don’t have all sunset. If you can’t do this, I’ll find some Hollow that can.” She turned to leave, but I stumbled forward, putting a hoof on her shoulder.

“I can!” I rasped, panting, and she shook her shoulder, dislodging my hoof. “I just… just don’t know what I’m... supposed to be doing...”

She sighed. “Fine. Again, close your eyes.”

I did so, and she continued talking. “I’m trying to teach you Pyromancy. See, you and me, we can’t manipulate magic like hornheads can. But we still have our own magic, deep inside. That’s what you’re looking for.”

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but I focused as hard as I could, probing out. It was strange, like exploring my muscles again after I’d woken up. I found a muscle, a tendon, that was unfamiliar. But when I pulled it, all I felt was something sliding off my back. Snapping my eyes open, I turned my head to look at my right wing, which had flexed just hard enough to slough off my back. It was still connected by the atrophied bones, yet hanging limply. I glanced at my back and retched, as I could see the grimy outline of where it had been pressed against my back for so long.

“That’s really the best you can do? Ugh. Forget it.”

“Wha- wait…” I croaked, but the teenager had already turned, only to come nearly face-to-face with another teenaged pony, just a hoof-width shorter than herself.

I’d run into Dinky a few times during my aimless meanderings around town, since our first introduction. Often, she was helping repair something using her magic, or lighting a dark building, or occasionally helping the guards fight the hollows who were truly gone. She always seemed absent when Applejack came looking for her to help evict any but the undeniably feral, and I was glad for it; I’d seen her golden sorceries from a distance, and she wielded them with deadly precision and efficiency.

Dinky raised an eyebrow. “Diamond? You’re back, then. What are you doing?”

Rolling her eyes, Diamond started to walk around her. “Oh good, it’s the sorceress’ apprentice.” She paused, then smirked. “You know, I might have a job requiring your impressive skills.”

“Uh-huh,” Dinky deadpanned. “And what’s that?”

Still smirking, Diamond drew the same torch she’d offered me. “I need a torchbearer. Hold this for me while I go and clear out one of those ruins full of Hollows that Applejack likes to rant about. You can use your teeth if you like.”

Dinky stared at her, her expression never changing. However, her horn lit with a bright yellow corona of magic, and an identical aura enveloped the torch before her. “Is that what you offered her, too?”

Sticking her tongue out, Diamond shoved the unlit torch back in her bags. “Actually, I offered her some bits to do it. Not my fault she can’t even hold a torch. Bet she can’t even ignite it.”

Dinky shook her head. “That scam actually works on some ponies?” She turned to me. “Those bits she would’ve given you are basically worthless these days. Some traders will take them out of habit, but they’re mostly shiny garbage without a bank to back them up.”

“Ugh. Killjoy.”

“Bully.”

“Apprentice.”

Dinky sucked in air through her teeth. “Alright. How many buildings are you planning to loot?”

“Loot? How dare you. It’s scavenging at this point. Picking the bones clean.”

“Call it whatever you like. If I help you, will it get you out of town faster?”

Diamond curled her lip. The ghost of a smile. “I do believe it would, yes. It’s just the one structure, too. Nice and fast, then I’ll be out of your mane. You can go back to… whatever it is you do around here afterwards.”

“Great. Fine.” Dinky exhaled slowly. “Lead the way.”

Now fully smirking, Diamond turned back to me. “I guess you can come along if you like. Can always use another set of hooves.”

Dinky glared at her as I hesitantly began to follow. “Let me guess, once we get inside she’ll take the lead? Worried about traps, or just crumbling architecture?”

“Little of column A, little of column B. Offer still stands.”

Dinky shook her head. “Fine. We’ll lead you around by the nose wherever you want, so long as you leave afterwards. And I mean right afterwards.”

“Fine by me. Follow.” For now, Diamond took the lead and set the pace. I had some trouble keeping up, but DInky matched my pace, and we more-or-less managed to keep up with Diamond. Now that I was walking beside her, I noticed just how accurate Dinky’s name was; she was at least a full hoof’s width shorter than myself, while Diamond in her armor stood at least a head higher than her.

“You’re so… y-young…” I mumbled, more to myself, than anypony else. She heard it anyways, ears twitching in my direction as we walked.

“Yes and no.” She shrugged. “I feel like an old mare sometimes, with all the time I’ve spent learning magic here in Ponyville, but I’m still physically seventeen. It’s like I stopped aging entirely, while time moved on. Of course, it’s hard to tell when any time has passed at all, without the clocks, but... I think I got off lucky, regarding the curse.”

“And yet you’re only an apprentice,” Diamond chuckled from in front of us. Dinky closed her eyes, and tried to ignore her.

“Despite what the peanut gallery says, I am very much the Archmage of Ponyville, for the present and the foreseeable future.” That seemed to put an end to the conversation.

As we walked, I preoccupied myself with my wing, which still hung at my side, useless and limp. Pulling the same muscles I had before just made them ache; they seemed too atrophied from disuse to overcome their own weight. Eventually, I managed to use my teeth to pull it over my back once again, but the little twitches, the miniscule works of muscles, were barely enough to hold it in place.

We continued to walk, passing out of Ponyville’s main thoroughfare and into the outskirts to the southeast. Out here, it seemed to have been a mix of lesser businesses and greater houses, shifting somewhat from Northwest to Southeast from rich to poor. I say “seemed to have been” because most of it had been burned down already. Either the bucket brigade was never able to reach these buildings in time, or they simply deemed them unnecessary to save. Stragglers remained, some scorched but standing strong, while others were little more than burnt-out husks, creaking in the winds and threatening to topple with every breeze.

After a few minutes, I turned back to Dinky. “Can you… do that thing? That she was.. trying to t-teach me?”

Dinky was instantly wary. “Thing?”

“Relax,” There was a snort from up ahead. “Your friend there just doesn’t remember Pyromancy. Must’ve rotted away.”

“Ah, Pyromancy.” Dinky shook her head. “I know of it… I can make sparks, enough to light fires, but that’s about it. Most of what that kind of magic can do, I can already do with my horn. Not much point in training to use it.” After a moment though, she added, “Though, Zecora... She’s probably the best Pyromancer I know here in Ponyville. Whatever lets it come so naturally to Earth Ponies, they share it with Zebras. But she’s sort of tricky to see these days, always busy.”

I nodded, and up ahead, Diamond turned, now clearly making her way towards a large mansion backed right up against the wall. “We’re here. Still got that lightbulb spell ready, or need a few hours of rest before it’s good to go again?”

“Ha ha,” Dinky replied mirthlessly, as she turned to face me. “Anyway. If you don’t know Pyromancy, then she’s right, you can’t hold a torch. But I do have these.” 

She opened up her saddlebag, and pulled out a small wooden box. Light poured out of the cracks, and when she clicked the lid open with her magic, the source quickly became apparent. Set inside the box were five brightly glowing gems, emitting a bright amber light. She selected one with her hoof and pulled it out by a rough string tied around it, then held it in front of me. She casually clicked the box shut with her magic, behind her back, and stowed it in her saddlebags.

“I made these a little while back when practicing infusions. They’ll emit light in the darkest of places, and shouldn’t start to dim for… well, a very, very long time. Longer than it’s been since the sun stopped, certainly. They’re actually really cool, because they don’t need charging, they take ambient magic from the surrounding aether-”

“Real pretty. Can we please get moving?” Diamond sighed and rolled her eyes. Without waiting for us, she stepped up to the wide oak double doors, rotten with age.

Dinky huffed. “Fine. Long story short, I set them into necklaces, so they’re really hard to lose. Keep it on you, a lot of places don’t have lights any more. Plus it’s not a fire hazard!” She groaned back at Diamond, who just rolled her eyes again. Using her magic, Dinky looped the rough string necklace over my head, and the gem settled against my chest.

She was in the middle of adjusting the length when there was a splintering crash. Diamond had turned and bucked both doors open in one blow with her armored hindlegs. Dinky growled under her breath, but finished adjusting the necklace, and we followed Diamond inside.

The interior of the mansion had fared only slightly better than the exterior. A fine layer of dust and rubble caked every surface, and a heavy cloud of it hung in the air. The light from my new necklace and the sunlight outside shone through it as we looked around.

“Tch. Looks like the main staircase rotted away. Foyer’s useless, in that case. There should be a staircase in the kitchen for the servants, much smaller and better supported. I’d be surprised if that turned to rot as well.” Diamond glanced over at the door, and her scowl deepened. “Blocked by more rubble. Damn. Alright, we’ll go through the dining room. First door on your right.”

She pointed to me, and I led the way, first trying the door handle, then thumping my shoulder against it. I swear I felt something crack, and I fell back, whinnying in pain, as Diamond nickered at me. Dinky just winced, then stepped up, a golden yellow ball forming at the tip of her horn. After a second, she released it, and a bolt of yellow magic trailed through the dust as it launched up, curved back, and sped across the floor at barrel height to slam into the lock of the doors. The whole portal exploded, with chunks of brass and splinters of wood scattering everywhere. I was showered in dust and tiny splinters, from where I lay on the floor.

“Oh, you do know some offensive spells. Very impressive, apprentice.”

Dinky turned, words forming in her mouth, but there they stayed as she dropped into a combat stance, more magic coalescing at the end of her horn. For a moment, Diamond looked shocked, unsheathing her rapier. But when Dinky released the trailing ball of yellow energy, it streaked right past Diamond, and instead slammed into a Hollowed maid that had emerged from a room behind her. The mare flew back into the doorway from which she'd emerged, while Diamond's eyes narrowed.

“Damn, that roused them. Good going, you two.”

“Yeah, sure, it’s our fault…” Dinky muttered, as she formed another ball of magic. This time, she released it upward, where it bobbed like a glowing golden bubble, coming to a halt just below a massive, creaking chandelier. It lit up the entire room, and as I stood shakily, I was taken with just how grand this mansion must have been, so long ago.

Then another Hollow was stumbling out of the blown-open doors of the dining room towards me, and I had no weapon. Glancing down, I spotted a broken banister that would make an okay club. Grabbing it in my teeth, I brought it back up and into the jaw of the moldy butler. There was a crunch, either from my teeth or his own, and my vision went white. After a moment, I was shaking it off, and my jaw seemed fine.

The butler’s jaw had been smashed by the impact, but that didn’t stop him from letting out a growl through the remnants, shambling towards me again. Then Diamond was there with her rapier, stabbing it clean through the Hollow’s neck. When that only seemed to slow him down, she yanked it forward, ripping it out and taking a hefty chunk of rotting flesh with her. The Hollow stumbled, then collapsed into the rubble, black ichor soaking into the moldy carpet.

“Humph. You definitely fight like a Hollow.” Diamond smirked as she wiped the blade clean on my back, until I shook her away, disgusted. She didn’t seem to mind, but took the opportunity to sheathe her sword and pull her helmet on, encasing herself fully in her silver armor.

On the other side of the room, Dinky had blasted a couple more Hollows with her magic, and had blocked off another doorway with a golden shield. A second decaying butler was hammering against it, to little avail. “Let’s get this done as quickly as possible! I’d rather not disturb the rest, if we can avoid it.”

“Eh, if only because I don’t feel like getting my armor dirty,” Diamond agreed with a shrug. “Dinky, rearguard. Hollow, take point.” She ducked down, picked up a worn brass candlestick, and tossed it to me. It clattered against the floorboards when I missed the grab, but I got the idea. I grabbed the thin end with my teeth, and let the lightgem against my breast light the way forward.

Stepping over the dead butler at my hooves, I glanced around the dining room. What had once been a grand table took up the center of the room, but it had cracked down the middle when the ceiling had started to crumble onto it. At the far end, a door was left askew, and I could see a stove through the gap. There were more sounds of violence from behind as I pushed forward, but my way forward was clear until I entered the kitchen.

The tiles had a fetlock-deep layer of grime across them, and the appliances in this room had long ago gone silent. A layer of mold had spread outwards from the gray icebox, but even that had died with time. Light filtered in through ancient curtains over the windows, above the sink. In the middle of it, another Hollow was shambling towards me, with a squarish chopping knife buried deep in her shoulder. She seemed too far gone to use it herself, though, and I swung the candlestick into the side of her head to stun her. She staggered, legs stumbling over the detritus scattered across the floor, and I swung again, which earned a meaty crunch as the wide base of the brass candlestick smacked against her skull.

She hit the floor, still flailing, and I dropped the candlestick with a clatter to make a grab for the knife instead. She was squirming, but I managed to get my teeth around the handle, and as I tugged she made this awful whining noise. A silver rapier stabbed into her chest, slowing her down, and it was enough for me to find my leverage and yank the knife free with a squelch and a squirt of black ichor. Then I brought the heavy knife back down on her head, feeling it jerk out of my teeth as a crack reverberated through the room, and she went still.

I was still tugging it back out of her skull as Dinky caught up, firing another golden bolt of magic back into the dining room. Diamond had moved right past me, after retrieving her rapier, and was using another knife to pry open a door exiting the kitchen. There was a snap, and she swore, before tossing the handle away. Then she spun, bucking clean through the rotted wood once again. 

The dead Hollow’s skull thumped against the floor as I kept trying to free my own knife. It was really jammed in there, and more ichor leaked out around the blade as I tugged. Then it suddenly came free, leaving a deep, bloody dent where I’d smashed through the Hollow’s temple. As I was still reeling from that, the corpse twitched, and one of the Hollow’s eyes sparked back to life, looking at me as one side of her body tried to reach for me, the other remaining still.

I rasped out a low shriek in surprise around the knife's handle, scrabbling back, and Dinky grabbed me with her magic. While I’d been retrieving my new weapon, Diamond had bolted up the narrow stairs, and we followed. “You know, it makes it hard to cover behind us when you keep knocking down the doors!”

“What, your shields aren’t holding up, Apprentice?” Diamond yelled back down the stairs.

We emerged onto the second floor landing a moment later, and Dinky dropped me to grab the chandelier from before. The light she’d tossed out before seemed attached to it, and they both came loose as the Archmage ripped the Chandelier free from the ceiling. I gaped, as she easily swung the heavy glass chandelier into the stairway we’d used to get upstairs. There was a deafening crash, and the stairway was blocked, as broken glass teardrops bounced and rattled across the floorboards and showered down the stairs.

“That should keep us safe for a bit from the ones below. Diamond, how’s it looking up here? Where are we going now?”

“This way!” She shouted from around the corner, and we followed, galloping past several closed doors. One made me jump as we passed by it, as another Hollow inside hammered at the closed door. The floorboards creaked worryingly as we moved, but they held as we followed Diamond, who was holding open a door near to the end of the hallway.

Dinky dashed inside, and I staggered in a second later, before Diamond slammed the door shut behind us. Then she held up a hoof, and we froze, our tired panting the only noise in the room. Outside, there was the occasional dragging hoofstep, a dumb thump against a wall, but it seemed we’d lost the majority of the Hollows within the mansion.

As they focused on the door, I took in the room. We seemed to have taken refuge inside a lavish bedroom, with a dusty bed covered in moldy pillows clearly being the centerpiece. A mirror over the nightstand had been cracked from age, the glass shards mixed with a long-hardened makeup kit. A bookcase filled with books that were too decayed to read sat next to a shelf covered in dusty trophies, between them fully taking up one side of the room.

All of these, Diamond barely glanced at, scowling as she moved away from the door. Instead, her eyes swept the room. She scanned the bedside dresser and a nearby desk, before her eyes landed on a leather-and-brass traveling trunk beside the bed. “Maybe in there... I’ve been putting this off for long enough.”

She was about to crack it open, when Dinky stopped her. “Wait. What’s this about, Diamond? This isn’t some random looting, I can see that. Why this place, what are you looking for?”

Sighing heavily, she glared at Dinky. “You don’t remember, huh? I used to live here. Before all this.”

Realization lit up Dinky’s face. “Oh! I never… Well, you never had anypony over to visit except for Silver Spoon, back then.” Her expression softened. “Sorry about her. Is that why you came back here? To find something from before?”

“Something like that.” Diamond sighed, looking back down at the trunk. “Look, after we’re done here, neither of you say anything about this, alright? You didn’t know me, this was just a scavenging job. Got an image to maintain these days.”

I nodded, as did Dinky, but she still seemed curious. “What’d you come to get, anyway?”

Diamond shook her head, bracing her hooves on the lid of the trunk. “My mom, she had this enchanted necklace my dad gave heraaaaaggghhHHHH!”

Her explanation was lost in a scream as she forced the lid open. Instead of the interior of a trunk, like we had expected, Diamond was met with a slavering maw, ringed with teeth that looked like metal nails. A pair of arms unfolded from under the lid, and claws formed of pony legs made three fingers and a thumb. In an instant, they reached out and grabbed Diamond’s shoulders. She was yanked bodily into the open jaws of the living trunk, and the lid came down with a bloody crunch around her midsection.

“Mimic!” Dinky shouted, magic forming around her horn, and fear shot through me as I realized I’d been watching the teenager getting eaten and hadn’t moved a hoof. Growling through the handle of the knife clenched in my teeth, I leapt towards the living trunk, and buried the blade of the knife in the leather of its lid. The aged skin split like it was fresh, and red blood spattered across me as the blade dug deep.

The creature shook as Dinky's own magic bolt rocked it back, and the lid opened. For just a moment, I thought it defeated, but I was quickly proven wrong when it just used the opportunity to pull Diamond in even further, her hinds twitching weakly as dark blood flowed between the nails. The lid came down again with a horrible crunching of bones and silver plating, and Diamond's hooves twitched weakly, one final time, before it pulled her all the way under the lid.

Then it clapped shut, and the trunk lifted up entirely, standing on a dozen pale hooves. It seemed slightly off-balance as it tried to scuttle away from us, towards another corner of the room. “Quick, kill it quick!” Dinky yelped, as she blasted it with another golden magic bolt. My knife was still buried in the lid, blood seeping from the wound, but out of desperation I leapt at the creature, my hooves hooking onto the lid as I tried to tear my knife free once more.

All this seemed to do was enrage the monster. The lid flapped as I rode atop it, trying to shake me free. Those claws made of hooves emerged from under the lid again, grabbing at me, but I held tight as my world became a blur of blood and leather and magic.

Then one of the claws grabbed around my midsection, and I let out a cry as it squeezed crushingly tight, trying to rip me off of the monster's back. There was a flare, and one of Dinky's missiles slammed into the beast's elbow, blowing it apart with a smell like burnt fur. Below me, the monster shook, letting off a muffled howl. The other claw grabbed me instead, yanking me forward, and the lid snapped open as it tried to drag me into its maw alongside Diamond.

My teeth clamped shut around the grip of the knife as I dangled over the flapping tongue of the monster, and my hooves kicked the fleshy muscle in terror while blood from its wound filled my mouth. Another missile slammed into the underside of the open lid, and the beast shrieked, before the remaining claw lost its grip and flung me upwards. There was a moment of resistance before the knife came free, and my neck ached as I was whipped over the back of the mimic. My legs windmilled until I smacked against the ceiling, before I then plummeted back to the floor in a shower of rotted ceiling plaster.

I was already dazed when I hit the floor, and the world spun as it was set alight in a fireworks show of magic around me. Then Dinky screamed, not a battle cry but a shriek of fear, and my fire within flared. I found my hooves, and my teeth found the knife, before spinning to help the frightened child.

Dinky had been grabbed by the monster's remaining claw, and was holding tightly to the bedpost of the mouldering bed. Her magic sparked and flared wildly, golden bolts launching without a target out of panic. But the claw holding her was taut, and that was all I needed. 

I chopped the knife’s blade down on the monster's elbow, and felt the joint split between my teeth as the blade dug almost all the way through the limb. The monster howled again, and scuttled back as it dragged its broken claw behind it. Dinky was freed, and looked back at me in surprise as I pulled her to her hooves by the scruff of her neck. She rallied quickly though, and  her eyes narrowed at the monster. “Okay, this isn't working, it's too tough. We gotta pull her out. I'll hold the lid open, you gotta grab Diamond.”

I nodded, though I was in no hurry to see the inside of that maw again. Turning back, I faced the monster, which seemed to be trying to slam its way through a door besides the one we'd come in from. A private bathroom, maybe? I let loose a growl, ragged and tired, and galloped at the monster. I had no weapon; my knife was still lodged in the remains of its claw. And if I picked it up, then I wouldn't be able to pull Diamond out.

This was a stupid plan. I was unarmed. I was going to die. But I had to save Diamond, so I kept galloping.

The green, dull remains of an ancient mirror exploded against its back, and it turned around to howl at us just as I reached it. The beast howled, and I jumped between its jaws, those nail-like teeth were barely a hoof-width away from my unarmored belly, and still wet with blood and saliva.

Then Dinky's golden aura wrapped around my barrel and the creature's lid, and a magic tube formed between me and those teeth below, protecting me as I reached forward with both hooves. The platform also filled the cavity within with light, and Diamond's armor gleamed wetly, shining like a beacon. I wrapped my hooves around her shoulders, and pulled her up and out, with only the constrained writhing of the monster around us giving me any trouble.

“I got her-” I yelped, before it was suddenly cut short by that same magic yanking me free, and Diamond with me. Together, we flew backwards, slamming into moldy carpet. I sprawled, and Diamond sprawled atop me, her heavy silver armor crushing me against the floor.

Distantly, I could hear Dinky shrieking “Rutting die already!” and the smashing of furniture around us. I couldn't see anything from underneath our companion, but it seemed like Dinky was winning, as far as I could tell. After a few seconds, the last smash faded into the gentle creaking of the mansion around us, and distantly, a faint dripping.

I groaned, and a moment later the weight of Diamond was pulled away. If I felt the need to breathe, I would've drawn in a gasp, but as it was I simply lay there and felt my body ache from the fighting we'd done to get here.

A moment later, I realized the dull purple shape in front of me was Dinky's hoof, offering to help me stand. I accepted, and she hauled me up. Dinky sucked in air greedily as she glanced back at the broken body of the monster in the corner. “I, hah, think I got it…? hah…”

She wasn't sure, and I didn't blame her. Even as we watched, it twitched spasmodically, and the lid flopped backwards onto the floor. But Dinky seemed to be victorious, with more than half of the monster's legs broken or smashed, and the tongue still limp within its mouth. Two of the four-poster bed's braces had been stabbed through its sides, while another pierced the lid. It lay in a pile of broken and splintered wood, and blood seeped through the sawdust, soaking it and turning it a filthy brown.

“What… w-was it?” I croaked, and Dinky shook her head.

“Mimic. Didn't know there was one in town, I’m sorry about that. They're really weird ambush predators, magical in nature. Nopony really knows where they come from, but we do know they like to nest in places with lots of valuables, waiting for somepony to open the lid so they can grab them. Speaking of…” Dinky swallowed nervously. “Diamond? Are you okay? Wake up, please…” Reaching out a hoof, she shook the other teen gently, and waited with bated breath.

Diamond was a mess. Her armor was soaked in dark blood, smeared with saliva, and more blood was still gently ebbing out from the cracks in the overlaid plating. Her midsection was totally crushed, with the armor encasing it pinched to barely a hoofwidth and punctured through with dozens of holes from the Mimic’s teeth.Her hinds were still, but gently, her fores twitched, and that made Dinky jump into action. “Come on! Let’s get her helmet off, get her some air!”

I grabbed onto the brim of the helmet, clasping it between my hooves as Dinky’s magic undid the straps holding it in place. It slid off easily with a click, and I fell back, the helmet still held between my hooves in surprise. Then Dinky’s face blanched. “Diamond! Damn it…”

As I stood back up, my heart fell. Diamond was alive, by a certain definition. But the pretty teenager that had led us into this mansion was gone, now that her face was decayed and Hollowed. Her eyes were nothing but embers, and she clawed dumbly at us, trying to move closer with her broken body to attack us.

“How…?” I rasped.

“That stars-damned Mimic.” Dinky croaked, moving a few paces back to be safe. “We took too long. It got her, killed her, pulled all the Equinity out of her. We took too long. Dammit!” She slammed her hoof against the floor.

“They c-can... d-do that?” I asked quietly, looking back at the dead monster in the corner. The blood seeping from it and its victim was mingling, soaking into the mouldering carpet as it mixed together. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swear it was grinning at us.

Dinky sat down heavily against the wall, staring up at the ceiling. “Yeah. They don’t actually eat, so far as anypony can tell. They feed off of your strength, your memories, your mind… Your soul. Sap it until you’re an empty Hollow, and spit you out. I bet it let us pull Diamond out. Dammit!”

Guilt overwhelmed me. I’d let this happen, I hadn’t moved fast enough to save the teen. I looked at Diamond again, still struggling dumbly as she tried to drag herself over to us. Her broken body and her smeared silver armor weighed her down too much. I felt like I was wearing it too, like it weighed me down, and I fell to the floor beside Dinky, lost in guilt.

Together, Dinky and I just stared at her sadly. We wished that somehow, her eyes would flare with intelligence, that we would be proven wrong, but it never came.

Eventually, Dinky shook her head, beginning to stand. “Look… come on. We can’t stay here, we’ll just end up like her.”

I didn’t want to move. My legs felt heavy. But Dinky used her magic, pulled me up to my hooves, and then slowly walked over to Diamond. Gently, Dinky pushed the hollowed teen onto her back, grimacing as she flailed dumbly, still trying to grab Dinky, fight her. Holding up Diamond’s rapier, she unsheathed it, looking at the silver blade.

“Should w-we…” I trailed off as Dinky turned back to face me, but found my voice a moment later. “...F-finish her off?”

Dinky blinked at me. “What? You can’t… That doesn’t work that way.” Sheathing the rapier, she pulled the leather loop around her neck, and trotted back to put a hoof on my shoulder. “Hollows can’t die, remember? Trust me, I want to, but all we’d be doing is wasting our time.”

I nodded sadly, leaning against the wall as Dinky seemed to consider the sword again. After a few moments, she began to properly attach the sheath to her side. “This is silver, or at least some alloy of silver. I’ll take it to Rockhoof, he’ll know. But I think this sword would enchant well.”

“W-would she… w-want you to h-have it?”

“Diamond? Pfft, not even.” Dinky giggled for only a moment, before her mirth was squashed once again by the sound of the Hollow behind us on the floor. “She’d hate me even holding this thng, let alone working magic into it. But I think Silver Spoon was smarter than that, might have meant for her to find an enchanter to finish the job she started.”

Dinky gave Diamond one last sad look, before shaking her head. “Come on. Let’s go, nothing else to be done here.”

I nodded sadly, trailing behind the Archmage like a lost puppy as we left the room, walking back down the hall.

We were almost back to the main foyer when we ran into another Hollow, another maid. She turned to growl at us, and Dinky barely glanced at an open door before simply picking up the wandering Hollow and chucking her inside, slamming the door behind her and shoving a table in front of it. It wouldn’t hold her forever, but it would at least contain her until we left. It did raise a question, though. “What about...the h-Hollows…?”

Dinky shook her head. “They may have been docile before, but we definitely stirred them up here. They’ll probably start wandering out from now on. I’ll have to tell Applejack about it, I guess. Maybe it’ll sate her bloodlust for a while, I don’t know.”

She paused a moment later. “You… Look, I saw you back there. You’re not a good fighter, but you did genuinely try to save Diamond. That’s rare nowadays, especially in Hollows. I’ll tell Pinkie you really did try.” She pursed her lips. “I… I’m also a friend of Zecora’s. I don’t know any if it myself, and Sorcery’s more my speed anyway. But she’ll be able to teach you the basics of Pyromancy at least, so you don’t need to hold everything in your teeth.”

I paused, considering it. With how ubiquitous those basics seemed to be, in this new, unfamiliar world, that would be useful. Being able to hold things properly was the first step to being able to fight, to hold my own. From her, I could relearn how to use my hooves, my mind. Dinky smiled as I nodded, and I rasped out a quiet “Th-thank you.”

For the first time since I’d met her, Dinky smiled, even if it was just a faint, sad smile.
> 6 - Zecora
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We returned to Rockhoof soon enough. Dinky said to let her do the talking, and I was happy to defer to her. Rockhoof seemed decent enough, but I got the sense whenever I approached him to talk he’d much rather work than talk with Hollows. And he always seemed to have trouble remembering me. Maybe I really didn’t look all that different from the other Hollows.

As we re-entered the town square and the comforting, endless ringing rhythm of hammer on anvil, Dinky unfastened the rapier. She held it by the sheathe, in her yellow aura, and held it high to get his attention. “Rockhoof! A word.”

He paused in his work, raising a scarred eyebrow, as the blacksmith gave her his full attention. I’d noticed a lot of ponies gave Dinky that sort of respect, staying out of her way but giving her friendly nods. Clearly, the remaining townsponies thought a great deal of the teenaged filly.

It soured when he saw the sheath. “Never seen you t’hold a sword before, Archmage.”

“It’s Diamond’s. She went Hollow.”

Rockhoof snorted, and started hammering again. “Never did like that filly. Damned troublemaker. Still, didn’t deserve that. What got her?”

Dinky set the sheathed sword by his anvil. “Mimic, in one of the old estates. We killed it as fast as we could.”

“But not fast enough.”

Dinky closed her eyes. “No.”

Rockhoof set the sword he’d been working over to the side, and unsheathed the silver rapier, examining its length. “So, you took her sword?”

“Better for her not to have it, once she becomes mobile again.” Dinky motioned towards the blade. “Besides, it’s silver, which holds magic exceptionally well. Bit soft, but stable enough, with maintenance.”

“Silver-plated,” Rockhoof corrected, scratching the blade while he weighed it with his hoof. “Not solid silver, or else it would already need to be enchanted for durability. Feels like a steel core. That other filly, did she make this?”

“Silver Spoon. Yeah.”

Rockhoof sighed again. “I can tell. Her work was a bit too gilded for my tastes, but she worked a forge like she was a strict mother.” He examined it a bit before placing it on his anvil. “Looks in decent enough shape. Tip’s a mite blunt, could be sharpened. I can reinforce it a tad if you like too, but I can only do so much before it loses enchanting potential.”

“That’ll be fine. Do your fire gems need a charge?”

“Aye. One shattered, too. Must’ve been weakened from age.”

Dinky winced. “Right. I’ll keep an eye out for a replacement next time Maud comes through. In the meantime, here’s one of mine.” She passed him a glowing red cubical crystal, and he passed her several of his own that had grown dull and faint. She stepped away, and I followed her, but only for a few steps before she turned back to me.

“Holly? I’m going to be recharging these for a while. See if you can find Zecora in the meantime, she should be around the other end of town, close to the Everchaos. She’s set up in an old storefront, look for the greenish smoke trail.”

I nodded, and she found a good bench to sit at while closing her eyes and focusing on one of the discharged crystals.

North was…I glanced over at the perpetually setting sun to the east, and oriented myself northwards before leaving the town square. I’d avoided this side of town for the most part, in my time here in Ponyville. Nopony wanted to live too close to the border wall, and there wasn’t much left to scavenge. As I walked through the streets, the buildings around me quickly became more and more fire-damaged. Some were still standing, but for the most part they became bare foundation and burnt support beams. A deep, instinctual part of my mind rebelled at being alone and so out in the open, but it couldn’t be helped.

Eventually, I found myself looking at the north wall of Ponyville, and knew I’d gone too far. While the wall was impressive, it looked like it had fallen, been rebuilt, and reinforced a thousand times since its construction. From the numbers of blurry shapes moving across the top parapet, I doubted it even had the inner tunnels I’d run through when I first came to Ponyville, like they’d been filled in to strengthen the structure as a whole.

Thankfully, my presence went totally unnoticed; if I had to guess, even the hollows atop the wall knew how much more of a threat the Everchaos was in comparison to anything that could strike from this side. They seemed much more preoccupied with the sound of steel on steel that rang through the patchwork wall. A fight on the other side?

I turned back to face the rest of Ponyville, shaking my head in confusion. Green smoke? This whole area was smouldering. How was I supposed to find a fire that had been intentionally kept alight? A few buildings looked more intact than the others, but none trailed smoke. Either they were unoccupied, or whoever—or whatever—had taken up residence inside any of them didn't want to attract attention.

A sudden thump from above caught my attention, but by the time I looked up, a blurry shape had already whipped over my head and slammed into a stone foundation. I only heard the scream a moment later, paired with another still atop the wall.

What had-? I turned back to face the one that had landed inside the walls, and froze. A disgusting mass of scales and pony and teeth writhed around on the stone, snarling and screaming. I realized, dully, that one of the Hollow guards must have been pounced on, had landed down here beside me. I realized that I was doing nothing but watching.

Another scream from above. “Demons!”

An alarm ball rang as I grabbed a length of timber, but it was already too late for the Hollow guard. There was a sickening crack, and they fell still, giving the demon that had tackled them time to do…something. A thin stream of pinkish smoke poured out of the eyes and mouth of the dying Hollow, and was absorbed by the scaley demon squatting atop their corpse.

I paled, holding the length of timber between my teeth. Demons, like the Mimic, could steal a Pony’s fire. Could Hollow me further, steal my very life from me. Ponyville repelled attacks like this every day.

We lived like squatters on the very edge of a burning forest full of monsters that could kill us all permanently. Were we all insane?

Then the mass of scales and teeth leapt at me, and I gasped as I swung the timber at what I hoped was its head. My neck ached once again as it jerked against my jaw, but the snarl it let out told me I’d struck true, and I rolled away. As I regained my hooves, it was already scrabbling back towards me, and this time I brought the length of wood down atop it, slamming it down into the ashen ground. It let out a squall as its limbs flailed, stunned for only a moment.

Some sort of frog, I speculated. Or at least, it had the gangly limbs of one. It didn’t carry its own weight, instead dragging its belly along the ground as it used its claws to pull and leap forward. The center of mass seemed to be mostly teeth and mouth, with four darting green eyes rolling around inside its skull as it lay stunned.

Abomination. Ugly, twisted, carnivorous abomination of nature. It had to die, before I was the next victim.

I brought my forehooves down onto its head with a pair of squelches against its rubbery flesh, and the limbs began to flail again. Undeterred, I began swinging wildly with my length of timber, battering the creature as it had battered its previous prey. It tried to fight, tried to crawl out from under me, but my hooves kept it pinned even as I clubbed it ineffectually. Eventually, I knew, one of us would tire, and I merely had to outlast-

My thoughts were interrupted as something smacked against my side, throwing me away from my opponent. My length of timber was flung away, a tooth or two going with it as I wheezed ichor.

My vision spun, but I could see something approaching fast. Kicking out with my hind legs, I caught it and roughly shoved it away; I’d hoped more for a deadly buck, but I lacked the strength. I was no earth pony.

I didn’t get to see this new foe in much detail, but I could see red feathers, ragged and scattered, as it staggered away on a pair of gangly claws. Some sort of bird? My inspection was interrupted as a small shape whipped over my head, shattering with the sound of glass against the demon’s feathers. Where the liquid inside splashed feather and flesh, steam erupted, and the beast screeched in abject pain.

“The twisted robin is my chosen foe, take this hammer to battle and go!” A claw hammer with a wooden grip landed at my hooves as a brown-and-black blur leapt over me, charging at the screaming Bird Demon. Stumbling, I scrabbled at the tool with my useless hooves before managing to flick it towards my head. Grabbing the wood in my teeth, I stood, just in time to be tackled by the first demon.

I fell back onto my other side, but managed to put it off balance enough that it rolled over me, flopping onto its back as I rolled with it, scrabbling to my hooves. I didn’t want to get pinned under this thing, I’d seen what it had done to that Hollow. Still holding the hammer, I swung it at the center of what I guessed to be its head, and was rewarded with another rubbery “whack.” That stunned it for long enough for me to pin it back under my hooves, and I began bludgeoning it with the hammer, red bruises forming across the body.

Rubbery amphibian legs, tipped with wickedly sharp claws, slashed wildly at me, as I desperately hoped to bludgeon the demon into unconsciousness at the very least. But my blows didn't seem to do more than stun the creature, and every second I kept it pinned, I became more off balance.

The scales tipped when those wicked claws slashed my shoulder, and I lost what little feeling had remained in my foreleg. My weight caused it to collapse under me, and the hammer slipped from my teeth as I cried out in pain. My ruined shoulder slammed into the ashen ground, and white pain filled my vision as black ichor squirted across the demon.

An obscenely long tongue lapped up the ichor, and it was like I had never managed a single blow. It shoved me off effortlessly, and righted itself in moments as I started kicking at it ineffectively with my three remaining hooves. It grabbed my forehoof with a rubber claw, slamming it down on the ground, and its four eyes flashed with pink fire as it leapt atop me-

There was a flash, and a blinding, baking heat, and even my ruined nose couldn't help but breathe in the scent of burnt frog flesh. It reeled, kicking me away as it scrabbled off to the side, and I was flung to safety. I bounced to a stop at a set of striped hooves, one forehoof lifted and glowing with pink heartfire.

"Begone, demon of froggy shape, begone I say! For you have lost this fight, and we will no longer be your prey!"

Zecora had lost her brown cloak in her fight. Her back, her legs, and even her face were marred with a dozen taloned slashes, proof of her own hard-fought victory. But she stood tall, her hollowed eyes burning bright, and with a bandoleer of alchemical concoctions fastened tight around her barrel.

If the Frog Demon understood her, it made no indication of it. A massive mouth, nearly the width of its whole head, split open and let loose a ravenous croak.

The Zebra pyromancer snarled again, scraping her hoof along the ashen ground and kicking up a cloud of dust that blew away in the wind. "To your hooves now, and do not look so dour - For I shall have frog's legs for my brews this hour!" Her hoof flared bright pink with fire, and she reared back on her hinds, as she kicked the ball of fire towards the rampaging amphibian.

It tried to dodge, and nearly succeeded, save for its extended hind leg. That exploded in a wave of baking heat, and the impact caused the demon to stumble directly into the path of a second fireball. That one caught the demon right between the eyes, and there was a croaking howl as they burst from the heat. Hissing red blood spattered into the ashes as it tried to waddle backwards, but the swollen amphibian’s anatomy was not suited to moving backwards.

Zecora let out a war whoop, and leapt over me, both her hooves glowing now. A cracked cobblestone and a rusted ancient tent stake floated upwards in pink auras of Pyromantic levitation at her sides, following her as she charged into battle. A moment before she reached the blinded demon, her implements overtook her, aligning themselves.

The tent stake, long and sturdy and slightly barbed so it would hold steady against the winds, aligned over one of the demon's eye sockets. The wide, flattened cobblestone met it, providing a wide base for leverage. And finally, Zecora reached her opponent with a spinning buck against the cobblestone.

There was an echoing clack of hoof on stone, and the frog demon stiffened as zecora pounded the tent stake through the ruined remnants of its eye, directly into its brain. Then she bounced back from it, landing on all four of her hooves, and watched.

The demon gurgled, twitching spasmodically as it clawed at its own face with rubbery claws, shredding itself with wild abandon as it tried to pull the foreign object free. As it bled, it began to slow, and let out a whining croak. Finally, it slumped, as its limbs dropped into the ash. 

Zecora turned back to me, shaking her head sadly. “A grisly battle we have fought beneath the stagnant sun...remember this: the struggle to survive is oft not a pretty one.”

I nodded, trying to roll onto my hooves, but I couldn't seem to stand for some reason. After Zecora had closed the distance, she had taken notice that I was unable to move from where I had fallen. "Remain still...t'would seem that you are gravely injured. Come, and let us return now to town that you may heal...unhindered?" She stumbled slightly over the last few words.

"N-no…" I whimpered, and her eyebrow raised. "Came to see…see you specific-specifically…"

Zecora shook her head sadly. "As honored as I am that my tale has spread so far, I feel that your forgiveness now is what I must implore - I cannot cure your hollowing, it hurts me to admit...as I myself yet wither still is proof enough of this..."

"N-no, not…not that. Dinky…she s-said you could t-teach…teach me P-pyromancy. She s-said you were the best P-pyro…mancer, that sh-she had ever kn-known…"

Zecora's eyes fell. "Did she, now…hmph. She feels this way because I'd say she simply knows so few! I am but a student too of Pyromancy old and new...yet, it has been a very long time since last I took a pupil of mine."

"P-please…" I whimpered. "You know m-more…more than I d-do. I c-can't…can't even h-hold a t-torch..."

Her eyes softened. "No ability to harness your flame, I see…yet still, Dinky chose to send you to me? Hm…." she glanced at something to her left, out of my vision, and sighed. "To understand the flames there is much that I must tell, and your body now is healing still so listen to me well: the curse flares as bright as ever when you are hoisted from the brink, so close your eyes and clear your mind of thoughts you wish to think. Full relaxation is essential, if I am to gauge hidden potential."

I nodded as she stepped closer, my vision darkening as I closed my eyes…or, at least, dimmed the lights of my eyes. I felt her presence as she stepped over me, taking the remaining hoof that I could feel against her own, and placing her other forehoof on my breast. She was warm, but not where we touched…more that I could feel that she was there, like wind that didn't blow, or a fire that had no flame.

I drew in a shaking, ragged breath, feeling strands of detritus catch in my throat, but more than that, the scents around me. I smelled the burnt frog flesh once more, and from Zecora herself, the heady scent of herbs and the alchemical reek of potions. Around us, the smell of burning firewood, and the sickly-sweet stench of decay.

And then she stepped away, and I was blind to the scent and feel of warmth that I had felt so clearly only a moment ago.

"Your soul…the fire within you is but a mote I fear, maddened hollows' flames are greater still to what I feel here..." My face fell, but she put her hoof on my shoulder. "Fret not, for yet still it burns hot - few would have guessed just from looking at you. There is potential here, an ember that is yet untempered...you can be taught, that much is true."

She closed her eyes, and a tiny smile crossed her muzzle. "Archmage Dinky was correct - I will teach you."

My excitement was quenched by the numbness spreading from my shoulder, but I was still ecstatic, and tried once again to sit up. "T-thank you…I'll be…be the best appre-apprentice you ever…"

Her hoof gently pushed me back down. "We shall see. For now, however, some sleep would be best. I must speak with Dinky myself, and take care of the rest."

Her hoof glowed pink again, and a blurry, pale, fleshy shape floated over beside us. It took me a moment to realize that I was looking at my own severed foreleg, still leaking black ichor. "You need time for your strength to replenish. After all, I will not teach a three-legged apprentice."

I nodded dumbly, as she laid the foreleg on my belly, before pulling out a blue vial from her bandoleer. She uncorked the stopper, wafted the fumes towards herself, nodded, and then held it out towards me. "Drink."

I opened my mouth, and as she poured the liquid into my mouth, darkness overtook me. For the first time since I had awoken in Ponyville, I fell into a deep, fitful sleep, full of pain and movement, but not a single dream.


*	*	*


Once more, I had no idea how much time had passed while I was unconscious. Sharp pains and burning sensations nearly roused me more than once, but I always slipped back down into unconsciousness. When I eventually began to awaken, it seemed that Zecora had hauled me back to her makeshift home, and she had re-attached my foreleg. There was a faint, visible seam around my shoulder, but it functioned fine, as far as I could tell. I blinked fully awake, despite my splitting headache, and squirmed around on the bed to look around.

Zecora’s home was, frankly, a disorganized, cluttered mess of a workspace. Stacks of books challenged the rafters for height, clumps of herbs and bundles of greenery hung from the ceiling by various lengths of twine, and somepony—presumably Zecora herself—had punched a hole straight through the ceiling to allow smoke from the smoldering cauldron to escape. Every surface higher than my knee was covered with glassware, be it bottles, jars, bubbling pipes heated by burners, or glass decanters of suspicious-looking fluid. Shelves and racks held dozens of vials and potions, and even more hung from the ceiling alongside the herbs. At the edges of the room, terrifying tribal masks loomed out of the shadows, hung as if they were intended to be wardens, watching my every move.

And then, there were the actual carcasses. Various demons, or parts of demons, had been hung up like trophies, but I could see needles and tubes jammed through their fur and chitin and leading to collection bottles below them. This included the Frog Demon, which had been hanging for so long that it had appeared to have begun to mummify, drying into a texture more akin to tree bark. Its legs hung beside it, hacked off where they had joined the body to be used seperately.

Even the bed I was laid out in seemed to be a mess. Various fluids, ichor and spilled potion, alcohol and vomit, had all seemed to leave their own stains. Even if they were all dried now, some of them left an unpleasant crust, and I had to tug at my foreleg for a moment to peel it from the damp wool sheets. At the end of the bed, I could see an ugly pile of books and parchment, as if they’d been shoved carelessly off the end to make room for a new occupant.

My confused whimpers and tugging at the bedsheet did attract the attention of Zecora, however, and she glanced over from the cauldron she had been engrossed in stirring to check that I was, in fact, awake.

"Ah, finally you rise from your slumber! Perhaps succumbed to your curse, I had started to wonder. Since now you've awoken from your ordeal, perhaps you could tell me how it is you feel?"

I felt as though I had been chewed up by a monster made of bricks and needles, and spat out onto a bed of broken glass. My bones felt heavy, leaden, and the joints had been pulled out of their sockets before being haphazardly shoved back in. My flesh was thin, sensitive, and it ached. I itched all over, but I could feel that if I indulged the urge, flesh would begin to peel off from the effort.

My head was the worst. I felt my brains as they slopped from one side of my skull to the other, and ichor dripped from one of my nostrils. My eye itched as well, but that was particularly confusing—I had no eye to rub to ease the discomfort. Only the phantom feeling of an eye.

All this, I told Zecora, and she grimaced as she made notes. When I was finished, I asked her why she was writing it all down.

"In my time I've offered hollows many forms of aid...I've found one's average potion does naught, be it pony or zebra-made..." She waved around the room. "All my life I've learned the strengths of herbs and reagents far, and how to mix and cure most maladies most bizarre.

"But now the rules have changed, and with them dire costs - Ponies find they cannot die but still shamble until lost...and though I take the strangest paths that none before have tread, I find that hardly anything will benefit the dead." She turned back to her cauldron, closing the journal in which she had written my symptoms, and placing it back on the desk.

"Of course, through all the failure that I tasted, all was not totally wasted - through trial and error new rules were learned, new patterns emerged and tables turned, progress had been set in motion and finally...I could craft new potions. A cruel joke was what I had missed, were the side effects that would persist - for all the length of its helpful effects, the ponies would suffer a most painful hex." Zecora waved her hoof at the cluttered room around us, at the multitude of emptied bottles and unoccupied pouches. "Worse still, is that my herb supply has nearly been depleted - I was wasteful when my help was so very dearly needed."

She shook her head, after a moment. "Oh, listen to me ramble not unlike a silly foal, I do believe I've said enough of my long sought-after goal...now it is your time to learn as my teaching role resumes, so come stand by my cauldron and inhale the potent fumes."

I hauled my aching body off of the bed and let my hooves become acquainted with holding my weight once more, before limping over to Zecora's cauldron. I stood across from her, and peered over the rim, to see a slow-bubbling liquid lapping at the sides as it filled the room with a deeply pungent, wooden sort of flavor.

"Is…is this s-some…some sort of p-potion? To t-teach me P-Pyromancy?"

Zecora chuckled a bit at that. "If such a brew could be obtained the herbs it used would long be plucked! No, rather this is pungent tea to sniff while your muscles reconstruct - it shall ease your pain for now, and soon you will focus on what I will instruct."

I nodded sort of sheepishly, and Zecora sighed sadly as she looked into the bubbling liquid. "Drink deep now and do not waste it, for so dearly do I wish that I could taste it - the smell works wonders even still, but to ingest it now would make me ill…the tea would cause my throat to swell to the point of suffocation, because of that it no longer works quite as well for relaxation."

She looked back up at me, after a moment. “Though yet I know you yearn at heart to learn I wonder before we start. Neither Dinky nor Pinkie could tell me your name, though 'Holly' has Pinkie so often exclaimed - do you remember what it was you were called, before the curse swept through this land of auld?"

Sadly, I shook my head. “C-can’t…all…all blank. H-Holly or Ap-Apprentice...either’s f-fine.”

Zecora's eyes were filled with nothing but sympathy as she looked down into the cauldron. "A simple exercise for us to begin, nothing more than visualization. Close your eyes and let tranquility subsume, as you breathe deep of the tea's powerful fumes." Her own eyes dimmed as she led by example, and I followed her instructions. Soon, the sound of the cauldron bubbling, the hissing of glass tubes, it all faded into dark. All except for the crackling of the fire, and Zecora's voice.

"Pyromancy is primal magic - old beyond unicorns, alicorns, or ponies. When all Equines were of one body and spirit, there was nothing but darkness to know these. Our ancestors lived in this darkness, grazed by themselves in solitary lives...yet it was not life, but simple, dumb existence with no thought for the whens, wheres or whys.

"But it was in that sole darkness they found the first embers - not by reaching out for something else, but rather deep within themselves. It was inside they found they had this spark, a gentle flame within their hearts. This heat appeared too within their brethren, and together they sought one same direction - if yet more and more together they came, inevitably brighter would grow their flame.

"Do as they did, to focus on knowing the very flame that keeps you going - find that which gives you purpose and energy, center yourself on where you should be..."

It felt like I was falling. Deep within the inky, tea-scented darkness, I was plummeting. My ruined wings unfolded on instinct, twitching gently by my sides as I tried to slow my fall. What was I falling through?

No, I realized, that was the wrong question. It didn't matter what I was falling through, nor how fast, nor what I was falling toward. The point was, what was I? What was falling, to perceive the world moving upwards around it? That was the point that I focused on, peeling off layers of atrophy and unfamiliarity as I clutched that plummeting core tightly.

Slowly, my wings pulled themselves back up to my side. The layers I had stripped off were meant to protect it, but they had worked too well, blinded me to my own core. Now, I could almost see it, a bright orange spark, like the cooling wick of a candle. I felt my wings cradle it, comfortingly, protectively, as though it were a foal.

Together, we were one, my fire and I. Wherever I went, it would always be here, ready for me to draw on it, even if I could only draw forth an inkling.

And then, there was a second flame, so much brighter and warmer than my own. Zecora's flame was gentle as it probed inwards, feeling the layers around my spark. As it did, I opened my wings just a bit, allowing my friend to see the measure of my soul.

Her voice echoed through my conceptualization. "You feel it then, the spark in there? This is my own, for you to compare..."

I barely needed to. I felt like a flea on the back of a dog, dwarfed by the breadth of her soul.

"When the ponies of eld felt this kinship burning, they lent pieces of their flame to the other yearning...as did they then, so do I now, my apprentice." As she spoke, I could feel her fire divide itself. A fraction of her flame split off, no more than a hundredth of her soul, but it still dwarfed mine.

Until it slipped through the crack I had opened for her, and it merged with my own flame. Suddenly, I felt my soul expand, and I gasped as the fire deep within flared brightly. The wings that protected it fluttered as the inner fluff was singed, but I adjusted them, re-cradled my flame, and I eventually managed to adapt.

Once more, Zecora's voice was right beside me, and she continued. "Do not share your flame frivolously, my apprentice - while your soul can recover strength given in this way, so too can one give their all to another, and your body would fail you soon thereafter.

"Now, open your eyes."

It was jarring, returning to reality after delving so deep into myself like that. Zecora's home snapped back into sharp focus around me, and I reeled, staggering backwards from the cauldron. I heard Zecora chuckle as I found my balance once more, and she waited until I staggered back to where I had been standing before.

Strangely, I felt much better than I had before. I barely felt the aches in my bones or the dull pain in my skull, and when I stood still, my hooves shook just a little bit less than they had before. Zecora seemed to notice as well, nodding as she smiled.

"There is a difference in you which I cannot ignore; You seem more centered now than you did before! Being deeper attuned to oneself in this way, will save you a great deal of doubt and dismay. You should be more comfortable now within your own skin, now that you've felt the fire within."

I nodded, and she continued. As she spoke, she held out her hoof, frog facing upwards. A bright flame seemed to ignite in the air above it; a representation of her own flame. "Seek those that you can trust, beyond my lessons - assist them, and the burdens you both bear shall lessen...and when your bond with these ponies has grown to be sure, then share with them too my gift now of yours. Pay this kindness ever onward, as did the Equines of eld."

After a moment, she chuckled. "A past apprentice of mine was quite charismatic, and as she would oft say…’friendship is magic.’"

We basked in the heat of our shared flames for a while, her reliving old memories, as I meditated on my own flame. Eventually, she spoke again. "Now...enough of a break we have had for this session, it is time we move onto the next of my lessons - When the Equines of old had formed their first covenant, and long known their flames, they began to experiment. Simply pushing their flame outwards was their first discovery, and they created fire by projecting the metaphorical into reality..."

She stepped back, pointed her hoof at the cauldron's base—where the fire warming the tea had begun to dwindle—and tilted her head to indicate I was to follow her lead. When I had done so, she continued. "Take hold of your flame - grasp it gently, but firmly. Feel its weight, how it yearns to break free so overtly."

I closed my eyes, and nodded. Zecora inhaled, and I did so as well, my throat dragging the air in slowly.

"Squeeze and push, down the length of your leg, and past your hoof. As hard as you can."

There was a sound like a foal coughing, and my eyes snapped open as the gout of orange flame bathed the cauldron. Zecora jumped back only a hoof-length, before stomping both her hooves on the wooden floor. "Excellent! Again!"

I didn't close my eyes this time, but it came easier all the same. This time, the flame was broader, fully enveloping the blackened cauldron without damaging it. As the orange pulse faded, Zecora's own hooves began to glow, and several fresh logs shoved themselves under the cauldron as well as a few hoof-fuls of thin, dried branches. "Again! Lower, focus it tighter, towards the kindling!"

I grit my teeth, and pushed one last time. A flash of fire pulsed out of my hoof and rolled over the kindling, and sparks caught in a dozen different places. As I sat back, panting, Zecora tended the growing fire, flicking her tail to push fresh air towards the flames. As she did so, her hooves deftly manipulated the logs within the scorched fire pit, and soon, the fire was back to a dull crackling, healthy flame between us both.

“Combustion,” she explained. “The oldest and most basic expression of Pyromancy, to weave flame from the hoof whenever one fancied. From this, Equines saw with their own eyes a change - this first flame inspired them, comforted them as they huddled, arranged together they joined for warmth. From there, the rest of Pyromancy came, and everything, everywhere, could see with affinity that which formed the heartfire of Equinity.”

Together, we watched the fire dance around the cauldron, and Zecora stirred it as she continued to tell her story. “That was how Equines started, at the beginning. From whence came language, herds, society, civilization. We ran to the corners of the world, and the world shaped us as we shaped it. We may all look different now, we may consort with strange gods and live by different creeds…but deep within, we are, all of us, Equines.”

Eventually, she shook her head and smiled. “Stories for another time, I suppose. Next is levitation, after a lengthy repose - it is no easy feat, though its use is tremendous. Still, a promising start, my little apprentice.”

Deep within myself, my own personal flame flared just a little brighter. For once, I’d done something right. Somepony was proud of my progress, and because of that, so was I. I was learning Pyromancy!
> 7 - The Cottage
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time passed, under Zecora's tutelage. Gradually, Pyromancy became more and more natural, and a flame sprung to my hoof with only a little concentration. From there, it only took a little bit of time before I was able to “push” at my training dummy: an old, dried inkwell. Any ink left inside had hardened a very long time ago, and the hollowed Zebra had used it as a paperweight since. From then on, it had become an object of focus for me, since the glass bottle had weight without being too heavy, was a non-uniform shape without being overly-complex, and, should there be any accidents, it would be easy enough to replace.

That first strained push across the table had become a shove, and then a gentle pull. Seeing the inkwell sliding across the worn varnish of the table and bumping against the frog of my hoof became a common sight. Still, any fine control beyond this simple attraction or repulsion seemed beyond my skills for now, and Zecora came to the sad conclusion that I was unlikely to pick up true levitation, one of the more complex abilities of a non-unicorn Pyromancer.

Instead, she pushed the inkwell into my hoof, and told me to keep it there as I lifted my hoof from the table's surface. As I practiced, she gave advice whenever she could find time to break away from her alchemy. Supposedly one of her previous students had said it helped to visualize a claw projected from their hoof, while another had visualized vines wrapping around the object instead. I imagined a gryphon's claw, clasping the inkwell, and that seemed to work well enough.

I noticed, as I continued to practice, that the shaking of my hooves seemed to calm when I focused, whenever I held the inkwell before me. Zecora noticed too, and it gave her hope; those shakes were caused by the long-dead nerves of my flesh and muscle being forced to move. While such a well-known and widespread symptom of extreme hollowing was incurable, it could be worked around, and this was a good sign that meditation would serve me well. Though she did note that as soon as I lost focus, either due to seeing that lack of shaking or by distraction, that it returned. Still, I relished any trace of my health’s return.

From the inkwell, I moved to paper, and then delicate herbs. Zecora's lessons were gradual, as we moved from absolute basics to increased control, and ensured my magical grip was gentle. It would do me no good to hold an object, if the strength of that grip crushed it to dust.

As my abilities grew, so did my duties around Zecora's distillery. Our first order of business was to clean the distillery, as much as we could. Mostly, I think Zecora was tired of cleaning up after me when I knocked one of the book stacks over. We couldn't sort them; whenever I tried by myself I got confused and scared quickly. Whenever Zecora helped, she'd get only a few books in before skimming a title gave her an idea, and then she'd run back to her cauldron to toss a fresh batch of ingredients in, making another fetid brew that clouded the air with noxious fumes. Eventually, we settled for shoving the stacks back to the edges and creating pathways through them.

But that was only the books. From there, the alchemy reagents were next, a heady assortment of powders, herbs, stalks, roots, crystals and glassware. The last she only entrusted to me twice; after we lost two vials of valuable distilled essence, she made the decision to handle those herself.

This categorization brought one undeniable fact to our attention: so many reagents or ingredients had run out long ago, or were dangerously close to being depleted. Even more so than Zecora had admitted before. To continue her mysterious project, Zecora would need more ingredients, ones she could only retrieve nowadays from the former Everfree Forest.

It was true that originally some reagents could be found elsewhere across the world, shipped to Ponyville at great expense, or even in outlying villages or the great conservatories of Equestrian cities. But many of those had been fragile, temperamental plants, and could not be relied on to have survived in a world of endless sunset. All Zecora could confidently rely on, in numbers great enough to replenish her alchemical stocks, were the toughest of herbs, the hardiest of roots, and perhaps, just perhaps, a few flower species unique to the Everfree to begin with.

Zecora told me to go practice again while she packed, and I did so. I set the ancient inkwell on the table, and began to stare at it. Already I had memorized every feature of the simple object, from the faded label, to the hardened dribble of ink down the side, to the hairline crack up the wide neck—a scar gained when I dropped it, early on in my training. Soon enough, my eyes began to wander, watching Zecora. For the first time since she had taken me on as her apprentice, she doused the flame below her great black cauldron, and the flames hissed and spat as they turned the water to steam.

As the flames cooled to embers, she retrieved a small bag from behind an old, mouldy shelf, and then blew the dust off. She opened it up, then pulled out several small clay jars, marked with a blue alchemical symbol I didn't recognize, and the corked necks sealed further with wax. She retrieved five in total, and checked the seals, before she set them aside. Then, a coil of mouldering rope. I had to guess, perhaps fifty leg-lengths if unrolled? She tugged it between her hooves, satisfied at the tensile strength, then set it beside the clay jars.

The next item she retrieved, I guessed, had to be the last. A large, tightly rolled bundle of leather, on which she undid a drawstring and pulled open. From within fell a ragged set of armor, and a familiar red banner wrapped around it. After a moment's thought, I remembered where I had seen such a banner; it was the defining feature of our “protectors” atop the wall. A disguise, then?

To my surprise, Zecora reached back into her bag, and pulled out a second bundle of leather, another ragged set of armor. One for each of us. But how did it fit? Then she further strained credulity when she reached in once more, and this time pulled out a sheathed blade. Impossible, I thought. The length of the blade alone must have been longer than the exterior of the bag. Finally, she caught me as I stared.

She chuckled as she set the sheathed sword down on the table before me. “I see your eyes widen, but they do not deceive; it is an old unicorn creation, a bag from which many things can be retrieved.”

“H-how…?” I stammered, still looking at it.

“Your inkwell, take it in hoof. I'll show you myself, should you need more proof.”

My hoof shook as I picked it up and held it out. All Zecora did was hold open her bag, and allowed me a glance inside. When I did, I was overcome with nausea again—the darkness within the bag, it was familiar to me. It was the same darkness I saw when I stared into my cutie mark, that I had stumbled into and gotten lost within. Somehow, I could feel they were the same. Was I simply staring into two windows to the same place, the same dark abyss?

Whatever the case, I shook my head and cleared my mind, and let the inkwell drop into the mouth of the bag. It crossed an invisible threshold, and winked out of existence, lost below the dark surface.

Zecora nodded. “Your inkwell is now stored in a space within the bag. But reach your hoof inside, think, and then grab.”

Hesitantly, like a foal told, for the first time, that they can reach inside the cookie jar without consequences, I pushed my hoof in. It too crossed that invisible boundary, disappeared into the inky abyss, and it felt…cold. Clammy. The little fur I had remaining stood on end as I groped around aimlessly inside the bag, reaching impossibly deep. I shoved my foreleg in, up to my shoulder, and still felt no bottom, nor the sides of the bag.

Then I thought of my inkwell, and the cracks and stains and faded label, and it was there, pressed against my hoof, like somepony inside had passed it to me. I pulled out my hoof, and the inkwell came with it, untouched, unchanged, like it had never left my hoof. There was still a pervading sense of wrongness inherent in that abyss, but I understood what Zecora was getting at: this bag could indeed hold a nearly infinite number of items, so long as they fit into the mouth.

With a nod, Zecora placed the bag on the table, and picked up the sheathed blade. Pulling it from the protective leather, she withdrew a wide, flat blade, rounded up to the tip before it became a sharp edge. It was streaked with rust, but as my mentor swung it through the air a few times experimentally, I noted time seemed not to have dulled the edge of the blade as it had so many others.

"My Homeland is quite unlike yours - savannah and Jungle, not plains and fogged moors. When one needed a path through the thickest of vines, a sharpened machete saved a great deal of time."

She turned the blade around, and offered me the grip of the weapon. “You will take the lead, blade in hoof and eyes to the front. There is no greater teacher than experience, and we have many herbs to hunt.”

Slowly, I nodded, and took the grip. It felt heavy in my hoof, and I started to feel the machete slip loose as soon as Zecora relaxed her own grip. I followed it as it slid, and the tip thumped against the floor as I focused on strengthening my ethereal hold on it. Never before had I needed to focus on the leverage of a held object—this was completely new, and almost wholly foreign.

As I turned and twisted my hoof, and furrowed my brow in concentration, Zecora busied herself by equipping one of the sets of armor. Now that I had the time to examine it close-up, I could see it was mostly crafted of crude leather, wrapped and bolted together. Metal rings linked the joints, and rattled as she moved, and caused her to click her tongue. I could also clearly see the symbol stitched into the tabard; a dark red apple, over a lighter red background.

I was too focused on Zecora, and the machete slipped from my hooves again. She jumped slightly as it clattered to the floor, then shook her head, before she picked it up and slid it back into the sheath. “Worry about that later, my Hollow student, and put the other set of armor on. You will have plenty of time to practice…” She paused, sounding out words silently for a moment, before she hesitantly finished her sentence with “...out of town?”

She shook her head and turned back to her ingredients shelf, taking note of what she lacked while I pulled on the armor.


*	*	*


Zecora didn't bother to lock her door. I didn't comment on it, but it seemed an intentional decision, not borne of forgetfulness. Maybe that was an old Ponyville habit, from before my time. As we walked to the ramshackle wall that kept us safe, I wondered idly again what this town had looked like, before Equestria became what it was today.

Had it been a quiet, sleepy village? Or a bustling little burg, with foals playing, the sounds of laughter and the smell of baked goods wafting through the air? All that remained now was a distinct sense of loss, that something wonderful was gone from the world, never to return, but I didn't even know what that thing was, not really.

We approached the wall after a short walk through the empty streets. This was one of the few places in town I had not wandered, as the guards here seemed the most present. Even in her madness, it seemed the Hollow Hunter could see those that kept more of their mind, and knew to assign them here.

The four of them stiffened up when we turned the corner, their embered eyes playing over our own, as if they expected…something. A trick, an attack perhaps? We had no such plans, and as we drew closer they took notice of the armor, relaxing somewhat. Zecora had already told me she would do the talking.

“We need to go outside of town, for an hour or three. I have a standing pass from Princess Twilight, if you wish to see?”

They looked amongst themselves for a few moments. I caught a whisper of “...Princess who? She didn't say Celestia…” but another hollowed militia pony cut them off with a snarl. After a moment, one of them nodded, and they stood aside, two of them moving to open a large pair of doors set into the wall. They pulled back a giant wooden deadbolt, before they shoved one of the doors open, only a few hoof-lengths. 

All they said was, “Shout to the guards atop the wall when you're coming back in,” before they waved us through. We squeezed through the cracked-open door, and our armor clanked and fabric rustled as we passed through. It had simply been that easy to get back outside of Ponyville.

In an instant, I felt foolish, as I looked at the deep, endless fog that surrounded us. It looked exactly like it had before, when I had first entered Fort Ponyville. The walls stretched endlessly, our only guide, and only the strange, gnarled shapes of trees in the fog indicated there was anything but the wall.

Zecora paused too, taking it all in. Her embered eyes swept through, and searched. For what, I had no idea.

I shivered slightly. The dampness of the mist had already crept into my bones, and overpowered the warm sunlight that managed to penetrate above. This is a world gone mad, I thought to myself. Ponies are no longer welcome here. Such a small attempt at normalcy, as we cowered behind our ramshackle walls.

Then Zecora started to walk, and I had no choice but to follow her into the deep mist, or else be left behind. She withdrew the sheathed machete from her bottomless saddlebag once more, and the strap of the sheath looped itself around her neck, and drew in close to her armor, until the sheathed blade was flush against her side. The side facing me, I noticed, so that we could both draw the machete if needed. Such a complicated operation, and she barely looked at the object as she refastened it around herself.

We walked. I know not for how long, nor where we were going. Zecora seemed to find landmarks in the fog where I saw vague shapes, and more than once she slowed down, changed course, as we heard some beast shuffle past, shrouded just as we were, amongst the mist. Only once did she pause, and we doubled back on ourselves, and immediately afterward she gave a thoughtful “Hmm…” as we found a rotten bit of fencing.

Eventually, I couldn't take it. It was a pain to speak under my breath, to try and talk at anything other than conversational volume. But I had to murmur out a question, and I saw her ragged ear flick as I spoke, listening to me.

“W-where are w-we...we g-going?”

She didn't respond for a moment. Her ears flicked around, as she listened to see if anything changed course towards us. When she was satisfied, she responded in a murmur of her own.

“To enter the Everchaos on our own would invite an untimely end, so instead? We are going to visit an old friend. She was not quite as dedicated to herbology as I, but I hope that her garden is a place which we can try.”

I nodded. It was as cryptic an answer as ever, but it satisfied my curiosity.

The ground before us split, and a creek cut a sharp cliff through the earth. I couldn't see the other bank, but Zecora smiled, and we turned to follow the flow of the quiet, burbling river.

Her smile shrunk when we reached the bridge, however. The shape of it loomed from the fog as we approached, and I inspected it as we came closer and it grew in detail. It seemed as if a fire had spread from the other bank to the little footbridge, and while it still stood, it leaned and creaked worryingly in its foundations. One side of the railing had already fallen into the river, and chunks of painted, sodden wood littered the riverbank below.

She placed a hoof on the boards, and they creaked loudly as the sound echoed through the fog. With a wince, she stepped back, and instead moved back up the river a few paces. Dutifully, I followed her, and together we half-climbed, half-slid down our side of the river bank. Zecora gave the foundations a wide berth, and we splashed through the hoof-deep water of the river, fording across to the other side. The chill of the water crept into my hooves again; An unsettling feeling, and yet a familiar one.

As we scrambled up the riverbank on the opposite side, I could already feel a change in the soil and the grass atop it. It crunched wetly, rehydrated by the fog, but something a very long time ago had dried this grass, killed it. The soil felt grainier than before, and the topsoil was grey when I looked down. Ash formed a thick, muddy boot over the ends of my hooves.

A dark expression had overtaken my teacher's face as we pushed onward, following the ashen outline of a hoof path leading away from the bridge. She still seemed to know where she was going, until a dark mass faded into view, then clarity. Here, the underbrush had grown, burnt, and tried to regrow around the blackened branches and vines once more. She nodded, and drew her machete.

"A lesson now, I hope to achieve: watch my blade, and with its weight how I cleave." I nodded in turn, and she swung her hoof in a wide arc, the blade a blur that chopped a dull green gash through the dead brush. What did not cut crunched and cracked instead, twigs showering the forest floor as Zecora began to brutally hack a path forward.

After a few minutes of chopping and a few leg-lengths of success, she nodded as she panted and huffed from the exertion. “I can see the cottage beyond, but it is deep within the thicket. Take the machete and practice your strike, but pace yourself, as progress will not be…” She trailed off, panting. “...quick.”

I nodded and took the tool in my own hoof, and held onto it as tightly as I could. It still slid, but I felt moderately confident I would be able to keep my grip. Then I paused, and looked for a good place to cut.

When I continued to hesitate, Zecora stepped forward once more. She gently took my foreleg as I held the machete, and guided my hoof towards a specific vine. “Begin here, swinging fast and true. My cuts were not random, but the beginnings of a path through.”

I nodded, and with her at my side, I began to notice the strained vines, and the branches bent from withering and moisture. They were weakened, and if I cut them where she directed, I could disassemble the whole tangle of branches before me in short order. I wound the machete back, holding it across my chest and over the opposite shoulder, before I swung it across in a wide, horizontal slash.

The branches squeaked as the blade glanced off them and jerked upwards, and I panicked. It fought to escape my grasp, but I held it tightly as it came back down, landing with a wet “chop”—and a sharp gasp from Zecora.

I turned, fearing the worst, and those fears weren’t terribly far off. The blade of the machete had buried itself—or rather, my wild strike had buried the blade—into Zecora’s foreleg, easily slicing into the bone. If I’d swung it with any more power, it might have chopped right through, and we both would have lost a leg in recent memory. “Z-Zecora!” I gasped. “I'm s-sorry...one s-second...I'll p-pull it out…”

She hissed, eyes clenched shut at the pain. I released my magical hold, and chose to use my teeth instead. As my teeth clamped down on the grip of the machete, she yelled something in a language I did not recognize, before we suddenly pulled away from each other. The blade came free with a sucking noise, and black ichor welled out around the wound, sluggish and thick, nearly coagulated already.

With a growl, she rubbed her foreleg, then gently pulled the machete out of my mouth and placed it back in my hoof. “Practice makes perfect, or so the pony expression goes. But practice takes time, as everyone knows. Hold the blade tight, and do not let it leave your sight.” She pointed back at the underbrush with her good hoof, and then stepped back several places in case I had any more...accidents.

This time, my attention focused on a branch that lay diagonally across the path, a fallen sapling that was held in place by a dozen other branches. I brought the machete over my shoulder, swung it up and over my head, and then down on the bark as hard as I could.

The machete jerked out of my hoof as I face planted into the ashen mud. Behind me, I heard Zecora sigh, and limp forward to retrieve the tool from where it was buried in the tree. “Swing fast and swing hard, but it is no hammer, no greatsword. Do not exhaust yourself, with all your strength in one swing - the blade is sharp, for now, and lesser chops will achieve the same thing.”

I wiped the mud from my face and nodded, as I took the blade once again in my hoof. Swing not too hard, but swing fast, lots of lesser chops. Okay. I focused again on the log, and started out slow with little more than a tap, then increased in strength.

Soon, I found a bit of a rhythm. I could snap the blade into the log three or four times, with a pause in between to rest. Occasionally as I did, Zecora stepped forward to guide my hoof, adjust my angle or swing. With her guidance, there was soon a notch growing ever larger in my chosen log.

After a little while of this, Zecora nodded, and stepped back again. My focus began to drift to my grip on the machete, and how adjusted I had become to its weight. I hadn't lost that grip so badly since the first time, and now it seemed to be gradually steadier with each swing. I felt, with some confidence, that I could do that for a while.

What helped was that, surprisingly, I didn't seem to be getting tired. Zecora rested behind me, as she tended to her ichor-soaked leg, but I could easily stand here all day. My rhythm of four chops and some rest, then four chops and some rest, seemed to take no stamina at all in the long term. My bones ached, to be sure, and my muscles were sore. But they had always been as such. It was already a struggle to ignore them and their decay, that this exertion barely seemed to affect them any.

My thoughts were interrupted by a loud crack, as the blade of the machete went right through the log. It split in two, and fell into the soft, muddy soil with a pair of thumps. I staggered, off balance again for a moment. Behind me, Zecora stood up, and as I found my hooves, she trotted past me with a wise smile. She paused only briefly to inspect the rotten wood I had laboriously chopped through, before she stepped past it. I followed, and together we clambered through more of the underbrush, but we paused at a fallen branch that now blocked our path instead.

Zecora turned to me, then took the blade of the machete. She guided it as I held the handle, and she placed it at the base of the branch. “Again.”

I nodded to her, Student to Teacher, and I began to chop at the next branch as she sat down and nursed her leg wound once more.


*	*	*


Quite some time later, I chopped through a particularly overgrown root, and the wall of vines and branches that stood in our way suddenly fell apart. I jumped as it did, but Zecora seemed excited, and she stood up and limped past.

We seemed to have smashed through the undergrowth into a large clearing, which sheltered a small, thatched-roof cottage. The crunching of the burned grass came to an immediate end. As I looked down, I could see that the grass here simply…hadn't burned. A hard, arbitrary line divided the burnt grass from that which had not. Some of the blades of grass weren’t even uniformly burnt, the ends or bases singed and the rest untouched. Some form of protection lay over this clearing, isolating it from the fire that had raged around it so long ago.

It was…strange to see normal grass again. It was still dead, sun-scorched and wilting, but it was undeniably in better health than the rest of the grass surrounding the clearing had been when it died.

There was the sound of a knock, then another, hesitant. My eyes looked back up to Zecora, who stood at the door of the cottage. She rapped the wooden surface with her hoof a few times, then moved to peer in the grimy, ancient windows. I followed behind her to catch up, and as I did, I examined the cottage itself.

The structure seemed strong, at first glance. While the thatching of the roof was long decayed, it only revealed the proper roof underneath, which had held up far better than the façade. Judging from the quiet dribble of a gutter nearby, that roof was still waterproof, and the walls were all intact. Far too many of the buildings in Ponyville could not say the same.

As I got closer, however, the illusion fell away. The whole house creaked and shifted as the wind blew through the clearing, thin fog swirling around us. Almost all of the windows had long since been shattered, some inwards, some out, the glass fragments worn down to powder. A smaller stream crossed in front of the cottage, a natural spring that had once flowed under a tiny decorative hoofbridge. Now it was dry, and the bridge had collapsed into kindling.

I stepped over its remains and joined Zecora at the door. She was still peering inwards, but after a moment, she sighed. “I do not believe my friend is around, and judging from appearances this place has never been found.” After pausing to think for a moment, she shook her head. “I think if she were here, she would want us to take what we need. No more, no less, and her forgiveness I will later plead.”

I nodded, and she sighed before pressing a hoof to the doorknob. The brass fitting refused to budge, however, and she grimaced before shoving her shoulder against it. There was a loud crunch as the doorframe splintered inwards, and the extended deadbolt easily smashed its way through the rotten wood of the door frame. The door scraped inwards on rusted hinges, and we glanced around the dusty interior.

It must have been a very nice cottage, once. Even now, we could see the low ceilings, plush, patched furniture, and soft colors. But after so long, mold had begun to overtake the furniture, and the colors had dulled to shadows of their former selves. We walked through the living room without saying a word, then froze as we heard a skittering sound from inside the house.

“W-wha-?” was all I got out before something grimy, fuzzy, and dog-sized bolted around the corner, hissing wildly and giving off an awful cacophony like chattering teeth as it flew right at us like a cannonball.

Whatever it was slammed into my barrel, and I could hear screeching, of animal and of metal, as it began burrowing through the side of my armor. I screamed and flailed, and desperately tried to tear it off. Zecora was there too, with her machete drawn, and smacked at it wildly with the hilt. Then pain shot up my side as it pierced the armor, and Zecora scowled.

There was a heavy thwack that brought all noise to a halt, save my pants and whines. Zecora withdrew the bloodied blade, readying it for another swing, but it didn’t seem to be needed. My hooves scrabbled at my side as I grabbed the fuzzy mass, but when I tried to rip it away, stars filled my vision. Whatever it was had bitten in, and had anchored itself to my flesh.

Zecora winced, and smacked my hooves away. As I lay on my side, panting, bleeding, she wedged the flat of the machete in between me and the creature, trying to lever it off. Finally it came loose, but it took a pound of flesh with it. Zecora held it up for examination as I was left, whining and trying to find my hooves. I could see it had a pair of long ears hanging limply from its head, and giant buck teeth, flanked by far, far too many smaller molars on either side of the maw. The fur looked like it might have been originally white, but age and strange magic had corrupted it, and now it appeared to be more of a grimy grey-brown.

Eventually, she nodded sadly. “The closest companion to my old friend, from before the sun set. She must have left it to guard this place, but the Everchaos twisted it yet.” She looked down at me. “Stay here while I check the garden, and bury the cottage’s resident demon.”

I couldn’t help my weak shaking, but I nodded, and focused on the pain as Zecora trotted to the back of the house, opened the door, and stepped out. Then I was by my lonesome as I bled and swore gently under my breath on the floor. All I could do was press my hooves against the ragged wound.

The armor that had been meant to protect me now hung off my side in ragged flaps. That thing had claws that could tear through metal in seconds—I was lucky that Zecora had been able to kill it in a single blow, or it may have burrowed inside further. I was able to regenerate to some degree, but I had no idea how the magic keeping me alive would handle ruination on such a scale.

Eventually, the flow of the ichor slowed, and I felt I had to try and move. Zecora would want me mobile, and I did her no good lying here on the floor in a pool of my own blood.

I hissed as I shifted. The movement opened my wounds anew, with fresh pain accompanying them. My hooves were nearly glued to my side now, but I had to tear one of them free for support, to try and stand. Ichor spattered into the puddle below as I shakily rose, and managed to stumble over to the decayed couch. Picking a less-moldy section, I fell onto the cushion, feeling something inside loosen up. I started to feel light-headed.

Tearing my other hoof free gave the cold twilight air an avenue with which to penetrate my wound. I gasped as I gathered up the scraps of armor hanging freely, balling them up and pressing them into the wound. Maybe it would stop the bleeding, maybe it would help keep them together for repairs later.

I was very light-headed now. I shifted, and felt the couch slipping out from under me. I fell onto my side, laying on the rest of the couch. Thankfully, my bleeding side wasn’t the one pressed up against the dead mold. Darkness crept in around the edges of my vision, and I let it whisk me away, hoping that the pain would be lessened when I awoke.


*	*	*


I was slowly woken up by Zecora. As she fussed over my wound, she hummed and muttered to herself in her strange native language. As I shifted, she smacked my muzzle.

“Such a wound, you have made it worse! Now it is wider, you stupid horse.”

Groaning, I coughed ichor across the couch cushion, before laying it down again. “Did…did you f-find…?”

She scowled. “No, the herbs are rotten and by the ground subsumed. They remained in the dirt until by decay, or the beast, they were consumed. They are useless, and now our journey out here has been fruitless.” She used her teeth to tear open a small bag, and pressed the healing poultice against my reopened wound.

“Oh...” I uttered sadly, barely noticing the cold pain from my side now as Zecora treated it. She noticed, and shook me gently to keep me awake.

“A major setback, that is to be certain. I know of only one other place we may find the herbs we need, behind the fire curtain. Beyond the Everchaos, to the southeast, lies the Hayseed Swamps of Fire. My mentor resides there, hidden away to attain an understanding of Pyromancy that is higher.”

“F-fire Swamps...b-beyond the Ev-Everchaos...ok-okay...” I looked back up at her. “D-do you th-think we…can m-make it that f-far?”

She shook her head. “A caravan of undead, perhaps, but not on our own. I have faith we will make it safely to her home.” She closed her eyes. “There are ponies in town who owe me favors, payment for services rendered. With their aid, we could make it there with skins unsundered.”

I nodded, and Zecora sighed, before she grabbed my armor and hauled me to my hooves. My legs were jelly, and my side still dribbled blood, but I found my balance soon enough. I could walk. Together, we began the slow journey out of the clearing, through the woods and fog, and back to the gates of Fort Ponyville.
> 8 - The Commander of the Firebreak
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The gate guards gave us some trouble upon our return to Fort Ponyville, but Zecora invoked Princess Twilight's name again, and that got them to let us in. As soon as her burning poultices had healed my wounds, we resumed my training, now with the machete as well. Zecora was careful to only let me practice its use in combat outside, and slowly, all the vertical rubble around the distillery either began to be reduced further in size, or acquired a myriad of battle scars.

Whenever she left me to my own devices like that, she usually set off into central Ponyville by herself. I was always nervous whenever she did; I knew firsthoof how dangerous it was, even inside the walls, and both of us were in much greater danger by ourselves, than we would be traveling together.

I did use the time to experiment with other objects besides my inkwell and our shared machete. I started to practice picking up small pebbles, and using an outward projection of force to launch them from my hoof. My aim was terrible, and my range was slightly less than simply kicking them with my hoof could attain. But it was still a useful skill, and it did not require the windup that kicking did.

It was at the end of one of these solo training sessions that Zecora returned with news: she had been speaking with her old connections, and we would be joining a small caravan that was resupplying the firebreak lines with munitions and fresh gems from Fillydelphia.

The caravan guards would continue accompanying us, she explained, past the edge of the free-fire zone, where the river emerged from the forest. From there, it flooded its banks, and the chaos fire bled into the swamps. When those petered out, we would find ourselves in the Everfree Delta, where her own mentor, Mage Meadowbrook, awaited.

The hope was that, since she was further from the fighting and the demons, her mentor may have her own sources of reagents, as well as some relevant knowledge to help Zecora with her own alchemical exploration. Knowledge that Zecora lacked, due to her mentor having a much deeper connection to the magic of Pyromancy than Zecora herself.

By the time she had finished explaining all of this, we had nearly reached the east gate, or at least we were close enough to hear the shouting. Our resident Hollow Hunter, Applejack, seemed to be having a rather one-sided argument. Behind her voice, from beyond the gate, I could hear an irregular “thump” every few seconds, like a giant stomping the earth.

“-the fact that y'all set all o’ this up without even checking with me says more than enough! Reckon I oughta kick all o’ y'all out permanent-like if ya think I’m gonna keep allowing foolishness on this scale!”

We turned a corner as Applejack was catching her breath, and it was by that small mercy that we managed to avoid catching her ire as well, at least for the moment. She was arguing with a hollowed pegasus wearing what seemed to be ancient Pegasopolian armor, all made of tarnished bronze and red cloth holding it all together. His helmet sat in the crook of his leg while they argued, though he seemed content to wait until Applejack’s ire burnt itself out against him. He stood before the rest of the caravan, and directly in between them and Applejack. He shielded them as a levee protected against the tide, allowing Applejack to scream and holler at him so that she did not do so against the others. 

Two hollowed earth ponies, weaving gently from side to side and looking at nothing in particular, were hitched up to a string of three wagons, each hitched to the one before it. All three wagons had been overstacked with wooden pallets covered by a plain canvas sheet. From under the edge of the canvas, I could see rows upon rows of brass cylinders. Around the wagons, a half-dozen hollowed guards, as well as two other unarmed earth ponies, watched the argument with varying levels of concern. Two of the guards wore the proper armored uniforms of Equestrian soldiers, while everypony else wore either the ragged leather and chainmail of the Fort Ponyville militia, or nothing at all.

I spotted Archmagus Dinky as well, standing awkwardly by the gate. She had donned a traveling cloak, and over that, a pair of brown saddlebags filled with her own supplies. At her side was her new silver sword—clearly Rockhoof had sharpened and reinforced it to both their satisfaction. She was pointedly ignoring the argument in front of her, and seemed to instead be chatting with two of the militia ponies, who were, at most, a few years older than her.

Behind them, the east gate stood tall. It was well-maintained and carefully reinforced, with seams running through where the burned wood had been patched, and steel rivets driven through to keep it all sturdy. This gate was even decorated; graffiti, drawings as if by foals, and a few more professional-looking yet unofficial banners, hung across the supports and from the archway around the door, or were painted onto the door and walls themselves. Every single one of them depicted a sun, of a dozen different designs. Fitting, I thought, for the gate facing the sunset.

While I was staring at all of that, Applejack had gotten her second wind. “Now! Y'all are gonna drop this foolishness, and them soldier colts are gonna haul their own danged supplies through their own damned trenches, and ya’ll are gonna stay right here and defend the home front, where y'all are most-”

Finally, Zecora had heard enough. She stepped forward, interrupting Applejack with a stomp of her hoof. “Applejack, from a great distance I could hear your report. Is there a reason you are scolding my escort?”

Applejack spun around, and a snarl formed as she saw us. “Zecora? Dangit, if y'all weren’t so useful I’d have already kicked ya out for being such a thorn in my side. Stay put, I gotta sort out these soldier colts first-”

“I think not, for they are under my employ.” Zecora strode forward, and all of the Hollows stood up a little straighter, aside from one of the wagon-pullers. “I have cashed in more favors than I’d like to secure this convoy. I’ve told you time and time again that I work for Celestia at foreleg’s length, and to continue doing so now I require these guard’s protection and strength.”

“Ah still don’t fully believe that.” Applejack snarled as she came to a stop before Zecora. “Fact, I reckon you’re losin’ your mind. You’re weakenin’ our position against that damned forest! I ain’t gonna let you send our best militiamares- Tartarus, I ain’t gonna let you send our dad gummed Archmagus out there, it’s a killin’ field! You drag ‘em out there, they ain’t comin’ back, and they ain’t like the soldiers! If Celestia needs ponies out on the front lines so bad, why don’t she just send more soldiers, instead of risking our colts?”

Zecora sighed. “Applejack, I know survival in the short term is your benchmark for success, but I assure you that Celestia has already sent out her best. We will not be fighting on the front lines with them, I assure you, but to reach our destination past the trenches, we must eventually pass through.”

Applejack still looked hesitant, so Zecora gently beckoned her forward with a hoof. “I see you still do not believe our plight in comparison to your own. Come back to the distillery, where I shall show you just how much Celestia has entrusted me with the task of protecting your home.”

Applejack snarled and shifted her hooves, but eventually nodded. “Alright. I’ll listen, this time. But I got limits, dangit, and you’re nippin’ at the edges as it is. Better have Celestia’s own signature on some orders for me to see.”

I moved to follow, but Zecora held up her hoof. “Apprentice, best for you to stay here, and talk with our Commander-in-residence. He should explain much that you need to know about the formation, in my absence.” I nodded, and Zecora led Applejack away from the gate. The argument started up again as their voices faded into the distance, and I wanted to follow her anyways, but I trusted Zecora.

A heavy hoof settled on my shoulder as I watched them go. “Well, what do we have here? Zecora’s new apprentice, she said?”

I turned my head, looking up at the armored pegasus stallion beside me. He seemed to be looking me over, with a distinctly crestfallen look across his face. “You’re not much to look at. Your wings are in tatters, you know that? No respectable Pegasus, even a Hollow, should let their wings fall into such disrepair. Don’t you ever preen them?”

“Magnus,” Dinky said from behind us both. “Stop teasing Holly. I’ve seen for myself, she’s got the soul of a fighter in her, and Zecora saw it too. Besides, you told me yourself there’s not much point to flying these days, with those winged demons patrolling the skies.”

“Sure, sure. But that’s still no excuse to at least take care of your wings a little bit. It’s a point of pride for us pegasi to have properly-preened wings.” He clapped his hoof on my shoulder, then stepped away. “Well, if you’re coming with us, then I’d better see what you can do, so I know where to place you in the formation. Do you have a weapon?”

I turned to face him and nodded, before drawing my machete. As I did, I saw his eyes fall. “Oh stars, that’s barely… Of course Zecora’s been training you with that. I bet she had you chopping branches and hacking at vines too!” I nodded, and he put a hoof to his face. “Come over here. Zecora can use that old bushwhacker, but you’re going to need a proper sword if you want to defend yourself.”

He trotted over to another one of the soldiers, who unfurled a roll of leather on his side. As he did, it revealed a small collection of swords of various types, held in place by loops woven through the leather. “Now, a pegasus… Normally I’d give you wingblades, but that’s clearly not going to work… Perhaps a rapier? No, you don’t have the control for that yet, I don't think… A shortsword?”

He looked at me again, then shook his head. “You have more earth pony than pegasus in you, filly. Wish I had a longsword to give you; that’d be the best of both worlds, with enough heft to do some damage, but light enough to swing quickly… all taken though, they’re a common favorite. No, I’ll just have to give you one of our standard cavalry swords instead.”

He pulled out a thin blade, with a simple hilt. It seemed that the blade was one-sided, with the back edge of the blade being too blunt to injure an opponent. The tip was sharp, though, and he practiced whipping it through the air a few times to make sure the weight was right, before he passed it to me. “That’s a slashing sword, or it can be mounted into an armored saddle—see that screw in the hilt? Right there—and you can charge an enemy with it to run them through. All of our basic cavalry are equipped with these, being as they’re cheap and easy to make or fix. So cheap, in fact, you can keep that; Zecora’s an old friend, and I’d much rather you be equipped for the fight ahead than worry about a tight inventory.”

I nodded, and held the cavalry sword tightly in the magical grip of my hoof. Magnus walked around me once or twice, moving my foreleg or instructing me to spread my stance, before he nodded. “Alright, give me a practice swing, however you like. Just to see what I’m working with.”

I reared back, whipping my hoof down and swiping with the sword, and I heard his breath catch in his throat as he cringed behind me. “Oooooh, you’ve definitely been training with that damned machete. Alright.” He paused, then motioned with his hoof. “You’re swinging the tip, using the weight of the sword to carry the momentum through. It works for a machete, because the tip is the heaviest section of the blade, but no other sword is built like that. No Equestrian sword, at least, and you’ll snap the tip off if you try. Swing the sword again, but try to pretend the blade is about half the length. That’s where you want the leading edge to impact.”

I nodded, and continued to practice as he watched, for a short while. With his guidance, I just about figured out how to swing the sword without earning a wince from him, though I did lose my grip once. That made everypony jump, and all I could do was weakly apologize as I picked the sword back up to try again.

That got Dinky’s attention again, though, and as I practiced swinging the sword, she trotted over with the two deeply hollowed militia ponies in tow. I paused to look them over; one was a tall colt, thin, and his embers stared into space without anything to focus on. The other was a short, squat colt who narrowed his embered eyes at me, but didn’t say anything. Neither of them fit into their armor particularly well, thanks to their unusual builds.

“Hey Holly. These are a couple of my old friends from school, before… all of this. This is Snips,” she indicated the short, grumpy colt, “and that’s Snails. Snails!”

Snails blinked, before looking at me. A dopey grin emerged across his face, and he greeted me with, “Hullo!”

Snips, on the other hand, still looked hesitant. “We’re bringing Hollows with us? Can she handle herself?”

“I’ve seen her fight. She’s still learning, but she’s a scrappy mare, I think we’ll be fine. Besides, if we have to do any fighting, then we’ve got bigger problems. The soldiers in the trench should keep us safe.” Dinky indicated them both again. “These two will be part of the escort squad keeping us safe. I know we’ve got kind of a… strained relationship with the militia, as Applejack was so helpfully demonstrating, but you can trust them.”

I nodded, and Dinky gave me a smile before they stepped back to let me practice some more. Magnus had stepped away to talk with another pony by the time my teacher returned, with Applejack in tow. Zecora raised an eyebrow when she saw my new weapon, but nodded in approval, and picked up the machete for herself instead. Applejack made a beeline for me though, and I stopped swinging just in case I needed to use the sword to defend myself.

Applejack got right up in my face, wrinkled and aged snout almost touching mine, and the embers of her eyes were dead level with my own. I was so close, that a wave of burnt gunpowder overcame me. Sulfur and gunsmoke caused my nose to wrinkle, and I tried to look away, only to spot a strange glow from under the collar of her armor. For a moment, curiosity overcame me, before she interrupted those thoughts with a growl. “Hollow. I don’t like you. I reckon I’m gonna kick you out of here when you get back, if the demons outside don’t do me the favor of finishing you off. But you had better danged well keep Zecora alive out there, ‘cause Hollowed as she is, I trust her, and she owes me anyhow. Ya’ll got that?”

I nodded, terrified, and she snorted in my face before pulling away. She waved a hoof as she began walking away. “Bring ‘em back, Zecora. All of ‘em, or cure or no cure, I will tan your damn Hollowed hide.”

Dinky sighed sadly as Applejack disappeared down the street, and Magnus let out a mirthless chuckle. “I so dearly miss Applejack whenever I’m not passing through Fort Ponyville.”

“I know that she only means the best, and always has for her family and her home. But at some point, her near-sightedness has become a problem we cannot shy away from.” Zecora agreed, with a shake of her head. She turned back to Magnus, Dinky, and me. “Is everypony prepared to depart? Or is there any more knowledge we need to impart?”

“Almost.” Magnus straightened up a bit, and his military stance replaced the more casual air he had worn until then. “Holly, I’m going to put you in the middle, behind the wagon. You and Zecora will gallop together, and yes, we will be galloping. It’s dangerous out there, and the faster we cross the free-fire zone, the less danger we’ll be in. I’ll be leading, the wagons will be behind me, then you and Zecora, Archmagus Dinky behind you, and then everypony else, two by two. The rest of you, listen up!”

As Magnus addressed the caravan, Zecora opened up her bottomless bag, and withdrew both our sets of armor. As Magnus continued his briefing, we pulled the armor on and cinched the straps tight. One of the militia ponies gave us a confused nod when he saw that Ponyville’s banner adorned the flanks, and I was once again curious just whether Zecora was really supposed to have the armor, officially speaking. The Golden Guard that had held their spare weapons also passed me a sheath for my cavalry sword, and I fumbled with it for a moment, before Dinky helped affix it to my armor.

Magnus trotted around to take his place at the front of the caravan. “Fillies and Gentlecolts, we are leaving in five! We are crossing the free-fire zone, and for those of you who are joining us for the first time, a quick summary: The full might of the Equestrian army is dug in on the single largest, deadliest, and most literal fire-fighting operation this nation has seen since the Dragon War! It will be loud, and it will be chaos, so listen closely, ‘cause we’re not going to have time to remind you out there!”

“When this gate opens, you will follow me! We will cross fifty body-lengths of open ground, and this will be the most dangerous part, because there will be no cover! After fifty body-lengths, we will begin descending into the firebreak trench! After another fifty body-lengths, we will pause and take a summary of any casualties. We will not be coming back for anypony we lose, and it will be assumed that the demons have grabbed them, so watch your buddy! After that, we will move at a steady gallop down the remaining length of the trench! I will clear the way, and I will dictate if we stop! Is that understood?”

The soldiers behind us barked out in unison, “Sir, yes sir!” and the militia ponies followed suit a moment later. Behind Magnus, the gate began to open, and he nodded, letting out a long, slow exhalation. “Alright. On my call!”

The old gate had to be opened by retracting two giant crossbars first, and they squeaked and ground, as they had been long rusted through. When they finally clunked into place at the sides of the gate, the doors themselves began to open, and immediately, a deafening “boom” blew the loose dust off the ground as a detonation from beyond the wall shook us directly.

And yet, the door was not yet fully open. The anticipation was terrible.

Magnus didn’t wait for it to fully open either; as soon as the doors were wide enough for the wagon, he shouted, “Go!” and the wagons ahead of us started rattling forward. They started off slow, but began picking up speed as they passed through the doors, and before I knew it, the last one was out the door. Zecora started galloping after them, and I was only a few leg-lengths behind her as we emerged into the free-fire zone.

I couldn’t see much of Equestria’s scenery before, but here, it seemed the blanket of fog that smothered the land had thinned a bit. And what I could see, until the horizon was swallowed by fog, seemed impossibly flat. For what must have been a mile to the south (our left), the ground was flat as a lakebed, without buildings, trees, or even shrubbery to break up the expanse. Some impossible force, by magic or by time, had pounded the earth flat as glass. But to the north (our right), about two hundred body-lengths away, the perfectly-smooth ground ended suddenly in a burning treeline. Even aflame, burning as if cursed, the forest stood tall, and the flames and the smoke formed a wall of fire that towered hundreds of body-lengths upwards into the sky.

My eyes snapped ahead, and I was immediately reminded of anthills; great trenches ran in parallel down the length of the wall of fire, with smaller trenches connecting the frontlines to the back, and soldiers running down their earthen walls. I could see corridors, dead-ends, and choke points everywhere. Finally, at the back of the trenches, the earth had finally been allowed to rise higher than a fetlock; insead, it had been shaped into artificial hills, protecting the ponies behind it from direct attack, while great steel cannons pointed upwards into the sky. As I watched, the barrel of the nearest cannon flashed, and a moment later I was nearly flattened by the shockwave. They had been the source of the ground-shattering thumps.

And then we were galloping downhill, and my vision on either side was obscured by earth held in place with sheet metal. On our right, a single-file line of soldiers galloped past us, the way we came. Shouts and the occasional report of a hoof-held firearm followed, along with the nightmarish screeching of some demon that had been denied an easy meal. At least, I hoped it had been denied an easy meal.

I never saw the wagons stop; me and Zecora simply slammed into the back of them, and the soldiers behind us stumbled as we all tripped over each other. Nopony was seriously hurt, but we all had some new ichor-dark bruises as we shuffled, panting, back to our places in the formation. “Report!” barked Magnus from ahead of us.

In between the deafening “booms” of the cannons, one of the Golden Guard responded. “Goldengrape got grabbed, he’s gone! Sugarshine got hit with some kind of fired spine, maybe poisonous, but she made it to the trench before she collapsed!”

I felt sick. I hadn’t even seen them get hit, I was so focused on galloping and keeping up with the wagons.

“Hah! One of our better runs! Alright, leave Sugarshine here, she can head back to Ponyville when she wakes up again. The rest of you, prepare to gallop again! First station is two hundred body-lengths down the trench, on my call! Three, two, one, go!”

We were galloping again, and I didn’t know how much more of this I could take.

*	*	*

We paused at the first station, at least long enough for them to unhitch the backmost wagon of the line. I was more than happy for the break, because it gave me time to puke.

Dinky was by my side as I did, not looking much better, but she patted my back as I heaved against the earthen wall of the trench. “That’s it, let it out. Don’t force it, just let it come.” Beside us, the other militia ponies were doing the same, as was one of the soldiers.

I wasn’t even sure what I was coughing up, but it looked as black and ichorous as everything else my decaying body produced. All I could hope was that I was better off after heaving it up.

Zecora sat beside us, breathing heavily, her eyes closed. She seemed to be trying to meditate, but every time one of the cannons fired it made her jump. I think it was starting to damage our hearing too, because we could hardly hear the howls of the demons as they fought and died only a few hundred body-lengths away.

Eventually, I had nothing left to cough up, and my throat felt worse than it had the first time I had awoken. My stomach felt better, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to my not having a stomach any more; I was fairly sure I had left it in that pile of black ichor. I staggered back from the wall, slumping against the wagon, and tried to focus on its contents as Dinky started checking in on everypony else.

One of the brass cylinders had slipped off of its pallet as they were unloading it, and was lying in the mud beside me. With shaking hooves and a curious mind, I picked it up, turning it over as I tried to figure out its purpose.

“It’s a mortar shell.” I blinked, and looked up at Magnus, who looked as morose as ever. He pointed at the end. “See that little circle there? That’s the primer. A hammer strikes that, and it detonates an internal charge that separates the other end from the brass casing.”

“What…?” I murmured, still not quite understanding. Magnus reached out and took the mortar shell from my hooves, wiping the mud off of it.

“This is an explosive shell. We mostly use it to clear ground, because the demons usually don’t stay still long enough to accurately target. But we fire enough of these at a spot, we can know with a fair amount of certainty that there’s no enemies there.” He paused, then chuckled. “Though there was this one time that a really big, slow demon came out of the woods. That was a fun time, hitting that with direct shots. Everypony on the mortar crews got commendations for that one, though it was a real mess to clean up.”

After a moment, he shook his head, and set the shell back on the wagon. “Ah, maybe you had to be there. There’s also firestopper shells, which make up most of what we’re using out here. They detonate, and a compressed ice cloud inside the shell spreads out around the impact site, dampening the ground and extinguishing any fire. We’re trying to use those to contain and fight the fire directly, but we go through them so fast…”

After a moment, I looked at him. “This… it’s h-horrible.”

His eyes fell, and he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, it is. It’s a really nasty fight, and we lose soldiers all the time. Soldiers we can’t get back, despite what Applejack says. This isn’t a fight we’re going to decisively win.” After a moment, he added, “I’m not sure it’s a fight we’re going to win at all.”

“But…” I looked down the trench, at the hollowed soldiers sharpening their swords and checking their rifles. “But why... put all of this... wouldn’t… wouldn’t the weapons… a-armor… everything? Is it… all being... w-wasted?”

He shook his head. “Never said that. Better to say... It’s not a fight we’re going to win with a military victory. We’re not going to plant a flag in Tartarus and call it captured. It’s more of a… fundamental fight, I think.”

“Fu-fundam-mental?”

This time, he nodded. “Celestia’s still coordinating all this. She’s still changing up tactics, shifting us around, so we’re never dug in too deep. But it’s all delaying tactics; I’m pretty sure she’s waiting for something to change. She’s trying to find some way for one of her agents to make a precision strike at the heart of all of this, while we distract the demons on this front. Or she’s waiting on her sorcerers and alchemists, to find out what happened to...” He waved his hooves at the both of us, then at the sky. “...To everything. Why the demons are the only thing killing us, why we’re not aging, what happened to the sky.”

Eventually, I nodded. “Like… L-like Zecora.”

He gently punched my shoulder “Like Zecora, exactly. You’re helping solve this, even if it doesn’t look like it right now. Even if we have to do horrible things to make it happen.” he let out a sigh. “Even if I’m not sure Luna would be willing to forgive me for everything I’ve done for this fight.”

I recognized the name, even if I wasn’t sure why, the same way I had recognized Celestia’s. It was something deep, ingrained in my memory of the firmament. Like being unable to forget about the ground, or mountains, or… or the sun and moon.

Suddenly, I felt sick again. “T-tell me about L-Luna-”

“Later,” he said with a crestfallen look. “I’ll tell you about her at the next station. They’re almost finished unloading this wagon, and we have to start moving again. Don’t get grabbed on the way there, alright?”

I nodded, shakily got to my hooves beside Zecora, with Dinky behind us. Magnus trotted back up past the lead wagons, and shouted, “Fall in, we’re moving in two! Another four hundred before our next rest!”

*	*	*

I didn’t puke this time, but then again, I was pretty sure I had already ejected everything that could be puked up at the first station. I laid in the ashen mud, watching the silhouette of a hollowed mare winding a crank-gun and firing wildly down the trench. The staccato rattle of the brass casings landing in a pile beside her blended into the sound of the crank-gun’s automatic report. The noise of the cannons behind us barely even registered any more.

I couldn’t even see what she was firing at. I doubted she could either, or that she cared. Every shot she fired released a thick gout of smoke, and the cloud within the trench around her seemed even thicker than the fog that blanketed the world above. All I could see was her outline in the flashes from her gun. Yet she seemed to have found her purpose, firing wildly into the smoke of the trench, ripping apart unseen demons with every turn of the crank.

My attention was pulled away from her when a shape galloped past me, splashing mud across my muzzle. “Courier! New orders for all stations, from Canterlot!”

Magnus swore, taking the folded letter, while the courier saluted, then continued to gallop at full tilt down the trench. Magnus unfolded the letter as he left, skimmed it, then passed it to the station officer. “New firing solutions. She wants us to shift our cannons to 34 North, 12 East. It’s going to take the heat off of us when we leave the trenches, but the swamp’s going to be above the waterline with all of that extra water.”

The station officer nodded, then started relaying the orders to the cannon crews above, while Magnus looked at me, then shook his head. “Holly. Can you stand?”

Panting, I hauled myself up and out of the mud, eventually collapsing into a sitting position beside him. He looked down at me and sighed. “Good enough. So, Luna…”

He went quiet for a little while, watching the sky above the trench, before continuing. “I knew her before the sun stopped. Met her a few times, formal functions and such. There was this brief time since I, uh... let’s say I got transferred from one nation to another. I got some refresher training to catch up with modern militaries, and took over command of a contingent of the Royal Guard, back when they were still called that. I met her then, but she was never interested in me so much as Stygian.”

“Little squirt was… It’s complicated, but he’s a friend, or at least he was. He told me that Luna made him an offer one night, in his dreams. Said something about the Dark and one of the spells he cast. Really shook the kid, he doesn’t like to talk about the Pony of Shadows, but Luna knew. Apparently all of that would be forgiven if he joined some sort of Covenant, to fight some sort of endless war.”

Flash Magnus turned his eyes back down. “Apparently… Luna was making this offer to a lot of ponies. Every species, every country, whether soldier, civilian, or even beings in government positions. And Styggie said that word was getting around, from ponies who hadn’t taken the offer. But he wouldn’t say why, or what for. I saw him only a couple more times after that—he gave everyone the only group hug I think the seven of us had ever shared all together, and that was the last we ever saw of him. He’s been missing since.”

He was silent for a while, after this. Eventually, he broke the relative silence with a question. “Anypony told you about dragons yet?”

I shook my head.

“I’d be surprised if they had. I’ve been fighting them just about my entire life, but I think everypony outside the Golden Guard, and Celestia herself, has forgotten about them. My previous life… I fought dragons a lot, but we were always defending against them.” He patted the iron shield that he kept on his back, smiling fondly, before he shook his head, and his expression fell. “But nothing like what happened a few years after working for Celestia. The Dragons… did something to her. Stole part of her power, using this artifact, called the Bloodstone Scepter. Drained the life out of the sun, and Celestia with it.”

“We reshuffled the Equestrian Military because of that, moved beyond the Royal Guard mostly defending Canterlot and the border territories. I was one of the most experienced dragon-fighters in the country, even if my knowledge was a little out of date, and I became one of the veteran members of the new Golden Guard. Together, Equestria occupied the Dragonlands, as best we could.”

Something in his eyes changed. He wasn’t looking at me, or the sky, or the trenches any more. His eyes were unfocused, like he was seeing something he couldn’t unsee. “The Dragons… They were confused, at least at first. Whoever stole the magic must have gone behind Dragon Lord Ember’s back, because she had no idea what was going on. We brought her to Equestria to negotiate, but she had to leave the scepter there, and the Dragons started fighting for dominance. A new Dragon Lord took over, and he must have been behind all of it, because the country turned on us. We lost a lot of good ponies that day, and we had to go on the offensive instead of the defensive.”

“Eventually, we won, if you could call it that. The Dragons just… never stopped fighting, until we’d nearly wiped them out. The rest scattered to the winds, and Celestia finally took the scepter, which was supposed to fix her, but... “ He trailed off.

“Ember left, after it was clear she wasn’t going to get the Bloodstone Scepter back. Not if it was powerful enough to cripple Celestia like it had. She’s probably still out there, trying to rally the dragons and rebuild, but I don’t know if they trust her. They sure don’t trust us any more.”

Eventually, he sighed, looking down. “At least the demons don’t speak. Wild beasts, twisted by magic. That’s a nice, unambiguous war. Pest control, really. They sprung up… weeks after we won the war against the dragons. Not sure we’d still be here if we hadn't already been so heavily mobilized. Burning, killing, destroying… We managed to push them back really quickly, at least.”

Magnus’ eyes never moved from the mud. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Luna’s supposed offer since. I never got a visit from her, and I can’t abandon my own endless battle to join hers, even if I wanted to keep-” He cut himself off with a sharp intake of breath. 

We sat there for a while, just staring at the ashen mud together. I could hear the booming of the cannons shift slightly as they changed targets, and the distant rumble of the shell’s impacts shifted to the west. Eventually, Dinky hesitantly approached us.

“Commander? Holly? This wagon’s unloaded. Just the last station now, right?”

That seemed to shake him out of it. “Right. Yeah. Let’s get moving.”

He went off to run down a quick checklist, leaving me sitting in the mud. A moment later, the station officer reappeared, clattering down the steep ramp from talking with gunnery crews above. In between the booms of the cannons, he waved at a soldier sitting nearby, checking his short hoof-held firearm. “Hammerhead! It’s here again, I can feel it!”

The soldier was deeply hollowed, but had enough of his wits left to sigh. “Your… bird d-demon, right?”

A manic grin crossed the station officer’s own undead muzzle. “You can feel it too! I knew it! Come, let’s watch the sky, so we can pick it off when it comes to watch us again!”

Hammerhead put his head in his hooves. “Sarge, it’s g-gone! Nopony’s seen it in… what m-must b-be weeks!”

“Then that means it is biding it’s time, watching us from afar! It’s the most devious little demon I’ve ever seen, created to spy on us!”

“Uugggh… F-fine…” Hammerhead groaned, before he slid his firearm into a holster over his shoulder, and followed the station officer back up the ramp. As he left, I heard him mutter under his breath, “Can’t be a sp-spy… demons d-on’t use sp-spies…”

After they left, I was left by myself in my little corner of the trench, though not for long. Magnus soon returned, and shouted down the line. “Two minutes! Another four hundred body-lengths to the end of the firebreak, and then we’ll enter the swamps! Mud’s only gonna get worse from here on out, so we can move a little bit slower, but if anything swoops down, you drop like a stone into the muck!”

There was a chorus of groans and grumbling, and then we were moving again.

*	*	*

We cantered into the last station, splashing mud from our hooves. It was nearly ankle-deep, and everypony was stained grayish-brown from everypony else kicking up the mud ahead of them. Only Magnus was mostly clean, as he paraded over the rest of us. “Good work in that last stretch, but we’re not out of it yet! From here on out, it’s only gonna get worse, but we’re gonna move a lot slower! This is unpatrolled territory, and while we’re ringing the dinner bell elsewhere, there’s always gonna be stragglers! Keep your eyes high, and your hooves on your weapon!”

He looked over everypony in the line one last time while mud dripped down our barrels, and then nodded. “Take ten, then back in formation to depart! Zecora, Dinky, Holly, how are you holding up?"

Zecora shrugged, resting against the wall as she panted slightly. Dinky's own wheezing was much louder, and more frequent. I seemed to be the outlier; as I still wasn't terribly used to breathing autonomously, my muscles were somehow both aflame, and prickling with that distinct pins-and-needles sensation. I was attempting to make up for lost time by manually sucking in air and wheezing it back out, but it was slow going, and Dinky recovered long before I did.

When she caught her breath, she glanced around the station, and then approached Magnus. He seemed to have quickly busied himself, checking over several topographical maps of the area. "Commander, a word?"

He nodded, while tracing a line with his hoof, before looking back up at her. Dinky pointed back down the trench where we came. "How many guards are actually assigned to these trenches? None of them are wearing the golden armor I knew from before the wars, either, it's just the ones guarding the caravans that wear that." 

"That's… a bit more complex than I was hoping for." He sighed, sitting on a muddy, charred stool. He indicated that she should take a seat on another across the table while he pulled out another map. "During the Dragon war, it quickly became clear that the Equestrian guards were inadequate for warfare on the scale required. The Princesses expanded, then broke up the standing army into three divisions; air, ground, and sea. The Pillars and Elements did our own recruiting, taking up the golden armor and becoming an… honor guard, of sorts. The best of the best, and giving orders to the divisions as well as tactical and logistics advice to the princesses."

He flared his wings. "I mostly worked with the air forces. That lasted until Cloudsdale fell, and wiped most of us out. After that, I was sent out to coordinate the efforts here on the ground, fighting the fires, but the rest of the Golden Guard are still out there, scattered around Equestria. If you see a pony wearing golden armor these days, they're either one of the veterans, or one of our troops; you can tell from the barding, officers like me are a little more…" He tugged at the red cloth under his own armor. "... pointlessly ostentatious."

He looked back around the trench, a moment later. "As for how many troops are here… you've been counting, haven't you? Why don't you tell me?"

Dinky nodded. "Something like two hundred, give or take a few dozen? They've been doing a lot of running around us, and everypony looks the same in body armor and mud. Multiply that by three for the three trenches, and the total is somewhere upwards of six hundred on this firebreak?"

Magnus nodded. "It's a good count, and closer than most would guess. There's about three hundred in the back trench, less than two hundred in the middle trench, and almost nopony in the forward trench. Turnover rate was too high, and it's easier to funnel the demons down the firing lines of the trenches anyway. Call it five hundred-ish, not including the most recent casualties or soldiers Hollowing out entirely while on post."

Dinky's eyes narrowed. "But there's more troops in reserve, right? Soldiers in Canterlot, Trottingham, Fillydelphia, Baltimare?"

"Of course, but not many. The demons are coming from the forest, so most troops are fighting on the front lines here to keep them contained." Magnus' hoof drifted over to a map of Equestria, stopping at the coastal city on the other side of Ponyville. "And Baltimare… reports are weird from Baltimare, wildly conflicting. We're still trying to work that out exactly."

"Commander." Dinky's voice was firm. "How many troops does Equestria have to resupply the front lines with? How long can they keep going like this?"

Magnus didn't respond, at first. His hoof danced over the maps and several troop reports, and he was silent for a long time before he finally answered her question. "Somewhere between three thousand and five thousand troops, depending on whether some of the larger groups are still out there. Most of the navy never made it back from Celestia's scouting mission to the east ocean, and a lot of the outlying battalions have stopped reporting in. If you mean battle-ready and available to shore up the lines here… it's pretty much just the troops in Fillydelphia and Canterlot, plus everypony already here but not fighting at the front directly, which is something like two thousand."

Dinky's eyes went wide, and she reeled back on her stool. "That's it?"

"That's all of them that can be easily accounted for. The Dragon War was costly, and it's pretty much been attrition from Hollowing, demons, and infighting ever since. Losing Cloudsdale really hurt us, too." Magnus looked back over at Zecora, who was trying not to look like she was listening. "It's not going to last forever, kiddo. Part of why I'm escorting Zecora to Meadowbrook's personally; we can't afford to lose either of them, because we need a third-party remedy to this mess before we have to pull back too far. We're already over-extended, and I have no idea how bad it's going to truly get when all these demons that we're keeping contained finally break loose."

"Okay," she swallowed. "Keep Zecora safe. Understood."

"Good." Sighed Magnus. He stepped away from the table, and raised his voice. "Leaving in one minute! Forma-shun!"

As we scrambled back to our places in the formation, I had just about caught my breath. But I'd mostly been occupied with listening to Dinky and Magnus; how much longer could they keep fighting, really? How long did we have, until we had to abandon Ponyville?
> 9 - The Fire Swamps
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Final checks!" Magnus barked, taking his position at the new front of the formation. Zecora and I were directly behind him now, with Dinky and one of the Golden Guard behind us. Another Golden Guard stood beside a hollowed militia pony, and the last pair behind them were Snips and Snails of the militia, sticking together as always. Everypony else had been for the wagons; this group was solely to escort Zecora.

"We're galloping for the treeline! That's about seventy body-lengths from the end of the trench, and it's not well-defined, so just keep galloping until the pony ahead of you stops! There's gonna be fire! There's gonna be mud! If you catch light, drop into the mud and roll until it's out, and try to catch up when you can!"

We all nodded, and there was a series of clanks behind us as the Golden Guard saluted. Magnus closed his eyes, turned forwards, and sighed.

"Three! Two! One! Go!"

We had a slow start, due to the damned mud. It was flowing downhill as we were scrambling uphill, and I heard one of the militia ponies swear as she slipped, slapping into the mud with a squelch. Then we were out in the open, and everypony's ears were flicking all around, listening between the reports of the cannons for any sort of animal noise.

Either we were lucky, or the diversion fire worked, because we entered the smouldering treeline only a few moments later, seemingly having avoided any attack. We all tensed up as we heard panting behind us, but it was just the militia mare who had fallen into the mud, after she'd recovered and caught up.

Magnus looked us all over, the fire gleaming off of his armor, and smiled, just a little. "Lucky break. It won't hold for long, though. Swords drawn, and watch the smoke. We're invaders in their territory now, and we won't start to be safe until we've left the fire long behind us."

We started moving slowly, cautiously, through the burning forest. Magnus took the lead, and carefully guided us around the actual burning patches, though sometimes we had to make a wide circle around them, or even double back, though it was clear he hated doing so.

Zecora, too, was clearly unsettled by being so close to the fires. “I urge all of you to be mindful of the Chaosfire that surrounds our hooves. It is not like normal fire, but more akin to a disease, twisting and warping whatever it may choose. The mere mud under our hooves may not be enough to extinguish one who is lit aflame, and I cannot promise that so doused may emerge with their form the same.”

That confused me, so when next we paused, I took the time to closely examine a smouldering sapling, and Dinky beside me had the same idea. As we watched together, we got our first up close look at the effects of Chaosfire.

The constant flickering was hypnotizing, and it made us nauseous to watch it. Dinky was the first to really understand what we were looking at. "It...it's not burning, it's growing! Over and over and over in the span of a second! The fire, that's the previous iteration burning off to make way for the next iteration!"

And every time the leaves regrew, it was as though they had been grown from a different tree. Pine, palm, birch, larch, oak, eucalyptus, and dozens more I couldn't identify. Maybe trees that had never been grown before, or never would again, all in the space of a second. Even the bark of the sapling was burning and shifting, changing texture and color and exploding out as new bark grew from underneath the old.

And yet, the tree never grew more than a hoof’s-width; it never had the chance, not with every piece of the tree growing and burning off all at the same time. It was locked in a bizarre, burning, chaotic stasis.

Zecora noticed us examining the burning sapling, and stepped away from Magnus to join us. “It is… beautiful, in its own uniquely dangerous way, and I have studied strange magic since long before the dawning of this final day. I know Discord has to be involved, but I do not think he is truly at fault. He prefers his Chaos to be entertaining, not merely the agents of an endless assault. Even this Chaosfire is different than his usual style, and the way it changes while remaining static? I knew enough about Discord to know that he would consider such a chaotic state to be not only boring, but tragic.”

“What do you think it’s doing? Magically speaking?” asked Dinky, barely taking her eyes away from the sapling.

Zecora sat down on a smouldering log next to us, and glanced back at Magnus, who seemed to be busying himself with another map. “It is difficult to explain, and so much of what I do know is guesswork and speculation. Perhaps it is better to ask what it represents, then to simply study it through endless observation. Pyromancy, for example, has always represented change, ever since the first equines brought light to dark. Chaosfire is change left unchecked, unstoppably changing the world around us and leaving its mark.

“Imagine a candle, burning bright. Imagine the heat, and imagine the light.” Zecora closed her eyes, and held up her hoof, her own Pyromancy flame springing to life to demonstrate. Out here, in the midst of the burning Everchaos, it seemed like little more than an ember. For the first time, I could not feel its heat. “The candle’s wick has either been lit, or has not. Those two states are all that a candle can exist in, or so we ponies thought.

“But a candle lit with the flames of Chaos burns differently, and everything about the candle is new and strange. The color of the wax and the flame emitted, the wick’s length and the thickness of the smoke, from one second to the next, are all being constantly changed. And if that candle should ever be snuffed, the Chaos magic will wither and die, unable to sustain itself.”

Zecora opened her eyes, and the flame in her hoof flickered out. “Long have I wondered what appearance Discord’s own Pyromancy flame would take, were I allowed to witness the sight. Perhaps this hazardous environment, and the demons it has spawned, are the results of that question coming to light.”

We would have spoken more, but Magnus finally smacked the map, and called Zecora back over. They argued quietly for a few minutes, but once they had agreed on a new route through the flames, we began moving once more. Zecora rejoined us, though she looked more and more nervous as we walked through the smoking underbrush.

“Zecora, what’s wrong?” Dinky asked. I was occupied as they spoke, and only half-listened. I was focused on the undergrowth for any of the herbs Zecora had shown me, just in case some had survived the burning Chaosfire.

“These patches of fire are obstructing us too regularly to be natural, and they are too thin to occur on their own. No matter the type, fire burns outwards in a radius around itself, but these patches almost appear to have been sown…I am sure we are being funneled into the forest’s confines, just as the soldiers funnel the demons into their firing lines.”

“Could it be the demons?” asked Magnus, slowing down to more closely guard Zecora. “That seems too coordinated for the beasts.”

“You are correct, this seems too intelligent for creatures used to rush tactics...” she murmured, watching the burning treetops. “In fact, this reminds remind me more of a Zebrican warfare practice-”

She was cut off by a shout from behind us as one of the Golden Guards yelped, “Movement!” A moment later, whatever she’d seen whipped past my own vision, as I had still been peeking through the underbrush for herbs. For once it was a good thing that I had reacted so slowly, because as I saw the flash, a blur whipped just over my head. Glass shattered behind me, and a stallion screamed; the guard who had been beside Dinky.

We all jumped, readying our swords, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the Guard. Whatever had been contained within the glass bottle had splashed across him, and was hissing and sizzling like boiling oil as he desperately tried to shake it off. His features were starting to melt as the acid burned through his flesh, and tarnished the gold of his armor, and we couldn’t help him, because we had to watch for the next attack.

It came from above, another bottle. This time, it glowed a bright blue, and would’ve smashed across Zecora if Dinky hadn’t caught it with her magic, tossing it away with a flick of her horn. “Potions! We’re being attacked with potions! Dodge them, catch them, just don’t let them shatter on you!” Dinky shouted over the screams of the Guard beside her.

Under her striped fur and her traveling cloak, Zecora went pale.

Snips and Snails were watching the back of the formation, but at the sound of screams, Snips galloped forward to assist. He lit his horn, and a glowing shield manifested above him, but Snails was left by himself. Our assailant seemed to notice this, and the next potion sailed high above the formation, to shatter at the hooves of Snails.

To everyone’s momentary relief, the contents weren’t immediately deadly; instead, they expanded out in a roiling purple cloud of noxious gas. Snails’ eyes bulged as he clutched at his throat, and his sword fell into the mud. Snips doubled back just in time to watch his friend and fellow militia member drop to his knees, gagging on the poison, and everypony else was forgotten as he ran to help. He leapt into the toxic quagmire with his horn lit, and he grabbed Snails with his magic to begin hauling him back out.

Magnus spread his wings and leapt atop a splintered tree trunk, trying to spot our assailant from above. “Form up around Zecora and the wounded, a loose circle! Call out if you see them!”

If Snips heard him, he was too busy to acknowledge the orders. The poison seemed to take a toll on them both; Snails had already lost consciousness, and was foaming purple at the mouth as Snips pulled him to the edge of the cloud. Finally, they both burst free, parting the fog that separated them from the rest of the group, but that was as far as Snips could go. He collapsed just past the threshold of safety, and face-planted into the mud, as both he and Snails convulsed and wheezed raggedly.

They had at least escaped the toxic fumes, but the cloud had thoroughly cut us off from any hope of escape or rescue. Snips had been holding his breath when he galloped in, and he spent seconds at most in that miasma; clearly whatever had been contained within the potion bottle was toxic to the flesh, not just when inhaled. There was no way we could try and gallop back through that the way we came.

As Dinky, the remaining guards, and I all herded Zecora into a defensive formation, she was preoccupied with a search through her bags. Maybe she thought something she had brought would help us fight, or she had something to help the melting Guard beside her, maybe even an antidote for Snips and Snails. I only watched her for a moment before turning my attention back to the undergrowth around us. We waited with bated breath as the Chaosfire crackled nearby, but everypony else was watching the breaks in the fire. I was the only one facing a wall of Chaosfire, out of our defensive herd, and that was why I saw her emerge.

She was young, maybe the same age as Dinky, or a little older, and she leapt out of the Chaosfire like the Frog Demon from before had leapt over the wall. The fire parted around her, and in the smoke-tinged firelight, it seemed almost like she was wreathed in red light as she struck. What was worse, it obscured her features beyond her size and silhouette.

There was no warning or fanfare; she simply leapt directly at me. I only barely raised my cavalry sword in time to parry the blade of her weapon, which was a strange sort of halberd, with a hook and blade all on a long pole maybe twice my height. It deflected her killing blow, but she’d anticipated that, and the pole was twisted to hook my blade. My grip, trained for strength with which to hold my sword, was turned against me as she yanked my sword to the side, and I followed it to the ground.

Behind me, I heard the war-whinny of the other Golden Guard, and there was a loud clack of steel on steel, then a clang. When I stumbled to my hooves and turned around, the other Golden Guard was lying in the mud, ichor leaking down from inside her helmet as she clutched it tight to her head. Our assailant was finally out in the open, and, of all ponies, Zecora was the first to recognize her.

“Apple Bloom?” My mentor’s voice was trembling. She had only gotten angry at me once, but I had never heard simple disbelief in her voice before. Our ambusher was deeply hollowed, with almost no fur left, and only the ragged scraps of a red mane around her head. Multiple bandoleers of misshapen potion flasks were wrapped around her barrel. 

She didn’t respond to Zecora. She never said a word, she only spun, whipping her weight around with the halberd following. As she did, I could see her eyes, and they burned bright, like tiny infernos in the smoke around us.

Zecora wasn’t too stunned to dodge, and she only barely caught the edge of the blade, drawing a dark smear across her own traveling cloak. It fell to shreds, and Zecora shrugged the rest of it off as she danced backwards. Dinky and one of the militia ponies stepped in between them, but that didn’t slow down Apple Bloom.

Instead, she flicked her halberd down, stabbing it into the mud, and using the momentum to flick her own body upwards by the strength of her forelegs. She leapt into the air, and as she was flipping, a bright yellow potion appeared on the end of her halberd, hooked on the blade. She landed a moment later, swinging the halberd around, and throwing the potion like it had been fired out of a cannon.

Only Dinky’s quick thinking saved the three of them. A shield flickered into existence in front of the potion, and it shattered into glass and glowing yellow fluid. Wherever the potion landed, the mud and ash of the ground turned metallic, like sickened gold. I had no desire to find out what would have happened if it hit a pony.

I charged her, unarmed, anything to throw her off balance so one of the others could attack her. I didn’t care if I fell to keep Zecora alive, I would have gladly given my life. But Apple Bloom barely glanced at me before she grabbed the pole of her halberd with both hooves, and slammed the length of pole between her hooves into my throat. I toppled to the ground, splashing into the mud, and she managed to dodge even that, ducking back into the treeline.

“Junebug! In front of you!” barked Magnus from his perch atop the tree stump, and one of the militia ponies—a mare—dropped her sword to spin her fores, bucking into the bush next to her. Her legs never impacted; the halberd emerged like it had for me, horizontal, and Apple Bloom swung upwards from below. Junebug barely had time to let out a yelp as she was toppled, hinds over head, onto her back. Apple Bloom emerged for only a moment to stab downwards at the helpless Junebug’s exposed throat, finishing her off, before she ducked back into the bushes.

“Dammit!” swore Magnus. “Grapeshot! Pull her into the center, and close the gap!”

I was staggering as I joined back up, but our herd was looking poor overall. Only Dinky, Zecora, and Grapeshot, the other militia mare, were still unharmed, as well as myself. I grabbed my fallen cavalry sword as we huddled around the wounded, but Apple Bloom’s next attack wasn’t for us.

Instead, she struck at Magnus, hooking her halberd onto a branch of the broken tree he was perched in and flicking herself up. Both her hinds slammed into his chest, and we all heard the clang as his chest plate dented inwards. He toppled out of the tree, wings and hooves flailing as Apple Bloom followed him down, and they both fell out of sight into the underbrush.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit…” Dinky muttered, horn glowing brightly with a spell yet uncast, watching for a target. Zecora’s own hooves were glowing as she called upon her Pyromancy flame. I felt inadequate as I clutched onto my muddy sword.

“Down!” Zecora barked, and we all hit the mud as Zecora reared up on her hinds. A great conflagration leapt from her fores, like a dragon had sneezed, and we saw a shape within the flames leap back, scorched but unharmed.

Another potion was whipped at us, and Dinky had to release her held spell to deflect it away with another shield. The uncast spell was released as a golden corona upwards into the sky, sparkling as it dissipated, and the potion exploded away from us, electricity crackling across the shield and the surface of the puddle below.

“If we drag out this fight, then she will not even need to use her own hooves to slay us,” Zecora snarled, standing protectively over the wounded Guards. “The demons will be attracted, as the sound of battle will betray us!”

“W-why is s-she at-attacking us?” I rasped out, eyes flicking wildly across the underbrush.

Zecora shook her head. “I know not why she has chosen this path, or why we have so earned her wrath. I only hope she does not seek our souls-”

Dinky’s eyes widened. “Magnus! She could be draining him right now!”

Zecora swore in a foreign language, and added, “Dinky! Holly! Go to where he fell, and pull him back! Grapeshot and I will defend here, and we will see which group she attacks.” Zecora was already casting some form of Pyromancy on herself, her flesh under her ragged fur stiffening and darkening. Beside her, Grapeshot was fumbling with her weapon, a cut-down double-barreled shotgun.

I could see Dinky’s trepidation at leaving them, but we both nodded, and leapt into the bushes towards Magnus’ former perch. As we galloped, a certain terror crept through me. This was just like the Mimic, and Diamond Tiara. I had to move faster this time. Thankfully, it didn’t take us more than a few seconds to find Magnus, and when we did, he was staggering and blinded. A slash across his face had filled his eyes with ichor, and he was swinging wildly.

“Magnus!” Dinky shouted, and he took a swipe at her out of panic before he regained his senses.

“Tell that fool zebra I’m fine, when you go back and help her! I’ll follow your voices!” We nodded, spinning around and galloping back the way we came.

We arrived just as Apple Bloom attacked. She slid up from under a bush, striking like a snake with a halberd, but Zecora saw her coming and simply didn’t dodge. The blade of the halberd slammed into Zecora’s chest with a scraping sound, like steel against stone, and it glanced off to the side. Zecora used the opening to raise her hoof, and a thin spray of flame engulfed Apple Bloom, causing her to leap back once more.

This time, the fires didn’t go out so easily, and Apple Bloom had to cast a Pyromancy of her own. A heat shimmer, like a mirage, surrounded her, and water seemed to coalesce across her fur, dousing the flames and diluting the mud under her hooves. Grapeshot took the opportunity to fire her shotgun wildly, and a cloud of gunsmoke enveloped Apple Bloom. By the time she had extinguished herself, and the cloud had begun to clear, I was upon her, and Dinky was casting behind me.

I had neither the time nor the armored saddle required to screw my cavalry sword into for a proper charge, so I had to settle for rearing up as I reached Apple Bloom. As I did, I reached across my barrel to grab my sword out of its sheath, and used the momentum from drawing it to whip the blade horizontally at Apple Bloom’s neck. She dodged it almost casually, but a fireball exploded behind her and made her jerk to my left. That put her off balance and into Dinky’s firing line, and a golden spear of magic thudded into Apple Bloom’s chest a half-second later, sending our assailant sprawling.

As my hooves came down, I dropped my sword into the mud, ducking my head down and retching as I grabbed it with my mouth out of the puddle. Once I had it in my teeth again, I was able to step closer, and stab at her with the sword. My aim was terrible when I held the sword like this, though, and she dodged it easily, flicking ichor across me as she bled from the magic strike. Behind me, Grapeshot cursed, trying to line up a shot, but I was in the way.

Apple Bloom caught me off guard by rolling fully onto her back and bucking upwards with her hinds, which threw me up and into the air. The world spun as I flailed wildly, flying in the least controlled way that a pony could, and my sword flew away as I reached the apex of my flight. I landed with a “splat” a second later, and another golden spear of magic flashed over my head. It didn’t land, because a moment later the hook of her halberd hooked into my armor—she was trying to use me as a grapple point to strike again!

I grabbed onto the pole of her halberd as she vaulted over me, and the inertia yanked me out of the mud a few leg-lengths before our opposing forces reconciled. When I came back down, I came down hard on the blade, and pain lanced up my side as I felt the hook pierce my leather armor, then snap off inside. It threw her off balance, however, and she snarled at me in anger before another golden spear lanced into her back.

She toppled over me, and apparently decided she’d had enough. Leaving her broken halberd buried in the muck and my side, she bounded off into the underbrush for the final time. As she galloped off, she tossed one final potion, covering her escape with another noxious cloud of purple. That, I realized with a curse, blocked us from chasing after her or seeing where she was going. Clever.

Dinky looked almost ready to chase her through the poison cloud, but a shout from Zecora stayed her hoof, and she galloped to my side instead. As Zecora tended to the wounded where she stood, Dinky instead busied herself by pulling out the broken halberd and examining it. “Clever...“ she muttered, swinging it around to test the weight. “It’s some sort of billhook, maybe for cutting trees, and sharpened. I bet if Applejack cared, she’d probably find this missing from one of her tool sheds.”

I groaned, trying to stand, but I only succeeded in rolling onto my back and releasing a fresh wave of ichor across Dinky’s hooves. That got her attention, and when I explained that something had broken off in my gut, she used her magic to feel around at the edges of my wound until she felt the hard edge. She pulled out a broken rib first, but the second try saw the tip of the hook removed, and Zecora passed her a cold-burning poultice to apply.

As we were patching each other up, Magnus finally staggered out of the brush, and blindly demanded that a nearby tree stump give him a report. We quickly determined that Junebug was regenerating, but Apple Bloom stabbing her through the throat had truly put her out of commission for a while. We’d have to carry her for the rest of the way, and maybe all the way back, too. Magnus would likely recover on the way to our destination; Apple Bloom hadn’t actually damaged his eyes, just flooded them with ichor that he had to keep washing out of his sockets.

Dinky and I checked on Snips and Snails together, and Dinky managed to shake Snips awake. His eyes were wild, and he couldn’t stop coughing up gobbets of foaming purple bile, but he assured us that he could walk. In fact, he surprised us; with his squat, bulky build, which was unusual for a unicorn, he actually managed to haul Snails onto his own back. He stumbled and staggered the entire way, but his concern was just for his friend, as Snails was still unconscious.

Out of everypony, the Golden Guard that had gotten hit with the corrosive potion was the worst off by far. Magnus informed us as we drew close that his name was Autumn Leaf, and while the damage was almost all external, he had actually partially melted into the mud under him. The potion had smashed on his head, and while he had managed to rip off his helmet with dissolving hooves, his face had gotten almost all of the flesh stripped off down to the bone. He could still see, as like Magnus, the embers that made up his eyes hadn’t been damaged, or maybe couldn’t be damaged. But he couldn’t speak, could hardly move, and we couldn’t separate his flesh from the muck around him as his ruined body tried to pull itself back together.

He seemed to be in a lot of pain from the damage that the acid had done, and Zecora eventually sighed and used her machete to finish him off. With a few grisly chops, she removed his head from his body, and the lights in his eyes went out. She continued to disassemble him, removing his ruined forelegs from his torso and his hindlegs for good measure. Eventually, we were left with a bag of limbs and body parts, which Zecora assured me, would regenerate and reconnect through the power of the curse as we continued onwards. Autumn Leaf would, eventually, be whole again, but he would be spending quite a lot of time regenerating in order to get there.

Magnus chose to carry the bag on his back and bear the weight himself, while Zecora again assured us that, eventually, Autumn would regenerate fully. But the thought of it still made me shudder, and it reminded me of my initial fall into Ponyville. How broken had my body truly been, inside that rusted and ruined armor? If Applejack had kicked my body into nothing but an ichorous splatter, would I have eventually pulled myself back into the shape of a pony from the gutter?

As my mind wandered, the swamp changed around us. There were no more steadily burning fires, but the occasional drifting piece of burning firewood sometimes connected with a pocket of bubbling natural gas. The resulting loud gouts of flame in the otherwise-silent swamp never ceased to startle us, and we were jumpy the entire time we were sloshing through the knee-deep muck and water.

As the Chaosfire that kept the forest alive and yet burning became less and less frequent, I noticed just how quiet the swamps were. Instinctively, I knew swamps should never be quiet; there should always be the croaking of frogs, the buzzing of insects. But all I could hear was our own sloshing hoofsteps as we waded through the shallows. The trees here had all died long ago, just like those I had seen on my first journey to Ponyville, and the only change they’d suffered since their death was the warping that came with water damage.

How, of all places in Equestria, was an entire swamp simply dead? Was there anywhere in the world that still had living plants? Was there anywhere else in the world where things truly lived at all, besides the Everchaos? How far had the Hollow Curse truly spread? Were us ponies all that were left, because we were stubbornly unable to die?

As if to mock me, we passed by the skeleton of a hydra, half-sunken in the swamp. Magnus started telling a story about how they’d had to hunt it down after a while to keep Froggy Bottom safe, but all I could focus on was the rotten black algae that sat atop the swamp water. Even the algae was dead. Even the rot that had overtaken it was dead. Decay itself had ceased to be, simply because Equines and Demons were the last things alive, all the way down to insects, mold, and rot.

The only parts of the plants and scum that were still alive were tainted and sustained by Chaosfire. At least that was interesting to look at: The algae burned on the surface of the water like oil, as the destructive magic was washed downstream by the firestopper shells that flooded the Everchaos. Idly, I wondered how far downstream the magic was being washed. It had to stop eventually, or did it just get diluted to nothing? Or was all of this magic leaking out into the ocean, tainting the life below the waves as well?

I got introspective when I was wounded, I noticed. Maybe it was because I couldn’t move around as much when I was hurt, so my body couldn’t do the walking and fighting for me. Or maybe the pain made me more centered, and I just didn’t focus as well now that the general aches and itches and soreness of living had begun to fade into white noise. If this kept up, I was going to be introspective very, very often.

After a long period of silence, Dinky sped up to trot alongside us, her attention on Zecora. "So…who was she?"

Zecora was normally at least a little cryptic, due to her unusual syntax. But in this matter, she was as direct as she could be through rhyme. "A former apprentice of mine, though her family was already familiar with Pyromancy. Instead, she sought me out to learn my personal skill, the practice of potion-making and alchemy.

“With a keen eye for herbs, and a deft hoof for the pestle and mortar, she took to my teaching not unlike a fish takes to water. I thought for sure she’d find her talent through my lessons, but… she drifted away to focus on ‘crusading,’ and that was the last of our sessions. I rarely saw her afterwards, but I was always proud of dear Apple Bloom; I never could have guessed that eventually she would seek our doom.”

"I heard the Crusaders left Ponyville a while back, after Cloudsdale fell," interjected Dinky. "Went looking for Rarity, I think. And I had heard about the rumors of a rogue alchemist attacking travelers in the outskirts of the Everchaos, avoiding the firebreaks, but I never thought…"

Dinky trailed off as Zecora hung her head. The hollowed Zebra sighed, looking back towards the way we came. "As much as I am sorry to see she has become such a fright…I am at least relieved the other two are not by her side.”

"Yeah," Dinky agreed, "I thought those three would stick together through thick and thin. I wouldn't have been surprised to find that had happened literally, out here, with all the wild magic saturating everything."

"I can only hope they are well, for I wish none of them ill will." Zecora sighed again. "And…I can only hope Apple Bloom has good reason for wanting to kill."

"She seemed cognizant…" muttered Dinky. "Restricting our movements, ambush tactics, and she fought like a mare possessed. The glass of her vials looked a little sloppily-blown, but that could be for a number of reasons…I wonder why she didn't speak?"

From ahead, Magnus cut into the conversation. "More importantly, did anypony notice any weaknesses in her tactics, or errors in her attacks? We're going to need to pass through that section of the woods again on the way back, and it's almost guaranteed that we're going to encounter her a second time."

We were all silent for some time, thinking back to the fight. Eventually, I ventured a basic observation. "Sh-she might not be able to th-throw p-potions any m-more. We br-broke her halberd…thingy."

"Billhook," Dinky corrected quietly. "Maybe. We didn't break it into pieces too small to repair, but we definitely damaged the metal head. Good work on that, Holly."

A small mote of pride welled up from within, and I found myself smiling, even with all that had happened.

"She could steal another from Fort Apple." There was a snort of laughter from behind us as the remaining Golden Guard apparently heard the name for the first time. Magnus threw a glance back, but shrugged, and continued. "But doing so would take time, and be dangerous. It depends on how much she's still considering risk vs. reward."

“Her armory of potions, of course, must be restocked. That will delay her somewhat, as the whole reason we are out here now is that many ingredients have been lost,” added Zecora. “She still seems to be as creative as ever, as I did not recognize several effects. I only wish that she was not trying to use them in service to our deaths.”

"Do you know why she targeted you, specifically? When we went to save Magnus, she went straight for you instead." Dinky chewed her lip as she pondered.

"And the troops she did attack directly, it was mostly to whittle us down, or incite panic," mused Magnus. "Make no mistake; she wanted a chance to strike you directly, Zecora."

We sloshed through the swamp in silence, as Zecora pondered. I noted it had been a while since we had passed any burning fires, though I could still see the oily magic polluting the water around us.

Eventually, she shook her head. “We parted last on good terms, as teacher and student. The Apple family was always friendly, and often gifts were sent. Though my interactions with Applejack are now strained...nothing about this was mentioned, perhaps because the thought caused too much pain.”

Magnus nodded. "Alright, so we know she's going to use potions again at the very least. We'll just all have to run some combat evasion drills once we reach Meadowbrook's home."

“Why not take a different route back to Ponyville?” asked Dinky.

Magnus shook his head. “It’s a good idea on paper, but all of Equestria is much more dangerous than it used to be. Some paths are still patrolled by the army, but there’s nothing out here. I’m seriously considering ordering Meadowbrook to close shop and return with us, because if a wandering demon wiped her little settlement off the map, we wouldn’t find out about it until we came to check in on her.”

“Like...we are now?” the remaining Golden Guard asked, from behind us in the formation.

Magnus winced, but nodded. “Exactly. Let’s hope she’s still alright, or else this whole excursion... “ He trailed off, before looking back at Dinky. “As for traveling through the trenches…it’s dangerous, but it’s a known danger, and if anything does go wrong, we have everypony stationed there for backup. Better the demons you know, after all.”

After that, conversation more or less petered out. I did note that, between the willow trees and the haze of the swamp, the sunlight did seem to be getting brighter. We had moved far enough to the east that the sun must have been just a little bit higher in the sky here. For some reason, the thought made me happy.

The sunlight seemed to be good for our health, too. I felt less sore the further we walked, and Snails startled us all when he jerked awake on Snips’ back. His eyes were clouded and his mind confused, but we got him caught up on the situation as we walked, and he managed to walk on his own after a little while. Like Snips, he spent a lot of the walk coughing and wheezing as he tried to clear his lungs. I hoped I never encountered whatever that poison was for myself—with how much trouble I had with regular breathing, something that did active damage to my insides might cripple me permanently.

Around us, the land flattened out, and the trees began to spread further and further apart. We had been moving downhill on the slightest incline, as the river flowed from the midlands of Equestria out to the ocean. When the water started to be more common than land, and the water around us began to clear, we guessed we had reached sea level. 

The Hayseed Swamps were surprisingly humid, with the air becoming warmer the further east we traveled. While Equestria seemed wreathed in fog and smoke for the most part, these days, this humid mist seemed more natural. If it weren't for all of the flora having long ago died and partially rotted, and the fact that the land was frozen in late afternoon, I could almost convince myself that the curse had not yet spread here.

Snails, for his part, seemed saddened by the sight of the swamps. When he hung his head, Dinky noticed, and the both of us broke formation to walk alongside him and Snips for a while. Dinky bumped his knee with her shoulder to get his attention. “Hey, what’s up? How do you feel?”

Snails blinked at her, but after a moment, realized he’d been asked a question. “Oh, uh…I’m okay, I guess. I still don’t feel very good, and breathing’s kinda hard.”

Dinky and I looked at each other, and Snips bumped Snail’s other shoulder with his own. “They wanna know why you look so sad, dummy. They’re not used to seeing you mope about this, like I am. Talk to ‘em.”

Snails looked reluctant, but between Dinky’s concern and Snip’s gentle shoves back towards us, he opened up a little. “It’s the… I was gonna be a zoologist. They’re ponies that study animals, and bugs, and…anyway…” Snips shoved him again, to keep him talking. “Ow, hey...um. Anyways. I guess I had to kinda give that up a long while back, ‘cuz the demons, they either were the animals, which made ‘em too dangerous to study, or they were huntin’ down whatever was left. So there’s...no more need for zoologists, I guess…”

Snips looked like he was gonna shove him again, so Snails stepped away and waved a hoof lazily at the dead swamp around us. “But I knew that for a while, it’s just... you know, seeing all of it... like this. I’d never seen it up close, for myself, before now. Was always helping miss Applejack protect Ponyville.” He lowered his head again. “I was...I was really proud of how good I could catch things without hurting them. Always gentle, no matter how fast they moved, because you can’t study a squashed bug. And now…I can’t study them at all. An’ that sucks.”

Dinky was silent as she looked around us. Had she ever actually realized that, I wondered? I woke up and everything seemed wrong as soon as I looked at the world around me, but if she’d been around and aware the entire time as the world went to pot… Had it been just too slow for her to really see the change? Was she only just now then seeing how dead the world around us was?

Eventually, I had to respond for both of us. “Y-yeah… Th-this all s-sucks. I h-hope Zecora and M-Meadowbrook can h-help fix th-things.”

There wasn’t much else any of us could say, after that. Any platitudes would ring hollow, and we were all already hoping for the best. But what would the best even look like, at this point?

Eventually, our path crossed a poorly-maintained hoof path, which we followed until it merged with a larger highway. Our path was only blocked by the odd abandoned cart or wagon, which we usually stopped to investigate for supplies, or to see if they would still roll. The ability to pull our wounded behind us on a cart would have been a boon, but it was not one granted to us; the carts were all in various states of disrepair. Perhaps if we broke apart every one we found, we could have constructed a single working cart, but we decided it wouldn't be worth the effort.

We slowed down as we came near to our destination, with old road signs on the sides of the highway pointing the way and telling us how much further we had to trot. Mage Meadowbrook's home had actually been a bit of a tourist destination after her return, back when tourism was still an existing industry. Her presence brought historians, herbalists, alchemists and pyromancers alike to the small town of Baton Verte, breathing new life into what had been an abandoned ghost town. Even now, the rusted signs advertising it hung limply from their posts.

As we approached, Magnus smiled just a little bit. He told a few stories of their struggle to reclaim the land here, and make it livable once more. All of the Pillars and a few of the Elements had helped, and he mentioned a name I hadn’t heard before: Fluttershy; whoever she was, apparently she and Meadowbrook had been close. His voice trembled when he spoke of Applejack’s contributions, though, and he trailed off not long after.

The town of Baton Verte wasn't quite abandoned now, but it was hardly thriving. While we were still several miles from the coast proper, the terrain the town was built upon was more water than land, and the buildings themselves had been built on great stilts in between the trees and hills, with rickety hoof-bridges crossing from building to building. The stilts, Zecora explained, were so that when the swamps flooded, the buildings would not be washed away.

There were still villagers around. Living ponies, though all had deeply hollowed. They paused as they walked between buildings to stare at us, or scampered out of our way. They clearly feared our uniforms and armor. A few mindlessly stood on the banks below the bridges, or sat on bobbing rafts. They were equipped with fishing spears, or rods, but the entire time we took walking up the ramp and through the town, I never saw a single one of them actually catch anything. Were the fish all dead, as well? Even those twisted by Chaos magic?

Our destination was built on slightly higher ground, towards the edge of town, so we mostly avoided talking to the locals as we passed. I wondered what they did out here, at least those who weren’t already fishing. Perhaps they were scavengers, or hunters? I hoped they didn't just wander the bridges and swamps until they went hollow, but then, we didn't exactly have much to do within the walls of Fort Ponyville, either.

Mage Meadowbrook's home was more tree than building, and it was a tree that had been in the process of outgrowing the furnishings woven through its trunk when the curse killed it. A thin trail of smoke curled out of a stovepipe chimney, and there was a faint glow shining through the windows, so we felt confident that Meadowbrook was here. She had a large circular clearing just before her front door, which I suspected was used for unloading cargo and experiments too large for the inside of the building, and most of us stopped there to catch our breath.

Zecora and Magnus were in no mood to rest, however, and they walked up to the door while Dinky and I waited, seated on the ground a few steps behind them. Magnus knocked with his hoof, and there were a few rattles and thumps from inside as the occupant moved something away from the door.

When the door opened a moment later, a hollowing earth pony mare opened the door. She had a lovingly-decorated bird mask pulled up onto her forehead, and a cloth rag held her mane in place in the form of a messy sort of beehive shape. Even from here, I could smell the bouquet of oils and powders that stained her fur from an eternity of alchemy. What was more, the sheer heat of her fire washed over me from even where I was sitting, and if I hadn't known already that she was one of the greatest Pyromancers to have ever lived, then I would have guessed as such from her flame’s radiance alone.

Yet…her fire still seemed smaller than Pinkie Pie's had been. Though Meadowbrook's fire was hot, burning like a compressed inferno, Pinkie Pie's had been like I had been given a hug by the sun itself. Had there been something the unhollowed mare hadn't told me? Was there a power greater than pyromancy that could be contained within a pony? Or was Pinkie Pie simply the most powerful Pyromancer I had ever met, and yet, I was somehow the only pony to have noticed?

I was yanked back to the here and now as Meadowbrook's eyes widened, and she chirped in a sweet, friendly accent, "Zecora! Magnus! Celessia's sake, haven't seen either of ya for…shoot, can't even recall how long! How you been, what brings ya here? Good news, I hope!"

Magnus rubbed the back of his head. "Some good progress, since last we spoke. The firebreaks were moved inward another mile, but we're pretty much stuck at a stalemate there. Still, better than having demons running wild."

Meadowbrook nodded, and turned to Zecora. "And my star pupil! Très wonderful t’ see ya here, you're one of the few ponies I know who can really appreciate some of my most recent work. What's new with you?"

"I…have taken on a new apprentice of my own, with great potential. Though she is perhaps a slow learner, she has nonetheless proven herself to be a great help." She turned and gave me a smile as she said it, and I jokingly stuck my darkened tongue out at her, before following it with a smile of my own.

"Awwww, I like ‘er already! You know, it is funny you actually came by, I was jus’ considerin’ the logistics of goin’ out to Ponyville to visit you myself!"

Magnus chuckled. "Damn. Wish the telegraph wires were still up, so you could have saved us the trip. You missed us?"

"I did! Although, I have to admit, it be a bit of a business call, too." She turned back to look inside her house, but kept talking as she watched something out of my own sight.

"Oh?" Zecora asked, raising an eyebrow. "Some sort of breakthrough in our shared goal? Perhaps some way to again help Ponykind as a whole?"

Meadowbrook tittered, then looked a little embarrassed. "Not quite, though I have learned a lot, and I do think I am on the right trail. Actually...it would be more of a supply run; I, eh, heh…might've been a little overzealous in some of my research, and my stocks of even the most basic herbs and reagents are gone..."

All murmurs of conversation died in an instant. Before, the wind had been rustling the dead grass, and something had been bubbling inside the building. But now, it was as if an incredible silence had fallen over the clearing.

I swore I could see Zecora hollowing right before my eyes, as the embers of her eyes had shrunk to pinpricks. This entire journey had been for naught.
> 10 - Hollow Breath
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The entirety of your supplies have been depleted? I was so sure that your own stores would still be replete...” Zecora was slumped onto a well-worn wooden table, heavily stained with the evidence of a long history of alchemy. A mortar and pestle, similarly worn, had been pushed aside so she could rest her head comfortingly. She was not completely hollowed out, but she did not look good, and her rhymes were the most inconsistent that they had ever been, in the entire time that I had known her.

“Maybe not all gone, but I’ve dipped far deeper into my emergency reserves than I ever thought I’d be comfortable wit’.” Mage Meadowbrook was rummaging through a storeroom in the back of her cottage, taking a detailed inventory just to make sure. Her cottage, as a whole, seemed much better organized than Zecora’s had been. The books on her bookshelves were properly sorted, her bottles divided between empty and full and then sorted by volume, and all of her ingredients were stored in a pantry in the back to keep them safe and dry. I couldn’t tell if Mage Meadowbrook was simply more orderly than Zecora, or whether it had to do with how much less Hollowed she seemed to be, by comparison.

There was another stool available, and I could’ve joined Zecora at the table as her apprentice, but I wanted to keep looking around. In addition to being orderly, Mage Meadowbrook’s home seemed so much more lively than Zecora’s was; there were still accommodations for patients off to the side of the front door, and empty shelves meant to store potions for sale. This felt so much more like an actual home, as opposed to Zecora’s improvised lab in the abandoned distillery. This was cozy, but functional, and even though we no longer required rest nor food, I felt comfortable here.

“Actually, it be really annoyin’,” continued Meadowbrook, as she walked back out of her pantry, and took the stool instead to sit across from Zecora. “I was makin’ great progress! You wouldn't believe how much meditation and research on souls I’ve been doin’, and the incredible Pyromancies I’ve performed. Look at this!”

She leaned back and held up one of her forelegs, and used a forehoof to spread her fur, revealing the flesh of her hind. As I leaned in, and Zecora slowly turned her eyes to inspect it, Meadowbrook explained. “A while back, I actually amputated this leg, wit’ a little help from Cattail. I tried everything I could think of before re-attaching it! I dissected it and examined the dead blood vessels, I extracted the bone marrow, and then I put it back together using my Pyromancy. We actually have some new and’ unusual magical properties, due to our changed natures!”

I have to admit, at this point Meadowbrook's voice was turning into white noise in my head. She was very sweet, and certainly knowledgeable, but between the detailed scientific terminology, the eager swiftness with which she spoke, and the accent that was as thick as the swamp mud outside, it was all blurring together. I was already in over my head, now I was starting to drown. I had to divert my focus elsewhere, anywhere, just to keep focused.

Zecora was surely used to it, though, and she had sat upright again to stare, agape, at Mage Meadowbrook. “Your first thoughts on where to gain more material, and you choose your own flesh…I do not like that such is a disturbing prospect, but we know it can be replenished…”

Meadowbrook waved her hoof dismissively. “I had to research our changed bodies somehow! And I couldn’t ask anypony else to endure being picked apart for that research. For all I know, the damage I was doin’ could have been to the soul itself, perhaps by proxy.”

“I can only hope you have not done so, for I would miss you dearly if you went Hollow...” Zecora whimpered.

“Thankfully no, and this was back when I could still make painkillers strong enough’ that losing a limb weren’ much more than an inconvenience. Gettin’ around’ on three hooves was a bit difficult, but I managed for the duration. And look!” Meadowbrook spread the fur again. “Not even a scar! Cattail continues to impress me wit’ his mastery of Pyromancy; it only took him an hour of channeling to re-attach my leg!”

That caught my attention. Nopony else had mentioned the passage of time with such certainty. I stumbled, and my hooves caught on the corner of a rug. My stumbling got her attention, and I asked dumbly, “You...h-how do y-you know how l-long…”

I trailed off as I tried to suck in another breath, but Meadowbrook nodded, and motioned towards a wind-up clock on the shelf. “I may not know when days begin or end, or have any idea where we are currently in the cycle, but time still continues onward when measured. If I wind a clock and twenty-four hours pass, then that's just as good as knowing a day has gone by. When I remember to wind the clock, speakin’ of...” She grumbled, and stood up from the table to do exactly that.

Zecora shook her head. “I apologize for my apprentice, for clock-watching is now a foreign concept in Ponyville. We lost our resident timekeeper very early on, and we have not recovered still.”

“It happens,” Meadowbrook said dismissively. “Even here in Baton Verte. I’m pretty much the only pony who still actually winds their clock. Speaking of Ponyville, what about the Everfree? What resources can be found there?”

Zecora took a deep breath, and released it. “What herbs may grow are warped and twisted, and I cannot make a brew with them before I find their effects have shifted. Were I able to stop time, or counteract the Chaos magic in some way...I could perhaps use them productively, but without those skills, I cannot say. The few brews I attempted to mix have been random or explosive, and I decided to stop entirely when one turned out to be dangerously corrosive.”

She tapped her forehoof on the table. “The corpses of the demons themselves might have some use, but there is simply no consistency in what the Everchaos can produce. It seems like every demon I see is unique, with no repeats that I can count, and that makes it very hard to acquire any ingredient in an extreme amount.”

“What about resources that are neither plant nor animal? Surely there must be mines and quarries still that have powders and minerals we can use as a replacement.” Meadowbrook returned to her seat, and I began to tune out the conversation once more. Instead, my curiosity led me to investigate a set of tools hung near the door.

“That is viable, but for the question of supply,” Zecora admitted. “Equestria is now fraught with dangers far and wide. While there is a recurring caravan that resupplies the town, I cannot ask them to add such a load to their own. What would be best would be some sort of resource that replenished naturally through a spell; much like how an aquifer naturally replenishes a well-”

I reached out to touch a tool that looked like a hoe, or perhaps a pick, with the head of an axe on the opposite side of the head. But it was hung carelessly, and my gentle touch knocked it free from its peg. It was the first of several tools to clatter loudly to the floor, and we all jumped as the rusted iron thumped against the ancient floorboards.

“Apprentice!” barked Zecora, chiding me. Then she sighed, turning her head back down to the table. “I apologize again for my student; she still has a penchant for touching things she wishes to inspect. We’ll need to work on training that out of her, it’s a bad habit that I hope to correct.”

Meadowbrook nodded. “It’s alright. Still, perhaps it would be better if she be amusin’ herself outside? After all, our research is still a little bit over her head, at least for now.”

I nodded, and hesitated before the fallen tools. Should I pick them up, or…? I decided against it after an awkward few moments, and simply stumbled to the door. Meadowbrook began talking about the bone marrow of her severed leg again as I exited her cottage, and I already seemed forgotten as the door shut behind me.

The sharpness of Zecora’s voice had been a shock. She had never raised her voice so quickly before, even with how I blundered around the distillery. But then, she had never looked so unwound before. Coming here and being denied our goal must have hurt her more deeply than I realized. How close was Zecora to completely Hollowing out?

Our little caravan had chosen to simply unload our bags right outside of Meadowbrook’s front door, monopolizing the clearing for our own use. If she had any complaints, she didn’t voice them, and she simply seemed happy to see us. Especially Magnus and Zecora; the three of them had clearly been friends for a long time, and in some ways, I was glad to be out of their way. Being privy to their conversation felt almost like intruding on their privacy, even if I was invited to join the conversation. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of being an outsider.

For now, Magnus seemed busy with organizing the supplies and taking stock of what we had, or rather, what had survived the journey. Some of it had been carried by the two militia ponies we lost in the trenches, and Autumn Leaf and Junebug’s loads had been redistributed when they had been “killed.” Knowing what we had, and where it was, seemed incredibly important, and I quietly offered to help, in any way that I could.

Magnus waved me off, however. “Appreciate the offer, but I need something to do while the others check the perimeter. I saw Dinky head up the hill behind Meadowbrook’s, why don’t you go join her until I need you two?”

I nodded, and followed where he pointed. Meadowbrook’s home was backed up against a steep hill, but a trail around the side of her house cut a more gradual path upwards. I stumbled up the stones, smoothed by time, that had been set into the soft peat.

Meadowbrook’s home was on much more solid land than the rest of the town, mostly due to how the hill it was built upon was already nearly thirty leg-lengths above the waterline. The hill behind ascended another thirty, maybe forty, before leveling off. As I ascended the stone path, the trees of the bayou became thick, and I was level with the canopy for a few body-lengths. Then I clambered up a few more steps, and met the sunlight at the top of the hill with wide eyes.

Up here, the setting sun to the east was unimpeded by the thick leaves and branches of the swamp, and sunlight glittered and gleamed across the browning canopy. My coat warmed as the light of the sun saturated it like honey, and I had to pause at the top of the stairs, and simply allow myself to bask in it. Some part of that sunlight just felt right, like it was meant for me. As though Celestia herself had blanketed me under her wing, comforting me after all that I’d seen and done to get here. This was the closest I had ever physically gotten to that distant sunset, and a part of me hungered to fly, to take off and glide ever towards the horizon.

I lost myself for a long while, and drank deep of the sunlight, my eyes closed. My wings twitched, but the muscles had long since atrophied, and the tendons gone limp. It was almost like Hollowing, from my brief brushes against that inevitable madness, but this was different. Nothing was being lost or drained here, but instead, it felt as though my soul were being filled with new light, and new life. I opened my soul, and felt my fire, deep within my belly. It burned ever brighter, absorbing the sunlight as fuel that was never expended.

Eventually, my eyes gently flickered open, and I allowed my gaze to fall from the distant red-orange horizon. Instead, I took in the hill around me. It was not dissimilar to a mesa, with steep hillsides on all sides, topped by grass. No trees grew up here, nor anything more substantial than bushes. I suspected the soil went down a leg-length at most, not nearly deep enough for the bayou saplings to take root, when they were still growing and living. The flat top of the hill was maybe thirty body-lengths long, and at the other end, facing the horizon, I saw Dinky’s pale purple fur.

As I approached her, I took note of how relaxed she seemed. She was lying on her side in the dead grass, but with her head bowed. I almost thought she was asleep, but her ears twitched as I approached, and she turned to face me a few seconds later. A smile cracked her muzzle as she recognized me. “Holly. Gave me a start, I thought one of the Hollows in town was trying to creep up on me.”

“S-sorry…” I groaned, but she flicked her head.

“It’s fine, heh! I’m just glad it’s you. Come on, you can sit up here with me. Plenty of hilltop, and I’m happy to share.”

I staggered closer, and lay down next to Dinky. Was Dinky my friend? We’d fought together a few times now, both in Ponyville and on the way here. It was kind of a tossup whether I knew her or Zecora better. The two of them were the only ponies that I really had interacted with on more than a couple occasions.

My eyes lingered on how her ears twitched, listening to the winds, and she drew in long breaths. Old instincts, from when Ponies had been herd animals in the wilds, watching for predators. Even now, with our bodies wracked with curses and death little more than an inconvenience, we watched the skies and listened to the world around us for danger. No wonder she’d heard me coming.

“Are…” I trailed off, but Dinky turned to look at me, and I decided to voice my question. “Are we f-friends?”

Dinky smiled. “I don’t see why not. We know each other, and we’re out here together anyways. I don’t have many friends, especially not around my physical age; I’ve been pretty focused on my studies since Twilight left, and all my foalhood friends, well…” She sighed. “You’ve met Snips and Snails, and Diamond, and...Apple Bloom.” She paused and grimaced before going on. “Wish you could’ve met Silver…or maybe I just wish Silver was still here.”

She shook her head. “Besides, you’re quiet, but you’re really easy to get along with. Kind of just happy to be here, and learning everything you can, just like me. Maybe a little clumsy, but so are most Hollows, and that just reminds me of…” DInky trailed off, suddenly looking morose.

I’d reminded her of somepony, and I shrunk downwards a little bit as I regretted bringing it up. She looked like she was trying to keep from crying, and I felt awful. Gently, I reached out a hoof. Dinky jerked away as I touched her shoulder, and she blinked as she looked at me.

“Uh. Sorry, just...sorry. Caught me…caught me off guard. You don’t breathe, so if you’re not walking it’s hard to tell…sorry. Rude of me.”

“S-sorry t-too. Didn’t m-mean…mean to b-bring up b-bad mem…memories-”

“Not bad,” Dinky shook her head. “Too good. She’s g-gone now, so…doesn’t matter.” Dinky shifted her legs and how she laid on the ground, gathering them under herself and pushing her way a little closer to me. “Instead, let’s talk about…I dunno. Is it okay if I ask…”

She looked hesitant, as she chewed her lip. “Is it okay if I ask…why you don’t breathe? I don’t think it’s a conscious thing, but it’s…it’s kinda freaky up close, and it clearly gives you a lot of trouble when you’re trying to talk.”

I shrugged, lowering my head to the ground. The dead grass crunched as I laid flat against it. “Don’t…r-remember. Think I f-forgot...how to b-breathe. Can k-kind of…t-take d-deep breaths, if I f-focus. But only one…one at a t-time.”

Dinky tilted her head, and her eyes showed only pity. “That’s…that sucks, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sorry I asked. I wonder if that has any side effects…you always seem super tired, and maybe that’s why you have coordination issues…”

I shrugged again. Maybe she was right, but it didn’t seem like not being able to breathe would kill me; only inconvenience me, or slow me down. It sucked, she was right, but what could I do about it?

Which was why her next question caught me off guard. “Do you…do you want me to try and teach you how to breathe? Like a living pony? I don’t know if it’ll help, or if it’s kind of insulting, but…I can’t really teach you any kind of sorcery, and it really clearly bugs you, so…”

My head rose from the ground, and I slowly nodded. “If…if y-you think you c-can teach…then I w-want to l-learn.”

Dinky’s face lit up, and she smiled. “Great! Okay, um. Uh. Here, let’s sit up, it’ll be harder to learn if we’re lying down.”

We shifted around a little bit more, until we sat side-by-side on our rumps. We were still facing the sunset, but we were more focused on each other. I found myself fascinated by how much of Dinky was moving and living; her eyes, actual eyes, and not the embers of the Eyeless Hollows, gently flicked across me. Her ears were still twitching atop her head, listening for the cries of predators or distant whinnies of distress. Her nostrils flared gently every time she exhaled, and her chest rose and fell as she filled her lungs, and emptied them once more. It all seemed dauntingly complicated, and that thought confused me. How dead was I, really? To have to relearn such subconscious basics?

“Okay,” Dinky said, placing her hoof gently against my breast. “Breathe. Just…inhale, as deeply as you can. Completely fill your lungs, and hold it there for a few seconds, then exhale, push as much out as you can in one go. Just so I can see, get a baseline.”

I nodded, and parted my lips. Old muscles inside my throat opened up, and I felt my dead lungs flex inside my chest. They seemed brittle, somehow, and they ached and cramped as I ordered them to move and live once more. Air was sucked into my mouth, through my rotted nostrils, and past my desiccated tongue.

I tasted the air all around us. While I had smelled the bayou before, it was distant, like an echo of a swamp as opposed to actually smelling it. Even now, as I really, truly tasted the scent, it was strange, almost artificial. I smelled water, and decay, and the bitter scent of broken plant stems. The pale lifeblood of the bayou trees. There was the scent of wood, mouldering or burnt, and a fleeting sweetness, like a whiff of honey. Maybe there was an abandoned beehive somewhere in the trees nearby? Clay and peat had scents all their own, earthy and filling, in a weird way; they smelled solid, like how they were the dirt under our hooves, and I knew the mud around here was no stranger to rain or flood. Even further, in the distance, I could taste faint hints of salt from an inland breeze that blew in from east to west. It brought the ocean air in with it, and the scent of the sea.

Then the muscles of my lungs seized up. It was as though they had caught on something, and my breath hitched in my throat. My slow inhale became a strangled gag, then a hacking cough. Warm, wet mass filled my chest, and as I doubled over coughing, I felt it shift, rattling around inside me.

As I pitched forward, Dinky pitched with me, holding my shoulder and smacking my back, under my wings, with her hoof. I tried to pull in more air, to knock loose whatever debris was within my airway, but I couldn't. My lungs were frozen, unable to bring air in or out, and I gasped like a fish drowning on air. If my eyes could have, they would have been bulging as I suffocated.

Dinky’s horn lit, and a great force replaced her hoof in the service of slapping me on the back. A wall of force slammed into the space under my shoulder blades, and I gagged again. But that seemed to have loosened the atrophied muscles of my lungs, and my breath hitched as I inhaled once again.

Whatever was clogging my lungs was still inside, and it shifted again as I tried to exhale. I coughed, and it leapt upwards. Dinky was saying something, but it was lost as I focused on that sensation, and tried to locate it precisely. All I could do was keep coughing, still doubled over as I was. Liquid dribbled over my skinless lips, and flecks of ichor speckled the dead grass.

Dinky’s hown glowed again, and the mass within my chest shifted once more. One particularly hard cough forced it upwards, but then it seemed to break apart. Most of the mass retreated back into my chest, but some thick portion kept moving upwards. My throat turned sore and cracked, as though I was dehydrated, and the mass scraped as it was forced up my throat. Then I was really choking, with the mass caught in my neck, and I was completely unable to suck air past it to use in the service of pushing it any further up.

Dinky’s hoof smacked against my back one last time, and the back of my throat filled with blood and pain as something leapt upwards. I nearly swallowed it by accident, but I retched, and fluid flowed unbidden over my lips. The mass broke up as it splashed over my tongue, and a black gobbet of crusted nastiness splattered past my lips into the dead grass. I keeled forward completely, and Dinky let me collapse onto my face, but she held me tightly all the way down.

I tasted mud, and blood. Silt, and ichor. The remnants left over in my lungs from when I had lain in a muddy stream, mixed with the blood that had filled my lungs from all of my other chest injuries since. My body was a mess, a horrific ruined mass of strained muscles and debris and blood, and I felt disgusted at how much damage such a small lump of ejecta had done on the way up. My throat still ached, and felt as though it was raw and bleeding. Judging from the cold wetness that was still dribbling down my lips and seeping from my withered snout, my throat and sinuses had been wracked with the effort.

Gently, Dinky patted my back. “We should get all of that out. We’ll take it slow, but you won’t be able to breathe so long as all of that crud is still in there. Let me know when you’re ready to try again.”

Did I have the strength to try again? To really, truly, knock all of that free? On my own, no, never. But with Dinky holding me tightly, I think…I think I could try. She wanted to help me so badly, even as broken and ruined as I was. At that moment, I knew for sure.

Dinky was my friend. And that made the warmth in my belly flare, just like the touch of the sunlight had.


*	*	*


By the time my lungs were clear, there was a slimy black pool of ejecta soaking into the dead grass before my muzzle. Some lumps were larger than others, but it all had an oily, gritty texture. Still, in the sunlight, it seemed to shiver and shrink away, leaving only the dark mud, soaked with blood so deep a red that it was black.

Dinky never left my side. Even as I hacked and coughed, she stayed with me, using her magic to push and squeeze my lungs, or knock all of the waste out of the walls. She tried to grip and pull the waste and mud herself, but as she explained, it was nearly impossible for her to grab something she couldn’t see, and she couldn’t tell my body from the clumps. Differentiation and separation were some of the hardest, most impossible sorcery for unicorns to do, especially when something was contained within something else, and she was afraid of hurting me. But I still appreciated every bit of help she could give.

“Okay. Again?” I nodded, and shuddered as I began to pull in air one more time. This always hurt, and it had hurt every time I had done it previously. My lungs, my throat, what was left of my sinuses; all were damaged. Maybe permanently, from all of our efforts today. It was possible that we had done more harm than good. I braced myself for the pain, as I filled my lungs with the cloying bayou air.

But the pain never came. My lungs filled, heavy within my breast, and I choked in surprise. Dinky braced, but it was only a single errant spasm. I held the breath for a few seconds, and relished in the sensation of my lungs being clear and unobstructed. Then I compressed my chest, and gently blew the air back out across my lips. My cold breath rustled the grass before my lips, like it was any other breeze.

Gently, Dinky helped me lean back, and a rag from her saddlebags wiped at my lips and nose, smearing the ichor. But no fresh blood replaced it, for the bleeding had stopped. I turned to my friend, and she smiled at me. “Just like that. Can you do it again?”

I nodded, and felt myself smile in return. Laboriously, I pulled in air, held it, and exhaled. Even now, it took more concentration than I thought it would. Every action had to be manual, and conscious; if I weren’t making an effort to breathe, or give off the illusion of breathing, then no subconscious process replaced it. But if I sat and focused on my lungs, and the muscles within my breast, then I could find a shuddering rhythm.

Warmth embraced me as Dinky wrapped her hooves around me in a hug. I felt her fire, and her fur, and the natural warmth of her un-Hollowed body, and my rhythm was for but a moment. When I found it again, I felt Dinky giggle against me, as she felt me breathing.

After a few moments, she pulled away, and tapped her hooves on the dead grass happily. “See, Holly! Progress!”

“Th-thank you,” I rasped. I still needed to take deeper breaths sometimes. I could feel that I’d still need to pause mid-sentence, when what I wanted to say took more breath than I had. I still had a lot to re-learn about my body. But Dinky was right; this was progress. I felt like I had improved, for once. Cheated the curse, even just a little bit.

“Nah, thank you, Holly. For letting me help.” She closed her eyes and shivered happily, smiling in the sunlight. After a moment, she opened her eyes once more. “Do you want to keep practicing? We can work on it more if you want. It’s not gonna be easy to pick up on the habit, and keep it going.”

I was tired, but not tired, in the strangest way. Like I needed to rest, but we were unable to sleep. The coughing had taken a toll on my body, but I was already feeling better. Gently, I tilted my head. “A b-break would b-be n-nice...sh-should we ch-check in w-with M-Magnus?”

Dinky sucked at her teeth. “It has been a while since I came up here, huh…yeah, probably a good idea. We’ll pick this up when we get another break, okay?”

I nodded, and we shakily stood. Turning my back on the sun to head back down the hill, descending under the canopy of the trees, felt subtly wrong, but I think that I had just gotten used to feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin. A large part of me wanted to stay up here still, and bask in it forever, but we had other things to do, and we were still heading back to Ponyville eventually. We were a little bit more careful coming down the steps; hooves were awkward about going downhill, even with the path, and neither of us wanted to dampen our spirits by slipping and cracking our skulls after all the effort we’d taken to feel better.

Magnus was talking to one of the remaining Golden Guards, and we entered earshot just as the argument seemed to reach the end. I recognized her voice from the journey here, and her name had been…I couldn’t quite remember. “...undignified! I was already against dragging him along in a sack of all things, but we can’t just keep him in there like cargo, left in a cart!”

“Grapeshot,” Magnus growled, his eyes flicking towards us as he beckoned us over. “We can’t just seize a building as an infirmary. We’re already seeing some hostility from the locals, we don’t need to make it worse. I’ll work out something with them, but I’m not bringing you along with me for negotiations.”

“So we’re leaving him here? Why not let him out of the sack at least, or bring him inside with the Alchemists-”

Magnus whickered angrily. “Are you a Golden Guard or not, Grapeshot? Because you’re not acting like one. Don’t make me pull rank on you officially, because you know I hate doing that.” They stared each other down for a few moments, before Magnus added, through clenched teeth, “Autumn is incapacitated anway. He’s insensate until he wakes up, so until then, how he’s kept or transported literally doesn’t matter, regardless of rank.”

The dark purple mare snarled, but eventually backed down. She turned away stomping her hooves in frustration, and Magnus turned to us. “Dinky, Holly, just who I wanted to see. You two are next up for patrol, I want everypony to learn the immediate lay of the land and mark trees that would make good firewood or building materials. Grapeshot will be coming with you, I don’t feel comfortable sending untrained civilians out by themselves.”

“Sure, that’s the reason!” shouted Grapeshot from across the clearing. Her horn was aglow as she picked up her armor and weapon from the ground, and began the brief process of equipping herself with both.

Magnus sighed tiredly, and passed us a small quiver filled with metal rods tipped with bright orange cloth. “Stick these into the ground near any trees that look thick enough to make firewood, but aren’t rotten or waterlogged. We’ll do another sweep later when we need them, and use the stakes as a guide. Any questions?”

We shook our heads, and Grapeshot joined us a moment later. Nearby, we heard the clopping of hooves on the wooden planks of Baton Verte’s bridges, followed by Snips and Snails turning the corner and entering the clearing. Magnus nodded, then waved us off, while he went to approach the militia ponies. We heard him talking to them, but his voice faded out as we cantered onto the bridges ourselves. “Snips, Snails, you’re both coming with me. We’re going to go door-to-door to ask about buildings we can use while we’re here. Snails, take the lead and do the sweet talking. I’ll be the authority backing you up, while Snips…Eh, just look mean while you’re standing next to me. We should be able to get a space for our needs soon enough...”

Baton Verte’s bridges were unsettlingly rickety, and even the guardrails were no comfort. They looked splintered from age, weather, and wear, and rusted nails stuck out all over from pieces that had fallen away, or simply been poorly constructed to begin with. I felt the planks under my hooves creak and flex as we walked over them, but none of them broke, for now. Conversation was light as we passed through the stilt village; I got the sense that eyes were watching us hungrily from the darkened windows, and it was distressingly quiet. We were undeniably invaders, intruding upon the quiet life out here on the sunny outskirts.

Dinky was the first to speak when we had passed through the town, and our hooves squished into the moist terrain of the bayou on the other side. “So, Grapeshot, how about you take the lead? I can mark trees as we go.”

“That’s fine,” muttered the mare. In her magic, a break-action shotgun snapped shut, almost identical to Applejack’s back in Ponyville. I remembered seeing it during our battle on the road, but now I had a chance to inspect it up close. Grapeshot’s weapon seemed customised, as the barrels were significantly shorter, for one thing. While most firearms seemed to be designed for Gryphons or Minotaurs to hold and operate, the stock and grip of this shotgun had been cut down to a nub. The modifications made sense, I supposed. If she was used to fighting in the trenches, then she didn’t need a long barrel, and as a unicorn, the gun was already held without need for the stock. Maybe she’d even simply done it for weight, so it would be less of a load to carry around.

She took the lead, following what seemed to be an old hoofpath that avoided the deep water. While the bayou was nearly entirely at the waterline, both terrain and water alike, there were small bluffs and crests that broke up the still water, and we mostly followed those around. We splashed across the shallowest of the water when need be, but it seemed this trail had been blazed by many a dry traveler.

“I wonder where this goes…” Dinky muttered, glancing at the trees around us.

“Probably an old fishing path,” Grapeshot said with a shrug. “I’ll bet it ends at a nice deep river that filters out into the sea. Or maybe back to the main road.”

To our surprise, it was neither. A rickety wooden shack lurked ahead of us, through the fog and trees. We approached it slowly, watching for movement in case somepony had chosen this corner of nowhere to Hollow out, but it seemed abandoned. Dinky used her magic to push the door open, while Grapeshot kept her shotgun pointed at the darkness inside, and I watched the bayou around us.

“Seems like a moonshiner’s shack, maybe. Ugh.” Dinky wrinkled her nose as she peered inside, her horn lit to provide light. “I think the sealed distillery might have kept the fermentation process safe, at least until the metal corroded through. This smells…more recently rotten, if that makes any sense. But only by a few decades, at most.”

Grapeshot nodded. “Anything useful, at least?”

Dinky stepped inside, and looked around at the shelves. “Lotta glass bottles filled with fluid. We might be able to make some firebombs using these, at least, depending on if…whatever’s inside is still flammable.” She picked one at random and uncorked it, then retched. “Ugh! Yeah, okay, yeah. This’ll burn. Wouldn’t want to get soaked in it either way, though.”

She grabbed a bunch of the bottles and waved me over. Grapeshot took my place, and watched the foggy bayou around us, as Dinky held up one of the bottles. “Anyone ever told you about firebombs, Holly?”

I shook my head, and Dinky shrugged. “Pretty simple concept, just get some flammable liquid in a breakable container. Sometimes it’s glass, sometimes it’s ceramic, though that always seemed like a lot of work to me. Anyway, you get that and a wick, or a rag or something. Light the wick on fire using your Pyromancy or Sorcery, chuck the firebomb at something you want burned.”

I gave her a look, and Dinky flinched. “Not ponies! Never ponies, if you can avoid it. Burning’s always been awful, and it’s even more now that it doesn’t kill you outright. I mean like wooden debris, or a big bonfire, or something. It makes for a good distraction.” She hesitated. “I guess…if you really have to use these in combat, they’re good against things in heavy armor. They can’t dodge as fast, and the oil gets in through the cracks.”

She shook her head a moment later. “But avoid that at all costs. Awful thing to consider. Ugh. Might work on demons, though.” I nodded slowly, and she passed me a couple of the bottles, with rags freshly wrapped around the necks. I set them down in my saddlebags, and heard them clink together loosely inside. It was slightly unsettling, and I wondered how fragile the glass still was, after all of this time.

She passed a few over to Grapeshot as well, and we left the moonshiner’s shack behind us as we continued onward. Dinky seemed to be leaving the flags at regular intervals, and not necessarily at good-looking trees. When I asked her why, she pointed back the way we came. “I’ve read it’s easy to get lost in swamps. This way, we can follow the flags back through, and we know they’re set into safe terrain.”

I nodded; that made sense. Hopefully it didn’t confuse Magnus later, though.

After some more relatively aimless wandering, we found ourselves at the bank of a larger river that flowed through the bayou. Dinky chuckled. “Found your fishing spot, Grapeshot. Wanna toss out a line?”

Grapeshot chuckled, walking up to the bank. “Naaah, looks like slim pickings today. Maybe tomorrow morning the fish will be a little more active.” She turned to leave, but we all jumped at an explosion of movement behind her in the water.

The river splashed across us all, as what we had thought to be a log leapt out of the water and onto the bank. A massive alligator, maybe five body-lengths long from snout to tail tip, had emerged from the river and clamped its jaws around Grapeshot’s midsection. She screamed as it yanked her to the ground, and tried to pull her back into the water. Her shotgun fell out of sight into the bushes as she panicked, while DInky and I leapt forward to do something, anything, to help.

I was again horrifically reminded of the Mimic, not so long ago. I wondered if Dinky was too; judging from how brightly her horn was burning with sorcery, she would not let this world consume another pony while we stood by, helpless.

Golden sorcery slammed into the hard scales of the beast, as I drew my cavalry sword and began stabbing wildly at the creature’s eye. As I did, I began to notice how dark and tough the scales were. Chaosfire burned in the alligator’s eyes, and under its flesh whenever we struck a blow that peeled the scales away. This was no mundane alligator, but one twisted by Chaosfire, surely poisoned and warped from the runoff from upstream.

Grapeshot screamed again as the alligator demon pulled her into the water, and it was cut off as she went under. The water foamed white and red as I leapt in, and Dinky’s magic slammed into the river’s surface, causing dull thumps to echo through the riverbed as she fired wildly. I was able to keep atop the beast, and from what I could tell, Grapeshot’s golden armor was protecting her from being crushed so far.

Then the beast rolled over, and Grapeshot and I traded positions. Water and mud enveloped me as the alligator crushed me under its back, but that exposed its unarmored belly to Dinky, who capitalized on the exposed weakness. I felt the monster stiffen and shake, before the combined weight of itself and Grapeshot came to rest atop me.

It was surreal, in a way. While it certainly hurt, and I was stuck, I was no longer actually in danger with the beast slain. Even after we’d done all that work earlier, I still didn’t actually need to breathe. An odd peace settled over me, as I was pressed into the riverbed. The disturbed mud from our fight filtered downwards, and the water had cleared somewhat by the time I felt the weight of the dead Alligator Demon lift off of me.

Dinky’s magic embraced me once more, and I was roughly hauled out of the river as water trailed off of my limp limbs. “Holly?” she asked, with terror sharp in her voice.

I tried to respond, but muddy river water gushed out of my mouth instead. Dinky set me down on my unsteady legs, and I took a few moments to cough up the contents of my lungs one last time. Dinky seemed satisfied, but she kept glancing back at me as I hacked and coughed.

She busied herself with checking over Grapeshot. The Golden Guard seemed to be our latest fatality, with a clearly-broken neck that was twisted at a strange angle. Dinky awkwardly closed her mouth and eyes, and checked that her armor was still on securely. “I…think she’ll be fine? We acted pretty quick, so it might not have had time to drain her…”

Dinky swallowed, then stamped her hoof into the muck. “Goddesses-damned ambush predators! As if we didn’t have enough problems. We’ve gotta- I’ve gotta keep a better eye out.” her gaze turned back to me. “Holly, you…that was incredibly brave. It could have grabbed you too, but I think you kept it from dragging her out fully into the river. If you hadn’t done that, she would’ve gone under entirely, and we never would have found her again.”

I coughed again, but gave Dinky a weak smile. It didn’t make up for our failure to save Diamond Tiara, but knowing that we were getting faster, and we’d saved somepony this time, was at least a small comfort.

It took us a few minutes of searching, but eventually we found her shotgun. I hauled the undead mare onto my back, with her head flopping over my shoulder, and we began the long process of following our little orange flags back to Baton Verte.
> 11 - The Undead of the Bayou
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My ragged breath caught sharply in my throat as Meadowbrook slid the dagger across my foreleg. The cut was shallow, but that didn’t make it hurt any less, and I struggled to catch my breath and resume my manual breathing exercises as I endured the pain. The warm wind here, atop the hill behind Meadowbrook’s cottage, blew over my fresh wound. It only made the pain deepen. As I breathed, I tasted the scent of smoke, from the little bonfire we’d kindled to sit around.

Meadowbrook gave me a sympathetic look, as she extended my foreleg to examine the blood. It oozed from my fresh wound like watery mud, and I could feel her move her grip around my leg to try and squeeze out more as she spoke. “Y’all be seein’ how dark it is?”

Around me, Dinky, Snips, and Snails all leaned in to look at the ichor. It seemed to bubble and writhe as it was exposed to sunlight, and I felt sick as I gasped for air. How easily Meadowbrook drew blood, with the knowledge that even fatal wounds would recover in time.

She continued to speak, as my blood oozed down the side of my leg, soaked my fur, and dripped off the underside. “When a Hollow has died so many times, their body begin to deteriorate in the long term. Their corpse begin to rot, like before the Curse, but the process is halted by the most basic regeneration. Thus, they be trapped, in a sort of limbo between healin’ and decay. The internal organs back up, the blood be contaminated, and they become stiff and clumsy as it coagulates inside their veins.”

Snips chuckled darkly. “Is that what’s going on? I thought we were just getting old pony’s knees. That’s a relief!” Dinky gave him a gentle kick with the side of her hoof. It was almost playful, but Dinky seemed to be very focused on what Meadowbrook had been saying. Snails gave them both an odd look, before we all turned our attention back to the old alchemist.

Meadowbrook sighed at our playful antics. “When an Undead reaches this point, there is nothin’ that can be done. No healin’ potion can fix this, no mundane poultice can repair the damage. While Pyromancy can repair immediate wounds, as I be about to demonstrate, it will not be able to heal anythin’ more than that. The Curse seems to bring any form of regeneration to a complete halt once it determines that the Cursed Undead be mobile and functional once more.”

Her hooves took on a gentle red glow as they held my foreleg, and I felt her warmth, her fire, bleed through them and into me as she used her Pyromancy to seal the wound. Snails in particular leaned in to watch, and let out a quiet uttering of “Coooool” as my sundered flesh knit itself back together before his eyes. Even my veins, under my thin flesh, seemed to reconnect where they had been split. My pale, colorless fur remained separated however, leaving not a scar, but a distinct absence of one.

Snails leaned back and looked at his own hooves, and a small ember sprung forth from his own hoof. It was weak, but present, and Dinky seemed to turn away from the sight. That was interesting, and it made me reflect more on what Dinky had said so long before; she had no interest in Pyromancy, and it wasn’t often practiced by unicorns, since they could do Sorcery. Snails must have been an exception, then.

Snips screwed up his face, and pointed back towards Meadowbrook’s cottage at the other end of the hill. “What about Zecora? We’ve used her recipes and bandages and pull...poultries?”

Bside him, Snails blinked, and the ember in his hoof winked out. “Poultices. Right?”

Snips nodded eagerly. “Yeah, those! The bandages that burn cold.”

Meadowbrook smiled as she released my hoof. I rubbed the spot that had been cut, as if to comfort myself that the wound was healed now, but all I did was smear my hoof with the cloying blood. “Zecora be incredibly clever, and while I may be the better Pyromancer, Zecora has combined my teachin’s with her own extensive knowledge of potions and herblore. Those poultices and her potions represent her finest work, imbued with her own Pyromancy, and even they can only serve as one-time-use replacements for our own healin’ hooves.

“I just wish they could do more,” Meadowbrook continued, as her expression fell. “Holly, Snips, and Snails…there be no nice way to say this, but you are all at this threshold of Hollowin’. Ya keep dyin’, and you’re due to go Hollow soon. Five or six more, at the most, and less if you begin to lose your grip on reality, or otherwise lose hope. You need to do your best to stay safe, and stay sane, because every death could be your last.”

It took us all a moment to understand that, but when we had, silence descended over the hilltop. Dinky blinked at her for a few moments, then looked at the rest of us. She looked like she wanted to say something, to apologize or pity us or outright reject Meadowbrook’s prognosis, but the words wouldn’t come.

Snails seemed mostly confused by this, and he sat back and looked down at the ground as he mulled it over. But his other half, Snips, seemed to be in shock. He shivered and his hooves twitched, and under his breath, I could hear him mutter, “Fi-five or six? B-but we died once on the way here, so it’s…it’s gotta be less than that…”

Eventually, Dinky found her words, and she stood up while she motioned her hoof towards me. “Wait, wait, what about Holly, at least? Zecora said she was learning, and improving; that has to mean something!”

With a sigh, Meadowbrook shook her head. “She would be the first Undead to make any sort of upwards progress. At this point, it be almost always a steep drop as depression sets in, though a few Undead have managed to…flatten the curve. Keep their heads straight, even when they be so Hollowed, but your mind and body must be mighty strong.”

Dinky was still glancing between us, unsatisfied at the answer, so Meadowbrook continued. “It’s possible I be wrong. I wish I knew more about the process, or even the Curse itself, but its very nature makes it a pain to study. It’s real dangerous to study Hollows in particular, as the curse seems to teach them how to steal souls as it overtakes ‘em. But everything I ever been taught in my life became depressingly useless when we all turned undead. All of it said that this sort of state be impossible to maintain, through natural or magical means, and yet…” She waved her hoof at the treeline around us. “Here we be.”

Finally, Dinky sat down, still shaking her head. “Well…what do you know about the Curse itself, then? What have you actually learned, after all this time?”

Meadowbrook looked unsure. “It won’t be helpful, you know. We’ve learned frustratin’ly little because the problem is so deeply metaphysical-”

“Aren’t you one of those pillars or something?!” Snips suddenly shouted, as he jumped to his hooves. “How long have you been studying this? And this is the best you got?”

 Dinky jumped in surprise as well, but she nodded a moment later as she found herself in agreement with Snips. “Meadowbrook, you wrote the book on Equestrian sicknesses. Literally, your books were required reading for ponies studying medicine! You have to know something...”

Meadowbrook sighed, and lowered her head. “Then I will tell you what I do know.”

As she gathered her thoughts, I stepped away. I noticed my hooves trembled as I walked, and I dropped back to my knees beside Dinky, which she seemed grateful for. She leaned against me just as much as I leaned against her, and I decided to try and focus on my breathing. Right now, it was difficult to keep it steady. Snips still seemed distinctly agitated, and he kept glaring at Mage Meadowbrook, like he was blaming her for telling him his time was so short. 

When Meadowbrook spoke, her tone seemed to take on a bit more of a scholarly tone. I got the sense she was reciting something she’d memorized a very, very long time ago. “Equestrian medicine be based on a concept: That everything about a pony’s health be built upon three things: the Body, the Mind, and the Soul. Modern Equestrian medicine be long focused on the Body, and what it be made of, and what can afflict it, but all three be of equal importance.

“The Body be what you are: It be your flesh, your bones, your blood. Filth attracts illness, which we were just only barely beginnin’ to see in detail when the sun stopped. Apparently illness be caused by animals—too small to see—attackin’ the body in ways too small to be seen with the naked eye, causin’ fever, plague, and decay. The body can also be damaged, through combat, or accident, breakin’ bones and rupturin’ organs. Poisons can also interfere with the body’s workin’s, disruptin’ their natural rhythms and causin’ damage that way.”

We all nodded. We were decently familiar with this knowledge, and it was the most immediately apparent to us, so Meadowbrook continued.

“The Mind be what you think. It be your thoughts, your memories, and your knowledge. And because it ibe so hard to study, Equestrian science has to go through the body to truly study it in most ways. The brain be where the Mind and Body meet, where what you think becomes what you do, and how you do it. Your brain tell your leg to move, and so it does. It tell your lungs to breathe, and so they do.” She looked, sadly, at me as she said that.

“When it be disturbed, those thoughts can be interrupted or misinterpreted by the Body. Like weather signals bein’ misread. And your body become confused, and often damaged by the miscommunication. This can, in turn, damage the brain and cause mental illness...but we still know so precious little about those. And now, maybe we never will. The best we had was the usin’ chemicals to try and physically repair the damage to the Body, in hopes it would heal the Mind in turn.

“Finally...” Mage Meadowbrook pressed her hoof to her breast. “The Soul is what you feel. It be your passion, for your work, for life, and for the other ponies around you. It motivates you, and pushes you forward, to succeed, and to survive. Even our own Pyromancy flame, it be nothing but an abstraction, a representation of a pony’s Soul made manifest, and a way to channel the power of that Soul. For individual ponies, this be represented by our Cutie Mark; it be a window to the Soul, a magical interpretation of that pony’s deepest passion. But how do you study a pony’s passion?”

Her hoof dropped, as did her eyes. “You can’t, not like you can study their body. You can’t dissect a Soul. But you can study the way it change the world around itself, like determinin’ the shape of a rock by the way the water flows around it.

“That too, is the only way we have been able to study the Curse.” Finally, Meadowbrook stood once more, and turned to display her cutie mark. Just like everypony else’s, it was that same awful dark spiral. A whirlpool of smoke, like color and light and the cutie mark that was meant to be there had been drawn into it.

“The Curse—and it be a curse, we know now, though long we thought curses to be the workings of fiction and legend—attaches itself to the soul of a pony. It seek to inhabit the same metaphysical space as the soul; when that pony’s soul be damaged, it would normally repair itself over time. But instead, now, the Undead Curse floods into the space left empty, and occupies it for itself, slowly pushin’ out and replacing the Soul that is meant to be within. When all of a Pony’s soul been depleted, then nothing but the Curse remain within their body, and their mind be consumed next. They become a true Hollow, mindless, soulless, and nothin’ but a walkin’ body that hungers for Souls.

“Even this,” she sighed, “wouldn’t be such a problem by itself. Damagin’ a Pony’s very soul be an impossible task before; only incredibly complicated magic could do it, and the Soul be resilient. Whenever somepony tried, the pony’s Body failed long before their Soul did, and they died; so no livin’ bein’ in recorded history has ever been rendered truly soulless. Until the Curse came.

“The Curse changes somethin’ about a Pony’s body. It disrupt and contort the connection between Body and Soul, and renders them immortal—at the price of their Soul.” Mage Meadowbrook indicated my newly healed foreleg, where the blood had long dried in the sunlight. “Every injury that a Pony sustain be healed by their Body, just as before, but usin’ their Soul instead. So for every injury sustained, a little bit of the Pony’s soul be burned away, and the Curse replaces it. In this way, the Curse be inevitable; it can only be slowed down, or brought to a halt, by keepin’ safe’ from death or injury.

“This is why curin’, or even fightin’ the Curse, seems so impossible. We can’t inoculate a Pony against it, and every Pony alive today already been tainted by the Curse. Our attempts to remove it by the methods we know only damage the Soul, which allow it to surge into the new void. No method of removin’ or even interactin’ with the Curse seems to have any effect, as if we can’t even touch whatever metaphysical or magical space it occupy within a Pony.

“The best we can truly do is use alternate methods of healin’. Pyromancy comes from the Soul, but does not subtract from it; it only channel the power within. Those acts of kindness-” Meadowbrook suddenly paused mid-sentence, and her gaze turned behind us. “Magnus? Weren’t you keepin’ watch over the wounded?”

We all turned as well, and as we did, Magnus landed with a gentle rustle against the dead grass. He shook his wings dry as he responded; apparently flying upwards through the canopy was a recipe to get soaked. “Yeah, but Grapeshot just woke back up. Zecora’s tending to her now, and she kicked me out so she could work. Suits me fine, her rhyming gets on my nerves…”

Meadowbrook chuckled. “Oh? Annoyed she be knowin’ our language better than us, in this day and age?”

Magnus flapped his wings one final time before folding them against his side. “Hey, I’ve adapted. You pick up on lingo real quick in the guard, no matter what time period you find yourself in. You’re the one with their accent stuck in the Pre-Abeyance period.” His expression soured. “Seriously, though, I wanted to talk to you.”

We all stood up to leave and give them some privacy, but Magnus held up a hoof as he sat down and began to poke at our little bonfire with an errant branch. “No, all of you should be aware of this too. Besides, I don’t want to have to repeat myself again later.”

Dinky raised an eyebrow, and we all dropped back to lay next to the fire. Magnus nodded, then turned to Meadowbrook. “Med, what you’ve done out here is incredible. It’s always been incredible, but everything you’ve sent back to Canterlot, about this Curse, has been incredibly helpful knowledge for Celestia and the Golden Guard.”

“I be sensin’ a ‘but,’ Flash…” Meadowbrook said, watching him carefully.

“Yeah, dead on.” Magnus let the branch drop into the fire, and we heard gentle crackling as the heat began to warp the branch. “The ‘but’ is that it sure feels like you’ve done everything you can out here. You and Zecora told me yourself, you’re both basically out of ingredients, and these swamps are getting less safe by the minute. We need to get you both to Canterlot.”

“What-? You be talkin’ about givin’ up and hidin’ on a mountainside? Did the demons attack your brain, too?”

Magnus let out a deep sigh. “Not quite. No, this is because there’s nothing here, Med. Nothing but danger and dregs. There’s no point to staying here, not when we could regroup there and maybe work out a new supply chain. There has to be something left, somewhere, and we can get it to Canterlot for you and Zecora to keep working.”

“There’s ‘nothin’ here?” Meadowbrook repeated sarcastically. “Nothin’ except my hometown, Flash. I’m not gonna let it be abandon a second time. We be lastin’ this long, the demons don’t care about us.”

“Not yet,” Flash conceded, “but we have no idea if the winds will shift or not. Could be an hour’s time from now, they’ll completely give up at the Ponyville front line, and all come downstream towards Baton Verte. Ponyville’s reinforced, and it can handle that kind of battering, but this place? Med, it’d take three big uglies to wipe this place off the map. You’ve been getting lucky that it’s only been alligators so far, and they haven’t changed from being ambush predators, but what about if a chimera comes through? Or a hydra? Even the timberwolves have gotten an upgrade, and they were nasty to begin with. You don’t wanna see how vicious they are now that they’ve gotten a good soak in Chaosfire.”

Meadowbrook looked pointedly back towards the thin trails of smoke over the hill; the faintest signs of life still left in this strange little town. Eventually, she sighed. “Fine. Fine, you be right. We wouldn’t be able to fight off a real fightin’ force.”

Magnus sighed in relief. “Thank the winds, Med, I thought you were gonna fight me on this one-”

“On one condition,” Meadowbrook interrupted, as she held up her hoof. “If I can’t stay in Baton Verte, then Baton Verte be comin’ with me. Everypony gets evacuated, not just me and Zecora. I won’t leave my friends, neighbors, and descendants to suffer that inevitable attack while I scamper away to safety.”

Magnus froze, then started to scratch his hoof in the dirt. “Gryphon scat…can we make that work? Caravan of…say, one hundred twenty, assuming they’re bringing belongings and useful supplies to sweeten the deal-”

“I be havin’ no illusions that it be an easy journey, by any means,” Meadowbrook admitted. “But this be my only compromise. Everypony be evacuated, or nopony be.”

Magnus shook his head, and stomped his hoof, erasing any sort of calculation he’d done a moment ago. “Med, that’s gonna be bad. We’re going to attract attention from the Demons with that many, guaranteed. We’re going to lose ponies.”

“Then we make them aware of that risk too. I won’t be draggin’ along anypony who wants to stay, but I at least have to give them a chance!” Meadowbrook stood as well, and faced down Magnus. Despite being at least two hoof-widths shorter than the military stallion, she seemed to be his equal. Maybe even more than that, with the force of her fire blazing within her. She was not going to back down on this point, and Magnus could see it too.

“Fine.” He sighed. “But mark my words, Med, when we lose ponies, their blood is going to be on your hooves.”

“Even now, when death seems so elusive, it remains an inevitability. Surely it be better to offer them a chance, than to simply abandon them to their fate outright?” Meadowbrook turned to us, and stomped her hoof. “If a pony die because we did not act, is that any better than if we had acted and they die anyway?”

We all shrunk away from the Mage, and nopony answered. Either they were afraid of how suddenly intense Meadowbrook had become, or they, like me, were mulling over the dilemma.

I couldn’t help but agree with Meadowbrook. We should at least offer the help. But more than that, her words resonated within me, and I found myself wondering about my actions so far. How many ponies had Hollowed out, due to my inaction? Because I was not fast enough, because I was not smart enough? Diamond Tiara still haunted both me and Dinky.

Magnus rolled his embers at the display. “I really didn’t want to repeat myself, but I gotta now…great.” He waved a hoof at me and Dinky. “You two, go knocking door-to-door. No details, just tell them there’s a town meeting outside Meadowbrook’s. I’ll tell the town all at once, get it out of the way.”

His gaze shifted to Snips and Snails, as we got up to leave. “You two, same thing, but everypony on the bridges or fishing below. See if you can shake them out of their rut, try not to get stabbed with a fishing spear.” When the both of them failed to move or respond in any meaningful way, Magnus clapped his hooves together. “Hey! Ponyville Irregulars! Anypony home?”

That finally got Snails to jump, and he snapped off a sloppy salute. “Uh, inform the townsp-ponies about a m-meeting! G-got it!”

Snails turned to leave, but noticed that Snips was still busy staring into space. Snails shook him by the shoulder, and that seemed to rouse Snips for long enough for him to stand up and start following behind.

Our two groups began to head back down the hill, as Magnus talked quietly with Meadowbrook behind us, both silhouetted in the sunlight.


*	*	*


“I think this is all starting to get to Snips. Did you see how Snails was the one that shook him awake?” Dinky mused, as they trundled down a ramp and out of sight.

I was following her lead as we walked through the small town. “Y-yeah…I d-don’t really kn-know them, th-though.”

Dinky sighed. “Maybe it’s just because I’ve known them for so long. Snips has always been a little aggressive, but that was different. He’s never gotten in anypony’s face that fast. Guess what Meadowbrook said kind of hit everypony hard.” She sighed, and shook her head. “I’ve never been a believer in the old jokes about ‘things ponies were not meant to know,’ but I certainly believe in ‘things ponies really don’t need to hear in certain mental states.’”

I couldn’t help but agree—hearing that my time was so limited, so soon after I had just barely awoken, deeply unsettled me. I was so careless…admittedly, I hadn’t known how much damage each death did to a Hollow’s psyche, but still, I was dying and getting hurt far more than I should have been. I lost nearly every fight I participated in, and while my coordination was improving, my skills in battle weren’t. Maybe I could ask Magnus for more training? As I mulled the thought over, we continued trotting along the rickety wooden walkways.

After a few moments, Dinky shook her head again. “Maybe coming out here was a mistake. Not just for me, but everypony. But if we hadn’t, then…ugh. If that was a mistake, then what was the right call to make?”

I looked down at the wooden planks below our hooves, and the bayou between them. “M-maybe the pr-problem is…th-there is no r-right call. N-not any m-more.”

Dinky shook her head. “Not any more. Isn’t that the truth, these times…”

After the short time we'd spent here in Baton Verte, I was getting better at telling the specific difference between types of buildings here in town. The newer buildings were built atop concrete piles that kept them standing rigidly, and these buildings were the closest to the highway, or more specifically, the ramp that was the de facto entrance to Baton Verte. That included a small town hall, a gift shop, and a long-abandoned fish-themed restaurant. Older buildings tended to be built on wooden piles instead, and those hadn't fared well through time at all. They creaked and squealed, and we'd all jumped a little while back when what looked like an old bait-and-tackle shop finally gave up the ghost and collapsed into the bayou below right in front of us.

But the oldest buildings seemed to be the original homes of Baton Verte's first settlers. Like Mage Meadowbrook, they had been tree-based, though only a few were able to go to the same extent she had by fully hollowing out a tree. Most simply used the trunks as a support structure, and had built their floors in the space between. Even today, they still hung, suspended from the long-dead trees by a spider’s web of cables, twine, and plain old rope, even when the rest of the house's construction had begun to sag from moisture damage. However, this introduced a new problem: the trees had continued growing after the houses were built.

As the staked supports had shifted upwards over the course of decades, nailed deep into the tree and dragged upwards by the stubborn, unyielding growth, the connections to the rest of the town had moved upwards with them. Some paths that connected the homes to the network of bridges—that were the lifeblood of the town—had simply been repaired and extended upwards, eventually becoming steep staircases or outright ladders. Others had thought slightly ahead, and created spiraling staircases that could be added onto as needed. One particularly enterprising pony, long ago, had even created a clever weight-and-basket system that looked fascinatingly unsafe, were it still in operable condition.

As time had gone on, this quirk likely went from being a minor inconvenience, to an actual problem to be solved, to a desired quality among the long-term residents. Various signs had been set up, long-rotten, but still legible. Scrawling scripts of a dozen different hooves warned us to "Stay off my porch," "Don't play on our ladder," and "Go rut yasself,” and several made oblique threats against trespassing zebras, kirin, minotaurs, and tax collectors.

All this, Dinky and I took in, as we tried to determine which buildings were even still occupied. Only about two-thirds of the houses still had thin trails of smoke curling upwards from their chimneys, which gave us a decent starting point. Of those, we eventually decided to start with the nearest house on our left.  A switchback ramp led up to the front door, and I limped behind my friend as we climbed up. It was quiet, but we could see movement through the window, so it seemed like somepony was home. The door itself had a window set into it, and Dinky tried to peer inside, but it was too grimy. Eventually she just shrugged, and gave it a knock.

There was no response. Dinky frowned, and we turned to watch the town while we waited to see if anypony came. In the distance, we could see Snips and Snails, who had just started to work their way through the underbrush to talk to everypony fishing. Snails was able to step over most of the obstacles in his way, but Snips had to leap over them, and he often came up just short when he jumped. Already, his armor was beginning to get soaked through with muck and reeds.

After they passed behind another cluster of cattails, Dinky shook her head. “I’m gonna knock again, but if nopony answers in a minute, we’ll just head to the next one.”

I nodded, and Dinky turned back to the door. She knocked her hoof against it a bit harder this time, and we heard movement from inside. “Good, that must’ve woken them-”

She was interrupted when the door’s window burst outwards, and showered us in shards of glass. A long-Hollowed hoof reached through and swiped wildly at us, but all the Hollow inside managed to do was slice their foreleg to ribbons on the jagged frame.

Dinky swore loudly, shaking her mane to dislodge any errant shards of glass, and I jumped back in surprise and fear. Hollows, of course there would be Hollows. Suddenly, Meadowbrook’s warnings of our own fragile existence rang clearly in my head. Every fight could be my last, and I didn’t want to become Hollowed. But we had disturbed this Hollow, and started this fight, even if we hadn’t meant to do so.

A moment later, the latch of the door clicked open; either the Hollow inside remembered how doors worked, or it had been loose enough in the frame that the random flailings of a feral pony could push it open. Either way, I grabbed at my cavalry sword as the door loudly creaked open, and Dinky drew her new silver rapier.

The Hollow emerged sloppily, with one foreleg still caught in the door’s window. Another Hollow behind it was trying to push past. I was surprised when I saw them, and pangs of sadness shot through me; They had been old and withered even before they’d been afflicted by the curse. It looked like they had been an old couple, left alone in their house, and they’d succumbed together. Now, they were nothing but mindless Hollows, lurching and snarling towards us, and I could hear their arthritic joints creaking as they moved towards us.

Dinky winced as she stepped forward, and thrusted her rapier forward in a quick stab with her magic. It punctured the leading Hollow almost too easily, and she staggered as she turned to face Dinky, lurching in her direction instead. As soon as she moved away, I was left with the stallion, who had finally managed to free himself from the door. His leg had not fared so well, however, and when he tried to take a step towards me, it instantly collapsed with a snap.

Even now, I froze up, as I was afraid to approach him. Even an errant swipe could knock me to the ground. I had to fight, but I had to be careful about how I fought, as well. My cavalry sword wasn’t sharp or heavy enough to remove his head in even a few chops, and he looked like he was at a bad angle for that anyways. I could try and stab him through the eye, or his chest, but he could still swipe at me with his intact foreleg, which made that idea alarmingly risky..

Eventually, I stepped back to shift my grip, and I held it upside-down instead. With the blade positioned that way, I could much more easily stab it downwards through his head, without getting too close. I clenched my eyes shut as the tip impacted, and pierced through far too easily. It didn’t go all the way through, however, and I was forced to open my eyes once again.

The empty, dead sockets of the fallen Hollow stared at me, but the embers had flickered out for now. The blade had punched an ugly hole through the side of his skull, and it shifted unsettlingly as I tried to pull it free. All I managed to do was bounce his head against the wooden planks that he lay upon, and eventually I had to brace a hindleg against his shoulder for leverage. I would not be without a weapon when we were in danger.

The sword scraped free, and I busied myself by wiping it off on a moldy couch next to the door. Dinky had won her own fight a few body-lengths away, and I looked over to her just as she drew the glowing rapier blade out of the dead Hollow’s breast. Her blade slid out easily, and I don’t know if it was because of the design, the enchantment, or if that Hollow had been more easily pierced to begin with.

“So…Hollows,” Dinky muttered, flicking ichor from her blade. I tilted my head towards the couch, where I had left streaks of rotten brain matter, and she nodded. “Guess we’ll have to be more careful knocking on doors. Good work, Holly.”

“D-doesn’t f-feel like good w-work…” I whimpered. “F-feels l-like…we int-intruded.”

“Yeah,” Dinky agreed. “I wish we hadn’t knocked on this door. I never like slaying Hollows, and this…this house was just a mistake.”

She wiped her rapier clean on the couch, which was now even more thoroughly ruined. Then Dinky sheathed her blade, as did I, and we were left with the two corpses in front of the house. How close had we come to losing our Equinity, even in such a minor scuffle?

Dinky didn’t seem quite as perturbed as I was. “They’re gonna wake up eventually. We need somewhere to put them, so they can’t attack anypony else.”

I looked back at the door. “B-back ins-side? And ifff…we move the c-couch in f-front, they sh-shouldn’t be ab-able to op-open it…”

Dinky nodded, and her horn lit with that same golden corona of magic. “Alright, That makes sense. Then we’ll finish telling everypony, as quickly as we can.”


*	*	*


Together, we looked up at the next house.

This time, a staircase so steep as to be a ladder led up to a rickety platform. It made me nervous when I looked at it, since I was already clumsy enough, and the ladder looked like it would be a challenge for a pony in good health. Dinky assured me that she’d catch me if I slipped, though, so I took the lead and began to climb up the rungs.

I got a good look at the house as I climbed, though it looked more like a rickety shack than anything meant for pony occupation. The roof was made of branches with a canvas hung over them, and even that canvas was riddled with holes. The walls were made of wooden planks, and huge gaps existed where the wood had shrunk and expanded from moisture over the years, not to mention wherever boards were just missing. While there was a window facing us, there was no glass; only a layer of fishing net hung by nails to keep animals out. I almost thought it was totally abandoned, but smoke was still curling up and out of the chimney, so it was at least worth checking.

As I stepped off the ladder, I could hear as Dinky placed her hoof on the lowest rung, then paused. “Wait- Holly, don’t-!”

I took a step towards the front door, and blinding pain shot up my leg. A steel bear trap snapped shut around my leg, and I let out a strangled yelp. My own cry seemed pitiful in comparison to the noise of the trap itself; the rusted metal echoed like a thunderclap through the quiet town. I collapsed onto the platform, and instinctively tried to use my other hoof to tug the trapped hoof free. All I did was make the pain worse.

“Sire of a- Holly, hold still!” Dinky’s hooves clattered on the ladder as she scrambled up, and she paused at the top to sweep for other bear traps. There was only the one, however, and she scrambled forward to assist. I tried to follow her instructions and stay still as she inspected the blunt metal jaws crushing my leg, but the pain was incredible, and I couldn’t keep myself from letting out a few pained whimpers. “It’s all rusty…I don’t see a spring, maybe it broke when the trap got sprung? Damn it, I wish I’d seen that sign earlier-”

“It h-hurts, g-get it off!” I whimpered again as Dinky tugged at the steel jaws of the trap. “Wha-what s-sign?!”

Dinky flicked her hoof back towards the ladder. “There was a sign at the bottom of the ladder, a warning about the bear trap, it’s to catch Hollows...”

I winced and groaned through my grit teeth. Hollows like me, that didn’t see the posted sign, or simply didn’t care.

“Well, y'all be missing some common sense, but don’t look like y'all gone fully wild just yet.” The new voice caught our attention, and I looked up, while Dinky turned around. A Hollowed pegasus stood in the door, holding a long, lever-action rifle in his hooves. A scraggly, rough beard had grown across his muzzle like moss, but the embers of his eyes lit up the darkness under his wide-brimmed hat. He wore a vest covered in fishing tackle and rifle cartridges, and his expression said that he clearly wasn’t impressed by us.

“Is this your trap?” Dinky snarled. “Help me get it off her leg!”

“Quit tuggin’ at it, or it actually will break, and you’ll do more damage to your friend anyhow.” The stallion set the rifle in the doorway, and then casually cantered over to us. Dinky stepped back to let him work, while I whimpered in pain. “Also, ain’t got a spring. Springs are too sensitive to rust, though...whole trap’s a bit rusty nowadays. This might take a sec.”

Dinky rolled her eyes. “Are you in the habit of trapping your front door?”

“Only since the other townsfolk started coming by to visit, and didn’t bring their brains with ‘em.” The stallion stepped on the side of the trap, which didn’t budge, but did squeal and scrape. He let out a grunt as he stomped on the metal bar again. “Anyhow, what’s brought ya callin’? Seen ya soldier folks hanging around Meadowbrook’s, and the library, but kept my distance. Didn’t know if it was a friendly sort of visit.”

Dinky moved to the other spring-bar on the opposite side of the bear trap, but he waved her back. Apparently he was going to do it himself. Instead, all Dinky was allowed to do was sit nearby and glare at him, unable to help. “We came by to ask Meadowbrook for help with something, but she needs our help instead. There’s a town meeting at her cottage soon, and she wanted us to go tell everypony.”

“Mmm. Not one for big town meetings, myself. Gonna sit this one out.”

Dinky groaned and shook her head. “Look, it’s important, alright? Just come, I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you.”

“Important, huh? Well, if you know it’s important, then I reckon ya know what it’s about. Howsabout ya share with me, and then I’ll decide?”

Dinky winced. “Fine. Her and a commander from Canterlot are evacuating the town to Ponyville. it’s too dangerous out here, and Meadowbrook’s run out of supplies.”

The pegasus smiled, as he continued to stomp on the spring-bar. “Awww, that’s awful nice of her. Not so sure I feel like moving though…and it sure don’t feel like the gators have gotten any more ornery than usual. Something bad coming?”

“You have no idea…” muttered Dinky. “Yeah, some sort of evil…well.” Dinky caught herself, reconsidering her words. “I don’t know if it’s evil, but there’s definitely a big source of dangerous magic spreading downstream in the future. Was Baton Verte hit at all by the demons?”

FInally, the spring-bar that he was working on gave way with a metal screech, and the pressure crushing my leg eased up slightly. “Hold this down with your own hoof. Good.” He started to work on the other spring-bar as he talked. “Seen a couple of nasties, and the gators do seem to be gettin’ bigger for sure. I can still hunt ‘em just the same, though, and we ain’t had any crawl into town just yet.”

He stomped again, then paused. “Gonna be honest; your word don’t mean a mosquito droppin’ to me. But you say Meadowbrook’s worried…she done me right. I be hearin’ her out.”

The trap suddenly snapped open, and the cold air against my crushed leg made me gasp as I fell onto my side. I clutched my foreleg tightly against my breast, cradling the ugly bruise that was already forming where the trap had kept me pinned. It didn’t feel broken, thank goodness, but any feeling but pain was slow to return. I was thankful the trap had been blunt, without teeth; I might have lost my foreleg again, if that had been the case.

The stallion nodded, and shifted back. As soon as he released it, the trap clapped shut once more, and unleashed a shower of sparks as the metal shrieked. “Gonna have to scrape some of that rust off,” he mused. “Anyhow. Y'all be goin’ door-to-door?”

Dinky was at my side, and she helped inspect my leg, even though I shrunk away from her. It wasn’t her fault that probing at the bruised flesh hurt, but I wasn’t eager to endure it. “Yeah. Any tips?”

He shook his head. “Nothing general. But I do know my neighbor Hollowed out a long time back, and she attacked me herself. The house is empty now, so you can skip it. Anypony else, I got no clue; my business is with the gators.”

Dinky nodded, and stepped away so that I could try and stand. My leg was still numb, and shook like a leaf when I put weight on it, but I’d just have a worse limp than I already did. Hopefully that would fade with time, and if it didn’t, Meadowbrook could help.

“Thanks,” Dinky said. “I never did get your name, by the way.”

The stallion shrugged. “I don’t recall, myself. Think it had something to do with scales. Ain’t important these days anyhow. Watch your step going down the stairs.”

Dinky sighed, and nodded. I followed behind her, and she started climbing down. As she did, I turned back to the stallion. “Th-thank you…”

He waited until Dinky was out of sight, but he gave me a small smile. “Sorry y'all got trapped like that. I’ll be there, don’t worry.”

I nodded, and began clambering down the ladder. When I reached the bottom, Dinky was glancing at the house next to us. Just like the stallion had said, the house was dark, and we likely would have skipped it anyways. But it was good to be sure, and moved past it to the next one in short order.

This time, I was much more careful to look at the walkup. The resident of this house seemed to have relied on a spiral staircase over the decades, and had simply added steps as needed in a tight rotation. A "Missing Cat" notice greeted us at the bottom of the stairs, along with a list of tools that had been borrowed but never returned.

At the top of the stairs, the house itself looked decent enough. There wasn’t much external damage, aside from an errant branch that had collapsed into the roof, and seemed to have fallen through into the attic, where it was left in place. Still, the smoke from the chimney seemed steady, and there was a light on inside, so the branch didn’t seem to have disturbed them terribly much.

Dinky took the lead with a certain amount of confidence, gained from our progress so far. She rapped her hoof against the door a few times, before stepping back to wait. We could hear movement from inside, the sound of a creature—hopefully not a mindless Hollow, this time—shuffling around, but it didn’t seem to be approaching the door in any meaningful way. After a few moments, Dinky knocked again, and that finally seemed to get the occupant’s attention. Hooves clattered against wood, and the door swung open.

The mare on the other side of the door was a deeply Hollowed unicorn. She was hardly an old mare, but she was old enough to be my mother, at least as far as I could tell. She had crow’s feet and bags under her embered eyes that were visible even after Hollowing, a bad limp, and a loose wool coat to protect her against the cold and damp of the swamp. Her eyes scanned us for a while; she seemed to be looking for something about us, or perhaps she was trying to remember something.

Dinky took the initiative. “Miss? Mage Meadowbrook’s calling a town meeting-”

The motherly mare’s eyes lit up. “Lilypad! It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, sweetie!”

Whatever else Dinky was going to say stumbled and caught in her throat, as the mare stepped forward and wrapped her up in a hug meant for her long-lost family. As Dinky stammered in shock, the mare’s eyes turned to me. “And Stoneskipper! Look at you, in your beautiful golden armor! How nice of the both of you to drop by for a surprise visit!”

I blinked at her in surprise myself, before her living warmth embraced me tightly. Gentle pressure squeezed my leather militia gear against my sides, and the mare pressed her neck against my own. The fire in my belly flared, as I accepted the hug meant for another; the magic didn’t care who shared their warmth with me, so long as they were a fellow Equine. All too soon, she pulled away, smiling at us both with yellowed teeth. “Come in, come in, I’ve just put the kettle on for some tea!”

She turned and cantered back inside, and both Dinky and I were left, stunned, on her doorstep. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the question of my identity once more. 

Stoneskipper? Could that be my name? Sure, she mistook Dinky for somepony else, but she seemed to recognize us both so clearly. Maybe Dinky just looked like the pony she had in mind. But what about me? I didn’t have any real identifying marks left, or so I had thought…and she saw my armor as being those of a guard…

I sighed, and the spell was broken. No, the mare was delusional. There was a chance, however minute, that I was actually Stoneskipper. But to have left Baton Verte for Ponyville, only to come all the way back to meet with my estranged family…the chances of that were so unlikely as to be impossible.

“Come in already, you’re letting all the warmth out!” came a shout from inside the building. Gently, I shook Dinky’s shoulder, and that seemed to break her out of her own confusion, at least for the moment. She glanced at me, then back at the door.

“Follow my lead. I really don’t like this, but…It’s for the better.” Dinky said with a sigh, before she stepped inside. I followed her, and looked around.

The interior of the house was incredibly comforting. While there was clearly some water damage and general wear and tear, knitted cosies still managed to brighten up a few of the more dull surfaces, though I noticed they seemed to be kind of a mess so far as the actual stitching went. The patterns were a chaotic mess, often changing several times in the middle. A few looked like she’d had the presence of mind to recognize that she had messed up, but hadn’t cared enough to start over, or maybe she’d forgotten about that shortly afterward and continued on as she had before.

The furniture wasn’t in great condition; most of the chairs had permanent divots in the seats, and the leather of the chairs and couches was cracking and ancient. A sewing table near the back looked like one of the legs had broken. Sharp, splintered wood was left exposed, and dried blood stained the tips. A woodpipe stove near the back was crackling gently with a low fire contained within, though I noted there was not actually any kettle on the stove, or anywhere in the room at all.

The mare herself had taken a seat on an ancient armchair, and was busying herself with sewing a patch onto a pair of overalls. A small basket of clothing sat by her side, as well as some fabric scraps; it seemed that she was functional enough to repair clothing for the town, though I couldn’t guess at the last time any of those clothes had been worn by the ponies outside. Perhaps that was what she did for the town?

Dinky didn’t intrude too far into the living room, and stopped to stand awkwardly by the door. “Uh…M-Mom?”

The mare looked up, beaming happily. She didn’t need to stop her knitting as she looked away, though she did occasionally glance back down at the needles held in her magic. “Yes, dear? Oh, don’t stand so awkwardly! I know you’ve been gone for a while, but it hasn’t been that long since you both left for Baltimare! Sit down, both of you!”

Dinky winced uncomfortably again, before she shook her head. “We’re…not gonna be staying long, Mom. We just, uh…just stopped in to tell you that Mage Meadowbrook is holding a town meeting at her cottage, and she wants everypony to come. It’s, uh, it’s really important.”

“Oh, surely not as important as talking with my daughters!” The mare beamed. “How long has it been? I haven’t gotten any telegrams from you in a few weeks, hopefully they haven’t gotten too expensive. You know you can always just send me an old-fashioned letter if they have, I don’t mind it taking a little while to reach me.”

“I…it’s not…not that, I just…” Dinky stammered nervously. She seemed to want to say something, but she was stiff as a board, and the words wouldn’t come.

The mare glanced over to the stove. “Honestly, you look like you’ve seen a ghost! Oh, I should put the kettle on. Come, sit down and relax while I do that.”

She stood, and passed by us on the way to the old rusted iron stove. As she started to open cupboards in search of her teakettle, Dinky turned back to me, and hissed under her breath, “We should leave. Now. While she’s distracted.”

I blinked at her in confusion, but I did start slowly backing towards the door. “Wha-what’s g-going on…?”

“I’ll explain later. Outside. Come on!”

I was still confused, but we managed to turn and scamper outside without the mare noticing. Dinky quietly shut the door, and pulled me back down the staircase, firmly out of sight. I felt awful about the entire thing. Somehow this was worse than having to put down a fellow Hollowed pony. “W-we just l-left her by hers-self…”

“Yeah, well, we told her. Job done there. If she doesn’t show up, then that’s on her.”

There was a lump in my throat. “But…sh-she thinks we’re her d-daughters, she’ll th-think...they j-just ran out wh-when she wa-wasn’t looking-”

“And what can we do about that?” Dinky growled. “We don’t know her daughters, but we’re definitely not them. Maybe they’re dead, or Hollowed, we can’t know. And besides, you think in ten minutes she’s going to remember we were even there?”

“B-but…” I trailed off. What did I want? I wanted to help her, but how? Should we have tried to break her illusion, help her think straight? Or maybe played along, and pretended that we were her daughters? Both felt like awful things to do to a sweet old mare, but what other options did we have?

Dinky let me argue it out in my own head for a few moments, but her eyes kept flicking back to the stairs. I think she was watching to see if the mare followed us down. After that went on for a short while, Dinky squeezed her head with her hooves, like she was trying to push out a headache. “Look…look. You can go back up there and help her, if you really want. I’m not gonna stop you. And you can do that for every single Hollow left in this town, if you care so desperately. But I’m not going to play along with her delusions, she’s most certainly not my mom, and I’m starting to think coming along on this adventure was a mistake.”

I whimpered but nodded, and Dinky took a deep breath, before we both stood. “Come on. Let’s tell them and get this done. Those that’ll listen will listen, those that won’t…I don’t know. But that’s Meadowbrook’s problem, not ours. We’ll do our part, she can handle her own.”

Awful. I felt awful. This wasn’t like seeing a pony die, or be drained. This was seeing a mad pony that I wanted to help, that needed help, and knowing that even if I did…it wouldn’t even matter. This was our fate, all of us. I was going to start going crazy and losing myself soon, just like that mare, and it scared me down to my core. Being Undead was an awful fate, and if I didn't already, I began to truly hate the curse that had afflicted all of us so.

The encounter had affected Dinky deeply as well. She tried to hide it, or shove it out of her mind to stay distanced. But every few steps she’d mutter something under her breath, and she shook like a leaf as we plodded forward over the walkways and continued knocking on the doors of Baton Verte, so we could talk to the Hollowed Undead within.
> 12 - Dinky Doo
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The crowd hadn’t yet begun to assemble by the time Dinky and I got back. Snips and Snails had already returned at least, and everypony was standing outside the front door to Meadowbrook’s cottage. The door was open, and I could see Zecora moving around inside. Oddly, Snails was talking with Magnus and Meadowbrook, while Snips was standing off to the side by himself. He looked oddly agitated, and every few moments, he shot another nasty glare at Meadowbrook. We gave him a wide berth as we passed by, just to be safe, and listened to the end of Snails’ report.

“...and then he just kinda seemed to forget why we’d gone back to his house? I don’t really know, he seemed really confused, and then we were confused, and he didn’t recognize us. So we had to explain who we were and what we were doing there again, and eventually he kinda shook his head and said he’d swing by, but then he went back inside. So I dunno if he’ll be here?”

Meadowbrook sighed, and pressed her hoof against her forehead. “Alright. Thankya for talkin’ with ‘em, Snails, even if they don’t be all there anymore. You and your friend should get some sunlight.”

Snails nodded, and went back to Snips. As he did, me and Dinky stepped forward, with Dinky doing the talking. “Magnus? We talked to everyone we could, but we got kinda mixed results. I don’t know how many will actually show up. And you didn’t give us any sort of signal that the meeting’s starting.”

Magnus nodded. “Yeah, I realized that too, but apparently the central podium has a horn to call meetings. She’ll blow that, and they should remember to come, thanks to you four. You can come with, if you want; it’ll do the townsfolk good to see you standing next to us as a unified front.”

Dinky nodded, but then looked back towards the town. “That’s…not all. A lot of the townsponies are pretty bad off, or already Hollowed. Maybe half the ponies we actually tried to talk to were completely Hollowed out, and the other half are all of a…questionable mental state.”

“Half?!” Mage Meadowbrook made a strangled sort of noise as Dinky gave her report, and she sat down heavily in a stunned silence.

Dinky cringed back, nut nodded. “I’m…I’m sorry, I know they were your fellow townsponies-”

Meadowbrook shook her head, and stared down at the dead peat under her hooves. “They weren’t just townsponies, filly. They be my neighbors, my friends, my family. A thousand years of descendants spread across Equessria, and we called them back. I called them back. Jus’ to this?” She squeezed her eyes shut, but there were already tears escaping. “There…there would be many, I knew that. Was prepared for loss. But half the town…”

And we had killed them, even temporarily. Dinky and I were the ones who disturbed the Hollows within their homes. We were the ones who brought down Meadowbrook’s descendants and friends by hoof and by blade. How many had we actually cut down, in our little door-to-door campaign? How many ponies was half of half of the town, even generously assuming the other half had been the duty of Snips and Snails in the bayou below?

Even Magnus looked a little sick. We’d gone out there on his orders, after all. His eyes flicked towards the town, then he let out a deep breath. “Dinky, Holly, did you put them down for the moment?”

I nodded, and Dinky added, “We didn’t leave any wanderers, so nopony else should get hurt. But they’re going to wake up, and some of them probably soon.”

“Rutting Tartarus…” Magnus muttered to himself, as he shifted his shield into his off-hoof. “Alright. When you were out there, did you see any particularly strong buildings? Large, no windows, anything like a warehouse? We need something we can easily reinforce to contain them, at least until after we leave.”

That got Meadowbrook’s attention. “You ain’t be stuffin’ my family into a warehouse to rot, Magnus! They be deservin’ more than that!” Her own shouting seemed to grab the attention of Snips and Snails, who were still sitting nearby.

“Like what?!” Magnus barked, turning on his old friend. “Meadowbrook, I know you mean the best, but I’m really asking you, what can you do to help them? We’re not bringing them with us; the caravan’s already going to be bloated, assuming they stay here. We might as well walk them straight into the heart of the Everchaos, each with a dinner bell of their own to ring, singing ‘come drain us dry!’”

Meadowbrook was shocked, and she stumbled backwards as Magnus shouted at her. Magnus froze as he watched her tumble onto her back, as if he’d suddenly realized he had shouted at her. But he was silent, as Meadowbrook mumbled quietly to herself, “They be deservin’ better...”

With a long sigh, Magnus closed his eyes, and sat down heavily on the dead peat at her side. “Meadowbrook. I want to side with you, I really do. I’ve lost more soldiers and friends than I can count to this rutting Curse. But I have to draw the line somewhere. They’re Hollows, and once they get that bad, containment is the only thing we can do-”

“Are you gonna contain us too?” The snarl came from behind us, and both Dinky and I turned to face Snips, who was shaking in rage behind us. Rage and something more; he was nearly foaming at the mouth, and the embers of his eyes darted wildly, all around us. Snails was by his side, and seemed to be trying to calm his friend down, but the taller of the two colts was clearly confused and terrified.

Magnus’ eyes narrowed. “Snips, what do you mean by that?”

“Don’t play ruttin’ coy! You were nearby earlier, when she was telling us how short our time was! When we go Hollow, are you gonna lock us up with them? Or back in Ponyville, are we going to get our own little cell to go insane in? How long are you gonna string us along in the name of this ‘cure,’ huh?!” Snips shook Snails off entirely, and the taller colt stumbled away in shock.

“I…I didn't mean to string anypony along…” Meadowbrook was still laid out on the ground where she had fallen, and Magnus moved directly in between them. This turned out to be a good move.

“Liar!” howled Snips, and he charged forward right between me and Dinky. He shoved us aside as he galloped straight towards Magnus and Meadowbrook, and the both of us ended up on our sides in shock. Snips kept charging forward, and Magnus held up his shield defensively, only for the wild colt to slam right into the bronze surface as if he hadn’t even seen it.

A great clang rang through the clearing as Magnus forced Snips back. Dinky was on her hooves long before I was, and her horn ignited in golden sorcery. Sleeves of levitation wrapped around Snip’s legs, and she held him still as he writhed and frothed. Even now, he still tried to claw his way towards Meadowbrook, still tried to attack her, and he didn’t seem to care about the ichor spattered across Magnus’ shield or his own broken muzzle.

“Snips! What in Tartarus is wrong with you? Stop this!” Dinky’s cry was tinged with tears as she held her old friend still, and Magnus advanced on his shaking form. Snails was behind me, mumbling something that sounded similar, but there was no way that Snips could hear him.

Magnus stood above Snips, and shook his head. “He’s gone Hollow. And if he hasn’t, then he will soon. You got your wish, numbskull.” With shocking brutality, Magnus slammed the edge of his shield down on Snip’s neck, above the collar of the armor, and we all flinched as the colt went still with a wet crack.

Dinky’s sorcery fizzled out as she gaped like a fish, but Snips’ legs simply flopped to the ground, lifeless. “Wha- you…you didn’t have to-”

“I did have to, Archmagus.” Magnus snarled and slid his shield back over his wings, and his eyes snapped to me, then Snails behind me. “How about you two? Any urge to attack helpless old Pyromancers?”

We were still in shock, but I shook my head, and shrunk back behind Dinky. I heard Snails whimper behind me, and Magnus seemed to take that as an answer. “Fine. This works out better anyways. Right, Meadowbrook?”

The older mare trembled as she stood, but nodded. “I…I’ll get Zecora, and I be telling her. Have a barrel spare we can use to hold him.”

“Good.” Magnus breathed out through his nose. “Watch over the colt until we get back. Snails!”

The young colt shook as he approached, and seemed unable to take his eyes off his former friend. Magnus looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “You and me, we’re going to go check buildings for someplace secure to store Hollows. Then we’ll come back for your friend. Is that going to be an issue?”

Snails hesitantly shook his head and whimpered, “N-no s-sir…”

Magnus turned to face me and Dinky. “Holly. Dinky. Before you all started reporting in, Meadowbrook was telling me that she was running low on firewood. She has an axe you can use, go chop some of those trees we marked earlier. She’ll tell you when to stop.”

We both nodded, and Meadowbrook’s hooves began to glow with light blue magic. A simple woodsmare’s axe floated out of her front door. It passed a curious Zecora on the way, who looked down at Snips and shook her head. “I was worried about that colt on the way here, and I’m sorry to say this was one fear…”

Dinky took the axe in her own golden magic, and we left as Zecora began to help Meadowbrook pull Snip’s corpse into the cottage. We couldn’t shake the distinct feeling that we were being ordered to do this as punishment, and maybe we deserved it.

*	*	*

Neither of us said a word until Baton Verte was long lost in the fog of the bayou. Once more, we trotted from tree to tree, following the orange flags we had planted…days ago? It felt like days had passed, but without a sense of the passage of time, I had no idea how long it had been since then. I wasn’t even sure how long it had been since we had first left Ponyville.

Dinky broke the silence first, and her voice was shaking. “I want to go home.”

I turned to face her, and was struck by how different she was from the teenaged filly I had first met in Ponyville. While she was still the same height, her eyes were deeply sunken, and her fur was beginning to fade. When had this started? I had never really noticed until now, but how long had it been since Dinky had started to break down, out here? Had it been the run through the Firebreak? Apple Bloom’s attack? Or was it just a slow development from everything we’d seen and done here in the village?

“I…I do t-too,” I said. My voice was nearly a whisper, but Dinky heard me, and shook her head.

“No, not just- Not just in general. I’m not just homesick. This is…I hate it out here.” Dinky glared out into the swamp, as we sloshed through the wet muck. “It’s been…nothing but endless rutting fighting, and Hollows, and terrible things. Every moment since we left Ponyville has been a mistake. I thought…”

Dinky screwed up her muzzle, and we both paused under the branches of a dead willow. “I’ve been sitting and training for so long in Ponyville. Talking to everypony I can about Sorcery, learning about everything I can, about the world outside. I thought…I thought…” She cut herself off. “It’s stupid. You’re gonna laugh.”

I shook my head. “W-won’t laugh. I p...promise.”

Dinky shook her head, then slowly collapsed onto her side under the willow tree. The axe fell to the ground beside her, and she huffed through her nose before she kicked it away. I sat beside her, and gave her time to collect her thoughts while I focused on my breathing. Dinky needed that comfort, right now.

“I thought...” she began, hesitantly, “I thought I was gonna go out, into the world…and all that I learned, I was gonna use it. I was going to help ponies outside, I was gonna fight monsters. Find things long lost, solve ancient puzzles, maybe even cure the curse. I was gonna be a hero, but…I sure don’t feel like a hero. I feel like I’ve just made a mess of things with everything I do. Everything I learned turns to gum in my head when we get attacked; whether it’s spells or enchantments or melee combat. And then the fight is over, and maybe we shouldn’t have been fighting at all in the first place.”

I placed a cold hoof on her shoulder, and she shivered through her cloak. “I…f-freeze up, t-too. It hap-happens to eve-everypony, n-not just y-you-”

“We shouldn’t be freezing up at all!” Dinky said with a whine. “Magnus back there, he didn’t freeze up! Snips just shoved us aside like we weren’t even worth his time, and then Magnus hit him, and it was all over!”

I tilted my head. “D-do you w-want to be m-more…like M-Magnus?”

“Yes!” Dinky said with a cry, then caught herself. “But, no, but…maybe, I don’t know! He’s a trained killer, and I don’t want to be that, but…that’s how you survive out here now. I thought it was going to be nice and clean, we were going to fight monsters! But these ponies have names, all of them…or at least, they had names…”

I rubbed her shoulder comfortingly, but Dinky brushed off my hoof with her own. “I…Holly, I…” She clenched her eyes shut. “Never tell anypony I told you about this, okay? Never. I don’t want to sound like some stupid whiny teenager. I’ve been training for so long, I thought I was better than that…”

I nodded, and Dinky swallowed, as she ran her hoof through the dead grass in front of her. “I...” she started hesitantly. “I…I miss my mom.”

I’d never seen Dinky like this. She always wore a mask, that of the professional Archmage of Ponyville, and ponies respected her because of that mask. She knew Zecora and Magnus professionally, and she acted like an adult three times her age. But all of that was gone now, and all that was left, under that mask, was a scared little filly.

“My mom, she’d…she always knew what to do. She wasn’t the smartest, or the fastest, or the most clever, or anything special. She was a pegasus, not a unicorn, like me, and couldn’t teach me magic. But she always tried, and she always helped, no matter what. She loved me, and she- she was the best mother in Equestria, even by herself.”

Dinky looked up, and stared off into the bayou as she spoke. “Her name was D-Ditzy Doo. There’s couriers now, there’s always been couriers, but she was a mailpony long before…all of this. She flew around, delivering messages across town, or to other nearby cities, but she always came back home.”

“One day, she just…didn’t.” Dinky laid her head on the ground, and continued in a quiet whisper. “That was the same day Cloudsdale fell; she didn’t tell me where she was going that day, but I bet she was headed there, and got caught up in all of that. And then Princess Twilight left too, and Archmagus Starlight took over my lessons from her, but then she left too…

“I miss all of them,” Dinky said, with a whimper. “Eventually, all of them stopped coming back. Starlight too, though she stuck around the longest. She was proud of me too, but she never came back, and some-” Dinky choked up as she let out a sob, and I laid my foreleg over her back supportively. “S-somehow I th-thought…I th-thought I’d g-go out and f-find them, and bring them b-back…Starlight, Twilight, my m-m-mom-”

I leaned closer, and held Dinky tightly in a hug as she sobbed into the ground. I wished I could do more, but all I could do was hold her close, and breathe. And maybe that’s what Dinky Doo needed, right there, right at that moment. A friend, somepony she could trust. Somepony she could let herself cry next to.

“D-don’t go,” whimpered Dinky, as she shook under me. “D-don’t want an-anypony to go and l-leave me, n-not anym-more…they-they’re going to b-but I d-don’t want them to g-go because they n-never come b-back…”

“I’m n-not g-going anyw-where,” I promised her. Dinky needed that; deserved that. And it was the least I could do for my friend, besides to bring her back to Ponyville. And I promised myself, more than anything else, that I’d get the young mare back home safely.

*	*	*

Swinging an axe was hard, and weird, considering I’d had so little experience with using my hooves to hold weapons at all. Of the two I’d used before, it was actually much closer to Zecora’s machete, with all the weight focused at the end of the tool, but with much less reach. It was also significantly heavier; I felt like my own body served as a counterweight when I swung it properly, and I had to be careful not to lose my balance every time I slammed the axe blade into the dead bark of a tree.

Dinky watched from nearby, where she sat in the sunlight between the branches of the trees above. “We probably should have been given two axes.”

“Pr-probably,” I agreed. “This…is h-hard.”

Dinky nodded. “We should talk, that’ll take our minds off it.” She looked around for a moment, before her eyes settled back on me. “You, um, you never told me where you came from. You must have seen lots of things before coming to Ponyville.”

I swung the axe into the tree, then paused to shake my head. “W-woke up n-near P-Ponyv-ville. In a…b-building, that had f-fallen into a...r-river.”

“Huh.” Dinky shook her head. “Wait, you woke up? As in, you don’t remember how you got there?”

I started chopping again, and spoke between swings as I caught my breath. “Y-yeah. There’s j-just fl-flashes. I r-remember words, and their m-meanings. V-vague things ab-about towns, and...l-life before. B-but nothing ab-about myself. I had…had a s-sword through m-me, I ha-had to p-pull it out…it w-was st-stabbed through, int-into the w-wall.”

“So…whoever you were, whatever you were doing, you were attacked. And really viciously too, if they didn’t retrieve their sword after. They wanted you…pretty dead, or at least immobilized,” Dinky mused, out loud. “Was there anypony else nearby? Or any corpses, even skeletons?”

“T-two Hollows,” I grunted as I swung the axe again. “One…on the f-floor, injured, an-and I t-took her arm-armor. The oth-other was on the r-road, nearby…at-attacked me a b-bunch of times. Th-that’s how I l-learned I c-couldn’t die. B-both were…s-soldiers.”

“Damn, that’s…that’s rough,” Dinky said, with a sigh. “So either you were a soldier and somepony took your armor…? Or you were being chased by the soldiers, though I don’t know why they would do that. Or what caused all of you to Hollow out, but you didn’t…or maybe you did, and somehow got your sanity back?”

“C-can that hap-happen?” I paused mid-swing to look at her, but Dinky shook her head.

“If it could, you’d be the first. As Zecora would say, ‘That which is lost can never truly be returned,’ or...something to that effect. But...you know, in rhyme.” Dinky laughed weakly before she bit her lip. “Maybe…it’s not a nice thought, but maybe something smashed your head when they killed you? And that screwed up your memory, because you had to regenerate your head?”

I winced. I hoped that wasn’t it, but…at least if it was, I was glad I didn’t remember it. That sounded painful.

Dinky sighed, then shrugged. “Remember anything else? I mean, we can probably go out when we get back to look for clues in person, but…if we can work it out before that, then that’s good too.”

“W-was a c-cloud building…a b-bookstore. Wh-which makes s-sense…I’m a p-pegas-sus too, j-just…like-”

“Don’t.” Dinky cut me off. “Don’t compare yourself to her.”

I paused, and left the axe lodged in the tree as I looked back at Dinky. She saw my curious gaze, and lowered her head.

“I’m sorry. She…” Dinky looked back in the direction of Baton Verte. “That…that old mare, back in town, she…that was bad enough. She’s not my mom, and neither are you, not even with wings.” Dinky closed her eyes. “I’ve seen…a lot of Hollowed pegasi mares. A lot of them could have been her, and neither I nor them could have ever known. I’m not going to see her again, not like she was…and I wouldn’t want to see her Hollowed out, anyway. I don’t…I don’t want…to be the one who has to…”

Dinky choked up again, and I forced myself to start working at the tree once more while she composed herself. I could’ve hugged her, but…I got the distinct sense that, right now, that would have done more harm than good.

After a few minutes, Dinky calmed down a little, and laid her head on the ground. Though she did give me one last glance, and shook her head. “You’re too…too short, anyways, and too young. You’re not Mom. Thank…thank Celestia.”

A moment later, the tree trunk made a cracking noise as I swung the axe into it, and we both jumped. “Uhh…t-timber?” I grunted, in confusion. Dinky scrambled to her hooves, and moved around behind me as I yanked the axe free. The tree trunk cracked and groaned, as if in pain, and then the entire mass of the tree, branches and all, began to tip to the side. It collapsed towards the cut, away from us both, and then the branches splashed into the water of a nearby pond.

“Huh,” Dinky said, as we both blinked at the felled tree, “that…didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Though I guess it’s not firewood yet? It’s still got branches and everything.”

I nodded, working my shoulder as I stepped towards the tree. “I g-guess…I’ll n-need to st-strip those off…then ch-chop it down into sm-smaller logs?”

“That makes sense,” Dinky agreed. “The branches probably work as kindling, and we can carry most of this in bundles back to town in a few trips. There’s some vines nearby that might still work as rope, to hold them together.” She paused, and then chuckled quietly. “Huh. Woodcutting is harder work than I thought.”

I shrugged, and started to walk along the fallen trunk of the tree, while Dinky set off in search of vines still flexible enough for our needs.

*	*	*

“So…has anypony…actually told you about Cloudsdale? Or do you remember it, at all?”

I had been working to chop the branches off of the main trunk for a little while now, and Dinky had long since returned with vines, like she said she would. As I stripped the branches off, she grabbed them in her magic and broke them into smaller and smaller segments, before tying them into tight bundles with the vines. Conversation had been light as we both worked out how best to do our end of the job, but we were nearly done by now. I swung the axe down into the wood, but didn’t pull it back out just yet. Instead, I leaned on the handle of the axe to rest, as I scraped my memory for any clues.

Cloudsdale...I knew the name. I had vague flashes of a great city, made of clouds and fog and brick…an entire city, made of the same materials that the bookstore had been. It had been filled with ponies, so many that their faces, colors, and cutie marks all blurred. As I tried to look closer, the memories blurred and warped, as if I was peering through the clouds themselves, and then…eventually, I was left with only my memories of those faded memories, and I could barely see the originals at all, like blinking at an afterimage.

I sighed, before I yanked the axe back out of the tree, and returned to my labor. This branch was nearly free. “I…r-remember C-Cloudsd-dale…s-sort of. Wha-what happened t-to it…?”

Dinky paused, to bite her lip. “We’re pretty sure that the demons attacked it. Cloudsdale was basically right above the Everfree, and it would make sense if it was the first settlement to be attacked, but they did…something to the city, or damaged something important at the weather factory. But the first hint that anypony knew that anything was wrong was this awful shockwave.”

Dinky stared into the distance, and her eyes clouded as they focused on the past. “Everypony felt it. The air itself seemed to shake, and every window in our house shattered at once. My ears popped as I ran out the door to look, and there was this huge rainbow shockwave over the Everfree. Like Rainbow Dash did a sonic rainboom, but a hundred times bigger, and it was fading. The shockwave blew away all of the loose clouds in the sky, and Cloudsdale…”

She paused, and trembled as she spoke quietly. “It just…started to fall out of the sky.”

After a moment, she swallowed, and continued. “All of it. Cloudsdale was pretty spread out, like a giant fluffy stormcloud, but the entire thing sunk, like a ship sinks into the sea. The edge just barely missed Canterlot, and landed upstream of Ponyville, near the dam. The ground shook again when it hit, and there was this awful earthquake, and then everypony was screaming that the dragons were attacking…”

“It was all a blur after that, until Twilight, Starlight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie started to organize everypony. We fought off a bunch of demons in the first wave, and then the soldiers from Canterlot took over and helped us fight the fires. We had one fight that went really bad a couple days later, and I think…” Dinky swallowed. “I think…that’s when I died, for the first time? I don’t remember exactly what happened, but there was fighting…and then I remembered waking up in an alley, all by myself. I was covered in blood, but I thought I’d just passed out from exhaustion, because I hadn’t gotten a chance to sleep since Cloudsdale fell. I didn’t realize until later, when other ponies that had been killed started to get back up, too...”

The head of my axe chopped through the branch, and between the way I stumbled and the sound, that seemed to knock her out of her memories. I continued with the next branch as she shook herself, and resumed with her own work as she talked.

“Um, anyway...from what I hear, the main bulk of Cloudsdale all ended up in and around the reservoir, or the surrounding valleys, with the weather factory itself floating on the surface. And the weather factory’s still sort of active, which is a problem all on its own. That’s where all this fog comes from, you see.”

Dinky tilted her head at the mist that hung over the bayou. “The machines kept running, but the magic still in them got twisted and corrupted, and this fog is still pouring out of the ruin. As far as we can tell, the fog is just enchanted fog, but we’re not sure what it’s enchanted with. The pegasi say it’s harder to move and manipulate, and it seems to be repelled by settlements, which is why Ponyville and Baton Verte both seem so much more clear. But it’s covering the entire continent, according to the couriers and travelers, and we have no idea how to even shut it off.”

This branch broke much sooner, and as I moved on to the last one, I asked, “Are th-the machines d-damaged…somehow?”

“That’s the thing, we can’t even get inside to check.” Dinky’s eyes narrowed in frustration. “Apparently there’s this stupid...cult or something, we’re not even sure. Whenever a pony disturbs the ruins, or even gets close, the skeletons of the dead come back to life and attack them. All the pegasi that died when Cloudsdale fell…they’re still defending it to this day, or the cult’s using them to defend it. Maud got close once, scouting for minerals up by the reservoir, and apparently she saw a bunch of ponies in cloaks hanging around. The skeletons completely ignored them, even seemed to protect them, so we’re pretty sure they’re connected.”

Dinky shook her head in frustration. “Awful, disrespectful jerks. All the dead pegasi up there…and they’re animating them as cannon fodder. That’s one of the places I wanted to go most, when I started adventuring, to clear them out and put the dead to rest. But Ponyville’s so focused on the demons and Applejack’s fight against the Hollows inside the wall, that I never got the chance, plus they seem to be staying up by the ruins and not pestering anypony.” Dinky sniffed. “But they’re still jerks. Weird cult jerks.”

I could hardly disagree; it sounded as though I'd narrowly avoided running afoul of them myself, during my journey to Ponyville. My axe chopped through the last branch of the log, and I set it aside to catch my breath. "Tha-that's the l-last one...n-now to st-start br-breaking up th-the trunk into seg-segments?"

Dinky nodded, and her horn came alight as she helped reposition the trunk so it laid back across the stump. "I'll hold it in place, just make marks every leg-length or so first. We can chop them into pieces properly after we measure them. They should be short enough to tie together in bundles, and haul back."

The axe worked well for this, even though my scores in the trunk were sloppy. I wasn't too worried; it all burned the same, in the end. I focused on that until the tree trunk was roughly sectioned off, and it was only before I began cutting the segments properly that I asked my next question. "S-so…the sk-skeletons aren't…Hollows?"

“Not as near as we can tell?” Dinky shrugged, and her face was an expression of genuine confusion. “Ponies started getting cursed and coming back from the dead pretty soon after that, but there definitely seems to have been a cutoff point of sorts. Anypony that died on the same day that Cloudsdale fell stayed dead, but anypony that died that night or afterwards got cursed. Then…the sun stopped, and days didn’t really matter any more.

“The skeletons are kind of in a weird half-state…” Dinky continued to mutter, mostly to herself. “They’re definitely not Hollows. Starlight captured a couple, early on, and before they just stopped animating entirely, she said that they seemed to be controlled by something else. I think she described them as puppets? There was a soul animating them, but it wasn’t their soul, and it was from somewhere else, somehow?” Dinky shook her head. “Starlight was always good with new or weird magic types, but she stayed away from necromancy, so she had basically no experience with it aside from being able to identify it.”

Conversation faded once more, as Dinky started mostly speculating and theorizing to herself. It didn’t seem totally consistent any more, and she was making greater and greater leaps in logic. Eventually, I stopped being able to follow her thinking at all, and stayed quiet while I worked, and Dinky muttered to herself absent-mindedly.

*	*	*

"Y-you keep m-mentioning a St-Starlight…I r-recognize th-that name? B-but I d-don't rem-remember why…?"

It took a lot of time, and a lot of work, to reduce the tree down to manageable logs. Dinky had tied them together into eight bundles of half a dozen logs each, and then strapped two bundles across both of our backs like saddlebags. Between that load and the bundles of branches, we were just on the cusp of being overloaded, but we managed to begin our slow slog back to Baton Verte. Conversation had naturally resumed as we walked.

“Starlight?” Dinky asked, eyes raised in curiosity as she clambered over a fallen log. “I wouldn’t be surprised, she’s sorta famous. Sorta. She kept to herself, mostly, but…”

Dinky shook her head. “Maybe I should start from the beginning…do you remember Princess Twilight Sparkle?”

That was a name I remembered shockingly well. I paused on a stable bit of shoreline, closed my eyes, and clearly saw a purple alicorn. Much shorter than my memories of Princess Celestia, but about a hoof taller than myself, and smiling. I remembered she was important, and a hero, and one of the princesses…but mostly I just remembered her appearance. Clearly, I had seen her for myself at some point, long before I had reawoken.

I nodded emphatically, and Dinky grinned as we resumed walking. “Okay, good! That’s something. So, okay, Princess Twilight lived in- you remember that big crystal tree on the edge of Ponyville? Or…actually, maybe you avoided it, Applejack’s headquarters are right at the base…”

“I s-saw it…” In the distance, a cricket chirped. For just a moment, the swamp seemed alive again, before we both realized it would be best to avoid the source of the sound. We turned and crossed a shallow bit of bayou to skip some flags.

Dinky nodded again, as soon as we were out of earshot. “Okay, good! So, that’s Princess Twilight’s castle, and she’s lived there since I was little, when she became a Princess. But she always let me use her library when I was growing up, so I got to spend a lot of time there with her and Spike-”

“Sp-Spike?” I didn’t mean to keep interrupting, but nopony had been able to tell me this much new information since Rockhoof, and most of what he remembered was far too general to be useful. Or it was about weapons and armor, and that just wasn’t really something I needed to know much about.

Dinky’s face fell. “Uh…yeah. Spike, he’s...another old friend, but he’s been missing for a really long time. I think he went with Ember…I think. He and Princess Twilight fought Celestia so hard on the whole Dragon War thing…”

She shook her head. “Anyway, uh, getting ahead of myself. So, I was already hanging around the library a lot, and our teacher, Cheerilee, couldn't really teach us magic, so Princess Twilight offered tutoring lessons for unicorns, for free, at her castle. Eventually she took me on as her apprentice, after Sweetie Belle left to pursue her singing career, and I was still her apprentice when Cloudsdale fell.”

I nodded, and we pushed through a patch of grass twice our height..

“And she always had this friend, Starlight Glimmer, who became Archmagus of Ponyville at some point…I think because legally Twilight couldn’t be both a Princess and an Archmagus within the same county? I forget the reason why, or who was the previous Archmage. But it was mostly in name, because everypony went to Twilight for all the reasons one would go to an Archmage, and Starlight ended up running a lot of the School of Friendship’s day-to-day stuff.”

Dinky shook her head and furrowed her brow as new thoughts occurred to her. “Everything about that really confused me. Ponyville’s weird about stuff like that. You know, our mayor was basically the town’s mayor for life? She got a cutie mark in being mayor, and everypony loved how well she did her job that nopony wanted to run against her, even though legally she was supposed to quit at some point.”

I coughed, and that seemed to put her back on track.

“Uh, right, sorry. So...Cloudsdale fell, and there were soldiers everywhere, and everypony was always running around and it was basically…well...chaos. Twilight called me, Starlight, and the rest of the town together, and told us that she was going to Canterlot because Celestia needed her, and that they were going to try and fix everything. She asked Starlight to take over as my tutor, shut down the school because Ponyville was too dangerous for the students from other countries, and then left.” Dinky screwed up her muzzle. “She forgot to leave the castle unlocked though, which really sucked, because it was super safe in there. Demons couldn’t get in at all, but now we couldn’t either. Both Starlight and Trixie were really annoyed about that, and they basically had to live out of the School of Friendship, because they’d been living in the castle before.

“Starlight was a really good teacher, even if the actual training times were kind of random. She had a really different style to Twilight, who taught me from books and scrolls and repetition. Starlight called herself a ‘Hedge Mage,’ and had learned magic by herself, so she was much more focused on feeling your way through magic and trying what felt like it would work, as opposed to framework and hypothesis. Twilight regularly told her what she did with magic was impossible, but Starlight would figure out ways to do it-”

"There you are! Took long enough." The main ramp of Baton Verte emerged from the fog before us, and Commander Magnus with it. He seemed to have been waiting for us in the flat clearing just before Baton Verte proper, where the town connected with the road. Dozens of Hollows were milling around as well, and seemed to be busy hauling cargo from the town into wagons made of mouldering wood and threadbare cloth. 

Snails was present as well, at Magnus' side, but he seemed much more focused on the leather hoofball helmet cradled in his hooves. After a moment's thought, I realized why; Snails was wearing one himself. They must have been part of the colt’s personal militia armor. Applejack really had made the armor out of whatever was on hoof, it seemed.

"Sorry we took so long, Magnus." Dinky looked around the clearing, then back at him. "Did we, ah, miss anything?"

"Only the town meeting," Magnus said, with a hint of frustration in his voice. He moved closer, and Dinky pulled both of our loads from our backs. Magnus raised his eyebrow as his eyes skimmed the firewood, probably checking it over in case it had gotten too waterlogged on the way here. "Is this all? Not much of a tree."

"It's only about half, we're doing two trips. How'd the meeting go? What's the verdict?"

"Meadowbrook talked most of them into it…for better or worse. We've got a caravan of twenty-something wagons loading up, as you can see, and we're going to have to change our overland route to follow the highway to accommodate them. Up the side of the valley, so lots of switchbacks, and then a bit further south. We'll still link back up with the east end of the firebreak; I can show you on the maps…"

I tuned them both out a bit as I slowly approached Snails. The colt barely noticed me until I was sitting right in front of him, and it was only then that he looked up. He blinked a bit, and I could see him mouthing something...trying to remember my name, maybe?

I think I surprised him when I leaned forwards and embraced him in a gentle hug. He stiffened slightly, and nearly let the hoofball helmet slip from his hooves into the mud, but he fumbled and managed to hold on tight. Snail's fire wasn't terribly bright, but it was still burning persistently. I didn't have much practice doing this, but I slowly cradled my fire, and pushed its warmth out into him.

Snails sighed contentedly, and seemed a bit more relaxed when I released my hug, though he was reluctant to let me go. When we did separate, he looked down at the helmet in his hooves, before he securely clipped it to his belt. "Th-thank ya, miss. I…you're really nice."

I nodded, and we both got to our hooves and started listening to the conversation between Dinky and Magnus once again. Magnus, for his part, gave me a nod. "'Course, before all that was decided, we had to sort out the Hollows. Started with his friend there; Zecora and Meadowbrook put him into a barrel, and we rolled 'im down to that warehouse along the highway."

"A…barrel?" Dinky said in confusion, and both Magnus and Snails nodded.

Magnus pointed back the way we'd come, towards Ponyville. "Trick we developed pretty early on, for the sake of containment. Lots of empty barrels around, without any food to fill them, and most Hollows can't get up enough strength to smash their way out. Works for wounded undead soldiers too; we'll be carrying Autumn back to Ponyville the same way, as soon as I've finished supervising the wagons here."

Dinky winced. "That's awful! What if he wakes up, stuck inside a dark, cramped barrel, like cargo?"

"He won't." Magnus spoke with surety in his voice. "Zecora and Meadowbrook have made sure of that. We just have to get him to Ponyville, and then we can take care of him there."

With a shiver, but a nod, Dinky turned back to me. "If something kills me on the way back, don't sign me up for the barrel. I think I'd prefer to be left behind…" She shook herself like she was shaking water off, then started trotting. "Come on Holly, let's get the rest of the logs. You coming with, Snails? We’ll bring them back faster with three sets of hooves."

The colt nodded, perhaps just a little more lively than he had been moments before, and the three of us set off back into the swamp together.
> 13 - Sunlight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

During the time we’d spent here in Baton Verte, we’d always kept coming back to the hill behind Meadowlark’s cottage. It was nearby, it was relatively private, and above all, it was comforting. At the top of this hill, as one looked out over the bayou treetops towards the eastern horizon, and the sparkling ocean that was just barely visible...one could almost forget about the curse, and about everything we’d had to do to get here.

I relished in that feeling, as I sat down atop the cliff. I had only a short while before the caravan set off; I had just come from helping Magnus load up a few wagons, and now only Zecora and Meadowbrook’s wagon remained. That one, they wanted to load themselves. They had sent Dinky, Snails, and myself away while they did so, to allow us to relax before we began our journey back to Ponyville, and Canterlot beyond.

It was an odd idea. I had vague memories of Canterlot, and remembered it was the capital of our once-great nation. But I had only brief glimpses of being there; maybe I had been, once or twice, a very long time ago.  But those memories weren’t much more than faint glimmers.

What would the country look like now, from atop those marble towers? Would I see only fog and mountain peaks? Or would I see the nation laid bare before me, like Magnus’ map?

As my mind wandered, I focused more on my breathing. Ever since Dinky’s impromptu lesson, I’d been practicing as often as I could, especially whenever I was allowed a moment of rest. I still couldn’t manage to make the motion automatic, but it was becoming gradually easier to draw breath over time. My lungs felt healthier, aside from the occasional coughing fit. Eventually, my focus shifted on the sun, while I worked to inhale and exhale.

How hot must the great red flame be burning, I wondered, for me to feel its warmth from such a great distance? Even from so far away, it dwarfed my own soul, and I think that may be why it enthralled me so. Was the sun Princess Celestia’s own Pyromancy flame? Some deep, hungry part of my being envied that fire, and envied the goddess who wielded it.

My wingtips twitched in the sunlight. They were neglected, and had atrophied, from time and decay. I envied Commander Magnus, and how easily he took to the sky. He could ascend into the heavens and view Equestria from above whenever he chose. I should have practiced with them, like he said, but how could I flex limbs I could barely feel?

I closed my eyes, and as I breathed, I focused on the muscles of my back. When I had first awoken in the bookstore, I had needed to reach out with my senses, and I had plucked at strings connecting my puppet-body together without the knowledge of where they connected. I learned by pulling at the threads connecting my being together, and I had become aware of my neck, my legs, my tail.

But in the time between, I had learned of my fire. I knew the meager breadth of my soul; and the power that fire held to myself and to others. Like I had with Snails, I embraced my own fire, and clutched it tightly. When it threatened to escape my grasp, when it sought escape, I pushed it out through my limbs. I spread my own fire out through my body, and I felt the warmth spread through my limbs. My legs, my hooves, my belly, my tail, and finally, my wings.

Something shifted, like a string had been cut, or a muscle that had been held taut had finally been released. The bones of my shoulders spasmed, and I let out a gasp as the weight of mouldering fur and feathers and hollow bones sloughed off my back. My wings extended as they flopped limply to my sides, and my ragged wingtips touched the dead grass around my hooves.

I kept my eyes closed, however. This was progress, but I could feel how delicate it was. This process was not an easy one, and I felt how I needed to understand the connection between myself and my wings before the sensation was lost.

I pulled at the muscles of my shoulders, and the wings beyond, and I felt my wingtips. As I breathed, I drew them taut, and pulled at those taut muscles. My wings trembled and shook at my sides, unmoving, but slowly, inexorably, they began to rise.

It was an impossible effort. It was as though I were trying to lift a mountain onto my back. My legs shook, and my breath caught in my chest as I wheezed. Every part of my body strained, just to raise my wings. It felt like it took an eternity. But my wings rose.

I didn’t have the strength to keep them spread, and I managed to close them, just slightly. Instead of lifting them when they were fully extended, I was only lifting them at half-breadth, like one would do if they were trying to shield somepony from the sun or rain. It took less effort, and with my wings in such a position, I found I had the strength to bring them level with my back...and higher.

My wings continued to rise upwards, as the joints in my shoulders swiveled to keep them steady. They trembled wildly as I pushed the muscles as far as I was able, to try and push the limits of my bones and the fire within as far as they could go. I had to see. I had to know how much strength I truly had. But I couldn’t push them all the way up; my muscles began to fail me, and my whole body trembled as my breath caught in my throat once more. I was losing control. Soon, I would lose feeling in my wings once more.

My eyes snapped open, and I saw Celestia’s sun, gloriously incandescent, once more. I was bathed in Sunlight, like I always was when I sat atop this hill, and the sun seemed to give me life. I felt new energy soak my fur and seep through my bones, and my wings trembled as I found new strength within. I took another breath, and it felt as though I were drinking from the sun itself.

My wings trembled and rose, pointed straight up from atop my back. And when that was not high enough, I extended my wings once more to their full length, until my wingtips touched the sky. I shivered as bliss filtered through my body. That feeling of a muscle being stretched to its fullest, but magnified a thousandfold. I had never believed I would be able to feel it again, not when my body was a litany of aches and pains during every moment of my unlife. But now, just briefly, those pains were forgotten.

For a few wonderful seconds, I felt a warm breeze blow in over the ocean. It rustled through my wings, and I felt the wondrous sensation of flight, long forgotten by this Hollow pegasus. The wind pushed my body upwards, away from the ground, and my forehooves left the grass behind as I rose higher, balanced against the wind upon only my hinds. My own fire flared higher as I remembered how it felt to fly—no, how it felt to be the inheritor of the sky. To look down upon the world and the clouds around me, and feel that it was mine. The fire burned brighter in me than it ever had before, and just for a moment, just for a single fleeting instant as I silently offered praise to Celestia’s sun, I felt the curse recede.

Deep within my chest, I felt a faint, thudding warmth. I was alive again, only for the length of a single heartbeat.

All too soon, the warm breeze was gone. I fell back forward onto my forehooves, and exhaustion slammed into me as I collapsed into the dead grass. My cursed, rotten body fell to pieces, and I became limp as my puppet-strings were cut. My wings flopped limply to either side of me, as my face was pressed into the peat. I saw nothing, but I could feel the curse as it crept back into my bones and weighed me down.

I lay there for millenia. Time had no meaning, as my body ached, and the gentle sunlight warmed the outermost layer of my dead flesh. The dry grass and cold, wet dirt felt soothing against my barrel. All I could do was breathe, in, and out, as agony enveloped me. I was being punished for my hubris, for thinking I could take flight again. The curse never wanted me to feel the sky again. But I would not succumb.

Eventually, there was a voice. It took some time for me to understand the words, but I could feel a hoof pressed against my side, and the pressure gave me a focus beyond my own aching body.

“Holly? Pegasopolis calling, wake up.”

I shivered, and my eyes fluttered open. The dead grass stalks were poking at the interior of my eye sockets, and they itched, so I was forced to drag my hooves underneath myself. The presence at my side stepped away, and as I gathered the strength to turn my head, I let out a pained groan. 

“Come on, don’t Hollow out on me now, not when we’re about to leave.”

“I’m…I’m f-fine…” I could barely utter the lie, but I wasn’t Hollowed out entirely. At least, not yet.

“Speech is good; walking is better. Want a hoof?”

I nodded, and extended a shaking hoof. Magnus grasped it firmly in his own, and I felt disoriented as I was hauled to my hooves. My legs shook underneath me, and I stumbled slightly as I tried to find my balance. My wings still hung limp, with the tips drifting through the grass, and I didn’t have the strength to pull them back against my sides.

I blinked at Magnus dumbly, as he looked me over. “You alright? You look like death warmed over. More than usual, I mean. We can’t afford to lose another guard, especially not when we’re about to leave.”

I couldn’t keep my body from shaking, but I nodded again. Magnus looked skeptical, but he shrugged a moment later. “Alright, if you say you’re good, then I’m not gonna force the issue. Just get down the hill in one piece, alright? We’re leaving as soon as I check over the carts one last time, and Zecora wanted to talk to you as well. Her and Meadowbrook have a cart of their own, you can ride in that while you wake back up.”

I nodded one final time, and Magnus stepped away, before he flapped his wings and took to the sky. I watched him enviously as he flew so easily, and dipped back below the canopy of the bayou. After he left, I forced my hooves to move, and nearly collapsed once more. But I had friends waiting for me at the other end of Baton Verte, and I yearned to be with them again.

As magnificent as Celestia’s sun was, they were like my own personal sun.


*	*	*


As I stumbled down the main ramp of Baton Verte towards the reformed caravan, I heard arguing. Grapeshot seemed particularly incensed again, and in the distance, I could see her shouting at Meadowbrook. They both stood in front of a covered wagon, though the cloth that covered it was ragged and full of holes. Through those holes, I could see a full load of mouldering wooden barrels.

"...doesn’t matter if he’s still regenerating, it’s disrespectful! How would you like to be carried across Equestria like that, in a barrel of all things?"

"I’d see it as a wonderful opportunity to meditate without distraction." Meadowbrook stated, her voice weary. She turned to the stallion hitched up to the front of the wagon, a short, wide pony with more hair on his face than his scalp, almost like an adult version of Snips, and gave him a nod. I dimly recognized him as Cattail, one of Mage Meadowbrook’s descendents and her close assistant—I hadn’t had much opportunity to interact with him during our stay, but she had always spoken highly of him and his service. At that moment, I thought of my relationship with Zecora, and I wondered if she would ever think of me that way.

Grapeshot just growled angrily, and stomped back up the line. Distantly, I heard her arguing again, presumably this time with Magnus. I couldn’t make out the words, but I heard his distinctive bark as he shouted her down.

Meadowbrook caught my eye as she walked back to another wagon, and waved me over. This one was meant for passengers, and as I approached, I could see Zecora, Dinky, and Snails already riding in the back. Dinky gave me a wave as I approached, and she pulled Snails further in to make a space for me on the bench. Zecora also gave me a nod, but her eyes fell downwards immediately after. This trip had taken a lot out of all of us.

Dinky used her levitation to help pull me into the wagon, and Meadowbrook clambered in awkwardly after me. Dinky tilted her head as I collapsed into my seat, and she swapped seats with Snails to sit between us both. “Holly? Are you okay? You look really...not great, what happened?”

I shrugged. “D...dunno. I w-was prac-practicing my br-breathing...and then tr-tried to str-stretch my wi-wings…”

Dinky raised her eyebrows. “Really? You can feel them again?” At my nod, her eyes lit up. “Cool! Can you fly, do you think?”

I shook my head sadly, and Dinky’s expression fell. She turned back to Snails, and then pulled us both into a wide hug with her forehooves. Snails and I leaned heavily into her, and while I can’t speak for Snails, I was glad for the company, and her warmth.

Hoofsteps squelched through the mud beside our wagon, and Magnus reappeared behind it, looking in. “FInal checks. We’re not coming back to Baton Verte until the demon problem is solved, so are you sure you have everything, Med?”

Meadowbrook nodded, and flicked a hoof in the direction of the wagon before ours. “All my equipment, any remaining ingredients, and some very personal keepsakes, yes.” She hesitated, and then added, “I’ve also double-checked Autumn’s barrel. His is marked, and loaded in my wagon.”

Magnus let out a long sigh,and then nodded. “Alright. Dinky, Snails, Holly, are you good to walk alongside the caravan? We need every guard we can get. A few of the Baton Verte townsfolk are armed, but not nearly enough to fight off a real attack by more than a couple demons.”

Dinky nodded, then bumped Snails, who nodded as well. I couldn’t bring myself to do the same, and Zecora noticed. “Commander Magnus, my apprentice is clearly not feeling her best. She shall join the formation as we approach the Everchaos, after she has had some time to rest.”

Magnus curled his lip, but he didn’t argue. “Alright. Dinky, Snails, rearguard. Make sure nopony, and no creature, is following us as we leave.” They both nodded, and shuffled out of the wagon to follow Magnus as he checked the caravan. I was left back in the wagon with only my teacher, and her own teacher above her for company. They both looked incredibly tired, and I was particularly worried about Zecora. The embers of the Zebra’s eyes seemed much more dull than they were before, and for a long while, she seemed content to simply spare into space in front of her. Even Meadowbrook amused herself by idly playing with her pyromancy ember.

After a short while, Magnus barked distantly, “Forward!” I heard the wagon before us squeak and groan as it began to move, and then our own was moving to follow it. The wagon behind us, pulled by another Hollowed resident of Baton Verte, followed suit.

Meadowbrook sighed. “Once more, I leave my hometown, without knowin’ when next I’ll be back.”


*	*	*


By the time I was feeling better, and less exhausted, our wagon was slowly crawling up the side of the valley. Out of the back of the wagon, I could see the narrow trail that our caravan was following, and the distant bayou downslope. Meadowbrook in particular seemed to be looking over the treetops.

“I…” My voice cracked; my lips were dry. It got Meadowbrooks attention, though, and she turned to look at me. After a moment, she reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a leather canteen. I took a sip of the water inside, coughed to clear my throat, and then continued. “I’m s-sorry we c-couldn’t...h-help more...”

I trailed off as Meadowbrook sighed, and then reached across the wagon to pat my leg. “Holly…might not feel like ya helped. But ya brought Zecora by, and we did make some progress while ya helped more directly ‘round town. Somethin’ to show to Celessia, at-”

All of a sudden, Zecora shushed her. “Do you intend to blab to all about this breakthrough? I thought we agreed that the number of equines who know about it should be very few!”

Meadowbrook glared at her. “Well, it be your creation. Don’t ya think yer apprentice oughta know about it too, since she gon’ be helpin’ ya in Cannerlot?”

Zecora nickered quietly, and shot a glare back, but eventually conceded. She waved me over with a hoof, and I scooted down the bench of the wagon, so that Zecora could talk to me in relative privacy. Meadowbrook simply went back to staring out the back of the wagon, apparently disinterested in helping with this explanation.

My teacher reached into her own saddlebags by her side, and, from the leather, drew out a wide-necked bottle blown from green glass. A silvery cork plugged the neck, but most strange of all seemed to be the liquid contained within. It was hard to tell through the glass, but it seemed to be colored like liquid sunlight, and the glow it exuded illuminated the interior of the wagon around us. “Meadowbrook and I combined our knowledge together, on Pyromancy, potions, and equine anatomy. I will spare you the details of how we made the bottle, but the contents are plain to see.”

Zecora gently passed the bottle to me, and I took it in my own hooves. Instinctively, I cradled it like a foal; I was deeply afraid of dropping it, should the wagon hit a sudden bump in the road. Even through the glass, I could feel the power within, and it was surprising how much it felt like another pony’s fire in liquid form. “Wha-what is it…?”

“We intended to create a bottle that could filter magic from the air itself, for use in our work. Such a medium would replenish itself without using resources, but instead, it has developed a...quirk.” Zecora waved her hoof between us both. “Like us, the bottle itself seems afflicted with the Hollow curse, or rather…it seems afflicted with the inverse. The bottle refills with liquid fire, the same stuff that makes up the soul of an equine. In fact, it seems to siphon the fire from those around itself, although after testing, the effect seems benign.”

The bottle was…drawing strength from us, to fill itself? That was worrying, because we didn’t have much left to give. If Zecora said it was harmless, though, then I believed her.

“The liquid created within is strange, but seems to be contained safely inside. Already, a few experiments have had completely unexpected effects, and there are many things we’ve not yet tried.” I passed the bottle gently back to Zecora, and she nodded towards Meadowbrook. “Though Meadowbrook does not wish to share credit, we have made two copies of this flask. After all, Magnus warned us that returning to Ponyville would not be an easy task.”

She placed the flask back into her saddlebags, instead of her bottomless bag. I noticed this, and asked why, since it seemed as if it was so important.

Zecora nodded, and patted her bottomless bag as she explained. “Though you are correct that it may be safer to carry the flask in such a way, when I was packing up my bags, Meadowbrook had something to say. She seems to believe that the different magic of the two objects…uh...might conflict and damage them both, as well as cause other undue effects.”

Meadowbrook nodded as she turned back to face us “Both are new magic, relatively speakin’. I still don’t trust that bottomless bag, or the abyss within.” When she turned back around, she raised an eyebrow. “Got a visitor. Looks like Magnus wants somethin’.”


The Commander dropped in from above to hover behind the wagon, and gave us all a friendly nod. “Was just coming back to check on you three. We’re entering the Everchaos soon, and Holly, I need you up near the front of the caravan. You work well with Archmagus Dinky.”

Zecora placed a hoof on my shoulder, and smiled. “Good luck, and keep us safe, my Hollowed friend. Remember that it is not just us two whom you must defend.” I nodded, checked my armor was still strapped on tightly, and that my cavalry sword was still in its sheath. Then I clumsily climbed out of the back of the rolling wagon, and followed Magnus back up along the length of the caravan.


*	*	*


At first we ended up doing a lot less fighting than Magnus seemed to have expected. Instead, the duties of Dinky and I seemed to be more related to fixing the road, while Magnus kept a watch on the treeline. We’d only barely entered the edges of the burnt-out forest when the road began to be filled with potholes, from falling branches or roots burned out from below, and while we could fill them in using branches and big globs of mud that Dinky lifted with her magic, it was incredibly slow going.

My hoof erupted in flame once more, and the mud under my hoof dried and cracked. This was good practice for my pyromancy, at least. After a moment, I pressed the same hoof against the warm surface of the mud, and nodded to Dinky. She turned back to the wagon behind us, and lit her horn. “Alright, roll it forward!”

We both stepped to the side of the road as the lead wagon slowly rattled and creaked, and rolled over our patches in the road. They weren’t well-made, but they’d hold well enough to move the caravan through. Dinky blew through her nose as she looked at the smoldering woods around us. “This is such a stupid route. If the roads are this bad already, how are they going to be inside the actual forest?”

“Th-think we sh-should...t-turn around?” I looked up at Magnus, who was hovering above us. He couldn’t seem to hear the conversation, or maybe his mind was just elsewhere. He seemed to be peering at something in the distance.

Dinky shook her head. “Even if we could, Magnus wouldn’t let us. He’s too damn determined to get to the firebreak, so the soldiers can take the heat off of us. But that’s still a lot of ponies to move through a trench-”

“Movement, southwest!” Magnus barked suddenly from above, and both Dinky and I jumped. I drew my cavalry sword, while Dinky used her magic to draw her silver rapier. Now that I was up close, I could see the faint inscriptions freshly etched into the base of the blade, and how they glowed, just faintly, with gentle cyan sorcery.

In the distance, I heard a rhythmic noise, like the clacking of hooves on wood. Everypony’s ears swiveled to follow the sound, and everypony who still needed breath held it in. Whether to listen more clearly, or to hope we somehow avoided detection.

The noise approached fast, and others followed. Loud panting of exertion, and the gallop of hooves through mud, hidden only by a thin barrier of burnt bushes to our left. I saw flashes of color, yellows and oranges, but those might have just been the flickers of the Everchaos in the distance. The leading edge continued past us, but some of the galloping hooves slowed, then paused.

A moment later, a yellow blur exploded out of the bushes about midway down the line, and another darker blur followed it. All around us, on both sides of the road, lithe dark shapes emerged from the underbrush. I vaguely recognized Apple Bloom, and I from the way Dinky’s magical grip on her blade dipped, I knew she did too. But we had more pressing issues, as her pursuers paused to investigate us instead, while Apple Bloom galloped away into the underbrush.

They were like ponies, but lither, more athletic. Long necks held elegant heads high, tipped with antlers. They were clothed in rough armor made of leather and fur, with burning tree bark for reinforcement. Their antlers were glowing, in the same way as a unicorn's horn would, but the corona emitted was green and smoking. Their magic was not our magic, but it was similar, and they used it like we would, to hold primitive, jagged stone weapons in an orbit around them.

“Deer,” Dinky hissed to me, under her breath. “They’re- they’re native to the Everfree, or—they were—Apple Bloom must have agitated the…the survivors-”

We examined them, and they examined us, but something was wrong. The deer seemed burnt, as if they had been set aflame, but hadn’t been able to extinguish themselves. Their fur was patchy, and where it remained, it was wiry and stiff, clearly catching against the armor’s straps and shaking in the breeze. Their flesh underneath was carbonized—burnt until it had blackened, turned hard and brittle. And yet, as they turned their heads, examining us, that blackened flesh cracked and crumbled. Underneath, the glow of chaosfire and burning muscle was exposed, hardening as it was exposed to the air like cooling magma.

They were like the trees themselves had come alive, still burning, and had begun to hunt the invaders of their forest. Was this what happened to equines caught alight by chaosfire? The worst feature was their eyes; they burned like ours, like those of a Hollowed undead, but they burned too bright. These were no embers, but burning kindling within their charred, cracking skulls, and as their eyes swept over us, rage and fury made their eyes shimmer with heat.

Fire-blackened lips cracked apart to expose broken teeth that looked more like tiny lumps of coal, and a mouth full of cracked flesh that bled fire. The deer grunted, a gutteral hissing noise that sounded like a sneeze in reverse, and the bushes shifted behind them.

How many were there? This had to be a hunting party of at least twelve, focused on their pursuit of Apple Bloom. All of them were hissing and grunting like feral beasts. The weapons held in their own strange fae magic were all stained with demon blood and ash. The does had no antlers, and thus no magic to hold weapons, but instead, their hooves were stained red and gray and they glowed like my own; maybe their own version of pyromancy?

Above us, Magnus beat his wings slowly, and was gradually losing altitude. As he descended, he held out a hoof. “We’re just passing through. We don’t want any-”

The yellow blur of Apple Bloom emerged once more from the brush, and Magnus’ eyes locked onto her. At the same time, one of the does let out a wild bleat, and then the forest exploded into chaos as the deer attacked as one. Magnus swore, and with a sweeping downbeat of his wings, he changed direction sharply to chase after the rogue alchemist, which left us to deal with the deer ourselves.

Dinky and I were charged by the first two who had emerged from the trees. The one who leapt for me swung an axe of cracked flint with such ferocity that I knew it would snap my sword’s blade, and I had to dodge, as I clumsily sidestepped the deer’s charge. That opened me up, and he tilted his head to catch me with a glancing blow from his antlers. Even a glancing blow was deadly, however, and hot fire stabbed through my side as the burning antlers punctured my armor like it was nothing. I gasped as I staggered back, and boiling ichor spattered across the undergrowth as the antlers were yanked back out of my side.

Beside me, Dinky fared only slightly better. Her opponent had a dozen wooden spikes, like oversized splinters, which orbited around his head. Two by two, he shot them like arrows, or flicked his head to use them like daggers. DInky was overwhelmed, her horn burning as shields flickered to life around her, deflected a blow, and were just as quickly dispelled. She snarled, as she loosed a golden bolt of magic at her opponent, and he didn’t even dodge; he took the full strength of the blow in his breast with barely a grunt, and staggered back slightly as his own burning ichor sealed the wound. It hissed and bubbled as it cooled, and hardened in his chest as if to form a new armor-plated scab. He advanced again, and only the divot carved into his breast remained as evidence of the strike.

My own opponent swung his axe horizontally; a decapitation blow. With Dinky at my side, I didn’t have the room to back up, so I had to duck under it. As I stood back up, I advanced, stabbing my sword forward and up. Fire crawled down my blade as I struck his shoulder, and then I saw stars as he whipped the grip of his axe into the side of my head. My hooves went out from under me, and my cavalry sword dropped into the ashen mud as I fell. My opponent stepped closer, axe raised high over his head, but another bolt from Dinky sheared through one of his antlers. It fell away, sparking with chaosfire and wild magic, and he finally reacted, howling as he turned to face her instead. He was not yet disarmed; his axe still floated nearby, though it wobbled unsteadily and his strikes with it were clumsy now.

I looked away as Dinky whinnied in pain; saving me had taken her eyes off her own opponent, and three wooden spikes had buried themselves in her side before she could start to block them again. I struggled to stand as she fought off both of them, quickly growing tired from overuse of magic and from having to split her attention.

Dazed and desperate, I gave up on standing and simply shoved myself off the ground at the axe-wielding deer, and tackled him with my weight. Dinky only spared a thankful glance as we fell together, before she refocused fully on her own fight.

The burning deer hit the mud first, and there was an awful hissing, spitting sound as the mud boiled under his weight. I landed atop him, and it felt as though I’d landed in a bed of coals. The surface was cool, but any pressure broke through the crust of his flesh and released the compact inferno underneath. I screamed and battered my hooves against his muzzle, and I watched as my blows and his flowing magma began to deform the shape of his head. Then the head of his axe slammed into my side, and I rolled off of him, into the dead undergrowth.

Any chaosfire that had clung to my fur was thankfully extinguished as fresh mud splashed my side, but that same mud burned as it splattered into my new wounds. I felt the pressure of the axe being yanked free, and it took all of my strength to grab onto its grip. It only seemed to slow him down; he still pulled us both out of the undergrowth as I clung onto the weapon, trying to rip it free of his crippled levitation. He yanked it high, and I swung my head forward, smashing my forehead into the end of his muzzle.

Finally, he staggered, and the axe fell as I clung to it. My face was hot, burning from his cursed ichor splashing across it, but I had no time. Standing, my own face aflame, I swung the axe up and then back down in an arc that terminated at his throat. As it slammed home with a grisly ‘crack,’ the embers of his eyes dimmed, and I tasted bloody, burning victory.

I had to drop back into the mud, and I splashed some of the grimy liquid across my muzzle before the pain dulled. I was absolutely covered in burns, and I was thankful, albeit confused, that I had somehow avoided contracting whatever internal fire had infected the deer. I had no time to truly contemplate it though; my face was covered in mud, and it filled my eyes, and I was helpless if another deer sought to attack me.

I took a few, awful moments of frantic wiping and scraping at my muzzle and eyes before I could see again, through a vignette of ashen mud. Dinky seemed to be able to handle herself, and I used the few seconds of safety I had earned in order to look around us.

The caravan was in shambles. With no battle line, the helpless townsponies had fled into the burning forest or stayed to defend the wagons. Small groups huddled with their backs to their wagons, and those that were undefended were ablaze. Smoke filled the exposed road, with real fire blending with the corrupted chaosfire, and the Baton Verte militia were doing everything they could to keep the deer from overwhelming us all. As I watched, two more deer leapt out of the treeline and uppercut a hollow with their horns, before they tossed them out of sight. They chased after the townspony, and screams followed from that direction.

A corpse fell into the mud behind me, and yanked me out of my daze. Thankfully, it was Dinky’s opponent and not the filly herself; the deer had fallen, with a fresh hole magically drilled through his skull. I scrambled to my hooves as Dinky panted. “Holly! We gotta-we gotta get out of here! Where’s Snails, where’s Magnus, or Zecora?”

I gaped like a fish, unsure of the answer, but I pointed back along the caravan. Zecora’s wagon was back there…but that was where Apple Bloom had first emerged.

Dinky realized it too, a moment later, and she swore before she started to gallop in that direction. She wheezed in pain as she ran, and dark blood soaked her cloak. I followed behind as quickly as I could, but one of the deer’s strikes had damaged my foreleg, so I galloped with a jerking limp.

We passed by a half-a-dozen fights on our way, and every single fight tore at me. Ponies were dying, slain and drained by the tainted deer of the Everchaos, and we couldn’t stop to help. Zecora was more important, and while we might win a single fight, attrition would wear us down if we tried to participate in every scuffle. I squinted my eyes and tried to ignore the shouting and smashing of wood against steel, the echoes of gunshots, but they were all around us. I couldn’t escape them.

Meadowbrook’s supply cart had been overturned, and a great deal of the barrels had broken, and spilled their contents into the muck. We leapt over a pile of broken bottles and kept moving, because the wagon they had been riding in had to have been right behind it.

Smoke and the scent of strange brews had permeated the air. A dozen potions had already been thrown and shattered, or drunk with the bottle discarded. Zecora and Apple Bloom seemed to have been fighting from the beginning, and we arrived only just as Apple Bloom gained the upper hoof. In the time we’d spent regaining our strength at Baton Verte, Apple Bloom had retrieved and repaired her billhook, though the binding along the shaft looked shoddy and improvised. Zecora was laying on her back, hooves trembling against the shaft of the billhook, which Apple Bloom was trying to crush against her throat. 

Meadowbrook was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Magnus. Had they fled together, and left Zecora here to fight? Or had Apple Bloom fought both of them off, and had only just begun to finish her old mentor when we arrived?

As Apple Bloom saw us, she snarled, and slammed the billhook down one more time to break Zecora’s grip. The zebra coughed and choked on the ground as her wayward apprentice stood, eyes focused on me and Dinky. She evaluated us, took our measure by her eyes, and I think she remembered our defense of Zecora from her first attack. 

After a moment, she ripped a potion vial off her bandoleer and smashed it against the ground. A cloud of smoke rolled over all of us, and the impromptu arena became impossible to navigate. I felt Dinky’s fire by my side, but the fog of war seemed to blank out all other presences within the caravan, including Apple Bloom, Zecora, and the townsponies and deer fighting and dying all around us.

“Apple Bloom!” Dinky shouted, and her silhouette glowed with golden light as she swept around us with her horn. “What in Tartarus are you doing?! Why are you attacking us, why provoke the deer?! We’re trying to save Equestria! Zecora’s trying to fix this curse!”

Zecora’s own voice, weakened and interspersed with coughing, came from entirely the wrong direction. “My old apprentice, your young friend speaks true...I don’t understand why you attack us...what did we do?”

When Apple Bloom spoke, her voice came from above us, somehow. “And ah don’t understand why ya’ll would want to ‘fix’ her gift. Awful rude, t’ try and ruin it for everypony.”

Had she jumped up into the trees somehow? Dinky and I looked up to try and figure out where she was talking from, and because of that, her first blow was deadly. Movement flashed off to my side, and I just barely saw Apple Bloom leap towards me, then land on her back in the mud. She slid under me in an instant, and her billhook stabbed up like the tail of a scorpion. By the time Dinky and I managed to take action, I had lost all feeling in my hinds, aside from a sharp, burning pain in my belly and back.

Ichor splattered as Apple Bloom ripped the billhook back out of my gut, and Dinky loosed her sorcery wildly into the mist to try and get a lucky shot, while I collapsed limply into the mud. I could only move my fores, and as I tried to roll over onto my back, blinding pain from my open wound made me groan loudly in agony. Golden bolts arced into the fog all around us, and they were met by a glowing green potion, which was intercepted by one of the bolts. The bottle exploded, and putrid rain tainted the mist, though thankfully we seemed to escape the worst effects of whatever the potion had been.

Hooves galloped through the mud nearby, and I grabbed wildly, as I hoped to trip up Apple Bloom. But instead, the legs I tangled myself in were long and orange, and I heard Snails yelp as he collapsed on top of me. In the distance, I heard the report of twin shotgun blasts—he and Grapeshot must have made the same decision as us, and ran here to help Zecora and Meadowbrook. Just like Snips so long ago, Snails had galloped into the fog to help ponies within.

“This stupid fog!” Dinky shrieked, and her horn burned brightly for a few seconds. Then there was the sound of a thunderclap, and my ears popped as a massive pressure wave erupted outwards, with Dinky at the epicenter. The fog was dispersed in an instant, or at least shoved back, and we could see clearly in its wake.

Zecora had crawled closer to us, and our ichor was beginning to dye the gray mud red. Snails was still stunned and lay atop me, while Dinky stood in the center of it all, her eyes wild. Back over by the wagon, Grapeshot and Apple Bloom were both struggling over Grapeshot’s shotgun, with the former trying to snap the breach closed and the latter trying to pull it out of her magic. A moment later, Apple Bloom took the advantage when she slammed her hoof upwards, and landed a strike directly against Grapeshot’s horn, which caused her magic to fizzle out.

Apple Bloom now had the shotgun, while Grapeshot was left writhing on the ground at her hooves, and she snapped the breach closed as she turned the weapon towards Dinky. My friend had just enough time to summon a golden shield between the two of them before Apple Bloom fired both barrels from the hip, but it wasn’t enough. The first blast ricocheted off the shield in a dozen directions, and I saw smoking trails punch holes in the wagons around us, or rustle the burnt leaves of the trees. The second blast was just too much for Dinky to repel, and the shield shattered with a sound like breaking glass. As the golden shield exploded inwards, Dinky threw her hoof up to cover her face as the shards dissolved from reality, and the buckshot continued onwards in a haze of gunsmoke.

That gunsmoke covered Apple Bloom’s advance, and she leapt out of it with a flying kick that slammed into Dinky’s shoulder, and knocked her into the mud as well.

With all of us on the ground, at least momentarily incapacitated, Apple Bloom took her time as she strode back to Zecora. “Can’t cure this. Can’t be allowed t’ cure us. Not after what she sacrificed.”

Zecora tried to crawl away, but she never had a chance. Apple Bloom brutally kicked her over onto her back, and her saddlebags spilled open, and dumped all of their contents into the mud by her side. Old scrolls, small vials of ingredients, and finally, the golden, glowing flask. As soon as Apple Bloom laid eyes upon it, it was her sole focus. Zecora seemed almost forgotten as she stepped over the older zebra, and plucked the flask out of the mud to cradle it.

“Is…is this your cure?” Apple Bloom seemed almost in shock, as she turned it over in her hooves. “Ya’ll are closer than I ever coulda guessed, from all the time I spent watchin’ you…but this is…”

Apple Bloom’s brow furrowed. “This fire, ah recognize...why does it feel like…?”

Zecora hauled herself up and grabbed wildly at Apple Bloom’s potion bandolier, and the calm was broken. Apple Bloom slammed the blunt tip of the billhook’s handle into Zecora’s cheek, and the older alchemist fell back, while Apple Bloom shoved the flask through a too-tight loop on her bandolier.

She let out a feral snarl as she stood over Zecora’s prone body once more. “Too close to a cure. Ya’ll are too dangerous. Ah’ll see how you did it, anyhow.” Apple Bloom grabbed Zecora by the scruff of her neck with a Pyromancer’s grip, and Zecora writhed and howled as pink fire began to bleed out of her eyes, her mouth, her nose. The Hollow Curse overtook her in seconds, as her eyes fully receded, her fur dulled and wrinkled, and her mouth lolled open dumbly.

Zecora was gone, I knew at that moment. All that had made her Zecora, her memories, feelings, thoughts, and mastery of Pyromancy, all of that had been drawn out of her. It had been stolen by her former student.

And I, her current student, had just sat idly by and watched. I watched her go Hollow, just like Diamond Tiara, just like Snips. In that moment, all the burning and bleeding agony of my body was insignificant compared to the pang in my chest, wrenching, breaking, crying out, as I watched my friend and mentor die before me. I could only give out a raspy wail, as the mud that had coated my cheeks turned liquid with tears.

Apple Bloom let her fall, and the Hollow corpse fell back into the mud as the last of the pink fire writhed around her hoof, and Apple Bloom combined the stolen fire with her own Pyromancy ember. Her eyes glowed a little bit more brightly, and she seemed just a little bit faster as she drew the golden flask once more, and stared at it. There was a strange ‘pop’ sound in the distance, like displaced air.

Seeing Zecora get drained seemed to galvanize Dinky, and the teenaged filly struggled to her hooves a short distance away. For a terrifying moment, I thought she was going to attract Apple Bloom’s attention and try for a shot against her back, but Dinky hesitated, and her eyes flicked to us. I was still crippled, and Snails seemed too terrified to move, even though he’d long disentangled himself from me.

Dinky made her decision and staggered over to us as her horn began to glow. The movement finally caught Apple Bloom’s attention, and she turned to look at us. Cold anger overtook her face once more, and she drew a potion, then hooked it onto her billhook with the intent of whipping it at our bleeding pony pile.

But Apple Bloom moved just a bit too slow. By the time the potion had been thrown, Dinky had let loose a wail of exertion, and then her horn flashed gold. Nausea overtook me as the colors of the forest around bled like oil paint, and the three of us left only afterimages as the potion shattered in the space where we had been only a moment ago.
> 14 - The Black Knight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My vision was a horrific kaleidoscope of bleeding colors and blurring oil paint as reality became unreal, and we shifted through the spaces in-between. The fire of the forest became the concept of orange, and the muck of the forest became the shadow of brown. Light itself seemed to distort as Dinky’s magic replaced the sun’s glow, and wrapped us up in a cocoon of sorcery. It was only because of this cocoon that we survived our passage through the void between spaces.

There was nothing else in that space, besides ourselves, huddled against each other inside the bubble. Only absolute, unbroken void loomed beyond. We couldn’t see it directly, because our eyes didn’t work right during the passage. But we could feel it; there was no light, no warmth, no magic, and no fire in this empty abyss. Instead, our vision passed backwards through the embers that represented our eyes, and the thoughts within bled out into the void that surrounded us. We could barely last more than a few seconds in this place, as the unreality clawed and screamed and battered against our bubble of safety, but we endured.

Our home reality slammed into us as though we had fallen from the sky, but in truth, we fell only a leg-length from our point of arrival. Dinky and Snails gasped like they were drowning, but I merely fell onto my unfeeling rump, and was unable to stop myself from slumping back against the muddy side of the ditch. Dinky landed atop me, while Snails fell onto his back by my side, but facing upwards. He slid down the hill head-first a few hoof-lengths, then friction dragged him to a stop. Dinky seemed to panic for a few seconds, but calmed down a moment later as she realized we were all alive and alright, relatively speaking.

“S-sorry!” Dinky groaned, as she pressed a hoof to her smoking, red-hot horn. It hissed like a branding iron as she touched it with her frog, and she jerked the hoof away in surprise. “That was- that was a bad wink, I was panicking, and I didn’t do it right, and I never practice that enough, because that type of teleport is really scary and I don’t ever practice it when I can just blink instead, even though the mana required increases exponentially with dist-”

I could still move my forelegs, at least. Dinky’s babbling ceased as I gently pulled her against myself in a hug, and pressed my chin against the top of her head. She shivered against me, and I focused on my breathing, to calm the both of us down. In the distance, I heard Dinky’s wail…a second time? And then a pop…strange.

The air smelled like smoke, and blood. I focused on the fires of the two ponies alongside me, and paused. There was another, very close to our three fires. Almost directly in front of us. I opened my eyes in confusion, and looked up.

The ichor clogging my veins solidified in an instant. The first thing my fear-stricken mind understood were the eyes—twin embers, burning like tiny suns full of malice. Despite how brightly they burned, they totally failed to illuminate the face within the helmet. All I could make out clearly were the eyes themselves, but I recognized the creature from the shadowed scars it had left in my head. With those memories came the feeling of pain, sharp and stabbing, as I remembered the weapon that had pierced my belly. I dimly recalled my body as it grew cold around the blade, while that shape stood above me, and watched me die.

It was tall, taller than I, and closer in height to my dim memories of Celestia. But she had worn golden regalia, while this creature was encased in metal that I couldn’t recognize. Something had happened to it, and had blackened the metal like flesh lit aflame. It was hard to even focus properly on the smooth surface of the armor plates; my vision seemed almost to slide away, or focused instead on the dull reflection of the burning Everchaos all around us. Perhaps it was because of the way the metal seemed to absorb light, or perhaps my own eyes would not let me gaze upon the equine-shaped beast before me.

It was going to kill me again. I knew it as soon as I had looked into those eyes, but only now did I understand, after my mind had been screaming those words at me, over and over and over. I had to run, had to hide. I couldn’t fight it, or if I did, then it couldn’t be beat. It would find me eventually, no matter where I ran, but if I just kept running then maybe it would never catch up.

But I was paralyzed. Apple Bloom had made sure of that, when we had fought. I could still move my fores, but I would never be able to crawl fast enough to flee, even if I could force myself to even breathe as I stared at it. But I was too overcome with sheer terror, and I thought for sure as soon as I moved a muscle, it would strike.

I stared at it, but when the Black Knight stared back, I had almost a sense that it was…measuring me. That it was examining my being in utter totality, every action I’d taken, and every step of my hooves. Those two suns full of malice never shifted, never strayed. They dissected my being and my very soul without even an errant twitch.

Dinky shuddered under me. I think she was concerned that my breathing had stopped suddenly, and she shifted as she opened her eyes. Then she too froze, with her back pressed against my barrel, as we both stared down the creature..

“Wha-what is...who…” Dinky fumbled over her words as she was surely struck with the same unshakeable terror that had me frozen in place. But to my surprise, her eyes narrowed a moment later, and her horn lit with golden fire, as she pushed away from me.

Dinky was clearly tired, clearly still hurting from the fight we’d just had with Apple Bloom and the burned deer. And we were still close enough to hear the few remaining screams from the caravan, so we were far from safe. But Dinky still stood, shielded Snails and myself with her body, and glared down her glowing horn at the Black Knight. “Are you with Apple Bloom? Are you going to try and steal our fire, too?”

The Black Knight barely acknowledged her, for the briefest of moments. The ruined helmet turned as the gaze of the burning suns within shifted to Dinky, and they examined her being in turn. Through it all, Dinky never flinched, and never broke her composure. She stood over us, horn aglow, and waited for the Black Knight to make its first move.

The metal armor ground together slowly, as though it were made of tectonic plates, as the Black Knight slowly turned away from us. It seemed to have lost all interest in us as it left, and it picked up speed as it strode confidently, but never broke into a gallop. Long strides on longer metal legs carried it into the forest, and the last we saw of the creature was the silhouette it made as it walked straight through the forest fire. It was neither hindered nor harmed by the inferno, but we had no hope of following it.

Dinky’s hinds collapsed, and she fell back beside me, panting from the mere exertion of standing and guarding us. If the Black Knight had chosen to strike, would she have survived even a single blow?

“What…?” Dinky shook her head, and turned back to me. “What was that? Holly, you- Holly?”

I shook myself awake. It was gone. It had left. I was still alive, or something akin to it.

“Holly, are you okay? You look- I’ve never seen you look so scared.”

I nodded to reply, but it was almost lost in how hard I was shaking.

Dinky winced, but turned to Snails, who was still lying on his back. “Alright…Snails, how about you? Can you move?”

I hadn’t even looked over at Snails, not after I’d seen the Black Knight. Had we landed directly at its hooves? When I looked over now, I could see Snails was just as shaken as us both, and he kept twitching as his eyes darted from tree to tree. But he nodded too, and Dinky took a few sharp breaths.

“Okay. We’re in bad shape, but the caravan’s gone. We need to leave, now, before Apple Bloom finds us. She already has to know we winked out, and I bet she’s searching for us right this second.” Dinky looked back at my belly, and the ugly wound Apple Bloom had inflicted upon me. “Snails, can you carry Holly? With your magic or on your back, it doesn’t matter, but we’re not leaving her behind. I can’t carry her—I’m not even sure I can gallop, not after those fights.”

Snails nodded again, and turned to face me. As he shoved his horn under my back, and I watched my limp hinds flop loosely, I tried to help seat myself on his back using my fores. I ended up laying on my belly, with my legs dangling over his own. I would have blushed, but I wasn’t sure I was capable of it any more, and we had much bigger problems at the moment.

Dinky took the lead, even though her best gallop was hobbled, and I heard her hiss as she tried to ignore the pain that came with every step. Snails followed behind, encumbered by my weight, but we left the burning caravan behind us as we fled into the woods.


*	*	*


We paused at the foot of a gnarled oak, twisted by Chaosfire, so that Snails and Dinky could catch their breaths. I kept an eye out on the forest around us as Snails sagged under my weight, but try as I might, my legs were still disconnected from the rest of my body. Would I even manage that small bit of autonomy before we reached Ponyville?

Snail’s mind was clearly elsewhere. “What…what was that knight?” he gasped, “That pony, or...whatever they were, it was like I was being petrified when they looked at me.”

“I don’t know.” Dinky shook her head. “I’ve never even heard of anything like that out here. I’ve never seen armor like that...Holly, you…you seemed to recognize them, or...something? Have you seen them before?”

The silhouette, one of the few memories I could scrape together when I had first awoken, flashed before me once more. It was far from clear, but it was more defined now at least. Tall, and angular, and with two glowing eyes full of malice. I swallowed to work my dry throat. “Y-yes...it...th-that thing...it k-killed me. B-back in the b-bookstore, that kn-night was what k-killed me…”

“You remember now?” Dinky’s eyebrows widened in hope, but I had to dash them.

I shook my head, and mumbled, “Only v-vague flashes...r-remember th-the eyes, th-though…”

Underneath me, Snails nodded slowly. “That knight...they had an empty scabbard at their side. Like they had a sword, but lost it somewhere? I don’t think they could have attacked us, at least not without using their bare hooves. Or armored hooves.”

Dinky rubbed her shoulder, where Apple Bloom had kicked her. I could see just barely under her cloak that a dark bruise was beginning to form there, and the frantic gallop away couldn’t have helped. “And Holly…you said you woke up with a sword stabbed through you, right? If it’s the same one...where’d that sword end up? Maybe there’s some clue we can glean from it about…whatever in Tartarus that knight was, or who you were.”

I shrugged slowly, and limply. “The b-blade was r-ruined, an-and it w-was too h-heavy to c-carry...I l-left it in the b-bookstore, I th-think...”

“Okay, maybe it’ll have some clues we can use. After we get back to Ponyville, we can go out together to retrieve it. That shouldn’t be too tough, as long as we can get back to…” Dinky trailed off, as the color drained from her face, and she looked back the way we’d come. “Wha-what are we gonna tell them when we get back? We lost Zecora…Oh Celestia, we lost Zecora.”

I couldn’t help but close my eyes and huddle tighter to Snails at the same thought. Zecora was dead, and Apple Bloom had her research now. So much for my lessons, and Zecora’s cure for the Hollow Curse, unless Meadowbrook also got away. But we hadn’t run into her during our own escape, while the rest of the caravan was lost…which didn’t bode well for her.

I felt Snails swallow under me. “Miss Applejack’s not gonna like this…we lost Snips and the other guards, too.”

Snails had a point. Were we the last survivors? Grapeshot had been stunned, but I hadn’t seen her get attacked directly. The last we’d seen of Magnus, he was flying back over the caravan to chase after Apple Bloom, and he clearly hadn’t defeated her. I felt sick at the thought of all of the ponies we’d left behind in our panic to escape. I hadn’t seen Cattail, but I hadn’t been looking for him either; he and Meadowbrook could have been any of the ponies fighting that we ran past, when we were so focused on Zecora. We took them from their homes, only to leave them at the mercy of Apple Bloom, the Deer, and whatever that Black Knight was.

Snails mumbled quietly, “Are we deserters?”

Dinky shook her head. “We…no. I don’t think so? We…” She trailed off, then stamped her hoof against an exposed root. “We didn’t desert! That battle was lost, and staying behind to fight more would have just gotten us killed too!”

I looked at Dinky, but she couldn’t meet my eyes. She was right, but...it felt wrong, all the same, leaving all of those ponies behind. And it was too late to take it back now. Far, far too late.

After a few moments, Dinky looked down, and spoke quietly again. “When we get to Ponyville, we need to just...avoid Applejack. More than we were before. See if we can take advantage of her Hollowing, maybe she’ll forget we ever left at all.”

“An’ then...then what?” Snails asked, more out of confusion than anything else.

“I...I don’t know!” Dinky barked, and we all flinched as we heard the echo through the burnt forest. She continued as it faded, much more quietly than before. “I just...I just wanna go home. I wanna lie down in my bed, and try to forget all of this happened, and just go back to learning magic and not getting anypony else hurt.”

The bushes rustled nearby, and Dinky leapt to her hooves. “We gotta go. Apple Bloom’s still hunting us, and there’s worse out here.”

We nodded, and Dinky took the lead again as we limped quickly through the burnt underbrush.


*	*	*


We could only gallop so far before our relatively good luck ran dry.

While up until that point, we had managed to avoid the worst the Everchaos had to offer, something finally caught up to us as we neared the edge of the forest. We were pretty sure it was Apple Bloom, who had finally tracked us down. But I was the one with the clearest view, since Dinky and Snails were too focused on not tripping as they galloped through the forest, and even I could only see flashes of bright red through the leaves. Whether it was her mane, the burning visage of one of the Deer, or just some hungry demon, it didn’t matter all that much. It was behind us, and we weren’t going to let it catch us.

“We’re getting closer to the cannons!” Dinky shouted, as the distant thud of the report washed over us. They had been our only guide home, without Magnus and his maps, and the sound had distorted as it rolled through the Everchaos.

A second later, the ground shook as the shell detonated, and Snails stumbled, and only barely managed to recover. I wanted to tell him to drop me, so he could run unhindered, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not when we were all so close to safety.

Something whipped over our heads and burst on the ground before us, and a puddle of bubbling crimson blocked our way, but we never slowed down. Dinky vanished in a streak of light that snapped forward over the puddle, and then reappeared on the other side as the light flashed. A moment later, Snails repeated the trick for himself, and I felt a sudden lurching motion as the world flicked past us in an instant. Deceleration made me nauseous again, and Snails stumbled as he found his hooves once more, but we couldn’t slow down.

Was that some other form of teleportation? Once again I was reminded how both my friends were unicorns. I made a mental note to ask about the difference between the two types at some point, preferably some time when we weren’t running for our lives. I had only the barest memory of the concept, and now I had experienced two different versions in a short period. I didn’t terribly like either of them, and I wished I could just fly to safety instead.

After we had spent so long running through the Everchaos, where the sun was obscured by the thick smoke of the forest fire, and our only light was the writhing embers of chaos, even the dim sunlight of the world outside blinded us. We couldn’t see past the final treeline, but we could most certainly see the silhouettes of a great swarm of demons as they crawled, stomped, and scuttled in the cover of the trees. We were approaching too fast to stop, let alone to find a way through, and I have no doubt that I would have faltered in that moment if I were alone.

Dinky did not falter. Not now, not when we were so close. She lowered her horn as she continued to gallop forward, and a cone of golden sorcery pushed in front of herself, while Snails followed directly behind her. The demons heard us approach, but by the time they turned and saw us, we had already begun to charge through their swarm. Acid, spittle, feathers like needles, and dozen different sets of claws all scraped at the cone of magic, but Dinky kept us all safe. She was the first to leap out into the sunlit space beyond the edge of the forest, and Snails followed her through afterwards. I was blinded for a few harsh moments, as my vision adjusted to the space beyond the trees.

When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t help but stare at the barren expanse all around us, for the forest hadn’t been razed to the ground, so much as it had been obliterated. Smoldering stumps, burning clumps of broken branches, and the broken bodies of a hundred dead demons, still bleeding as though freshly slain, had replaced the trees and bushes. Even the terrain here was ruined; the ground had been ripped apart by the passage of great beasts, and craters pockmarked the land like volcanic slopes.

Our ears all popped as the ground exploded a few hundred leg-lengths to our west, and hard-packed dirt was thrown into the sky, before it began to rain down as ashen mud.This was all wrong. We weren’t supposed to be here—this was the free-fire line, on the Everchaos side of the Firebreak!

Dinky screamed something, but our hearing was gone, thanks to the explosion a moment ago. We never slowed down, because to stop out here was death from either the demons behind us or the soldiers before us. At the very least, when I looked back, I couldn’t find our pursuer; they’d had the good sense to stay hidden within the trees, where they couldn’t be directly targeted.

Another explosion shook the ground around us, and an instant rainstorm appeared in our path. This must have been one of the firestopper shells that Magnus had mentioned when we first left Ponyville, but if that was a compressed ice cloud, then it must have had a terrifyingly huge static charge that was being dispersed as it spread! Dinky charged right through it, even as I yelled for her to stop—that was incredibly dangerous, even for pegasi! But Snails didn’t stop either, and I felt the electricity of the cloud prickle at my dead feathers as we galloped blindly through the liquid air.

I prayed to the winds that the cloud wouldn’t discharge, and those prayers were answered as we re-emerged, sopping wet, through the other side. The dirt turned to mud under our hooves as we got as far away from the cloud as we could, and when I turned back to look, a quadrupedal shadow was moving through the cloud behind us.

I was blinded as the cloud flashed—the discharge. Lightning connected ground and sky within the low-hanging stormcloud, and a pressure wave, the silent thundercrack, rolled over us. A moment later, the smoking corpse of a demon slumped into the mud behind us, instantly fried by the positive charge.

Once again, we had been lucky, but how long would this streak hold?

I was jerked upwards suddenly as Snails leapt over the edge of an embankment, and suddenly the trench walls closed in on me. I turned my head forwards again, to where Dinky was leading us down the forward-most trench. We only needed one of the paths leading back to the second trench, and then we could find our way to the third, and then maybe we’d be safe-

Dinky turned a corner and ducked, and her horn lit as she shoved Snails back. He stumbled, and I fell over him and landed with an undignified splat into the bloody mud. As I pushed myself back up, I could see Dinky shouting something down the trench, then both Snails and I were grabbed in her magic. Her horn burned as she tossed a golden flare into the sky above, and the walls blurred by as Dinky carried us both to safety at withers-height.

She only released us as she jumped over a short wall of sandbags, and we both landed with another undignified splat on a woven hemp carpet laid on the bottom of the trench. I decided to continue lying there for a moment, and just relish in the feeling of staying still.

How long had we been galloping? It felt like hours, but I didn’t think Dinky had that kind of stamina. How much distance had we crossed, in so short a time? Especially compared to our first run down the length of the firebreak.

Eventually, I lifted my head. My hearing was still gone, but I could see Dinky, as she shouted at a soldier operating a crank gun mounted behind the sandbags. She looked like she was shouting so loud, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Eventually, he shouted something back and waved his hoof towards the back line, and Dinky stomped her hoof one last time, before she turned to us.

She asked me a question, but it was lost to my new deafness. After a moment, I pointed to my ears, and her eyes widened, before she shook Snails awake. The colt seemed dazed as well from the run, but Dinky clapped her hooves together noiselessly, which he didn’t respond to at all. Apparently we had both been deafened by the blast. Maybe being as Hollowed as we were had made our ears weaker?

When Snails finally understood, his hooves began to glow, and he pressed them to his ears. After a moment, his whole body flinched, and he kept his hooves pressed to his ears as he shouted something. Dinky shouted something back, then glared at the soldier again. He didn’t seem to care; he’d just returned to his duty, which seemed to consist of firing intermittently over the sandbags.

Eventually, Snails shook his head and released his ears, though he kept jumping at noises I couldn’t hear. Then he trotted over to me, and wrapped me in a very tight hug. I leaned into it as much as I was able, as bloody, ashen mud matted both of our fur between us. Snails released me after a few seconds, then pressed his glowing hooves to my ears. Whatever he’d done to himself looked painful, so I braced myself, but I could never have braced myself enough.

One moment, I was deaf, and the world was silent. The next moment, I could hear again, and the world seemed to be trying to cram all the noise I’d missed in the interim into my head in the span of a second, then just kept going. I flinched and yelped, and both Snails and Dinky held me tightly as I clapped my hooves to the sides of my head. I tried to focus only on them, and tried to breathe, as I felt the warmth of my friends embrace me.

Eventually, the screaming din resolved itself into noises I could distinguish. There was the staccato repeated report of gunfire, the earth-shaking booms of the cannons, and the howls of the demons that had been once again denied their prize. And finally, I could hear Dinky’s voice, as she shouted over the cacophony. “Can you hear now?!”

I nodded, and Dinky sighed in relief, before turning back to Snails. “Do you think you can fix her legs, too?! Unless you feel like carrying her back!”

Snails shrugged, and seemed unsure, but I was more than happy to let him try. I pointed to my back, where my legs met my spine, and he blushed as best he could. Dinky gave him a kick, and he nodded before he gently laid his hooves above my tail, and felt the ridge up my back. After a few seconds, he shook his head. “I think it’s too deep inside, I can’t reach it! I can still carry her, though!”

Dinky sighed and nodded, and then helped him haul me atop his back again. Once more, she took the lead, and we slogged through the trenches towards the back line. As soon as we reached it, Dinky ran into another soldier, who looked confused that we were even here.

Dinky seemed only able to communicate by shouting at this point. Maybe her hearing had been damaged, after all. “Ponyville?!” she yelled in the soldier’s face.

He pointed down the west end of the trench, unflinching, almost blasé, in spite of this mare’s shrillness.

“Thanks!”

Onwards we continued. We only passed one cannon emplacement, which meant we had somehow emerged from the forest, or at least had entered the trenches, between the first and second cannons. How we had gotten so turned around inside the Everchaos, I had no idea, but at least we were safe.

Safe. The thought was odd; we were maybe the safest that we had ever been, in the last…however long it had been since we left these trenches, had left Ponyville. We didn’t know what our plans were once we got back inside, but whatever we did, we’d be a lot safer in there than we had ever been outside the walls. We couldn’t get back there fast enough.

When we reached the final stretch of land in between ourselves and the gate, we paused to plan. Thankfully, Dinky’s speech had fallen back to merely loud conversational speech, which suited the booming trenches just fine. “Okay, so we can’t get the gate open from this side, but it’s not especially thick. I can wink us through, shouldn’t take more than a second. We’re going to run up the ramp, get to the gate, and then you two hold still once we reach it. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Can you do that?” Snails asked, with clear concern in his voice. “I thought you were tired.”

“I was, and I am, but this is the last stretch now.” Dinky hugged him close, and hugged me as well on his back. “We’re almost back in, and we can lay in the street until the end of time if we need to. We’ll feel well enough to move eventually, we just have to get inside.”

Snails still looked unsure, but we both nodded, and Dinky led the final charge up the hill. The great steel gate seemed to gleam in the light of the setting sun behind us, and when we came to a rest at the door, Snails looked ready to collapse. Dinky huffed a few times, and I braced myself as her horn began to glow one final time.

It wasn’t more than a flash of unreality this time, and I closed my eyes before we passed through the space between, which helped. We landed with one final squelch in the mud on the other side of the gate, and we all flopped onto our sides as the sound of the magic faded. In its wake, we heard voices, and as my vision cleared, I took in the scene from where I had landed in the mud.

“Whoa! What was- Dinky?” Magnus was the closest to us, and we’d apparently interrupted a conversation he’d been embroiled in on this side of the wall. By his side stood Mage Meadowbrook, with a few bleeding scrapes and scratches across her muzzle, breast and sides. She had jumped at the sound when Dinky winked us in, and galloped over to check that we were alright.

Behind them both, and flanked by a half-dozen militia ponies, stood Applejack. She had a clear scowl across her face, and as Magnus trailed behind Meadowbrook to stand over us in concern, I could see her motion and whisper to a few of the militia ponies nearby. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I doubted it was anything good.

Dinky jerked upright at Meadowbrook’s caring touch, and looked between her and the absent Commander. “M-Magnus?”

He nodded, and indicated Meadowbrook with his wing. “We had to flee, I’m sorry to say. Managed to fly Meadowbrook out to safety, at least. Good to see you made it back too, with Snails and Holly, but...what about Zecora?”

We all flinched, and Dinky clenched her teeth. Meadowbrook had been in the middle of healing Dinky’s ears and checking her over in general, but Dinky pushed her away gently and looked down at the ground, which was enough proof for tears to well up in Meadowbrook’s eyes. Next to them both, Magnus’ expression turned crestfallen, and he let out a frustrated sigh.

“So ya got Zecora kilt,“ growled Applejack, as she stomped her hoof, and the other militia ponies snapped to attention. “Damn you, Magnus. Wish Ah had the authority to kick your rump back outside to cry home to Canterlot.”

Magnus turned on her. “Yeah, well, you’re stuck with me! Sorry to disappoint, but your stupid little sister seemed to have it out for us! Real surprised you didn’t mention her at all when we were heading out, coulda maybe used a heads-up that she was poking the hornet’s nest!”

“Apple Bloom?” Applejack raised an eyebrow, then shook her head. “Won’t have you talkin’ such nonsense about my family. If you saw her out there, then I believe ya, but I don’t believe she’d attack you. Filly ain’t got a mean bone in her body.”

I wanted to laugh, from where I laid in the mud. I was still paralyzed from the withers down, after all.

Magnus took up the torch for me. “Ain’t got a- Applejack, your sister has gone Hollow! We’re all beat to Tartarus and back thanks to her! You can be damned sure I’m going to report all of this to Celestia, and she’ll come down here herself and set you-”

“Ah said, don’t you talk nonsense about my damn family!” Applejack bellowed. “Apples don’t go Hollow! What Ah see is a bunch of mo-rons went and took our only damned alchemist out on a nature walk through the Firebreak, and now you come back without any o’ my militia ponies, and a different alchemist to replace the one ya lost!”

I could see Snails blink as he heard that, but we didn’t have time to question it, as Applejack continued. “Now I can’t punish you, but I sure can sure as hay punish the damned fools that went with ya! Snails! Been looking for you and Snips, you both missed your last shift! Arrest Ex-Archmagus Dinky Doo here, and her pet Hollow too!”

We all looked at each other for a second. Snails...arresting us?

We hesitated just a moment too long, and Applejack stomped her hoof into the mud. “Snails! Quit lyin’ down on the job, and arrest these two! That’s an order!”

Snails leapt to his wobbling hooves and snapped off a limp salute that slapped mud across his muzzle. “Ma’am yes ma’am!”

Magnus shook his head in frustration. “You can’t arrest them! They didn’t do anything wrong but survive! If you arrest them, then you might as well arrest me, too!”

“An’ me!” Meadowbrook barked, as she stepped forward.

Applejack actually laughed at that, right in their faces. “Ah don’t think so. Been meanin’ to rein in the Archmagus as it was, get somepony with actual experience in the role, ‘stead of some filly. And Ah can’t arrest you, not without Celestia’ comin’ down here and readin’ me the riot act anyhow, much as Ah might want to. So ya’ll go on back up to your fancy-pants castle and report back to the princess that Ah am doing my job, and protectin’ Ponyville, just like Ah promised! We’ll see whose side she takes!”

“Maybe I’ll do that.” Magnus replied with a snarl.

“Ah welcome it.” Applejack spat into the mud between them as she turned back to us. “You two! No funny business! Ah might not have my shotgun with me now, but ya’ll don’t wanna run afoul of Bucky McGillicuddy and Kicks McGee. Snails, with me, we’ll show ‘em to a nice cell to rot in.”

Snails still seemed confused, but none of us brought it up, and we were all too tired to start another fight. Snails pulled me onto his back one last time, and Dinky let Applejack lead us in the direction of the crystal castle at the other end of town.
> 15 - Applejack's Jail
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My nameless captor tossed my limp body into the cell, and I flailed in the air for only a moment, before I landed on my back with a painful thump and a rattling of metal chains. Dinky was only pushed into the cell by Snails, who looked miserable to even be here. The militia pony—who had carried me to the jail, after assisting with the process of putting us in shackles—shut the cell door with a loud clang, and we were locked inside.

Dinky stood over my prone form protectively as she glared at Applejack. “Magnus is going to force you to let us out. You watch.”

“Ah doubt that.” Applejack chuckled. “In the meantime, howsabout you get acquainted with your new cellmate? Reckon you’ll be spendin’ a lot of time together, after all.”

“Go rut yourself,” Dinky growled as she stared her down.

“Language, filly! Lucky there ain’t no soap left to wash your mouth out with.” Applejack shook her head, and began to trot out of the basement. The other militia pony trailed behind, but Snails hesitated enough to be left with us in relative privacy for a few moments.

“I’m-I’m sorry guys, I don’t know what’s going to happen, I didn’t think-”

“Snails.” Dinky’s eyes softened, and she stepped forward so they could face each other through the bars directly. “I don’t blame you, and it’s good that you’re not in here with us. See if you can get the keys, as soon as Applejack isn’t paying attention. Hopefully we shouldn’t be here long, and we can figure out things here in the meantime. Can you handle that?”

Snails nodded shakily. “Get the keys, get you out. Okay. I got it.”

“Snails!” Applejack’s bark from upstairs made him jump. “Land’s sakes, where’d he wander to now? Colt would get lost on a straight road painted with arrows.”

Snails galloped up and out to avoid her wrath, and Dinky sighed, before she turned around and sat against the bars. It was an odd thought, that we were in a jail cell, of all places. I would have thought that ponies had bigger priorities than sticking each other in prison in this Curse-stricken age, but we weren’t even the first occupants of the jail.

“Well! This is a surprise, I was hardly expecting a guest, let alone two! Sadly, the Great and Powerful Trixie cannot offer you much in the way of hospitality.” The pony who had been here before us seemed to be a unicorn, who regarded us with some manner of amusement from her cot. Her slightly faded fur seemed to be a shade of light blue, while her mane was a few shades even lighter than that, mixed with gray. Surprisingly, she'd seemed to have escaped the worst of the Hollow Curse. She shook her head, and shifted so that her head was propped up on her hoof while she lay on her side.

“Wha- Trixie?” Dinky jerked upwards as she looked at our “host.” “You’ve been in- why are you in...?”

Trixie blinked, and her eyebrow rose. “In here? I ran afoul of that overinflated country bumpkin. Same as you, I’d imagine. You’re one of Trixie’s adoring fans, I presume?”

Dinky pulled herself to her hooves and trotted closer, but paused to check on me. As she made sure I was lying down comfortably, she shook her head. “Not really? I remember you, you’re Starlight’s…ah, best friend?”

Trixie chuckled. “Not inaccurate, but I still don’t recognize you, I’m afraid.”

“Dinky? Dinky Doo? Starlight took over for mentoring me after Twilight-”

“Ahhhh yes, now I remember!” Trixie’s eyes lit up. “The filly that Twilight dumped on Starlight when she ran off to play hero again! You’ve…well, to be honest, you haven’t grown terribly much at all. Did you get shorter since I saw you last?”

Dinky sighed, and pushed her hooves under my barrel to push me over onto my side. My vision shifted as I rolled, and my chains rattled against the stone floor again, before I settled.

Trixie sat up to look at us. “What’s wrong with her? She’s not going to turn Hollow on us, is she?”

I shook my head, although my range of movement was as crippled as I was. “N-no...g-got hurt, my b-back...someth-thing important. St-still hurts.”

Dinky placed a hoof on my shoulder as she sat beside me, and looked back up at Trixie. “Can you heal her? I barely know any Pyromancy, and I remember you used it a lot in your show.”

Trixie chuckled again. “Normally, yes! The Great and Powerful Trixie would delight in using her healing hooves to cure the sick and mend the wounds of the injured, for a price.” She tapped at the collar around her neck, the bindings around her head, and the cuffs around her hooves. “Unfortunately, all of these bindings—save for the collar—appear to be forged from cold iron, the classic magical inhibitor. None of us can use our magic, whether sorcery or pyromancy, at least not with these on.”

Dinky started to tug at her own collar in frustration, as I took the time to inspect our bindings properly. The three of us all wore our own plain steel collars, locked tightly around our throats, and they had been the first of the bindings that Applejack had ordered Snails to lock. Gently glowing runes encircled the outside rim, and they had a metal loop built into the front that a chain could be hooked into, to allow our captors to drag us around by our throats.

The three of us were also wearing a set of four cuffs, with one around each hoof, and I could inspect my own in detail. More runes encircled the exterior, and they felt oddly heavy, even more heavy than the metal that they were forged from. I tried to focus on my Pyromancy, but the fire within seemed constrained; when I tried to channel the fire out through my hooves, it was snuffed in an instant, and my fire flickered. I gasped in pain, as it felt as though my soul itself had been struck with a club. Our flame was prohibited, and Pyromancy had been made impossible to cast, just as Trixie said.

The bindings on my back seemed designed to restrict my wings, and presumably any pegasus magic I attempted to weave, if I could recall any. They bound my wings to my side, and kept them bundled tightly together. Only feathers could escape, without the aid of another pony who had the key.

Finally, my eyes turned back to the two unicorns in the cell with me. The other militia pony had been the one to jam the device onto Dinky’s head, when Snails had been disturbed enough to step away, and it resembled a cold iron birdcage more than anything else. The base had locked into the collar, and the bars reached upwards to the apex of the cage, where a glowing black crystal was securely mounted. If I stared at it long enough, I swore I could see a faint tendril of anti-magic that tethered the crystal to Dinky’s horn.

Dinky had already begun trying to pull the cage off of her head by the time I finished observing our bindings, but I could tell it was a fruitless effort. Even if it weren’t locked into the collar, the cage was at a bad angle, and she wouldn’t be able to get leverage while it was still on her head. Neither Pyromancy nor blunt force would remove it; the cold iron would be strong enough to survive most blows or conjured heat, and any that overcame the metal would harm Dinky in turn. We were bound, until somepony freed us, or Snails came back with the keys.

If anything, Trixie seemed amused by Dinky’s efforts. “Oh, you’ve almost got it! Keep pulling, and you might just pull your own head off with it!”

Dinky choked as the collar dug into her throat, before she finally gave up and let her hooves fall to the floor. “Stupid dampener cage...thingy! Why not just use horn rings, like in all the adventure novels?”

Trixie chuckled again. “I don’t know what adventure novels you’ve been reading, but horn rings are closer to...exotic marital aids, if you catch my drift.” Dinky blushed while Trixie continued. “Besides, they’re meant to be easy to escape from, you just need to pull them back off. Not nearly secure enough for actual prisoners, like us.”

Trixie slid off her cot and moved next to us as she continued to speak. “No, to get these off, you need either the key, or something you can pick the lock with. Mind if I borrow a feather from the audience?”

I blinked at her, but Trixie had already ducked her head into my wing. I winced as she pulled a mouldering primary, and she wrinkled her nose as she leaned back, with the feather held between her teeth. “You are absolutely filthy, by the way. Take a bath.”

I held up a hoof, and recalled how I had been absolutely caked in blood and mud from our frantic gallop. That was another reason I hadn’t made anything more than a cursory attempt to stand: I was exhausted, and I could tell Dinky was as well. That she’d been as rebellious as she was, all the way to our cell, was nothing if not a testament to her own stubbornness.

Next to us, Trixie sat back and held up her fores, so she could push the calamus of the feather into the lock of one of her cuffs. She was surprisingly dextrous with her tongue and teeth as she tilted the feather and her hooves, and tried to find the perfect angle. A few moments later, she pushed the feather in just a few hairs further, and she grinned as she mumbled through her teeth. “Almost…almost there, just gotta get this at the right angle to push back the pin tumblers…”

Even Dinky was impressed. “That’s incredible, how are you-?”

“Dammit!” The tip of the feather snapped inside the lock, and Trixie jerked the cuffs in frustration, before she spat out the broken feather. “Ptooey. One of the Great and Powerful Trixie’s most famous skills is escape artistry, although it is…somewhat more difficult with actual locks. I’ll get it this time.”


*	*	*


Trixie broke twelve more feathers before I pushed her away, and gently asked her to stop pulling them. Primaries were important for flight, and while I was pretty sure I could manage when missing a few, Trixie looked desperate enough to escape that she’d pluck my wings clean. I wasn’t even sure if they had been permanently lost, or if they were considered important enough to regenerate, as far as the Curse was concerned.

Trixie had moved back to her cot, and she glared at the broken feathers that littered the floor as though they’d betrayed her personally. “There has to be a magical component to the locks, that’s the only explanation. Some sort of protection enchantment that needs to be matched by the keys.”

Dinky nodded. "That makes sense. Hopefully Snails gets back with those soon." Her gaze swept the cell, and her expression fell as she realized she might be stuck in this cell for a long while. After a few moments, her eyes focused on the cot behind me. "There's only two beds in each cell, but Applejack put us all in here?"

Trixie shrugged. "It suited me fine until you showed up. Not that it matters much, since I seem to be having trouble sleeping; they're just marginally more comfortable than the floor."

"Yeah, Undead can't sleep, we just gradually get less tired-" Dinky paused mid sentence. "Trixie, that's common knowledge outside. How long have you been down here?"

Trixie rolled onto her back, and held her hoof to her forehead dramatically, as she spoke. "Years and years, untold aeons since the sun stopped! Oh, woe betide Trixie the Great and Powerful, for she has been trapped underground since the sun stopped, never to escape!"

Dinky rolled her eyes.

After a moment, Trixie rolled back onto her belly and smirked at us. "I'm not really one for the whole 'woe is me' shtick normally, but indulge me slightly, yes? It's incredibly boring down here, and you two are the first decent audience Trixie has had in the last few…" Trixie paused briefly. "...weeks? I think I’ve been locked up for a few weeks, at most. It's very hard to tell, nowadays."

At that, Dinky nodded in agreement. "Yeah. Uh…for reference, how long do you think it's been since the sun stopped?"

Trixie shrugged. "Overall? It’s only been a few months so far. Maybe a year, but that’s my absolute most extreme guess. I can't wait until Celestia fixes things and gets the sun moving again, and I can start my show back up. The Hollows are a bit unpleasant, but they're just as enthralled as anypony else by my tricks, so long as that country bumpkin upstairs hasn't ripped apart Trixie's wagon."

"A few months...right." Dinky swallowed, and looked back at me. "Holly, you should have the cot, so you can rest your back. I'll...I'll be fine."

I wanted to argue with the filly, but my deadened hindlegs spoke louder. I didn't fight as Dinky awkwardly shoved her head under my shoulder, and tried to pull me onto her back. She was clearly struggling without the use of her horn, but I helped as best I could, and Trixie only snickered at us a bit as Dinky pulled me from the floor and dumped me onto the bed. I winced as my back landed on the ancient mattress, and I felt the bones of my spine as they ground against each other.

From the cot, I could finally look around the basement jail that we had been locked up in. The three of us occupied one corner cell out of the six total that had been partitioned out of the square space, and there were three cells on either side of a central space meant for the guards. A ramshackle table sat in the absolute center of the room, and a dim electric bulb hung from the ceiling above that table, which illuminated an old deck of cards from a long-forgotten game.

We were far from the only occupants of the jail, as a whole. The center cell of the three across from us seemed to be another group containment cell, with half a dozen feral Hollows all locked inside. They stared hungrily at us, as they crammed themselves mindlessly into the corner of their cell closest to our own, and the poor Hollow that had been the first there was clearly being crushed against the bars. The other five were too far gone to care, however, and he seemed to be as well. They all reached out with their hooves, as if they believed they could reach us if they just reached a little bit further.

The final occupant was on our side of the basement, across from the cell full of Hollows, and seemed to regard us with some small measure of interest from the other corner cell. He was a pegasus, like me, and deeply Hollowed. I gave him a wave with a trembling hoof, but he didn't return the greeting, or even respond in any way that I could see.

"Don't bother," Trixie grunted from behind me. "He hasn't ever done anything but smirk at me, or the bumpkin, whenever she comes down here to 'interrogate' him. I think he's already gone, and she threw him in the wrong cell."

I let my hoof drop back to the mattress sadly, and my eyes turned to the last feature of note inside the basement: near the ceiling of each center cell was a barred window that let in the warm, gentle light of the sunset. It seemed to be open up directly to the square outside on the opposite wall, while the window on our side, from what I could tell, only opened up to an alley behind the building. There was little hope of escape through there, with the bars blocking us from climbing our path, even if we were in that cell. The fact that even the Hollows across from us got more sunlight was only one more depressing detail about our prison.

Dinky seemed to finish her own inspection of the basement at the same time as me, and I winced again as she sat on the floor against the edge of the bed. Her gaze settled on Trixie. "So...what'd you do to get thrown in here, anyway? I thought Applejack just banished ponies she caught, not locked them in prison."

Trixie blinked at her. "Who?"

Dinky blinked back in even greater confusion. "The…the mare in the hat and armor. The orange, Hollowed one, with the accent…?"

"Ah! The country bumpkin, yes. I haven't really cared to learn her name, and unless the story of Trixie's escape is particularly impressive, I shall take great pleasure in forgetting about her entirely after I leave."

Dinky shook her head. "Right...but...actually, what happened to you and Starlight? Is she okay?"

Trixie shrugged. "Oh, she's well enough, I can't imagine she's gotten herself into too much trouble in the last few weeks, after all. You might recall that we left together? Well, we traveled across Equestria for a while in my wagon. We did shows, like old times, to buy our safety and pay for her research. You'd think if Twilight gave her instructions important enough for Celestia to follow up with her afterwards, she could float a royal stipend of sorts our way…"

"Research?" Dinky asked.

"Mm-hm. Twilight asked her for help researching the 'Curse,' and then disappeared. All-important Princess Twilight Sparkle was in Baltimare, last I heard, and hiding out at the library. Some things never change, hm?" Trixie chuckled to herself as Dinky's eyes went wide, but the showmare continued onwards. "Anyway! We traveled all over the country for a while. I'll tell you about some of the places we went another time, but Starlight ran into...ugh, an old 'friend' of hers. She decided to stay there and read boring books together, instead of traveling with me. Twilight made that mare boring, let me tell you!"

Dinky nodded, and I heard her mutter to herself, "Twilight is in Baltimare…right, okay."

"Myself, I kept traveling, though my shows weren't quite as impressive without my faithful assistant. Eventually, I had to return here to Ponyville to pick up some supplies that I left behind, buf to my surprise, that bumpkin had occupied and fortified the School of Friendship! She wouldn't let me in, and when I tried to get in anyways to get my own belongings, she had the guards beat me within an inch of my life! Then she tossed me in here, and here Trixie has remained since." Trixie waved her hooves at the prison around us, and then settled back down onto her own cot. “I may give you the detailed description of the fight another time; it was a spectacular battle, for the Great and Powerful Trixie does not surrender easily!”

I shrugged, as much as I could from where I lay on my cot. “M-maybe...we’ve had en-enough f-fghting for ours-selves, f-for a w-while...I th-think.”

“Oh?” Trixie’s ears perked up in interest. “Trixie has told you her tale, but she is always interested in hearing a good story! I may even be able to give you advice on how to ‘spice it up’ for an audience, hmm?”

Dinky shook her head, and looked away. “I’d rather not, if that’s alright. Not exactly proud of it so far.”

“Fine, fine,” Trixie waved her hoof, and looked at me. “How about you, hm? You certainly look like you’ve had more than your fair share of adventure, with how filthy you both are. And was that militia colt you were conspiring with involved as well?”

I looked down at Dinky, who gave me a tired shrug. “If you feel like it, Holly. I haven’t heard your whole story either, so it’ll be good to fully catch up, I guess.”

I mulled it over for a few moments, before I nodded slightly, and began to recount everything I’d witnessed so far. From the time I woke up, to where we lay now, as best I could remember it. My broken speech and stuttered words caused a little bit of confusion, but Dinky coaxed me to continue my breathing exercises again as I spoke, which helped.

I gave them the mostly-abbreviated version of events, from awakening in the bookstore to traveling to Ponyville, and Trixie took notice when I described my frantic gallop along the wall. Ponyville was mostly skipped over, because they were both familiar with the town, but I fumbled over my words when I started talking about Zecora. I couldn’t remember her rhymes exactly as she had said them, and it hurt me to think about her now.

Thankfully, when I got to the caravan, Dinky opened up slightly and helped me fill in some information. Trixie again took interest as we described the first fight against Apple Bloom, and she smiled fondly when we discussed Baton Verte; apparently she had been familiar with the town. Dinky went quiet again as I described Snips going Hollow, then leaving Baton Verte, and, finally, the second fight.

It was...hard to describe Zecora’s death, or…her Hollowing. I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that it was my fault that Apple Bloom stole her Equinity, and judging from how Dinky put her hooves over her head when I finally managed to describe it, I think she blamed herself too. Our desertion afterwards didn’t help; I was starting to wonder if we should have stayed and fought. At least we wouldn’t have been burdened with this awful feeling of shame.

Trixie, however, seemed impressed when I described our teleporting and evasion. “You Winked out of combat? That’s actually very impressive!” Trixie looked over Dinky again, as she clearly re-evaluated the teenager.

I looked down at Dinky, who only shrugged and looked away from us both. “It...it is?”

“Oh, yes!” Trixie sat up once again on her own cot and threw her hooves up in a grand, sweeping gesture. “One of many abilities available only to very skilled unicorns is the ability to Wink! It requires not only a sundering of the space between spaces, but it also requires great concentration as the caster travels through those spaces towards their destination. Even if a Unicorn is powerful enough to cast the spell to begin with, they have to train for months to maintain their focus. Even some of the most famous unicorns of all time have been permanently lost to a botched Wink. They poofed away, and simply never arrived at their destination!"

My flesh crawled, and my cutie mark itched, as I recalled the screaming, and the incredible pressure just on the other side of the shield. “Wha-what hap-happens to p-ponies that m-mess it up?”

Trixie leaned in, and held a hoof up to cover her mouth, as if imparting upon me a great conspiracy. “Nopony knows…some ponies claim they emerge weeks later, mindless and mad, and others swear they see the lost, trapped and drowning in the whorls and eddies of the abyss, when they travel through themselves. Others hear whispers, from those lost, and from voices beyond…”

Trixie waved her hooves, and the chains of her shackles rattled as I shivered. Then she pulled back, and it seemed the darkness of the cell around us receded as well. “I can only impart what I hear, of course; the Great and Powerful Trixie prefers to trot, or to be carried to her destination by her adoring fans.”

Trixie settled back into her cot a moment later. “So! What then, after skillfully evading combat?”

"Wh-when we l-landed-"

There was a sudden crash, as somepony stomped on the floor above us loud enough that we could hear it in the basement. We all jumped, and my words caught in my throat. A moment later, a shrill voice echoed down the stairs, but it was hard to make out the words. Dinky looked over at the stairwell, and mumbled quietly, "That sounded like Pinkie…?"

After maybe a minute, we heard movement coming down the stairs, and Applejack clearly barked, "Snails! With us, we'll make sure she doesn't try anything heroic."

A pink blur of burning warmth shot downstairs, and suddenly Pinkie was standing at the door of our cell, with her hooves wrapped around the bars. “Dinky, Holly! I’m sorry I took so long, Magnus was looking for me for a while and I was trying to talk Roseluck into coming outside but she’s all growly and so I was hard to find and oh hey Trixie! How have you been?”

Trixie shrugged. “Bored, mostly, but at least now there’s company.”

“I’m sorry! I would have come and kept you company if somepony had told me they were locking ponies up!” Pinkie turned to glare at Applejack as the mare came galloping down the stairs, with Snails trailing behind her.

Applejack looked as though she had been caught off guard by Pinkie’s arrival; she’d left her hat upstairs, and to my surprise, she had a short unicorn horn above her forehead. The hat must have been covering it up the previous times I’d seen her. “Ah don’t report to you, Pinkie, Ah report to Celestia. Guarding Ponyville from Hollows, saboteurs and malcontents is my duty, and as far as Ah’m concerned, these here ponies fit all three of the criteria.”

“That’s crazy! Crazier than usual for you!” Pinkie bristled, and I could feel her fire flaring, as her fur stood on end and she stared down Applejack. “That filly is our town Archmagus, and I know you’ve had your disagreements with Trixie in the past, but locking her up for Luna knows how long is just cruel! And I don’t know exactly what you think Holly did, but you’re probably wrong about that too!”

“These two,” Applejack pointed at Dinky and then me, “either got Zecora kilt or kilt her themselves, the investigation’s still ongoin’. Your friend Magnus was workin’ with them, and if I had my way, he’d be locked up in here too. Or maybe I’d just throw him in with the Hollows and let them sort him out; he’s been givin’ me attitude about how I run my town for far too long!”

“Hollows?” Pinkie turned to look around the rest of the basement, and her eyes widened as she saw the cell with the six feral hollows crushing each other within. All the activity in the basement, and especially Pinkie Pie’s presence, seemed to have riled them up; they snarled and snapped and clawed through the bars with a vigor I hadn’t seen in any Hollow until that moment.

Pinkie shook as she darted over, and stayed just out of reach of their hooves as they clawed at the air between them. “Bella Brella, Blue Bonnet, Rosetta, Peachy Plume, Orchid Dew, Lipstick! This is where you all went! I thought you all just disappeared or got eaten!” She jumped into the air, whirled around, and landed facing Applejack with her glare reinforced. “At least you haven’t been throwing them outside like the others, but what the hay, Applejack?”

 Applejack stood her ground. “These ponies are Hollows, Pinkie. Whoever they were before don’t matter one bit; they’re just beasts now. Or worse, they were hidin’ Hollows, like I know I’ve caught you doin’ a dozen times over. That weakens Ponyville, and lets the Curse spread further. We gotta throw ‘em all out so the sickness dies outside the walls.”

Dinky’s eyes widened, and we all heard her as she quietly mumbled, “They-they weren’t Hollowed already when you locked them up?”

I looked over at the mindless Hollows in the cell across from us once more, and felt a very unique sense of dread. Would that be our fate? Would it already have been, if Applejack had locked us up in one of the adjacent cells on that side?

Pinkie’s mouth twitched wildly and she seemed unable to make any noise for a few moments, as her jaw worked and unheard words tumbled out. When she spoke again, she was the angriest I had ever seen her. “You killed these ponies, Applejack! Maybe you didn’t pull the trigger or light the fuse, but you locked them up and starved them, and they died down here, alone and afraid, because of you!”

“Ah am doin’ what needs to be done to protect Ponyville!” Applejack barked back.

“Then why are you killing us?!” Pinkie shrieked, before she stomped both her forehooves on the stone floor. “This has gone too far! This has been going too far for way too long! Magnus is right, and we’re going to tell the Princess on you, and she’s going to put a stop to this, because you need to be stopped!”

“Let her try!” Applejack said with a guffaw. “Ponyville is mah town, and if she’s forgotten that, then I will stand up to her to keep you idjits safe! Tell Magnus that any authority he and his guards had is no longer valid in my town, and if I see his stinkin’ Hollow hide inside these here walls again I’m gonna throw him down a well to rot!”

“Fine!” Pinkie shrieked, before turning back to us. “Dinky, Holly, Trixie, I am coming back and Celestia’s going to get you out of-”

“Visiting hours are over!” Applejack barked to interrupt Pinkie. “Ah will escort you out of my jail myself! Snails!”

The colt jumped to attention, though he trembled as he pulled a sloppy salute.

“Stay down here and watch the prisoners ‘til Ah come and get you. Make sure they don’t try any funny business!”

“Y-yes miss Applejack-”

Pinkie whinnied in annoyance, and she had already bolted upstairs, leaving behind a pony-shaped cloud of dust, by the time Applejack turned back to her. This didn’t deter the militia commander any, and she simply galloped back upstairs a moment later, which left us alone with Snails and the echoes of shouts through the ceiling above.

When they had finally faded, Snails stumbled over to us. He seemed slightly in shock from the argument, and he barely managed to mumble out an apology. “I’m s-sorry…Miss Applejack’s got the-the only key, and she wears it herself on a necklace. And-and I don’t wanna try and steal it because she’s been really riled up as of late-”

Dinky laid her head down on the stone floor, and it looked like she couldn’t manage to lift her eyes up to meet his. “S’ okay, Snails. We’ll...I dunno. We’ll get out of here...somehow. Probably.”

"I'm sure we'll figure something out," Trixie muttered casually as she laid back down on her cot. "I've been trying everything I could think of to escape before now, but with a pony on the outside, I've got new possibilities to work with...It might take a few more weeks, but the Great and Powerful Trixie will not be locked up for much longer!"

I felt a leaden weight in my chest, uncertain if I would be able to wait that many "weeks" myself.
> 16 - Ball and Chain
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I finally began to feel my hinds again, they announced their presence suddenly and loudly, and it was only polite to convey their message to the rest of the prison. I let out a throaty screech, and fell off of the cot as my hind legs spasmed wildly.

Dinky jumped away in surprise as I flopped onto the stone floor, and I just barely avoided landing atop her. "Wha- Holly?! What's wrong?"

I let out a keening wail as I pressed my fores against my hinds, and attempted to keep the buzzing, throbbing sensation still. "L-legs! Feel m-my legs ag-again!"

"Breathe! In and out, slowly, and focus on my voice. It's, uh, it's probably gonna hurt for a while, just focus on me and it...should pass?"

The funny thing was, after the initial burst of mind-shattering agony, they didn't actually hurt exactly. It was more of that same pins-and-needles sensation that I had felt when I had first awoken, and had needed to learn once more the sensation of feeling. It was like I had wasps buzzing inside of my flesh, and when I pressed my hinds tight against the stone, the buzzing calmed.

As I calmed, and the cool feeling of existence reasserted itself in my legs, I felt myself exhale in relief—and then the breath caught in my throat. I had been breathing the entire time as I was focused on my hinds, without need for thought or pulling my attention away. Without knowing she would, Dinky had accidentally helped kick-start my autonomous breathing. But even as I realized this, I began to focus too much on it, and lost my grasp on the sensation.

Not this time, I swore to myself. Not when I'm so close. I leaned back against the edge of the cot as Dinky held me close, and I closed my eyes to focus on myself. Zecora had only barely touched on meditation past the beginning of my training, but I recalled it as best I could, and I let my awareness fade. With it faded the last of the pins and needles.

I found my fire, and felt the cold iron around my legs as they constrained it. But that was fine; I didn't need to push my flame out, I just needed to use it to center myself. I inhaled, then exhaled, slowly and gradually. I focused on my lungs, and where they were in relation to the nearly-snuffed center of my being.

I breathed in, and my fire flared as the air in my lungs fanned the flames.

I breathed out, and my fire flickered as the air left me.

Then I began to shift my focus. My attention was no longer on my lungs; to manually work them required a great deal of effort, and I had little remaining for anything else. Instead, I focused on the flame, my dear flame, and how it flared and flickered. So long as I watched that flame, I could trust my lungs to fulfill their duty.

I opened my eyes, and I was breathing.

I couldn't do it autonomously, sadly. I wasn't there yet. Maybe I still needed some piece of knowledge or understanding, or maybe I just needed enough practice that it would form into a habit. But it was a hundred times easier to focus on my flame alone, than to manipulate every muscle of my bruised and battered lungs individually.

Dinky was still by my side, and she gave me a look of worry as I relaxed, now that the pain of my hindlegs regaining function had faded. "Holly? How do you feel?"

"B-better. I f-feel a lot b-better now." And it was true. My breath came easier, and with it, my speech evened out. I hardly needed to pause to catch my breath at all now, though my traitorous lips and tongue continued to betray me, and made me trip over the words as I tried to give them a voice.

My eyes caught those of Trixie. She was still lying languidly across her cot, but I had the absolute of her attention; Dinky had said she was an experienced Pyromancer as well? She must have felt it, from where she lay. I had no doubt that whatever I had just done—even while bound in cold iron, or perhaps because of it—had gotten her notice.

And as soon as our eyes met, her lips curled in a grin that seemed almost feline. "Holly, was it? How much time did you say you spent training under this 'Zecora?"

I shrugged, and began to struggle to my hooves. "N-not long at-at all. W-we had just gotten thr-through the b-basics?"

Trixie's only response was a thoughtful hum, and the matter was quietly dropped. Dinky hadn’t even noticed the exchange, and I was only barely aware that Trixie seemed to know something I didn’t. That was hardly a surprise, in my Hollowed condition.

When I tried to stand, any confidence that I had regained alongside the feeling in my legs fell away. My hinds shook as they took on weight, and they felt even more atrophied than the rest of my body. Being separated for as long as we had been, I was surprised they could move at all. I decided not to push it too far, and simply settled for sitting back atop the cot. Dinky joined me now that I wasn’t occupying the entire surface with my crippled body, and we sat side-by-side, to face Trixie as we talked.

That was one thing Trixie could do very well, whether her hooves were in chains or, I assumed, she was pacing the length of a stage. She could talk, for hours and days and weeks on end, it felt like (I desperately hoped that it hadn’t literally been weeks). She had claimed to be bored before, when Pinkie had come to see us, but I think she missed an audience more than she missed company. Dinky and I could hardly get a word in edgewise as she talked about everywhere she’d traveled in detail, the places she’d been, the things she’d seen, and the ponies she’d met.

The city of Las Pegasus was a favored topic of hers. I had no memory of the city before, which led me to believe I had never been there before my Hollowing, but from her description, it sounded like a fascinating place to visit. The city was too far away from Celestia’s sun for the light to reach it as anything more than a dimly-lit dusk, and the desert was shrouded in shadow. But the city was so bright that it lit up the night, all the way from the earth pony mining town on the ground, all the way up to the floating pegasus casinos high above. Even now, with everything that had happened, the city fought to stay sane and keep the lights on. Even the shows still ran, so the performers would not forget their craft, nor would the militia there forget what they fought to protect.

To the far southeast sat the village of Somnambula, and when Trixie spoke of it, Dinky sat up and helped fill in the gaps. Somnambula was one of the Pillars of Equestria, like Magnus, Rockhoof, and Meadowbrook, which was news to me. I had wondered idly why Rockhoof and Meadowbrook spoke so intimately of events long before our own endless time, and apparently, they had all been pulled from the past to our modern era, just years before the sun stopped.

Dinky had met them a couple of times formally as Princess Twilight’s student, but she knew Magnus and Rockhoof the best, as they were the only ones who actively operated in Ponyville. I gained new respect for them, now that I knew they had been through so much to fight alongside us. I was only stunned slightly that I had simply blundered across three ancient heroes with barely any sort of notice or fanfare; maybe the fame had rubbed off during the wars against the dragons and demons.

As for the village of Somnambula itself, it was the eponymous pony’s hometown, just as Baton Verte had been Meadowbrook’s. Apparently as a pegasus, she could more safely travel between there and Canterlot. From what Dinky had picked up from Magnus and Rockhoof, Somnambula was studying alicorns, like Celestia and Princess Twilight. She seemed to believe they had miraculous powers due to being living goddesses, and ponies were gradually learning how to imitate those powers, so they could be used against the demons.

“Pffffft, powers of the goddesses?That’s rich! Next time I’m down south, I’ll need to congratulate her on an excellent grift! I bet she’s not even really ‘from the past.’” Trixie waggled her hooves sarcastically as she repeated the phrase. “I’ll bet Somnambula Isn't even really her name—she probably just looked a bit like the statues, and decided to take advantage of some gullible villagers.”

Dinky sighed in exhaustion. I couldn’t blame her—trying to tell Trixie stories where she wasn’t the focus seemed to be an exercise in frustration. “Look, I’m just telling you two what Rockhoof told me, okay? And before you start, they’re absolutely from the past. Rockhoof and Magnus know way too much about Equestria from a thousand years ago to be faking it. Especially Magnus; he told me in so much more detail about Pegasopolis than a pony could recite from a history book!”

“Hah! They’re faking it. If you can’t confirm what they’re saying, then how do you know it’s not all made up, huh?” Trixie sat back on her cot, with a smug grin plastered across her face, while Dinky spluttered quietly beside me. “Powers of the goddesses? I knew Twilight Sparkle, and she wasn’t a goddess. Just a dorky librarian who got a pair of wings she couldn’t even fly with.

“Besides, I’ve been to Canterlot—or at least, I’ve tried to go to Canterlot, since this whole demon business started. Whole town is locked up tighter than a barrister’s wallet.” Trixie shrugged, and waved her hoof in what was probably the general direction of the city. “I guess Celestia decided she needed to collapse the pass you’d use to roll a wagon into Canterlot. I can’t imagine why; it’s not as if the demons are rolling catapults and trebuchets around.”

Finally, Dinky seemed to agree with Trixie on something. “Yeah, Magnus mentioned to me once how Canterlot was locked down. Only the couriers can get in or out, to convey reports and orders back and forth along the supply lines. There’s even an interdiction field keeping pegasi grounded—I guess they already had one aerial attack.”

Trixie chuckled again. “More lies from your friends! How are they flying in and out, then? That desert cleric, the old soldier, or these supposed couriers all have to be getting in and out somehow.” Trixie sat back and looked up at the wooden beams that supported the ceiling. “No, I bet they have a ground path, if there really is an interdiction field. Some hidden way up the mountain and into the city. Probably nothing I can get a wagon through, but I bet I could still get in on hoof...hm…”

Trixie’s thoughts were interrupted suddenly, by the sound of hooves in the stairwell. Dinky and I turned to face the entrance, hoping Snails had come by to check up on us, but we both slumped slightly when we saw Applejack emerge instead. She glared at us as she entered, and another guard trailed behind her, with two rolls of cloth over his back.

“Prisoners! I have an opportunity for you, to help you earn your freedom.”

Dinky raised an eyebrow, and I shifted to look at Applejack more directly. Trixie snorted derisively at first, but she gave Applejack her attention. “Oh? And what generous deal do you seek to make with us, then? Slave labor? Target practice?”

“Labor, of a sort.” Applejack grabbed one of the chairs at the table with her teeth, and then pulled it over to sit in front of our cell. Her guard continued to stand at attention by her side. “Now, as you might recall, our relationship with the Golden Guard is a little strained right now. They’ll come to heel in time, but until then, I got work that needs doing. And that’s where you come in.”

The guard pulled a drawstring on one of the cloth bundles, and a set of basic quilted barding unrolled from within. A mouldering leather scabbard, about the length of a shortsword, also swung free and hung by the strap.

“My duty is to keep Ponyville safe, and one of the things I gotta protect it from is certain groups outside our walls. In this case, it’s a horde a’ bandits that attacks the gates from time to time, and raids the farmhouses left abandoned. Ya’ll know what a hog is?”

We all nodded, in curiosity and confusion (or, at least, I certainly was confused, having never heard talk about “hogs” up until now).

“Good. Lots of farms around here used to keep them as guests, since they’re happy with a roof over their heads and scraps to munch on. They usually earned their keep by hunting for truffles and disposing of said scraps, so it worked out for everyone involved.” Applejack snarled suddenly, and leaned closer. “Well, at some point that changed. Now they’re unified, and they seem to have a grudge against us ponies, though I got no clue what we did to earn that.”

Applejack leaned back, and used her hoof to indicate the equipment still held by the guard. “Two of you would be given basic armor and weapons, as you can see here, and free reign outside the walls. We’d escort you to the door, and let you back in once you proved the work was done.”

Dinky tapped her hoof on the mattress for emphasis. “And what work is that, exactly, that you’re asking us to do?”

Applejack shrugged derisively and scowled. “Kill ‘em, scatter their gang to the four winds, or just steal all of their equipment; Ah don’t care. They stole an old Apple Family heirloom from our farm, and I know it’s one o’ their proudest prizes. Bring back mah Granny’s lucky horseshoe, and I’ll consider them dealt with.”

“Mercenary work, as a penal unit?” Trixie huffed, and flicked her messy mane. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is no mercenary. Why can’t you and your hick militia deal with this yourselves?”

“Oh, we can,” Applejack motioned to the guard, who began to place the rolled-up quilted armor onto the table behind her. “In fact, it’d be near-trivial to take a group out and burn their little camp to the ground. But I’d rather not waste the time it’d take to hunt them down, nor the resources, and I figured you seem to care about Ponyville plenty, and the defence thereof. So why not try and make a deal that works for the both of us?”

Trixie scoffed again. “And what is to stop us from simply leaving? Why come back to Ponyville, when we would already be free and outside the walls?”

“You in particular?” Applejack motioned to Trixie. “Well, I still got your wagon, and the contents within. Reckon you’d want that back, huh?”

“Ah. Collateral.” Trixie spat the word in disgust, but nodded. “Then Trixie is at least marginally interested, with one caveat.”

“Not in much of a bargaining position.” Applejack’s glare was hard, daring Trixie to push her luck, but Trixie didn’t rise to meet the challenge.

“Oh, nothing so dramatic as to inconvenience you or weaken your...collateral. All Trixie requires is her hat; the rest of the wagon’s contents are to stay safely inside the wagon, within your possession, until Trixie has fulfilled her end of the bargain.”

Applejack considered Trixie for a long few moments, and the showmare busied herself by casually examining her hooves. Eventually, Applejack nodded. “Alright. Ah can understand the sentimental value of a hat. I’ll have it for you when you arrive at the gate, in case it contains any...surprises.”

She turned to Dinky next. “As for you, filly, your collateral would be-”

“I’m not going.” Dinky interrupted her. “Not interested. I’ve seen enough of the world outside the walls, and I’ve had enough adventure. I just want to stay here in Ponyville, even if I-” She swallowed. “Even if I have to stay inside this cell.”

“Hmph.” Applejack snorted as she looked her over, and her eyes turned to me instead. “Alright. Hollow, can you walk again? Ain’t got much use for a lame pony.”

I hesitated, and pressed myself closer to Dinky. “Y-yes, but-” I didn’t want to leave Dinky here. And I might not come back either; Dinky had already known far too many ponies who didn’t return for her.

Applejack didn’t care to let me protest. “Alrighty, then your collateral is Dinky’s freedom to move inside of Ponyville again. I might even let her earn her title of Archmagus again; Ah’m generous like that.”

Dinky narrowed her eyes. “But not Holly’s own freedom?”

“She’s a Hollow. Ah’m not lettin’ her wander freely ‘round Ponyville to infect the rest of us, no matter what she’s done. She can stay in this cell when she’s not working outside the walls.”

It was more freedom than I had currently, but it still wasn’t a good deal for me. But it was a better deal for Dinky, and that was more important. I still didn’t want to leave her here, by herself.

Dinky seemed to sense how split I was, and she pressed her head against my breast. “It’s...it’s alright. We shouldn’t both stay here until we both…” Dinky swallowed again. “I’ll be okay. Go.”

It hurt. I desperately didn’t want to leave her here, for fear of what might happen to her while I was gone. But she was adamant. If this was what it took to free her, then it would be worth it.

But in the moment, it hurt to pull away from her, and get to my hooves.

Applejack nodded as I stood. “Good. I’ll give you the armor and swords at the gate, so there’s no funny business on the way there. And your hat,” she added, as Trixie slid off her cot behind me and stretched like a cat.

“The great and gracious Trixie thanks you,” Trixie muttered, with sarcasm dripping from every word.

Applejack turned to the guard behind her first. “Roll that one back up and gallop over to the northwest gate. Grab her hat too, and tell Snips and Snails to help me escort these two there.”

The guard blinked at her, before he replied in a growling and ragged voice, “Snips is st-still missing, m-ma’am.”

“Ugh, right. That colt…fine, Ocean Breeze can fill in for him. Need unicorns who can watch for any magic tricks.”

He nodded, and rolled up the armor and sword into a tight bundle once more. Applejack waited until he had galloped upstairs, and Snails and another guard had joined her, before she withdrew the key from under the collar of her armor. She unlocked our cell while the other two guards nervously waited a few steps away, and she flicked her head as she swung the door open. “Follow me.”


*	*	*


The northwest gate felt oddly familiar, and after Applejack left us alone with a small squad of guards, I looked around to try and figure out why. Eventually, I worked out that this area might be where I had originally run across the top of the wall. I’d been so close to the gate to begin with, and hadn’t been able to tell? If I’d followed the wall the other direction when I first arrived, would I have encountered this gate?

It was a moot point; the guards wouldn’t have let me in, even if I had some way of communicating with them from outside the wall. But it was slightly frustrating to know how close I had been so long ago, if I’d only known a little bit more, or searched a little bit harder.

Applejack returned a short while later. “Gate’s gonna open soon, and might be a fight. Best if y’all get your armor on before going out, though I’ll ask ya not to draw your swords until the gate’s open, at the earliest. I’ll unlock your shackles and such now, though you’ll be keeping the collars, just so you don’t forget.”

I nodded while Trixie scoffed, and Applejack pulled out her key once more. She unlocked my wing bindings first, then the shackles around my legs. I sighed happily as I felt the anti-magical pressure of the cold iron release my flame, and I let it fill my body once more, while Applejack moved to open Trixie’s bindings.

Trixie’s strange birdcage helmet was the first to be removed. Applejack lifted it off with her teeth, and Trixie shook her head to loosen up her mane again once it was off. It had still left her mane pressed down in a strange way along the back of her neck, and it clearly bugged Trixie, but she waited until Applejack had removed her shackles. Once they were off, Trixie began to fluff and brush her mane, until it looked marginally more presentable.

Applejack waved another guard forward, who held our armor, and Trixie’s hat. She didn’t even wait for him to get close before she grabbed it with her magic; everypony jumped, and the militia ponies grabbed their swords, but Trixie only brought it to her breast, where she hugged the ratty, star-spangled apparel close like it was it was a long-lost lover.

While she did that, I worked to unfold the quilted barding, and examined it. It seemed to be sort of like a jumpsuit made of a heavy wool quilt, with a row of buttons that ran along the barrel, and it looked like it ran all the way down to the knees of my hinds. The only places it didn’t cover were my head and the ends of my legs, and even as old and ragged as the wool was, it looked like it would be fairly comfortable and decently protective. The heavy wool would absorb most blunt strikes, and provide at least minor resistance to piercing blows. Slashing attacks would damage the exterior layer of the wool, but presumably the rips could just be sewn up as needed after a fight.

As far as armor went, this was surprisingly generous. I had expected little more than a padded tunic, but I felt as though I could take a blow or two while I wore this barding. Still, I noted that it was only good when attacked in those situations; I was still very vulnerable to being lit aflame, splattered with fluid, crushed, or being thrown up into the air to let gravity do the work for my opponent. 

And, of course, my head was still bare and completely exposed. When Trixie joined me and donned her own barding, she at least had her hat to cover her head, flimsy fabric though it might be.

Applejack looked us over after we had pulled on the equipment, and I coughed gently to get her attention. “W-why are you g-giving-”

“The armor and weapons?” She finished the thought for me, and I nodded. “Not too much use against demons anyhow, and they’re not so valuable we can’t afford to lose ‘em. You ain’t seen your swords yet, heh. Besides, if you decide to take advantage of your freedom and attack us, or maybe join the hogs in their fight—which I doubt, seein’ as you’re not hogs—we can take care of you without much trouble, even when you’re equipped like this.”

I looked around at the militia ponies who were guarding us, who wore leather or metal armor over their own padded barding, and used pikes and freshly-sharpened blades. A great deal of the guards were unicorns as well, who seemed to be specifically watching Trixie. Applejack was correct; I had absolutely no interest in fighting these ponies, and even if I did, we would have no chance against their training and equipment.

“In the interest of returning as quickly as possible,” Trixie asked, as she caressed her hat, “Do you have much in the way of clues as to the location of these ‘hogs,’ we’re being sent out to fight?”

“Wish I did,” Applejack shrugged, and focused her attention on the gate. “Best we got is that we figure they’re holed up at a farm somewhere. The cows are missing too—that might be their work, or the demons. If’n they did take the cows for themselves, then the farms are the best place to keep ‘em, but that’s nothing but guesswork.

“Speakin’ o’ the demons,” Applejack continued with a chuckle, “We saw a couple of ‘em snuffling around the wall about a mile east. Bring back their hides or horns, and we might see about getting you two some more-valuable equipment. The more dead demons there are, the better.”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie will consider it,” Trixie said, in a tone that bluntly stated she would do nothing of the sort.

“Well, reckon you’re set,” Applejack looked back up atop the gate. “Open ‘er up! Look sharp, ‘case we got guests!”

The soldiers around us all readied their weapons, while the ones atop the gate began to unbar the great door. I remembered what Applejack had said about drawing our own weapons, but I couldn’t keep myself from at least putting a hoof on the grip of my shortsword, in case I needed to draw it quickly. A worrying amount of militia ponies seemed more focused on us than the door though, and especially on Trixie.

Wood and steel groaned in a symphony of strain as the gate opened, and I shivered slightly as I waited for something, anything, to happen. Would a smaller demon, or some unfortunate equine, try to dart inside past us? Or had a larger demon been waiting on just the other side of the wall for this moment? Would the doors suddenly be bashed inwards, and force us to duck?

It was a relief when nothing happened at all. The gates simply opened, and a thin skein of fog rolled in through the gap to settle around us. We couldn’t see much further past the gate, because of that same fog, but the militia ponies around us at least partially relaxed. They seemed content that nothing would enter to attack them, and their attention refocused on pushing us out the door.

“Alright, git. Come back with mah Granny’s lucky horseshoe, or the head of their leader; either’s good. If ya ain’t got either, then don’t come back at all.”

Trixie glared back at Applejack as we began to trod forward into the fog. “Glad you’re so concerned for our wellbeing.”

“Nah. Ponies I’m concerned about are here, inside the walls.” Applejack gave us a smug wave, as the gates shut between us. They closed with a final slam that echoed through the fog, and we could hear the quiet rumble of the locking bar on the other side, as it slid back into place.

“Th-they don’t s-seem like they w-want us to c-come back…?” I looked around us for any hope of a landmark, but there seemed to only be the gate and the walls to either side. Trixie had busied herself by giving her blade an inspection, and she clearly found it wanting.

“They don’t.” She replied bluntly. “Look at this steel. I’m not a swordspony, but even I can tell this blade is junk. Did they pull this out of a shipwreck?”

I was curious, so I drew my own sword, and winced. Rust had stained the blade, and the chips and notches from an eternity of wear and tear seemed genuinely sharper than the edge did. The shortsword wouldn’t be much good for cutting, but it would at least bruise my enemy, if I used it as a club.

Trixie glanced over to see it as well, and she actually broke out in giggles. “That’s what they gave you? Luna’s moon, that’s in even worse condition. It’s a good thing we’re not actually going to go fight those pigs.”

I blinked dumbly at her, as she sheathed her blade and looked around. “W-we’re not?”

“Of course not. The Great and Powerful Trixie has much better things to do with her time.” She looked at the wall, and how it disappeared into a dark blur in the foggy distance. “You mentioned a hole in the wall earlier, and that’s how you got into Ponyville. I can use that to sneak back in, get to my wagon, and then I just need to get into the school for my, ah, supplies.”

I furrowed my brow, and pointed back at the gate with the end of my shortsword. “W-what about D-Dinky? Are w-we gonna g-get her out, t-too?”

“What?” Trixie looked at me in confusion, before the realization dawned across her muzzle. “Oh, you’re serious! No, I don’t plan to. You can if you want. In fact…” She smirked. “That’s perfect, that should make sure the militia’s attention is elsewhere.”

I shook my head, and sheathed my dull blade. Flakes of rust were scraped off as it didn’t quite fit inside the leather. “I’m n-not a d-distraction.”

Trixie tilted her head and looked at me cooly for a few moments. Eventually, she nodded. “You’re not as Hollow as you look. Alright, then, I’ll work out something while we look for the hole. I should have a new plan by then, that works for both of us.”

“Th-thank you.”

Trixie barely acknowledged the thanks as she turned around, and started walking along the wall into the fog.. “You’re welcome. Now, lead me to this hole in the wall.”


*	*	*


“It w-was somewhere ar-around this ar-area…”

“Trixie is beginning to lose faith in your sense of geography.”

“S-sorry...It all l-looks the s-same, o-out here...” Every time we found a road, or even a decent hoofpath, I got my hopes up. But there really hadn’t been much to distinguish the exact road I had originally walked, and it seemed like a lot of roads had entered Ponyville from the surrounding farmland. The best I could do was lead an increasingly-exasperated Trixie over hillocks and around sickly groves of trees, while we both peered up at the wall above us for any cracks in the ramshackle surface. I wasn’t even sure we’d followed the wall the right direction to begin with.

“Alright, enough of this.” Trixie held up her hoof a few minutes later, and we both stopped to rest beside a broken tree. It had rotten and hollowed out long ago, but the thick trunk still stood up straight as it reached up towards the fog above us. “Do you have any idea where we’re going at all? Because for all I know, you could be leading us into the Everchaos by accident.”

“I’m s-sorry, I r-really d-don’t-”

“Shush. Trixie is thinking.”

I swallowed my mounting annoyance and nodded, while Trixie massaged her temples with a hoof. She muttered to herself quietly a moment later, and seemed to be thinking out loud. “I should’ve just tried the double trick, but it would have been difficult with all those other unicorns watching me, maybe if I’d made a big show of putting on my hat…but there were too many eyes, too far spread out, for a flat image to cover every angle, that clever hick…”

I tried to tune her out and give Trixie her privacy, while I looked around the fog. But without anything to focus on, I quickly found my attention wandering. Oddly enough...I swore I could hear a stringed instrument being plucked nearby. Maybe on the other side of the wall? In any case, it helped me think, and I turned back to Trixie a few moments later.

“M-maybe we sh-should just f-find th-those hogs? Like Ap-Applej-jack wants us to?”

“Ugh, the mercenary work? Don’t tell me you actually believe that gryphon scat.” Trixie shook her head in clear frustration, and then moved to the broken tree, where she sat against the side and looked up at the wall. “Look, maybe it’s not obvious to you, but the hick doesn’t actually expect us to do that. It’s an old trick to get rid of stuff or ponies you don’t want, or don’t need; you use them up.”

“I d-don’t f-follow...?”

“Take fireworks as an example. You have too many fireworks to safely carry around, or the next town over has some strict rules that prohibit bringing them in city limits, or whatever. Point is, you have too many fireworks. Following so far?”

“I th-think so?”

Trixie waved her hoof upwards. “So, the easiest and simplest solution is just to use extra fireworks at your next show. That uses the fireworks for their intended purpose, and it makes for an especially grand finale, which really wows the crowd. It’s win-win. The hillbilly’s deal is the same thing; she gives us junk she can’t use and sends us outside, which lets her get rid of us guilt-free because technically she gave us a chance, and it’s our fault if we run off on her, or if we actually do try and fight the hogs and die like idiots. The point is, now she doesn’t have to worry about us, and she doesn’t have this busted junk taking up space in her armory.”

I mulled that over for a minute or two. “Wh-what if we act-actually do the j-job?”

“What, you mean actually fight the gang?” Trixie actually laughed at that. “Just the two of us, against Luna knows how many pigs? I could probably take them, sure, but I’d be surprised if you could fight a single piggy by yourself. You don’t look like the fighting type.”

“W-well, wh-what else are we sup-p-posed to d-do?” I raised my voice in exasperation, at the thought that I might have just left Dinky by herself by taking this stupid deal.

“That’s why I was looking for this supposed hole in the wall! So I could get back in without having to follow that stupid bumpkin’s-”

“For Celestia’s sake, would you two just shut up already?!” A voice hissed angrily from above us, and we both jumped. Trixie in particular let out a very filly-like screech as she shot up from where she had been sitting, and we both looked up in surprise at the cream-colored head of a pony who had been hiding in the felled tree. “You’re going to attract every demon in the county with your damn arguing!”

“Who the hay are you?!” Trixie asked, in a low hiss. On the other hoof, I actually recognized her; she had been one of the two ponies who I saw Applejack kick out of town when I first woke up in Ponyville. Pinkie had said their names at the time, but it was too long ago for me to remember.

“I’m a magical tree nymph, and this is my tree. Go find your own!” The mare waggled her hooves in a mockingly mystical way, before she hunkered back down inside the cracked trunk, and only barely kept her head high enough to peer out at us. “Seriously, buzz off. Hay, I’ll give you directions if it’ll make you leave faster.”

“Y-you will?” I stood up a little straighter in surprise.

Even Trixie looked cautiously intrigued. “Wait, about the pigs, or about the hole in the wall?”

“Hole in the...oh! No, not that, they sealed that up a long while back.” The mare flicked a hoof further down the wall, where we had been going. “It’s all full of rubble now, and totally impassable. I think they plan on patching it up properly and just keep forgetting.”

“So the pigs, then.” Trixie’s expression soured.

“Well, they call themselves the Ashen Wallowers, but yes. I’ve been keeping an eye on them, and even scouted out their base to make sure they weren’t a threat to-to me.” She stumbled over the last couple of words, but just kept pushing forward. “They’re out at the old Pie farm to the southwest—you should be able to follow the road signs—and they’re hiding out in some of the old buildings there. Built kind of a camp around the main farmhouse and barn. They’re really getting into the whole bandit thing, and they’re surprisingly organized.”

“Organized?” Trixie scoffed in disbelief.

I looked up at the mare, while Trixie continued to chuckle quietly at the thought. “Ar-are they H-Hollowed? L-like us, or b-burning, l-like the d-deer?”

“Oh, those poor deer…” The mare ducked her head down, and sighed in sympathy. “They’re a little bit of both, I think. I’ve had to beat up a few of the Wallowers, when I ran into a passel of them on one of the farms, and they seemed to regenerate like us—they even had the black mark on their flanks. But they’re also a little bigger than they used to be, and a lot tougher; I think they’ve been kind of exposed to the fires in the Everfree, but it hasn’t driven them nuts just yet.”

“Are you still considering that?” Trixie groaned at me. “Listen, even if you bring back that bandit king’s head for the bumpkin, she’s just going to keep giving you more and more dangerous work until one of the jobs kills you. That’s how that sort of thing works, and it’s why Trixie only works for-”

Trixie cut herself off suddenly, and spun around in a tight circle to look all around us. “There it is again! Did you hear that?”

I blinked at her in confusion. “Wha...D-did I hear wha-what?”

“Somepony’s playing a harp, or a lyre, nearby…shush, you’ll hear it too.”

The mare in the tree stump suddenly looked nervous. “I didn’t hear anything. You’re crazy.”

“Shush!” We all listened intently, as we glanced around the fog that surrounded us. After a moment, I heard it too; more strings being plucked, the same sound I’d heard earlier. It didn’t sound like it had been from over the wall; it was too quiet and too clear for that, and Trixie understood that too.

Her ears focused towards the tree stump, and the mare who had taken up residence within. “Is there another pony in there with you?”

“No.” We all went quiet again, and the gentle tinkle of strings as they were rhythmically plucked slowly echoed through the fog. It was a haunting effect, for the sea of mist that had enveloped our world, but it was definitely close. Eventually, the two of us just staring at the mare got to her, and she huffed loudly through her nose. “Fine. Yes, she’s here. Congratulations, you broke the code. Can you buzz off now, already?”

“Is-is it the oth-other mare? The H-Hollowed unicorn y-you had w-with you?”

The mare looked down at me more closely, maybe to see if she recognized me. “Her name is Lyra. Yes. Why?”

I nodded, and looked back towards the gate. “I w-was there w-when Applej-jack kicked y-you b-both out. I s-saw it all hap-happen.” I ducked my head. “I sh-should have t-tried to h-help. I f-followed them f-for a wh-while, but c-couldn’t.”

After a moment, the mare above me sighed, and I looked back up at her. She had turned to glance over her shoulder, down into the hollow tree, where her Hollowed companion was hidden. She looked back to me, and our eyes met, before she sighed again. “No, no you shouldn’t have. It’s not your duty, not even for my wife. But I appreciate it all the same.”

She shook herself, then ducked down into the tree. I almost thought the conversation had come to an end, but she re-appeared a second later, with a small cloth bag held in her hoof. “I overheard you two say the equipment they gave you was busted? I can’t help you with your job, because I can’t leave Lyra here by herself, but maybe I can help give you a fighting chance against the Ashen Wallowers. Draw your sword, and hold it up for me.”

I stepped forward to do so, and the mare leaned out of the tree to take the rusted blade in her hooves. Now that I was closer, I could peer into the broken tree, and could actually see the Hollowed green unicorn as she played her lyre, with Bon-Bon standing above her. She looked peaceful, and content, as she plucked the strings with her hoof and hummed quietly. Behind me, Trixie sighed and muttered to herself, “I guess we’re doing this. Fantastic. The Great and Powerful Trixie, reduced to mercenary work…”

The mare rolled her eyes, and held the blade out so I could watch her work. “Remember what you said earlier about the fireworks? Got one of those situations right now, sort of. We’re trying to travel light, and one of my old tools from back in the day is this repair powder.” She held the sword in one hoof, while she held the bag in her other hoof, and tugged open the drawstring with her teeth. Slowly, she began to pour a strange, glittering golden powder over the length of the rusted blade, and I leaned in closer to watch. 

As the powder poured onto the rust, it seemed to shrink back into nothingness before my eyes, and the original unstained metal underneath was revealed. The nicks and scrapes across the surface of the blade healed themselves, as though the sword had never been damaged.

“I don’t know how this stuff is made, or how it does what it does—as near as I can tell from all the times I’ve used it, it seems like it turns back time in a really localized area—but I should have just enough left to fix a weapon or two.” Even as she spoke, the powder dwindled to a trickle, and she sighed before she let the now-empty bag into the dead grass. “Not even that. Alright, rub the rest across the blade until it’s all used up.”

I took the shortsword from her, and began to rub my hoof through the powder, then across the rest of the rust. As I did that, Trixie looked up at her in suspicion. “This is unusually charitable, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, well...we could all stand to be a little nicer to each other, in times like this. Maybe we have to fight to survive, but we can’t forget what makes us Equine in the process.” The mare watched as I worked, and the melody of stringed notes echoed through the fog around us once again.

The dust seemed to dissolve into nothing as it worked, and soon there was simply none left. The blade didn’t quite gleam, and still had uneven streaks of rust across the surface, but the edges were sharp and the metal seemed strong once more. The mare nodded in approval as I held it up for her to inspect, and I sheathed the sword again until it was needed. Then I looked back up at her. “A-are you g-going to st-still b-be here, if w-we m-make it b-back?”

She shook her head. “No. We’re leaving soon, and we’re going to try and make it to Canterlot. I still have contacts there—I hope—and we should be safe.” She looked back down at the other pony, hidden from sight, and sighed sadly. “If we go, we go together.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat, and held up my hoof. “Th-thank you, and g-good l-luck. H-Holly.”

“Bon-Bon,” she replied, as she pressed her hoof against mine. “You’re welcome. Audi, vide, tace, si vis vivere in pace.”

Trixie’s eyebrow rose, as I stepped back. “What’s that mean?”

Bon-Bon chuckled quietly. “An old traditional farewell, from some older friends. Old Unicorn. I’m surprised you don’t know the meaning, Trixie, or...maybe I’m not.”

Trixie nickered in annoyance. “Trixie has better things to do than learn dead languages.” She turned back to me with a scowl on her face. “Are we done here? Don’t we have a suicide mission to embark upon?”

I nodded, but Bon-Bon’s eyes lit up suddenly. “Oh! Almost forgot, be careful when you’re traveling. The Apple filly is stalking around the wall for some reason, and she almost beat Lyra half to death before I fought her off. I still don’t know why, she just ran off before I could ask any questions.”

Apple Bloom was still hunting for us? I thought we’d left her behind, back in the Everchaos. Why would she still be hunting for me, and presumably Dinky and Snails? I felt a cold feeling of dread settle into my gut, and I shivered for some reason. It felt like we were already being watched.

Trixie didn’t seem quite so affected. “Right, right. If we see her, we’ll tell her you said hello. Come on, Hollow, let’s get moving.”

We began to walk west along the wall once more, and I couldn’t help but glance back one final time at Bon-Bon. She watched us leave with a sad look on her face, and when the fog between us began to grow too thick to see through, she ducked back down into the safety of her hollow tree. Hopefully, she and her wife would get to Canterlot safely.
> 17 - The Rock Farm
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was a good thing Bon-Bon had told us about the signs, and given us a name. If we hadn’t been given either of those, then we would have wandered through the fog for who knows how long, and maybe been lost forever. But with those two clues, we were able to follow the old roads fairly easily; they’d avoided most damage, and we could see far enough to stay on the path.

The only difficulty came when we had to stop and really examine the occasional sign up close; the paint was always faded, but sun, rain, and time had been especially unkind to a few. More than once we had to guess what they said, judging from the general shape of the words. A couple signs had even fallen off entirely, and in one case we could only find the lone post remaining. We’d explored down a couple of roads to the empty farms before we seemingly found the right path.

Trixie seemed to be getting slightly agitated as the terrain turned hard beneath our hooves, and I noticed she was suddenly much more focused when she peered through the fog for landmarks. Eventually, I had to ask if something was wrong.

“Maybe,” Trixie mumbled after a few seconds of silent thought. “Maybe I’ve been here before. This is all very familiar, and I don’t like it.”

As we approached our destination, the fog seemed to thin, and the stony soil beneath our hooves grew more slick as the moisture in the air soaked the ground instead. Once we could see clearly, we made our way up a hill, and overlooked what Bon-Bon had called “the old Pie farm.”

It wasn’t like any farm I could recall ever having seen. Instead of fertile fields, the ground here looked like a thin layer of dirt over bare stone, only occasionally broken up by the dried evidence of mud washed downslope. To the south, a quarry had clearly been dug into the stone, and it had been dug deep enough that we couldn’t see the bottom from the top of our hill, though we could see a strange blue glow from within. A thin forest—which looked as though it had already been sickly before the curse killed it—surrounded the boundaries of the farm, which were marked by a low wall made of stones and mortar.

The buildings themselves had been similarly built out of the materials the original farmers had available, which meant mostly stone bricks supported by wooden beams. Still, they had weathered the eternity between now and the sunset far better than most structures I’d laid eyes upon. The farmhouse was a simple structure, barely two floors, and the second floor looked more like an extended attic, or maybe a sleeping loft. Beside it sat a wooden barn that had darkened with age, and the windows had long been patched over with scrap wood.

A roughly circular wall had been erected around the buildings, but the construction of the wall spoke of amateur work, especially by comparison. Where the buildings had been built out of carefully-cut stone mortared together like pieces of a puzzle, the wall seemed more as though it had been built out of stacked stones, and the mortar was an afterthought that had been applied by pouring it over the top. On average, it was about twice my height, but large sections of it had clearly fallen off the top of the wall, or had been stacked much higher than others in various shoddy repair jobs. A stone windmill had been built outside this wall, and the broken blades still slowly turned in the gentle breeze.

Within the perimeter, we saw movement, but couldn’t make out distinct shapes. Smoke curled upwards from various fires lit within the stone wall, and we could taste the scent of the burning wood on the breeze. Between Applejack’s original instructions and Bon-Bon’s assistance, this had to be the place.

Surprisingly enough, Trixie had joined me in scouting out the area in detail. When I turned back to her, she was actually still focused on the farm, and seemed to be trying to get a better look at the movement within the walls. I tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention, and she brushed me off until I tapped her again. “What?” she snapped, an angry, hushed hiss, “What do you want?”

“Ar-are you ok-okay?” I tilted my head in confusion as I asked, but Trixie shook herself and looked back at the farm.

When she spoke, it was almost lost to the wind, but I leaned in to make sure I heard it all. “Trixie recognizes this place. She spent some time here, after...it’s not important.“ Trixie closed her eyes, and took a deep breath of the earthen scents of the rock farm. After a moment, she opened her eyes again, and narrowed them at the distant shapes below. “If the pigs really have moved in, then they’re probably not here any more. Still...it would be nice to know for sure.”

Finally, Trixie sighed. “Very well, Hollow. You’ve convinced me that this is mercenary work worth doing. You have the aid of the punitive and vengeful Trixie. But we do it my way.”

“Th-that’s f-fine, I d-didn’t really kn-know where to st-start, anyways…” I had no idea how many pigs there were, or how well-armed they all were. I certainly wasn’t just going to walk in and start swinging my sword, but against this many foes? It seemed like I didn’t have many options.

Trixie pointed down the hill, and traced our path with her hoof while I watched. “We need to stay out of sight for as long as we can, which isn’t easy with the fog as thin as it is. Thankfully, these idiots have built a stone wall that blocks off most of their sight, and I can only see a couple of lookouts standing around on the roof of the barn, as it’s the only building with roof access. We’ll go down this hill, pass by the quarry and Holder’s Boulder, and then approach from the southwest. Once we reach the wall, we can follow it around to get back to the barn, staying out of sight. We’ll climb over a short section, then I can pull the lookouts off the roof and onto the ground so you can kill them, and we can move around a little more freely.”

I swallowed at the mention of killing, but I had agreed to this for Dinky’s sake. At least these were bandits; any hope of a peaceful resolution was whimsy at best. We’d do what we had to do, make Ponyville a little bit safer, and Dinky would be one step closer to freedom.

Trixie’s horn came alight, and she cast a quick spell on both of us, which, she explained, would make us blurry at very long distances and would cover our approach a little bit better. With that done, she took the lead, and we both slid down the loose gravel hillside to the fields of the rock farm, after we hopped the ancient stone wall that marked the boundary.

“S-so...w-what is this p-place, exactly?” We kept our voices low. I was fairly sure the hogs wouldn’t be able to hear us at such an extreme distance, but it was better not to take that risk.

“Mostly, it’s a quarry,” Trixie explained. “Ponies dig into the stone down in that hole over there until a lump of rock comes loose, then they haul it up the hill and break it down into smaller rocks, or ship the whole thing off somewhere. They also crack geodes, and grow crystallized aether, though that’s sort of incidental, I think. They call it a rock farm because it’s technically part of the Ponyville farming community, and probably so they get subsidies from Canterlot. They’re pretty far away though, and they only really go into town once a month to buy food. Or...they used to, I suppose.”

As she spoke, we approached the quarry, and I peered over the mouldering wooden fence. It seemed more like a polite suggestion that I shouldn’t fall off, as opposed to any sort of real protection. At the bottom of the quarry, I saw movement, and Trixie paused as well so we could both look down at the creature at the bottom of the wide pit.

It seemed like a great lizard, or a particularly thin dragon, but massive ice-blue crystals had grown across the beast’s flesh instead of scales. Even as it moved, it ground and cracked, and left a trail of broken shards and dust as it sniffed around the edges of the pit. Wherever the crystals had fallen, they had begun to grow outwards, and we could see the paths left by the creature as it shuffled around, because it was the only place where a pony could still walk without having to climb over them.

“It’s some sort of animal?” Trixie muttered. “Those are aether crystals, but I’ve never seen them grow like that, and never on a creature made of flesh. What is that thing?”

“N-no idea…” I murmured. “D-do you th-think it’s d-dangerous?”

“Even if it’s not predatory, it moves too quickly for my liking. I wouldn’t want to tangle with it myself, but...hm…” Trixie seemed to be lost in thought for a little while, and as she watched the beast snuffle around the bottom of the quarry, my own eyes wandered around the edge.

A little further on, it looked like a large stone had been perched on the edge, but some great force had cracked it in half. I trotted over to investigate, and Trixie followed, though her eyebrows furrowed again in confusion as she looked over the scene.

“This is—or was—Holder’s Boulder…I never got the full story of it myself, but it's strange that somepony went out of their way to break it.” Trixie glanced down at the bottom of the quarry, and then shook her head. “Good riddance. Limestone had an unhealthy obsession with the thing.”

“L-Limestone?”

Trixie either didn’t hear me, or didn’t acknowledge the question. “We’re approaching from behind the windmill now. Let’s start moving towards the wall.”

I nodded, and we changed direction to pick our way across the rock fields. While the dirt here looked as poor as the rest of the farm, I couldn’t help but notice that our hoofsteps were disturbing an odd pattern in the soil across the field. It looked like the trail of thousands of stones being rolled, or dragged, across the field, but it seemed too intentional for that. I tried to follow the pattern as we walked, but I could only see so far, and it was too spread out. I’d need to see the whole thing to make any sense of it.

My focus on the pattern distracted me, however. The first indication that we had been spotted came when a round stone, about half the width of my hoof, suddenly slammed into my cheek and dazed me. I sprawled into the dirt of the field with a yelp, and Trixie turned to look at me in confusion. A moment later, a second stone whipped over her head and knocked her hat off, and she ducked as she swore loudly. “Scat! They had a patrol wandering the field!”

I struggled to stand as Trixie’s horn lit, and she reared up on her hinds. I heard her cry, “Oh, you’re not going anywhere! You all want a piece of Trixie? Then you shall have her!”

There was a squeal as a flailing form whipped past me and bounced off of a nearby rock, and that finally inspired me to stand and shake the rest of the stars from my eyes. I drew my sword and spun around to get a good grasp on the fight—Trixie had thrown one of the pigs when he’d tried to run, it seemed, as the others were already dedicated to a charge straight at us.

One had a hoe, another had a club, and the last had a small hoof-axe clenched in his snout. They all wore ragged armor that looked like it had been made of cloth strips that had been poorly woven together, reinforced with scrap metal or wood, whatever they could find. This was the first time I’d seen the “Ashen Wallowers” for myself, and I recognized their rough shape as being pigs originally. Their general anatomy was unchanged, but they were much bulkier, and had grown significantly. Now they came all the way up to my shoulder instead of being just above knee-height, and they seemed to have regressed slightly back towards being wild boars. They each had a pair of sharp, gleaming tusks that stabbed outwards from the sides of their mouths, and a layer of shaggy fur that had grown haphazardly over their softer flesh.

What was more, they seemed to be Hollowing, just like us. Their flesh had aged and taken on a green hue, as well as having bloated slightly like a drowned corpse. The embers of their eyes were wild with the flames of chaos, and flickered as their vision jerked between me and Trixie. The one hog that Trixie had thrown bled bubbling red blood, and it sizzled as it seeped down his snout and stained the rock he lay across.

The one with the club broke off towards me, while the other two focused on Trixie, and the last was still on the ground, where he lay and grunted in pain. He was safe to ignore. Instead, I focused entirely on the hog armed with a club. He leapt up into the air at the end of his sprint, and I was stunned as he released the club from his snout to grab it with his hooves while in the air. I only barely remembered to raise my sword, and it saved my life when it absorbed most of the blow, but forced the blade down into the ground.

The hog snarled and whipped his club horizontally, but I couldn’t leave my sword stabbed into the loam, and I chose to trust my armor. The blow slammed into my chest, but the padded barding softened most of it. I still staggered, but I wasn’t injured, and it gave me the opening I needed to yank my shortsword out of the muck.

The pig swung his club over his back to brace for a heavy swing, and I used the opening to step forward and slash at him with my sword. I could move faster than he could, which earned me a squeal and a splatter of boiling blood, but it didn’t deter him from bringing the club back down on me in return. Crushing force slammed into my back thigh, and I was forced down to the ground as I felt the club bounce off of me. As he was hauling the heavy wooden weapon back into a fighting stance, I took the opportunity to stab upwards into the foreleg that held it.

He squealed and dropped the club as I pierced through his leg, and yanked the grip back towards myself. Whether it was torn out or yanked him towards me, it didn’t matter, but it definitely seemed to hurt. As the pig sprawled towards me, and kicked and stabbed with his tusks, I felt just a pang of guilt. But that faded when those same tusks pierced my barding. I felt them scrape against the steel collar around my own throat, and glancing down and piercing my breast.

Pain filled my vision, and I gasped as I brutally ripped the shortsword back out. I felt the hog’s leg bones shatter as I did, and it managed to distract him long enough to physically shove him away. Black blood squirted across us both as it soaked my barding, and I knew I had to finish him now, before he could rally or I passed out. I had only so many lives to lose, now.

I tossed my sword beside him, and he looked up in confusion, which gave me the perfect opening to slam both my forehooves into his snout. He toppled backwards into the dirt, and I just kept stomping. If I had the strength of an earth pony, maybe I could have crushed him right there, but all I could do was batter him into submission. When he threw his hooves up to protect his face, I grabbed my sword again, and aimed for his exposed belly.

There was a final shrill squeal of pain as I stabbed the blade deep into his barrel, and up, to force it under his ribs, towards his vital organs. That finally seemed to be the final straw, and the hog slumped, dead for the moment. Hopefully, we would be long gone by the time his fire healed the wound.

It took effort to yank the blade back out, as it was slick with both our blood, and the time it took to do so left me vulnerable. Stars filled my vision again as a splitting pain erupted from the back of my head, and I staggered once more, only to trip over the corpse at my hooves. When I managed to raise my head again, I spotted the hog that I had dismissed before, which Trixie had thrown; he was the one armed with a slingshot, which he now aimed at Trixie. Maybe he thought the stone had knocked me entirely senseless?

I couldn’t stagger towards him fast enough, and he managed to loose another stone. I watched as the rock arced through the air, towards Trixie, and I opened my mouth to warn her, but it was too late. The stone collided with Trixie’s head...and passed right through, Trixie evaporating into thin air.

I was confused, but not as much as the slingshot hog, and I was able to close the distance just as he drew the slingshot back, this time aimed in my direction. I ducked under the stone as it whipped over my shoulder, and I swung my sword up as I rose, to bring the blade down upon his head. He tried to flinch out of the way, but all he accomplished was that he made my blade slam into his own shoulder, instead of his skull. 

His leg dislocated with a crack, and I ripped the sword out, which made him claw at the fresh wound. Finally, I swung the blade under his chin, and while it didn’t fully decapitate the hog, all he could do was claw at his throat as boiling blood burbled out of his opened throat. When I pulled the sword free, blood gushed out to fill the void, and my second opponent stilled a moment later as it pooled around my hooves.

With both of them dead, a wave of exhaustion suddenly wracked my body, and I remembered my own grievous wound. Ironically, Applejack’s symbol of captivity had saved my life when it directed the blow downwards; if it had been any higher, the hog’s tusks would have pierced my throat instead. Cold numbness had begun to spread outwards as my black blood cooled, and my soaked barding clung tightly to my breast. My hooves shook as I sheathed the blood-stained sword, and tried to use both my hooves to pull my barding away from my collar. It was crowding me, I couldn’t pull in air, my chest didn’t compress right when I tried-

“Hey, Hollow idiot! Over here!” I turned at Trixie’s shout, and spotted her at the entrance to the stone windmill. I kept myself together to gallop on limp hooves over to meet her, and she chuckled as she saw my condition. “You look like a real savage, friend. You fight like one, too; Trixie can respect that, but if that’s all you can do, you’re not long for this world.”

I tried to speak, but ichor spilled out of my mouth instead, and she flinched. “Eugh, don’t get that stuff on me. Get in here, they’ll have heard the fighting and shouting from inside the wall.”

It felt like it took the rest of my strength to stagger into the stone tower, and I passed by the millstone, only to collapse against the wall in the back just as darkness began to creep towards the center of my vision. I couldn’t die, I had to fight it. I didn’t know many deaths I had left, but I couldn’t afford to spend even a single one if it might be my last. I clawed at my pierced breast, and cold ichor soaked my hooves as I fought for my life, but it was to no avail. I succumbed to my wounds in the back of the darkened windmill, while Trixie was focused on the door with her horn aglow.


*	*	*


Sore. My breast was sore, like it had been a week past having been kicked, and it was the first thing I felt when consciousness gradually filtered back into my abused corpse. My neck was sore as well, from having laid limp in the same position for so long.

My eyes flickered to life, and I groaned, only to feel a rag get stuffed into my open mouth. “Shush! They might be nearby again.”

Trixie’s near-silent hiss had come from my right somewhere, and I struggled to lift my head and look at her. Dried ichor cracked into flakes as I did so. I felt like a living blood clot, but it was dry all the way down. I had been dead for a while, and I was actually kind of surprised that Trixie was still here. I would have almost expected her to have made her escape and left me for dead by now.

The light was dim, and I struggled to see. The magician seemed to be seated against another wall, and her eyes were on the doorway. Only…when I turned my head, there was no door. The wall was flush, even though I knew there had been a door there, or else how had we entered?

As I watched, she cast a spell on her hooves, and when she stood, her steps were silent. She paced slowly towards the wall all the same, and a thin seam opened at eye level, which allowed a thin ray of light into the darkened windmill. I winced as I saw the dried ichor that had mixed with the dirt floor; I had made a mess when I stumbled in. I hoped I hadn’t left so much of a trail to the entrance...wherever it was.

After Trixie had peered through the slit for a short while, she nodded, and turned back to me. She left the slit open to provide light, and I felt the rag in my mouth dislodge itself. It floated over the millstone, where Trixie let it drop unceremoniously. “We should be safe, but shut up if you hear anything. Can you stand?”

I groaned again as I pushed my body forward, and my head flopped down as my neck ached. The dried ichor fell off of me in a shower of dusty flakes, and when I finally managed to stand, I spent a few seconds just trying to brush it all off, to no avail. It had soaked my barding as well, and the black clump seemed to have become a part of the armor. More than ever, I wanted a bath to wash all of this off. A rain shower sounded wonderful, if I thought I could manage it while I was grounded.

Trixie nodded. “Good enough, I suppose. You can sit back down, I need to explain the plan.”

I did so, and leaned back against the wall as I continued trying to scrape my old ichor off. “Are-are we s-safe here?”

“Safe-ish,” Trixie explained, with a non-committal waggle of her hoof. “I’ve got an illusion around the doorframe, and it looks like they haven’t noticed that the windmill doesn’t have an entrance yet. So long as we’re quiet whenever a patrol passes by, we should be alright. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Th-thank you,” I croaked. “H-how l-long…?”

“Have you been out? Not terribly long, maybe a day or two. There’s been a couple of rainstorms, which at least covered our tracks. Rather annoying how quickly they come and go in this part of the country.”

Multiple storms in “a day or two”? That wasn’t atmospherically possible, especially not with the weather running wild. How skewed was Trixie’s perception of time? How skewed was my own?

As I mulled over how long I’d actually been dead, Trixie continued. “It’s been pretty boring in the meantime, but I can move around unseen when needed. I spent most of the time scouting the rock farm in greater detail, and planning out my plan of attack. It’s useful that you’ve woken up, it’ll be easier with two ponies.” Trixie’s horn flashed, and a magical map of the area spread out over the ground between us. “We’re in here, as you might recall. The farmhouse is here, the barn is here, the wall surrounds both of them, but not this structure. Remember?”

I leaned closer to get a better look, while I idly tugged at my barding to peel it off my flesh, and she continued to explain.

“They aren’t quite as organized as everypony seems to think. They changed leaders once since we arrived, and this new hog boss seems content to have the other hogs fight for his amusement in this small fenced-in area in front of the farmhouse. He watches from this window, the rest all hang around this general area in front of the house, unless there’s a fight. Then they all crowd around the fence to watch the bloodsport. This leaves the farmhouse itself pretty much unguarded, aside from a couple of patrols.”

There was an incredibly gross sucking noise as I finally separated the dried barding from my chest, and found that the ichor was still somewhat wet within. For once, I thanked the Winds that decay and mold had ceased to grow, because I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to handle the smell if I’d begun to rot. I shifted it loosely to reseat the cloth, but I found that it never quite sat as well as it had when it was plastered to my chest. It was easier to move in now, at least, and both my muscles and the fabric that protected them grew less stiff the more I moved around.

Trixie gave me an unamused glare. “Are you finished?” At my nod, she continued. “Fine. So, I’ve determined that the best way to get the bumpkin’s stupid horseshoe is to put on a show, which is something that the Great and Powerful Trixie is very good at. I’ll get their attention with some fireworks and Pyromancy, which will lead them over to the quarry. That’s where you come in, to bait the trap.”

“Uh…” I wanted to interrupt and ask her to clarify what exactly she meant by that, but Trixie never slowed down.

“You’re going to get the attention of that...eh, call it a crystal lizard. It’s definitely a predator, by the way, so don’t let it catch you. Anyway, you’re going to make it notice you, and then you need to have it chase you up and out of the quarry into the stone fields. I can throw an illusion in between the quarry and the farmhouse so neither side sees the other, until I drop said illusion. They fight each other, we mop up the survivors after they kill the lizard, and we can check the farmhouse at our leisure. Nice and easy.”

I held up my hooves. “W-wait, how m-much did I m-miss? How d-do you kn-know it’s a p-predator? W-why hav-haven’t they al-already k-killed it, s-since it’s s-so close?”

Trixie smirked, and I was suddenly very nervous for my own well-being. “Call it rehearsals. They didn’t notice a few patrols going missing, so long as I waited a good bit of time between them. The hogs are absolutely impossible to reason with, by the way. You can’t even understand them anymore, not that Trixie spoke hog before they went nuts. Anyway, I tossed a few into the quarry to test, and the big lizard seemed to appreciate the snack. As for why they haven’t taken care of the problem on their doorstep...I think it doesn’t hunt outside the quarry, so they leave it alone. Or maybe they feel like they don’t have the pony-power...er...hog-power.”

“A-and you w-want me t-to m-make this th-thing ch-chase me?”

Trixie crossed her forehooves. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is in just as much risk as you—perhaps even more. I have to attract fifty-something insane pig-bandits and get them to follow me outside of their camp. You only have to deal with one creature.”

“B-but it’s a r-really b-big creature!” I held out my hooves wide for emphasis, or maybe I was just throwing them in the air to show my exasperation.

“This performance was originally planned as a solo act,” Trixie said, her tone sharp. “You can try and get the horseshoe for yourself, if you prefer. But Trixie will not wait for you at the gates to Ponyville, and she will be happy to reap the ‘rewards’ for herself. Getting back in, and getting a single moment to slip away from the bumpkin commander, is all I need.”

And then I’d be stuck outside, with no way back in, and no way to help Dinky. I knew Trixie certainly wouldn’t; as far as she was concerned, the filly could rot in her cell. She had made it abundantly clear by this point that all she wanted was her cart, and the freedom to perform across Equestria once more. I didn’t like it, not in the slightest, but I didn’t really have a choice.

“F-fine, I’ll h-help,” I muttered dejectedly.

Trixie’s smile softened, just a bit, and she stood once more. “Excellent! Now, I’ll go check where the patrols are right now, so we can slip between them. There’s a dead hog around the corner too, Trixie’s latest kill, and you should take his corpse with you to get the lizard’s attention. Lead the lizard towards the farmhouses, and Trixie will take care of the rest!”


*	*	*


She had made it sound so easy, I reflected. Just lure the big lizard out of the quarry and get it across the field. Easy as that.

But as I stared down the stone path that wound down the quarry wall, with a Hollowed pig lying limp across my back and further soaking my armor in ichor, I wondered if perhaps I had let Trixie convince me just a little bit too easily.

I could hear the great crystal lizard, as it stomped and crawled around the bottom of the quarry. The stone under my hooves trembled faintly with every step it took, and it was regular enough that I could follow the rhythm. I closed my eyes and counted, and clung to my fire for comfort.

Flare, one, two, three, four, flicker. Inhale, one, two, three, four, exhale.

My eyes flickered open. I was as ready as I was going to be, and so I started to trudge downward. I continued my breathing rhythm as I walked across the rumbling stone, but it caught suddenly in my throat when I was about halfway down the ramp that led into the depths.

It was there, perched on the rocks. It was looking at me.

The crystal lizard had no eyes to speak of, since the creature’s head seemed to have been overtaken entirely by crystal, but I could tell. It was balanced on its hind legs, with three more sets of legs hanging in front of the beast’s chest for a total of eight, and its head was pointed directly at me as it sniffed the air. I swallowed and took another step, and just as I thought, the lizard’s head followed my movements.

I had the beast’s attention, but how would I get it to actually follow me? If I stayed where I was, would it come over to investigate, or would it lose interest in a few moments? Would it actually follow me all the way up and out of the pit?

Neither of us moved a muscle. I got the impression it was waiting for me, to see what I’d do when staring down a large predator. It was curious if I was just teasing it, or if I’d make a dumb move, and allow it to stalk me.

So, I made a dumb move, and kept walking closer. When it still didn’t move, I had an awful feeling, and looked away. Within seconds, I heard the grind and crackle of the crystal beast as it crawled closer.

I forced myself not to look at it as I continued to slowly trudge along the ramp. I could tell more-or-less where it was from the sound, so I didn’t really need to, but it deeply unsettled me to know that I was being hunted. Soon, I would be close enough that it could crawl up over the side of the ledge to meet me, and I paused, which caused the great lizard to pause as well. When I looked up, it was terrifyingly close, but still not close enough that it could catch me if it ran.

So I forced myself to look away again, back up the hill, towards safety. After a few moments, the lizard began to move again, and the stone under my hooves trembled as it crawled up onto the ground in front of me. Finally, I could take it no longer, and looked back at it—but this time it didn’t stop.

I panicked. I awkwardly spun on my hooves as it sped up to chase me, and I knew I couldn’t get away with the weight of the regenerating pig on my back. I heaved him off and continued to gallop uphill, but I couldn’t keep myself from looking back to see if it took the bait.

It paused above the dead hog, sniffed it briefly, and then continued to chase after me, while the dead pig was left on the stone floor. I’d barely bought myself a few scant seconds, and I had to push myself to make it up the slope before it caught up to me.

It closed the distance terrifyingly fast, and it couldn’t have been more than ten body-lengths behind me as I reached the top of the ramp. The ground trembled with every step it took, and I could finally gallop at my absolute top speed now that I was on flat, level ground. I dodged between rocks and saw gravel get thrown into the sky behind me, but something was wrong; the farmhouse looked the same as it ever had.

There was no Trixie, no Wallowers, not even a firework in the sky to get their attention. Had I been too early? Had Trixie failed, and been captured? Or had she chosen not to uphold her end of the deal, and I was just supposed to let the beast chase me all the way into the camp?

That was when the air was ripped apart before me, and a veil that had hidden all of Trixie’s work dissolved into sparkling nothingness. Trixie herself galloped past me and directly into the crystal lizard, but then she also dissolved into nothing; just another illusion. Behind her, I came face to face with an entire warband of angry hogs, and their anger switched to me. That lasted for only a moment, until they saw the beast on my tail, and they scattered, squealing, in a dozen different directions while I galloped directly through them.

As the pigs dispersed and we lost all interest in each other, my eyes started to scan for Trixie again, in the hopes that maybe I’d spot where she actually was. After a moment, my eyes found a figure sitting atop a large rock, and I changed course to gallop towards her. I didn’t look behind me this time, as I could hear the war cries of the Ashen Wallowers all around me, and how they kept being cut off suddenly by wet crunches and the grinding of crystals.

It didn’t end as I emerged out of the other side of their passel, and the rock fields around were clear. I could still hear the noises as I galloped away, and I felt sick. Not just at the noises themselves, though they certainly didn’t help. No, I felt sick because this was something I had done. Trixie’s plan had been successful, and because of that, these bandits were being absolutely shredded by the massive predator that I had baited from its lair. Would these two forces have remained in complete peace forevermore, were it not for our intervention?

As I approached the large rock, Trixie came into sharp focus. She was spread out and relaxed atop the stone, and watched the grand battle behind me with a smirk on her face. She barely spared me a glance as I drew close. “Oh! You actually made it out. Come on then, there’s plenty of room up here to watch the show.”

I circled the rock as my legs began to ache. I could certainly gallop for a good distance, but I always felt like I had to collapse afterwards to rest. As my movements grew clumsy, I tried to focus on my breathing, in case that helped.

Eventually, I found a less-steep portion that Trixie had probably climbed, and began to scramble up the rough stone. I had only made it about shoulder-height before I suddenly lost my balance, and my back hoof slipped out from under me. Thankfully, I managed to fall against the rock, and I decided to catch my breath there as I clung to the stone.

After a few moments, Trixie’s head poked over the side, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “Really? Do I have to do everything, honestly…”

Her horn lit, and her field enveloped me, but I was surprised at how weak her pull actually was. She barely lifted me to a standing position, and when I looked up at her in confusion, Trixie was visibly straining. “Well, come on! Work with me, you stupid Hollow!”

Trixie’s magical grasp kept me from slipping again, at least. With her begrudging help, I managed to clamber the rest of the way up the rock, and I collapsed fully atop the boulder. Trixie laid down a bit more elegantly beside me, though I saw her trying to hide the fact that she was panting slightly. “Finally...now, we just sit up...sit up here and watch these stupid hogs...wear down the lizard. This way, we can catch our breath...while they’re still tired from their fight.”

I felt sick from both the exertion, and guilt from causing the battle before us. But Trixie’s logic definitely made a certain amount of sense, and we had been sent here to kill them, as I had to keep reminding myself. This was pragmatic, and much better than having to fight all of them ourselves. But those rationalizations didn’t make the carnage easy to watch.

From up here, I could see that the Wallowers had rallied very quickly after they had initially been scattered, and seemed to be trying to attack from all directions at once, then leap back. The overall effect was that they kept getting in solid hits every few seconds, while the crystal lizard whirled around towards the most recent attack. It was a good strategy when they had that many bodies and weapons, and a single large foe that they could all attack without much coordination. I could see why Trixie anticipated that they would win eventually.

The only problem was, it didn’t seem to be working at all. The crystal lizard was massive, fast, and above all, tough. Swords and axes barely knocked jagged chunks of crystal loose, and only drew shallow cuts across the scaled flesh of the creature’s legs. Clubs seemed to stun it, and they had a little bit of success when they targeted joints, but they never accomplished anything more than that. One hog came in with a sharpened shovel and managed to get the blade jammed in between two crystals on the beast’s back, but no actual damage was done, and the hog was easily grabbed and flung helplessly away.

If anything, the crystal lizard seemed to be winning. As time went on, it showed that it could move at deadly speeds to dodge blows and chase down individual hogs. When they grouped up to give chase, it doubled back and crushed them in large groups. When they stood back to use bows and slingshots, it just started chasing them down one by one. Eventually, the hogs even tried to retreat to the farmhouse, and the lizard actually beat them there. It rolled itself up into a ball of jagged crystal, and rolled around the hogs in a circle as if it were playing with them.

Even Trixie began to look somewhat nervous. “I, er...I knew the hogs were incompetent, but this is not nearly as close a fight as I thought it would be. If that lizard isn’t at least wounded by the time it’s finished with them, we may have a problem.”

“D-do you th-think we c-can sneak aw-away?” I watched as the lizard readed back on its hind legs once more, with a hog held in one set of legs. It yanked and tore the squealing undead hog in two, while the forelegs swiped at any others who came near to try and rescue the unfortunate victim.

“Oh!” Trixie blinked at me in surprise. “I mean...almost certainly, yes. It should be able to gorge itself on the hogs down there, and I can keep us hidden until it falls asleep or loses interest.”

I managed to haul myself into a sitting position, and looked at Trixie. She was still watching the lizard, but she did glance back at me, and she bit her lip as our eyes met.

I had to ask. “Y-you wanted to f-fight it?”

“No! That’d be-” Trixie bit her lip again, and looked over at the bloody carnage. “Okay, maybe a little. It looks like it would be a real challenge for my skills, and you’d be the one doing most of the fighting while I kept it distracted with my illusions-”

“I’m n-not doing th-that.” I interrupted.

“Fiiiiiine,” Trixie said in a long whine. “I can fictionalize this adventure a little bit. When Trixie tells this story, however, you will be written out of it!”

“Th-that’s fine,” I mumbled, as I turned my eyes back to the lizard. It seemed preoccupied now, as it shook another hog’s limp corpse around like a rag doll in its teeth. The hogs themselves had been thinned out to about five or six, and only a couple of them were even still trying to fight. One was lying on the ground with his hooves covering his face, while the others had scattered in different directions entirely.

The guilt mounted as I pitied the hogs. I wished I could save one or two of them, at least, but Trixie likely wouldn’t help, and I could hardly do it on my own. Hopefully one or two would sneak away while the crystal lizard was busy wiping the main passel out. I chose to stop watching, and closed my eyes to focus on fire once more.

My fire was...unusually active. It was normally a very static ember within my breast, but when I focused on it now, it seemed almost...jittery? Excited? It sparked eagerly, and my attempts to grasp and restrain the metaphysical concept at my core at least distracted me from the death occurring less than a hundred body-lengths away.

Eventually, Trixie nudged my shoulder, and my meditation was broken. “Hey, the lizard’s leaving. The farmhouse should be clear soon.”

I opened my eyes, and winced. There were noticeably less pigs present than when I had looked away, and the lizard carried a few carcasses in its teeth as it crawled back to the hole we had lured it from. At the very least, a dozen or so Ashen Wallowers remained, scattered around the field. So long as the beast didn’t return for them before they regenerated, they could perhaps make their own escape.

We waited for a short bit after it had disappeared back into the quarry, before Trixie’s horn flashed, and the air in front of us crackled as a one-way illusion fell away. She took the lead clambering down the rock, and I was stunned by how easily she managed it; she’d clearly had a lot of experience with rough terrain, or at least climbing up and down steep surfaces. That made sense, if she really did travel as much as she said.

I was not nearly so agile. I made it about halfway down before I lost my balance, and fell onto the stony soil with a yelp. My padded armor helped, but gravity was as cruel as it had ever been, and the back of my head still banged against the gravel. As I rolled to my hooves, Trixie sighed in annoyance. “I can’t believe I'm saying this, but If you’re quite finished being melodramatic…”

I stuck my tongue out at her as I rubbed my new sore spot, but we started towards the fortified farmhouse a moment later. There wasn’t much of note as we crossed the field; only Hollowed hogs and their discarded weapons, or dull crystals pried from the lizard. I pocketed a couple in my barding, but it was all I had room for. Maybe Dinky would know something about them when I got back to her.

The farmhouse had weathered the time very well, but it had still taken a toll on the structure. A worrying amount of stones had been pried free from their mortar, leaving pockmarked craters across the walls. The windows were in much the same condition as every other glass window I’d seen—which was to say, they were completely shattered, and only dull shards remained within the edges of the frame. The wooden supports were old and splintered, and the whole building groaned ominously as we crossed the yard.

Trixie’s magic grasped the door and pushed in, but it barely moved before something thumped against it from the other side. Trixie furrowed her brow in confusion as she pushed at the wood again. “What-?”

“No! No more! Ponies take enough already! Leave now!”

We looked at each other, before Trixie chuckled loudly, so the Hog on the other side of the door could hear her. “You really think you can stop us? Little old you?”

“Only until big lizard eats you! Then camp mine! All mine!”

“Uh-huh. Sorry to tell ya this, but I don’t think that’s terribly likely, big ugly’s already gone. You may direct your thanks towards the Great and Powerful-”

“Don’t care! Rut off! Ruin something else!”

Trixie nickered in annoyance, and she slammed both hooves against the moldy wooden door, then gasped in pain. As she stepped back and rubbed her shoulder, I held up a hoof. “C-can I t-try?

“Go for it, whatever gets this door open. I wanna tear this little oinker a new one.”

“N-not that.” I stepped up to the door, and gently tapped it with my hoof. “H-hello?”

“Said before, leave now!”

“I kn-know. W-we will, we j-just n-need one th-thing. Then w-we’ll leave.”

There was a long silence. Long enough for Trixie to finish rubbing both her shoulders, and start doing some light stretches while she gave me an odd look. I was about to try the door again when the response echoed through the wood: “Depends on thing. Not opening door.”

“I-it’s a h-horseshoe. V-very thin. C-could pass it th-through the cracks. M-maybe it h-has an ap-apple-”

I was interrupted when the Hog on the other side let out a frustrated snort. “Course! Course pony come for stupid trophy! Idiot! Idiot got all hogs killed over stupid trophy!”

There was a rattling of tiny hooves on the other side of the door as the Hog stepped away. Trixie’s expression lit up as she reached for the handle again, but I bumped her with my shoulder, and she looked at me in confusion. “What? Wasn’t this your plan? Unless you’re seriously suggesting we just leave the loot here-”

“Take!” A dark shape was crammed through a crack between the door and the frame, and fell to the ground as the door shook again.

The pig went back to pushing against it, and Trixie shot me a glare as she plucked the shape from the ground. “Really? This is just any old horseshoe! It doesn’t even have an apple on it, the pig could have stolen this from any farm! We could have stolen this from any farm!”

“Hah! Is stupid pony-shoe, nothing but bad luck! Got former Boss killed! Happy to be rid of!”

I shrugged at Trixie. “If w-we can’t t-tell, how w-will Ap-Applejack?”

Trixie rolled her eyes, and tossed the horseshoe to me. I fumbled to catch it, but it escaped my grasp and landed on the stony soil with a metallic clink. “Fine, whatever. But you can’t tell me you don’t want whatever loot these bandits had?”

“N-not r-really,” I mumbled, as I picked up the horseshoe and shoved it into the collar of my barding. It didn’t do anything unexpected or magical, and it felt exactly like a metal horseshoe should have done. Just an ordinary iron shoe. “W-we got w-what we c-came for.”

“But we could have so much more!” Trixie argued, with a stomp of her hoof against the packed dirt.

I patted the horseshoe through my barding. “I’m n-not going t-to h-help you k-kill him. I’m g-going b-back to P-Ponyville. If y-you w-want to st-stay and f-fight, g-go ahead.”

Trixe nickered again, and glanced between me and the door a few times as she weighed her options. When I turned to leave, she finally snarled, and started to follow behind me. “Fine! But only because Trixie refuses to be kept away from her wagon from any longer than necessary.”

I turned to her as we walked away from the farmhouse together. “I d-don’t th-think Applej-jack will l-let you have it b-back af-after one j-job…”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, with a smirk. “All the Great and Powerful Trixie requires is getting back inside without an inhibitor on her head, and she can take care of the rest. Then she can come back here and take what she needs.”
> 18 - Apple Bloom
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trixie was the one to notice the river, after we’d already followed it halfway back to Ponyville. “Hey, wait up a minute. You’re still filthy, now’s the perfect time to get cleaned up.”

I paused to look over the embankment. The water looked about knee-deep, and flowed fairly quickly. It also looked clean, free of mud, and that was a welcome change after having spent so long trudging through the stagnant bayou of the Hayseed swamps. Distantly, I wondered if the bookstore where I had first awoken might be upstream from here, or if it might have been a different river entirely. “Okay. C-can you w-watch for d-demons?”

“Yeah, yeah, I gotcha.” Trixie sat down by the side of the road, while I undid the belt holding my sheathed sword, and started to work on my padded barding. As I tugged a few straps loose with my teeth, I looked up and noticed Trixie was watching me intently. When I tilted my head at her, she raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Y-you’re st-staring…?”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re modest now! You were naked as a foal when they tossed you in the cell.” She wrinkled her muzzle in disgust. “Besides, you are most certainly not Trixie’s type. She does not do pegasi, and if she did, she would prefer ones that didn’t look quite so much like a walking corpse.”

“Th-then why w-were you st-staring?” At this point, the reminder of how I looked barely even stung, though I couldn’t blame her. Those inclinations had apparently died when I had, but I certainly had little interest in Hollows myself.

Trixie coughed, and pointedly looked away. “I was just watching to make sure you didn’t drop our macguffin, as it were.”

“Our w-what?”

“The stupid horseshoe. You shoved it into your barding, remember? I certainly don't feel like fishing it out of the river, should you drop it. But I would have caught it, if you had.”

I hadn’t forgotten, but I also hadn’t exactly planned out how to retrieve the heirloom from against my breast. I had, in fact, planned for it to fall out at some point while stripping my armor. But Trixie had a point, I probably shouldn’t have done that while looking downhill. I moved back over the embankment to the road somewhat sheepishly, and continued to undo the armor.

“I can hold it for you while you bathe, if you’d like. So we were sure it was safe.” Trixie said, as she stood up.

I looked back up at Trixie, as I felt the weight of the horseshoe against my breast. “S-safer than in m-my armor?”

“Sure! Hundred times safer, with me.”

I gave Trixie a very long look, and eventually shook my head. “D-don’t tr-trust you. Wh-what’s to st-stop you fr-from running b-back to P-Ponyville, and c-cutting me out?”

“Whaaaaat? Trixie would never!” She laughed and put on a smile that was wider than I had ever seen from her, far too wide to be genuine. “You’re my assistant! I need you...uh...you...Hollow…” Trixie waved her hoof in the air as she awkwardly fumbled with her memory for my name.

“H-Holly,” I filled in for her, furrowing my brow crossly. “And n-now I’m c-carrying this w-with me w-while I b-bathe.”

“Oh come on!” Trixie groaned, but eventually she did sit back down at the top of the embankment, as I continued to strip my armor. The horseshoe fell out onto the road a moment later, and I was quick to grab it in my teeth, before I looked directly at Trixie. She let out an indignant huff, and turned to watch the fog around us.

The rest of my barding fell loose a moment later, and I sighed in annoyance through my clenched teeth, as I realized I should probably take it into the river with me. I needed to scrub the blood out; it wouldn’t matter how clean I was, if I pulled my filthy armor back on right afterwards. It was good that I already had the horseshoe clenched between my teeth, as that would have given Trixie the perfect opportunity to grab it and run. I pulled the loose barding over my back, and turned back around.

It was only a couple leg-lengths down the embankment to reach the water, and I slid down the soft dirt and dead grass to land with a slosh. The impact kicked up a cloud of mud, but the river was moving fast enough to sweep it all away, so that didn’t worry me. More clouds of brown were kicked up as I waded in deeper, but I found a good enough spot to start scrubbing soon enough.

I pulled my barding back off, and sat back in the water, though I gasped through my teeth as I did. Cold! Very cold water, colder mud! I continued to hiss in discomfort as I held the bloody barding to my breast, and I focused on my fire to try and warm me from within while I worked. It wasn’t terribly effective, as the heat was quickly wicked away by the stream.

It worked well enough to wash, though. I held my barding between my hooves and rubbed them together to loosen up the blood, and streams of dark red soon joined the disturbed mud as it flowed downstream. The barding soaked up water all too well, and the ichor had soaked it deeply, so I couldn’t squeeze all of it out with my bare hooves. The best I was eventually able to manage was nothing more than dilution of the stain, as I spread it thin across the rest of the barding. Eventually, the wool turned a sickly pink, and I decided that was fine, so long as it was comfortably flexible once more. I tossed the barding onto a smooth river rock to dry, and focused on myself for a little bit.

It was surprisingly hard to force myself to splash cold water over my bare flesh. I hissed and groaned as I shivered in the river, but it helped when I began to lower myself down so the water came up to my neck. After I’d grown a little accustomed to the frigid river, I rolled onto my side and began to scrub gently at one foreleg with the other.

After a few moments of this, I sighed. The flesh of my forelegs, across my whole body, certainly felt loose and uncomfortable. I had to know if it was fragile as it felt, or if my body just felt terrible from the pain of death. It wasn’t fun, but I was careful, and focused on my off-hoof, near the end of my leg. There, I began to vigorously scrub at the flesh, to find my limits through trial and error.

Ichor immediately began to filter downstream in black streamers, and it clouded around my hoof as I continued to scrub. The raw flesh underneath burned when exposed, and as the cold water pierced deep into the wound, I decided that was enough to know for sure. I pulled my hoof from under the darkened water, and as fresh ichor ran down my leg, I examined the damage.

I had not reached bone, nor muscle, as I had feared. Instead, it seemed as though only the topmost layer of flesh had begun to slough off, like shed snakeskin. Most of it was held in place with clumps of colorless fur, and a little bit more experimental rubbing loosened that. The flesh underneath was still raw, and looked gaunt, or perhaps dehydrated. But it had the appearance of tough leather, and as I rubbed the sensitive flesh, it did not shift like the topmost layer had. Like rust on a metal surface, I merely had to scrape it away.

Trixie glanced down after a short while to see what had taken me so long already, but judging by her repulsed expression, it didn’t look great. Especially not whenever I looked downstream, at the dark red trail I had left as the water flowed around me. Hopefully, nopony was drinking from this river down there.

I had finished my forelegs, and was working on my hinds, when the first bottle splashed into the water beside me. It hit the stony bottom and shattered, and its contents instantly turned the river purple and cloudy around me. I was still working out what exactly had impacted nearby when the poisoned water washed over my raw flesh, and my legs instantly began to burn with pain while I gagged from sudden nausea.

That gag caught Trixie's attention,and she glanced down at me with obvious disinterest. "Have you only just understood how disgusting- what the hay?!" Her eyes turned wide as she saw the whole river dyed purple, and how I was dry heaving in the middle of it.

The second potion was whipped directly at her, and she snarled as she dodged to the side. It exploded into glass and curling vines that burned with chaosfire behind her, and she dropped into a low stance as her horn came aglow. "Hollow, we're being attacked! Get up here!"

I started to struggle towards the shore, my body still wracked by nausea, but I had only sloshed a short distance before something heavy landed squarely on my back. I was slammed downwards, and my whole body was dunked under the ice-cold water. Poison totally enveloped my form, as the weight atop my back used my spine as a springboard, and they leaped onto the hill to face Trixie directly.

My world was frigid water, a stinging pain that attacked from every direction, and the sense of nausea from within that made me want to cough my guts out into the stream. Brackish bile clouded the water around my face, and I had to force my hooves down against the slippery-smooth stones of the riverbed for any hope of escape. I breached the surface, and the cold air stung against my soaked body.

At least my eyes were unobscured, and what a sight they could see. At the top of the embankment, a dozen Trixies stood in a circle around our attacker, who I could finally look at clearly. There was no mistaking that red mane, or her faded yellow fur, or the repaired billhook she swung through one of the illusionary Trixies; Apple Bloom had tracked us down already, and now there was nowhere to run.

At least Trixie kept her attention as I struggled to climb out of the river, with my body wracked from the poison. Apple Bloom did notice as I climbed up the hill, but a glowing bolt of magic whipped past her head, and she decided I wasn’t as big of a problem.

I had lost the horseshoe in the river at some point. Maybe when I had first been afflicted with the poison, or maybe when Applebloom had used my back as a stepping stone, but it definitely wasn’t between my teeth any more. Part of me wanted to laugh, as I gagged and scraped at my twitching flesh. You would think she, of all ponies, would want to see such an heirloom returned. Perhaps she cared more about slaying us than any history her family might have.

As the poison bled from my body and ran down the riverbank, I watched Trixie and Apple Bloom as they dueled viciously. I hadn’t taken Trixie for a fighter before, and I was right in doing so; even now, she never actually struck Apple Bloom herself, or was struck by her. Instead, the multitude of Trixies around us ducked and wove evasively, and they swept in as one to strike—but that strike never came, and as Apple Bloom dodged the spot where Trixie’s bare hooves converged, she was caught off guard by a sparkling bolt of magic that came from a location unseen. Trixie wasn’t in the melee at all, but had hidden herself somewhere nearby while Apple Bloom tried to batter her illusions.

Unsurprisingly, the filly grew sick of the situation after the bolt struck her, and she tossed a fresh potion onto her billhook before she swung it over her head. The potion whipped toward the source of the magical bolt, and Trixie appeared from thin air, to whip her hat off her head and catch the potion with it. It disappeared inside, and Trixie smirked as her horn flashed, and three more Trixies peeled away from her and galloped at Apple Bloom.

This time, Apple Bloom didn’t bother with them, and remained focused on where Trixie had disappeared. So when the right most Trixie spun around to buck her in the chin, Apple Bloom was very surprised to suddenly be struck in the jaw. Even though Trixie was a unicorn, it clearly hurt, and the filly staggered, before she shook her head, and turned her eyes on me.

My rest was suddenly over. I scrambled to my hooves as Apple Bloom galloped at me, and I leapt atop my sheathed sword as she whipped her billhook upwards into my naked belly. Pain erupted across my underside, but I grabbed the sheathed sword and dragged it with me as I was thrown back onto the embankment.

Multiple Trixies galloped towards us from the road, with one riding confidently atop another’s back, but the real Trixie stopped to balance on her hinds while she whipped her hat back off. From it, she withdrew the potion Apple Bloom had thrown at her earlier, and Trixie used her magic to launch it at the filly’s back while she was focused on savaging me.

Apple Bloom was completely caught off guard when her own potion shattered against her body, and she screamed as her flesh began to bleed from every pore touched by the liquid. I jammed my scabbard between my teeth and rolled away as I clutched my belly with one hoof. I had to keep myself in one piece at least long enough to fight off Apple Bloom; I could only allow myself to collapse and begin regenerating once she was defeated or forced to retreat.

Apple Bloom was clearly not about to do either. Instead, she scraped at her back, wiping off as much of the serum as she could, then snarled at us both. Trixie hesitated as Apple Bloom drew another flask from a bag at her side; suddenly I realized she was no longer wearing her bandoleer. Instead, she had completely replaced it with Zecora’s bottomless bag, no doubt looted from my Hollow mentor.

It wasn’t the only thing she had taken. The flask she withdrew was none other than Zecora’s flask of sunlight, and Trixie looked confused as the filly chose not to attack her with it. Instead, Apple Bloom popped out the silver cork with her teeth, and then poured the glowing liquid over herself, and down her throat. A brightly incandescent glow suffused Apple Bloom from within, and her wounds began to heal themselves right before our eyes. The bleeding came to an immediate halt, while the shallow wounds Trixie had blasted into her with her fireworks filled themselves back in. Apple Bloom suddenly looked healthier than she ever had before, as the liquid slowed to a dribble, and she re-corked it before sliding it back into the bottomless bag.

“Ohhhh, now that’s just rude!” Trixie accused Apple Bloom, as two more of her clones circled around the filly. “Healing in the middle of a fight—the nerve! The gall! The confidence!”

Apple Bloom swept her billhook through both of the clones, as Trixie narrowed her eyes. Meanwhile, I looked at my hoof, and the wound it covered. While my ichor was as dark as ever, it didn’t feel like a deep wound, just a painful one. I managed to struggle to my hooves as Apple Bloom strode towards Trixie, and ducked under the occasional firework spell.

Trixie didn’t even move as Apple Bloom swung her billhook viciously down, and then through, the illusionary Trixie’s head. As she howled again in frustration, I began to stagger towards her, and finally drew my sword. I hadn’t the time to properly fasten my scabbard to my side, so I dropped it onto the road, and clenched the grip between my teeth. I had to be ready to swing as soon as I got close, and couldn’t take the time to transfer the sword to a hoof before I struck.

Apple Bloom noticed my approach, and when I swung the blade at her head, she easily blocked it with the shaft of her billhook. Then she tried to use where the blade had dug into the wood for leverage, as she grabbed the head and swung the other end of the tool at my underside, but I saw it coming, and released the grip from between my teeth. Apple Bloom was suddenly off balance, with my sword throwing off the weight of her staff, and I grabbed the end that had been intended to stun me.

She swore as we both yanked on our respective ends of the weapon, and she suddenly pushed it instead, which caused the end to jab me viciously. It stung, but didn’t break the skin, and now I had more leverage to yank the billhook into my own hooves. Apple Bloom barely even fought, and instead her pyromancy flame appeared in her hoof. A great flame began to coalesce as she prepared a spell, but a firework from Trixie slammed into her side again with a concussive ‘bang’ that left us both dazed for a moment. The ball of fire in her hoof dissolved into a mere shimmer of heat, and I swung the sharp end of the off-balance billhook at Apple Bloom like a halberd.

The filly simply smacked the shaft of the billhook away with one hoof, while the other slammed into my muzzle, and I sprawled backwards onto the wet road. The billhook tumbled from my hooves, and Apple Bloom spun around to face Trixie once more. As soon as I had recovered from a few brief moments of dizziness, I rolled over to grab the billhook once again, and tried to tug my sword free, with the intent of separating the two weapons.

While I worked at that, Trixie and Apple Bloom were preoccupied with each other, and the magician was really putting on a show. Trixie stood up straight, as her horn burst into a hundred motes of glowing sorcery, and they all immediately curved towards Apple Bloom. For her part, the filly did an amazing job of dodging a great deal of them; not that it mattered, because only a single one of the magic arrows was real to begin with. Apple Bloom had tired herself out dodging around the swarm of spells, and so when the absolute last one to impact her turned out to be real, it slammed into her back and drove her down into the grass.

I saw a chance to strike, and I scrambled to my hooves, with my sword gripped in my teeth once more. As I stood, I found a copy split away from me, and together, we ran towards Apple Bloom. This time, she guessed correctly, but her hesitation allowed me to tackle her. I remembered the hogs I had fought not so long ago, and dropped my sword into my hooves as I reared up to strike.

Apple Bloom had no escape, but she was not defenseless. When I brought my sword down towards her barrel, she pushed her hooves up to block it, and the blade hacked brutally into her leg instead. The teenager howled in pain under me, and I froze at the sound.

Her hinds found my belly, and she kicked me away as hard as she could, which sent me flying a few body lengths away. Trixie leapt in to continue her own assault, and I stood to see Apple Bloom batting wildly at several illusionary Trixies all around her with my sword and her hinds while her foreleg spurted blood. Finally, one of the Trixie was revealed to be the real one when Apple Bloom bucked wildly, and the rest disappeared into sparkling magic as Trixie sprawled across the road.

By then, I’d galloped back into the fight, and I charged into Apple Bloom’s side to knock her back down. She dropped my sword beside us as she fell, and I steeled myself as I grabbed it with my hoof. There was no time to negotiate, no time to allow for hesitation, no time to let her escape. We needed to put a stop to this, right now, before Apple Bloom injured one of us badly enough that the other was easily slain as well. Before she could hurt any pony (or zebra) ever again.

Apple Bloom’s breast and barrel were exposed as she flailed, and I grunted as I brutally plunged the tip of my sword into her underside. It pierced all too easily, and the blade slid in between her ribs as I speared her all the way up to the hilt. She gasped as the embers of her eyes went wide, and Apple Bloom pushed me away suddenly, before she started trying to pull out the sword. But the grip had already turned slick with her blood, and all she managed was to wiggle it inside her own breast as she gasped painfully for air.

I was transfixed with growing horror as I watched the teenager fight for her life on the broken road. I slumped to a sitting position, and the filly writhed in pain before me. I had done it. I had defeated Apple Bloom, with Trixie’s help. This was vengeance for Zecora, for the fallen residents of Baton Verte. I should have been overjoyed to have finally overcome her.

Why did it pain my soul so dearly?

Trixie joined me a few moments later, though her steps were pained and clumsy, and she stumbled as she passed by me. “Ah! Uh, hah. Very- very nice work, assistant! Looks like a fatal blow, so she’ll bleed out in a few minutes without that stupid flask to save her.” Trixie’s gaze turned to me. “Now! Perhaps you should explain why this Hollow attacked us, hm?”

I swallowed, to try and clear a lump in my throat. It didn’t go away. “Th-this is Ap-Apple Bloom. The f-filly that at-attacked us on th-the way t-to and f-from Baton V-Verte.”

“Ahhh, I remember now,” Trixie said with a smirk. “She drained your old mentor, didn’t she?”

Before I could respond, Apple Bloom interrupted me, though her voice was pained and low. “You c-can’t. Can’t cure this. Can’t be allowed to cure this. Won’t l-let you.”

“W-why?” I asked, as I stamped hoof against the road between us. “J-just tell m-me why! Why d-do all th-this? K-kill Z-Zecora? H-hunt me down?”

Apple Bloom’s body was wracked with a bloody cough, and fresh blood seeped from her wound around my blade. “C-can’t know. Can’t be allowed to know. Nopony else would understand her sacrifice, ev-everything she’s done for us all. You’d hunt her down, slay her for your own gain.”

I took a few steps closer, until I was close enough that I easily could have pulled the sword free. Trixie came with me, and watched us intently as I begged. “P-please. I’ll t-try my b-best to un-understand. P-please just t-tell me.”

“Can’t,” Apple Bloom snarled. “Can’t tell you. Will-will never tell you. You’re t-too dangerous. Too c-close to ruining it all. Need to k-kill you, kill all the ponies that Z-Zecora told.”

I groaned in frustration, as Apple Bloom tried to pull the sword from her chest once again with limp hooves. Trixie huffed, and shook her head in annoyance. “Tell me, did this Zecora educate you on how to drain a pony’s fire for yourself?”

I jerked back as if stung. “W-wha? N-no, never! C-couldn’t do t-that-”

Trixie interrupted me with a snort. “Really? After this fight? After she’s killed your mentor? After she’s told you that she’s going to keep trying to kill you, over and over?” Trixie pointed at the teenager again. “She’s not playing around, you heard her. When she’s standing over you like this, do you think she’s going to let you walk away as well? No. She’s going to drain you dry, and leave your soulless body wandering.”

“T-there has to b-be another w-way...She’s Ap-Applejack’s s-sister, she’d kn-know what t-to do-”

“You’d trust that hick?” Trixie laughed. “She’s just as bad! She wouldn’t recognize her, and if she did, she’d be more preoccupied with punishing you than locking her up. Those Apple idiots are all the same, they put family above anything else. Trying to ingratiate yourself to her, trying to appeal to her good side, that’s a fool’s errand.”

Trixie stomped her hoof, and I flinched. “Don’t you see? You have to, with as close as you are. There’s no redeeming mad Hollows like this. Docile ones, you can work around, but the last bit of sanity in this pony’s skull is convinced that you are her enemy. After she drains you, she’ll just find another, until it’s just her alone in the world. How many others has she already drained?”

I trembled, and looked back at Apple Bloom’s face for any trace of the filly she must have been at some point. All I saw was a feral, snarling maw as blood dribbled down her cheek.

Trixie shook her head. “We end this now. I refuse to be hunted like an animal, even by association. So if you don’t drain her, I’m going to.”

Another lump in my throat. Would I want that? Would that absolve me of killing this filly? And Zecora…they’d both be dead, with nothing to show at all because of it. What was the point of all this? Just Hollows killing Hollows?

The thought of Zecora having died, and going unavenged, that was too much to bear. I shook my head. “I’ll…I’ll d-do it. T-teach m-me how.”

With a satisfied huff, Trixie nodded. “Finally. Alright, assistant, so how much do you really know?”

I shrugged limply. “I kn-know how to f-feel my f-fire, and simple c-combustion…”

“That’s all?” Trixie raised an eyebrow in disbelief, but I nodded. After a moment, Trixie huffed again. “Maybe that’s why she took you as an apprentice...if you’re telling the truth, then you’re a bright little spark. Alright. Close your eyes, and focus on your fire.”

I did so, and my fire began to flicker and flare as I breathed deeply. The river smelled clean, and the air was cold, but it was tinged by the distant burnt scent of the Everchaos. I could hear Trixie’s calm breathing, and the panicked gasps and whimpers of Apple Bloom as she trembled against the road. I couldn’t see what Trixie meant about my fire; it seemed just as meager and fragile as it ever had.

“Expand your awareness. Feel my fire, and feel the fire of this idiot. Sense us both around you, and find your body in relation to the three flames. Your hoof is a conduit, to and from your soul. When you invoke combustion, you’re focusing your fire within. This time, focus on her fire, and raise your hoof.”

I swallowed, and my shaking hoof rose to point at the fire before me. Was I really about to do this? Could I really bring myself to end this filly, even one so maddened?

Trixie gave me no time to hesitate. “Draw her fire in along your hoof, so it flows through you and joins with your own. It’s going to take a little bit of time, just keep pulling until you feel it. Like a straw. You’ll know it when it happens.”

I clenched my teeth, and grasped Applebloom’s fire. It felt alien, to manipulate the soul of another pony. It felt like the worst crime I could ever commit, to steal such a thing. But Apple Bloom would have no such reservations. As I pulled, my eyes opened, and they met Apple Bloom’s own. As both tears and pink fire seeped from her empty sockets, Apple Bloom repeated, “C-can’t be allowed. Can’t let you f-find her. Won’t let you st-steal it from me.”

“Wha-what do y-you mean-”

That was all I managed to utter in confusion, before heat, warmth, life—all of the sensations of a living, breathing pony—overwhelmed my senses. I was ripped from my own body as the world dissolved around me, and I wanted to gasp in pain, or in bliss, as I was alive again.

I was staring at a pure white teenaged filly, and the colors around me were beautiful. We stood on a steel catwalk over a black lake that tinged blue around the edges, and the trees around us bloomed in brilliant autumn colors. Even the sky seemed so much clearer, so much more blue and orange in the light of the sunset. The filly’s mane was purple and pink, and her eyes were green, as was the coronal glow from her horn. She wore a stunned expression on her face, of shock and confusion and terror, and as I watched, she shook her head.

“We can’t let anypony know about this. They wouldn’t understand. They’d rip this entire place apart if they thought it would cure them of this curse.”

“Not a curse.” I felt my own mouth move, without any control over it. I felt my tongue roll and fold as I spoke, a prisoner in my own—no, somepony else’s body. “A gift. Her gift. This is an incredible thing, if’n Ah understand how you explained it to me.”

The filly didn’t look so convinced. “You...you really think so?”

“Ah know so. And Ah know you’re right. We oughta protect this place, keep it safe.”

The filly shook her head, and pointed back down the catwalk. My eyes followed her hoof, and I glanced across the building we stood beside, which seemed to be a massive warehouse with walls made of cloud, and high windows set into the walls, miraculously unbroken.

“What about them? They’re using...it, for their rituals, draining this place.”

“That’s fine,” I shrugged. “You teach them how to do it right, Sweetie Belle. Teach them the limits, so they don’t damage it. They already see the effects, even if they don’t understand what exactly they mean. And the spellwork they’re usin’, ain’t seen nothing like it. We could end this stupid war in half a day with those kinda spells.”

Sweetie Belle looked back at me nervously. “I don’t...maybe.” She shivered like a leaf, as a cold wind blew in over the lake, and the building wobbled slightly atop the water. “I’m not a fighter, Apple Bloom, but if you think this could lead to peace…”

I could feel myself smirk. “Lucky for you, Ah am a fighter. I’ll run interference, keep mah sis off your back. Keep anypony from trying to ‘fix’ us in the meantime. Can’t abide such dangerous foolishness.”

Sweetie Belle looked away, and nodded. “Yeah. We can’t afford to lose this chance, no matter how long it takes.”

“Well, that’s the grand thing, ain’t it?” I chuckled, and patted her shoulder with my hoof. “Got all the time in the world now.”

My senses drifted and contorted as the memory fell apart. My hoof dragged through the flesh of her shoulder as my leg extended infinitely long, and I spun listlessly in the void. It was as though I were underwater, without light or sound, and yet I drifted upwards as my natural buoyancy dragged me somewhere unknown. Something rushed towards me, and I braced for an impact, as my limbs were jerked into new positions-

“What the hay do ya mean you won’t let me in? It’s me, dammit! Don’t ya’ll recognize your little sis?” I panted tiredly from a hectic gallop, but it was so hard to breathe. Why was it so hard to breathe?

As I stared up at the ramshackle wall high above, a face poked over the side to look down at me. After a moment, I recognized Applejack, mostly thanks to her stetson hat; I almost didn’t recognize her face. She was Hollowed, but only just; she’d barely lost her eyes, and her face still seemed pleasantly smooth, undamaged by time and wear. Her hoof held her hat onto her head as she stared down at me, and she wore a hard scowl. “Ah do recognize my little sis, and y'all ain’t her! She ain’t a teenager, and Apples don’t go Hollow! Now quit kiddin’ around, my little sis is missing, and this ain’t no kiddin’ matter!”

“Ah’m your sis!” I screamed up at the wall, but Applejack just shook her head in disgust, and disappeared back over the edge. I let out a frustrated scream, and then turned to look around. The world had only a thin film of fog blanketing it, and I could still see the abandoned farms all around Ponyville, dark and empty. I was alone, outside the wall, and something was wrong with Applejack.

“Ah’m your sis…” I repeated, but it was punctuated with an anguished sob as tears overtook me. Where could I go now? Why couldn’t Applejack see? Was it something I did?

I melted into the ground as the memory closed all around me. I fell once more through the abyss, and tried to flail, tried to fight it, but I felt my hooves being broken and twisted into a new position as I-

I was sitting by a fire, and a living, albeit Hollowed, Zecora sat across from me. She tended a warm kettle that had been suspended above the fire, and her pack lay open on the ground behind her. Bottles of ingredients, green and fresh and plentiful, had spilled out slightly in her haste to find her tea herbs. We seemed to be hiding within an old, abandoned building, one where the roof had long since fallen in and left only the walls standing. I could see fog, and the spindly silhouettes of the forest beyond.

Our mentor sat down a moment later, and smiled. “Of all the ponies I did not expect to find out here, it is a pleasant surprise to come across a friend so dear! How have you been, Apple Bloom? I hope you are doing well, amongst this sad foggy gloom.”

“Not great,” I mumbled, as I stared into the fire. “Had an...argument with Applejack, a little while back. We’re, um, we’re not talking any more.”

Zecora’s face fell, and her embers dipped in sympathy. “I am sorry to hear that, little one. I wish Twilight were easier to find, but she seems busy with the sun. Were she not, I am sure she would be happy to speak to Applejack, and reconcile your differences, to put your sisterhood back on track.”

“Ah know,” I said with a sigh. “How about you? Ah, uh, heard y'all were doing some research.” This was a lie; I’d been watching her as she gathered herbs, hunted demons, scraped moss and metal dust from stones. Far, far too much for any mundane potions. She was up to something.

Zecora’s embers flared in excitement. “Indeed I have, though progress has been very elusive. I have actually been hoping to stumble across you, though it hasn’t helped that you’ve been so reclusive. Where have you and your other two friends been, all this time? To be without their company in Ponyville for so long, it has been a crime!”

“They’ve been, uh, busy.” I looked away as Zecora’s hooves lit, and she poured the hot water into two cups she had already filled with herbs. “Scoots kinda went her own way—y’all know her—and Sweetie Belle’s, been, ah…” What could I tell her? Necromancy was still heavily taboo, but now that we were all dead…would she understand?

No. I couldn’t tell her. She’d make us stop. We needed to win the war against the Everfree, even if Celestia herself didn’t like how we did it.

“...She’s been traveling too. Even further away. Sends letters sometimes.”

Zecora nodded sadly, as she passed me the warm cup of tea. It smelled so fragrant, so delicious. This must have just been picked. “A shame, to see such fine friends split by distance, but it is good to hear you keep in touch. But since you have chosen to stay, would you like to help? My research could use a fellow skilled alchemist with so deft a touch.”

“Depends.” I looked back at her, over my steaming cup of tea. “What exactly are you tryin’ to do?”

Zecora smiled at me, and for a moment, she was our mentor once more. “I seek to end this Hollow Curse, and return the world to the way it once was. I have been brewing many new potions to…”

Zecora’s voice faded into noise in my mind, as I placed the steaming cup of tea on the stone floor. I wanted to scream at her. She couldn’t be allowed to continue. She would ruin everything if ponies could die once again. The trees and herbs were all dying, and the animals were already nearly hunted to extinction, or twisted by the chaotic fires of the forest. Ponies couldn’t survive in this world, not without changing.

I didn’t hear Zecora as she talked, but I nodded occasionally and pretended to listen. I wouldn’t accept, but I could keep an eye on her. Maybe she could do some good still, but if she ever made progress towards ending our immortality…I would have to slay her.

The smell of delicious tea stuck with me as the world distorted, and the light of the cooking-fire sped far off into the distance, until it was a star amongst all-consuming darkness. I fell backwards, and tried to pull away, tried to find my fire, tried to do anything to get my bearings and escape whatever nightmare I was stuck in-

I was crouched in a tree, and I had pressed myself against the bark. I felt like a lizard, as I blended into my environment, and watched the foggy forest below. My quarry, the two Hollows I had been watching before, were so close. Zecora was easy to identify, with her cloak and agile gait, but the Hollow that walked beside her was new.

She didn’t look like much. She limped and stumbled as she walked, and while she was clad in the armor of the Ponyville Irregulars, I knew my sister would have trained her ponies better than this. And she wouldn’t have allowed a Hollow to serve; it was strange that they’d even let them out of the gate wearing that. A Hollow bearing the sigil disrespected Ponyville.

“W-where are w-we...we g-going?”

My ears flicked, as I listened to the Hollow speak. Her voice was timid, fragile. She would be easy enough to take care of, should Zecora prove to be still working on her damned cure.

“To enter the Everchaos on our own would invite an untimely end, so instead? We are going to visit an old friend. She was not quite as dedicated to herbology as I, but I hope that her garden is a place which we can try.”

Zecora spoke quietly, but I could still pick out her voice amongst the fog. To Fluttershy’s, then. They would find no herbs there; I had already picked it clean for my own purposes. Still, it meant that Zecora was beginning to look further afield for her resources. If she gave up here, then I could leave her be; but if she continued to go further and further out, she would eventually find something. If that time came, then I could stop her.

In the meantime, I would simply watch, and learn. Zecora and her Hollowed apprentice began to work themselves down the side of the empty riverbed, and as they disappeared into the gully, I slid out of the tree. They would never see me, as I followed them.

I took a step towards the riverbed, but my hoof never connected. Instead, I fell forwards, spiraling back into the empty nightmare. I had seen myself—Apple Bloom had been following us, even then. I couldn’t take much more of this, especially not if I had to watch my own hooves slay Zecora-

Reality slammed back into me, and I staggered backwards with a gasp, before I stumbled and fell back. My hooves flailed like I was drowning, while Trixie laughed. “Pffft! Yeah, that looks about right for your first time. You get used to it eventually, though.”

Back. I was back in my own hooves, my own body, my own soul. I had never been so relieved to feel so poorly, but that faded fast. Now that I had the memories of what a living, breathing body felt like, I was horrified at how still and cold I lay on the ground. My flesh felt like rubber, as if I were a dead imitation of a pony. Lacking a heartbeat, lacking a pulse or the pressure of my lungs, it all felt wrong. Suddenly, I understood all too well why I had unsettled Dinky so.

Trixie reappeared above me, and my voice trembled as I spoke. “Wha-what was th-that?”

She shrugged. “Flashes of memories, mostly. Things they felt were particularly significant to who they were, or things they had on their mind. Usually it’s not much, since not many Hollows remember anything besides what just happened moments before. Consume enough, and you start to learn how to block them out until you barely even notice pulling them in.”

“H-how m-many have y-you…?”

“Oh, don’t look so aghast!” Trixie said with a chuckle, as she held out a hoof to help me up. “Most Hollows barely have anything left to take, meager scraps of a soul at best. You got a real live one for your first, since she could still speak. Something was motivating her, but I expect you’d know that better than me, now.”

I nodded, as I hesitantly took Trixie’s proffered hoof. “Sh-she was pr-protecting something? Her and an-another f-filly, long ag-ago. B-before she H-Hollowed.” The world had been so bright and colorful, in that memory. Had it changed, or had we? If my eyes were restored, would I see the world around us now in such brilliant hues?

“Protecting something? Should we be on the lookout for another attacker, then?” Trixie glanced at the fog around us.

“N-no, I th-think it was...a l-long time ago. And sh-she was there, w-while Apple B-Bloom went out.” I started to recount everything about the first memory that I could remember, but it was already beginning to fade. I also told her about the other memories, or at least tried to. As we did, I found my eyes drawn to Apple Bloom’s corpse. Her eyes had gone dark, but she would regenerate again, as a mindless Hollow. I pulled my sword from her breast, and sheathed it as I finished the retelling.

“So lots of arguing with adults, then. Sounds like your average teenage filly, you can spare me the details.” Trixie rubbed her chin, as she stared off into the fog. “Cloud buildings on a lake...You don’t usually see many pegasi structures that low.”

I nodded, as I explained: “T-they’re too at-atmospherically b-buoyant. Th-they want to rise into the s-sky.” Pegasi and our structures were very similar in that way. I suddenly found myself jealous of the clouds, high above the fog.

“Well, the only place that fits that description is Cloudsdale. I’ve passed by it a few times, or at least the reservoir, although I’ve never gotten too close. Been chased away a few times by some...” Trixie shivered in disgust, at whatever she was remembering. “...annoyingly persistent piles of bones.”

“C-Cloudsdale? With the N-Necromancers?” Had those been the ponies Sweetie Belle had been talking about? “D-do you think Applejack w-will send us af-after them, next?”

As we talked, I started to shuffle down the embankment towards the river once more. To my relief, the poison had all been swept downstream, and the old horseshoe was found after only a minute or two of searching. It stood out, amongst the round stones of the riverbed. As I gathered it and my armor all together, I decided I was clean enough. We didn’t want to stick around and wait for Apple Bloom to regenerate.

Trixie continued to watch me as I climbed back up the hill. “It’s not unlikely. I can’t imagine there’s many other little gangs and factions around here that she expects us to clear, when they could set up shop somewhere away from the ongoing war. There’s a lot of country, and most of them aren’t so stubborn that they won’t scatter like the roaches they are.”

As I reached the top, I glanced over at Apple Bloom, and realized I’d nearly forgotten something. I set my armor, sword, and the horseshoe down as I trotted over to the dead filly, and leaned over the pool of blood to tug the bag at her side free. Specifically, Zecora’s bag. After I moved a few steps away, I opened the top, while Trixie leaned in to look. “What’s that?”

I pushed my hoof into the inky abyss within, and cringed at the feeling. But I thought of the green glass flask, which Apple Bloom had slid back inside after she’d drained it. Weight settled onto my hoof, and from the bag, I pulled out the flask of sunlight. A few drops of golden liquid rolled around the bottom, as it had already begun to refill, albeit slowly.

“Th-this,” I said to Trixie, as I felt a small smile grow across my muzzle, “is Zecora’s last p-potion.”
> 19 - Liquid Courage
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“And you’re sure it’s not going to suck us dry? I’m very hesitant about anything drawing from my soul. Especially in these times, you understand.”

“Zecora d-didn’t seem to th-think so. It sh-should be safe.” We had left Apple Bloom, or the Hollow that had once been Apple Bloom, on the road far behind us. We were drawing close to Ponyville’s northwest gate once more, and I had been telling Trixie everything I knew about Zecora and her work ever since.

I felt…strangely energized. The words now came a lot easier, and speaking for so long didn’t seem like such a struggle. It helped that I had been practicing my breathing the entire walk back, but even that felt like less of a chore, and my mantra of flare and flicker seemed easy to maintain as I spoke about subjects completely unrelated.

“Well, it certainly works wonders for injuries, we know that...you can carry it though. If any souls are going to be whittled away, mine won’t be one of them.”

I chuckled as the gate loomed through the fog. “Th-that’s fine.”

We paused just before we approached the gate proper, and I shifted my quilted armor against my breast once more. I’d stashed Zecora’s bottomless bag—now mine, I supposed—within my armor, and Applejack's horseshoe beside it. While the crystals pried from the lizard had been safely stored within, it seemed like it might arouse suspicion if I pulled the horseshoe from the bag when we returned it. Applejack might have known that Zecora had owned it, or worse, might recognize the bag as being specifically hers. It would be best not to give her any more reasons to throw us back in a cell. I wore my sheathed sword at my side for the same reason, so it wouldn’t seem strange that I was traveling without it.

I glanced back into the fog one more time, though I would have been surprised to see anypony besides myself and Trixie out here. We had stopped by the hollow tree where Lyra and Bon-Bon had been hiding, but they had vacated their hiding-hole while we were busy with the Ashen Wallowers. Whether they’d left for Canterlot proper, or just a better hiding place, I didn’t know.

“If you’re quite finished staring at the mist…”

“S-sorry.” We started towards the gate in earnest, though I turned back to talk to Trixie. “D-do you think Applej-jack will let m-me talk to D-Dinky?”

“Probably not; I’ll be surprised if she actually lets us back in to begin with. She might just have us pitch the shoe over the wall, and respond with a message in a bottle. Why?”

I looked down at the ground, where the hard-packed dirt of the road had loosened back into mud, over the course of the endless age in which we were trapped. “Sh-she deserves to know. Ab-about Apple Bloom, so she knows Z-Zecora’s been avenged.”

Trixie shrugged, as we came to a stop before the gate. “If you say so. Do you know how to get their attention?”

I had a strange moment of deja vu. It was familiarity, but the familiarity itself was alien. This was the same gate that Apple Bloom had stood under when she called up to her sister, but that wasn’t my memory; it was hers, and I knew it only because I had stolen it from her. The thought still made me sick, and I could only shake my head in response.

“Ehh, fine. Stand aside, for this is a task that Trixie excels at.” She stepped back, and her horn’s magic glowed around her mouth. When she spoke, her voice was amplified, and the mud rippled under our hooves. “Hey! Idiots on the wall! We did your killing and brought the shoe, now let us back in! The Great and Powerful Trixie was promised her wagon in return!”

A moment later, a pony wearing a dull yellow construction helmet poked his head over the side. After a moment, he leapt off the wall and caught the air with a pair of dark gray wings. He landed beside us, while Trixie cancelled the spell that had amplified her voice. “Y-you did it? W-where’s the h-horseshoe? Or d-did you b-bring something else f-for proof?” He seemed to have the same trouble with his breathing that I did, his voice stuttering and gasping. There was something comforting to me in knowing that I was not alone in that regard.

Slowly, so as not to startle the Hollow guard, I withdrew the horseshoe from against my breast. I held it out for him to inspect, and he took it in his own hoof, where he peered at it for a few moments before his embers flickered in surprise. “Wow, that ac-actually looks r-right. Okay, I’ll t-take it b-back in, to the C-Commander. Sh-she’ll know for sure.”

“W-wait!” The pegasus turned at my shout, as he spread his wings. “C-can we come ins-inside? I w-want to check m-my friend, and t-tell her I’m okay.”

He shifted on his hooves nervously. “Um...I’ll a-ask her, b-but no p-promises. She’s b-been really b-busy dealing w-with the G-Golden Guard.”

“Okay.” I nodded, and he beat his wings, once, twice, then he was over the wall.

Trixie and I stood there together in silence for a few moments, watching the wall, but it seemed he would take longer than we hoped. Eventually, I looked over at Trixie. “D-dealing with?”

“You’re asking me?” Trixie said with an incredulous snort. “Hay if I know what he meant. I wouldn’t be surprised if that stupid hick was really trying to boot out the army; she seemed mad enough to think she could take them on herself, and the whole Everchaos too.”

As Trixie trotted off to the side of the road and sat down, I strained to listen. The fog made sound travel weirdly, and there was a whole undead settlement in between us...but eventually, I could pick out the low rhythm of the thumping cannons, a few miles away, still firing into the Everchaos. They were still holding the line, with or without Applejack’s intervention, and that was a small comfort. I joined Trixie by the side of the road, and together, we waited for the pegasus to return.

We clearly had time to kill, so I coughed to get her attention a few minutes later. “Um...y-you said s-something, earlier. You c-called me a ‘b-bright little spark’?”

Trixie leaned away from me, but didn’t stand. She looked me over from head to tail, then closed her eyes, and seemed to repeat the motion again. After a moment, she nodded. “I did, yes. Interesting…”

“W-what?” I looked back at myself, trying to see what she could. “And w-what did you mean b-by that?”

Trixie smirked, and her eyes opened. “Before I tell you, why don’t we make this little arrangement official, hm? You’ve proven yourself competent enough, and it does seem as though we’ll be working together for a while yet.”

“Ar-arrangement?”

“Mm-hm.” Trixie’s horn lit, and she used her magic to brush a few flecks of mud from my armor.  “As the Great and Powerful Trixie is currently without an apprentice, or rather, an assistant, she could see her way towards taking you on. We’d be picking up where that zebra shaman left off, starting with a proper fireball. It’s not as basic as combustion, but it’s a spell no Pyromancer would be caught dead without.”

I mulled it over for a few moments. I still didn’t trust Trixie; she’d proven herself opportunistic, conniving, and downright deceptive in nearly everything she did. But for all her bluster, she was, in a couple ways, genuinely “great and powerful.” If nothing else, she did know Pyromancy, far better than most if Dinky was to be believed. That alone made the offer tempting.

But she had also proven herself willing, even eager, to kill. That unsettled me, and though I had eventually agreed that it had needed to be done, everything about what we’d done to Apple Bloom rubbed me the worst way. I couldn’t shake an awful guilt whenever her memories were recalled as though they were mine, and that Trixie had done that to other ponies, enough times to practice ignoring it...that terrified me.

Thankfully, the decision was postponed when the militia pegasus appeared over the wall once more. He gave us a wave, and when we waved back, he disappeared. A few moments later, the door began to grind open, and we both jumped to our hooves. As we shook the dew from our coats and started to walk back into Ponyville, I shrugged to Trixie. “G-give me a bit to th-think it over.”

Trixie just gave me a smile that was probably meant to be reassuring, and she said, “Take as long as you need, assistant!”

A militia unicorn was waiting on the other side of the gate. “Which one of you is Trixie?”

She gasped at the insult, innocuous and unintended though it was. “The Great and Powerful Trixie, you mean!”

The unicorn mare shrugged. “Whatever. We’re supposed to watch you while you stay here. The Hollow is supposed to follow Thunderlane to the jail and back. Applejack’s on her way here, and she’ll give you two the instructions regarding the next target in person.” The dark gray militia pegasus dropped onto the ground beside her, and he smiled at me.

“Okay. L-lead on,” I said, with a nod. Trixie gave a huff and found a new spot to sit on this side of the gate. Once again, I noticed a surprising amount of unicorns all stationed around the gate, and how they watched us all very intently, but especially Trixie. While they only sometimes glanced at me, their eyes were focused on her for any sign of trouble.

The pegasus stallion—Thunderlane, apparently—took the lead, and I dropped in behind him. He cut a very straight path through the town, towards Friendship Square, but I did notice he stuck to wide roads instead of cutting through alleys. It might be that he didn’t terribly trust me, or maybe he just didn’t like the confined spaces between the buildings. Most pegasi, so used to soaring above the clouds, felt some inherent degree of claustrophobia.

As we turned down a road, I noticed a small crowd had gathered around a stallion standing atop a soapbox. He seemed about middle-aged, but his muscles hardened from farm work persisted, and he spoke loudly to anypony who would listen. He had violet fur, but no mane to speak of. It seemed to have migrated south instead, to form a beard and goatee. He wasn’t yet Hollowed, but his eyes were dark, and he didn’t look as though it was far off.

It was hard not to listen, as he addressed the small crowd before him, and we passed by. “No no no, you haven’t read the old lore tablets at all, you moron! All of this was ordained long ago! This sun-stricken existence we know now was always fated to happen, for this is merely part of the endless cycle of light and dark!

“The sun shall set on our age of light, and an age of dark shall be upon us! But fear not, my listeners, for it too shall pass, and there will be an age of light once more. But that too shall pass, and there will be another age of dark! Then, an age of light! An age of dark shall follow of course, but then, there will be an age of spiders! Yes, spiders. It will be awful. That shall pass with an age of fire, thank the stars, and an age of light shall follow that!

“Then an age of machinery! We shall accomplish great things! Great brick walls shall be erected, to hold back the monsters of old, but have yet to be created in our time! But that machinery will bring about an age of dark as well, even as we try to light up the abyss with that same machinery! It shall be an age of steel, and brass, and glittering gold! But eventually, dark shall prevail, and the age of darkness shall be long and cruel. Then, an age of fire will warm our world once more! And then more spiders!”

One of the onlookers rolled her eyes, and she left the crowd, having lost interest in hearing him rant and rave. Instead, her eyes caught those of my escort, and she smirked as she pointed at him. “Oh, a guard! Excellent, perhaps you can deliver us from this plague of gripes that has befallen our poor town!”

He shrugged, and we continued to walk. “I’m…a little busy right now, miss.”

“Of course you are, bah,” She passed by us, and disappeared into one of the nearby buildings as we left the street crier behind. The strange stallion’s ranting faded as we turned a corner, and we continued onwards toward the giant crystal castle.

Friendship Square seemed slightly more reinforced than it had before. Though the Hollow militia was still mostly milling about, the sandbags had all been recently repaired, and two additional automatic gun emplacements had been set up in front of the barracks. I got a few sharp looks from the ponies guarding the square, but Thunderlane waved them off as we proceeded towards the jail.

I hadn’t gotten a good chance to inspect the building before, since we’d been hauled into and out of the building by Applejack herself the previous time I’d been here. I took the time to pause and look it over now, while Thunderlane explained the situation to the guard at the door. It looked like it had always been a place of authority, and had maybe been a small constable station? That would explain the cells and bindings, though it was odd to have one across from what Dinky had claimed to be a school. Maybe it had just been limited to petty thugs, or mostly served as a drunk tank? I pondered if Applejack had originally used this building as her base of operations, before she started to reinforce the barracks.

After a short conversation, the guard let us in, and we trotted inside, past a bunch of desks and into the door marked “Cells,” which led down into the basement that I was far too familiar with. I glanced around briefly to see if there were any new changes or additional prisoners, but it seemed just as Trixie and I had left it. I moved to our former cell, and rapped my hoof against the bars, while Thunderlane stood beside me.

I jumped in horror as Dinky looked around, and sat up. We had been gone for only a short time, but in that time, Dinky had begun to Hollow significantly. The old mud and blood—that we’d all been stained with on our hectic run back—now stood out more than the original color of her thinned fur did. Her mane had grown a few shades more dull, and she seemed small in her bindings, as if she’d shriveled from dehydration.

Worst of all was her eyes. Dinky’s eyes were a bright, golden color when I first met her, and they had shone with health and curiosity whenever we talked to each other about the world around us. But at some point, those pony eyes had been lost, and golden embers replaced them inside her sockets. I didn’t want to think about that process in detail, or where those old eyes might be now.

“H-Holly?”

“Dinky!” I swallowed, and leaned against the bars to get as close as I could to my friend. “W-what happened? You, you’re-”

“I know,” She mumbled, as she shifted towards me. She leaned limply against the bars, and I wrapped my hooves around her. Thunderlane looked a little jumpy at that, but he decided to look away, to give us the illusion of privacy. Dinky shivered at my touch, but to my relief, she was still warm and alive, for the moment. “I haven’t been f-feeling great...sorry you have to see me like this. I d-didn’t think you’d be coming back, Holly.”

I nodded. “D-didn’t think I w-would, either. It’s d-dangerous out there.”

Dinky looked over at Thunderlane, and the sword at my side. “Are you being l-locked back up? And w-where’s Trixie?”

“No, j-just visiting. T-Trixie’s waiting by the gate, but I w-wanted to see you, s-see my f-friend. Applej-jack let me do that much, after we did the w-work she asked.”

“The killing, you mean.” Dinky mumbled, but she still rubbed her cheek against my forehead. “How’d it go? Obviously you’re b-both okay, so…”

I still fumbled over my words, as I related the story to Dinky, and we huddled together. I spread a little bit of my fire into her as I spoke, and while I could feel it being filtered through the cold iron, it seemed to reach her eventually. She perked up when I told her about Bon-Bon and Lyra, and she nodded when I told her they had likely left for Canterlot already. Her face fell again when I started to describe the rock farm, and when I asked what was wrong, Dinky explained that it had probably been Pinkie’s family home, and that I should tell her about it when I got a chance.

Her interest was piqued when I told her about the crystal lizard, and how I’d retrieved a couple of crystalline lumps from the battlefield, even though I couldn’t show them to her directly now. She shivered with worry when I told her I’d died again during the fighting, but we clung to each other tightly again, and that seemed to allay her fears. Finally, I told her about the Ashen Wallowers, and how they’d been near-feral themselves, but their leader had been at least willing to negotiate a bit.

“Th-there’s one l-last thing.” Dinky looked at me with that same curiosity in her embers as her eyes had held before, and I leaned back to reach into the collar of my armor. “We ran into A-Apple Bloom on the w-way back.”

Dinky’s eyes went wide. “D-did you beat her? Is she st-still out there?”

I swallowed. “N-no. Trixie taught me how to f-finish an Undead...properly.”

Dinky’s embers winked out as she squeezed her eyes shut in pain. “Properly. That’s...that’s one way to put it. I didn’t want to think about that, but if it means she doesn’t hurt anypony else...and it avenges Zecora...”

I nodded, as I reached into the bag against my breast. Thunderlane’s eyes were on the cage full of Hollows, so I drew the flask from the bottomless bag. The glimmering light from the dram of liquid sunlight shone across Dinky’s face, and she gasped quietly as I held it between us.

“W-what…?” Dinky had never seen the glowing bottle, aside from when Apple Bloom had stolen it from Zecora.

“Z-Zecora’s research. I d-don’t know where M-Meadowbrook is, but I c-can keep this safe until I f-find her. And th-there’s something else...Apple B-Bloom did something s-strange with it, when we f-fought her. She d-drank the liquid s-sunlight, and it s-seemed to heal her w-wounds.”

“Heal her…” Dinky mumbled in confusion. “W-why would it…like a healing potion?”

“I g-guess,” I said, as I nodded. I tilted it towards my friend. “T-there’s not much, b-but it replenishes b-by itself. You sh-should have a taste.”

Dinky smiled sadly, as she leaned her head against the bars. “I think I’m a b-bit too far gone for that to help, Holly.”

“P-please,” I murmured. “Please just t-try.”

Dinky sighed, and nodded, so I pulled out the silver-wrapped cork. She couldn’t hold the bottle in her own hooves while she wore the shackles, so I held it up to her mouth, and tilted the bottle so she could drink. The golden sunlight poured down and into her mouth, and Dinky’s eyes widened as she glowed slightly. Then the trickle of glowing sunlight was gone, and I re-corked the bottle, while Dinky smacked her lips. “Tastes like…doesn’t really t-taste like anything? Like...sparkles on your tongue. It’s liquid magic, for sure. I don’t know enough ab-about alchemy to say anything more.”

“H-how do you feel?” I slid the flask back into the collar of my armor, and the bag hidden within.

Dinky shook her head, and leaned back against the bars. “I don’t th-think my eyes would have come back even if I’d had a whole bottle to drink. I’m s-sorry, Holly.”

“I’m s-sorry too,” I mumbled, and we held each other tightly again. “I’m g-gonna get you out o-of here, okay? I p-promise.”

“I know. It-it’s not so bad, being in here.” Dinky chuckled mirthlessly, though I could feel her smile. “Sn-Snails comes by every once in a while, and he’s happy to talk to me. I don’t remember a lot of what he tells me—never had an interest in b-bugs, or animals, really—but I enjoy the company.”

“D-do you want me to st-stay? Instead of g-going out?”

Dinky swallowed. “D-don’t ask me that, please. I’ll be f-fine, like I said.”

We huddled together tightly for a while longer. Eventually, Thunderlane trotted back over. “We should p-probably get moving s-soon. I don’t w-want to k-keep Applejack waiting. S-sorry to b-break you two up.”

“Al-alright,” I whimpered, and me and Dinky clutched each other again tightly one last time before I broke away. As Thunderlane led me back up the stairs, I couldn’t help but look back at my friend, where she lay in her cell. Would there be anything left of Dinky, by the next time I returned?


*	*	*


Applejack wore a furious glare when Thunderlane and I finally returned to the northwest gate. “‘Bout damn time. Took the long way there and back, huh?”

“I didn’t think I’d ever agree with the hick, but you were gone a while. She’s terrible company,” Trixie snarked. She’d been lying on her back out of boredom, but rolled back onto her belly as we approached.

Between them both, Applejack had spread an old, yellowed map of Ponyville and the surrounding area. Charcoal lines had been drawn across the cloth to mark the walls that girded the impromptu fort, and more lines had been drawn to indicate the free-fire line between Ponyville and the Everchaos. Finally, a large amount of scribbling had been drawn atop a nearby lake.

“Shaddup, convicts.” Applejack waved her hooves, and they took on a glow as a dagger withdrew itself from a leg sheathe. She used it to point at various details on the map. “Now, this moron’s been telling me about your little adventure while you’ve been gone. Just so I can get this from both of you, where were they set up?”

Carefully, I approached, and stared at the map for a few moments. I had genuinely no idea where their hideout had been, geographically speaking; eventually, I tapped a rocky area to the southwest, near a large ravine. “Here-ish? Th-there was a q-quarry there, and Trixie c-called it a r-rock farm.”

Applejack frowned when I couldn’t place the exact location, but she tapped a part of the map a short distance away from my hoof with the tip of the knife. “Sounds like the Pie farm, yeap. And you cleared the whole place out yourselves?”

“Yep,” Trixie said, but Applejack turned to glare at her sharply and shushed her.

I looked between them both. “Uh...n-not by ourselves, th-there was a big l-lizard in the q-quarry, covered in c-crystal-”

Trixie groaned. “Ugh, you’re too honest, it’s no fun! I bet they would have kept sending ponies in for that thing to hunt!”

Applejack flicked the knife in Trixie’s direction. “Ah warned ya! Lie to me again, and this is going into one a’ yer eyes! Now, is there anything else at this danged farm?!”

“Nope, totally-”

“Ah said shaddup!”

I gulped as Trixie and Applejack glared at each other. “Th-there’s a few p-pigs left, but they m-might be g-gone soon. The l-lizard is st-still there, and it’s a p-predator. It h-hunted them f-for us, when we b-baited it out.”

Applejack nodded, and a nearby unicorn guard started to write that down in an ancient notebook. “That all? Good. We’ll send scouts—ones we can trust—to confirm from a distance, but y'all have a new job.” Her dagger flicked back towards the map, and she pointed at the mass of scribbles around the lake. “This here’s the Ponyville reservoir-”

“Told you.”

“Last! Warning!” Applejack barked at Trixie, as she stabbed the dagger into the map out of frustration. “Interrupt me again and I’ll gut ya, before I toss you down a well to fight the frogs!”

All was quiet for a few moments, as Applejack huffed and grunted, and calmed down somewhat. When she was “calm”, she continued. “Now, this used to be just Ponyville’s reservoir. Long time back, Cloudsdale fell out of the sky and landed in it, and now the water from there’s turned black. Real weird, real gross. And there’s skeletons hanging around the ruins. Ah got no clue what the hay’s going on up there, so I want you two to probe around, see what you can find, or at least try and figure out how big the problem is exactly. Then come back here, and we’ll mount a proper force to clear out the ruins, ‘cause it’s too big a job for just the two a’ ya.”

I raised a hoof, and Applejack glared at me. “W-what if we g-get attacked, and c-can’t make it b-back?”

“Ya’ll don’t come back, we’ll assume there’s something out there worse than skeletons,” Applejack grunted. “For now, seems they’ve mostly kept to themselves, ‘sides the odd wandering pile a’ bones. Like ah said, don’t go lookin’ for a fight. If you’re really spoilin’ to die, you can go with the fightin’ force. Need some good cannon fodder.”

“Great. Anything else, o Princess of Ponyville?” Trixie asked, with a grimace.

Applejack made a point of yanking the dagger back out of the map and pointing it at Trixie. For a moment, I thought she’d finally been pushed too far, and Trixie was about to get a knife in the throat. But after a moment, Applejack just snarled and sheathed the blade. “Nope. Get the hay out of mah town, both of you.”

The militia unicorn beside her looked up at the gate. “They’re ready to go! Open up!”

Trixie stood and stretched, as I wandered over to stand beside her. “Well, once more into the mist. Have a nice chat with your little friend?”

“S-something like that,” I mumbled, as Applejack wandered away, and the great wooden gate began to open before us. They stopped it when it was only a couple of body-lengths open, and we both drifted out into the fog towards our next destination.
> 20 - Through the Fog
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“S-so, I’ve been, um, been th-thinking about your offer, T-Trixie.”

“Mm-hm.” She wasn’t listening. From her horn, she had projected an illusion of Applejack’s map from earlier, and her focus was entirely on the geography thereof. As I watched, the symbols on the illusory parchment drifted and shifted—apparently Trixie was having trouble remembering exactly what went where, and where the charcoal markings had been exactly.

“Ab-about becoming your ap-apprentice-”

“Assistant.” Trixie flicked her head, and the map dissipated from existence. “Come on, over this field. Look for a road, we’ll follow that until it meets up with—and follows—a river.”

I blinked in confusion, as we both started to climb over an old wooden fence. It creaked and groaned, and I feared it would snap under my weight, but it held. “W-what do you m-mean-”

“Assistant, not apprentice.” Trixie turned her head as we trotted across a field that had been last plowed long ago, where the furrows dug into the ground remained out of spite. “An apprentice would imply you are a student, and could replace me in the future should I be unable to perform what I’ve taught you. An assistant learns, but the main goal is to assist me while learning.”

That was a...very formal, very business-like way of looking at the relationship. While Dinky had been a friend, and Zecora had been a teacher who wished to teach again, I was reminded that Trixie was neither. She seemed to see me as little more than a hired sword, at best. The best response I could muster was a quiet, “O-oh.”

Trixie raised an eyebrow and flashed a smirk. “So! You said you were thinking about it?”

Slowly, I nodded. “St-still am. Haven’t d-decided anything.”

Trixie shook her head and nickered in annoyance as we reached the other side of the field, marked by another moldy wooden fence. A hard-packed dirt road stretched beyond, extending into the fog in both directions. “You brought it up.”

“S-sorry.” While Trixie climbed over, I chose to slide between the crossbars. A loose bit of my armor caught on a rusted nail, but I tugged it free a moment later, and we were standing on the road.

Trixie’s horn lit, and the map shimmered into existence before her once more. “Whatever. This should be it—watch for any road signs, and the river should be on our left.”

I nodded, and we started down the road. For some reason, I couldn’t shake a growing sense of familiarity.


*	*	*


The reason for my familiarity became apparent a mile or two down the road. With the babbling stream on our left, a large shape began to loom out of the fog. I stared at it as it came into focus, and Trixie had to put up a hoof to stop me. “Wait, shape on the road. Hollow, maybe.”

I nodded, and we continued forward, much more slowly. I hadn’t seen the shape before, but it came into clarity as we closed the distance in the mist. I blinked when I could see it clearly; it was a Hollow soldier, and a familiar one at that. He was the first “living” pony I had ever seen, which meant we had stumbled back across the bookstore where I had woken up so long ago.

He looked to have recovered from our battles, but another—more recent— set of injuries had given him a shaking limp. His horn had healed, and his old rusty sword dragged through the surface of the road, since he seemed to lack the strength required to lift it. His jaw hung loosely from his skull, broken at least in two from a blow to his head, and his left hind dragged limply. Whenever he took a step with it, he stumbled slightly, as he didn’t seem to quite have feeling all the way down to his hoof. If he’d been anything more than an empty shell of a Hollow, I had no doubt he would have been in unimaginable pain.

Trixie was bluntly unimpressed. “Yeah, he’s not a problem. Let’s keep going.”

“W-wait.” Maybe it was cruel, but I wanted to fight him. It wouldn’t even the score—there was no score to keep track of, really—but I was curious how much I had improved since then. I’d been swinging my sword and fighting for a while now, and surely I could handle a single Hollow? “I’ll t-take care of him. I w-want to look ins-inside the b-bookstore.”

“The what?” Trixie glanced over at the ruined cloud-building, where it lay in the stream. “Oh, you- ugh, you bookworms are all the same. You know the books will have all been long ruined by damp?”

I shrugged as I stepped around her and drew my sword. “D-don’t care. M-maybe I missed s-something last t-time.”

“Last time?” Trixie mumbled in confusion, more to herself than me. “Whatever. Explain after you kill him.”

The Hollow soldier let out a weak groan as he finally saw us, and he staggered in our direction as his head lolled slightly on his shoulders. It seemed like he barely knew how to hold it up straight, and he only seemed dimly aware that his leg was damaged. As I flexed my hoof and flicked my sword to limber up, I wondered what had happened to him. Even if he wasn’t clearly wounded from a recent fight, would he be just as much a threat? Or had I improved so drastically, in the time between?

Even now, his first strike was that wide horizontal slash, and I easily dodged it by stepping back when he swung. His sword dragged in the dirt as he fought to raise it once more, but I never let him get the chance. I stepped back in to close the distance, and swung my sword down in an arc that terminated in the side of his neck.

There was a wet thwack as the blade sliced through his flesh and dug into his spine. His legs went limp in an instant, but his head continued to snarl as black blood foamed from between his lips. The glow of his horn intensified, and I ducked as his sword careened wildly over my head, and buried itself, tip-down, into the road. The stallion slumped to the ground, and I yanked the sword from his neck, where more black blood welled out and crept down his neck.

Now that he was immobile, and what little attention he had was split between biting wildly at me with a broken jaw and tugging his sword free, I could easily finish him off. I considered leaving him as he was, but with his blood already so coagulated, the blow I’d struck might not have been fatal. Instead, I leaned back, grabbed his horn with my off-hoof, and lined up my blade with his limp jaw. Then, I stabbed upwards quickly, and pierced the roof of his mouth with the tip of my blade. The embers in his eyes winked out, and the undead stallion went still once more.

Trixie approached from behind, stomping her hooves as she walked. “Bravo, you killed some wandering chump. I doubt he’s even got a few dregs left to take, but they’re yours. Can we move on now?”

I nodded, in sudden worried anticipation. Right. Trixie was right. I should drain him. He was long since feral, and there was nothing left of the stallion’s mind. Even now, he seemed content to stand on this road, and attack passers-by. But the thought of stealing whatever scraps of a soul he had remaining...I didn’t like how casually we spoke about it now.

I kept my grip steady around his horn as I closed my eyes, and grasped for his fire. The stallion was dead, but his fire remained, even though it was little more than embers. Now that I'd done it once with Apple Bloom, it was easier to embrace his flame, but it still took me a few long moments to pull it in. I grit my teeth as I felt his fire join mine-

Tired

Chase

EYES

Fear

Run

Fight

Pain

pain

why

I trembled, as I drew in a slow breath. Trixie's description of 'flashes' was accurate, but they weren't just visual. Even though none of them had lasted for more than a moment, I had been the stallion for each of those moments. I had worn his armor, and I had been running in his hooves. I saw the silhouette again, and those burning crimson eyes.

After a moment, I shook my head to try and clear my mind. The stallion's fire wasn't entirely gone; a single dull ember remained that I couldn't take. Just enough for him to heal eventually, and begin wandering once more. That thought brought me no comfort.

Trixie was already crossing the river by the time I stood, and I had to slide down the muddy river bank to cross the stream. I followed her into the darkened building, and we both stood in the doorway for a few moments, blinking owlishly as our eyes adjusted.

While the bookstore had changed little since I had left, somepony—or perhaps something—had clearly been inside recently. A trail of smoking hoofprints led from the door to the back of the building, pressed directly into the old, moldy wood floor. There, they paced around seemingly at random, before they finally returned to the door and ended where they had begun. Trixie's horn lit with a pink glow as she swept the room with a projected light for any surprises, and while the light lingered on the other Hollow soldier, still motionless on the floor where I had left her last, she seemed satisfied that the room was safe.

"What is...what's with these hoofprints? They feel magical, but they're no illusion. Like some sort of imprint left on the aether field…?" Trixie muttered quietly to herself, while she moved to drain the Hollow mare. As she did that, I walked alongside the tracks, careful not to disturb them, and followed the path to the back.

A small pile of debris, an ancient bloodstain, and a hole stabbed into a stubbornly dense cloud wall. This had been my resting place for untold ages, but it barely looked like anything. I glanced around, but there was simply nothing else to see, and it looked like whatever had left the hoofsteps had been as frustrated as I was. They paced around the debris, and I found my own hooves tracing their steps as I looked around. It was difficult, however, as they had a much longer stride than I.

However, the conspicuous lack of certain things was just as interesting. There were absolutely no vermin anywhere in the store; while I was sure I'd heard rats when I had first awoken, now there was nothing, and I wasn't sure they had ever been rats to begin with. That didn't make much sense now, with what I knew about the Everchaos, but I supposed if any creature was likely to stubbornly survive, it might have been the rodents. Even the dead vermin were gone, with no trace that they had ever been there to begin with.

Also absent was the dark sword. I paced and paced, but the black blade that I had pushed from my belly when I first awoke was nowhere to be found. Somepony had taken it, and I was beginning to suspect the black knight had finally returned to retrieve his weapon, now that it was no longer being used to pin me to the wall.

How long ago had he been here? The Hollow outside had been recently injured, but his wounds were far from fatal, so maybe he had never been killed by the knight. He had undoubtedly seen him—there was no mistaking those eyes, even if I had only seen them for a flash—but I had no idea if that had been minutes ago, or decades. The hoofsteps were still smoking, but I had no idea how long they would last, and Trixie seemed just as baffled by them as I.

I couldn't shake the unsettling feeling that we had only just missed him. If we'd been just a little bit faster, we might have encountered each other here, and I had no idea what I would do then. Could I manage to fight him? Whenever I even thought of those eyes, my breath caught in my throat, and I froze in fear. I was sure that I couldn't do it, no matter how scared I was. I would freeze up again, and I would die once more when he ran me through with his blade.

What if this was a trap?

What if the black knight had watched us through the fog, and followed us here, knowing that I would want to investigate? He could be lurking just outside now, standing atop the hill, as he waited for us to emerge from the bookstore. Or would he enter after us now, to fight us here in the dark and cramped interior? Would I be pinned to the wall once again, in the same spot as before, as if I had never left?

I trembled in terror as I stared at the door, and waited for his shadow to fill the frame. But that never happened, no matter how long I stared.

Behind me, Trixie rummaged through the building for a short while. I heard as she peeled books apart, peered at the covers, and then discarded them carelessly. "Not about magic. Not about magic...one about rats, but not about magic." Eventually, she moved to check the registers, and found a small measure of success once she managed to pull the rusted drawer free. I heard the rattle of bits, which Trixie stashed in her armor, even though I was sure they were worthless now. Eventually, she approached me from behind, and cleared her throat. "Hey. Hollow. Wake up!"

I started. Why had I just been staring at the door like that? Had I wanted the black knight to appear so badly? "S-sorry! All-all good. We can g-go."

Trixie eyed me suspiciously, but shrugged a moment later, as she moved towards the door. "So what's up with this place? You said you'd been here before."

"A w-while back. I w-woke up here at f-first. There w-was a sword, b-but it's gone n-now. I th-think something t-took it."

I followed Trixie through the doorway, as she rolled her eyes. "A sword, right. These two Hollows friends of yours, then?"

We dropped into the creek, and crossed it once more to make our way back up to the road. Streamers of black, like faint trails of ink, wove around our hooves as we moved through the water. The river we had fought Apple Bloom beside had been much more clean than this one. "N-no, at least...I d-don't think s-so. Did the m-mare tell you an-anything?"

"Nothing except the usual." Trixie put on a mocking voice as she rolled her eyes. "Bored, something happened, afraid, then lonely. Think she got trapped under a shelf and then gave up. Boring all the way through."

What a way to describe the entirety of a pony's soul. But then, the stallion hadn't given me much information either. Would it be preferable to be like Apple Bloom when you were drained, so that you still had memories from the time before, or was it better to have already been so Hollowed that there was nothing left but base instincts? When I was to be drained, would I want to be aware, and remembered? Or did I want to persist until I was long maddened, so I never felt the pain of having my very being stolen from me?

I didn't want either. I wanted to survive, so that I never had to make that choice, so that I never had to feel it either way. But after everything I'd seen, survival seemed increasingly unlikely with every passing moment.

We left the bookstore, and I was confident I wouldn't need to return here, even with Dinky. We had gleaned all that we could, and all that remained now was two Hollows and an empty building. I was merely satisfied that it had not become three.


*	*	*


The road followed the river, and we followed the road. As we pushed uphill, we noticed the fog had begun to thicken around us, and visibility seemed to shrink by a hoofstep with every twenty we took. We pressed closer together as the mist pressed in on us both, and tall, dark shapes loomed upwards on the periphery of our sight.

They didn't move, which barely helped our nerves, and we eventually forced ourselves to approach one by the side of the road—where we found only a long-dead pine, light of needles and colored brown from an eternity of death without decay. We had entered a forest without realizing it, and the knowledge that we were surrounded only by trees was at least a small comfort.

We pressed onwards. I was beginning to have trouble pushing through in particular, while Trixie was unimpeded; we worked out a moment later that the clouds were much more real to me, as a pegasus, than they were to Trixie. For her, they were little more than cold air that our vision was unable to pierce. For me, it felt as though I were underwater, and I had to struggle to push forward as their density increased. I had long since given up on breathing exercises, and felt a bit light-headed, but I suspected that a living pegasus would have been suffocated within this fog bank. Or perhaps they would drown, since it felt as though we moved through more water than air along our way.

“St-stop,” I groaned, and Trixie did so as she turned to face me. “Wh-what about the r-r-iver? The mist sh-should be absorbed by the w-water, so it’ll be easier g-going.”

“So now you want to trudge uphill while hock-deep in a freezing creek? Fantastic.” Trixie whined, but she moved to the river and slid down into the water. I struggled to follow, and when I finally joined Trixie, I found her standing in the water already. She let out a litany of groans and pained hisses as she tried to get used to the cold water, and I joined her with my own as my hooves splashed under the surface.

At the very least, I was right; the river was where the mist became too heavy and coalesced into liquid, and that left a few leg-lengths of open air above the surface. I could see a good deal further upriver, and so long as I kept my head low, I could move at almost a normal walking pace, aside from the minor struggle of wading upstream.

But there was one other problem; the water itself. Both Trixie and I found our eyes drawn to the flowing stream, where large inky blobs flowed over stones that had long been dyed black. They were some form of heavy fluid, and they dragged against the stones at the bottom of the river, while the clean water flowed quickly over them. There, they broke apart into smaller and smaller lumps, and eventually, they became little more than the thin streamers we’d seen downstream.

We both looked at each other, as we waited for the other to say something. I didn’t want to have to slog my way through the thick fog, but would this be worse? Trixie was clearly just as repulsed by it as I, but would she be stubborn enough to bear it until I gave up and suggested that we move back to the road?

The decision was made for us when a black blob bumped against my hoof, and smeared the viscous bile across my leg. It felt like mucous, as though a giant had blown his nose into the river, but it was colored so dark that it seemed like pure black. Once more I was reminded of the interior of my bottomless bag, or our cutie marks. And all of this combined into a feeling of such intense revulsion that I wanted to puke again.

I dry-heaved as I struggled back out of the water, and Trixie followed me with a pained but self-satisfied smirk across her muzzle. Her own hooves were already dyed black, and she looked just as sick as I, but she’d stuck it out long enough for me to be affected. We both wiped our hooves on the dead grass, and left black smears wherever our hooves touched. We managed to wipe off most of the disgusting stuff, at least, but it stained our fur still. We’d need to wash them properly in clean water to remove whatever filth had contaminated this stream.

“L-let’s just-” I retched again. “Just t-take the road?”

Trixie nodded, and led the way as I continued to struggle forward through the fog.


*	*	*


It began to rain shortly after.

I was actually surprised that it hadn’t started earlier. There was clearly enough moisture in the air, as we headed up into the mountains, but for some reason it seemed content to linger as fog. Even when it did start raining, the fog only thinned slightly, and didn’t actually ever clear properly. Still, it allowed me to move forward at almost a slow canter again. The rain was also very pleasant to feel on our backs, and we were able to scrape away more of the black ink as the droplets soaked our fur.

As the fog thinned, we could see the trees around us a little bit more clearly, but found they looked no healthier. They might be evergreens, but that did not persist for so long after the forest had died. The road also cleared somewhat, and Trixie was the one who noticed a stone bridge, old and crumbling, which connected the road to a path that led up the hill. “Hollow, fog is low-hanging, right?”

“Y-yeah?”

“Well, then let’s go this way, and try to get above it. We have to be high enough now that we won’t have to go far. It’ll let us get a good look at where we are too, and I can check our map.” Trixie started across the bridge, and I followed her, though I couldn’t help but peer over the side at the river once more.

It was as though I was looking down into a great, sunless crevasse. I could see no detail, only blank, dark blackness at the bottom of the river. The only clue that told me that the river still had a bottom was how the water flowed over the top of it, as though the dark sludge that had twisted the riverbed was more solid than fluid. If the dark ink that had poisoned the river actually flowed this far upstream, it was impossible to tell.

I swallowed, as I continued to follow Trixie over the bridge and up the hill. I was very glad that we had chosen not to wade upstream, fog be damned.

While the road we had followed thus far was a gentle upwards slope that followed the river, this path up the side of the valley was much more steep. We both struggled slightly when the path required a step up, or when it turned thin around a rock that jutted out of the hill. Even Trixie seemed uncomfortable with how close we both were to the edge, where a slip could turn fatal, even if only temporarily. I had no desire to plunge downwards, and I especially had no desire to climb up and out of the dead thicket under us.

But Trixie was correct in her decision; the fog thinned quickly as we ascended, and soon my eyes began to wander. I saw the tops of the evergreens, and a great looming mass in the distance, which had to be the other side of the valley. Eventually, shapes and colors resolved themselves into rock formations and a dead forest, and we completely escaped the fog.

We were in the shadow of the sunset up here, but this was the clearest I had seen the world around me for a very long time. The mountains stretched for miles, as we were making our way into the Canterhorn range now, and the path to get here had been too curved to look back and see Ponyville. I could barely see the smoke from the Everchaos. I tried to see if I could spot Canterlot itself from here, but it was little more than a silhouette amongst the clouds.

The rain for which we had been thankful fell from a cloudbank above us, which was dyed red from the sunlight. We were sandwiched between the light rainstorm, and the thick fog below. As I peered down, I noticed that just like the river that followed the valley, the fog seemed to be flowing downhill very slowly. No wonder I had been having trouble pushing through it—it wasn’t just thick, but I had been actively moving against the flow.

My hoof slipped, and I gasped as I scrambled back from the edge. The rain was beginning to wash away the dirt of the path, and turn it into mud. As the mud slowly oozed downhill, it exposed bare rocks, and the wet rain made those slippery and treacherous.

Thankfully, we didn’t need to go much further. We passed around a rock at the corner of a hill, and we found ourselves on a large outcropping. An ancient rockslide had halted here, and time, trees, and more rain had turned it flat. That was perfect for us, and for many a pony, it seemed; there was already a small camp set up here.

For a moment, I had a hope that we had stumbled across somepony out in the wilds, but to my sadness, the fire was long dark, and the tent was ragged and full of holes. This place had been abandoned long ago, and we were easily the first travelers in a long time. Trixie continued onwards to the edge of the camp, where our path continued, but it seemed to turn downhill once again. Instead, she looked into the great valley as it spread out before us, and I was stunned into silence as I looked off into the foggy distance.

The valley was easily a mile long, hemmed in by steep mountain walls on either side, and maybe a quarter-mile wide. The fog was present, but it was spread thin over the expanse, and only compressed into the thick mist we had been fighting on the way here at the bottom end of the great gulch below us. The far end of the valley was blocked off by a large dam, made of stained concrete, and we could see the shimmer of water over the wall.

And across all of it—the ruins of Cloudsdale. Ravaged and destroyed buildings lay in haphazard arrangements everywhere, from clumps of disowned fluff, to entire neighborhoods, then fallen warehouses, skyscrapers, and finally, massive industrial buildings at the foot of the dam. The entire pegasus-built city had fallen into this single valley, and an unimaginable amount of construction had been crushed under its own weight here.

At the top of it all, looming over everything else, the great Weather Factory had fallen atop the dam. It had cracked the concrete when it impacted, and black water leaked down the massive wall in a thin rivulet, until it combined into a trailing stream, merged with the river that had been originally dammed up, and became a churning torrent of dark that wound all the way through the valley until it disappeared under the fogbank.

In that moment, I understood why there was so much fog across Equestria, and the sheer amount of death and destruction that this nation had seen since the sun stopped. It all hit me at once, and I reeled, and trembled as my jaw hung open. This had been a great pegasus city, the hub of weather engineering for a huge section of our world, and it had fallen here, where it seemed almost forgotten. It was almost too much, and I nearly pitched back in a coma from shock.

Eventually, Trixie turned to me. “What a mess. Let’s rest up here, and then we’ll go in and find Apple Bloom’s ‘source,’ whatever it is.”

I could only nod, and we began to scrounge up wood to re-light the campfire together.
> 21 - The Restless Dead
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It took us a while to scrounge up wood decent enough to burn. Eventually, we had managed to get a pitiful flame burning in the old campsite’s fire pit, and Trixie kept a watchful eye on it, in case it began to burn low. I busied myself by checking my equipment, and especially my bottomless bag, which I moved so that I wore it on my side. It was easily reached by my hoof there, should I need something in a hurry.

A question had occurred to me. I knew it contained Zecora’s flask, and anything else I had put in, such as the purloined crystals. But what else did it contain? Either Zecora or Apple Bloom could have dumped all manner of alchemical supplies inside, or useful equipment.

But the problem was that I didn’t know what had actually been placed inside. It was easy to imagine the flask and call it to my hoof, but picturing more abstract, vague concepts such as “herbs” or “salt” or “potions” yielded nothing. I was able to retrieve Zecora’s wood axe, and I gave it a few swings for the sake of nostalgia, but it was absolutely inferior to the shortsword I had now. The shortsword itself I continued to wear on my other side; I might be able to store it within the bag, but I didn’t want to reach inside and fumble out an entire weapon—let alone a sheathed one—in an emergency, unless I had to.

Eventually, I came to a depressing conclusion. With both of the bag’s previous holders now Hollowed, there was nopony left who could tell me what they had stored inside it. There could have been a cure to save the world within the cold, black void of the bottomless bag, but unless I had at least a decent idea of what it looked like, and the general dimensions thereof, I would never be able to retrieve it. And if I fell next, then to whoever found the bag next, it might as well have been empty, with the contents lost to time and madness.

At the very least, I had Zecora’s flask of sunlight, and it seemed as though it could be kept safely within the bag. I pulled it out to check how much had been replenished, and found myself pleasantly surprised when it was a bit more than half full. I sloshed the liquid around and watched the curious fluid as it glimmered, satisfied that it would safely refill itself while inside the bag. Wherever it went, it seemed that it was able to siphon a trickle of fire from me from within the depths.

I returned the flask to the bag, and my attention moved to Trixie, who seemed satisfied with the campfire. Once more, I contemplated her offer. Trixie seemed to have no affection for me, but she didn’t hate me specifically, and we worked well enough as a team. While I wouldn’t trust her with a pile of gold bits, she didn’t seem randomly malicious; while she had proven herself very dangerous, her ire had so far only been directed towards those who threatened her, whether directly or indirectly. I doubted she would stab me in the back, unless I was the one holding the knife to begin with.

“Hollow. You’re staring at me.”

I coughed, pointedly looking back over the valley. The fact that she almost seemed to make a point of not remembering my name was also a sore point, but I suppose at this point I was beginning to simply accept it. “S-sorry. Was th-thinking about your of-offer again.”

“Oh?” Trixie smirked, and cocked her head as she sat back. “What of it? Have you come to a decision this time?”

After a moment, I nodded. “I’ll be y-your assistant, as l-long as you can t-teach me more P-Pyromancy.”

“Excellent!” Trixie clapped her hooves together, then began to rub them to warm up. “Now, Trixie mentioned the humble fireball before?”

I nodded. I knew the proper technique for meditation, and combustion seemed simple enough. I vaguely recalled tales of fireballs being slung by Pyromancers in combat, and the thought that I might be able to do the same was exciting.

Trixie raised her hoof, and her own pyromancy flame sprung to life to demonstrate. “Excellent! A fireball is something very different to mere combustion. It’s not about just feeling your fire—you have to charge it. You can do this with intense focus, but calling an emotion from within is actually much easier. Anger, in particular, lends itself very well to fireballs.”

I blinked in confusion, because that sounded very different to Zecora’s methods and teachings. Pyromancy so far had seemed a very peaceful sort of magic, as though it were self-actualization with the world around me. But then, for one to turn this magic to a purely offensive purpose, it did make a certain amount of sense. “An-anger?”

“Yup! Anger, hate, annoyance, frustration, they all work very well. You need to focus on those feelings, feel how they get your blood pumping, and make your fur stand on end, and you need to focus that feeling onto the flame in your hoof.” Trixie’s gaze turned sharp as she glared at her hoof, and the fire above her frog swelled as it kindled with her emotions. After a moment, she had a pulsing ball of flame that seemed eager to escape from her grasp. “You need to hold it in place with your grip, because that isn't as ‘real’ as the world around you. As soon as it touches something that is, it’ll explode. It’s naturally unstable too, so you need to throw it quick, before it-”

As she spoke, the ball of flame pulsed faster and faster, and the sphere distorted as the fire raged within. She was mid-sentence when the fireball made a whining noise, and she held it away from herself, while she covered her face with her other hoof. A loud ‘bang’ echoed across the campsite and through the valley, and I was knocked back a pace from the wave of pressure.

Trixie was, surprisingly, relatively unharmed. Only her hoof was left smoking and the fur of her fores aflame, as well as the tip of her hat. She slapped her legs together to extinguish herself as she cursed, “Sire of an ass!” A moment later, she noticed her hat, and she grabbed it off her head to clap her hooves together around it, to douse those flames as well.

When the fire was out, she panted heavily, and I stepped closer to make sure she was okay. She waved me off, though I could see her fur was noticeably much shorter. She seemed to have avoided any permanent burns, however. “Ahem. Before that happens. It’ll pop after a few seconds all on its own, so you need to throw it before it gets out of control, or you need to at least not be there when it does.

“That’s the first thing I need to teach you, because it’s all well and good to have a fireball, but it’s going to be very painful if you only learn how to throw it afterward. Follow my movements, with an empty hoof—I’m going to show you how to throw one for absolute maximum distance.” Trixie summoned another fireball, much faster this time, and reared back on her hinds to swing her leg back. She threw it overhoof, as she swung her leg overhead in a blur, and the fireball sailed away over the valley. It left a burning trail through the fog, and finally, a loud pop echoed back as it disappeared in a flash just after it disappeared into the mists below.

“You get that?” Trixie asked, as she landed back on all fours. I nodded, and she motioned with her head. “Alright then, show me. No fire, just the motion. You’re gonna be a little off-balance without the weight in your hoof, but it should be manageable.”

“The...w-weight? I th-thought it was just a ball of m-magic and fire?”

Trixie shook her head. “Nah, but I can see how you’d think that. Something about using an emotion to alter the physical world makes it heavy, as a side effect. Especially the emotions of a fireball. If you don’t use those emotions, they fly further, but they’re also a lot harder to aim, so it’s really just not worth it.”

I nodded, and started to mimic Trixie’s throwing motion. She did it again to help, but as soon as I tried to stand on my hinds, I felt horrifically off-balance. My wings unfolded limply to stabilize myself, but they weren’t enough, and I felt myself topple backwards. At the very least, they were spread out when I flopped onto the stone, so I didn’t damage them. The back of my head, however, smacked into the stone, and my vision went dark.


*	*	*


When I came to, Trixie was tending the fire again. I groaned, and she glanced at me, before she knocked her hooves together and stood up. She walked over next to me, as I rolled onto my own hooves, and said with a smirk, “That wasn’t too long at all. So, you’re too far gone for the fancy techniques, then.”

I nodded. “S-sorry.”

Trixie chuckled. “Just be more careful. The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn't like to be kept waiting by her assistants!”

When I was steady on my hooves once more, Trixie demonstrated a few different throwing motions that were a bit easier, but not quite as useful. Several were wide sideways swings, a few fancy kicks that I didn’t even try to imitate, and an underhoof lob that was good for flushing out a quarry behind a wall. I continued to have trouble with balance, but after the third time I fell over, Trixie went and found a rock that she said was more-or-less the right weight. I used that for practice, and tossed it at the stone wall at the back of the camp a few times, before Trixie got tired of fishing it out of the undergrowth.

“Alright, you’ve got the technique down. Now, as for creating a fireball, it’s just like I said. Focus on things that make you angry, or annoyed, or things you really don’t like. Feel that power, and use it to charge the fire in your hoof.”

I swallowed. “I...I d-don’t really have anyth-thing like that? I d-don’t really h-hate anything..?”

Trixie burst out in laughter. “Pffft, yeah, right! Everypony’s got something, assistant. Really think about it, what’ve you been annoyed by as of late? What have you been angry at? Maybe those Apple bumpkins?”

Anger? Hate? Neither of them suited me terribly well. It was hard for me to actually hate anypony I’d met, even Apple Bloom. She’d had her reasons, even if I still didn’t understand them. Applejack was closer, but I still found it hard to really hate her. I disliked her, but that dislike wasn’t strong enough to really be called hate. Annoyance…I could maybe work with that.

I focused on Applejack, and how she’d yelled at me, yelled at Zecora. She’d shot me, she’d kicked me, she’d hurt so many ponies. Pinkie was clearly so annoyed at her, and I very much liked Pinkie. She’d thrown me and Dinky in jail, and Dinky was Hollowing out now because of her, just like untold numbers of ponies had before her. That last thought in particular inspired a surge of fire, and it joined the building bubble of searing warmth above my frog.

The magic was strange to hold. It strained to escape, it bobbed and twitched, but all I did was hold it in my invisible grasp. I could feel it searching for an escape, and I focused on keeping the bubble of force around it sealed, so that it was contained. Trixie clapped her hooves together and leaned back. “Decent enough! Toss it, quick!”

I swallowed as the fire raged inside the bubble, and I could feel it straining harder as I wound up. I loosed the bubble moments before it would have erupted, and it flew at the stone wall weakly. When it hit with a pop, I felt a wave of warm air roll back over us, before the cold mountain air flooded back in. The fire exploded out in a bright flash as the air ignited, but it was only that quick flash. After a few seconds, even the undergrowth that had been caught in the explosion had been extinguished by the moisture in the air, as the fires were unable to sustain themselves.

Trixie nodded, as a smirk crossed her muzzle. “Adequate work, assistant! You have the concept, but your technique and power are both terrible. Keep practicing, and you might become skilled enough to use that in a fight! It’s also great stress relief, if you ever need to literally blow off some steam. I’m surprised your mentor didn’t teach you that, at least.”

I shrugged, but I did feel a little bit less annoyed with Applejack. Was it just because I hadn’t really thought about her much before, and being forced to think about her in these terms made me really consider her actions? Or was the magic actually turning my emotions into power and burning it like fuel, in some way? Pyromancy was really strange.

“Hmmm…what else?” Trixie sat back by the fire, and chewed her lip as she thought. “What else might get more of an ‘oomph’ from your fireballs...how about the demons, or the deer? You mentioned fighting them both in the past.”

The deer...I didn’t hate them. I felt more sorry for them, than anything else. I doubted they had willingly been consumed by chaosfire, and it seemed to have permeated their entire forest. As for the demons themselves, again, I couldn’t hate them. They were dangerous, and they were a huge problem, but they were just animals, twisted by magic. Maybe if I ever learned where the fire came from, I could hate that. I shook my head, but I did start to charge another fireball to see if I could do it through focus alone.

“What about…” Trixie smirked again. “What about whatever had been through the bookstore before us? You seemed to know what it was, maybe you have some history you can use?”

The black knight? In an instant, I saw those eyes again, and remembered how it had looked at me with such hate in the forest. It would have no trouble at all creating a fireball, one strong enough to burn me to ashes. The thought of that almost instantly charged the flame held in my hoof, but it wasn’t charged with hate—it was charged with fear, instead, and that made the orb suddenly very heavy indeed.

Trixie didn’t notice. She saw the fire, and stomped her hoof. “There we go! Toss it!”

I tried. I really, genuinely tried to heave the leaden bubble as far as I could, but it barely left my hoof. I saw it fall in front of me, and I barely had enough time to cover my face with my hooves before a blinding wave of heat and fire rolled across my body. There was a loud thump, then another, and another, and they continued for several seconds, while I heard Trixie curse distantly. There was no pain at least, but as the explosions faded and I seemed to be unharmed, I became quite confused. How had I dodged such a powerful explosion?

When I lowered my hooves and looked around, I found myself in the center of a dozen craters, and I stood in the only ground left untouched, although it was a bit more dry. Great heat had cracked the stone surface all around me, and burning soil had been blasted away to clear the ground. The campfire had been blown into debris, and that seemed to be why Trixie had cursed—the explosion had launched a pile of burning wood in every direction, including right at her. As I stared, she seemed to be preoccupied with extinguishing her hat once again.

After a moment, I caught her eye. “You idiot! I said hate, not fear! That wasn’t a fireball!”

“Wha-what-”

Trixie finally extinguished her hat, and she glared at me as she pulled it back onto her head. “That was called a Firestorm. It’s a spell used to force attackers back and give yourself breathing room, and it’s powered by fear. I don’t use it, and I wasn’t going to teach it to you.”

Well, then it was good I’d discovered it myself. “Wh-why not?”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “The Great and Powerful Trixie has no use for the spell, and can’t cast it anyways—after all, she fears nopony and no creature! Without fear, it can’t be cast at all, nor does it need to be.”

So that meant I was afraid...That was all too true, I knew. Even thinking about the Black Knight had instantly charged the spell, and I was certainly more afraid than hateful of nearly everything that threatened me.  If that meant I was weak, or cowardly, or...whatever Trixie was implying, then at least I had a use for it now. Maybe using the spell would make me less afraid, just like how the fireball had made me less annoyed with Applejack.

I swallowed, and looked sadly at where the fire had been. Only the scattered stones of the firepit and a few smoldering lumps of wood remained. “I’m s-sorry about your hat.”

“You can replace it later,” Trixie muttered. “I suppose that concludes our lessons then. It’s too damned cold up here without a fire, so we might as well keep moving.”

I nodded, and Trixie led the way to the path down the hillside. It would take us directly into the valley, and as soon as we were on level ground once more, we could work out where to go from there.


*	*	*


“S-so Applejack s-said-”

“Applesmack said this, Applerack said that,” Trixie interrupted, as she led the way down the thin trail into the fog. “Don’t you ever think for yourself? No, before you ask, we’re not going to do her little scouting mission. You said that crazed filly from before was protecting something out here, and we’re not leaving until we find what she wanted so dearly to keep us away from.”

I turned my head back up the hillside. “Wh-what if we do the sc-scouting, and then c-come back with the m-militia? We d-don’t know how b-bad it is here, y-yet.”

“And what, you think those buffoons will let us have whatever it is, instead of taking it themselves? You think they’ll give you a pat on the head, too, and say you did a good job, before they send you back out to get killed somewhere else?” Trixie snorted, and I turned back to face forward as we carefully picked our way down a steep part of the path. “I’ve no interest in being some Hollow madmare's attack dog. I’m thinking, if this was worth protecting, then it has to be powerful. Maybe a magical artifact of some sort.”

Trixie suddenly turned back to face me, and stopped dead in the path. “Was the other filly a unicorn? Or another tribe? If this is some sort of pegasi-only artifact then it’s useless to me.”

I stammered over my words as Trixie peered expectantly at me. “I-I-I, uh, y-yeah, sh-she was. A f-fily, just like Apple Bl-Bloom. B-but a unicorn.”

“Excellent…” Trixie muttered, and she smirked as we resumed our careful descent. “So! My plan, assistant, is to find whatever this artifact is, take it for myself, and then the both of us will go back to Ponyville and deal with that damned bumpkin. I’ll get my wagon and finally leave that one-track town far behind, and you can break out your fillyfriend or whatever.”

“D-deal with?”

“And anypony who stands in my way!” Trixie crowed triumphantly, though as we moved into the thin sea of fog that covered the valley, her voice became slightly muffled.

I had to follow Trixie a little bit closer so we could still hear each other clearly. “Wh-what about P-Ponyville?”

Trixie shrugged as she peered through the fog, and the trees that were rising around us through the gloom. “What about Ponyville? The Great and Powerful Trixie has other venues to visit, ones that won’t throw her in jail over a petty thing like reclaiming her own property from a room they weren’t using anyways.”

“B-but Applejack and the m-militia are protecting the t-town, what will hap-happen if she goes H-Hollow?”

“Is she?” Trixie snorted, as the path approached the bottom of the valley. “Could’ve fooled me, it looked like the soldiers were doing most of the work. Either way, it’s not my problem. If you’re so concerned about having a place to stay, you and the filly can travel with me. One assistant or two, it doesn’t make too much difference.”

That question silenced me, as our path terminated in a bridge over the black river, and then rejoined the road. Was Applejack actually causing more problems than she solved? Was having her as the commander of the militia a net positive for Ponyville, or would the town be better off without her now? Could we really do that? I had the distinct sense that no matter what we found out here, whether it was an artifact—like Trixie thought—or something else, it wouldn’t be powerful enough to fight all of the Ponyville Irregulars. After all, I doubted they’d simply let us...deal with Applejack.

While I mulled it over, I looked all around us, as the valley was noticeably different to the mountain pass we’d followed up here. Trees were far fewer between, as either they had been mostly cleared when the dam was built, or they had been uprooted and destroyed when Cloudsdale crushed the forest. Broken and malformed lumps of solid clouds replaced them, where lumps of what had been part of the city had been scattered long ago.

As we passed particularly close to one such lump, I stopped to inspect it, and Trixie stopped a moment later to see why I’d paused. I pushed a hoof against the pegasus building material, and expected some give, as though it were a sponge. Instead, my hoof scraped against the surface as though it were stone, and I jerked back as if it had burned me.Then I started to press my hoof against it once more, and slowly walked around the misshapen lump to see if it was uniform.

It wasn’t a cloud any more, it only looked like one. It might as well have been a lump of clouded chalk, and not just for me—Trixie became curious, and tapped at the surface as well. Bits of hardened vapor crumbled away when she struck it with any force, and collected into a pile of dry powder at her hooves. “What the hay? This isn’t like any cloud I’ve ever heard of. How did this float?”

“It d-didn’t,” I mumbled, as I racked my brain in confusion. “It’s l-like something tore the m-magic out of the c-cloud, but when it r-runs out, they’re supposed to j-just turn to vapor. Th-that way, they can j-just be recharged by ambient m-magic, but this...this is r-really wrong.”

Trixie shook her head in confusion. “Alright, then why aren’t all the clouds like this? We’re walking through fog right now, do we need to worry about a block of it just turning solid and falling on us like a block of stone?”

I glanced upwards through the veil of fog, through which I could just barely see the orange light of the sky. “I d-don’t think so, b-but I can’t s-say for sure. Watch out f-for any thick cl-clouds above, and if it st-starts to hail, we n-need to get under s-something f-fast.”

Trixie went pale at the thought of literal hailstones, but I still wasn’t sure if that was possible or not. My knowledge of the sky and atmosphere seemed instinctual, and only faint memories of being taught about them remained. I had a vague flash of a small classroom with walls made of clouds, and then it was gone.

“You can take the lead now, assistant.” Trixie muttered, as she gave the cloudstone a half-hearted kick. She barely knocked a layer from the surface, and she shivered as I started to follow the road once more, deeper into the mists.


*	*	*


The cloudstones became more and more frequent, and they seemed to be larger and better-defined as we pushed inwards. Formless lumps gained edges, and then curves to those edges. A few looked to have been larger, but they had collapsed under their own weight into a pile of broken debris. Even that became less frequent as time went on, and soon we found lumps of cloud with hard edges, doorways, and windows. Trixie finally caught on as we came across a crushed bedroom made entirely out of dense cloudstone, and a bleached skeleton trapped under the solid stone covers of the bed. The cloth sheets had long since deteriorated away, leaving only what had once been a soft filler of magical fluff.

“These...these were houses. Cloudhomes.”

I nodded, and we paused to inspect the skeleton. Whoever they had been, they were long dead now, and the sheet hung over their remains as if it were the gaping maw of a cave. Most of their bones were broken into jagged chunks, and the hollow bones filled with their dust as time whittled the remains away. Their skull, in particular, seemed to have been smashed into bits.

“Th-they were alive when the c-clouds turned s-solid,” I mumbled. “I th-think they were t-trying to pull themselves free, wh-when the house hit the s-surface.”

Trixie looked like she was going to be sick, but she forced it back down with a swallow and turned away. My own gaze turned back to the worn stone edges, and my hoof scraped at the chalky surface again. Whatever these clouds were now, they were brittle, and the moisture in the air was wearing them down. Did the powder turn back into clouds when they got wet? Was that where all of this fog was actually coming from—an entire city that flowed through the mountains, like a river of concrete vapor?

“Let’s...let’s keep moving,” Trixie mumbled. “Keep an eye out for anything valuable that might have survived, but...we shouldn’t linger.”

I nodded, and we left the bedroom behind as we returned to the road, and continued to follow it. As we passed by increasingly-intact structures, I couldn’t shake how uncomfortably similar the cloudstone looked to bleached-white bone.


*	*	*


We passed by another pile of bones that used to be a pony, left lying on the road, then another, and another. We quickly decided not to stop and inspect them—there were simply too many skeletons to determine how each one died, and I suspected there was really just the one answer anyways.

When something moved, no matter whether it was on the ground or in the air, it left a wake behind it. An atmospheric dead zone that trailed just behind, where the air rushed in to fill the space left vacant. Something being “aerodynamic” meant that it moved through the air, without creating such a wake behind that it slowed down the object through the drag of friction. Pegasus wings, just like birds, barely created any wake at all as they flew across the sky. Conversely, a falling pony was always taught to spread out their legs as far as they could, to create as much drag as possible and fall slower. That way, maybe somepony could catch you, or maybe if you were very lucky, the impact wouldn’t kill you, because you landed on something soft.

But there were limits, mostly depending on how big you were, and how heavy you were. That was why pegasi had hollow bones, so we could fall slower and catch ourselves with our wings. Cats could fall a lot further than the average pony could without getting hurt, but an elephant couldn’t fall very far at all. And a pony riding on the back of that elephant would fall just as fast as the elephant did, because when it fell, it was so non-aerodynamic that the pony would be trapped in its wake, and they’d be pushed flat as the air chased them all the way down.

An entire floating city that suddenly turned to stone, filled with pegasi walking on the streets or sleeping in their homes, didn’t stand a chance—because they fell with the weight of a city.

It was a miracle any of the buildings had even survived, and the entire urban cloudscape hadn’t been smashed to powder when it landed. Maybe the air hadn’t been able to get out the way fast enough, and that cushioned the blow, but that wasn’t enough to save the ponies that fell with it. Once again, the sheer horror of how many ponies must have died when Cloudsdale fell nearly overwhelmed me, and what didn’t help was how many skeletons were all around us now. We had to start stepping around and over the dead, as we tried to push in without disturbing their rest. Every once in a while, one of us would trip, and the hollow rattle of bones echoed through the fog.

Was that what had happened to me? The bookstore seemed as though it was still relatively soft, but the walls had undeniably been more stiff than they should have been. Maybe it was far enough away from the blast that it only caught the edge of whatever magic had done this, and fell slow enough that I didn’t die on impact? I vaguely recalled that the Cloudsdale stadium was on the other side of town from the weather factory, since it was natural to want to separate the ugly industrial buildings from the clean shops and attractive businesses of the tourist area around it.

But then, what of the soldiers? Neither of them had been pegasi, so it would have been uncommon to see them in Cloudsdale. I doubted that they had survived well enough to walk and patrol the area, and I hadn’t. They must have happened across the building after it fell, but what about me?

I had been killed by the Black Knight, I knew that for a fact now. Had I fallen with the building, or had I stumbled across it just like the soldiers had? Or perhaps it had chased me down, and I sought shelter within, to attempt to hide from my pursuer? Being smashed to smithereens would explain why I couldn’t recall anything, but then, why had I awoken with a sword pinned through me into the wall? Perhaps I had awoken, and the Black Knight pinned me down when I first began to stir? But I had clearly been there for a while, much longer than it should have taken to regenerate what was a less-than-fatal wound, aside from blood loss.

None of it made any sense. None of it answered any of my questions. I still didn’t know who I was, or where I’d come from. I didn’t know what had happened to the world, or even Cloudsdale. All I could hope was that whenever we found what Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were protecting, and what Trixie was so focused on finding, that at least some of it would give me an answer. 

I was pulled from my thoughts by a shout from Trixie, and when I looked up from my hooves to see what was wrong, I found myself staring into two burning orbs within an empty skull.

I let out a yelp of my own as I stumbled backwards and collided with Trixie, and we both tripped over the bones at our hooves. Skeletons fell apart and scattered like matchsticks, as we found ourselves staring in horror at the standing skeleton before us. It was alone, and we must have both been so distracted that we hadn’t seen it, not to mention how well it blended into the ruined houses and pony remains around us. The bright red embers of the dead pony’s eyes lit up the fog around us, and it seemed to stand without any assistance, or any obvious magic to hold it together. The bones were still spaced as though they had flesh and connective tissue connecting them, as far as I could tell, meaning the skeleton was more like a suspended anatomical model than a solid being.

But it clearly lived, as it took a step towards us, and the bones of the creature’s wings rattled against each other as they were spread—like a bird puffing itself up to look bigger. Ancient teeth chattered together to make an unsettling clacking noise, as if it were shivering. Most strangely of all, I could feel warmth within the skeleton—faint, so faint that it was like a ghost of fire, but undeniably present. The flame of a soul forced this corpse to walk, and I felt an awful kinship with this long-dead pegasus.

It was not life, but something akin to it.

“What are you doing?” Trixie hissed from behind me. “Hit it! Kill it!”

I stumbled again as I fumbled for my shortsword, and Trixie stepped away, which forced the skeleton to split its attention between the two of us. My sword was unsheathed with a scraping sound, and that seemed to make the decision for our opponent. Those bright red eyes locked back onto me, and the skeleton’s teeth chattered loudly—like a desiccated snarl—as it lunged for my throat.

The first blow was struck when I slammed the blade of my sword into the side of the skeleton’s neck, and the bones exploded into splinters as it fell away. A cloud of dry dust erupted from where my blade had struck the skeleton, and slowly began to descend as the larger bones scattered across the road. The skull cracked against the hard dirt as it bounced a few hoof-lengths away, and came to a rest, eyes still aglow.

Trixie blinked in surprise as the glow of her horn went dark, and she began to relax. “Uh. Okay? That was- that was actually really easy-”

She trailed off as the bones rattled against the road, and began to scrape back towards each other. They bounced and rolled as they were drawn back to a single point, and snapped into place as the skeleton began to reassemble itself before our eyes. The bones of the creature’s neck were still broken and pulverized, but they hung in the air as dust ran off of them, with new gaps formed in the cracks between. I had only stunned it, at best.

The skeleton’s teeth chattered as it leapt at me again, and I sidestepped to dodge. As the head turned to follow me, I lowered my shoulder and raised my sword, before slamming both against my opponent’s shoulder. As my weight staggered it and knocked the skeleton off-balance, the tip of my sword continued forward and pierced the ribcage—or at least, that was what was supposed to happen.

There was no flesh to pierce, no vital organs to target. The skeleton had neither heart nor lungs, and my sword simply rattled as it slid between the empty ribs, and barely scraped at the bones thereof. It was off-balance for only a moment, before my confusion gave it an opening, and the skeleton’s jaw clamped around my neck in a crushing bite.

I thanked the wind that ponies had flat teeth for crushing our food instead of sharp fangs, for if the skeleton’s teeth had been any sharper, then it would have pierced my throat and ended me right then. Without muscles, it seemed to be lacking the absolute strength required to crush my neck. I felt my tongue fill my throat, and I could no longer draw air, not that I needed to breathe anyways. I still panicked at the sudden feeling of suffocation, and I shoved it away with a hacking cough, and a sudden sharp pain in my neck. The skeleton staggered to a stop a few paces from me, with a thin strip of my flesh stuck in its teeth, and we glared at each other as I felt a wet ebb of ichor spatter into the collar of my padded barding. It must have trapped my skin between its teeth at the last second.

“Smash the skull!” Trixie shouted from behind me. “That’s where fire is…wait…”

She trailed off, but that was enough for me, and it made sense. Go for the head to kill the skeleton properly. I grasped my sword again as the skeleton lunged forward, and this time I stepped back so it fell short. As it landed on its ribcage with a loud clatter, I brought my sword up, and then down towards the eggshell-white dome of my opponent’s skull. To my annoyance, the blade only bounced off with a scraping noise—in fact, the force of the blow caused the skeleton’s jaw to slam into the road with a crack, as it had done more damage than the edge of the sword itself.

This was the wrong weapon for this job. A shortsword could stab and slash, but it could not crush or shatter as this foe required. I’d have more luck smacking the skeleton with the blunt pommel of the weapon.

I let out a frustrated cry of “Scat!” as I dropped the shortsword into the piles of bones around me—I didn’t have the time to spare to sheathe it properly—and leapt for my opponent with my bare hooves. The skeleton’s jaw was broken, and dangled loosely from one side as it raised its head. I’m sure it would have been chattering at me again, if it could. I didn’t give it time to piece itself back together before my pyromancer’s grasp grabbed the skull with booth hooves, and I slammed it back down against the surface of the road. There was another ‘crack’ as the jaw splintered entirely, and the skull jerked oddly.

Skeletal hooves battered at the flesh of my own, but I kept my grasp steady, and leaned back to pull the skeleton’s head up for a second strike. As it clawed at me with worn bones, I brought the skull down on the road with my full weight, which admittedly wasn’t much. There was another ‘crack,’ and this time I felt the skull fracture, though my opponent still lived and fought. The hooves twitched spasmodically, escaping the boundaries of traditional anatomy to swipe directly at my face, as if they were being levitated like clubs.

One final time, I pulled the skull up, and slammed the entire weight of my body down through my forelegs, into my hooves, all to force the skull that they held against the road. There was a loud, splintering crunch of bones turning to shards, and a flash of heat as the trapped fire within was pulled into my own-

fearpainLOSSacceptancedissolution

It was only a flash, and I didn’t understand any of what I saw. It was impossible to pick out a single experience, because it felt like hundreds had run through my mind in a single instant. I had a thousand eyes that all saw something different, a thousand ears that heard a single great explosion and the rushing of wind, and my nerves were on fire as I felt a thousand deaths. It all turned to white noise, impossible to distinguish a single voice, a single experience, and then it was gone.

I staggered away from the pile of shards that had been the skull of a pegasus, and shook my head to try and chase away the phantoms. At least the skeleton was dead, and I saw my previously-animated opponent’s bones rolling away from where I’d ground it to powder, which was all the confirmation I needed. That skeleton would not rise again.

Suddenly, a red light flickered to life at the edge of my vision, and I turned my head to look at it. Another discarded skull had suddenly become illuminated, with red embers within the eye sockets, just like the last skeleton had. Then another, and another beside that. Dozens of embers burst to life within the empty eye sockets of the restless dead that surrounded me, and the bones that carpeted the road all began to rattle and scrape across the ground towards them.

I swallowed as I found myself backed into a circle of skulls, which all began to rise while the rest of their skeletons assembled under them. One grabbed my discarded shortsword with its teeth, and they all lowered themselves into intimidating stances as dozens of sets of teeth all chattered wildly around me.

“T-t-t-t-Trixie!” I yelped in panic, as I spun around, looking for my companion. Where had she gone? She had left me, I was alone, I couldn’t fight this many at once! I felt fear fill me, and I realized this would be a perfect use for the Firestorm spell I had just learned, if I could get enough time to cast it-

Suddenly, like a switch had been thrown, all of the red embers in the skulls around me winked out. Whatever magic had been animating them was suddenly cut off, and without that, they were nothing but the bones of the dead once more. They collapsed back into lifeless heaps, and a cacophony of hollow rattles echoed through the fog around me as the skeletons fell as one. My sword made a clatter of its own as it fell into a pile of bones, and I was nearly too stunned at what had just happened to retrieve it. Eventually, I did, although I couldn’t keep myself from flicking my head back and forth just in case more arrived.

“T-Trixie?” I asked of the fog, and my voice seemed to echo in the lonely world around me for a few moments. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone for long.

“Hey! Over here, assistant!” I turned to look, and spotted the glow of Trixie’s horn as she projected a light towards me. She stood in the window of a broken two-story cloudhome, and I galloped over to join her as quick as I could. She met me at the top of the stairs within. “While you were providing a fantastic distraction, the Great and Powerful Trixie followed the magic back to the source! Come and see.”

We entered the remains of the master bedroom, which was littered with dust and bones, most conspicuously a pile of bones that had very likely been an animated skeleton only moments before. Sitting next to the window was a dead, Hollowed unicorn mare, clad in brown, hooded robes. I recognized Trixie’s sword—it had been stabbed downwards, past her collarbone, and had been left hilt-deep, sticking out alongside her limp neck. The dead Hollow looked as though she had been surprised, with her mouth wide open and her limbs askew, as she laid back against the chalky wall of cloud.

Trixie’s grin gleamed brighter than the sun itself. “Turns out, if all of your focus is dedicated and split up into a bunch of skeletons, your own body is left pretty vulnerable. Also, it turns out that the junk sword the bumpkin gave me is still perfectly serviceable for stabbing, if you have all the time in the world to line it up.”

“H-how did you…?” I mumbled in confusion, as I moved close to inspect her body.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie saw a thin strand of magic connecting that skeleton you were fighting to somewhere else, and while you kept it busy, she followed that strand over here! She also made herself invisible, to get the drop on the morbid puppeteer, and—hold your applause—also managed to sneak in past the skeletal guards she left to watch the house, to find the mare herself, and slay her with a single blow!” Trixie sat back and spread her hooves, to indicate that now was the appropriate time for applause. I stomped my hoof against the floor a few times to humor her, and she bowed in response. “Anyway, what’d you learn? Did smashing the skull work?”

I nodded, as I turned my attention back to the dead mare’s robes. Her fire was already gone, so Trixie must have drained her as I made my way over. “Uh, y-yeah, though it was t-tricky. Our swords d-don’t work for sm-smashing, so I had t-to use my b-bare hooves.”

“Makes sense,” Trixie mused, “I should be able to make do with my magic, either by squeezing their heads until they pop, or by blasting them with pyromancy. We should keep an eye out for anything you can use as a cudgel, though.”

I winced at the thought of using such a heavy, unwieldy weapon, but it made sense. Unfortunately, the dead mare had nothing in her robes, and I didn’t feel like peeling them from her corpse would do anything except get me tangled up in a fight. “D-did you see anyth-thing useful? When you d-drained her?”

Trixie shrugged, as she grabbed her sword with her magic and began to wiggle it loose. The blade seemed stuck, and it made disgusting sucking noises as Trixie pulled it out of the dead mare’s throat. Ebbs of ichor welled up with it, and stained the corpse’s cloak. “Nothing too useful. There’s a lot more of these idiots further into the ruins, enough that they have sort of a village set up in there. They use the skeletons as guards, and for manual labor as puppets. This mare got picked to watch the road, because she could use her horn to fire a flare if anypony got past her—which we don’t have to worry about now.”

The sword finally slid free with one last sucking noise, and another ebb of ichor. Trixie started to wipe the rusted blade clean on the dead mare’s robes, and I moved to the window. “A v-village? Inside the r-ruins of the c-city?” That seemed wrong, somehow, and disrespectful of the dead. Not that these ponies seemed to care terribly much to begin with.

Once more, I remembered that each one of these skeletons had been a pony. I especially thought of the one whose skull I had been forced to smash into dust; what if that skeleton had been Dinky’s mother? I would never know for sure, and even if it wasn’t, that had still been a pony once. They deserved a more respectful end than becoming a disposable golem of bone.

Trixie finished cleaning off her sword, and sheathed it with a shrug. “Seems like. We probably can’t take all of them at once, so it’s especially good that I handled the perimeter guard quietly. We can probably sneak around them entirely until we know where they’re keeping the artifact.”

I shook my head, and Trixie raised an eyebrow. “It’s n-not down here in the f-fog. That w-wasn’t where the m-memory was, it w-was on a l-lake.”

“Atop the dam then?” Trixie considered that for a few moments. “Alright, that should be easy enough to get around to without raising suspicion. So long as they haven’t moved it, at least. It’s still a good place to start, maybe it can give us a good idea of what we’re looking for. Let’s go.”

I nodded, and we left the bedroom—and the dead necromancer within—where she had fallen. Eventually, just like all the other Hollows, she’d awaken and begin wandering through these fading structures once more. It was ironic to think that putting the dead to rest meant leaving her wandering in their place.
> 22 - The Ruins of Old Cloudsdale
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

At some point, we lost the road that we had been following thus far. Great cracked slabs of cloudstone had flattened the ground, serving as foundation for the buildings around us and the roads between, but they totally covered the valley’s floor. The edges had been eroded enough that we could climb atop them, and our hooves began to echo quietly through the fog as we walked down the fallen city streets.

Cloudsdale’s architecture, or what remained of it, was a disorganized mishmash of every different pony’s personal taste and aesthetics. Clouds were easy to shape, and it was a skill that many pegasi grew up practicing to build confidence for weatherwork. That meant that pegasus houses were always custom work, designed by the resident or residents, and temporary or experimental additions were the norm. Even gravity had no constraint on the style or structure of a cloudhouse built by and for pegasi, leading to tall towers, strangely-shaped construction, and houses that had been built downwards through the cloud layer. They generally tended towards a mix of the bland, cheap and industrial, mixed with beautiful and elegant columns, grand balconies, and intricate buttresses, all evoking imagery of ancient Pegasopolis.

When it had all turned to stone, few of the more fanciful structures had survived. Many houses had collapsed inwards on themselves, while others had been forced upwards out of the foundation by the impact. Most were little more than rubble, but the more grounded structures hadn’t been too badly damaged. Those intact buildings, we eyed warily as we passed by, for they could contain another guard tasked with watching the road. The rest were little more than shells of their former selves, or merely piles of rubble. We slowed our pace to muffle our hoofsteps as we passed by them, but there was only so much that could be done when walking across the bare stone of the road.

In the distance, a strange glow emerged from the fog. Trixie and I were instantly wary, and approached it slowly, as we expected to find more animated skeletons. Instead, they seemed to be words and a symbol, written on the door of a mostly-intact cloudhouse. Trixie stopped me for a moment before we could get close enough to read them, as her horn came aglow. A moment later she said that they weren’t explosive runes, or any other sort of trap, so we moved in closer.

“Some sort of enchanted chalk? It looks like two spells cast on the tool used to leave the marks. One makes it waterproof, so it can still be used to write and wiped away afterwards, and the other just makes it glow.”

I peered at the words, while Trixie glanced around us at the buildings once more. “It s-says, ‘wood, cloth, m-metal,’ but metal is sc-scratched out? And t-two tally marks?”

Trixie’s eyes turned to the writing as well. “I think that’s a musical symbol? I’ve seen a few ponies that had cutie marks that looked like that. It’s one of the timing ones.”

Inspecting the house didn’t turn up anything really unusual. We noticed there was a fair amount of mouldering wood furniture, padded with cloth, but that was all. Two more skeletons lay on the floor within, with their skulls intact but without lights in their eyes. We decided that whoever had written outside on the door must have been making notes of the houses’ contents, but for what purpose, we could only speculate.

Before we left, I noticed a broken table that lay askew. Damp had loosened the nails holding it together, and one of the legs lay on the floor. It made for a mediocre wooden club, but it would be more effective than my sword for smashing skulls. We shredded a bedsheet using my sword, and used that to craft a ragged, makeshift loop that held the club well enough. Afterwards, Trixie replaced her sword with my own, and hers went into my bottomless bag while I wielded the club. So equipped, we continued onwards, moving deeper into the ruins of Cloudsdale.

The further inwards we pushed, the more intact the buildings seemed to be. Rubble and skeletons still filled the narrow, winding streets, and the more intact buildings rose higher on either side of us like chalky teeth. We began to lose the sense of direction we had been afforded by seeing the light of the sunset through the fog above us, and the dark shape of the distant valley walls, and soon we were unsure of which direction was forward. Trixie took over, and we tried to head in a single direction as straight as we could. Either we would run into a hillside, the dam, or back out to the bottom end of the valley.

At one point, a massive pile of rubble dominated the ruined cityscape, and we had to spend a long while working around it. It looked as if it had once been a single massive building, and some part of me wondered if it was all that remained of Cloudsdale Stadium. The fallen structure was too tall to climb over, and too jagged and broken to even want to get close. Trixie fired an experimental bolt of magic into a loose section, and we had to gallop away as a large lump of cloudstone cracked off the side and fell free, where it crushed an entire house beside where we’d been standing. As we regrouped and listened to the sound of the collapse echo through the valley, we agreed not to try that again, then fled before somepony came to investigate the noise.

Other sections were perilous to traverse on the street, because the solid cloud banks that the city had been built on had cracked and shifted. Great crevasses had torn the streets asunder, and no matter how hard we peered between them, we couldn’t see the terrain below. Presumably the valley floor was somewhere below us, but we had no idea how thick the slabs of cloudstone were. The dim light of the sunset failed to penetrate those ravines, and the sound of rushing water from far below was little comfort. Were it not for that, the pits might as well have been as bottomless as my bag, for they seemed just as dark and endless.

The sound of rushing water between the cracks grew louder as we pressed on, and gradually, the mountainside loomed before us. We couldn’t cross over to it without crossing an incredibly hazardous trench filled with a rushing river of black water, but I pointed out that the water must be flowing downhill; ergo, we needed to follow the stream uphill once more. The dam had to be the source of the water, either from the crack in the concrete or from the spillways.

Another glow emerged in the fog, and soon, we started to find many more messages written on doorways. Most were almost identical to the first one we had found, with a musical symbol and a brief inventory of the building’s contents within, written in a dozen different hooves, but always in that glowing orange script. But there were outliers; sometimes we would find a more simple message, such as a warning that a wandering demon had made this house their lair, or that the alley was dangerous and a pony had been lost in the crack between buildings. A few were more detailed descriptions of supplies, which we took to be supply caches for the residents that wandered through Cloudsdale, but we often found those had long been retrieved.

Others were just graffiti. There was art, drawn onto the buildings in orange chalk, usually of skeletons, skulls, suns and swords. One pony had drawn a picture of our firmament, with a snake-like creature wrapped all around it. I tried to peer at the beast, but I couldn’t tell what it was meant to be; it seemed to have arms and legs, but every limb was drawn differently, which made defining it as any single creature extremely difficult. Another had drawn a huge tree, and had detailed how the branches held up the sky, and the roots explored downwards into a great cavern beneath the ground.

Sometimes ponies had written their names, or the names of others. We found a few names with hearts between them for new lovers, even now. More were eulogies for the Hollowed, or lists of the Cloudsdale dead. There were several poems, and iterations on those poems. A few had written with the intent of making a statement, such as, “the sun left us,” or “everypony here is a cloud.” One particularly puzzling note was above a skeleton, who had died while trying to climb through a window, which read simply: “Don’t give up , skeleton!”

We quickly became used to the sight of the orange glows, and began to ignore them. But this meant that when next we found a skull with glowing embers, it was only because I physically tripped over it, and was sent sprawling to the ground. “Aagh!”

Trixie’s eyes snapped to where I’d fallen, and as I struggled to my hooves, the skull I’d stumbled over rolled to a stop. Then it rose into the air, as dozens of bones from the piles of dead around us all began to skitter across the road towards it. I drew my new club as the skeleton assembled itself, and Trixie turned to face where we’d come, only to find two more had already assembled themselves behind her. “Augh, ambush! Keep that one busy, assistant!”

Trixie’s horn flashed, and she split into three, which charged as one towards the two skeletons. To our surprise, they didn’t seem fooled by the illusions; their eyes were locked to the center Trixie copy, and they both leapt onto her. The other two copies disappeared with a pop, while Trixie wrestled with the twin skeletons to force them off of her.

I gulped as I glanced around us. There had to be a necromancer around here somewhere, controlling them, but I couldn’t find them in time. My own opponent was standing and mobile, and I had to focus on them. I wanted to end the fight as quickly as I could so I could help Trixie, and so my first blow was a heavy downwards strike against the skeleton’s back. 

The skeleton’s bones scattered as the blow slammed it downwards, and it would take time to piece itself back together. With that one taken care of for the moment, I ran to Trixie, and swung my club upwards into the jaw of one of her assailants. Bone cracked, but did not shatter—at the very least, it was enough to subdue the skeleton for a few moments, and Trixie was able to use her magic to force the other one away to get some breathing room.

A bright glow formed in her hoof as Trixie formed a fireball, and I had to shield my eyes as Trixie let it fly. There was a loud bang, and bone fragments showered the street like chalky shrapnel. “RIght in the breast!” She crowed triumphantly. Meanwhile, I noticed the first skeleton I’d smacked with my club had pieced itself back together, and I moved to swing at it again.

Suddenly, knives pierced my mind. It felt as though something had reached into my skull to grab my brain with the sharp talons of a gryphon, and I let out a strangled whimper as I lost control of my pyromancy. My wooden club fell to the ground with a clatter, and my hooves felt so heavy—like lead—that I couldn’t lift them. They fell to the road, and I stood there dumbly, unable to even turn my head. My eyes twitched wildly, and my embers jumped from side to side, looking, searching, for anything, but I couldn’t find it.

The talons twisted and lifted my brain out of my skull, and manipulated my gray matter like the strings of a puppet. I heard a voice, but I heard no sound; it seemed to come from within my own head. “Cease, Hollow. Sleep, and fade. Now, you serve a greater purpose.”

I tried to fight it. Every one of my muscles burned with exhaustion as I strained to move them, and my body twitched and jittered as my limbs were pulled in two directions at once. The skeleton I had been moving towards to defeat suddenly lost interest in me, and it picked up my club, then rattled past me. I had no doubt that it intended to use it against Trixie, and I couldn’t let it.

My legs shuddered as I turned to watch the skeleton pass by, and I think the only reason that I could do so was because my puppetmaster wished for me to turn as well. The skeletons all seemed slower now, less coordinated, and the voice in my head spoke once more. This time it seemed frustrated. “Another fighter. You are under my control now; surrender your own. You were an interloper before, but now, you will aid us.”

My teeth ground together in my mouth as they clenched harder, and I felt them shifting from the strain. My tail lashed erratically, and my wings fluttered like grasping claws. Trixie pushed her own skeletal opponent back a dozen steps, and turned to fight the one that held my club, but her eyes were immediately drawn to me. “Assistant! What are you doing?!”

“Kill,” the voice said, and I felt my muscles obey, despite how loudly my mind screamed out in rebellion.

Trixie’s eyes went wide as I staggered towards her, and she leveled her horn at my skeletal companion. Together, we would slay the interloper.

I felt a shudder run through my mind—pain shared through the communion—as Trixie launched a burning flare from her horn. A firework made of magic, and when it slammed into the skeleton beside me, she exploded in a shower of broken bones, dust, and sparkling sorcery. But Trixie hesitated as she turned to me.

I wasn’t allowed to hesitate. My Master forced my hooves forward, and I advanced without pause, to Trixie’s increasing nervousness. The skeleton behind her shuddered and froze, for my Master required near-total concentration to sunder my rebellious soul. I was so foolish for fighting against him; it would be so much easier for us both if I relented, and let him take full control.

There was sudden movement, and my attention focused on that. It mattered little if I was slain by Trixie; all I needed was to be aware of the third interloper. How many more were there? My Master would need to make his escape, and get the others. But I relaxed as they stepped out of the alleyway completely, and I saw the heavy brown robes, and their darkened hood. Though I could not see their face, they were of our covenant, and I could focus totally on Trixie.

Trixie had just finished charging a spell, and I stepped to the side, but my foolish mind fought me once more. It tried to delay me, force me to freeze, and that small bit of rebellion was enough to turn what should have been a near miss into a glancing blow. I sprawled as my shoulder exploded in pain, though my armor absorbed the worst of the magic blow. The blasted cloth smoldered and smoked as I staggered to my hooves, but I spasmed as a deep shudder of pain echoed through the communion.

The other skeleton, who had been moving to attack Trixie from behind, had been slain. They fell to pieces, and those fragments of bone sparkled with sunlight as cleansing magic tore my Master’s enchantment from them. In his wake stood a fellow member of our covenant, revealed to be a unicorn by the glowing light within her hood. In her levitation, she held a glowing mace, enchanted with some form of magic that had destroyed the undead rapport between my Master and my skeletal ally.

A traitor, then? Had the old mare finally turned against our covenant? Or perhaps they were another interloper, wearing one of our robes as a disguise? Insidious. My Master searched my most recent memories, but we were unaffiliated. An invasion, then? Still, I recalled what I had seen within Apple Bloom’s soul, and how Trixie had reacted to it, and my Master panicked. We could not be allowed to reach the Source, for we would destroy it with our greed.

I was yanked to my hooves, and I staggered frantically past Trixie in a wild panic. I would serve as a mere distraction while my Master made his escape, and the mare with the mace was too dangerous. She had to be stopped!

But she barely spared a glance at me, and leapt over us. I clawed at her hooves as she floated overhead, like a phantom, but nothing was accomplished. At the very least, I was too close for Trixie’s firework spell to strike me, and so the weakling sorceress was forced to tackle me instead. She slammed me to the ground, and I lost sight of the traitor. Without my eyes, my Master would not know where she was, how close she was to his hiding spot. I had to see, had to find her!

My Master’s voice receded, but did not fade entirely. He had surrendered some control, so that he could defend himself and flee, but it was too little too late. As Trixie pinned me to the ground, I felt my Master panic. Trixie blasted me with a burst of combustion from her hooves, but I barely felt the fire, compared to the burning shock that echoed through the communion. My Master had been struck with that enchanted mace, and the pain from his injury was the last thing we felt together before it was cut off by that accursed enchantment.

The claws that gripped my brain were sliced away in an instant. I was alone inside my own head, and in pain, but Trixie blasted me again before I could scream that I was myself once more.


*	*	*


Everything felt sticky. I shuddered awake, and tried to rub at my face, but my hooves defied me. I shot awake a moment later, and screamed inside my head, but my scream was vocal. “Get out of my head! G-get out of...out of…”

I was lying in the darkened corner of a cloudstone bar, lit only by the dim sunlight that could enter through the windows, and a fire in the middle of the room. The wooden floor was missing planks, especially around the fire, and it looked as though they had been ripped out specifically to make room. Those same planks now fed the fire, as did a few broken stools and table legs. Trixie lay next to the fire, and seemed to have been relaxed before I’d startled her with my cry. Beside her sat an ancient mare with a wizened face, who wore the dark brown robes of a Necromancer, with the hood pulled down.

She smiled at me, before she turned to Trixie. She spoke playfully, in a strangely musical accent, “Your friend is awake.”

“Assistant. At best.” Trixie grumbled. But she still stood, and made her way over, where she stood above me. “Hey, idiot! What was that, huh? Tell me what happened!”

I shuddered at the memories. I didn’t want to remember. Instead, I looked down at myself, and found that all four of my hooves had been tied flat against my belly, which effectively kept me immobile. They’d tied me up while I was dead? I also noticed that my flesh was scorched, and dark red burn marks scored my fores. They only got worse the closer they got to my head, and I suddenly remembered feeling sticky when I awoke. A creeping horror started to build, as I recalled how Trixie had killed me using her pyromancy.

“Assistant!” She barked, and I felt my composure shatter. I struggled against my bindings as I tried to escape her, but all I accomplished was a sort of sad wiggle against the floor and the wall behind me.

“In m-my head! Th-there was a v-voice inside m-my head, and I f-fought it, but it j-just kept c-commanding and I c-couldn’t m-move my hooves, and it m-made me c-call it m-master and it w-wanted me to k-kill you, b-but I k-kept fighting it and everyth-thing hurt-”

“Trixie.” The mare’s voice was quiet and polite, but firm. “Your voice calms like a swarming hornet’s nest. Her hooves are her own, and no longer controlled by one of the Necromancers. But those hooves may still strike you down, if you make yourself her foe.”

Trixie snorted in derision, but turned away, and walked back to the campfire. “Fine; Trixie supposes you look reasonably sane.”

The other mare took her place, and I felt the fire within calm as she sat beside me. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in raising every time we fall. Hello there, young one. My name is Mistmane; can you tell me your own?”

I shook my head, and she tilted her head in curiosity as I explained. “F-forgot my name...P-Pinkie Pie c-calls me Holly.”

“Holly,” she said, with a nod of acknowledgement. “It’s a beautiful name, though I know Pinkie Pie. I suspect she wasn’t thinking of the plant at the time?”

“N-no. For H-Hollow Pony.”

Mistmane bowed her head sadly. “Poor dear. Pinkie tries so hard, she really does, but sometimes she really doesn’t think things through.” Mistmane’s horn came alight, and my bindings began to untie themselves. “You’re safe now, Holly. I was the one to slay the Necromancer who reached into your head like that, and I turned him Hollow, much to my regret. But it had to be done, so that we could remain undetected when he awoke.”

“Th-thank you,” I mumbled. As soon as my hooves were free, I felt the burn scars across my flesh wrinkle and crack. They hadn’t healed properly while I was regenerating—would they ever? What of my face? I felt my muzzle with an aching hoof, and found my flesh was still raw and sore. I didn’t bleed, but I had no doubt that any remnants of my mane or fur had been burned to cinders.

More damage that would never heal, and another death. How many did I have left? How much sand remained in the hourglass?

Trixie didn’t care. She watched us from where she sat, beside the fire, and seemed impatient for answers to her own questions. “So, now that we’re both awake, will you finally explain more than your name? Why are you dressed like one of them, if you’re not a Necromancer yourself?”

Mistmane held out her hoof to help me stand, and I worried I’d just pull her down. She was the oldest non-Hollowed pony that I’d ever seen, and she looked terribly frail. But when I gently grasped her leg, she pulled me up with a surprising strength, and the only sign that she’d exerted herself in doing so was that she rolled her shoulder joint around a little afterwards. Arthritis, perhaps? I also noticed that I’d left a dark smear on her leg where my hoof had brushed her light purple fur, but she politely wiped it off on her stolen robes without mention. “I am Mistmane, in service of her royal highness, Princess Celestia. I’ve been studying the members of this covenant at her request, as one of her leading experts on unconventional magicks.”

Trixie looked skeptical. “Another bookworm, then? Out here by yourself? I’ve never seen an old bookworm that wielded a mace like you do.”

Mistmane led me to the fire, where she gave us both a respectful bow. “Scholar, adventurer, sorceress, and landscape artist—though considering the current state of the world, that last one was more of a hobby that I’ve been unable to pursue for a long time.” Instead of rising from her bow, she moved to sit at the fire beside us in an elegant motion, and I couldn’t help but stare at her mane. It flowed like the fog around us, and I wondered how she’d been hiding it under the hood of her cloak.

“An old adventurer, then.”

“Older than you might think, my little pony,” Mistmane said, with a playful giggle. “As for you two, where are you from? Not many ponies wish to explore these ruins; they fear the fog, and the skeletons.”

“P-Ponyville,” I croaked. “Applejack s-sent us out here to sc-scout out the area, b-but Trixie wants something d-deep inside the r-ruins.”

“Oh?” All of a sudden, Mistmane’s face turned neutral, and she turned to Trixie.

“My assistant makes things up sometimes,” Trixie said evasively. “But it is true; I am, in fact, the Great and Powerful Trixie!”

Mistmane smiled, but I could see she was hiding something. “I think I recognize that name. You’re one of Twilight Sparkle’s friends, aren’t you?”

“Ugh! Always Twilight Sparkle this, Twilight Sparkle that!” Trixie groaned. “Nopony knows me for being Trixie the magician! I am not her friend! I’m barely an acquaintance of hers!”

“Well, Trixie the Great and Powerful, what are you looking for within Cloudsdale? Because I might be able to help you, if you can tell me a little bit about it.”

Trixie suddenly looked incredibly uncomfortable. “We’re not- um. My assistant, she- Uh.”

Mistmane tilted her head in curiosity. “Did Magnus allow this? I know both him and Rockhoof were stationed at the front lines, so perhaps the information I’ve sent back to the princess hasn’t made its way to Ponyville quite yet?”

“Y-you know them?” I asked in surprise.

“I do,” Mistmane responded, and she closed her wrinkled eyes in a wistful expression. “Magnus, Meadowbrook, Starswirl, Rockhoof, Somnambula, and of course myself; we were once called the Pillars of Equestria, a very long time ago. It sounds as though you’ve already met a few of them, friend.”

I nodded, but Trixie scoffed incredulously from the other side of the fire. “Oh, you’re one of those charlatans!”

Mistmane raised an eyebrow, as her expression turned to amusement. “I’ve been called many things in my life, but ‘charlatan’ is a new one. You don’t believe that we exist?”

Trixie shook her head. “Naaah, you exist. But you definitely aren’t as old as you like to make ponies think you are. Her filly-friend was talking about how Some Ambulance was crowing about the ‘powers of the gods,’ and all that. The Great and Powerful Trixie knows a good scam when she hears it.”

“Interesting,” Mistmane still only seemed amused at Trixie’s disbelief, but we both leaned back when she drew her mace. Thankfully, instead of swinging it at Trixie, she only passed the grip to her, so that Trixie could inspect it. “My friend Somnambula enchanted this mace with that very same power, you know. If she is scamming us, then it is a very good scam; it seems to perform just as she promised it would.”

Trixie took the mace for herself and began to inspect it, which also allowed me to see it clearly. It was almost solid steel, save for a leather grip so it could be comfortably held in a claw or clenched between a pony’s teeth. Though the head and shaft were two separate pieces, they appeared to have been screwed together firmly, and it looked like a weapon that would hold up for a lifetime of smashing bones into dust. The glow that the steel emitted was most fascinating of all, however. It was like sunlight, like the liquid of my flask, but it exuded no warmth, and it could not be mistaken for life. It was light, and magic, but I didn’t know enough about the different types of magic to identify what it did.

Trixie turned it over in her levitation a few times, but she clearly wasn’t impressed. “More magic I’ve never seen. How much have I missed out on while stuck in a cell? Ugh, whatever this is, it doesn’t seem that impressive. There’s no offensive component to the enchantment; it’s more focused order and light. Whatever unicorn worked the spell into the steel definitely had a thing for the Princess, but I doubt it’s anything more.”

“Pegasus,” Mistmane corrected.

“Eh?”

“Somnambula is a pegasus, through and through. Not a unicorn.”

Trixie stared at the mace before her again, and shook her head in disbelief after a moment. “I know Pyromancy, and this isn’t that. It’s not weather magic, either. What’s a pegasus doing with enchantments beyond those two types?”

Mistmane smiled again, as she took the mace back. “That’s exactly what she’s seeking to discover. Like Pyromancy, this new magic can be used by anypony, and she’s pioneering these new advancements in the clerical arts through it. After all, you saw what it did to those skeletons, and the Necromancer that controlled them.”

“Sp-speaking of,” I mumbled quietly, but Mistmane turned to face me, with a smile. “Who are they? N-nopony knows anything ab-about them, ex-except that they l-live out here, and c-control the sk-skeletons.” We’d at least known a little bit about the Ashen Wallowers before we attacked them, but the Cloudsdale Necromancers were almost a complete unknown.

“The ponies that live out here?” She asked. I nodded, and she plucked a few discarded bones from the floor to use as visual aids while she explained. “They call themselves the Gravewardens, or the Cloudsdale Gravewardens, or the Covenant of Cloudsdale Gravewardens...it seems to depend on how formal they want to be to each other, and how busy they are when talking about it. As far as I can tell, the first large group was mostly post-graduate students from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, who wanted to study why Cloudsdale fell. At some point, they discovered something that they call ‘the Source,’ and started to study it. I’ve also heard it referred to as ‘her’ very rarely, but I have no idea if they’re merely personifying it, or referring to an actual entity.

“In any case, after they discovered that, they seemed to lose focus on ever returning. They’ve only been digging in deeper and studying the wild magic in this place, and they’ve raised a great deal of skeletons to use as labor and guards. Especially around the old weather factory; that’s where their ‘Source’ is, and they’re fiercely protective of it. It’s one of the few places I can’t go, even with guards.”

Trixie raised an eyebrow at that. “You’re working with them?”

Mistmane nodded slowly, and I could see Trixie’s fur stand on end. It made me a bit uncomfortable too; I didn’t know how deeply one of these ponies could get into another’s head. What if she had been controlled, or was under control now?

She could sense our nervousness. “In this era, my allegiances are to Equestria, and the four Princesses. Princess Celestia herself sent me out here as an envoy, and I spent a very long time gaining the trust of the Gravewardens to be allowed safe passage through Cloudsdale.” Her face fell. “Though with another one of them now Hollowed because of me, perhaps I don’t quite deserve that trust.”

“I’m not going to weep for them,” Trixie growled. “At best, they’re a nuisance. At worst, they’re just as bad as the demons.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Mistmane said with a sigh. “They’re very hostile to outsiders, yes. But just like Somnambula, they’re discovering and categorizing entirely new spells and avenues of magic. While I’m personally uncomfortable with the focus of their studies being…well, death—as is Celestia—we can hardly choose to ignore the field when we ourselves are now undead.”

“Ugh, don’t legitimize them,” moaned Trixie. “There’s a good reason necromancers have gotten a bad reputation. It always ends with skeleton armies, miasmas of death and disease, and so on.”

“If you were drowning,” countered Mistmane, “would you refuse a helping hoof from a pony you disagreed with?”

“The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn’t go swimming, and so she would never have to consider such a preposterous scenario.”

Mistmane chuckled quietly. “Mmm. But ponykind does not have that luxury anymore, I think.”

I raised my head to speak again, and interrupt their argument. “W-what was that sp-spell he used? To control my m-mind?”

Mistmane shuddered, and shook her head in some mix of sadness and disgust. “I do wish that they’d stop using that spell—it’s awful to even consider such an invasion of a pony’s most private thoughts. But as I understand it, it forms the basis of how they control the skeletons, as well. Only undead—such as ourselves—can cast it, because it forms a rapport between that which makes us undead.  It’s as if they’re tapping into the ground beneath our hooves, or the air we all breathe, but it’s a shared component of our souls now. Through that, they exert their will, and their control. The skeletons are in no small demand; they make decent proxies for them to practice on, and they have no will of their own to fight against it.”

“That’s disgusting,” Trixie stated bluntly, and I found myself nodding in agreement and discomfort. “And Celestia allows this? She reached out to negotiate with these ponies, as opposed to marching the army through here to clean them all out?”

“Only by the thinnest of margins,” Mistmane replied, nodding sadly. “But even what little they’ve shared with me has been invaluable to understanding the nature of the curse. They refuse to directly help us cure it, since it goes against the founding principles laid down by one of their former leaders. But any knowledge they can uncover about the nature of Undead is one more clue that helps us towards a cure.”

“F-former leaders?” How long ago had my memories—stolen from Apple Bloom—taken place? How out of date was the tiny amount of knowledge I had?

Mistmane tilted an eyebrow. “Yes, they seem to have gone through a few. There’s not much about the first two, aside from the writings and observations that I’m allowed access to. They seem to have left of their own accord a long time ago, and there’s been a line of successors since, though none seemed to have quite the ‘vision’ that the original two had. Such is the way of most fringe religious organizations.”

Mistmane continued to peer at me, and I gently laid my head down on my hoof. “I th-think we may have r-run into one of th-them.”

At this, her eyes lit up in surprise and excitement, and it hurt to quash any questions she might have had about Apple Bloom. “Sh-she was Hollowed, and c-crazy. K-kept attacking us, b-because she was h-hunting down anyp-pony working on a c-cure.”

Trixie let out an undignified snort at the memory, but Mistmane only nodded morosely. She pulled a rolled scroll from her robes to check her notes, then hid it back inside after a quick glance. “That does match up with what I’ve been able to uncover about...Apple Bloom, correct?”

“Y-yes, that was her n-name.” I looked back up at Mistmane hopefully. “W-what about the other one? Her n-name was Sweetie B-Belle.”

Mistmane checked her notes again, and this time it took a few moments. “She stayed for a while longer, but eventually she left too. Nopony knows where she went, or if they do, they won’t tell me. All they know is that she wanted to find somewhere that she could test out some very experimental magic."

"But she left this 'Source,' whatever it is, here for her cult to protect?"

Mistmane turned back to Trixie. "She did, yes. From how they've talked about it, I get the sense that whatever it is, it cannot be moved. I suspect it is too large or too heavy, or maybe it acts as a magic font for their enchantments."

Trixie blew a raspberry in annoyance. "If that's true, then it's not much use to me. What good is an immobile artifact?"

Mistmane smiled pleasantly, knowingly, at her. "So, you have come to try and take it for yourself, then?"

"Fine, fine!" Trixie said, with a whinny of annoyance. "Yes, that sounds like what I came here for. Is that going to be an issue, old mare?"

"Not for me—in fact, I'm just as curious as you are about what it might be." Mistmane tilted her curved horn towards the fog outside. "However, the Gravewardens will be an issue, since they'd likely throw every skeleton in the ruins of Cloudsdale in your way if you just tried to force your way through. So, I propose a deal?"

Trixie eyed her warily, but nodded. "I'm listening." Mistmane turned to me, and I nodded as well in agreement.

Mistmane pulled two more brown bundles from within her robes. "I've two more robes, and they shouldn't look too closely at a pony wearing these. We can skirt their settlement, and you two can go through the section of the weather factory that fell down here. The other end opens up near the entrance to the dam, and an elevator inside should carry you to the top, where the rest of the factory landed. I can also provide a distraction, which should ensure you get up there without incident. When you're done, there's a rather treacherous mountain pass accessible from somewhere up there into an adjacent valley, through which you can make a safe escape."

"That's a decent carrot," Trixie buffed her hoof on her breast, and looked at the smooth surface nonchalantly. "What's the stick?"

"There's still a lot of skeletons atop the dam. I don't think they're under the Gravewardens’ direct control—they seem autonomous, like they were left to guard it. Maybe by the founders themselves. On top of that, the part of the factory you'll be passing through seemed to deal with the more dangerous types of weather, and a lot of the machines are still on. They stay away because they consider it too dangerous to go in and try to shut it all down."

"That all?" Trixie snorted. "So it's still dangerous, but not as dangerous as you think fighting all of them would be. Fine. What's in it for you?"

Mistmane smiled wryly at us both. "This way, the Gravewardens remain unharmed and unaware of your presence. However, I'd like to meet you both afterwards—say, in the Ponyville town square? That way, you can tell me exactly what you found within the factory, or even show it to me yourself, if it can be removed from the building."

"Ugh…back to Ponyville. Fine, I can stop by the town square after I retrieve my wagon." Trixie sighed, then held her hoof out to shake on it. Mistmane eagerly did so, then held her hoof out to me as well.

I couldn't really trust Trixie, but I definitely felt as though I could trust Mistmane. She'd see us there safely, and we could handle the rest, I hoped. I eagerly shook her hoof, and she passed us the robes to wear.
> 23 - New Cloudsdale
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The robes sat heavily on my back, and fit poorly over the top of my quilted armor. While they did a fine job of keeping out the cold fog and the gentle rain that sometimes rolled off the cloudstone rooftops above, they were also uncomfortably warm. I think that if I still could, I would have been sweating underneath the heavy cloth. But I tried to ignore it as best I could, because as long as it kept me alive and disguised, it could have been as uncomfortable as sandpaper for all I cared.

“And you had these prepared, just in case?” Trixie asked, as she shifted uncomfortably under her own heavy robes.

Mistmane, at the head of our short little procession, responded quietly enough that I had to strain a bit to hear her. “Not quite ‘sitting around.’ In truth, I’ve actually been planning this—or something like this, involving mercenaries—for quite some time. I likely could have afforded to wait a bit longer, but I’m not one to pass up such a perfect opportunity.”

“Oh?” Trixie paused for half a step, before she continued onwards after Mistmane. “And how much were you going to pay these hypothetical hired swords?”

“S-so now we are m-mercenaries?” I muttered to myself, though neither of my companions seemed to hear me.

Mistmane shrugged. “A generous sum. It will go to you for doing the same work, of course, but I’d prefer to wait until you returned to Ponyville to discuss the exact details. Remember, you’re not to harm any more of the Gravewardens, if it can be at all avoided.”

“Right, right…” muttered Trixie. “And what kind of ‘distraction’ are you planning, then? One that won’t harm them either, but will take up their attention enough to let us slip by? Unless it’s okay if you harm them, of course.”

“It won’t,” Mistmane stated confidently. “There’s a few wandering demons that make their nests throughout the fallen city. It’ll be easy enough to lure one into the open where they can send a few waves of the dead at it, at no risk to themselves. There’s one in particular that’s been a minor annoyance to me; a sort of mutated beetle about the size of a wagon. Too big to get into a doorway, too weak to pull a building apart, but intimidating enough to have their attention for an hour. You’ll want to move quickly, all the same.”

“Right. And while that’s going on, you’ll be...?”

“Assisting them, of course,” Mistmane said with a pleasant smile. “After all, the demons are a problem for us all, and I am a friend, or at least an ally. It’d be strange if I didn’t.”

“Somehow, I think not much would be lost if some demon did wipe them all out. Mind control and skeletons…ugh.” Trixie grumbled. It was difficult not to agree with her, after what had happened to me.

Mistmane turned back to us and sighed, then waved me forward with a hoof. “Holly, you should be in the middle, and we should be a bit more bunched up so we don’t lose each other when moving amongst other ponies wearing cloaks. They might also be able to tell Holly’s condition from a distance, but it’ll be harder to discern if we’re close to her. If anypony does get close, just smile and nod; there’s enough members of the covenant that they don’t all know each other on sight, so it should be okay if they don’t recognize you, so long as you look like you belong.”

We nodded and rearranged positions, and—although we could still hear her complaining—that Trixie was now at the back of the party dissuaded her from asking Mistmane questions so incessantly. It also gave me a chance to observe the city around us as we walked, and I eagerly drank in the scenery.

The buildings around us were getting taller. The part of the city that we’d been traveling through before had been mostly houses and small, outlying buildings, like freestanding stores or small stalls. But as we got deeper and deeper, two-story buildings became three and four-story, and the upper floors degraded more and more. Once more, the buildings had all mostly been custom construction work by the residents or owners, and again, the more fanciful architecture had not handled the shock of impact well. The shorter, smaller buildings remained mostly intact, while the wider and taller buildings had crumbled under their own weight from the fall, or merely from time since then.

There were a lot more stores and shops, as opposed to houses. While I was still fairly sure that the upper floors were still apartments for the owners of said shops, it definitely didn’t seem as comfortable as the freestanding houses in the neighborhoods before. I also considered asking Mistmane to wait while we searched a few shops, but I noticed those strange symbols again on the doors listing their contents—and most had already been scratched out.

Still, I wondered if Mistmane would know what they meant exactly, and as we passed beside one, I stopped to point at it. “W-what do these symbols m-mean?”

Mistmane turned to look at it, then smiled. “Ah! That’s a sort of territory marking the covenant uses. The symbol represents the Gravewardens, the tallies mark how many usable skeletons are within the building, and the list of supplies are what can be recovered. They scratch out whatever’s been taken, so nopony goes searching for supplies that aren’t there.” She paused to think, then added, “I’m not terribly well-trained in music, whether modern or, ah, classical, but I believe the musical note represents one-eighth time? They also called it a ‘quaver’ when I asked about it, and did specify the flag. I think it may have been Sweetie Belle’s cutie mark, before she left, and that’s why they still use it.”

“If we’re quite done discussing musical theory…” Trixie grumbled, though Mistmane winked at me.

“Curiosity should always be rewarded; it’s a fleeting quality in this age, it seems.”

“Reckless curiosity will get your hoof stuck in a snare.” Trixie spat back.

Mistmane just shrugged, and we began to walk again. “I’d hardly call this reckless, but I can’t entirely disagree with you. The cautious seldom err.” She turned back to face me, and added, "If you'd like to leave some messages of your own, I can give you one of my spare soapstones—which is what leaves those marks—before we go our separate ways."

As we continued onwards, I noticed a glow that began to permeate the fog before us, visible in the sky over the rooftops. It was orange, like the sunset, but illuminated from below. Mistmane pointed at it a short while later, when it was even more obvious, and explained, “That light over there is what the covenant calls ‘New Cloudsdale.’ The fog will thin as we approach, so remember to keep your heads down and faces covered. Watch your hooves on this bridge, as well.”

We passed over a rickety bridge that crossed another bottomless crevasse, and then we were mere streets away from the main hub of the necromancers. I noticed that here, the streets seemed to have been cleaned up significantly; piles of bone dust had been swept to the side, most of the rubble had been cleared away, and several buildings seemed occupied. Various windows were boarded up, and we saw the flicker of small bonfires in doorways and through the boards.

While the skeletons of the dead had already begun to grow rare, they were completely absent here. Only the occasional pile of bones, capped with a glowing skull, was to be seen. Those likely served as sentries, or at least warnings to the pony who had enchanted them, like the ones we had now tripped over twice. Again, they had mostly been placed in doorways, or in alleyways—places where a pony would be forced to carefully step over them, in order to pass without disturbing the trap.

Finally, we came across a small guard outpost, with a pair of necromancers out in the open. One seemed engrossed in reading a book, while the other looked up as we approached. Mistmane pulled her hood back with a smile, and a wave. “Hello there, Raspberry! I’ve been looking through the ruins with a pair of curious acolytes; how have things been here?”

“Mistmane, hey. You see anything unusual out there?” The Necromancer put her hooves up on the barricade, and we could see her face under the hood, though something about the hood made it hard to make out any of her features—it was as though they created a veil of darkness to obscure the wearer. We could only hope the same could be said for us.

“Unusual?” Mistmane asked, with a tilt of her head. “What do you mean?”

The Necromancer shrugged, and her hooves dropped back down on her side of the barricade, as we walked around it. “We’re not sure. The Silverdust sisters found Ruffled Pages out there, dead and Hollowed. And they’ve been looking for Aural Charm, but she’s been missing entirely, when she was supposed to be watching the road into the city. It might be another demon, or maybe somepony finally got curious and we’re looking at a larger-scale invasion. We’re still good with Canterlot, right?”

Mistmane nodded, then paused. “Celestia won’t move against you, but I did recall overhearing that one of the nearby towns has been having some leadership issues. It’s possible they might send scouts? But I hope not, you aren’t bothering anypony here.”

“Hopefully, yeah…” The Necromancer looked back out into the fog, then sighed. “Still, keep your eyes open. If you see anypony not wearing a cloak, try and get back here, or back to Canterlot. Talk to Letter Opener, too; he’ll know more about the letter drops, and if we need to move them for you.”

“Regardless, It’ll be good to speak with him again,” Mistmane said, as we passed by. The necromancer turned her attention fully back to the road, and started quietly humming to herself as we continued into New Cloudsdale.

As soon as we turned a corner, Mistmane seemed to deflate slightly. I could tell she really didn’t like lying to these ponies; how close was she to them? I felt another pang of guilt at how we’d Hollowed two of them to get here, especially now that we knew their names. But then I remembered how the stallion—Ruffled Pages, apparently?—had forced his way into my head, and made himself my “Master,” and the guilt subsided a little. But only a little.

The fog above us grew dark as we moved deeper into New Cloudsdale, and soon the weathered concrete of the dam loomed above us as it came into focus. The cracks across its surface didn't seem so bad from this close up, but black water bled through the deepest ones, and ebbed downwards behind the buildings. Now that we were close, I could hear it creak and groan; the steel and concrete within the massive pony-made structure was strained and weakened from time. It threatened to crack again, and the rebar would split the smooth surface like broken bones through flesh, erupting in a great tide that would wash this valley away.

I wouldn't want to be here when it did. Hopefully, the residents of New Cloudsdale could see that too, and had plans to prevent it happening. At the very least, I hoped they had plans to leave long before it happened. A morbid part of me wondered if, given their connection with the dead, they would have welcomed it.

The valley itself had noticeably narrowed the closer we came to the dam, and the great cloudstone slabs had less and less room to fall flat upon the valley floor. The slab on which we now walked had a noticeable tilt, sharp enough that a wheel would roll down the roads, but not so steep that a pony would slide off the end if they fell. What I thought was another valley wall turned out to be another slab, which had come to a nearly vertical rest. It was distinctly strange to look up and see ruined buildings above us, and the roads that led between them formed strange patterns, like a queer map of the fallen city.

Around us were dozens of robed necromancers now, and we blended in easily. I was constantly afraid that somepony would stop us and look under our hoods, but it never happened; the worst that did was a few Gravewardens paused in confusion, as if they smelled something strange, but couldn't find the source. Could they tell there was a Hollow nearby, like Mistmane had said? It certainly kept me on edge.

Even more unsettling were the skeletons of the dead. I'd frozen at the sight of the first one, but Trixie had jammed her head against my tump, and I'd not been still for more than a second. The dead pegasus had passed us without a second glance, with a dozen planks of wood on its back. The red embers in their bone sockets never looked any direction than forward, as it mindlessly carried its cargo to places unknown.

Just as Trixie and Mistmane had said, the skeletons were clearly being used as mindless manual labor, from pulling carts to hauling cargo, to standing guard, to brushing piles of bones away with push-brooms. We even passed by what seemed to be a small sparring circle, where two necromancers meditated on either side, while four skeletons fought between them as proxies, using salvaged weapons in brutal combat.

Through it all, I started to hear a quiet hum. At first I thought it was the wind whistling through the valley, or perhaps a machine running inside one of the buildings, but we passed by a pony who was humming loudly and clearly, and soon, it seemed as though every pony we passed was doing the same. It was a quiet undertone, never too loud, but always there, just below the quiet conversations throughout the quiet town. It rose high above through the fog, it rolled through the streets, and it washed over us, bathing us in the simple tune.

It had no words, at least none that we could hear being sung. It seemed to be carried only by the chorus of the Gravewardens, with no conductor, and no sheet music. If there were ponies humming out of tune, then they could not be heard over the weight of everypony else. And soon, I even found myself humming along to it, despite having never heard the song before myself, and despite it being a complex remedy that took a long time to properly repeat. I found my voice, though it was sore and tired, and joined in as we walked.

I don’t know if it was a sort of magic—perhaps it was a spell woven by the Gravewardens, or perhaps it had something to do with the ruins Cloudsdale, or the valley itself. Personally, I think it was simply a heartsong; but it was an old heartsong that had never ended when it was first sung, and scattered members of the covenant had continued the tune ever since. Or perhaps the heartsong had wanted to be sung, but nopony had ever actually started to sing the song, and so the melody persisted, ever waiting, lurking under the surface for lyrics that would never emerge.

It didn’t seem to impede anypony, least of all us; we simply continued to walk through the ruins, humming along, and perhaps the way we joined in helped keep any of the Gravewardens from looking at us too closely.

Whatever the cause, soon the base of the dam came into sight. While everything up until now had been ramshackle construction bolted onto the old, and hung from the crumbling buildings, this construction seemed as though the Gravewardens had settled, then found the ruined buildings wanting. They had torn them down, and used the materials to build real structures from the ground up. The closest we could get to that reconstructed area was a large square, where a large bulwark blocked the street between here and there.

After a moment, I realized what the building on one side of the bulwark was; a massive chunk of the weather factory—presumably the section that Mistmane had described—had fallen sideways there at the crack between two slabs. The entire cloudstone structure sat at a diagonal angle, while the bulwark was actually built into the roof of the building, not the side. A great crevasse hung underneath the factory, where the slabs had split, and once more I could only hear rushing water deep below. Mistmane gave us a subtle flick of her tail, and she ushered us into a darkened doorway nearby.

Not much of this crumbling building was accessible, and it was full of broken windows and empty doorways, meaning nopony wanted to bother clearing it out. It gave us privacy, unless a pony wanted to cross the square to look inside, in which case we would have plenty of prior warning. Mistmane still checked over the few hiding places that stood out, and when she was satisfied, she sat down near the doorway. “Very good; we remain undetected thus far. You two saw the weather factory?”

Trixie nodded, but I spoke up. “The s-section of it that f-fell down here. Th-that’s not the whole th-thing, j-just the exotic w-weather p-production wing.”

Mistmane nodded, hoof to her chin in thought. “That explains why it’s so dangerous. And you saw the condition of the building, as well; there’s likely to be sections within where the floor—or walls, I suppose—have fallen into the cracks below. Watch your step in there, because I don’t know where the river flows. Should you fall in, you may end up back at the bottom of the valley, relatively unharmed, or you may become trapped in the crevasse, perpetually drowning under piles of rubble and steel.”

Trixie blanched at the warning. “Right. Don’t fall in. Understood that, clear as crystal.”

“It’s also going to be dark in there,” Mistmane continued. “There will be gaps in the building, and windows, but you two will need lights. Trixie, I presume you have that covered. What about you, Holly?”

I shook my head—then paused, for an idea had occurred to me. While Applejack had confiscated the lightgem that Dinky had given me so long ago, and it was presumably sitting in the Ponyville armory, Zecora and Dinky had known each other for a long time. If she’d given me a lightgem before we really even knew each other, then surely she would have given one to my now-deceased teacher. I reached for my bottomless bag, and hoped I was correct, as I slid my hoof inside.

Mistmane’s eyebrows rose when she saw the bag. “Oh, you have one of those…interesting, those are an incredibly rare piece of equipment, outside of the Golden Guard. Wherever did you get it?”

“It b-belonged to my t-teacher, Zecora, b-before Apple Bloom H-Hollowed her.”

Mistmane looked down at the floor at my words. “Zecora has Hollowed? I’ve missed quite the chain of events, it would seem...I’ll need to ask Rockhoof for an explanation when I get to Ponyville, I should think.” After a moment, she looked back up at me. “Do you know how it works, and what it’s made out of?”

I blinked at her in confusion, while my hoof was still knee-deep inside the bag. “N-no?”

Mistmane smiled at me. “I think that might be for the better. Don’t leave anything living—or undead—inside the bag. It won’t survive.”

Unsettled, I nodded slowly, and started to imagine the lightgem necklace that Dinky had given me. When that didn’t work, I started to think about it in more abstract terms; the fine details of my own lightgem faded until I was imagining a generic glowing gem on a string. Suddenly, something moving, and covered in dust, pressed against my hoof, and I jerked my leg out of the bag in shock—but clasped in my pyromancer’s grasp was a lightgem, just as I’d hoped.

The lightgem seemed covered in some sort of chalky dust, presumably a remnant from whatever I’d touched inside the bag. I thought they might be fragments of the gem at first, but it seemed undamaged, even if the shape was unfamiliar. After a few moments of confusion, I shook the dust off, and looped the string around my neck, which satisfied Mistmane. “Good. Keep that around your neck, but hide it in your cloak when moving in the open, so it doesn’t attract attention. I’ll also give you one of these.”

Mistmane produced a bag of her own, and withdrew a length of orange soapstone with a smoothed end. I took it, and she pulled from her own bag one last item—her glowing mace. “You should take this too, I think. Like I said, the top of the dam has a great deal of skeletons left to guard it, and this should make short work of them. A tap, a swing, it shouldn’t matter—hit one of the dead with this, and it should disenchant their bones.”

I nodded as I took the proffered mace, and slid it into my bottomless bag, before I dropped my shoddy improvised club in a corner. Meanwhile, Trixie gave Mistmane a pout. “What’s Trixie, chopped celery? No gifts for me?”

Mistmane blinked at Trixie in confusion, and perhaps a touch of annoyance. “You do not strike me as a mare who would wield a club. Even if you were, I don’t have a second one to spare.”

Trixie let out a raspberry, before she moved to the door to look back out over the square. 

Mistmane turned back to me, gentle again. “As I said, I’ll create a distraction that should keep them preoccupied. Move through the factory carefully, but quickly, and from there into the buildings at the base of the dam. There should be an elevator in there, that you can use to get up to the top. When you’re finished up there, take the mountain pass out, and I’ll be waiting in the Ponyville town square. Good luck.”

“Th-thank you,” I mumbled, and I smiled at Mistmane again, to which she bowed slightly in response.

“Thank you, for doing this for me. Take good notes, and bring back whatever you can. I’ll be able to reward you both handsomely; personally and professionally, from the Princesses’ coffers.” Even Trixie grinned at that, as Mistmane stood up straight, and passed through the door beside her.

We both watched her leave as she crossed the square, and disappeared from sight. Trixie then started to inspect her hooves, while my own gaze shifted to the looming doorway that led into the weather factory. It hadn’t been accessible from the ground originally, but the Gravewardens had built a ramp, supported by scaffolding, up to the doorway. I could see several piles of bones left to guard it from where we sat, but we could probably step around them. That would be our way inside, then.

After she grew bored of inspecting her hooves, Trixie’s attention became focused on the barricade. The wall itself seemed very sturdy, to the point that they had actually scavenged a rusted metal gate from somewhere in Cloudsdale and brought it here, and managed to install what looked like a fully-functional—if rusty—portcullis to separate this square from the one that had been rebuilt. Eventually, Trixie made a “hm” noise, and started to rub her chin in thought.

I looked up at her in curiosity, because while she seemed content to stay put for the moment, I still couldn’t guess at what she was thinking. “T-Trixie?”

“Hm? What is it, Assistant?” She glanced at me, before she started to sit against the wall in a relaxed pose.

“W-well...you’ve b-been staring at that gate for a w-while…”

Trixie chuckled, and nodded. “Indeed I have! I still say we could get to the dam without having to go through that deathtrap that decrepit mare suggested. Cutting our way through the necromancers would still be easier, I bet.”

She still wanted to…? I rubbed my forehead at her words, though all it did was remind me that I’d had what amounted to a minor headache ever since I woke up originally. Trixie was making it flare up somewhat, although water would maybe help too. If I could trust the water in this valley, considering the condition of the dam. “T-Trixie, we can’t. There’s t-too many, even before they started to use m-magic.”

“Are you suggesting that the Great and Powerful Trixie can’t out-magic a few Necromancers?” The eponymous mare shot me a sour look as she spoke.

“N-not when they have s-so many skeletons...And they c-can get into our m-minds, too.” I shuddered as the voice of my “Master” echoed in my head once more.

“They can get into your head, Assistant.” Trixie grinned as she waved a hoof across her body. “Trixie is positive they attempted to ensorcell her as well, and it failed so miserably that she didn’t even feel it!”

I shook my head again in disbelief. “D-do you ever hear the w-words you’re actually s-saying? What if y-you’re wrong?”

Her face curled into a cocky smirk, and she tipped her witches’ hat in a showy manner. “Trixie is never wrong, Assistant. Honestly, I thought you would have noticed that, by now.”

“I’m n-noticing something, that’s f-for sure…” I mumbled tiredly. I was in the middle of considering if there was anything else I could say to convince Trixie not to attack the bulwark, when the decision was taken from my hooves.

All of a sudden, there was a whistle from down the street, and the pitch of the Gravewarden’s song shifted as a whole towards curiosity, and then a low sort of alarm. A moment later, a thin Necromancer who nearly tripped over his robes with every step galloped up the street, and shouted to the guards at the gate, “Hey! There’s a demon attacking Malleus street! Some sort of big beetle!”

“That’s our distraction,” muttered Trixie, and I nodded in agreement.

The guards scampered from the wall, and only two remained to watch the gate, which opened. The other guards all ran out, and the thin Necromancer led them down the street in a gallop. With most of them gone and distracted, we crept out from the building, and I started to make my way towards the scaffolding, only to notice, a moment later, that I was alone.

Trixie had changed course towards the gate, and it was only good luck that she hadn’t been spotted by the remaining guards in the meantime. “T-Trixie!” I hissed to her. “Come on, th-this way!”

She glanced at me, then back at the gate. She seemed to be weighing her options, and I was about to hiss at her again, when she changed course back towards me. “Fine,” she growled, as she started to follow me up the ramp. “But you're taking the lead. If this crumbling ruin starts to fall apart, then it will not fall out from under Trixie’s hooves!”

We gingerly stepped past the glowing skulls on the scaffolding, and I tried not to cringe whenever the wind or our weight caused the platform to shift. The bright red embers in their sockets burned steadily, unmoving, but I had no doubt that they would awaken if one of us was foolish enough to trip over one of the piles of bones. Soon, we were past them, and we found ourselves looking at the boarded-up door.

This was another frequent victim of graffiti, it seemed; there were several scribblings to the sentiment of “Do not enter,” with one particularly detailed one depicting a stick-pony getting electrocuted. A sloppy, glowing orange skull covered the entirety of one of the doors, while one of the boards across it had “DANGER” simply inscribed upon it. The symbol of the Gravewardens, that simple musical note again, adorned the wall directly beside the door, but it looked incomplete without the tally marks and list of the building’s contents. Presumably, they’d drawn the symbol before they’d attempted entry, and had never finished their exploration of the interior to actually write out the list.

“Well, this looks promising,” Trixie muttered sarcastically. “What about climbing over the building? Is that an option?”

I shook my head. “C-can’t fly, and n-neither can you. C-come on, help me p-pull this board off.”

Removing the wood blocking the door was easy, although doing it quietly was a bit trickier. While we were safely out of sight of the gate, any loud splintering noises would surely attract attention, and so we quietly wiggled the soft wood board free of the nails that had held it in place over the course of a few minutes. When it finally came loose, we both jumped at the loud squeak it made, but none of the Gravewardens seemed to notice, so we set it down beside the door.

When we actually tried to open the door, we found it opened outwards, and it was a good thing it did; as soon as we got it open, it sprang wide open, and we caught it just before it slammed back against the building. A rolling mass of fog poured out of the doorway like a wave, and I think if I’d been standing directly before the doors, I would have been swept off the scaffolding.

Strangely, when the thick fog finished pouring out of the doorway, we found there was still a layer that blocked our path in. It wasn’t solid cloudstone, but it wasn’t normal fog either—even Trixie had trouble pressing forward through it, and it took a concentrated effort to push through the fog wall and into the building. When we both had made it inside, we took a moment to look around, and take in the Exotic Weather Wing.

The room was dimly lit by a long set of windows on the side wall, which was now practically the ceiling. Another set had been present on the opposite wall, but the building had landed on them, and so they were effectively opaque. On both sides, most of the glass in the frames had shattered on impact, and the panes that had somehow survived were dull and grimy from decades of neglect and rainwater.

The calcified factory was subtly disconcerting, because of how sharply vertical the building had come to a rest. My mind kept trying to reorient itself, to turn my hooves so that I stood flat on the floor, only for it to instantly conflict with my personal sense of balance. If it had been completely upside-down, or had at least fallen flat on its side, then I could have handled it much better. No matter what the structure looked like, I would have had a flat surface to stand on. But my hooves were forced to scrape against the slope of the catwalk just to keep my balance, and eventually I clung to the railing and simply shut my eyes to clear my head.

Trixie seemed to be having slightly less issue with it, but only slightly. I heard her scrabble against the metal catwalk, and curse quietly to herself that she was going to be sick.

Once I had stabilized my balance slightly, I opened my eyes again, though I clung to the rusted railing like a drowning pony clung to driftwood. The room we had entered seemed to be dedicated to condensing and packing clouds, heavy with magic, that kept their contents tightly packed within. Most had turned to cloudstone, and lay around the room like great white bricks that leaked melted rainwater, but a few had survived until now. One rattled wildly under a pile of cables, like there was a wild animal trapped inside, while others were still stuck against the ceiling. Their contents had resisted whatever magic had calcified the city, and now the floating bricks were a massive danger waiting to disenchant themselves and plummet through whatever was below, be it floor or catwalk or pony, like the massive hollow brick that they were. One of the packed clouds glowed hotly, as though there was a fire raging within that yearned to escape.

I clenched my eyes shut again. Okay, this room was a massive danger. Disrupting any of those cloud-bricks could be potentially disastrous, and would likely set off a chain reaction that would rupture the rest. We might survive that, but I had my doubts that the building would. Thankfully, the catwalk had looked intact, and crossed the room without requiring any travel across the room. There was a door on the other end, and hopefully that would lead back outside, though the building was much too large for that hope to be realistic.

“C-come on,” I groaned, as I began to blindly clamber across the catwalk. “W-watch your hooves, we j-just need to cross this r-room.”

“Right...lead the way, Assistant.” The irony of the statement did not elude me.

Our hooves shook and rattled as the catwalk wobbled under us, and the metal bars that comprised the railing were woefully inconsistent. Some were rusted, some were missing, and some were so loose that grabbing them for support pulled them from their mounts. I swore as one pulled free, and I was so surprised that I let it fall from my hoof into the room below. I clung to the railing and waited for an explosion, but it never came—only the sharp report as the metal bar clanged off of a packing machine, and then rattled across the floor into a corner, where it came safely to a rest.

I had to open my eyes to more carefully pick across the broken catwalk, and I glanced behind myself to check on Trixie. Her eyes were still open, albeit focused on the metal path, and our treacherous climb across the hall.

Eventually, we made it to the doorway, and I pushed at the door. With a screech of metal as the rusted hinges gave way, the double doors that blocked our way fell into the corridor behind, and rust showered from the broken frame. I climbed through and stood atop them, though I turned to watch Trixie as she followed behind me. She gave me a glare as she crawled over the rusted doorway. “Subtle. Real subtle, Assistant. I’m sure they have no idea that anypony’s trespassing here.”

“If th-they can f-follow us through that…” I mumbled.

Trixie scoffed. “Oh, I doubt it. They’ll probably just be waiting at the exit, and then we’ll have to fight them anyways.”

I winced. Trixie had a point; we’d have to try and be a bit more quiet as we passed through the ruined building, if we didn’t want a welcoming party to greet us on the other side.

The corridor we’d entered had run along the spine of the building, and was lined with doors on either side that led to smaller rooms that isolated different weather machines from each other. Unfortunately, the doors had all long fallen out, so while the ones on the right wall provided dim light for us to see by, the doorways on the left wall were effectively a series of hazardous pits that we would need to cross over. At the very least, they were only single doors, and did not require that they be crossed by jumping; a pony could simply step over the doorway, though they were just wide enough to be off-balance and terrifying.

As we started to cross over them, we leaned against the floor as though it were a wall, and I peeked inside the rooms that we passed by. In one, I recognized an antique cloudwinder for spinning up cyclones; in another, I saw a sparking lightning coil, still powered and dangerous. That one I did jump over, because I didn’t want to be exposed around the live current for any longer than necessary. In fact, the whole building still seemed to have power, though the lights had all burned out; another door looked down into a room with a massive, whirring hail grinder. Though I was willing to bet that the blades had all long grown dull, the fact that it was still gnashing for ice to this day was terrifying, and I was sure that I wouldn’t survive falling in, Hollow or not. I was almost relieved when the next room over was completely empty—the floor within, and whatever machinery it contained, had long fallen out of the building, into a black crevasse below.

The end of the hallway was wreathed in shadow, and as we got close, I could see why. The door on the ceiling had remained closed and intact, and I had a certain ominous feeling as we passed underneath. It wasn’t helped by the fact that we could hear something rattling around and moving inside the room above, and the door groaned worryingly as whatever was inside banged its full weight against the metal.

Trixie in particular seemed annoyed by it. “Can’t those idiots outside hear that racket? It’s making more noise than we ever did-”

I think it heard Trixie, because the rattling suddenly grew frenzied, and the door rattled repeatedly as whatever it was bounced against it. The metal shrieked and groaned, and we both scampered past as quick as we could. But we’d barely made it a few steps further down the hallway before the door latch gave way, and the door slammed open with a squeal and a flash of light.

We were blinded by even the dim light filtering through the fog and the broken window within the room, but I saw something fall through the doorway, bounce off the open doorway below it, and rebound straight towards us. I shoved Trixie out of the way, and she sprawled across the wall with a yelp, while I had moved myself directly in the path of whatever it was.

The thin edge of a carriage wheel slammed against my breast and threw me back, and I was bounced down the hallway, where I managed to scrape against the floor for purchase. My hind legs still fell over the edge, and I found myself hanging by my fores from an open doorway, winded from the impact. The creature finally skidded to a stop next to me, and I got a decent look at it.

A pony must have been tangled in the wheel of a carriage before they died, because they were still tangled around it in death, with their body jammed amongst the spokes. The skeleton chattered wildly at me as it staggered to its hooves, the wheel bouncing on the floor as it found its balance. A twin pair of glowing gold embers within its sockets flicked between me, and Trixie, before it decided that I was apparently no threat. It turned to Trixie, and dove forward, as if they were attempting to roll. Instead, the carriage wheel began to roll, and they kicked their hooves as they bounced down the corridor to pick up speed. The wheel skeleton catapulted itself suicidally towards Trixie, and she let out a screech of horror before launching a firework directly at it.

The blast knocked it to the side and made it miss her, and so she started running down the hallway, horn aglow to light her way. It slid to a stop behind her, and the wooden wheel ground against the cloudstone wall as it turned, and then dove into a roll once more. Trixie leapt over me, and the wheel skeleton followed a moment later, to her horror. I focused on trying to climb up to safety, but I could hear blasts of magic and Trixie swearing behind me.

A moment later, I managed to pull myself up out of the doorway and onto the wall, but as soon as I stood up, something thin yet heavy slammed me in the back, and hammered me flat against the wall under my hooves. The world spun as I looked up, dazed, and saw the wheel skeleton bouncing back down the hallway, all the way through the door and onto the catwalk. One last bolt of magic from Trixie slammed into it there, and knocked it off-balance.

When it landed, it had too much force, and the metal catwalk that we had crawled over sheared off entirely. The entire construction, skeleton and all, fell into the room below with a deafening clang. A moment later, something in the room exploded, and a massive burst of ice crystals expanded upwards, filling the room, the doorway, and they began to expand down the hallway. It was like an explosion made entirely out of magical ice, and I swore as I scrambled to my hooves.

My head was still spinning as I jumped over the last two doorways, and Trixie had barely gotten the door at the end open as I galloped to the end of the hallway. Together, we leapt through into the sunlight, and Trixie slammed the door shut with a crack, as it smashed against an ice crystal that had been following us out. We backed away from the door a moment later, as the metal surface fogged and froze, and ice crystals began to form in the doorframe and on the surface. But the door held strong, at least for the moment, and that was good enough for us to look around.

We’d emerged from the fallen wing of the weather factory into a cramped back alley formed by the sheared slabs of the city, and another set of scaffolding built up to the door. SOmehow, no cultists had come to investigate the racket we’d made, though I could see smoke curling up over the building.

Trixie glared at the door for a long moment, then spat on it. The spit froze the second it touched the door, and formed a smear of ice. “Luna-damned wheels are going to hound me for the rest of my life!”

“W-what?”

“What?” Trixie turned her glare on me when I spoke.

“Y-you said something about w-wheels-”

“That is a story that Trixie is not going to tell you,” she growled, in a tone that left no room for negotiation. I nodded uneasily, and together, we started down the scaffolding on this side of the building.

When we reached the corner, I peered out, and Trixie leaned over me to look as well. While we could see several Gravewardens from where we were, they all seemed preoccupied with running down the street towards the burning end of the weather factory. We had made our own distraction, this time. I pointed at a small building at the base of the dam, labeled “Upper Dam Access Elevator” and decorated, as though it were a shrine, with hundreds of wax candles. 

When nopony was looking, we bolted across the open space and ran inside, where Trixie jammed a chair under the door handle. While she did that, I looked around at what seemed like a long maintenance office; shelves lined the walls, and those shelves had been lined with skulls. Spare parts were scattered everywhere, as well as a couple of toolboxes, with the open ones being filled with more candles. Every single one of the skulls on the shelves had two glowing red embers in their eye sockets.

“O-okay,” I mumbled in terror. “L-let’s just move s-slowly through here.” Trixie nodded beside me, a look of revulsion across her face, and we slowly paced down the center of the hallway, as far away from both the walls as we could be.

Thankfully, we reached the end of the hallway without disturbing any of them, and found a gated elevator inside. The shaft was dark, but I experimentally hit the button for the elevator, and a groaning, rattling mechanical noise echoed down from above.

“Just how old is all of this machinery?” Trixie hissed under her breath. “This elevator has to be centuries old, this can’t be right…can it even hold our weight?”

I shrugged, as I glanced nervously back at all of the glowing skulls behind us. I swore I saw one shudder, but I think it was just my imagination. “It b-better, or else we’re st-stuck down here...”

To Trixie’s surprise, and my relief, the elevator did actually come to a rest before us. The metal gates groaned and shrieked like the rest of the rusted metal down here, and they locked up when they were only halfway open, but me and Trixie were able to pull them open enough to get inside. The elevator itself swayed and shook as we climbed in, but it hadn’t collapsed yet, at least.

We pulled the elevator gates closed once more, and I suddenly felt very trapped inside the tiny lift with Trixie. If it did fall, we would be stuck at the bottom of an elevator shaft, and we’d never see the sunlight again. But Trixie seemed impatient, and she had already hit the button before I could say anything about my fears.

The elevator rattled and shook again, before it slowly began to drag upwards towards the top floor of the dam. Trixie sighed, and closed her eyes as she tilted her head back in what seemed like relief, before she muttered sarcastically, “But I don’t want to ride the elevator!”
> 24 - The Weather Factory
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rickety chamber turned pitch-black as we began to ascend into the ancient ruin of the dam. The lights within the lift had all burned out long ago, and no pony had bothered, or perhaps cared, to replace them. It made no difference whether our eyes were open or closed, and the only indication we had that the elevator was even moving at all was that we could hear the cables groaning above us, and a metallic scraping sound against the sides of the shaft. Even the song of the Gravewardens, that low hum that had permeated the valley, faded as we slowly climbed upwards.

It was terrifying. I didn’t realize how claustrophobic I was until this moment, where I could no longer see my own hoof in front of my face, where the floor shook and rattled. All of a sudden, the brown robes, the barding underneath, they were both too tight. It was choking me, and I had to get them off!

I started to grab wildly at the robes to pull them off as quick as I could while we were blinded, and Trixie was startled at how much I was suddenly moving. I could feel the elevator rock under me, and I heard it scrape more against the sides of the shaft, and it only made me more nervous.

“What the hay are you doing? Watch it!”

“S-sorry! I j-just...this...I d-don’t like this! Too dark, t-too tight!” I managed to rip the robe off, and tossed it against the back of the elevator, then started work on undoing the barding, at least around my wings.

I could hear Trixie growl in exasperation. “Rutting- Pegasus, right. Forgot you birdbrains hate being underground like this. Why didn’t you just fly up to the top, then?”

I shook my head, until I realized that the motion was completely lost in the darkness. “I t-told you, my wings don’t w-work! Not since I w-woke up.”

“Great, so you’re a cripple, too.”

Finally, I loosened the barding and pulled it down around my flanks, and my wings limply flopped free. One thumped against the wall, while the wing on the other side smacked against Trixie inside the tiny, confined space. Absolutely, positively, totally not on purpose.

“Ow! I said watch it!” Her continued protestations cried out shrilly in the gloom.

“S-sorry,” I mumbled, though I kept my wings somewhat extended. It made my muscles ache to keep them out like this, but being able to feel the air ruffle through my feathers as the elevator ascended did help me calm down a little. I could feel the air growing colder, even just by a minute amount. We really were high up in the mountains already, but gaining altitude by hoof, or by wing or elevator, were very different.

Fresh air washed in from above, and suddenly we were blinded when the elevator emerged back into the dim sunlight. We both groaned and covered our eyes, but the elevator started to groan ominously again as it came to a halt. The gates shuddered and rattled in front of us, and whether we could see or not, both Trixie and I leapt forward to grab onto the accordion-style metal door to try and pull it open.

After a few terrifying moments, we heard the metal shriek as we shoved it back into the frame of the elevator, and we pushed out of the tiny chamber. Trixie was faster and leapt out ahead of me, while I found my hooves entangled in my discarded robe, and I yelped as I tripped over them, and fell to the floor at her hooves. After a moment, I kicked the cloth free, and shook my head to clear my eyes, now that we were both safely out of the tiny deathtrap of a lift.

This office was nearly a twin of the one at the bottom of the shaft, in that it seemed to double as a supply or maintenance closet. However, this one was thankfully unchanged from how it originally appeared; there wasn’t a single skull to be seen, and only a few unlit candles, placed as guides to and from the exit. Cracked, grimy windows on both sides allowed sunlight through and lit up the room. Trixie went to peer through them, while I looked down at myself.

I had left my quilted barding hanging loosely around my rump, while my wings still hung open. Occasionally they twitched, as the muscles that held them up began to tire or itch, and it took a great force of will to pull them back against my body. It was as if they had a mind of their own, and clearly they no longer wanted to be trapped within my barding. The dark, cramped elevator shaft had been where my resolve in keeping them safely covered had shattered.

At the very least, my armor wasn’t shredded, or even terribly torn; it had a decent amount of battle damage from the journey here, and it was somewhat burnt, on the sections closer to my head. But it was still fine as far as armor went, unless I found something better. In fact, the armor’s only major flaw was that it was clearly designed for an earth pony, or a unicorn; it sat a little loosely on my thin frame, and had no allowance for my wings, though pulling it over them tightened it a bit.

“Euuugh. I’m not looking forward to moving across this dam, Assistant. There’s a lot of dead moving around out there- What are you doing now?” Trixie had turned back to talk to me, only to notice how I was staring at the barrel portion of my barding.

“Um.” A thought had suddenly occurred to me, and I reached for my bottomless bag. “I th-think I can cut wingholes into my arm-armor.”

“And why would you want to?” Trixie rolled her eyes at me. To be fair, I was considering damaging the armor that had kept me...relatively safe so far.

“It’s making me r-really uncomfortable…” I sort of trailed off, as I realized how weak that sounded as an explanation.

But it seemed to be enough for Trixie. “Ugh, whatever. Just make it quick; I don’t think the skeletons can see us in here, but I don’t want to find out for sure.”

She started to peer out the windows again, while I looked down at the sword I had drawn from my bag. What was I doing? I was no tailor, and the best I could do was stab a slit through the armor to poke my wing through. Would that be any better than keeping them safe, underneath it? I couldn’t even use them to fly.

Although…I hadn’t exactly been in much of a position to try, had I? So far I’d mostly been walking through dense forests, tight village streets, trenches, and lowlands in general. We were up in the mountains now, where I had plenty of altitude at my disposal. Maybe if I could figure out a way to practice gliding, at least, I would be able to re-learn how to fly properly?

The memory of Magnus flying up through the canopy, or swooping away into the fog, made my decision for me. I wanted to at least try and do that again, even if I couldn’t remember how. I wanted to reclaim the sky, instead of being bound to the hard earth. I drew my sword from its sheath, and spent a little while working out where I’d need to stab a slit through.

After a short process of measuring, curses, a few grunts of effort, and more measuring, I eventually started to pull the armor back on. I pushed my wings through the new slits that I’d cut, and while the one on my left side was much too short, and the one on my right far too long, it wasn’t a bad start. I tried to widen the slit on my left a bit more, but accidentally stabbed myself under the wing joint, which resulted in more cursing. It was serviceable, though, and as I put away the sword, it reminded me of something else I hadn’t checked in a while.

When I pulled my hoof from the bag, it brought the bottle of sunlight with it, and I was stunned with how heavy it was now. Nearly the whole bottle was full, and it made the room glow brightly as I peered at the fluid within. I sloshed it around a little, before my new stab wound ached a bit, and I decided to see how well it worked for myself.

I uncorked the flask and took only a sip, and my tongue crackled as though liquid lightning had rolled across the surface. The fluid never quite seemed to make it down my throat; instead it evaporated within my mouth. I could feel the warmth as it spread through me, however, and it crawled down to my side. In moments, the wound dried, clotted, and began to heal, and soon, the only sign that I had ever injured myself was the fresh bloodstain in the cloth.

The warmth faded not long after, though I felt it roll upwards, through my wings. I think it was helping me regenerate the feathers that Trixie had plucked so long ago, and maybe if I’d had more than it would have healed further, but I wanted to conserve the slowly-replenishing fluid. I could experiment with it more when I was somewhere more safe.

“Are you finished?” Trixie asked, with a hint of impatience in her voice. “I think it’s a good time to move, none of them are looking this way.”

I nodded, and drew the enchanted mace that Mistmane had given me. The weight was heavy in my hoof, and it reminded me of Zecora’s axe, though the head was even heavier. This was a weapon that was meant to be swung with the head being the center of balance, and I knew I’d get plenty of chances to practice with it.

As we emerged into the sunlight, I was slightly overcome with a sort of happiness. We were high above the fog of the dead city below, and breathing in the fresh mountain air instead. The liquid sunlight had perked me up, and I could feel the breeze through my exposed wings, while I casually swung the glowing, enchanted mace a few times for practice.

For the first time—in a long time, maybe since I had woken up—I actually felt alright. Not good; I was still riddled with aches and pains, and my throat still hurt, and I still wasn’t entirely sure what Trixie was leading me into. But for once, I didn’t feel actively terrible, and that felt like such an immense improvement that I couldn’t help but smile a bit.

It couldn’t last forever, however, as we looked over the top of the dam. A road crossed from one end to the other, and a few abandoned carts had been left along the path in terrible condition. Several of them were missing wheels, all of them were damaged by the damp air, and their contents, save for a rug or a mouldering box, had all been lost or salvaged over the years. Standing around the carts were a half-dozen skeletons, and they noticed us at just about the same time we spotted them. I could see more movement further down the length of the dam, yet more sentinels waiting in the wings; we’d have to deal with the skeletons quickly once they crossed the short distance between us, unless we wanted to be vastly overwhelmed..

As they staggered towards us, teeth chattering wildly, I noticed something unusual. The skeletons that the Necromancers had been controlling below had burning red embers, while these skeletons had embers of gold. I had no idea what that actually meant, though; perhaps it was as Mistmane had said, that these skeletons were more autonomous, to guard the dam? Hopefully that meant that whoever had enchanted their bones wouldn’t notice when we attacked them, or hadn’t noticed us already through their skeletal proxies. That was all the time I’d had to speculate, before the skeletons got within reach.

The first time that I swung the mace, I threw myself horrifically off-balance; I wasn’t used to swinging around so much weight so far from my center of mass. But the horizontal blow did exactly what it needed to, as when the glowing head of the weapon struck the leading skeleton, they died—and in spectacular fashion. Instead of simply falling apart when struck, the mace caused the dead pony to explode into a shower of bones. They scattered across the dam as glowing magic ignited across their surface, burning away the enchantments that had animated them until now.

Everything paused around me, skeleton and pony alike. I think the skeletons were re-evaluating how dangerous I was, and Trixie seemed suddenly very happy to be behind me. I looked at the mace held in my hoof once more, in shock and surprise, and found there wasn’t a scratch upon it. In fact, this was most likely the single highest-quality weapon I had ever used since my awakening.

With a hungry chatter of bones, the skeletons leapt at us once more; and more specifically at me, since they had decided that Trixie was not nearly as dangerous as I. And the thought of that power gave me a distinct, dark thrill. I was eager to meet them in combat, now.

I recalled the weight of the axe again, and how I’d needed my own body to act as a counterweight when swinging it, and that helped me keep my balance as they fell upon me. Two more skeletons fell with my second strike, as the mace cleaved through them both and reduced them merely to inert bones.

But that left me open, and the other three happily took their chance to stab at me. I felt the blade of a knife stab into my breast, and a set of teeth clamp down around my leg, while a wooden club slammed against my side.

The wounds stung, especially the knife, but I barely had to swing the mace up into the one biting my arm for their grip to loosen. They fell to pieces, as I swung the mace down into the one with the knife, and their skull shattered before it even hit the surface of the road. My mace finished the journey for them, as it banged against the stone road with a shower of sparks, and I eagerly swung it back up one last time into the ribcage of the skeleton with the club.

I dropped onto my rump, and forced myself to pant; I was getting light-headed from the exertion, unless I reminded myself to breathe. I had just slain six skeletons in the blink of an eye! I fumbled for my bag and the flask of sunlight within, but I did turn back to Trixie with an actual, manic grin on my face, as I giggled, “I r-really like this m-mace!”

“Trixie can tell, Assistant.” She said, as she eyed me warily. “Be careful where you swing that, so you don’t bash my skull in as well!”

I took a swig from the flask, which tempered my excitement slightly. Healing even the minor stab wound had depleted the bottle by almost halfway already, and anything more grievous would likely require the rest all at once. I was fine for now, but it still would be best to avoid combat, whenever possible. I stowed the bottle back in my bag, and stood up to join Trixie, who had already begun to walk down the length of the dam.

To our surprise, the rest of the dam seemed relatively clear of bones, aside from those I had most recently scattered. There were a few skeletons still stumbling around dumbly in the distance, but we wouldn’t have to worry about them for a short while. That gave me a chance to look around the top of the dam in detail, particularly our destination.

The weather factory had fallen closer to the other end of the dam, and I could see from here that it was only the uppermost section of the structure; it had been a fairly vertical building, and yet, only the top floor was above the waterline. The rest must have been submerged, and I suspected it was actually resting on the bottom of the lake entirely. That meant the prismapetrol refinery was underwater, and whatever we were searching for must have been in that uppermost section, which was where the main mixing vats were operated from. That was where clean water from Equestria below was stored, mixed, and refined into cloudbanks for use in weatherwork, before being sent to other sections of the factory—which had now broken away.

We could see a ramshackle bridge built from sheet metal and salvaged wood that connected the factory to the dam, presumably built by the Gravewardens to explore the fallen building. It looked stable enough from here, but the water below was actually of much greater interest. I walked over to the inner edge of the dam just to make sure the lighting wasn’t playing tricks on my eyes.

The entire lake was filled with that same deep, dark water that we’d seen leaking from the cracks in the dam, and heard rushing through the bottomless crevasses throughout the ruins. This was the source, or at least something within the lake was the source. I peered at it closely, but I could barely tell that there was even water there to see; it seemed almost as though the entire lake was a void in the world. It had no bottom, it had no surface, and I couldn’t see even a thin film of water atop it.

I shivered as I forced myself to pull away from it. The lake, the river, my bag, even all of our cutie marks—it was something impossible to explain, but it felt as though they were all the same all-consuming darkness. They were all the same material, the same substance, or maybe they were portals to somewhere else. Someplace deep, dark, and inky-black. They were all connected.

As I looked back, and forced myself to look beyond the bottomless lake, I could see the distant shores, a small town at the far end of the lake, and a forest that filled the rest of the valley behind. The light of the sunset just barely shined over the mountains here, leaving what must have been a small lakeside resort in a permanent shadow. The direct sunlight came to a stop on the shore opposite, almost exactly where the water lapped against the unnatrually-white beach. Aside from the terrifying lake, it looked almost like a postcard, and I imagined this valley must have been beautiful before Cloudsdale flattened it.

Trixie suddenly swore loudly, and it brought my sightseeing to a sudden end. “Oh, rut me.”

We were now much closer to the bridge, which the skeletons almost seemed to be guarding. Of those undead sentries, two had broken away and were moving towards us, or rather, rolling towards us. Two more skeletons—entangled in carriage-wheels like the one from the Exotic Weather Wing before—intended to intercept us.

While fighting or even evading the first one had been a challenge within the tilted hallways of the building before, the wide open spaces of the damtop was an entirely different environment. The two wheel skeletons rolled in parallel towards us, and both Trixie and I split up as the bonewheels sped between us. Then, we both broke into a gallop, as we tried to make it to the bridge and the factory beyond, where we wouldn't be such easy prey for the bizarre undead.

I glanced back to look at them, and immediately wished I hadn’t. The bonewheels had split up like Trixie and I had, to roll along the edges of the dam, before they turned back towards the center. Then their paths intersected, and they rolled past each other like a pair of hawks swooping after prey. In seconds, they were bearing down on us again, without ever having needed to pause and reorient themselves.

Trixie’s horn was already aglow, and phantom images were thrown backwards as diversions, or at least distractions. But for some reason, the one-way illusions didn’t seem to work on the rolling bonewheels, and they changed direction to bear down on us as if they couldn’t even see the illusions at all.

Trixie was understandably frustrated by how difficult they were to fool. “Why?! Stupid wheel skeletons, why aren’t you taking the bait?!”

There were more “normal” skeletons that had stayed to guard the bridge, but our focus was purely on the bonewheels behind us. It barely took an effort to swing the glowing mace through one that got in our way, and we simply galloped past the rest, as we leapt onto the scrap wood-and-metal construction. The whole thing creaked and groaned ominously as our hooves rang out on the metal, and the weight shifted as waves on the lake lapped against the factory.

One normal skeleton tried to give chase after us, by following us onto the bridge, but one of the bonewheels bounced and landed on them with a crunch. The other bonewheel tried the same trick, but landed wrong, and it bounced again off the bridge before it plummeted into the lake with a muted splash. Still, even the singular bonewheel was a problem, and it rolled down the bridge right behind us as we galloped for the broken balcony that would allow us access to the fallen building.

We weren’t going to make it; there simply wasn’t enough time to get to the door and slam it closed before the bonewheel would be upon us. So I turned and drew my mace, and tried to wait for a good moment to swing, but it was already too late.

The hard edge of the ancient wooden carriage-wheel slammed into my shoulder, and two skeletal hooves followed it, battering me as I sprawled backwards. The wheel never rolled over me entirely, because it didn’t have the grip, so I was subjected to being rolled on in place as it tried to grind me into dust against the ramshackle bridge.

I instantly lost my grip on the mace, but Trixie’s magical grip grabbed it before it fell into the lake, and the weapon was whipped into the side of the bonewheel a second later. My assailant exploded into a shower of bones, and the now-freed wheel bounced against the railing before it rattled to a stop.

I was left dazed on my back, as my eyes spun and my barrel burned. Again, I forced myself to inhale and exhale, but the process was so painful that I nearly gave up on it. It felt like I’d been lit on fire again, and my ribs in particular stung from the battering of abuse they had sustained in a matter of moments. No amount of cushioning provided by my armor could soften being run over like that.

More skeletal hooves clattered onto the bridge behind us, and Trixie yelled, “Get up, assistant! We don’t have time for this!”

I groaned again as I tried to roll onto my hooves, and immediately slipped on the mace, which Trixie had dropped after using it to dispose of the bonewheel. I stumbled, but stabilized after a moment, and grabbed the grip of the weapon in my teeth. Evidently, I was still being too slow for Trixie; the collar of my armor glowed, and I felt myself being dragged down the bridge after her. I flailed my hooves to try and help, but I could never quite catch my balance, and so she pulled me into the doorway mostly out of sheer panic.

The steel factory doors were slammed shut behind us, and Trixie let me fall with a clang onto the catwalk as she threw herself back against the doors, to keep them shut. A moment later, a cacophony of clanks and clatters rang out against their surface, but Trixie clearly didn’t need to strain terribly much to hold the door closed. The skeletons were many things, but they were entirely lacking in the kind of strength required to push open a barred door.

With Trixie and the skeletons occupied with fighting over their respective sides of the door, I finally had a moment to recover. While my hooves felt alright, the body they were connected to still burned, and that made me very reluctant to move them. Eventually, I was able to push them under myself as I struggled to stand, and at least managed to get myself back into a sitting position against the railing, where I could look around the interior of the factory while I waited for my body to not hurt quite as much.

The cavernous building was more akin to a subterranean grotto than anything pony-made. Light didn’t quite pierce the broken and grimy windows, but it made them glow brightly enough to make out the interior. There was no floor; only the void-black of the lake as it lapped against the interior walls of the room. The water could have been inches or miles deep, below the catwalk, but I couldn’t tell the difference when I looked down at it. Long-broken and deeply rusted machinery broke the surface, all around the room, and protruded upwards from the water like steel icebergs. The industrial catwalk ran around the edge of the room, but it seemed the only way accessible from up here was an open doorway on our left. The rest of the catwalk had fallen, or had been sheared off from the impact.

When I’d seen everything there was to be seen, I fumbled for the mace once more, and managed to shove it back into a loop of my armor to keep it safe and secure. I considered pulling out the flask of sunlight once more, but I decided it would be better to save it for a major injury while my discomfort faded. I could live with the bruising and aching for now.

After a short while, the hammering faded, although Trixie kept her back pressed against the door for quite a lot longer, before we determined that the skeletons had lost interest. She slumped against the floor, breathing heavily as she finally relaxed, and I nodded at her. “Th-thank you for p-pulling me in.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she waved her hoof dismissively. “You’re welcome. And also heavy, for a pegasus. That fraud had the right idea, giving you the mace instead of me.”

I smiled, just a bit. It wasn’t a compliment, but it showed that Trixie still thought I was worth the effort to haul to safety. It was better than nothing. “L-looks like that d-doorway is our way f-forward,” I muttered.

Trixie nodded, though she didn’t get up. Wordlessly, we both agreed to rest for a little while longer in what seemed to be relative safety. Eventually, my pain faded, and I was the first one to stand. Trixie followed afterward a few moments later, and let out a tired groan as she checked that her hat was still secure enough on her head.

Outside, the catwalk continued, and it seemed like it had been used to connect two parts of the building via an exterior walkway. Either this was some sort of fire escape for non-pegasi, or the two rooms needed to be isolated from spills from one into the other in some way. I didn’t have any memories of walking through this building before it fell, and I suspected I hadn’t worked here. I likely knew the machines from weatherwork, as opposed to personal experience with them.

As we reached the end, another doorway loomed before us, filled with fog. I paused before we moved towards it, and looked back along the catwalk. An immense sense of deja vu came over me, and Trixie noticed the look on my face. “What?”

“Th-this is the sp-spot. This is w-where they were talking, Ap-Apple Bloom and Sweetie B-Belle.” I looked out over the lake, and it was all just like I’d seen in her memories. I could see the trees, the water, the building—it all looked exactly the same, just older and more worn away. And the colors were all long faded, a far cry from the vibrant hues that Apple Bloom had seen.

I lost myself in the stolen memories for a few moments, before I forced my mind back to the here and now. We both turned to the fog wall before us, and Trixie took the lead in pushing through into the room beyond. I followed after her, and wondered just what we’d find within, after the journey to get here.

The wall of fog in the doorway didn’t want to let us through. It fought and strained, as though we were trying to push our way through mud, and it only relented when I drew Mistmane’s glowing mace. The light from the weapon seemed to soften the fog somewhat, and allow us passage within. Our hooves crunched on the floor within, and as we walked further into the great, fallen weather factory, I held the glowing mace high for a better look at our surroundings.

This section of the building consisted of only a single, massive room, and I was fairly confident that this must have been the oldest part of the ancient factory. The rest of the complex had been built out from this central hub, downwards, upwards, and sprawling to the sides, until it had fallen from the sky. In here, I should have seen the largest industrial cloudwinder ever built, a high-power aetheric autoclave to produce the clouds, and a massive mixing vat to feed them both, not to mention the various reserve and storage vats for water input, cloud output, and aether bleed-off from the industrial process.

Instead, I saw only a sea of bones, stretching from the walls into the deep, black abyssal shadows of the dead hall.

There must have been hundreds of thousands of bones filling the room, from thousands of dead, and they rose and fell in great hills as though they had fallen like snow. The greatest slopes reached up to the steel rafters, and they blocked the tall windows on the side that should have let faded sunlight illuminate the room. Even as I watched, the building shifted from the rhythm of the lake’s waves outside, and a scattering of bones rolled from the top of one of those slopes. They rolled all the way down, knocking skulls and femurs and bits of spine loose, like a landslide of hollow bones, until they slid to a stop a few leg-lengths from our light.

Trixie took the lead, with her horn coming alight in a projected beam that she swept across the room, and I followed her, mind dull from shock. I had already seen so many bones, so many dead, in the broken valley below. How many more were here? There were so many bones that we were only walking across the top layer. I felt them shift and compact and splinter as we struggled across the sharp, dusty surface. How deep had this room been originally? How much was now filled with the discarded bones of the dead?

Where had they come from? They couldn’t have all died in here, there simply wasn’t enough room. They had to have come after Cloudsdale had fallen. Was this where the Gravewardens interred their dead, to be thrown atop the pile? But nothing could decay now, and the dead were restless, so all that would accomplish would be to trap the Hollows in this room. And we were the only living creatures in the room that we could find—or as least as alive as an Undead could be. Maybe they simply stored all of the skeletons they cleaned off the streets in here? But then, they would keep coming up here for replacements, surely. That elevator was meant for ponies, not cargo.

Trixie’s light wavered, and I felt her shiver. I think she was just as unsettled as I was by the sheer amount of dead, but she did a much better job of hiding it. Perhaps she could ignore the surface we walked across, or pretend that it was just broken stone and gravel. But I couldn’t keep myself from shuddering in disgust and fear every time my hoof cracked a rib, or crushed a skull under my weight. So many dead, left in this great hall until they were ground into dust by their own weight. What a horrible thing to let happen to a single pony’s corpse, let alone a thousand.

“It has to be in here,” Trixie muttered to herself. “It has to be out in the open, and obvious. Because I am not going to start digging in here…”

I turned back to the door, but we had left it behind. The fog was too thick to allow the sunlight through, and so it had been lost to the shadows as we moved deeper into the room. Without that, we were only two points of light in a room so huge that we couldn’t see the walls from where we were. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that the darkness was pushing inwards, crushing our light down into a smaller and smaller pool of safety, the deeper we went.

It felt oppressive. Like we were drowning in it. I swore I saw things moving in the dark, black on black in the shadows, and I held the mace up to force the light just a little bit further out. All I revealed were bones and deeper darkness that the light had not the strength to penetrate.

We had been walking too long. We should have seen the opposite wall by now—we should be beyond it, over the lake. But the room continued, and so did the valleys of bone. Only the rafters above served as reminders that we were still in a pony-made structure, and even those were getting harder to see as our lights dimmed. Were those supports made of steel, or were they made of bone as well, masquerading as metal? Had we descended under the surface of the lake? What lurked within, and were we about to rouse it from its abyssal slumber?

At the edge of my hearing came a noise, but the sound was...wrong. Twisted, in some way. It was more akin to silence than a real noise, like some form of anti-sound. It was the rocking of the waves against the hull of a ship; it was the slow, incessant patter of the rain against the ground. It was the hum of distant, unseen machinery; it was a conversation where you couldn’t make out the words, but heard the indistinct voices.

It was the heartsong of the Gravewardens. Here, in this place, I could hear it. And I knew that what they sang was not the true song, but a pale imitation of what they had heard here, for no pony, living or undead, could recreate this song. Only the slow groan of the formless, numberless dead could sing what we now heard. The song of empty void, of loss and death and decay, of cold infinity, and the spaces between spaces.

I wish it wasn’t so damnably comforting. I wish it horrified me, made me panic and flee. But it was almost hypnotizing, and the crunching of our hooves as we continued onward faded as the song drowned it all out.

It was so tempting to join them. To lay down and bury myself in the bones of the dead, until I joined them, and we were one.

“Hey. Up ahead.”

Trixie’s voice pierced my reverie, and I shook myself awake. ”Wh-wha?”

She pointed with the light from her horn, and it focused on a pile of bones that stood out from the rest. It was too sharp a form to have formed naturally, and I knew it could have been no normal pile of bones. Even as we watched, it seemed to shiver slightly, as Trixie’s light shined across it. Surrounding it were dozens of skeletons, all bowed to the mass of bone, as if they had been frozen in time and died in that pose—but as Trixie’s light shined across them, they started to crumble and collapse, until their bones crumbled and collapsed to join the carpet below.

As the smaller masses of bones dispersed, the central pile of bones shifted. They seemed to be a single creature, and I stared at it for longer than I care to admit, as I tried to see patterns and shapes in the form. It was only when the eyes ignited—two golden embers that pierced through the darkness—that I could start to understand the creature’s anatomy.

Those golden eyes were housed in sockets made of bone, but the bones they were made of were not the skull of a pony. They seemed to reside within a skull made from skulls, as though the bones themselves had been sculpted into a face for the embers to occupy. Above the eyes, there protruded a horn, but instead of being smooth, it was formed from splinters of bone, packed and compressed into the conical mass that would have signified a unicorn. The body ground and shifted, and the bone dust that had sealed the empty spaces within fell like powder back into the carpet of dead below. More bones shifted, and I realized I was looking at a shoulder, which extended down a leg, into...a claw? And grasped within that claw, a bright little glimmer of light. The claw closed around the light as the creature clutched the glimmer to its breast protectively, but I could still see the glow through the bones of its fingers.

The jaw shifted and ground against the bones from which it had formed, and it twitched and chattered in a hollow mockery of speech. The song of the Gravewardens continued, but now there was a new tone, a new addition to the unseen chorus. I strained to listen to the noise, to understand what was said, as sound rolled through the air like the distant rumble of thunder.

There were words. It was speaking, and I could only just barely understand. Like an unending death rattle, it wasn’t formed by tongues and lungs, but air involuntarily forced through a throat, or a thousand throats, where it rumbled against bone and teeth. It was disturbingly similar to how I’d spoken my first words, all the way back in that bookstore, so long ago.

“Kkk-kkk-kkk-kinnn?”

Trixie’s ears perked up, as we both strained to listen, strained to understand.

“B-beee yyyooouuu kkk-kinnn? Sssiiisss-terrr orrr sssuuuppli-cant...?”

The syllables were too long, too drawn-out; they were barely more than a susurrus of wind passing through the room, and whistling through the bones within. The words of a ghost, or a legion of ghosts. But if I joined the song, and spoke with the voice as well, then they shortened. If the voice came through my own lips, then I could understand. And so we spoke as one, so that I could learn the meaning in what I said.

“The ch-children have been r-restless...in my s-sister’s absence...”

Trixie looked at me like I was insane, as my mouth spoke for the great dead one. Maybe I was.

“Is that you, s-sister? Or another s-supplicant child, come to s-see their so-called Gravelord?”

“Gravelord?” Trixie repeated, no louder than a faint whisper. I still saw the creature’s ears, formed from bonedust, shift towards her to listen. It had heard even that. “Is that what this thing is?”

“You r-recognize me not…” I groaned in curiosity and interest. “Then I d-doubt you be k-kin…why have you c-come?”

Trixie shook her head with a whinny of confusion. “Enough games! I don’t know what you’ve done to my assistant, but I am the Great and Powerful Trixie, and Trixie shall not be bewitched!”

“Tr-tr-tr-Trixie…” I repeated, and the name seemed to roll over my tongue, as if I were tasting it. “I r-recognize that n-name...I remember you…”

“Then you know why Trixie has come!” She declared, and focused her light on the Gravelord’s face. It turned from the light, as though pained by it, and Trixie grinned. “Whatever power animates your undead legions, and earns the worship of the necromancers below—Trixie has come to take it for herself!”

“Tr-Trixie…Lulamoon...” I muttered, and I felt the words grow more intense as I spoke. “Showmare...braggart...fool...madmare...thief...”

The Gravelord leaned forward, and began to grow in size. The claw that clutched the glowing light continued to do so as the creature stood, and more legs seemed to emerge from under the carpet of bones—or perhaps they were created in that moment, pulled from the piles and molded into the legs the beast needed. It slowly stood, and loomed over us as though the light from my mace was just enough to keep it from falling upon us and crushing us under its weight, in a tide of bone. From the Gravelord’s back came two more skeletal protuberances, that peeled away like the wings of an insect—an apt comparison, because as they began to split and separate into two parallel sets of humerus, radius, ulna, then further. They split apart into thin webbings of bone, and I began to see primaries and secondaries; feathers, molded from the formless dead that the creature had been formed from.

This was no beast, no creature, not even a ghost or pony—what had emerged before us was nothing less than a massive goddess created from bone and dust. An Alicorn of the dead. I knew now why my lips had named it “Gravelord,” and why the necromancers below worshipped this place, and the devastation that had occurred within this valley.

Trixie faltered as the Gravelord began to tower over her. “Err, although Trixie is, perhaps, willing to haggle instead-”

“This is no tomb for you to plunder, foal,” my lips growled. “This is a resting place...cold, dark, and gentle, for my children...those for whom their rest has been stolen...but if you will not let them rest...then I must teach you how.”

A massive hoof made of a thousand bones lifted above us, and I could see that the Gravelord intended to crush us flat. The time for talk was over, but I could still feel the rumble of the Gravelord’s song burbling through my throat, even as we readied for battle. Trixie canceled her light spell to charge up offensive magic instead, and we scattered to the sides as the Gravelord’s hoof slammed down into the carpet of bones where we had stood only moments before.

“Hit it!” Trixie shrieked from the other side of the alicorn’s limb. “Hit it until it dies!”

Flashes of light pushed back the darkness around us for a split-second at a time, as Trixie began firing magic wildly at the Gravelord. I joined her, and grabbed my mace in both hooves before I slammed it into the side of the massive leg as hard as I could.

I knew it would do some damage, judging by how it scattered the skeletons outside like matchsticks, but the mace’s enchantment was somewhat underwhelming in comparison to that. While it did seem to make the point of contact explode into a shower of powder, it only served to blast a crater into the side of the limb a little larger than my head. It did damage, and no small amount, but it would take a great many more hits just like that to fell this dead god.

But it did do one thing; it hurt the Gravelord. It howled like wind rushing through the skulls of the dead, and my own throat burned as I let out an involuntary screech. The giant hoof jerked back in pain, and I saw those massive, burning gold eyes turn on me. I was now the higher priority, while Trixie’s fireworks were little more than an annoyance. That massive bone-white horn burned with black fire, which completely failed to illuminate the dark room, and I turned tail to flee.

I didn’t see the spells as they were launched at me, but I could feel the cold magic as it blew apart the carpet of bones just behind my hooves. Broken fragments flew like shrapnel around me as I was showered with deadly magic, and It was only a combination of my own clumsiness on the sharp, uneven terrain and a decent amount of luck that kept me from getting blasted to pieces. I managed to find cover behind a low embankment of bone, and I clutched the glowing mace to my chest as I wheezed through my aching throat.

Suddenly, the bones under me shifted. The embankment flexed like the waves of an ocean, and they forced themselves under me. I was flung high into the air, and the world spun as my wings snapped open on instinct. That stabilized my tumble, and while I knew I didn’t have enough room to fly, or even glide, I could direct my fall a little bit. My wings burned with strain, unused to such exercise after being left to atrophy for so long, but I tilted towards the Gravelord in hopes of ending up behind it.

Even that was unattainable; I slammed into the sharp, dusty surface of bones just to the side of our opponent, and my wing exploded in pain. I shrieked again, but this time the pain was my own, and I lost my grip on the mace. It tumbled away and bounced out of reach, and I couldn’t focus enough to grab for it before it was gone.

My wing was broken, I knew in an instant. It hurt to even think about moving it, and it had been fully extended when I slammed into the ground. That thought dominated my mind and kept me from trying to move, because some deep memory screamed at me that I needed to keep as still as I could until somepony came to help me first aid. But I knew that we didn’t have time for that, not during this fight, and even if we did, then nopony would be coming to tend to our wounds. So I laid there, and made pained noises and whimpers, and waited for the Gravelord to stomp me flat and finish me off.

But it never happened; I could hear the grinding of bones and the detonations of Trixie’s fireworks, and my own throat continued to snarl and clatter in anger, but it seemed that the Gravelord was satisfied with my incapacitation. I was left alone, to whimper and bleed into the dust. And when I managed to open my eyes, I saw the glowing mace, where it laid in a pool of light and a crater in the floor.

I had to get it, and I had to help Trixie. She was holding it off, but I was pretty sure that she couldn’t do any real damage to the Gravelord with her spells. Maybe she could stun it, but nothing that would end this fight. I groaned sharply in pain again, as I forced my limbs to move, and agony pierced my side as my broken wing dragged across the carpet of bones.

It took more than I thought I had to crawl only a few leg-lengths to the shallow crater. I could hear Trixie shouting, sometimes obscenities at the Gravelord or at me, and sometimes asking where I was in an increasingly-panicked tone. I could hear the Gravelord responding, using my tongue and throat, forcing air out of my lungs, but I didn’t understand the words. When I reached the crater and pulled the mace back towards myself, I hugged it to my barrel protectively, and felt the bones under me rumble.

Gold eyes turned to face me, and I knew I didn’t have the strength to stand, to dodge the blow that was coming. Everything was pain, whether wet and hot from my broken wing, or cold and dull from the ends of my limbs. I fought against that feeling as hard as I could, and grasped for my fire. I didn’t want to die again, because I was so afraid that if I died here, I wouldn’t be coming back.

That fear charged my fire, and I felt warmth at the end of my hoof. My pyromancy swelled, and I threw the impossibly-heavy ball of flame at the Gravelord as it bore down on me. It wasn’t far, and it barely left my hoof, but as two massive skeletal legs slammed down on either side of me to pin me in, it was as far as it needed to go.

The fire flared, and heat erupted around me in a series of booming detonations. I saw the flashes of magma, and closed my eyes lest I be blinded, but I could still feel the bones rumble around with every blast. They slammed into the hooves of the Gravelord, and the explosions stunned it over and over as the fire burned it. The Gravelord howled through my lungs, and the ground rumbled one final time as it staggered backwards, blasted and burned from my desperate defence.

“Yes! Nice strike, Assistant!” I felt Trixie yank me to my hooves, and I felt nauseous as the world spun around me. My wing limply swung back and forth, and I felt the broken bones within all grind against each other, but I was standing now, with Mistmane’s mace clutched to my breast. For a moment, I looked up at the wounded Gravelord, and couldn’t shake the thought that it was doing the same with that strange little light.

The dead god didn’t stay stunned for long. I was leaning heavily against Trixie, and had only just regained my balance, by the time the Gravelord pulled itself back up into a standing position. Before, it had held itself in a regal manner, in a way that had commanded worship and respect. But now that I had wounded it with my fire—blackened the bones it was formed from, with the heat of my fear—it seemed all pretense of nobility or elegance had been discarded. Its legs twitched like those of an angry spider, and the Gravelord’s massive skull twitched madly as those giant golden embers focused on us.

It wasted no time trying to smash us with its skeletal hooves—instead, it spread its wings wide,  and they stabbed at us like fans of bone. We barely dodged away from the razor-sharp tips, and the false feathers between were pulverized as they slammed into the carpet. They erupted into clouds of dust, while the limb moved much faster, now that it had shed the unnecessary weight. Now, all that remained was a wickedly sharp broken phalanx at the end of the wing, which stabbed at us like the legs of a spider. But with two of them, they were even harder to dodge, and I shoved Trixie away when both of them came down where we had stood only a moment ago. They were uncannily similar to knitting needles made of bone, as they clicked and stabbed and tried to catch us between them for an easy kill.

I was already beginning to tire, and my broken wing burned like no pain I’d felt before. I couldn’t rest and let it heal, not until we had killed the Gravelord and escaped. Thankfully, Trixie took its attention once more, when a lucky bolt of magic lanced into the dead god’s eye.

There was a loud bang and a shower of dust, and Trixie crowed happily as the Gravelord staggered. “Yes! And Trixie has as many more as it will take to-”

I screeched, and the razor-sharp tip stabbed down out of the darkness. It was aimed for Trixie’s head, to stab through her skull and end her in a single blow, but lacking an eye made the strike go wide. Trixie was still struck, and it pierced through her armor and pinned her to the floor. But it went through her torso instead of her head, and so it only brought her to the brink of death, instead of ending her outright. Trixie gasped as blood gushed from her mouth, and her belly slammed against the floor with a crunch.

That got me moving. I galloped past the other wing as it stabbed wildly for me, and only stopped when it came down a hoof-length from my muzzle. That was too good an opportunity to pass up, and so I slammed the head of the enchanted mace into the side of the thin limb.

Just like before, it exploded into bone dust on contact, and the weight of the Gravelord was suddenly thrown off balance as the remaining length of the broken limb slammed into the carpet instead. My lips let out another howl of pain as we shared the pain of a shattered wing, and I broke back into a gallop as the Gravelord reeled and fell on it’s side, then began to flail in panic and pain.

Trixie was yanked back up and out of the floor, before she slipped from the end of the blood-spattered wing. She flopped onto the floor, and I tumbled to a stop before her, already reaching into my bottomless bag. The flask of sunlight leapt to my hooves, and while I considered downing the rest to heal my wing, Trixie was in much more danger. I uncorked the stopper and poured the glowing liquid across her body, and she let out a gasp, then started to cough out more blood as her wounds sealed.

There was more left, but I didn’t have time to use it, and so I had to drop the bottle into Trixie’s hooves so that I could draw my mace and face the enemy once more. Only...the Gravelord seemed just as confused as I was, and we stared at each other for a moment, with neither moving. For some reason, it seemed fixated on the flask of sunlight, and Trixie lying on the ground under me, while I stood over the wounded mare protectively.

But it only lasted a moment. My lips moved to let out a snarl, and this time, both the Gravelord and I were in agreement. I galloped directly at its head while it struggled to stand, and I tossed the mace into my mouth so that I could move at full speed. It was still lying on its side, and it seemed like its head was too heavy to lift. Instead, it seemed to be focused on using its horn to fire magic at me, but with one eye, the Gravelord’s aim was even worse than before. That glowing horn made a decent target, and so I swung the mace in my teeth as I bore down on my foe, and brought the glowing head to bear at the base, where it was connected to the Gravelord’s skull.

There was an incredibly loud bang, and I was thrown backwards as a wave of black fire exploded outwards. I expected to feel my thin fur ignite, and I expected pain, but it wasn’t more than a wave of heat. It was more force than anything else, a last-second desperate effort to push me back. I felt my lips open as if to cry out, but no sound emerged, and I heard the song of the Gravelord grow quiet, though it didn’t fade out entirely. My tongue was wholly my own, once more.

When I stood again, the Gravelord had not moved. One leg still clutched the glimmer of light to its breast, and the other was held between us as if to protect its face. But I’d come too far to stop now. I staggered closer, and a forceful smack from the mace caused the hoof to go limp, exposing the Gravelord’s massive head. The lone, burning golden ember focused on me, and I stumbled towards it as a feral growl rumbled out around the grip of the mace. The dead god’s jaw worked as if talking, but no sound emerged, and it had nowhere to run as I slammed the mace into the remaining eye socket.

The remaining ember winked out as dust exploded out around me, and I could taste the dried marrow on my tongue. But I was not deterred, and swung the mace again at the same spot. I’d stand here and smash the entire thing’s body to powder if I had to, all by myself.

The Gravelord’s body convulsed as it tried to fight, tried to escape, but it was blind, and crippled. The remaining wing flailed like a dying spider, and as I smashed the enchanted mace and dug deeper into the giant alicorn’s skull, it fell to the ground and grew still.

A few more strikes was all that was needed to truly kill the Gravelord, and the rest of the skull began to collapse back into loose bones and the dust that had glued the massive body together a few moments later. I stepped back to watch as the creature crumbled, and a satisfied feeling of victory swept over me.

We had won. Trixie and I, we had fought this massive monster with nothing but her magic and Mistmane’s enchanted mace, and we had won. We were going to survive this day.

As I reveled in the feeling, I noticed the leg that clutched whatever glowed within that strange claw, and how it was trembling once more. I staggered over to inspect it, but the breast it was pressed against collapsed first, and fell away. At first, I thought it was just revealing one of the ribcages or bones that had formed the Gravelord’s internal skeleton, but something within the breast moved. I held the mace up, just in case, but it wasn’t necessary. The light helped me see, however.

Within the Gravelord’s breast, there seemed to be a mare, but she was made out of the same crumbling bonedust as the rest of the dead god. She had been a unicorn, and while she looked as though she’d been pretty once, this imitation of how she must have looked before was desiccated, as though starved. Just like a Hollow, but one made of dust instead of flesh. She had no embers for eyes, only empty sockets, and her mouth trembled as lips made of dust peeled apart. Her form shook and shed more dust as she slowly extended her hoof towards the crumbling claw before her, and took the glowing light from within. Then she clutched it to her own breast, and I had to lean in to hear her as she spoke.

“Sw-Sweetie B-Belle? Is th-that you?”

I tried to talk, but I couldn’t find the words, and the bone dust from the crumbling corpse around us lined my mouth with chalk.

“I’m s-sorry you had to s-see me l-like this…” She murmured. “It’s b-been a v-very long t-time, has-hasn’t it?”

I nodded, and somehow, the mare knew. “I th-thought so...b-but that’s g-good...that m-means that it w-worked...that you r-received my g-gift...that ev-everypony received my g-gift...”

“G-gift?” I croaked.

The mare smiled, and more dust rolled down her form. “I c-couldn’t keep it all t-to myself, d-darling...Y-you know m-me...I had to sh-share it…”

She gently reached forward with one hoof, and I let her gently touch my jaw, then slowly pull me in. She tilted her head forward, until our foreheads touched. She felt cold and dusty to the touch, and a layer of her stained my brow. But feeling me gave the dead, blind mare comfort. “I’m s-sorry for l-leaving you all al-alone, Sweetie B-Belle...b-but it’s g-good you f-found me...I’ve one l-last gift to g-give...just f-for you…”

Her hoof took my own, and she pulled it into her other hoof, as I felt something metal pressed against it. Whatever it was, I took it in my own hooves, and felt hers grow limp. “L-live for me, Sw-Sweetie B-Belle...s-so pr-proud of you...and s-so happy...th-that all of our l-little ponies g-get to l-live f-forever…”

“W-what…?” I managed to croak.

The mare smiled, and leaned back in the crumbling cavity of the Gravelord. Her hooves trembled and grew still, before they began to crumble into dust that glowed like my mace, like the flask of sunlight, like the sunset over Equestria. “I l-love...love you...Sw-Sweetie B…”

She didn’t have the strength to finish her goodbye. Instead, she trailed off as the last remnants of the mysterious mare dissolved. For just a moment, she grew so bright that I couldn’t look at her, and I had to avert my eyes; when I looked back, she was gone, and the glowing dust was fading away, to join the rest of the dust and bones that carpeted this great, empty room.

After a few moments, I looked down at my hoof—at the gift she’d given me, intended for somepony else that I’d never even met. It was a scratched and tarnished golden necklace, old and worn. It looked like it had been intricately carved once, but those carvings were obscured now by all the scratches and damage on the surface. But the centerpiece still remained: a beautiful purple jewel, set into the necklace, which faintly glowed. When I closed my eyes, I could feel it, which meant that it was no magic, but the fire of a soul, trapped within the gem.

For some reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d made a horrific mistake.

I stood there for a while, as I stared at the necklace and thought about everything I’d seen on the way here. I was still thinking about it when Trixie approached from behind, and thrust the empty flask into my face. “Here, you can have this back. Whatcha got there?”

I blinked at Trixie as she plucked the golden necklace from my hoof, and looked at it in the light of her horn. With shaking hooves, I took the now-empty sunlight flask, and slid it safely back into my bottomless bag. “I...I th-think-”

“That this is what we came here for? It certainly fits the bill, though it doesn’t feel as powerful as I thought it would. Hm.” Trixie closed her eyes as she felt at it with her pyromancy, before she raised her eyebrows. “Oh, wait, this is...huh...there’s a soul in here…did you find this inside the big bastard?”

“Y-yes, but there w-was-” Trixie’s hooves took on a bright glow, and I realized what she was doing moments too late. “Wait, d-don’t-!”

A trickle of pink smoke curled upwards out of the jewel, and Trixie absorbed it before I could stop her. She froze suddenly, and went stock-still for a moment as the soul within the jewel washed over her.

When I grabbed Trixie, she seemed to snap out of it, and looked back down at the necklace, before she made a quiet “Oh.” Then again, a bit louder. “Oh! Ohhhhh. Hm.”

I wanted to cry, but I pushed it down. It was too late now. The jewel was cold and inert, drained of the soul that had remained within until we’d stolen it. “W-what did you s-see?”

“I saw…” Trixie trailed off, and looked down at the necklace again. Then she glanced around the dark interior of the building. “I saw…I see now…”

I shook her again. “W-what did you see, Trixie? P-please…”

She smirked, and when she looked at me, she seemed slightly unfocused. As if she were looking through me, instead. “I see how powerful this is now...where this power came from. And if it only took this little smidgen to do everything here…”

Suddenly, she shook me off of her, and stuffed the necklace into her hat. As she slapped the hat back onto her head, she waved a hoof. “Come along! Trixie has a real show to put on, and you’re going to help her, Assistant!”

She galloped off into the darkness, and didn’t even bother to light up the way before her. I nearly lost her as she disappeared into the dark, but I gave chase a moment later, and managed to follow the crunches of her hooves as her hooves hammered against the carpet of bones. I finally caught up to her, and we were both panting and wheezing in exhaustion as we reached the dark wall of fog that insulated this room from the world outside.

Trixie was already pushing through it, and I had to struggle after her. “Tr-Trixie, wait!”

“There’s no time to wait, Assistant!” Trixie said, with a manic giggle from the other side of the fog wall.

I forced my head through just as Trixie pulled her hinds loose. “Tr-Trixie, what are you t-talking about? Pl-please! Tell me w-what you saw, w-where you’re g-going!”

“We have a new goal, assistant. The bumpkin is a small fry by comparison!” Trixie grinned eagerly, as her hooves beat out an excited rhythm on the catwalk. “With this sort of power, Trixie can finally do something that has been a very long time coming!”

The rest of my body followed through the fog wall, and my broken wing ached as I dragged it out. “W-what’s that?”

Trixie cackled to herself madly. “Trixie can finally take her revenge, Assistant. She can find that foalish Twilight Sparkle, and make her pay for everything she has done to the Great and Powerful Trixie!”

I gaped at her like a fish. “Wha...who?”

Trixie was already beginning to eagerly pace down the catwalk towards the main building. “Then what…then Starlight! Starlight must see this too, that will finally impress her. She will finally see how Great and Powerful Trixie is, and she will beg to join her and abandon this stupid wild goose chase that Twilight sent her on-”

“W-what are you talking about?” I whinnied in confusion as I galloped along the catwalk to catch up to her. “I don’t w-want revenge? I d-didn’t want to do any of...this! W-we did s-something really b-bad in there, I th-think, and I wanted to help D-Dinky get free, and h-help you get your w-wagon! You k-keep changing your mind-”

“Neighsayer!” Trixie barked suddenly, and I stumbled back against the railing in shock. “That’s all you are! Another neighsayer, and you’ve come to humiliate Trixie! That’s all you’ve ever been! I should have known from the start, you’ve only ever cared about yourself!”

“W-what-” I didn’t understand any of this—Trixie’s personality had changed in a second! I’d gone from being her best friend to her worst enemy, just by asking her to slow down and explain things!

“Well, Trixie knows what to do with Neighsayers!” She let out a snarl, as she ducked her head low, and bared her teeth at me. I tried to move away, but I bumped into the railing again—which Trixie took advantage of. She spun around on her fores, and I saw a flash of her hinds as she whipped them towards my breast.

Trixie kicked me, and I felt the air leave my lungs as the impact slammed me off-balance, over the railing. The world spun as I tumbled, and I saw a flash of Trixie, grinning over the edge at me as I fell. Then my back slammed into the abyssal water of the lake with a teeth-shattering splash, and all went black as I sunk below the surface.
> 25 - The Black Lake
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was hard to know just how long I was unconscious, and even harder to know how long I was conscious and yet unaware of it. I could see nothing, I could hear even less, and without the wind or the dull ache of pain, I felt as though I had fallen outside of time itself. It held no meaning, and so I merely existed, without form or presence, or even the restrictions of thought.

What finally shook me from my trance was a blinding glimmer of light, a piercing bright intruding upon the abyss. I blinked, and before me floated a small, glowing gem tied to a string. The lightgem I’d been wearing as a necklace; I’d tucked it under the collar of my quilted barding, but the fall must have knocked it loose, and now it was floating away.

Away?

I focused on it again, and it burned my eyes, which were accustomed to the black abyss around me. But I focused on it all the same, and saw that, yes, it was drifting away. The glowing necklace was being drawn against the back of my neck, as the water tugged on the gem. I didn’t want it to go away—I liked the little light, even if it burned my eyes because I’d been away too long. The string went taut, as the necklace was pulled from me, and that pressure against my neck reminded me of my body.

All at once, sensation rushed back to me, and I was overwhelmed as I felt the pressure of the water as it crushed me. It was cold, so cold, and it pierced me through to my bones. I felt that burning cold in my bones, in my ears, in my chest. I had drowned, and the water had filled my lungs, saturated my corpse. And it felt wrong—it was too thick to be water alone, and as I tried to move my hooves, they were sluggish to respond, as though I were dragging them through black mud.

Points of pressure focused across my flesh, like goosebumps, or pebbles. Then sharper, and it felt like the water around me was filled with teeth, and the sharp ends of those teeth were being dragged across my flesh. They scraped, they sliced, and they threatened to crush and stab—but the hoof that I had extended towards my little light couldn’t feel them. Around that leg was only mundane cold. The light was protection from the dark.

I couldn’t lose it. I couldn’t afford to lose it, because if I did, then I would lose myself to the lake, and I would never again be able to escape. That gem on a string was my lifeline, and I grasped for it just as desperately. The lake, or the water itself, or something within the water—something didn’t want me to have it. It wanted to claim my body and mind for itself, and it resented the little glowing gem. But I knew that it was the only thing that was keeping me safe, now.

My pyromancer’s grasp was weak, but I barely needed any strength at all to grab at the gem. When I had it, I found that I could see the shape of my magic, against the darkness. A thin, glowing outline of a gryphon’s claw clutched at the gem, and held it securely, even as the water sought to crush the manifestation and tear the light from my hoof. But I held it tightly, and pulled it closer to myself. I clutched it protectively against my belly, while I curled up around it like a foal in the womb.

I didn’t know whether I was protecting it, or it was protecting me. But the dark around us didn’t like it one bit, and I felt it stab and slice at my back with claws larger than my body, as it tried to find purchase where the light couldn’t protect me.

I couldn’t stay here. Eventually, my little light would burn out, or my own magic would flicker, and I’d lose my grasp. I had to escape. I had to get out of here. But what was here? Where was up? Where was down? There was only oppressive darkness, all around me, and it didn’t want to let me free.

My vision clouded as my other hoof, the one not holding the light gem, began to search around me. I was lying on my side in a deep bed of mud, and I’d disturbed it, so now I couldn’t rely on my eyes. But it was a surface, a hard edge of reality against which I could anchor myself. It existed, and if the mud under the lake existed, then so must the shore. Oddly, I seemed to be heavy enough to sink. Either it was because the mud had invaded my lungs while I was dead, or it was something else unusual about the pitch-black water itself. At the very least, it meant that I could begin to drag myself forward through the cold black mud, hopeful that eventually, I’d escape this abyss.

The edges of my hooves, as I pulled myself forward...it was the strangest sensation, but they didn’t feel entirely real. As if pushing them outside the aura of the dim lightgem made them part of the darkness surrounding me. I thought maybe it was just because of how cold the water was, but the light gem didn’t produce any heat, only light. The fire within myself was fighting against the abyss as well, and that produced a little warmth, but not as much as a living pony would have, surely. But then…a living pony would have succumbed to drowning long ago anyway.

Instead, it was as though my fire, and the light from the gem, had formed a little bubble of reality within the crushing unreality under the water. It couldn’t extend very far; just enough for me to find purchase, and drag my little bubble through the mud. But maybe that was enough, for me to make my escape.

I only understood how long I’d been crawling, how long I had spent dragging my bubble of safety through the mud, when the light from the gem began to dim. It must have been a gradual process, or it had started to speed up enough that I could notice it. But it flickered, for a split second, and for that split second of darkness, I wasn’t sure whether I existed or not.

There was no transition, no steady brightening as I ascended, the dark soaking up all the light of the outside world with its absolute blackness. Instead, all of a sudden, I broke through the surface and was blinded. I never thought I’d see the sun again, and I’d been down in the deep for so long that I had been terrified that there might not have been a world to come back to when I emerged. The water had been freezing cold, but the feeling of cold air on my mud-soaked fur was even moreso, and I shivered as I dragged myself onto the shore and out of the water fully. I tried to look around, but the shore was just as blinding as the sky above. I could feel the faint heat of the sun, though, and I spread my wings and limbs to soak up as much of the sunlight as I could, while I lay on my belly.

My wing had already been broken when I fell into the lake, and while I couldn’t imagine the impact had done the limb any wonders, it seemed I had been under the surface of the lake for long enough for my fire to stitch the bones back together. While I was still blinded, I experimentally flexed and stretched my wing, and found only the dull ache shared by the rest of my skeleton. Occasionally, there was a sharp pain that reminded me that the bones hadn’t been set properly before they healed, but the wing seemed just as functional as it had before it was shattered. That was one benefit at least.

When I could open my eyes again, I found myself staring down at the bone-white soil of the shore. The dirt itself seemed to have mixed with a fine powder, and now the two were indistinguishable, though the bright white color faded the further away from the shoreline I looked. I gathered my hooves under myself, and rolled over to dry off my underside, and was met with an unpleasant writhing feeling from within as I flopped onto my back.

My whole body was still soaked with the inky-black mud from the bottom of the lake, but as I watched, it seemed to shudder and bubble when exposed to sunlight. I’d left a trail of gray in my wake, as the black mud had washed back down off my body and stained the white soil underneath. For some reason, the light seemed to repel it, and turn it fluid. What would have been gelatinous sludge became watery, and washed down the shore back into the water of the lake. It was even starting to drain out of my fur, although smears of the black muck stubbornly clung to every shadow and dark fold in which it could hide itself across my body.

My stomach lurched, and I sat up suddenly, then doubled over as something forced its way up my throat. Black muck painted the shore again, as the water and mud that had saturated my lungs and filled my stomach was suddenly and forcibly ejected. I felt it run out of my nose, and dribble down my lips, and it steamed in the sunlight as it rolled down into the water from whence it came. Three more times, I heaved and coughed, and more was evacuated from my insides.

When I was finished, I flopped back against the soil and resigned myself to lying in the sunlight for a good while. A discomforting wet feeling had saturated my cutie marks, as more black muck was somehow forced from within the darkness on my flanks. It had been inside the void, where my cutie marks should have been; it was inside of me, and maybe it always had been.

What was this darkness? It seemed to take the form of water and air, or perhaps it replaced them. Within it, time held even less meaning than it did in the light, and space seemed to shift and warp. It was everywhere the light couldn’t touch, including my own insides. My own blood had turned into it, or at least had been saturated with darkness—how long had I bled black ichor? Cutie marks were a representation of a pony’s talent, and it hadn’t just saturated them, but it seemed to have completely subsumed them. Not just mine; everypony’s cutie mark was now a black spiral of void.

I heard a bubbling, and forced my head up to look back down the shoreline at the lake. The black water seemed to be writhing, and I saw shapes, or perhaps the absence of shapes, swimming and churning under the surface. Invisible things moved through the lake, displacing water and replacing them with nothing, and they swarmed around the furrow I’d cut in the shoreline as I dragged myself from their grasp.

Slowly, the surface of the water shifted upwards, and I saw it strain against the light of the sun as it glinted off of the protrusion. The water rose in black spikes of liquid, trying to escape, and new furrows began to be dug in the shore. Some unseen force, or invisible creature, emerged from the water, and I saw its weight press the soil down as it crawled from the lake towards my hind hooves. I started to shuffle backwards in a panic, but my back thumped against the trunk of a tree, and I felt frozen as the sand indented towards me and the unseen enigma approached, eager to drag me back into the lake and-

“Heavens, you look like a drowned rat, covered in all that disgusting mud. Eugh.”

The feminine voice made me jump, and my eyes snapped up to find the source. A massive white cat, larger than me, sat in the crook of the tree above. She seemed twisted, mutated almost beyond recognition; her mouth, in particular, seemed grotesquely wide, and lines of teeth sharp as the teeth of a saw were exposed in a rictus grin at me. Her eyes were sharp, and her fur thick and pure white, brighter than the bone-white soil underneath. Even her claws seemed larger and sharper than they should have been, and they tapped an impatient rhythm against the tree trunk on which she rested.

“W-wha…”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, say something of substance, won’t you? All you equines are boring enough, but at least some of you can hold a conversation. If you can’t even do that, then I might as well go find one that will.”

I glanced back down at the shore, where some unseen nightmare had been crawling towards me, but the indents in the sand were gone now. As if they had never been formed in the first place, and only my own panicked trail remained. What had happened? Where had it gone? Had it ever been there at all?

I shook my head, and focused back on the twisted feline above me. “S-sorry, I j-just...There w-was a…” Was a what? I didn’t even know how to describe the thing unseen. “N-nothing, nevermind.”

The cat raised an eyebrow. “So you can talk! Though you don’t seem terribly concerned with making much sense, so really, it’s as if I still can’t understand you at all. Your words need meaning, or else they’re just noises made by a wild animal.”

I was being lectured by a cat. Why was I being lectured by a cat? “Wh-who are you?”

“Ah! Finally a question. I’m a cat, of course. I might look a bit different than those with which you may be familiar, but I assure you, I am and have always been that pinnacle of predation which you equines have dubbed feline.” The cat stretched on her branch, before she shifted how she lay on the branch to show more of herself to the sun. “Unless you meant to ask my name; names are a pony tradition, are they not? In which case, the name to which I am referred to by my pets is ‘Opalescence.’ I believe it’s also meant to refer to a particular type of jewel, or gem; I don’t care terribly much which one, but I’m sure it is quite dazzling, to share my given name.”

“Op-Opalescence. Okay.” I mumbled to myself, before I looked back up at her. “Why c-can you talk?”

“Why can you?” She responded.

I blinked at her dumbly for a few moments. “I...I d-don’t know. P-ponies have always t-talked. Cats...d-don’t? Usually.”

“What a haughty assumption. Cats have always talked, of course; Ponies have just never listened before, beyond a few particularly clever exceptions. Now that you’re all undead, it seems as if you’ve finally learned how to listen. And now you’ve all such a pleasant scent...really, it’s all quite an improvement to how you fools were before...and oddly familiar...”

Suddenly, I was very aware of how she was looking at me, and I was glad that I was covered in mud. If I wasn’t, I think she would have simply pounced on me, and I would have been slain once again. “F-familiar?”

“Mmm.” Suddenly, she leapt out of the tree and landed in front of me, and her weight shook the ground under my hooves. Her nose twitched as she sniffed me, but then she leaned back, and wiped the mud off with her paw. “Mmmm, yes, definitely quite familiar. Even under all that mud, I recognize the faint scent of my pets. You’ve gone and met them, have you?”

“P-pets?” I leaned away from the giant predator, who loomed over me as she seemed lost in thought. After a moment, she wiggled her hips and leaped back into the tree, which creaked and groaned under her bulk.

“Indeed, the larger one, and the smaller one. I’ve never cared to learn their names, but you’ve unmistakably got their scent upon you.”

I shook my head in confusion. “Y-you mean your owners?”

She scoffed at that. “Hardly! A cat isn’t owned by any other creature except themselves. No, they are my pets, and not I theirs. After all, they live in my house, and I feed them, or try to. They always refused the prey I caught for them, which was quite rude. Until they moved out here, and I had to move my hunting grounds accordingly.”

“M-moved out here? D-do you mean the Gr-Gravewardens?”

“More pony names; I’m afraid I don’t know of whom you speak. Unless you mean the ponies down below, living and undead?” I nodded, and she rolled her eyes. “No, not them. Those undead make fine prey, and I hunt them from time to time. But no, my pets live in that building on the lake, or at least the larger one does. The smaller one has gone elsewhere, and I’m tempted to follow her. This place bores me to tears, without anything to watch or hunt—save for the shuffling dead.”

I felt a pang of guilt. “Y-your ‘pet,’ did she have white f-fur? And a n-necklace, with a g-glowing jewel?”

“Ahhh, you have met her, just like I thought!”

“In a m-manner of speaking,” I mumbled. “We...I k-killed her.”

Opal’s mouth turned into a wide grin once more. “A fellow hunter, then…interesting, my pets are no easy prey, though they are quite fun to stalk. Were quite fun to stalk, as their number has been reduced by one, or so you claim.”

I stared at the grinning cat in confusion. “Y-you’re not angry, that I k-killed your...pet?”

“Oh, I’ll find others,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her paw. “I’m actually much more taken with you, for I have no idea if you’re telling me the truth. You certainly don’t look like a hunter; you soft ponies make for terrible predators, much less undead ones that look nearly ready to fall apart. Tell me, how did you slay my pet?”

Hadn’t I just been doing this? Hadn’t I been doing this all along, giving what information I had freely, and never getting any back in return? When were my questions going to be answered? Because I certainly had a great deal of them, now that I’d spent some time in this world.

No more. I’d done a terrible thing in there, and I’d made a lot of mistakes to get to that point. I couldn’t stop myself from making terrible mistakes, not entirely, but having at least a little information would help prevent me from making more in the future.

I struggled to stand, and shivered as black mud of the unknowable slithered down my legs, and boiled in the stagnant sunlight. I stared up at the cat that was too large, with my eyes formed from strange magic, in a forest that was long dead by means unknown, on the shores of a lake that seemed more like a portal to non-existence. “You f-first.”

“I beg your pardon?” The cat propped her chin on her paw; a distinctly pony-like gesture. She claimed to be above us, but she had to have learned that from us at some point. She seemed more amused at my refusal than anything else.

“S-sick of telling, never l-learning. You f-first. Tell me about your p-pet, about the p-pony I killed. So I know s-something about her, so I c-can remember her as more than a g-ghost.”

“And why does it matter?” Opal said, with a smirk. “She’s dead now, or so you claim. That’s the way of things; predators hunt prey, and the old and weak are consumed by the new and the strong.”

“But you c-cared for her.” I pointed out. “You c-call her your pet, and you s-said you tried to f-feed her, and that she l-lived in ‘your’ house. You f-followed them out here, so you m-must have cared about them. How d-does that fit into your ph-philosophy?”

That seemed to sour her mood slightly. Opal shifted again to glare at me directly, and her claws began to drag against the dead bark of the tree absent-mindedly. “Because she amused me. I liked to watch the two of them scurry around my territory, busy themselves with strange things that didn’t matter at all. Clothing, little bits of metal, and shiny jewels. All meaningless, but they attracted new ponies every day, and they amused me as well, so I decided to leave them be. The clothing, and the cloth she made it from was good to nap on as well; it was a little game we played, where I would find the softest of the fabrics and sleep on them, and she would shoo me off.”

“She w-was a seamstress?”

Opal wrinkled her nose. “Is that what you ponies call it? I suppose so, then. She traded bits of metal and gems for fabric, which she worked at with her magic and strange vibrating desk, before trading it back for more metal and gems. Circular and pointless, as I said before.”

The conversation could almost be described the same way. But I persisted. “W-what did she look like? B-before she came out here.”

“If you killed her, as you so claimed, then I think you should know very well what she looked like.”

I shook my head, and my eyes wandered again to the bleached-white soil. “Sh-she was all wrong...m-made of dust, like b-bones ground into p-powder. No m-mane, no eyes. She was b-barely more than a sk-skeleton, once we…” I winced. “...r-removed the shell.”

“That’s not too far off, then.” Opal had calmed down a bit, now that I wasn’t arguing philosophy any more. She started to examine her claws, and the scores she’d dug in the tree trunk. “She’d always been pale, like bone, but lighter. Her—mane, you called it?—was a dark color, always loosely wound in a spiral like her rolls of cloth. She was much too thin, and she reminded me of a bird in some ways. My fattest catches were always brought to her, for I feared she would starve if I didn’t provide them.”

Somewhere, at the back of my mind, I had the haziest of images. I dug at it, focused on her face, and tried to add eyes and a curled mane to what I’d seen in the dark factory. There was something there, but it was vague, uncertain. I glanced back up at the cat, as she lazed in the tree above. “An-anything else?”

“You want more?” said the cat, with a huff of incredulity. “Well, I suppose there was always the stench.”

“St-stench?” That didn’t fit at all. Not with the image I had in my head.

“Oh, yes. She was obsessive about covering up her natural scent. She reeked of flowers and oils and outside, but never as it should be, not like the actual outdoors. No, she insisted on smelling like the most absolutely pervasive scents, like the pollen of flowers, distilled and focused into a horrific odor that drowned out any other in the room. Lavender, I think you ponies call it? She yelled that a few times before, when I knocked over a bottle of the stuff...”

Opal continued to ramble on, but her voice was lost to me, as the memory suddenly sharpened. I could see her now; standing in a town square in a ground-borne township. Ponyville, maybe? And she was elegant, beautiful. Her mane was combed and curled, and a shade of dark purple that made her carefully-brushed white fur stand out all the more. I couldn’t remember the color of her eyes, but her face was so different from the withered corpse made of dust with which I’d spoken. And through it all, the muted scent of flowery perfume.

I’d known her, or at least I’d met her often enough to remember her. And for the first time in a long time I had, just maybe, a hint as to who I had been before.

Opal hadn’t stopped complaining about the dead mare. “...And then there was the tea, and you’d think she never drank any water! The stink of that horrid liquid saturated the building, she drank so much of it. All these different types too; maybe I would have liked it more if she stuck to one, but they all mingled together and made it impossible to smell anything-”

“W-what was her name?”

“Pardon?” Opal shot me a glare when I interrupted her.

I pressed on, and asked again, “What was her n-name? Sh-she had a name.”

“You ponies put too much importance on names,” the Cat said, with a roll of her eyes. “What does it matter what her name was? She’s dead now.”

“It m-matters to me!” I cried, and I stamped my hoof into the mud. “It m-matters to me, and I’m al-alive, or at least...less d-dead. I w-want to know the name of the mare I k-killed.”

Opal made a hacking noise, which I think was her way of showing disgust. “Fine. The other ponies that were always coming by, and the smaller one of my pets—they usually called her ‘Rarity.’”

I’d hoped the name would jog more memories loose, or at least bring the image of her face into more detail, but I didn’t recognize it. It fit the mare perfectly, however, and I didn’t doubt Opal’s own memory. At the very least, I knew her name, even if Opal was right, and it was just a name. It made me feel better, to put a face and a name to a Hollowed mare, even if it wasn’t myself.

“Satisfied?” Opal said, as she glared at me once more. “I should hope so, now that I’ve told you all that. Now, I believe we had a deal, and you’d tell me how you killed her, for my own curiosity’s sake?”

I swallowed a lump that had suddenly leapt into my throat. “R-right. Another m-mare, she gave me a m-mace…”

I trailed off, before my explanation had ever truly started. Where was the mace, come to think of it? I’d been holding it when I talked to Rarity, and stowed it in a loop of my barding afterwards to chase after Trixie. The action had been instinctual, even after using the mace for only a little while. So it had fallen with me, into the lake, but I didn’t have it now.

My eyes turned back towards the black water, which even now, seemed black and endless and horrifically inviting. My hoof drifted to the little lightgem, which had already been flickering out when I made my escape the first time. It was hard to tell in this light, but it looked dim, as though it had already burned out for good while I had talked with Opalescence. I wouldn’t be going back into the lake to retrieve the mace, I knew that for sure. I sighed as I realized it had been lost for good; hopefully, Mistmane wouldn’t be mad that I had lost her gift. It was such a good weapon, too.

“It’s n-not important,” I said, with a sigh. “I was w-with another mare, Tr-Trixie…”


*	*	*


I gave Opalescence the abbreviated version of the story; she didn’t need to know why we’d come to the valley, nor did she seem to care. My description of Trixie held her interest, though she wouldn’t say why, and said she’d explain after I was done. The skeletons, by comparison, she nearly asked me to skip past. Clearly, they were of little interest to her.

When I finally began to describe the dark, endless interior of the weather factory, and Rarity within it, in the form of the Gravelord, that seemed to confuse her. I had to spend a while describing the dust, and how she’d crumbled at the end, before Opal let me talk about the fight that had led up to that point. While my theatrics in the battle itself seemed to amuse her, she was confused why I’d dragged it out for so long. I think she had trouble understanding that I couldn’t just go for the Gravelord’s throat, at least in any meaningful way.

Trixie’s actual contributions to the fight were mostly glossed over. She’d spent most of it out of my focus anyway, and I still wasn’t terribly happy with her, after that kick. Aside from a couple of moments where she’d stunned the Gravelord, she hadn’t done all that much in the fight to begin with. But then, that made sense for the showmare. She was an illusionist, and she’d mostly had me fighting her battles for her in all the time I’d known her. Presumably, she was long accustomed to it in all of her previous assistants. But I decided to put a mental pin in the subject of Trixie, so I could work out how I felt about her later, on my own time.

When I described actually how I felled the Gravelord, it confused Opal, because in her eyes, I was weak. Far weaker than the Gravelord had been, in nearly every respect. Eventually, she declared that I had been cheating, with my magic mace. In a straight fight, the Gravelord would have slain me instead, and I found it hard to disagree. With that, I mostly lost her interest, because I’d revealed myself to be “weak prey” after all. She decided to skip the rest of the story after that, including Rarity’s final words, which suited me fine; they weren’t meant for Opal, anyways.

But I did detail how Trixie had seemingly gone mad, and kicked me off the catwalk into the lake. The cat got a devious grin on her too-wide face at hearing that. “Serves you right, then. She was stronger, though she didn’t finish off her kill. Perhaps she thought you weren’t worth her time.”

“M-maybe,” I said, with a shrug. “Don’t really c-care. J-just want to go back to Ponyville.”

The Cat smirked again. “Well, you might be out of luck, in that case. The fastest way out of this valley is the same path she took, but it’s a steep one, and treacherous. No trouble for me, of course, being that felines always land on their paws. But ponies like you, ooooh, you might make a nice-smelling smear on the way down…”

I shook my head at the thought. Trixie seemed sure of hoof, and even if she slipped, we’d been here for long enough that she would have recovered from a fall like that. Not to mention however long I’d spent floundering at the bottom of the lake. “I d-doubt it. But can you sh-show me the path? I d-don’t care how steep it is, if it m-means I don’t need to fight past the Gr-Gravewardens.”

Opal smirked at me. “Normally, I’d say no, and remain here to lounge in the sun.” She wiggled her hips, and then leapt out of the tree, to land with a loud thump at the base of the tree. “But I think I’ll head that way anyways, to find new hunting grounds—perhaps my other wayward pet. Follow me if you like, or you can stay here. It doesn’t matter much to me.”

I nodded, and as the massive cat began to weave her way through the dead underbrush, I fell into her wake to follow behind her. At least the journey back to Ponyville would give me time and quiet to think, because I had a lot to think about.
> 26 - Red
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You c-can’t be serious.”

The mountain path wasn’t so much “hidden” as it was “so unreasonably rough and obtuse that no sane pony would try and traverse it.” I suspected even a goat would have difficulty climbing these rocks, and I would have to be extraordinarily careful when descending back down the mountain. The start of the path went up into a narrow stone gully lined with lumpy rocks, and presumably cut over the mountain somehow. From there, it must have descended into a parallel valley, which would hopefully be unguarded and easier to traverse eventually. I was beginning to rethink fighting my way back through the Gravewardens, as opposed to climbing through here.

“Mmm, well. I can’t say as to whether that other pony made it down safely, but I certainly saw her climbing up here. I considered stalking her, and pouncing when she paused to rest, but I’d found such a comfortable spot in the sunlight…” Behind me, Opalescence rubbed her massive furry bulk against a large boulder which had been warmed in the sun for a very long time. I suspected she got sidetracked like that a lot.

“R-right...I guess I’ll see where it g-goes, then. Are you c-coming with?” I started to slowly struggle up the large rocks. They looked as though they’d been somewhat smoothed by the water and wind on the top side, but the undersides were still rough, as though they’d just been broken from the mountainside. Whatever had loosened them must have happened relatively recently.

“Hm? Oh! Yes, I suppose I will. For as long as you continue to be entertaining, at least.” Opal pulled herself from the warm rock with what must have been a titanic effort, and began to follow after me.

However, the big cat was much less cautious than I, and as she leapt from stone to stone, I felt the rocks under my hooves quake. An earth pony probably could have worked out how bad the rockslide was going to be, but it was barely a warning to me. I threw myself to the side, just as a stone the size of a door skipped off the stone where I’d been standing only moments before and exploded into lumps that rolled down the mountain. “Woah! W-watch it, this is really d-dangerous!”

“Oooh, fie,” meowled the massive cat. “You are undead, aren’t you? And I’m a cat; I can always land on my paws. What’s a few lumps of rock?”

“I d-don’t think I can r-regenerate being crushed flat…” I murmured, but the cat was already bounding upwards again. I followed after her, with significantly more caution.

After a short, but painful, climb up the rock-strewn slope, I pulled myself up onto a large rock. The top was wide enough that Opal could splay herself fully in the sun, and I could walk around her without much fear of the edges. I wished both those details needed not be discovered by experience, but progress was progress.

As I looked further up the slope for the best path, I glanced back at the giant feline basked on the warm rock. “W-why are you so large, an-anyway?”

Opal grinned, and once more I was reminded that her mouth easily spread wide enough to bite me in two. Thankfully, I think she was just excited to talk about her favorite subject—herself. “Large? Oh, I’m not large at all. I’ve always been this size.”

I found a promising-looking path, and began to climb again while talking with Opal. “S-somehow I doubt that. How d-did Rarity keep you in her...er, y-your house, if you’ve always b-been larger than her?”

“Well, my house used to be much, much larger. You little ponies used to be larger too, but then you all shrunk yourselves. It seemed a very strange decision at the time, I must say.”

“We all sh-shrunk ourselves?”

“Indeed! And the streets, trees, and everything else. I must say, it was as impressive as it was confusing.” Behind me, Opal rolled to her paws, and started to follow my path up the mountain again. “At the very least, it’s good that you left the prey untouched, or at least didn’t play around with their sizes too much. Can you imagine if you’d all kept the rats proportional to yourselves? Why, I’d have to eat a hundred just to sate my hunger!”

I shuddered. So the rats were proportional to Opal, then. Not to ponies. Then going by that measurement, they’d have to be the size of large dogs now, or maybe even rival a shorter pony. I could have happily lived the rest of my undead life without that knowledge, and I hoped I’d never encounter dog-sized vermin for myself.

“In fact, if anything, I’d say you improved their flavor. That odd sparkle they have now, that warm tingle of magic, it makes the prey quite delicious.”

That caught my attention. “Y-you’ve been eating the C-Chaos-tainted animals?”

“What’s chaos?” Opal asked, genuinely confused. “Is that another nonsensical pony name? Call a rat a rat, it’s much less confusing.”

I stumbled over a rock, and dropped to my knees for stability while I watched it bounce down the mountainside, and into the dead forest below. When I stood again, my knees were sore, but it was better than falling with the stone. “N-no, chaos is...it’s l-like a form of m-magic, but it c-creates change for itself.”

It felt like it had been months since Zecora had explained that to me and Dinky. With the sun stopped in the sky, maybe it had been.

“Interesting…so that’s why you’ve all shrunk, then; that explains some things.” It most certainly did, though I strongly suspected that we were looking at the problem from two utterly different perspectives. In more than just the literal sense.

So she’d clearly been exposed, but she wasn’t burning like the deer had been...I almost considered that her anatomy wasn’t twisted in any unusual ways, but a glance back at her far-too-wide mouth made for an excellent reminder. Even second-hoof exposure to Chaos magic could twist their body, then. It was much harder to say whether it had twisted her mind; while I doubted she’d so flippantly considered hunting ponies before, she was, after all, a cat. And cats were predators at any size, which constantly had me on edge around her.

I paused to check my hooves, and the mud soaked into my flesh, and Opal continued up the mountain anyways. One of her paws pressed down on my back to walk over me, and I groaned as I fought against her weight. Then she stepped back off me, and I shot her an unseen glare, before I focused on my hooves again.

While the blackest mud had boiled off in the sunlight, I still had a layer of dried mud that clung to my thin fur, and cracked and crumbled as I walked. It had been enough to dissuade Opal from eating me so far, apparently. Something about the black mud had disgusted her enough to completely ruin her appetite. While I wanted to get the disturbing mud off of me as soon as I could, I decided it could wait until Opal and I had gone our separate ways.

Speaking of exactly that, I heard Opal yowl from up ahead; though not in pain or fear, but mere annoyance. I resumed my climb, and joined her a few moments later, where I found the cat pressed against the mountainside. She seemed to be trying to reach into a crack in the mountain with her paw, but wasn’t having much success.

“Um. W-what are you-?”

“Stupid mouseholes!” She yowled again, before she slumped against the broken stone wall. “Or ponyholes, I suppose. I can smell the sweet scent of rot through this crack, but it’s much too small for me. And there’s no way around from here, it seems. I’ll have to go all the way back down—what a pain.”

Opal shrugged away from the wall, and looked back down the rockslide, which allowed me to investigate. It seemed as though a great force—such as a city falling into the valley—had split the very stone of the mountain itself, and left a significant crack. It was barely wide enough for a pony to carefully trot through, and seemed uniform for as far as I could see. The floor was barely that; mostly, it was made of broken stones that had fallen from above and filled the space below, forming a nearly-perfect tunnel. Up above, I could see the light of the sun reflected down the sheared rock faces, which provided just enough light by which to see.

Well then. I could see how Mistmane would have noticed this path, and it made sense that Trixie would have passed through as well. Either she’d already moved through the tunnel and was long gone, or I’d come across her on my own way through, stuck in a space too narrow for her to traverse, where I’d likely join her. “G-guess this is where we sp-split up, then?”

“I suppose so,” Opal murmured, with frustration still evident in her voice. “I may go looking for my other pet, or I may simply search for better hunting grounds. Should you wander into them, Undead, I should hope you’ll have washed that awful muck off. It’s a crying shame that your delicious scent should be overwhelmed by that...filth.”

“Th-thanks? I think?”

Opal was already pacing down the rockfall, and seemed content to ignore me as she left. As soon as she disappeared behind a large boulder, I noticed I hadn’t been breathing, likely since I emerged from the lake. Was that due to my submersion under the waters knocking me out of the habit? Or more likely, had keeping a massive predator as a guide been making me nervous? In either case, I turned back to the crack in the rock, and started my breathing exercises again as I climbed into the tunnel.

I felt immediately claustrophobic in this space. While the air was fresh, and flowed through the cracked mountain with a loud whistle, I could hardly spread my wings at all. The sunlight from above helped a bit, and kept me from feeling too trapped. The knowledge that I didn’t even have enough room to properly turn around, and would have to walk backwards if the path turned out to be a dead end, was unsettling enough to outweigh that comfort.

In the end, I managed to keep moving forward by occupying myself with my mantra of flare and flicker, as I took in the cold mountain air with ragged breaths. But it wasn’t enough to fully occupy my thoughts, and so my mind wandered. Now that I was alone again, my thoughts turned to Trixie, no matter how much I tried not to think about her.

It wasn’t that I missed her. In fact, there wasn’t much else that could be further from the truth. I thought back to all the time we’d spent traveling together, and with only my own thoughts for company, a fact quickly presented itself: Trixie had never really cared about anypony except...well, Trixie. At least, not as far as our little adventures were concerned.

Every single thing she’d done had been entirely motivated by her own self-interest, whether by her own decisions or through the ponies around her—myself included—twisting what we wanted to accomplish to make it work in Trixie’s favor. Trixie wanted out of jail, and then she wanted her wagon, and then she wanted revenge on Applejack? And reminding her of those facts, or at least not arguing when she tried to rationalize our objectives with those goals in mind, had been the only way to keep her around as a traveling companion.

It was inherently deceptive, and I hadn’t even realized I’d been doing it. That thought unsettled me; how far could I have taken that, to further my own goals? Of course, the own lack of any major goal of my own would have made that difficult, but the opportunity had certainly been there. That was a rotten base for an actual friendship.

Trixie and I had never really been friends. Unlike myself, Trixie had never seemed to harbor that illusion—she’d only called me “Hollow” or “Assistant” in the entire time that I’d known her, and all of her actions were at least consistent with that. My own were not; I had stubbornly—but naively—kept trying to get closer than that, so that we could form an actual friendship, like what I had with Dinky. That had only made sense to me, since, like Dinky, we were going to spend a lot of time fighting and traveling together.

The worst part of thinking these thoughts was that now I was questioning that friendship as well. Was my relationship with Dinky a healthy one? She clearly saw me as a friend, and didn’t want me to remain in jail. But I was the one working to get her out, while my own fate was more-or-less undetermined. When she was freed, would we go our separate ways? Would she remain in Ponyville, free inside the walls, while I was effectively free if I remained outside them?

And Trixie had referred to Dinky a few times as my “fillyfriend.” No space in the middle; she meant in the romantic sense. But that definitely didn’t feel right, not for the friendship that Dinky and I shared. I still had no libido at all, regardless of the other pony, mare or stallion, living or undead. If Dinky felt that way—which I doubted, as she hadn’t shown any sort of obvious romantic inclinations towards me—then I should probably gently dissuade her, just in case. That line of thought was easy to conclude, in the end: Trixie was terrible at reading interpersonal relationships, and jumped to conclusions a lot for the sake of a good story.

Fittingly, I pushed past a sheet of ice-cold mountain water that had formed a thin stream down one of the walls. I glanced up, but couldn’t see a source; presumably, a spring or natural meltwater pool had broken into the mountain crack at some point, and simply flowed down the path of least resistance. It passed into the packed stones under my hooves, and disappeared into the depths of the mountain below. I did use the fresh flow of clean water to scrub the rest of the black mud from my flesh, and rinsed out my mouth a little bit more, to make sure I had left the physical remnants of Trixie’s kick behind. The mental ones, though, those would not leave me for a while yet.

She really had just snapped, hadn’t she? She’d gone from grinning like a filly with a new toy, to a mare betrayed, in less than a moment. Like flipping a coin. Had that always been there, and I’d forced myself to ignore it so we could keep moving? Or was that a new development?

She’d held the door open for me, out on the Rock Farm. She could have easily hidden herself away, and left me to die as a distraction, to ensure that she went undetected. But she’d let me catch up to her, before I bled out in the back of the windmill. She hadn’t seemed to care much about me past that point; as quite a great deal of time had passed in the interim without any aid given, but she still included me in her planning when I did wake up. Though even that planning...she’d made it clear that she could do it herself, but in doing so, she’d shown that she clearly cared enough to threaten me into compliance. With that, she’d convinced me to be bait for the lizard.

She’d been very eager to kill the boss of the Ashen Wallowers. Entirely too eager for my comfort, and I had no doubt that if I hadn’t been there, she would have forced her way inside to kill him. That aggressiveness had reared its head when Apple Bloom attacked, and was thankfully put to good use by helping me slay her. But then she’d been extremely forceful about how I should absorb the filly’s soul; she’d pressured me to commit an act we both knew I was uncomfortable with committing.

My thoughts drifted to her actions as a mentor. She’d taught me how to throw a fireball, and clearly placed a great deal of importance on the knowledge of casting the spell. But it was a spell powered by hate, anger, frustration. It was a spell that seemed as though it would be the first shot fired in an argument, and would invariably lead to bloodshed. It seemed as though the caster was meant to revel in their loss of control, in allowing their emotions to boil over into the metaphysical. That was a terrible thing to teach a student, even I could see that.

Finally, in nearly every interaction we’d had with the Gravewardens, I’d felt like I’d been holding Trixie’s leash. I’d constantly had to talk her out of attacking them or fighting our way through them, for the sake of moving through without being detected, or without starting a massive fight. She’d been incredibly eager to slay them all, and the fact that I sympathised with her even a little bit...that genuinely upset me. Even after the mind control, they’d just been ponies. Stupid ponies, at least the ones who were using awful magic for their own benefit. But they hadn’t been complete monsters, or at least not all of them. Mostly, they just seemed like they wanted to be left alone, like the dead god they worshipped.

After all that, I really couldn’t deny it: Trixie was an awful influence, and I was almost certainly better without her.

Would I have been better off without her from the start? That was harder to say. Despite everything else, having a second pony to help me fight had been invaluable. Together, we had slain Apple Bloom, and I had little doubt that the filly would have wiped the floor with me if I were by myself.

What about other ponies in the future? Dinky had made it clear that she had little interest in the world outside Ponyville now, so she would almost certainly resist any further exploration. I’d be by myself outside the walls, unless Applejack caught another fool to force into this odd expendable-prisoner arrangement. Could I trust anypony like that, or any other pony that I met out here who would join me?

Perhaps not at first; I’d have to learn from my experience with Trixie. Some ponies didn’t want to make friends, or would be bad friends if we became as such. In general, I’d have to be a bit more discerning and a little more guarded. For some reason, accepting that fact made me horrifically depressed, and I sagged against a rock face for a short while as I came to terms with it. Ponies were naturally social creatures; if another pony was excluded from the social herd, then there must be a reason. Closing myself off to that, even just at first to get a better idea of who they were, that felt like it went against my very nature.

Eventually, I swallowed and continued to move through the mountain pass. There was nothing to be done for it; that was the way the world was now. I could hate it all I liked, but the world wouldn’t change for me. So the only thing I could do was keep moving, and make friends where and when I could.


*	*	*


After I passed through the crack in the mountain, I found why we couldn’t have simply come in from this side. The tunnel terminated in a steep drop, and though the cracked rock face continued downwards, the sheared stone was too sharp and slick from rain to be climbed with hooves. I had to leap awkwardly from the end of the tunnel into the dead branches of a tree, and it hurt only slightly less than plummeting onto the jagged rocks would have. Still, I was able to stagger away after I fell out of the branches, and once I shook the twigs off, my worst injuries were a scattering of bruises across each limb, and a sore barrel.

Afterwards, I began to limp down the steep valley. I felt distinctly lonely without another pony, or even a snobbish talking cat, beside me to watch for predators, and talk to as I traveled. I mostly spent the time taking in the scenery, which was nearly spectacular enough to replace it, but I still kept glancing around nervously for potential threats, just in case.

The fog was thin in these mountains, and that allowed me to see nearly to the low end of the valley, where another meltwater river ran out into the misty plains of Equestria. Snowflakes drifted down this slope, as though they’d lazily rolled off of the clouds above. Not quite enough snow fell to cover the ground or make the steep path too dangerous, but I could imagine this valley being used for skiing or snowboarding before the sun stopped. It was probably even more beautiful in winter, back when seasons still changed, and winter was more than a word.

My eyes also turned upwards, to the mountains that ringed the valley, and I was able to spot something beyond before I descended back into the mist. One of the other mountains nearby had a protrusion sticking out from the side at a sharp angle, an unquestionably unnatural formation, too precisely shaped amidst the surrounding slopes and cliffs. Though I couldn’t make out any clear details, I decided that must have been Canterlot, built off of the side of the Canterhorn. Dimly, I wondered if I’d ever get to go up and see it, though it was hard to imagine I would. From what everypony had told me so far, it certainly seemed as though the nation's capital was safely locked down.

Even more interesting was the peak above it. The tip of the Canterhorn was obscured by a dark cloud that never left, and I spent quite a long time peering at the distant mountain to try and see if I could work out what caused it. Eventually, I decided that if I could get closer, then maybe I’d know what the black shape was. But until I did, a blurry, indistinct oddity against the skyline it would remain.

Once I plunged back down into the fog, I was on edge again, but thankfully nothing came of it. I was left alone as I wandered downhill, and I was reminded how winding the road had been up to the fallen city of Cloudsdale. This valley seemed much more direct, but less interesting because of that. Eventually, the ground leveled out, and I found the river I’d seen from above, which I eagerly drank from before continuing on. A road was near that, and I could follow that for as long as it took to find some form of navigation marker.

A small, thatched-roof inn provided direction. I could hear the shuffling of hooves from the rooms in back, but they sounded like those of a Hollow, mindless and meandering. I just avoided them as best I could, while I glanced at a small pile of maps and brochures for this part of Equestria. They were faded and weather-ruined, but they were still legible, if just barely. Using those, I was able to figure out that I wasn’t too far from Ponyville if I followed a few roads carefully. I took the map that seemed like it was in the best condition so I could navigate, and left without ever encountering the Hollow deeper inside the inn.

It felt strange to trot along a main road. It felt as though I’d always been moving along back-country paths between farms, or small roads that led to smaller towns. But this had apparently been a major road between Ponyville and Buckhannon, and it felt lonely moving across the hard-packed dirt. It had been meant for large carts or wagons overloaded with cargo, and I was just a single pony wandering through the fog.

Eventually, as the road slowly sloped downhill, it bifurcated. One continued on towards Ponyville, while the other led to Canterlot. There was a small carriage-repair shop in between the two roads, and I noticed a thin trail of smoke curling upwards through the fog from the crumbling chimney. The thought that there might still be a pony living out here interested me, and I approached the building slowly and cautiously.

I did pause, before I reached the door, and dug around in the inky blackness of my bottomless bag for the sword I’d used before. After I finished re-tying the strap of the sheathed sword around my barrel, I also checked to see whether my flask of sunlight was safe. To my relief, it was completely unharmed—though I did notice it had a thin layer of chalky dust on the glass, which was strange. I wiped it off and slid it back inside. Hopefully I wouldn’t need it, but I’d suffered enough from being unprepared, so keeping it handy, just in case, couldn’t hurt.
I rapped my hoof against the doorframe, and only waited for a moment before a deep, drawling voice replied, “C’mon in.”

I stepped through the broken glass door, and looked around. The carriage-repair shop doubled as the owner’s home in times past, and living amenities were interspersed with replacement wheels hanging off the walls, bottles of wood sealant, and buckets of paint for painting over scratches from travel. The counter was bare, with the register having long been knocked off the wooden surface and smashed open. A pair of chairs sat in front of a fireplace in the back, which was lit with a very small but bright fire.

A huge stallion, burly and thick with muscle, sat before the fire and gently pushed another log into the embers. For a moment, I thought he was Rockhoof, and that the light of the fire gave his fur an unusual color. But no, it seemed as though the stallion’s bright red fur was the natural shade of his coat. After he finished feeding the flames, he sat back on one of the chairs, and I could see that it wasn’t just muscle that formed his mass. He had a fair bit of a gut to him as well, but not an unhealthy amount. It was a thin layer over a hard core of muscle, and just from looking at him, I knew this was a stallion that could lift a house, or buck a boulder in twain.

His mane was bronze and unkempt, and his beard, even more so. He wore a ragged set of hide armor, held together with leather straps and lined with the fur of a slain beast. He looked at me with the embered eyes of a Hollow, though that seemed to be the only indication that he was beginning to Hollow. Those embers softened in sympathy, as I took the other chair and started warming my hooves by the fire. “Hello.”

“H-hi there,” I rasped. “S-sorry to intrude...I saw the sm-smoke, and I’ve b-been traveling alone f-for a little while.”

He nodded again. “No trouble to me.” He glanced around the building, lit only by the fireplace. “Only resting here, myself.”

He spoke in short sentences, without wasting words, and that put a lot of emphasis on what he did say. It was a surprising change after Trixie and Opal, who had loved to hear themselves talk. It was strange, being the pony who spoke more in the conversation. “S-sorry for how I l-look, too. Hope I d-didn’t scare you, I’m a m-mess.”

The stallion looked at me again, but shrugged. “Hollows don’t knock. You’re fine.”

“Th-thank you.” I smiled at him, and rubbed my warm hooves together, and then rubbed my shoulders. My barding had mostly dried by now, but the warmth felt nice, and the fire helped finish the job while I sat here. “M-my name’s Holly.”

The stallion looked back at the fire, and lowered his head a bit. “Red.”

That he most certainly was; the name fit him, short but just as descriptive as it needed to be. “Okay. W-where are you going to, R-Red? I might be g-going the same way. We c-could travel together.”

The stallion glanced at me, then to the door. “Canterlot. Makin’ amends.”

I sighed sadly. “Aw. I’m g-going to Ponyville myself. Be c-careful, a fr-friend told me the road’s b-blocked.”

Red nodded. “Heard that too. Can still get in through Hammerhoof.”

“Hammerhoof?” I wasn’t familiar with the town, but knowing how to get into Canterlot certainly seemed like it would be useful knowledge to have.

“Mining town. Base of the mountain. They share a sewer system.”

“Eugh,” I grimaced, and shivered. I couldn’t imagine climbing through that, even though it was probably long dry by now. Even Red’s nose must have been stronger than mine. “G-good to know, at least. Th-thank you.”

“Welcome.” Red said. All was quiet for a minute or two, before Red sighed. “Mentioned Ponyville before?”

I blinked at him. “Uh, y-yeah. Have you ever b-been there?”

Red looked away again. “Long time ago.”

Probably before the sun stopped, then. My voice was soft and sympathetic, but there was only so much I could do to soften the description. “Th-there’s walls all around it n-now. A m-mare named Applejack r-runs the militia, and h-had them built, but sh-she’s Hollowing pretty b-badly and tried to b-ban the army from moving through t-town. You sh-should try and av-avoid her, if you can. They sh-should let you in though, b-because you’re not Hollowing.”

Red winced, but didn’t say anything, so I continued. “The r-rest of the town’s okay...P-Pinkie’s trying to h-hold everypony together, but it’s a b-big town and th-there’s a lot of buildings f-filled with Hollows. Ap-Applejack and her g-get into fights a lot. Outside, the Ev-Everchaos is still b-burning, and the soldiers are st-still fighting the d-demons.”

After a moment, he finally had a question. “What about Princess Twilight?”

I shrugged, and that seemed to really confuse him. “N-nopony knows. She left to h-help Princess C-Celestia with something, and n-never came back. St-Starlight too, according to Dinky; she m-misses both of them.”

“Who?”

“Th-their apprentice; my fr-friend. She w-was the Archmagus, too, un-until Applejack threw us in j-jail.””

At that, Red lowered his head sadly, and closed his eyes. He stayed like that for a while, as he breathed deeply through his nose. I almost thought he fell asleep. “S-sorry...again…”

Red shook his head, but didn’t look up. “Not your fault. Good you told me.”

“D-did you know anypony there-?”

“Not anymore,” Red said quickly. “Gotta get moving; might already be too late.”

He opened his eyes and stood up from his chair, and started to pull a beaten-up saddle bag onto his back. Then he reached behind his chair and withdrew an old, rusted battle-axe, which he slid into the leather loops of his armor. He started for the door, but paused when I asked, “W-wait, late for w-what?”

He glanced back to me, where I had shifted in the chair to look at him as he left. “Need to apologize. Was three mares...might just be one, now.” He turned back and stepped through the broken glass door, and a couple of fragments made tinkling noises as his armor dragged them out of the broken frame. The last thing I heard him say was, “Safe travels, Holly.” Then he disappeared into the fog.

I sat down in the chair heavily, and stared at the glowing fireplace. For some reason, the fire within didn’t warm my bones like it had before, and the building felt cold and lonely now that Red had left. I stayed for a little while longer as the log burned down to dead ashes, and as the carriage-repair shop became dark, I stood to leave as well.

It would be a decent walk back to Ponyville now. Hopefully, everything I’d told the stallion was still true, and things hadn’t changed for the worse in my absence.
> 27 - Divine Intervention
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rest of the journey was utterly uneventful, and, to my surprise, I reached Ponyville without incident. It was hard to tell which gate I arrived at exactly, but I’m fairly sure it was the northwest gate, which Trixie and I had passed back and forth through before we’d left for Cloudsdale. While it was just as foggy as it had ever been outside the walls, it looked safe enough, and so I thumped my hoof against the wooden gate a few times to try and get the attention of the guards.

I was pleasantly surprised when Thunderlane fluttered down from the wall above, and his embered eyes widened in surprise. “Y-you’re back!” He glanced around, looking for anypony else hidden in the fog, but it was just the two of us outside the gate. “Where’s T-Trixie?”

All I could really do was shake my head. I couldn’t explain why Trixie did what she did, and I suspected she couldn’t right now either. “G-gone. Went crazy, and r-ran off.”

“Oh...Ap-Applejack’s not gonna like th-that,” he said, with a worried tone. “Speaking of, you p-picked a bad time to g-get here. Pr-Princess Celestia arrived a sh-short while ago, and I saw P-Pinkie gallop past with this r-real worried look on her face. You c-came to see Applej-jack, right?”

I nodded, but I was reeling a bit. The “Y-yeah. We scouted the r-reservoir, just like sh-she asked, and a l-lot more besides. You s-said Princess Celestia is here?”

“She is, b-but…” Thunderlane trailed off, and looked back up at the wall, before his eyes turned back to me. “Look, I d-don’t think it w-would be a good idea to l-let you in right now. W-whatever they’re m-meeting about, it’s p-probably important. Ev-even if I d-did, I don’t th-think the other militia p-ponies would let you into the sq-square.”

I considered that for a moment, while Thunderlane shifted nervously on his hooves. Even that Princess Celestia was here was a massive shock. I’d heard so much about the Princess up until this point, about how she’d led Equestria into war against the dragons and won, and was even now coordinating the battle against the demons from the Everchaos. I never thought I’d see her for myself, with my own embered eyes. The sun herself had come down to speak to us.

Or rather, to speak to Pinkie and Applejack. The last I’d seen of Pinkie, she’d run down to see us in jail, and had been horrified by what Applejack had done and continued to do. She said she’d talk to the Princess about it, and it seemed like she’d figured out some way to do exactly that. Maybe that meant that the Princess was here specifically about that, to free me and Dinky from Applejack’s control, or maybe she’d come to punish Applejack for herself?

Either way, Pinkie would be one voice against that of the militia. The townsponies would speak for her, but whose opinion mattered more? If push really came to shove, who would the ponies of the militia side with—Pinkie, or Applejack? My gaze wandered to Thunderlane, and Snails came to mind as well. There were at least two guards I could trust. And maybe one that could help me right now.

I looked up at Thunderlane, who jerked to attention as I focused on him. “Th-then it’s really imp-important I get in. I n-need to help Pinkie.”

“P-Pinkie?” His embers flickered at me in confusion. “You know P-Pinkie? And h-help her how?”

“I th-think Pinkie brought Pr-Princess Celestia here, because...you r-remember last time I w-was here, and my friend D-Dinky?”

He furrowed his brow for a moment, and I hoped he wasn’t Hollowed far enough to begin forgetting recent events. After a moment, his embered eyes lit up in realization. “The f-filly? In Applejack’s j-jail?”

“Y-yes! Her.” I tilted my head back towards the gate. “I th-think Pinkie wants to g-get her out, and she g-got a message to the Princess to ask f-for her help. That f-filly was Ponyville’s Archm-mage, until Applejack l-locked her up.”

“Ar-Archmage…?” Thunderlane mumbled in confusion. “W-why did we have a f-filly serving as an Archm-mage, I thought it w-was...isn’t Am-Amethyst the town’s...no, w-wait, that cute l-librarian took over, but...sh-she had wings, unless…w-why can’t I r-remember…?”

After a moment, he made a frustrated noise, and looked back up at me. “It’s all bl-blurring together, b-but I think I r-remember. Okay, I’ll...I’ll help.” He glanced back up at the wall, then the gate, before he finally turned to me. “W-we’re both wearing P-Ponyville armor, so they sh-shouldn’t shoot at us. C-can you fly?”

I shook my head sadly, and Thunderlane shrugged. “Th-that’s alright. I’m a st-strong flier, I’ll c-carry you to the sq-square.” My wingtips had already twitched slightly at the mere thought of flight, but when Thunderlane said he’d carry me in flight, I felt them spasm eagerly. For once, I couldn’t contain my excitement at the thought of flying again. My cheeks flushed with dark ichor as Thunderlane beckoned me closer, and he wrapped his forelegs around me. Our libido might have been just as undead as we were, but it wasn’t exactly a flattering position for a mare to be held in by a stallion. His ragged gray wings beat, pushing the fog back around us, and together, we leapt into the air.

Ponyville sprawled before us, unhidden by fog and lit by the setting sun. The thatched rooftops glowed like spun, faded gold, and the cobbled streets were like rivers of stone passing between them. The great crystal castle matched our height, and the glassy walls gleamed as they reflected the sunlight. At the edges, I could see the scrap-wood walls with little dots moving across them—ponies looked like little ants from up here. And beyond them, walls of glowing golden fog all around us, aside from the Everchaos, where the clouds turned dark with smoke. I could see the faint flickers of fire from that direction, and the sky trembled slightly as the great cannons of the firebreak launched another defensive volley.

As I looked at the world around me, I was overwhelmed with joy; I was seeing the world as a pegasus truly ought to. I had been groundbound all this time, and to fly again, even if not under my own power, it felt as though something had always been missing. I couldn’t stop my wings from flaring out as far as I could to try and catch the wind for myself. I worked my shoulder muscles to flap as we glided above Ponyville, and my wings sluggishly tried to beat in time with Thunderlane’s so that he didn’t have to carry all of my weight himself.

Flare and flicker. Breathe in, then out. Wingbeats, repeated against the weight of the world. It was so overwhelming to try and remember to do it all manually, to work my undead body until it felt alive again. I was spreading myself thin, but if I didn’t, then I would never learn how to do it properly. I would never get any practice at being alive, and I needed all the practice I could get, because it was oh, so worth it for moments like this.

It all came to an end far too soon. We peaked, and began to spiral back down towards the ground to bleed speed and land safely. I saw militia ponies on the walls and rooftops track us with rifles and shotguns, but they saw our armor, and that just barely stayed their hooves while we made our way towards the base of the crystal castle.

As we descended, I got a good look at the situation. The square’s entrances were heavily guarded, and Thunderlane was right; there was no way they would have let me through on hoof. A gleaming golden phaeton had landed near the castle, and two stallions wearing bright golden armor and carrying spears stood guard beside it. Pinkie Pie was easy to spot, as her bright pink fur stood out against the worn cobble streets, but to my surprise, Commander Flash Magnus stood beside her. In fact, he looked as though he was guarding Pinkie—which was funny, because she was taller than he was—from Applejack. Speaking of the Hollow Huntress, she was shouting wildly, at us and at the guards stationed in the square. I couldn’t make out the words, and for that, I was thankful.

My breath finally caught in my throat as I focused on the last pony, who stood high above them all. Since they were standing so close, I could tell that Princess Celestia was a leg-length taller than Pinkie, who was already the tallest pony in the square. I had already known that the Princess was a living goddess, but the sight of her finally made me understand what that meant. As we drew close, I could see the grace and power in how she stood, and I could feel the incredible heat of her fire. With Pinkie and her standing so close, the two of them were like twin suns in the middle of Ponyville, and I started to panic. I was a fool to try and intrude, to try and force myself into their conversation.

But my embered eyes caught the unmarred, perfect eyes of Princess Celestia, and a feeling of calm came over me. She looked more amused than anything else at my intrusion, and she smiled slightly as one wing beckoned us closer. The other, she waved to her guards beside her, giving the order to relax. Everything was going to be just fine.

Applejack, however, did not seem to think so. As Thunderlane flapped his wings to slow us down and land, Applejack had already galloped below us, and we could finally understand her. “-the hay are you doin’, Thunderlane?! Ya’ll know the Princess is coming, and ya’ll are bringing a damned Hollow into the meeting-”

Thunderlane dropped me gently, and I stumbled awkwardly across the cobbles until I ran into the end of a shotgun barrel. Applejack had drawn her weapon in an instant, and I froze as I remembered how it had barked before and blasted fire and lead right through my armor, and that set had been made of steel; it would barely be slowed down by my quilted barding. Thunderlane landed a moment later, but he kept his wings spread nervously, as if he was going to take off again and flee. “Sh-she insisted, said it w-was important-”

“I don’t care if she’s bringin’ Discord’s head on a pike, I don’t want to see her within ten miles of this stars-damned meeting-!”

“Applejack,” Celestia said, and her voice was both firm and gentle, like a mother affectionately chiding a foal. “It’s quite alright; you don’t need to worry. Stand down.”

Applejack snarled at the Princess. “She’s a Hollow. It’s my duty to keep Ponyville safe, and that means keeping the damned Hollows out of Ponyville, to keep this fort safe, dammit!”

Celestia glanced around the square, at the militia ponies stationed all around us, who watched nervously and glanced amongst each other at their leaders arguing amongst themselves. “Are we not safe here, Applejack, in the heart of Ponyville? I personally find this town to be well-guarded indeed. And Hollow this pony may be, but I can clearly see she still has her wits about her. In fact, it looks as though she works for you, seeing as her barding bears your flag.”

The barrel of the shotgun shuddered in Applejack’s hooves, but after a few moments, she relented. She holstered her shotgun against her side, and snarled at me, “Why are you here? You got some real ruttin’ nerve, coming here now.”

It was safe to move, now that the shotgun wasn’t leveled at my breast any more, and the first thing I did was swallow the heavy lump in my throat. “I’m b-back from scouting Cloudsdale, and the P-Ponyville reservoir, I was g-going to report that…” I could see Applejack’s hackles raising—I’d intruded for such a minor thing? I added quickly, “And-and I wanted to sp-speak for Dinky, alongside P-Pinkie.”

Celestia’s eyebrows rose, and she looked to Applejack, who was still snarling at me. “What’s this about Dinky Doo?”

“It’s not important,” Applejack said dismissively.

Pinkie Pie bounced up alongside the Princess, joining the conversation. “You know Dinky?”

“Of course,” Princess Celestia said warmly. “She’s my own student’s student, and she’s spoken about her a great deal in the past. I’d rather hoped to meet her while I was here, in fact; I understand she took up the position of Town Archmage, after Starlight left to continue her research in the Crystal Empire?”

“Shoot!” Pinkie groaned. “Wish I’d known you’d know who she was, that would’ve helped so much before!”

Princess Celestia focused on Applejack again. “What’s happened to Archmage Dinky?”

“Ex-Archmage,” Applejack clarified. “She had to be stripped o’ her position after she got a buncha ponies killed, most importantly Zecora! She’s sittin’ in a jail cell until I figure out what to do with her.”

The Princess reeled somewhat at that. “She was part of that mess? And you put Dinky in jail? Is she safe there? Well-taken care of?”

“Safe enough,” Applejack replied, with a dismissive, half-hearted shrug.

The voice of the Princess finally took on a harsh tone. “We’ll be putting a pin in that, Applejack, for discussion in a moment.” She turned to Magnus, who had followed behind Pinkie. “Commander? Is there anything else you’ve left out of your report? I would have appreciated being informed of the entire story.”

He nodded, and bowed his head. “Apologies, Princess. I prioritized the disruption to the military supply lines, and didn’t know you had a personal investment. Negotiating her release was next on the list.” He looked up, and tilted his head at me. “Actually, that brings up a question. You were in jail with her, Holly. How’d you end up working for Applejack?”

“Yeah!” Pinkie said, as she put a hoof to her chin in suspicion. “What’s going on there, huh?”

“She s-said-”

“I’ll explain the situation, Hollow.” Applejack interrupted, as she stepped between me and the Princess. “I had work that needed doin’, and offered her, the ex-Archmage, and a loudmouthed rat a deal. They went out and handled a couple easy problems outside the walls with spare equipment, and they’d go free, easy as that.”

“Prison conscripts?” Princess Celestia asked, her voice heavy with disbelief. “Applejack, I’m...I’m incredibly disappointed in you. I thought you were better than that. I know you were better than that. Has time really taken such a toll on you?”

“I said I offered them the deal! They had a choice, and they accepted.”

“Of course they did,” the Princess said, with a sad shake of her head. “If they thought it was the only way out of the cell, then they would have taken any deal you offered them. Dinky stayed behind, and this mare is here. What of the third? That ‘rat’ you spoke of?”

“Tr-Trixie.” I answered. “She t-took the deal too, and we worked t-together as a team.”

The Princess shut her eyes in mounting disbelief. “Trixie now too...what has been going on in Ponyville, right under my nose?”

Pinkie raised her hoof, to ask a question. “Wait, you know Trixie-”

“Twilight’s letters,” Princess Celestia answered, without opening her eyes.

“Oh yeah! Right, okay. Fair enough!”

“And speakin’ of that rat, where is she now, huh? Can’t hardly notice she seems to not be here. You leave her to die somewhere out in the fog?” Applejack asked accusingly.

I looked down at the cobbles under my hooves, and sighed. “L-like I said, I have a r-report.”

With an aggravated grunt Applejack replied, “Give us the short version.”

It wasn’t as short as Applejack wanted, I could tell that much. I mostly skimmed over the walk up the mountain pass there and the campsite, and described the valley quickly. She seemed interested when I described how Cloudsdale had fallen into the valley and broken apart, and when I described the skeletons and the Gravewardens controlling them. However, I noticed that Princess Celestia’s attention wandered somewhat at that point. I suspected she’d heard a lot of it before from Mistmane, and when I mentioned that I’d run across her, I did see both her and Magnus’ ears quirk up in interest.

However, the Princess’s attention quickly became totally focused on the doors to the Crystal Castle. While I was talking, her horn lit with golden magic, and a matching field wrapped around the door handle. No matter how she tugged at the door, it remained firmly shut.

I continued my report as quickly as I could, since the actual geography of Cloudsdale wasn’t too important. Applejack had no interest in the Gravewarden’s society, though Pinkie took notes (literally, with a notepad she took out from her wild pink mane). The lower weather factory and the dam were mostly skimmed over, but when I reached the inside of the upper weather factory and the black lake on which it floated, everypony except Celestia was paying attention once more. Even the description of the fight against the Gravelord wasn’t enough to pull her away from her longing gaze at the crystal castle.

I described the mare made of dust, who had controlled the Gravelord, but it was only when I described the necklace that Celestia suddenly started. “Wait. You said it was a golden necklace with a purple diamond set as the centerpiece? Describe the mare again.”

As I did, I could see Celestia’s expression turn despondent. When I told them how the mare had fallen apart into glowing powder, and how Trixie had drained the soul inside the necklace, everypony went quiet. Even Pinkie Pie suddenly looked depressed. I finished the report with a description of Trixie’s sudden madness, and how she’d kicked me into the lake. I omitted Opalescence and most of the journey back; my encounter with the giant cat seemed almost delusional in hindsight, even though I knew it had happened. They didn’t seem to need any more information as to the mare’s identity anyways.

After I finished the report, Princess Celestia let out a long, sad sigh. “Thank you. I understand you may feel guilty for your part in that, but I do not find you at fault. It’s regrettable that it came to pass, all the same.” She turned to the militia commander beside me, and asked, “What’s your takeaway from that, Applejack?”

“My takeaway?” Applejack asked, with a raised eyebrow. “Well, I dunno what you all look so damned morose about. Sounds like they disregarded my direct orders, bit off more than they could chew, and that moron got exactly what she deserved. Good riddance to her.”

Pinkie’s expression soured. “Good riddance? Applejack! I get that you might not care all that much about Trixie, but what about Rar-”

“Pinkie.” Princess Celestia held up a hoof to cut her off. “Please.” She turned back towards Applejack, and they looked at each other intently. “Applejack, does the phrase ‘Elements of Harmony’ mean anything to you?”

Applejack screwed up her face in confusion. “Can’t say it does. What’s it mean? Air, water, that sorta stuff?”

Princess Celestia shook her head. “Not quite. What about the name ‘Rarity?”

“Nope. Not ringin’ any bells.”

Pinkie looked horrified, and she leaned against Magnus in shock as her eyes began to tear up.

“I see.” Princess Celestia sighed deeply, then turned back to me, with a morose expression. “Holly, was it? Thank you for your scouting, and your report—It’s been more informative than you know. I’d like to speak with you about another matter in a few minutes, so please, don’t go anywhere.”

Applejack stepped forward rebelliously. “Actually, I reckon’ she’s done just about enough. Thunderlane, drag her back to her cell, so she can’t get into any more trouble.”

The stallion had started to hover nervously nearby, only a few wingbeats away from the safety of the sky, but he hesitated as he glanced towards me, then the Princess. That gave her a chance to hold up her own hoof. “Please don’t, Thunderlane. I meant what I said.”

“I beg yer pardon?” Applejack snarled. “Thunderlane, I gave you an order. Follow it this time!”

Thunderlane shrank down, and his eyes were wild with confusion as everypony looked at him. “B-but...Applejack, sh-she’s the Princess.”

“Of Equestria; not of Ponyville. Her orders might fly everywhere else, but Ponyville is under my control! And I don’t want you-” Applejack pointed at Thunderlane, then spun on her hoof and pointed at Princess Celestia. “-or you! To think that you can overrule my authority and my rules in my town!”

Pinkie slumped to the ground, and clutched Magnus’ foreleg like a drowning pony clutched at driftwood. “Jacky...you can’t do that. That’s not—are you even listening to yourself?”

“About your authority...” Princess Celestia said, as she drew herself up straight. Suddenly, she appeared very formal, and she had to look down to meet Applejack’s eyes. Behind her, the royal guards shifted, and I noticed they were quietly standing at attention in case they were needed. “Applejack, I’m politely asking this of you, not as a Princess, but as a friend. Please step down from your position as Commander of the Ponyville Militia.”

Applejack blinked at the Princess for a moment in surprise, before her expression turned hard once more. “You have some ruttin’ nerve! Why do y'all think I oughta, huh?”

Princess Celestia’s tone wasn’t cold, but it was very restrained. She meant every word, and she chose those words carefully. “I was summoned here to Ponyville by your fellow Element of Harmony, Pinkie Pie. She has expressed deep concerns about your treatment of the township of Ponyville, and the citizens thereof. Commander Magnus, who carried the message, shares those concerns. I had dearly hoped they were mistaken, or that this could be resolved with minimal disruption.

“But since my arrival, Applejack, you’ve demonstrated almost no knowledge of the world at large, your own past life, or those of other citizens of Ponyville. Not even your closest friends. I was willing to give you leniency, considering your past achievements and those of your family within the Golden Guard, but I cannot allow this to continue. Please, come with me back to Canterlot. The Curse has clearly taken a great toll on your mental state, and-”

“That’s a load of horse hockey and you know it!” Applejack howled suddenly, and cut off Celestia. “Apples don’t go Hollow! We never have, and we never will, and I don’t appreciate you tryin’ to depose me usin’ that farce as an excuse!”

Princess Celestia backed up a step at Applejack’s outburst, and she lowered her head in sadness as she turned to Magnus. “If you’d prefer the request to be a formal one, Applejack, then I can provide you with a letter within the hour. Commander Magnus, do you have a blank message scroll with which I can send a message to Raven in Canterlot, so that she can send back the proper-”

“Don’t waste your paper.” Applejack spat. “I’m not goin’ anywhere. I ain’t goin’ to Canterlot with y’all, and I’m sure as Tartarus not steppin’ down from my position.”

Princess Celestia didn’t look at her. “Please, Applejack. One final warning, and one final request, is all I can allow. Please step down.”

Applejack snarled, and gnashed her teeth like a feral animal. “Y’all come to my town, and spit in the face of my rules and my authority.”

“Your town,” the Princess repeated, with a sigh. “Applejack, at least answer one last question, for my own curiosity. Which is more important to you? The town of Ponyville, or the Ponies that live here?”

Applejack blinked in confusion for a moment, before she responded. “Fort Ponyville needs to stay standin’, above all else. If y’all are askin’ what I think you’re askin’, then no, I never had any sympathy for dirty rotten Hollows. I will continue to keep kickin’ em out until we’ve cleansed this town o’ their plague. Maybe y’all don’t have the strength to do what needs to be done, like I do.”

Princess Celestia’s eyes were shut tightly, and though she was hiding it very well, I could see how she grit her teeth, and how her hooves trembled. “I understand, and...I’m sorry.”

She kept her eyes closed, but she turned to face the royal guards, who still stood by the golden phaeton. “Knights Flint and Tinder, Commander Magnus. Please take Miss Applejack into custody, but try not to hurt-”

“Like Tartarus!” Applejack shrieked, as she ducked low to the ground and spread her hooves. She was ready to leap at whoever came at her, and one hoof grabbed her holstered shotgun on her back. Her embered eyes snapped from the Princess, to her guards, to Magnus and Pinkie, to myself, then back again. She was just waiting for one of us to make the first move.

Princess Celestia sighed again, and finished where she had left off. “Please try not to hurt her, if it can be at all avoided.”

“I ain’t gonna let you take me prisoner,” snarled Applejack. “And neither will the Ponyville Irregulars.”

All of a sudden, the fact that we stood in the heart of Ponyville, in a town square that was heavily fortified by the militia, was thrown into sharp relief. All around us, on rooftops and behind sandbags, the able-bodied stallions and mares of Ponyville watched. Some held swords, in hooves or teeth, and others hammers or axes. Many held guns, whether they were Gryphon-made rifles built for hunting or military service, or older shotguns that they’d long used to defend them and theirs from the Everfree forest. Mounted guns, borrowed or outright stolen from the military’s many supply caravans, could be turned around on us in a second. And every one of the armed ponies wore a faded red apple on their armor, to denote that they were part of the militia formed to defend Ponyville.

“We will not be intimidated by royal authority!” Growled Applejack. “Ponyville! Take Celestia and Pinkie prisoner. Kill the rest!”

But, as I looked around at those ponies, and Thunderlane not three steps away, I could see it in their eyes. They just couldn’t do it. There was a wide gulf of difference between pointing those guns outward, towards the demons that threw themselves against the walls, and pointing them inward against each other. Maybe if Princess Celestia herself wasn’t who they were being asked to take arms against, they could have been swayed by Applejack’s bluster and momentum. But pointing their guns against the Princess was where nearly all of them drew the line.

“What are y’all waitin’ for?! I said kill ‘em!”

Not a single one of the militia moved, except to slowly shake their heads. A few even set down their weapons on the cobblestones, making it clear that they would not take action. Applejack’s expression turned manic, and she started to twitch as she saw more and more of the ponies she’d thought to be loyal laying down their arms.

Princess Celestia opened her eyes slowly, and looked around the square. She was clearly relieved that the tide had not turned against her...but there wasn’t even a trace of a smile. “Thank you, citizens of Ponyville. You’ve gone above and beyond the call to action in defending your homes, and I couldn’t ask any more of you in doing so.”

“Traitors!” Applejack screeched, as spittle flew from her lips. “Turncoats and malcontents, all o’ ya! I can see it now! I can see how the curse has gotten to all o’ you!”

She wheeled around to glare at me and Magnus, and her accusing hoof was jabbed in my direction. “You! The two o’ you! This is all your fault! You brought the curse in here,  and you infected all my ponies!” She pointed at Magnus. “And you let it happen! You worked with her, against me! I knew you were trouble, all along!”

And then she turned tail and ran. Her hooves rang out on the cobblestones as she galloped away. I watched, and for as much as I thought I should have been glad, glad that the pony who had tormented me and so many others had finally been taken down a peg, it just felt awful. Applejack had done terrible things, to be sure. But to her, this had been a world-shaking betrayal, and her Hollowed mind didn’t have much world left to shake.

Magnus began to chase after her, but the Princess opened her wing to stop him. “Don’t. Let her run, but take Flint and Tinder, and follow her from the air. I know she’s probably heading back to Sweet Apple Acres, but confirm it if you can. We’ll leave her be, as long as she stays there.”

Magnus nodded, and leapt into the air, with both of Celestia’s guards right behind him. Pinkie was left standing by herself, and I took Magnus’ place as she leaned against me instead. She practically seared my side as she hugged me, but I held her close anyways, because she needed to hold somepony close while she cried.

Princess Celestia seemed to be only doing slightly better. She took a few moments to compose herself, and then looked around at the Ponyville Irregulars. “No other charges will be levied; any actions taken under Applejack’s orders are fully forgiven. The Ponyville Irregulars will not, I repeat, will not be disbanded, but I understand if some of you may be conflicted about continuing in your duties.” She let out another deep sigh. “Those of you who still wish to bear arms in service to the protection of Ponyville, please assemble as many citizens as might be found outside Town Hall. I will be along shortly to make the official announcements.”

As the militia ponies began to disperse from Friendship Square, the Princess pulled Pinkie into a tight hug as well, which seemed to perk her up slightly. “Pinkie? Could you go with them? I think Ponyville might have some issues trusting the militia alone, but your voice will carry weight.”

Pinkie swallowed, before she snapped her hoof into a salute. “Okay. It might take a little bit to round everypony up because they’re kinda scattered and hiding, but I’ll move as quick as I can.”

Pinkie disappeared in a Pinkie-shaped cloud of smoke, and Princess Celestia turned once more to the gleaming crystal castle towering high above us all. She murmured something under her breath, almost too quiet to hear, but I just barely made it out above the noise of Ponyville. “To see what’s become of the Elements...Is this why you’ve locked me out, and sealed yourself away?”

I didn’t have time to ponder the meaning of the words. The Princess looked down to me, Pinkie, and Thunderlane, and gently flicked her head. “Please, lead me to the jail. I’ll see Archmagus Dinky released for myself, and any other prisoners that Applejack may have taken.”
> 28 - Reconciliation
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Princess had to really lower her head to get through the door of the jail, and the building’s ceiling was low enough that I thought I I could see her genuinely consider crawling on her knees. She continued to stand, though she was clearly uncomfortable in the compact space, and she had to hold her head below eye level to avoid knocking bits of plaster off the cracked ceiling. Oddly enough, she looked as though she didn’t really need to strain. I could sense how brightly her fire burned, and how powerful the living goddess was. If she so desired, she could flick her horn and rend this building asunder. Instead, I got the sense that she moved so delicately because she wanted to avoid exactly that. Out of courtesy and concern for the ponies within, she was more than happy to uncomfortably squeeze her way inside, no matter how silly it looked.

It was worth it to see the reactions from the guards, however. Applejack’s chosen wardens leapt to a shocked sort of attention as Princess Celestia crammed herself into the building. Snails was with them, and together they came to a count of three. As soon as she was completely inside, and confident that her tail wouldn’t knock anything over, she gave them a courteous nod. “Commander Applejack has been relieved of her position, and I’ll be pardoning the prisoners myself. I’ll be making a formal announcement outside town hall, if you gentlestallions would like to meet everypony else there?”

The two unnamed guards got the hint, and awkwardly shuffled past everypony to leave. Snails hesitated when he saw me, however. “C-can I help? I know Holly, and D-Dinky.”

The Princess looked at me for any objections, but I had none, so I gave her a nod. She smiled gently, and used a wing to indicate the door downstairs. “Go on ahead—it’ll take me a moment to navigate the staircase, I should think.” Snails opened the door for us, and both of us proceeded downstairs, as Princess Celestia carefully moved down the narrow steps behind us.

The jail itself was almost completely unchanged from the last time I’d been here, though it looked as though somepony had boxed up the deck of cards on the table. We moved to Dinky’s cell, and the sound of our hooves on the stone floor was enough to rouse her and the rest of the jail’s inhabitants. We tuned out the groaning of the mindless Hollows in the cell across from her, as Dinky weakly sat up. To my relief, it didn’t appear as if she had Hollowed much more than the last time I’d seen her. “H-hey, you’re back...” she murmured in a drowsy, wistful haze.

I nodded, and smiled faintly. “The Pr-Princess came to help, and Applejack l-left. We’re g-gonna get you out, she just n-needs a second to get down the st-stairs.”

Dinky blinked, then looked towards the door, eager with anticipation. She actually smiled a little, and it was rare seeing the filly get excited. “The Princess? T-Twilight?”

Princess Celestia chuckled quietly, as she bowed her head to step through the door frame. She still couldn’t stand properly in here, but she seemed to fill the room with sunlight as she entered. “Not quite, Dinky. Though I- Oh, heavens.”

Just like when Pinkie had come down here to visit us in jail, the Hollows in the cell opposite started to go nuts with hunger as Princess Celestia entered the basement. The fact that there was a living goddess that burned as brightly as she did only leg-lengths away seemed to drive them crazy, and the Princess’ temporary mirth plummeted again as she saw how they fought over themselves to reach towards her. She looked at all of them in turn, locking eyes with each as best she could, but there was nothing there except for feral, undying hunger.

With a sad sigh, she turned away, to focus fully on Dinky. Her expression shifted rapidly through several emotions, chief among them fear and sadness at the current state of the filly, but eventually she resolved into a warm and calming smile. “Dinky. You’ve grown a bit, and seen quite a bit more, haven’t you?”

Dinky looked a little nervous, but she seemed more embarrassed at her own state, for the Princess to see her as a Hollow. “I have, though...I d-don’t think Twilight ever got the ch-chance to introduce us...b-before she, um...left.”

“Her letters were quite thorough. It’s an honor to meet you myself, and I just wish it could have happened sooner.” Princess Celestia said, as she focused on the locked door of the cell. “Give me a moment, and I’ll have you freed. Snails, do you have the keys?”

Snails jumped as he realized the Princess meant him. “Oh! Uh, no. N-not for the cell d-doors, or the bindings. Only Ap-Applejack had the k-key…” He trailed off as he said it, and looked despondently back up the staircase.

The Princess only nodded, however. “That’s not too surprising. No matter, it won’t take much to brute-force it.” Her horn came alight with golden magic, that looked like flowing sunlight, and her field enveloped the lock of the door. “Hm...minor enchantments. Durability and hydrophobia combined, a pickbreaker, and a linking spell to a bound key...easy enough; you’ll all want to step back, and avert your eyes.”

Dinky crawled to the far end of her cot, while me and Snails did as asked. After a moment, I heard the hum of magic, and a sharp whistle as the room brightened. Heat bloomed, though it was still nothing compared to the Princess. I heard a hiss as something hot boiled the dew on the stone floor to steam, and then the spell ceased. A moment later, Celestia pushed open the door with a squeak. “I wouldn’t look directly at it, but it should be safe to turn around.”

The lock on the cell door had simply been reduced to iron slag, which dripped down the frame and boiled against the floor. The stone seemed to be melting slightly as well, but both would cool in a few moments. Even as I glanced at it, the puddle of molten metal on the floor had cooled from white-hot to merely red-hot, and the room was already beginning to cool thanks to the windows.

Dinky gulped nervously as she looked down at the remains of the lock, and then back up at the Princess. “You’re, um, not g-gonna melt the bindings too, r-right?”

Princess Celestia let out a quiet giggle, as she stepped over the dull red molten iron. “Of course not, I don’t want to hurt you. But breaking those spells with a delicate touch will take quite a bit longer.”

Once again, I was reminded how motherly Celestia seemed, as she gently pulled Dinky into a calming hug, then lit her horn and began to feel the cold iron around the filly’s own horn with her magic. Dinky squirmed slightly to get comfortable on the bench, and looked up at her forehead while the Princess worked. “It’s cold iron...I d-don’t know if you can use magic to b-break it.”

“Not all the way through. It’s a very clever device, but they must either be crafted entirely from the material, which makes them unenchantable and thus vulnerable to mechanical manipulation, or partially from mundane materials, which allows them to be protected magically. This device is mostly cold iron, but the bolts and locking mechanism themselves are made of brass. Still impossible for the wearer to remove by themselves, but it’s doable with help.” She glanced down at the filly. “How have you been? What have you been working towards, since my student took her leave of absence?”

“Too much, and n-not enough.” Dinky said with a sigh. “Starlight t-took over from Twilight, but sh-she had to leave, and she didn’t even tell me w-where she went. I still can’t get into the crystal c-castle to get at the library’s spellbooks, and I st-stopped trying when Applejack really locked down F-Friendship Square. I’ve been kind of drifting all over t-town, helping ponies wherever I can and learning f-from every unicorn willing to teach me. Amethyst has b-been really helpful in particular, she taught me about infusing g-gems and crystals a while back.”

Celestia flicked her head, and two of the screws holding Dinky’s horn bindings together made a sizzling noise, then disappeared in a puff of sparks. She gave the filly another comforting smile, though she was clearly still curious. “How did you end up in jail? I have Magnus’ report about the caravan, but your name was omitted until very recently.”

Dinky smiled sadly. “He probably didn’t want me to get in t-trouble, the lunkhead. He thought that it’d be a g-good experience for me to g-get out and see some practical combat, and that we m-might encounter more spellcasters outside the walls that I could learn from. On our way b-back, Apple Bloom—Applejack’s little s-sister—attacked us, and led a bunch of deer right into the c-caravan. Snails and Holly helped as m-much as they could, but sh-she…” There was pain in that expression. Pain that both me and Snails shared as well, and we all looked away so we didn’t have to face it, or remember.

After a moment, Dinky swallowed and continued. “...After...after Apple B-Bloom was finished, she turned on us, and w-we ran. I got us out of d-danger for a little bit with a Wink, but P-Ponyville was too far, so we ran the rest of the way by hoof. The th-three of us just barely made it back to t-town, and Applejack arrested me and H-Holly for desertion. She b-blames us for getting Zecora k-killed.”

Princess Celestia turned to the guard beside me. “But not Snails?”

The colt looked suddenly nervous under her gaze, but Dinky shook her head, which brought the Princess’ attention back to her. “I...d-don’t think Applejack ever understood that he left. She started giving him or-orders right there, and was annoyed that he had been m-missing his shifts. What happened to Applejack, anyway?”

“She fled,” the Princess stated simply. “Magnus and my guards are following her to find where. I strongly suspect she’ll merely retreat to Sweet Apple Acres, but it’ll be good to have confirmation, just in case.”

A moment later, the collar around Dinky’s neck sparked again, and it crackled with electricity as Princess Celestia’s horn flared. It split in two, and the horn cage around Dinky’s head noticeably loosened. “There you are. You should be able to remove it yourself, now.”

The Princess stepped back, and Dinky started to fumble with the anti-magic bindings. As she pulled them the rest of the way off, Princess Celestia looked around the jail, and saw the only other occupied cell. She tilted her head slightly at the silent pegasus within, who was giving her a very intense look of hunger, but she moved to help him anyways. “Pardon me, my little pony. I’ll be back in a moment.”

While she began to work on melting the lock on the other cell—with Snails trailing behind her, in case she needed protection—I took her place, and started to help Dinky pull the birdcage off her head. As soon as it was off, Dinky’s horn let out a golden spark, and she sighed in relief. “Ohhh, I missed that feeling...I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be able to feel my horn again.”

I hugged her tightly as well, and though she leaned into it, the jangling chains of her cuffs reminded us she wasn’t free yet. With her own horn free, she started to work on them herself, and probed at the screws with her own magic. “So we’re c-completely free? No strings attached?”

I shook my head. “She d-didn’t say anything about any. And she s-seems too nice for that, anyways.”

Dinky chuckled as she tugged at a cuff around her hind hoof. “I bet T-Trixie’s happy about that, at least. Did she run off to g-get her wagon already?”

The mention of Trixie’s name soured my mood, and I think Dinky noticed before I was conscious of the frown creasing across my own face. “Whoa, Holly, that’s a l-look. Did something happen?”

I shook my head, before I pressed it against her shoulder. “Just...Tr-Trixie is an ass. She tried to k-kill me, and then ran off to chase after your t-teacher.”

“Off to B-Baltimare?” Dinky said, blinking. “And she tried to k-kill you? Why the hay-”

There was movement in the cell beside Dinky’s, as the Princess opened the shackles of the other prisoner and turned to us. “Pardon me; you said Baltimare, Dinky?”

Behind her, the former prisoner scampered out of the cell, to the confiscated equipment chest. Several cloaks lay within, notably a star-spangled blue one, and a heavy brown cloak in an extremely familiar style. He pulled it on, and the Gravewarden was up the stairs and long gone before I could say a word. Princess Celestia noticed, but let him go without comment.

Dinky was still focused on her own shackles as she responded, however. “Yeah. When T-Trixie was locked up in here with us, she m-mentioned how she heard rumors that Twilight was in Baltimare, g-going through the library there. I d-dunno how long ago that was, but I don’t think Trixie cared. If she was hunting my t-teacher, that’s probably where she’d go.”

“And if Trixie still has the Element of Generosity…” The Princess mused to herself quietly. “But Baltimare’s a big city, and without the troops to spare for a search…that changes things. Hm.”

Dinky’s eyes went wide. “Trixie has the-”

“Your friend, Holly, she can tell you more than I. Come to the town hall when you’re finished re-equipping yourselves, so I can speak to you both personally after consoling the town.”

Princess Celestia began to leave, though she paused by the door, and looked back at the jail cell filled with feral Hollows. “Snails. Would you consider that cell secure?”

The guard colt looked at the door, and the steel bars that kept them contained. “Um. y-yes, Princess.”

“Good.” She let out a sad sigh, and a shake of her head. “They deserve a better fate than this, trapped within their own corpses like that. I can understand some of what Applejack did because of the Hollow curse, and how containing ponies became necessary as the curse ate them away. But her own stubbornness and dedication grew wildly out of control, especially as time went on.”

She looked back at all of us, with sadness in her eyes. “Everything we know becomes unrecognizable with the passage of time.”

After a moment, she composed herself. “Snails. Keep that cell secure, and the jail guarded. I’ll assign more ponies to this building. If we ever find a solution to this curse, then I’ll cure these poor souls myself. I won’t fail them again.”

Snails swallowed. “Un-understood, Princess.”

She left by the stairs, and all was quiet in the jail as Dinky and I worked to remove the rest of her bindings. All except for the constant, hungry growls, whining, and whinnies from the locked cell across from our own.


*	*	*


I didn’t have much to really take for myself when we left the jail, since I didn’t have much for Applejack to confiscate in the first place. It was good to have my own lightgem back, though, and it replaced Zecora’s. Her gem was dim, even in the light of the basement, and I suspected it wasn’t long before it burned out entirely.

I tried not to let that thought make me depressed, but I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about it, no matter how much I tried. I also grabbed Trixie’s cloak; though I didn’t really want it, I had a feeling that if I didn’t, then no pony would ever retrieve it from the confiscation box. After a quick rifle through the rest, I was satisfied there was nothing else of use for us within, and we exited the jail for the last time.

It was oddly comforting when we reached the town square once more, and heard the rhythmic ring of hammer and anvil. Rockhoof was still hard at work as ponies from across town crowded into the park, and a few watched him with interest while they waited. Most looked nervous at the militia ponies who stood beside them in the square, but a few were excited or even just relieved to see their friends again, without worrying about the uniform that separated civilians from soldiers. There were more than a few teary-eyed hugs and reunions in small pockets amongst the herd, as Ponyville was able to come together once more, as one.

I scanned the small crowd for any sight of Mistmane, and to my great relief, I spotted her a few moments later. She had sat next to the resident blacksmith, and was talking to him while he worked. I gently pulled Dinky in their direction, and she greeted him as we approached. “Hey, R-Rockhoof.”

“Eh?” The stallion paused as he recognized both of us, then set his hammer down beside him. “Holly and Dinky? Well you two are a right pair now. What happened to ya, lass?”

Dinky swallowed nervously. “Applejack. I d-don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Aye, that’s fair. My condolences. Try to keep your head up now, sounds like things are improvin’ a bit.”

Dinky nodded hopefully, while Mistmane smiled at me. “Ah, Holly! It’s good you’re here; I was just considering whether I should head back to Cloudsdale to search for you. I see Trixie isn’t with you, but…how did it go?”

For hopefully the final time, I recounted our journey to, up, and across the dam, then the interior of the weather factory. My audience of three was enraptured as I described the building and the dark lake below, and the impossible interior of the structure itself, as well as the imposing Gravelord that lurked within. I especially noticed Rockhoof paying attention as I described the fight, and I suspected that part of the story would have earned me a round of drinks in happier times.

The mood turned somber when I described the mare within, and the glowing necklace she wore. I saw Mistmane and Rockhoof exchange looks when I told them how she turned to glowing dust, and how Trixie had taken—and drained—the soul inside the glowing necklace. Dinky looked somber again, but as I described how Trixie had gone mad and kicked me into the lake, I was outright interrupted by Rockhoof. “Wait. You survived falling into the dark?”

I nodded slowly. “S-sort of. When I hit the w-water, the impact k-killed me again. I lost the m-mace there too. I didn’t have it on m-me when I woke up.” I shivered suddenly as I realized something. “It w-was...like the lake had t-taken it. It was t-trying to take away all my l-light.”

Mistmane quirked her eyebrow in curiosity, but her face fell a bit. “You lost it?” She sighed, and shook her head. “That’s...regrettable. It was a gift from Somnambula, you’ll recall. Hopefully she’ll trust me with another enchanted weapon, the next time I go and meet her.”

I winced when I saw the look of sadness on Mistmane’s face, and the distrust in her eyes. She knew I had a bottomless bag; she had no way to know if I’d just stolen her mace, and lied about it. It didn’t help that I had returned alone. If I’d heard the story from somepony else, I’d have my own suspicions about the details. Maybe Mistmane suspected all of it was made up, and if she did, I couldn’t totally blame her. The only reason I believed it myself was because I had lived it.

I didn’t want to think about that suspicion in her eyes any more, so I turned to Dinky. “Y-you made a lightgem for Z-Zecora, right? Like you d-did for me?” She nodded, and I continued. “I th-think it kept me safe. It felt like nothing else was r-real, outside of that light. If I d-didn’t have that, I th-think I would have been lost in the lake.”

Rockhoof still looked as though he didn’t believe me, and even Mistmane looked a little skeptical. She tilted her head at Dinky. “Just a lightgem? I think you should show me how you make those, little filly. I don’t want to call you a liar, Holly, but…I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”

I swallowed nervously, and again decided to omit what happened after I’d crawled out of the lake. I wasn’t sure myself if the unseen creature had actually emerged from the water, and I think I’d have completely discredited myself if I described the talking cat. Instead, I changed the subject back to the mare at the center of the Gravelord. “Who w-was she? The m-mare made of d-dust.”

Rockhoof took over again. “That mare...From your description, she was almost certainly Rarity, one of the Elements of Harmony. She was a seamstress here in Ponyville, but more than that, she was a hero.”

Mistmane stepped in again. “I told you about my friends, the ‘Pillars of Equestria’ as they’re now called. The Elements of Harmony are the modern incarnation of that group, in a way. Another six heroes, a group of friends, who stepped up to save the world together. You’ve met Pinkie Pie and Applejack, of course, and now you’ve met Rarity as well. Fluttershy has been missing for a very long time, while Rainbow Dash stayed in the Golden Guard. Twilight Sparkle has also disappeared, though Celestia seems to be keeping her location secret for the sake of security. They all had necklaces like Rarity, except for Twilight Sparkle, who had a tiara. Fitting for the Princess of Friendship.”

Rockhoof leaned back as he recalled them for himself. “Five of them served in the Golden Guard, actually. They took command positions during the Dragon War, overseeing their own divisions, and worked together to end it as quickly and bloodlessly as they could...but they could only prevent so much blood from being spilled on both sides.” He growled in frustration, and shook his head. “That Fluttershy mare, she opposed the war, and kept trying to get Princess Celestia to make peace. She really blew up near the end of the war, when things got nasty. Got into a screaming match with the other seven in the castle, and disappeared not long after. At least that chaotic abomination went with her.“

Mistmane shivered as she remembered something vividly. “Good riddance. That beast...I don’t know why Celestia kept him around. He’s still making trouble for us, but at least it seems to be indirect.”

I coughed quietly, to get their attention. “B-but what about Rarity?”

“Rarity. Right,” Rockhoof said, with a nod. “Rarity wasn’t a very strong spellcaster. Could do complex work, but only on a very small scale. She was much better as a tactician, planning offenses and overlooking the battlefield. Kept her away from the front lines, too. Damnably clever mare. Designed a few new formations that saved lives when dragons tried to cook ‘em.”

“But above all,” Mistmane interrupted, as she glared gently at Rockhoof, “she was, in every way, the Element of Generosity. She gave her troops the best armor with the finest enchantments that could be woven into them, and she made sure everypony got fed and outfitted. She gave up her own equipment so somepony else could use it a dozen times over. And she always sought and accepted surrender from the Dragons, which prevented more deaths and more costly battles than we could count.”

“When the dragons didn’t turn around and betray her trust, after they surrendered,” Rockhoof grumbled.

“They learned very quickly not to do that, after Rainbow Dash brought her division in to cover Rarity’s own,” Mistmane said sadly. “After the war, she mostly went back to Ponyville to take up her old job as a seamstress. I spoke with her a fair few times after, but she always seemed restless. I think she missed working with metal and making armor, as well.”

Rockhoof picked up the hammer again, and held it respectfully. “Aye. These are her smithin’ tools, in fact. Took me a time to gather them all back up after she disappeared, and ponies grabbed what they could for weapons against the demons.”

“But how did she end up in Cloudsdale, of all places?” Mistmane asked, as she rubbed her chin. “She wanted to stay here in town, live a more quiet and relaxed life. She even closed down her other franchised buildings in Canterlot and Manehattan, to keep her business in Ponyville.”

Gently, I shook my head. “And T-Trixie took her necklace, so we d-don’t even have that.” Though if I had been the one to draw the soul from Rarity’s necklace, would I have gone mad and attacked Trixie instead? Maybe it would have been worth it, just to understand what she had seen. Just to satisfy my own personal curiosity.

“Those necklaces,” Rockhoof growled dismissively. “They always wore those stupid things. Never took them off, even in battle. They just wore them under their armor. Hay, I think Applejack is still wearing hers, under all that barding she hides in.”

My eyes widened slightly as I remembered the day we’d left on the expedition to Baton Verte, when Applejack had come right up to my face with the smell of gunpowder wafting off of her, and I had seen a light coming from under her collar. Another Element under my nose this whole time, and it had been a pony such as her.

“Those necklaces are the Elements of Harmony, just as much as the mares that wear them are.” Mistmane countered. “I personally think they’re quite beautiful, although nopony would ever tell me who crafted them. I assumed they were Rarity’s work, in fact, until she told me otherwise.”

“Beautiful or not, they shouldn’t be worn into battle,” Rockhoof said with a snort. “Jewelry has no place in a fight. It’s too easy for an opponent to grab or steal, and they create space between a pony’s flesh and their armor. That’s space that a blade could slip between.”

“I’m sure they had a good reason.” Mistmane said, though Rockhoof just snorted again. She rolled her eyes, and turned back to us. “In any case, the Element of Generosity—that is to say, Rarity’s necklace—is extremely important. I’d be willing to bet Celestia is trying to find ponies to track Trixie down and recover it, right now.”

“Sp-speaking of,” Dinky interjected. “She’s stepping up to the p-podium now, we should go listen to her sp-speech.”

Mistmane glanced over to the town hall, then nodded. “Good luck, you two.” Beside her, Rockhoof nodded in agreement, then picked up the sword he had been working on before, and slid a glowing red gem down the length of the blade. The steel turned bright red, and he began to shape the blade again, like he had been before we interrupted him.

Dinky and I started to politely push through the crow of Hollows, while I tried to get a better look at the Princess. I could see her glowing mane standing just outside the front door of the town hall. It seemed that somepony had dragged an ancient podium out from inside the crumbling building, though the Princess hardly needed it, considering she was already taller than almost anypony else present. A nearby militia pony spotted us and waved us to the front of the crowd, where Princess Celestia noticed us and smiled. Pinkie was beside her on the porch, and she seemed to have perked up a bit since we saw her last. As she looked over the rest of the crowd, I saw Pinkie’s wings flutter slightly in excitement at the sight of so many ponies.

Princess Celestia addressed the crowd clearly, but only raised her voice slightly, so that she could be heard clearly through the town square. “Greetings, citizens of Ponyville! I understand some of you may be confused, or even concerned about your own safety. I would personally like to assure you that your security is first and foremost in my mind, which is why I’ve come to see you all personally today.

“It is also for this reason that I have asked Applejack to step down from her position as Commander of the Ponyville Militia. I came to understand that she was working with a zeal that was unhealthy, both for herself, and for you. To anypony that she hurt, directly or indirectly, I personally apologize, and I will do everything I can to mend the damages to health, home, and heart. Blame not the ponies of the Ponyville Militia themselves, for they are your own fellow citizens, and under very much the same pressure that you were. I will personally ensure that Applejack makes amends with all of you, once she has had some time to think about her past actions and understands how she overstepped her boundaries.”

There were some minor rumblings of distrust through the crowd. The militia ponies who had been in the square shifted nervously, as they could see just how hollow that promise was. But when the Princess raised her hoof, everypony quieted down to listen.

“I will be assigning a new Militia Commander within the day, once I have the chance to speak to several ponies who might be able to fill the role. In the meantime, look to Ponyville’s own Pinkie Pie—” She turned her hoof towards the pink alicorn, who waved at everypony in the crowd. “—and the local Commander of the Golden Guard, Flash Magnus, who is currently indisposed. The two of them will make announcements in my stead, and will hold council with the as-of-yet unchosen Militia Commander to make decisions regarding the safety of Ponyville, present and future.

“Now, onto some more distressing news. A pony by the name of Trixie Lulamoon—some of you may be familiar with the mare—has stolen an artifact of extreme importance to Equestria. It has the appearance of a golden necklace, with a purple gem as the centerpiece. The artifact must be recovered, but Trixie herself is not to be harmed, and will not be punished in any way should she return the artifact herself. Should anypony recover this artifact, or come across it in their own travels, it is to be given to Pinkie Pie, Flash Magnus, Ponyville’s Town Archmagus, or the as-of-yet unannounced Militia Commander, who will then escort the bearer to Canterlot, where I will inspect the artifact for authenticity and reward them in person. This message will also be relayed by courier to any safe settlement. However, any ponies willing to risk life and limb for the safety of Equestria should present themselves after this speech, for I have more information that will narrow your search.”

The Princess’ speech went on for a while longer, but not much more of it seemed terribly relevant to me. Most of it was just talking about how important Ponyville was, as the frontlines against the Everchaos, and how the army would be reinforcing the town’s interior as well as checking over the walls to keep everypony safe. A few ponies had questions, and the Princess answered them to the best of her ability, but almost all of her emphasis was on pushing back the chaos first before anything else major could be done.

She finished her speech shortly afterwards, and the crowd mostly started to disperse. Several ponies, including one or two in Militia armor, joined me and Dinky near the Princess. I recognized Maud as well, wearing her incredibly distinct stone armor and carrying her ridiculously-oversized club. It looked like it must have weighed fifty times her own weight, but she held it slung over her back with only a single hoof.

Pinkie was overjoyed to see her again, of course, and she leapt down from the raised porch to wrap her much-shorter sister in a crushing hug. I could swear I heard the stone armor grinding from the pressure, and yet Maud herself didn’t seem fazed in the slightest. "Mauddles! You're back in town again, did you just get back?"

She nodded, and began to talk about her own journeys. As she spoke, and Pinkie chattered excitedly, Dinky gave my shoulder a nudge. "Hey, Holly. Remember you went out to their farm? You should tell them about that."

I winced. "B-but they look so happy. I d-don't want to give s-sad news."

Dinky looked sympathetic, but she nudged me again. "I know, but they deserve to know all the same."

I glanced back at the two sisters, and swallowed a lump in my throat. "I g-guess…"

Pinkie smiled as I approached, though my nervous expression did seem to dampen her spirits slightly. "Hey Holly! Good to see Dinky's free again, bet you're happy about that!"

I couldn't keep myself from smiling a bit. Pinkie was right, knowing Dinky was free and safe was incredibly relieving, and I turned back to give my friend a happy smile, though it sagged a little because of my inescapable feeling of fatigue. She giggled just a little at the sight, before waving a hoof towards the others as a reminder.

Right. I swallowed nervously again, and forced myself to talk. "Y-yeah. I d-don't know what I'm gonna do next, b-but I needed to tell you s-something. When me and Tr-Trixie were working for Ap-Applejack, we came across what she c-called a rock farm…"

Pinkie and Maud looked at each other, then away. Maud nodded sadly, while Pinkie's gaze fell to her hooves. "It's okay, Holly. We, um, we know. About the farm. Maud's been out there a few times, though she said those mean pigs were gone now. Did you do that?"

"S-sort of," I said with a nod. I considered explaining in more detail, but Maud suddenly fixed her gaze on me in a manner that I could tell was her subdued version of a knowing glare. I got the hint. “M-me and Trixie...got them to l-leave. Just f-figured you should know, in c-case you didn’t already.”

Maud’s glare softened in relief behind Pinkie, who smiled sadly at me again. “Thank you for that, Holly. My family’s...already mostly gone, just me and Maud now. But knowing the farm is safe is still really comforting.” She gave Maud a gentle bump with her flank. “Hey Mauddie, when you find Trixie, tell her I said thank you, ‘kay?”

“Y-you’re going to go and try to track her d-down?” I said, surprised.

Maud shrugged, and looked away. “She’s a friend of a friend. Mostly.”

Pinkie nuzzled her sister happily. “It’s still really nice of you! Bring her back safe, won't ya? See if you can drag Starlight back from the Crystal Empire too, I miss all of them.” Pinkie’s expression turned morose again. “I miss everypony.”

“I’ll bring her back.” Maud promised, before she turned to me. “Would you be willing to help? You were traveling together last.”

I shifted on my hooves awkwardly. “I...um...I d-don’t know. She...she hurt m-me. In m-more ways than one.” Again, a look from Maud was all it took for me to sense that I should avoid elaborating in front of Pinkie, but I felt it was softer this time, more sympathetic.

The tall pink mare looked really sad at that, and shook her head. “Aw. I...I hope she didn’t mean to do that. I know she can be a little difficult, but I bet she’ll apologize next time you two see each other.”

“I...she...m-maybe.” I concluded with a sigh, while I looked back at Maud. Then I recalled the cloak in my bag. I reached in to pull out the star-spangled cloth, and passed the bundle to her. “Either way, y-you should have this. It was st-still in the confiscation box.”

The stone-faced and stone-clad mare watched me for a few moments as she took the cloak, and I felt like a bug being inspected under a magnifying glass. Eventually, she just said, “Thank you. We’ll talk about Trixie after Celestia briefs everypony.”

I nodded, and turned away to trot back to Dinky, though I didn’t go far. My friend was already talking to the Princess, and I picked up their conversation as I drew close.

“...I understand, after your experiences. Would you still be willing to take up the position of Ponyville Archmagus again? I’ve been speaking as though you were already reinstated, but I wanted to officially ask you, just in case you had other plans.”

Dinky looked nervous at the idea, but didn’t disagree. “W-would I have to go outside the walls? Since I know I’d b-be coordinating with Magnus again.”

“Not unless you wanted to,” Princess Celestia stated. “Or in case of emergency, but…I hope that shouldn’t ever become necessary. You should be perfectly fine to stay here in town, at least until the fires of Chaos are pushed back. Then the walls will be taken down, though I’ve been considering a more permanent wall bordering the forest. It’s certainly caused Ponyville no end of trouble in the past, and having a solid, properly-built wall dividing the two would help keep ponies safe.”

“Th-that would be really nice,” Dinky admitted. “But w-we’d have to get rid of the d-demons first.”

“Precisely.” Princess Celestia tilted her head as I approached, and she looked at the both of us with a curious expression. “By the way, I apologize if it’s rude to ask, but...have you developed a minor speech impediment recently? I don’t remember...Twilight never mentioned it, and she was otherwise very exhaustive in her descriptions of you.”

Dinky swallowed nervously, and looked away. “It’s a s-symptom of Hollowing. I notice odd m-muscle spasms a lot, and my hooves sh-shake sometimes. I d-don’t...don’t like to think about it.”

The Princess looked like she wanted to cry, as she looked down at the Hollow filly. She raised a hoof as if to embrace her again, but she clearly decided against it, and leaned in close. If I wasn’t standing right next to her, I don’t think I would have heard the Princess ask Dinky, “Would you like to come back to Canterlot with me, instead? You’ll be safe there, and you can continue your education using all of the resources available to students in Canterlot. We can pick up right where Twilight left off, in fact.”

Dinky clearly struggled with the question. She closed her eyes tightly, and shook her head as she fought an internal war over the idea, clearly divided over the question of whether to stay or leave. Eventually, she groaned, but didn’t open her eyes. “I...want to. I r-really want to. B-but I don’t know anypony there; my f-friends are all here in P-Ponyville, fighting to keep it s-safe. I n-need to help them, even if I can’t d-do it directly.”

“You know me,” the Princess offered, but Dinky shook her head.

“P-please. I’m sure. But...th-thank you, Princess.”

Princess Celestia clearly didn’t like the idea of it, but she didn’t fight Dinky on the point. She lowered her head, and nodded. “I understand. Keep them safe, Dinky Doo. I trust you, and you have my full support should you need anything to help. I’ll send any spell books or literature you require, as well.”

There was a rush of movement behind me that took my attention, and I turned to look at two bedraggled-looking Hollowed pegasi, who wore no armor. A stallion with faded green fur carried an Equestrian mailbag, while the other, a light blue mare, only had a tattered pair of saddlebags. “You r-requested civilian couriers, P-Princess?”

I stepped aside to let them pass, as Princess Celestia nodded, and lit her horn. From behind the podium came four bound scrolls, and she passed two each to the couriers. “I did. These are to be delivered for a public reading at the towns of Fillydelphia, Manehattan, Las Pegasus, and Appleloosa. Keep your ears open for any word of refugees or occupied towns as well, I need fresh reports on where Ponies might still be living and in need of protection.”

They both shakily saluted, and then galloped away to take wing, though they both headed the same direction at first to put distance between themselves and the Everchaos before they turned towards their destinations. The Princess watched them leave, then moved back behind the podium to speak to the smaller group of ponies before her. Pinkie and Dinky moved beside the stand, with myself, Maud, and several militia members standing in front of it.

Princess Celestia looked sad when her eyes passed over our group, and until she spoke, I wasn’t sure if she was let down by how few volunteered...or how many. “I wish I did not need to ask my little ponies to risk their lives like this, but my troops are preoccupied by the offensive against the Everfree. This artifact is too essential to the wellbeing of Equestria, and the world as a whole. Before I ask you kind ponies to go forth and retrieve it, know that there will be no recrimination or investigation should you choose to step away, and seek your own safety instead of putting your lives at risk. To put it simply, you can always back out to keep yourself and your friends safe instead.”

A few of the ponies in the group looked at each other. One of the militia ponies swallowed, then walked away. He pulled his helmet off and tossed it on the ground as he left, letting out a sigh of relief.

The Princess looked at everypony else who stayed, and bowed her head. “I understand. Thank you, all of you.”

Her horn lit with magic, as she looked up at us again. From behind her podium, she pulled a map of Equestria, and a broad-tipped pen with which she tried to circle Baltimare. The pen was long dry, however, and she shook it briefly before grumbling in a most undignified manner and finally discarded it. “From the reports given to me by Knight Holly and Archmagus Doo, Trixie Lulamoon—henceforth referred to as Trixie—was working to retrieve the artifact herself from the ruins of Cloudsdale, before she turned on Knight Holly and fled to Baltimare.”

Knight Holly? I was a knight now?

“Baltimare’s true status is unknown. The city appears to be abandoned at a glance, but scouts have reported movement. Ponies seem to still live in the city, but it seems as though they want to hide their presence. Many reports indicate that those scouts were themselves being watched, but any attempts to contact the city’s residents were unsuccessful. Why this might be is completely unknown. It’s possible that a demon incursion upon the city might have been catastrophic, and the survivors may still be hiding from those demons, or perhaps they have taken issue with the crown, and so wish not to work with the Equestrian government.

“Any residents you may come across are not to be harmed unless in self-defense. If possible, please attempt to make contact with any sort of leadership present, and inform them that we are willing to provide aid and evacuate any and all Baltimare citizens to protected cities, such as Canterlot or Fillydelphia. But the primary goal remains locating Trixie and the artifact, and returning them both to safety. Trixie is also not to be harmed unless in self-defense.

“The artifact itself is a golden necklace, with a purple gem set into the center. It is called the Element of Generosity, one of the six Elements of Harmony, and it was stolen from its bearer, Rarity Belle, who eagerly awaits its return in Canterlot. This is a major strategic asset for Equestria, and once it is returned, may provide the turning point we need in the war against the demons.”

A few ponies murmured at that. Some of them remembered Rarity, it seemed, and remembered the Elements. They understood how important it was that it be returned...Though I wondered why the Princess was lying about Rarity’s wellbeing. After all, Rarity was dead. I knew this better than anypony, since I killed her.

Princess Celestia continued, after the murmurs quieted down. “The first place to start looking is the Baltimare public library. That is where Trixie would most likely be headed first, and she may have left clues to her current location there. If not, it may be possible that she was waylaid on the way there. I would recommend some ponies work backwards from there towards Cloudsdale in case she, or any clues to her location, can be found en route.

“Finally...” Princess Celestia bowed her head and smiled gently. “As of this moment, you are all to be granted temporary Knighthood of Equestria, and carry that authority with you wherever you go. Ponies who display great feats of valor, and those who retrieve Trixie and the artifact or make contact with Baltimare, will be granted full knighthood. They will also be given the choice to join the Golden Guard, and continue to serve Equestria, if they so wish. Armor and weapons will be provided by Commander Magnus upon his return, to replace any arms and armor you may feel are lacking. Wear the armor with pride, and make Equestria-”

“Princess Celestia!” The eponymous Princess looked up at the interruption, just as a mass of feathers, golden armor, and blood fell out of the sky into the square. Everypony jumped at the clattering sound, as the metal plate armor slammed into the cobblestones, and the pony that wore the armor sprawled tiredly. The Princess scanned the sky for anypony else, before she leapt from behind the podium to investigate the fallen pony. Our little group followed her, and the ponies who had weapons readied them, just in case.

To our surprise, it was one of the Golden Guard that had pulled Princess Celestia’s phaeton, and who had left with Magnus to follow Applejack. He was curled up in a tight ball, and seemed to be protectively shielding something. One of his wings had broken on impact, and he squirmed from the pain, but the other protected his underbelly, even as the feathers trembled.

“TInder,” The Princess murmured, before her horn lit. Her horn instantly ignited with golden healing magic to heal his wounds, even as she spoke to him. “Stay still, you’ll be alright. Where’s Flint and Magnus?”

“C-captured,” the guard whimpered. “We were f-following the Militia C-Commander from the air, but she d-disappeared into a shack. We l-landed to investigate, and f-found an escape tunnel. At the other end, th-there were so many ponies w-wearing militia armor, and they all at-attacked us...”

Princess Celestia furrowed her brow. “She’s been planning for this...Or something like this.”

“Fl-Flint got lassoed and went down under a p-pile of ponies, but M-Magnus caught an axe to the neck. T-took it right off his sh-shoulders. I barely m-managed to get away, but…” The stallion looked around himself, at the small crowd of ponies standing around him. He especially eyed the ponies still wearing militia armor warily. “N-not here. Not safe…”

The Princess looked up at everypony present for a long moment, but then shook her head. “It’s safe here, Tinder. I assure you, I trust these ponies. I’ve granted them temporary knighthood for their task.”

He didn’t seem to quite believe her, but reluctantly, he folded up his wing, and exposed what he was carrying. “I c-couldn’t grab his b-body, they were already pulling it away...but I t-took what I could.”

As he pulled his wing away, it revealed a golden helmet, stained with dark, ichorous blood. Within the helmet was the decapitated head of Flash Magnus, separated with a ragged cut at the neck. Blood still dribbled out of the stump, but more alarmingly, his eyes were still a pair of brightly burning embers, and they focused on the Princess, then at everypony around the guard.

Flash Magnus, despite his head being quite thoroughly separated from his body, was still very much alive.
> 29 - Head of Magnus
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The lips of the decapitated head of Commander Flash Magnus moved, and we realized at once that he was still trying to speak, but couldn’t without lungs or a complete throat. The best he could manage in this state was a faint sucking noise that emanated from his lips and stump at the same time.

Everypony recoiled at once in shock and disgust, except for Dinky. The brave filly stepped forward in between me and Maud, her horn already brightly aglow. “Hold on! I might be able to help.”

Magnus’ stump came aglow with the golden light of her magic. There was a loud whistling noise, and then Magnus could speak again, though his voice was tinny and echoed in an oddly ethereal manner. “—cover me back up you fool you—Oh thank the sky I can speak. Cover me back up, and stop distracting me, or there’ll be a panic!”

Instantly, the Princess flared her wings, and everypony froze. “All of you stay put! Pinkie, keep anypony else from getting close, and do not do so yourself!”

“Okay…?” Pinkie said with a great deal of confusion, a short distance away. Maud turned to watch her specifically, and moved to shield Magnus from Pinkie’s sight.

Tinder did as he was ordered and flicked his wing back over Magnus' face, but we could still see the dark blood as it slowly seeped out from underneath. The casual observer would just assume it to be Tinder's own blood, or, at least, that was the hope.

Magnus was actually the first one to find his words. "Princess! I take full responsibility for the failure of the scouting mission, I—” He grunted suddenly, then continued. “—I made the call to follow Applejack into the tunnel, and ordered the guards to follow me."

"It's...quite alright, Commander. You were ambushed, and you all did the best you could in that situation. Tinder here deserves a commendation for...saving you while making a successful escape—"

"They shouldn't have been in the tunnel!" Magnus barked, though his desired volume didn't seem quite possible for the spell to emulate. His voice was even more clearly artificial for a few moments, before it stabilized. "I underestimated Applejack, and the rest of her cabal. I thought she was going to run off and hide by herself, but this seems to be some sort of secondary fort. Dozens of Hollows out there, easily. Loyalists of some sort."

"Perhaps more direct members of the Apple family?" the Princess offered. "Can you tell me anything else about them?"

Magnus was silent for a moment, before he let a sudden grunt. "Engh! Strong, and they've got stronger kicks. I'm counting at least three sets of hooves still wailing on me."

Princess Celestia blinked, as an expression of sheer confusion dominated her face. "I'm...sorry? Do you mean presently?"

"Give me a second, I can't talk and fight at the same- rope! I feel a rope around my- agh, you bastards, my wing!"

I noticed that the severed head was wriggling slightly, the stump of his neck flexing and bending against the ground. It was almost as if he was trying in vain to muster movement, to crawl along like some morbid caterpillar or slug, but it was too irregular and erratic for him to get anywhere. As I watched, though, I imagined what it would be like if he was still attached to his body, if he was ducking and weaving around attacks. Even while decapitated, the fighting instincts must have still been there.

Magnus let out a few pained wheezes and grunts that slowly trailed off, and eventually, he groaned in pain. "Damn it all, they're good with those ropes. I can't move a muscle."

"Are you...quite alright?" the Princess asked, with confused concern. "Beyond, ah, the obvious."

Magnus took a few moments to respond, as he let out ragged breath after ragged breath. Eventually, he groaned, "I'm not dead. I can thank the winds for that, at least. They seem to be carrying me somewhere—I can feel my body being hauled on another's back."

"Broken wing, left," he continued, as he started to list off his injuries. "Didn't like me slapping them around with it, I'd wager. Tied against my back, but it's going to set wrong without a splint. Broken rib, right. One hay of a kick there. Too many bruises to count, come morning. Sprained left forehoof, somepony grabbed it when I came out of the tunnel and gave it a nasty twist."

He grunted again. "And they've just tossed me onto a hay floor. Probably a barn. Lemme see if I can stand-" All of a sudden, he let out a sharp whinny, that devolved into a sad, pained whimpering. "B-bastards...kicked me in the thunderheads...guess they want me to stay put."

Several ponies—stallions, mostly—winced in sympathy, while Magnus wheezed gently under Tinder's wing. While he gathered his wits, Dinky's horn lit again, and we could see the golden glow of magic shining from underneath. "Don't mind me. I might be able to help with the pain, but I need to get a better idea of how...whatever this is...works."

"Good." Princess Celestia nodded at Dinky in approval, before she lowered her head to look at the injury for herself. "Magnus, can you describe the neck injury specifically? It's the most...pertinent detail, at present."

"...I'm actually trying not to think about it." Magnus grunted. "I feel as though if I focus on it too much, it's going to cause problems."

"I...see," The Princess murmured in confusion. "What about the moment of separation? Did Applejack do anything, or use any sort of unique-looking weapon to make this cut?"

"No, just a normal-looking wood axe. I never felt any separation, though I felt the cut. I actually thought she'd just buried the axe in my throat, or only gotten half my neck, until Tinder started to fly away, and took me with him. Was still fighting—blind—that entire time."

"Wonder if that might have distracted them," one of the ponies around us murmured.

The Princess turned to Dinky. "Tell me when you have something."

"Nothing yet…" Dinky murmured, more to herself than the ponies around her. "He's not enchanted in a way that I can tell, at least not with Unicorn magic. If it's some sort of bewitchment or hex, cast using Pyromancy, then it's outside of my skill set."

For a moment, the Princess sighed, and there was a flicker of disappointment across her muzzle. She spoke as a teacher, chiding her student for not having done their homework. "You still haven't even tried to learn Pyromancy?"

Dinky blinked in confusion, and her magic flickered out. She looked suddenly embarrassed, as she looked up at Princess Celestia. "I, um...no…"

"Twilight mentioned, at length, your distaste for Pyromancy. I had hoped that had changed, in the time since she left. You knew Zecora, and a dozen other skilled practitioners in Ponyville. And yet you haven't—"

"I was busy, alright?!" Dinky interrupted, as her voice cracked. In the long silence that followed, she seemed to realize she'd interrupted Princess Celestia, and she slowly shrunk down as she at everypony around her. "I-I thought magic was magic. And on some level it is. I thought—I think, that everything that can be done with pyromancy, sorcery can do too. I just had to keep learning, and I'd work it out from the other end, you know?"

Princess Celestia slowly, sadly, shook her head. "So much would be far more simple if that were true. Do you know, Twilight thought exactly the same way? Even after she came here to Ponyville. She was adamant about it, until Trixie came back for revenge, and my faithful student had to learn Pyromancy to match what Trixie was doing."

The Princess closed her eyes, as she remembered. "Do you know who taught her that Pyromancy? I'm sure she told you."

Dinky looked unsure at first, then nodded. "Z-Zecora."

"That's right." The ghost of a smile crossed Celestia's face, but she didn't open her eyes. "You could have apprenticed under her at any time here in Ponyville, you know. She would have been happy to take a student again."

"She did," Dinky mumbled. "And sh-she was, when I t-talked her into it. To repay Holly."

Princess Celestia opened her eyes, and looked at me for a long moment. Then she made a humming sort of noise, as though considering something. After a moment, she shook her head, and held her head up high above the other ponies to look over them. "Pinkie Pie? You'll need to see this soon enough anyway. Brace yourself, but come over here."

Pinkie nodded, though she looked confused, and approached cautiously. Maud looked as though she was going to keep Pinkie from seeing Magnus' head anyway, but the Princess glanced at her, and the stone-armored mare stepped aside.

Pinkie winced when she saw the blood, and her eyes went wide as she recognized Magnus. But  when the beheaded stallion spoke, that seemed to calm her worries. "Pinkie, don't be alarmed."

"Magnus? You're...not dead?"

He rolled his jaw. If his body was still attached, he might have been rubbing it, as if considering how to describe something. "Not as far as I can tell. I can still feel my body."

Pinkie still looked unsure. "So you're...okay? Not dying or in danger or anything?"

"I wouldn't recommend any other pony try to copy this, but yes? Are you going anywhere—"

As Magnus confirmed he wasn't dead or dying, a relieved grin split Pinkie's face. "Okay! Then that's actually pretty cool!"

"—with…with…what?"

Pinkie pronked forward and reached under Tinder's wing to pull Magnus' head out from where it had been covered, and started to turn him around to look at his stump, then back at his face. "Oh that's super gross, I'm gonna find you a scarf or something to cover that. But yeah, this is really cool! You're way more portable like this, and really light, and I could totally carry you all around town and hold you up at eye level when you need to talk to ponies! Oooooh, and the pranking potential!"

"Pranking—Pinkie, this isn't funny—!" the decapitated head protested.

"It's a little funny," Princess Celestia said, with a subdued smile. As Magnus spluttered indignantly, the Princess looked to Pinkie. "I know you're not a Pyromancer yourself, Pinkie, but I know that you'll know somepony who might be able to know something about what's happened to Magnus. If they were part of the Militia and can take over now that Applejack has left, all the better."

"Aye aye Princess!" Pinkie pulled off a snappy salute with one forehoof, while she held Magnus with the other. "I know a couple ponies that fit the bill already. Want me to go get them?"

"Magnus should stay here with us, but yes."

Pinkie was already trying to balance the helmeted head on her back, but she pouted and passed him to Dinky, who took hold of him with her magic. "Awww, but okay! Back in a bit, Princess!"

Pinkie disappeared from the town square in a Pinkie-shaped cloud of dust, and Princess Celestia looked around, to take stock of the ponies around her. Her eyes quickly fell to her injured guard, who was still lying on the ground before us. "Knight Tinder, you are relieved of your duties. Stay here and rest. You, wearing the blue barding. Please find a pony with a medical talent to get his wounds tended to properly."

The guard on the ground shuddered, as a militia mare in our group ran off on her orders. "I'm sorry, Pr-Princess—"

"None of that," she declared. "You will get a commendation for saving Commander Magnus. I'll send orders to Raven, to send a squad of guards to escort me and the phaeton back, and to scout Sweet Apple Acres from a safe distance. You'll stay here in Ponyville until your wing heals, and then both you and your brother will fly back to Canterlot, together."

The guard smiled, and relaxed a bit on the ground. "Th-thank you, your highness."

Princess Celestia had already begun to assemble several papers taken from the abandoned podium, and several further pens were discarded as they were found to be dry. When she found one that worked, she wrote the letter in moments, and then it disappeared in a flash of green, while the Princess had already moved to another piece of paper. "Need a list of priorities, to be reorganized as needed. Rescue Magnus and Flint. Scouting required first to prevent further losses and ambushes. Send negotiators to parley for peaceful release of hostages. Pull several squads off of the front line to reinforce Ponyville from potential counter-attacks. Retrieve Element of Generosity…"

The Princess looked back at our group, then nodded. "Anypony who has ever been to Baltimare before, raise your hoof."

Three ponies raised their hooves, including Maud.

"Of you three, who knows a path there by hoof?"

The other two ponies lowered their hooves, which left only Maud. Princess Celestia focused on her. "Knight Maud Pie, excellent. You have command of this group, and will lead them to Baltimare. The rest of you, follow and trust this pony. She's a veteran of the Dragon War, where she earned the title 'Stonebreaker.' She'll lead you well, and any wishing to join the Golden Guard should seek to emulate her conduct. Head to the northeast gate, there should be an army caravan there, and they can supply you with standard gear as needed."

The ponies present nodded, and turned towards Maud, who started to lead them in that direction. Instantly, I was presented with a dilemma. I had followed Dinky here, but fallen in with the group of ponies being sent after Trixie, and hadn’t really objected. But did I actually want to go with them, or should I stay here with Dinky?

I didn’t terribly want to see Trixie again if I could help it, especially not so soon after her betrayal. But a small, innocent and hopeful part of me was still worried about her. If the element had driven her mad, maybe she was still a decent pony again once they were separated? And even if not, then the other ponies in the squad could probably use an explanation of how she thought and acted, if that might help the track her down.

But Dinky was free, which had been the thing that had been pushing me forward until now. Before our imprisonment...I was learning under Zecora. But Zecora was gone. I could stay here with Dinky, but I’d mostly just be keeping her company. I could claim to be keeping her safe, but with Applejack gone, Ponyville seemed to be the safest it had been in a very long time. There was the occasional demon incursion over the wall, but those would be better fought if I helped out the army. But I had no intention of returning to the free-fire line, if I could at all help it. What was I to do here, in Ponyville?

Princess Celestia saw my hesitation. Her eyes turned to me as I took a half-step to follow the other knights, then froze. After a moment, she coughed, and I looked at her. It got Dinky’s attention too, and she looked between me and the Princess, as the latter spoke to me.

“Holly. Your name keeps coming up.” She tilted her head, and looked at me with a sort of intrigued curiosity in her eyes. “Friend of Dinky Doo, apprentice to Zecora. Guard for the caravan, and one of very few ponies who made it back in one piece. And then you went and found one of the missing Elements of Harmony. Like a moth to flame, it seems like you’re attracted to important goings-on. Very interesting.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It certainly didn’t feel like it, from my perspective. Things just happened, and I happened to be there. They didn’t even feel all that important until afterwards, when I was able to dredge context from other ponies.

“You should go with them,” Princess Celestia suggested. “They could certainly use another set of hooves. And I think, with you there as a part of that squad, important events will find you.”

I turned to Dinky, who looked as though she wanted to argue. But she glanced at the princess, then Magnus’ head, still held aloft in her magical field. Then she swallowed nervously. “I’ll be f-fine here, Holly. Trust the Pr-Princess.”

Trust the Princess. Trust the sun.

Okay. I could do that.

I nodded, hesitantly. Then I remembered something in my bottomless bag. I reached over to open it. “Um...I’ve g-got something I was s-supposed to keep safe, too. Zecora m-made it.”

The Princess nodded, and her eyes widened slightly as I pulled the flask of sunlight from my bag, and brushed some pale dust from the glass. “Ah, Meadowbrook said two had been made. Hers was one, and this is the other, I presume?”

I nodded, and held it towards her. But she surprised me when she held up a hoof. “Thank you, but one is perfectly sufficient for her research. I assume you’ve discovered the liquid’s…beneficial properties?”

“D-do you mean...the w-way it heals ponies?”

“Not ponies. Undead, specifically.” Princess Celestia smiled knowingly at me. “I think you should keep that for yourself, Holly. I suspect you’ll get quite a lot of use out of it on your journey, though I dearly wish it’s not needed.”

I looked at the glowing flask once more, full to the brim with liquid sunlight. It seemed especially heavy here, before the Princess, as if it could tell how close it was to the living goddess. As if it could feel the sheer intensity of the loving inferno within her body, like I could. After a few moments, I nodded, and slid it back into my bag. “Th-thank you, Princess.”

“Don’t thank me, my little pony. Thank Zecora.” Princess Celestia smiled at me again, with tired eyes, and then looked towards the street by which the other knights had left. “Now, good luck, Holly. As I said, the northeast gate.”

I nodded one last time, before I turned and started to trot after Maud and the others. As I left, I heard the Princess speaking to Dinky. Her voice faded into the distance as I left. “Now, as for you, Archmagus, I’ll send another letter to Raven with a list of books regarding Pyromancy…”


*	*	*


I had only been delayed by a few minutes at most, while the Princess had helped me sort out where I was going. In that time, the others had reached the gate first, and exited out to the foggy road outside the wall, where a military wagon waited for the town to open back up. There, they seemed to have caused no end of trouble. The scattering of ponies, both former militia and not, had set upon the guarded caravan like hungry piranha. The soldiers guarding the arms and armor looked as though they wanted to object, but Maud stood tall between them, and it seemed that the authority of the Golden Guard, and the word of the Princess, was enough to allow them access.

And access it was. While Magnus had been conservative when equipping the caravan, Maud had no such compunctions. I doubted the military wagon was keeping the top-of-the-line gear, like rifles and full gilded steel plate armor, but several ponies had already shed their normal barding for steel barding and those strange flat military helmets. The only unicorn in the group—a stallion with grey fur—looked down the sights of a slim revolving pistol, while a yellow pegasus mare flicked her wings in practice swipes with her new wingblades. Another pegasus mare, with green fur, had already mounted a spear to an armored saddle, and a bulky earth pony stallion—who still wore his yellow construction helmet—swung around a sledgehammer to test the weight and heft of the tool-turned-weapon.

My cheap, ragged quilted barding suddenly felt like rags by comparison. I might have liked the armor, and found it quite serviceable for the time I’d worn it, but given the choice between it and the steel barding, which seemed to be in ample supply? Well, that was hardly a choice at all.

The new armor was much less warm than the padded coat had been, and it was significantly heavier. I could feel myself being weighed down as I pulled it up my legs and cinched the belts tight around my barrel, and I wondered if I might actually weigh less than it did? After all, pegasi had hollow bones, while these plates were solid steel, connected and wrapped with leather.

When I’d pulled the armor on entirely, I looked back at myself to inspect it. Most of the barding was still really just leather armor, with thin strips that protected my joints, while the larger bones and stiff parts of my body, like my legs, back and barrel, were protected by solid steel. I flicked my tail, and felt the clack of a hinged plate that even protected my dock. My breast had another separate plate that covered it, with the sigil of the Equestrian army stamped into the metal, while the high collar of the armor protected the back of my neck. My throat was slightly exposed, but as I pulled one of the flat bowl-shaped military helmets on, I found the strap that wrapped around my chin was protected by a small metal plate of its own. That would protect both my throat and the buckle itself, preventing it from being sliced off and letting the helmet loose.

This was undeniably an upgrade, and I hoped I was able to keep this armor after we returned to Ponyville. After all, if we were to be knighted upon our successful return, then it didn’t exactly make sense for us to strip off our gear? Though as I turned back to the nervous-looking army ponies, I noticed that their own equipment was actually less protective than ours.

I’d seen their armor before, when we’d passed through the firebreak and back. It seemed to be a midpoint between what I wore before and what I wore now, with separate steel plates that protected the body looped through straps of a quilted jacket. It was less protective, but looked as though it would be faster to put on and take off, as well as being much easier to repair or replace. So, their armor was made to be easily mass-produced for cheap, while our own equipment was more expensive, but more protective because of that cost.

As I was inspecting my armor, the militia pony who had run off to get somepony to help Tinder arrived. She apologized for being late, Tinder was going to have his wounds treated, and that Pinkie was going to see all of us off before we left. Another pony said that now was as good a time to introduce ourselves as any other, considering we were all present, and several of the others nodded in agreement. Maud shrugged, then nodded, and pointed at the pony who’d suggested it. “Start.”

The barely-Hollowed burly stallion blinked in confusion for only a moment, before he introduced himself. “Uh, right. I’m Rivet, used to work construction here in Ponyville, or work on contracts in nearby towns.”

“Doesn’t your brother work delivery? Same colors as you, but a pegasus?” The Hollowed yellow pegasus mare asked.

“Yeah, you know him? Nail, does heavy lifting.”

“We’ve crossed airspaces a few times,” the pegasus mare said, with a roll of her eyes. “Anyway, I’m Raindrops. Used to work in the weather team, then worked for the militia. Glad to wash my hooves of Applejack and that whole mess.”

There was a wave of nods and affirmations, and a Hollowed gray unicorn stallion spoke up next. “Star Bright, astronomer and militia as well.”

A cream-colored earth pony mare—who had escaped Hollowing, thus far—spoke up. “Isn’t it kind of hard to see the stars now, with the sun the way it is? What use is an astronomer now?”

“Well, that’s...why I’m in the militia, I suppose, since it’s something to do while we wait for the sun to start rising and setting again…” Star Bright mumbled, as he absent-mindedly fidgeted with the revolving pistol in his magic.

“Cut him some slack, Roma.” Raindrops grunted. “Didn’t you sell tomatoes, before? That’s not much better.”

“Selling things is plenty applicable, I’m not just limited to—” Roma was cut off by a gunshot, and everypony yelped in surprise; especially Star Bright, who had been holding the firearm in his magic when it went off.

One of the army ponies used their own magic to grab the revolving pistol, and they forcefully removed it from Star Bright’s field. He sheepishly rubbed his armored foreleg as he shrunk down a bit, and looked around the group. “Eh-heh, uh, sorry...Was playing around with the hammer, and I guess it had enough spring to...it’s not important.”

Maud herself gave him a subdued glare—subtle as all of her expressions were, and yet the intensity of it was inexplicably staggering. “Don’t ‘play around’ with firearms. Point it and shoot it. Leave it holstered otherwise.”

Star Bright nodded. “Um. Y-yes ma’am.”

Maud stared him down for a few moments afterwards, just to make him sweat. Then she turned away, and only glanced at the army ponies. “Give him back the gun, for now. As you were.”

One of the other remaining ponies who had yet to introduce themselves was a Hollowed pegasus mare, with green fur, who looked as though she was still shaking from the noise of the gunshot. A pink and red earth pony mare, who was only about half as Hollowed, was trying to calm her down. “It’s okay, just breathe.” She noticed everypony looking at the two of them, and she smiled comfortingly. “Uh, I’m Posey Petals, and this is Merry May. She’ll be alright.”

Everypony’s eyes finally turned to me, and I flinched back. I was easily the most Hollowed pony in the group, and I could see a wide range of emotions as they looked at me. The former militia ponies looked at me with fear or at least discomfort; I think I recognized Raindrops, and I suspected we’d crossed paths before, when she was working as one of Applejack’s goons. The other ponies seemed more sympathetic, and only Merry May looked nervous when she focused on me.

“I...I’m…” I swallowed another lump in my throat, and looked down at my hooves. “I’m H-Holly. Pinkie named me, b-because, um…”

There were a few nods from the group. Raindrops was the only one to step forward with a question. “Are you gonna hold it together for the journey?”

“Raindrops!” Merry May hissed, offended on my behalf. “You can’t just ask a Hollow that!”

“It’s a fair question, though she could’ve been a bit more gentle about it,” rumbled Rivet. He turned to me, and smiled. “Are you keeping it together? All we need to know.”

I nodded, hesitantly. “I’ve-I’ve actually been g-getting better. Learning P-Pyromancy helped.”

“Then we’re good.” Rivet said with a nod, before he turned back to Raindrops. “Right, ‘Drops?”

The mare nodded, though I noticed she didn’t seem like the smiling sort, like she was perpetually grumpy. I couldn’t really blame her, all things considered. “Yeah, that’s all. We’re ready to go, Maud.”

“Good,” the stone knight stated, before she unrolled a map, and started to point with her hoof while she explained our route, in her usual monotone voice. “The shortest path to Baltimare follows the rail line. A coal mine was extended into a train tunnel that passes through the range, which is about six miles long. If we find it’s collapsed, then we’ll have to go the long way around.”

Raindrops shivered, as she looked at the map. “A pitch-black six mile tunnel, or mountain climbing in the fog. Not sure which I prefer less.”

“I know that tunnel; I’ve ridden cargo trains through it before,” Rivet said, as he rubbed his chin. “It seemed plenty sturdy, from what I could tell, and the mine tunnels are all signposted. So long as we follow the tracks, it should be a nice, straight shot through.”

“Let’s hope,” muttered Roma, as Maud rolled up the map once more. “We’re just waiting on Pinkie to see us off, then?”

“That’s what she said,” confirmed Merry May, as she and Posey nervously looked out at the foggy road.

Rivet wasn’t terribly worried about it himself, and after I’d spent so long trekking through that same fog, neither was I. He turned to the army ponies, who had closed up their wagon after we’d finished raiding all of their equipment. “So, anypony here got a good story to kill time with, while we wait?”
> 30 - Canary in the Coal Mine
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We left Ponyville behind, as Pinkie waved us goodbye from the gate. I couldn’t help but keep looking back at her over my shoulder for as long as I could; no matter how far, she just kept watching and waving her hoof. I wondered if she’d still be there in that exact same spot when we got back, ready to hug every one of us all over again. I could only dream of a welcoming nearly as pleasant after the past few expeditions I’d been on.

To my surprise, we didn’t follow the road; we actually started off by following the wall around the northeast side of Ponyville. By the time we heard them lock the gate back up tight, we were already a good distance out into the fog, and it wasn’t more than a distant rumble. I almost mistook it for thunder at first; there was a distant storm rolling in from the east, and I could feel the air shifting over my wings as it approached.

Raindrops confirmed it as well, out loud for everypony’s benefit. “Storm moving in from the Celestial Sea. It’s probably hitting Baltimare now, funnily enough.”

Roma looked up into the fog. “Are we gonna be searching the city in a rainstorm?”

Raindrops shrugged, and fluttered her wings to flex her muscles. “Hard to know. It could push over the mountain range, or slide back out to sea, or down the coast to the swamps. We might even miss it entirely while we’re in the tunnel.”

“Let’s hope,” Roma spat. “The fog’s bad enough as it is.”

“Speak for yourself; I like the rain.”

“You would,” Roma muttered, with a roll of her eyes. Raindrops gave her a sour look, but didn’t respond, and we moved onwards in silence.

We passed by a couple of farms as we searched for the remains of the rail line. We didn’t stop to loot any of the crumbling buildings, mostly because there wasn’t much left to loot; the Ashen Wallowers had long been here, cleaned it out, and left their own graffiti. Curiously, it seemed as though they'd found some glowing chalk of their own, and used it to deface the more-intact buildings. I couldn’t understand any of their language, despite how infuriatingly close it was to Equuish, but I suspected the glowing words translated to nothing nice.

The rail line itself ran between two farms as it left the town, and was reinforced by a raised strip of gravel that kept the track level over the uneven terrain. The steel of the rails was ruined and rusted, and a few pieces had been stolen, while craters had ruined some other sections of the track. The land here was scarred from fighting, or perhaps sabotage. Either way, it was done too long ago to find any clues as to what truly happened.

The Ponyville barricade loomed above us, and I noticed that they’d not even left a gap for the train. Instead, they’d built the wall right over the track, so that it ran into a dead end made of steel, bricks, and wood logs. If this track was ever to be repaired and trains to be run again, the wall would need to come down first, or at least this section. The other end of the track ran deep into the fog until it became impossible to pierce, and that line was what we started to follow away from Ponyville.

Most of us walked along the rails directly, but I noticed Posey preferred to traverse the plain terrain to our right, while Rivet did the same on the left. I preferred it up here, closer to the sky, even if only by a few leg-lengths. It also let me look around us in all directions, or at least allowed me to peer helplessly into the mist in search of movement. Raindrops had taken point, perhaps the most eager of all of us to reach our destination and get this done with. Maud walked roughly in the center of the herd at all times, a living boulder tromping along the metal path, an anchor to all of us.

After a few minutes of silence, aside from the crunching of our hooves across the gravel, Merry May looked down the slope to Rivet. “S-so, um, you said you rode the t-train through this tunnel before?”

“Oh, yeah.” Rivet chuckled as he looked up the hill towards the nervous pegasus. “All the time—when I was younger, I actually used to ride the trains with the construction materials, so I could get jobs in construction on-site. Went all across the country like that, following where the construction was happening. I settled down eventually in Ponyville though, just in time for the crystal castle to pop up. Lots of work in town after that, supporting the castle—and the school, when that needed to be built a few years later.”

“The t-trains haven’t run...r-recently, though?” Merry asked sadly. Rivet glanced up at her in confusion, and she explained, “I w-was hoping I could ask somepony why they s-stopped running...I was g-going to Manehattan, but they stopped the t-train in Ponyville and sh-shut down the lines.”

“Oh! I…” Posey spoke up, and those of us who were listening to the conversation turned to look at her. “I can actually answer that. The demons started to attack trains all over Equestria, which lasted for about a week, until they shut down the passenger lines. I saw it firsthoof, even.”

“They attacked t-trains? While they were m-moving?” Merry squeaked in fear.

Posey shivered as she started chewing her lip. “Yeah. I was going from Fillydelphia to Salt Lick City—I have, or maybe had, a brother out there—when the train car suddenly rocked to one side. We looked outside, and this flying demon with huge claws had grabbed the roof. It actually pulled the car off the tracks, and derailed the whole thing.”

“H-how did you s-survive?” Merry asked, with shock in her voice. 

“I didn’t,” Posey said sadly. “Everypony in the car got smashed to pieces, but we all started to wake up around a week later. By then they’d hauled all of us off to Ponyville, so I woke up there. Apparently the military killed that demon, but the train and the track were both wrecked.”

“Damn, I heard about that. Did you ever actually get to Salt Lick?” Rivet asked sympathetically.

Posey snorted at the question. “Nah, I've been stuck in Ponyville since before the walls went up. My luggage didn’t come with me, so for all I know, it’s still rotting out in the wilds somewhere, with all of my bits and the rest of my belongings.”

After a few moments, Raindrops spoke up. “I’m sorry to hear about that, Posey. When we get back to Ponyville, I’ll go out and look along that line, to see if I can find anything. I can carry you with me, if you want.”

“Well, not much point now,” Posey said, with a sad chuckle. “But I do appreciate it. Maybe Celestia can give me a ride out to Salt Lick, instead of being knighted.”

The conversation didn’t really go anywhere past that. Talking about the demons had reminded all of us that they were still a threat, that they still stalked the fog outside Ponyville, and we didn’t want to risk attracting them. For the most part, everypony clutched their weapons a little tighter as we followed the tracks through the fog, and warily watched the grey mist all around us.


*	*	*


The mountain range sloped upwards gently at first, so that we didn't realize we'd been walking up the slope until we had to dig our hooves in with each step, and those steps kicked gravel back down the slope in tiny cascades. Very quickly, we found ourselves on a narrow plateau of stone, which had been carefully cut and quarried from the mountain.

Decades, or maybe centuries ago, this had been the outside of the coal mine. We could still tell; pile of weathered stones had been left in great, ugly heaps off to the sides of the track, after they'd been pulled from the mine and the valuable coal separated out. Streaks of black still stained the rocks, thin remnants of ore that had been too thin to be extracted.

As we moved further in, we found ourselves before a small railroad station, and beyond, the black maw of the tunnel entrance. The station held nothing useful for us, just an emergency telegraph and a bunch of faded pamphlets about the former mine. The general message seemed to be that the tunnel was safe, but the side tunnels of the mine itself had never been sealed, though they were barricaded off and blatantly signposted. So long as we followed the tracks, we didn't need to be concerned about those side tunnels.

As we all moved as a group towards the entrance, the pegasi—myself included—found it hard to force ourselves forward. While we could feel wind rushing out of the tunnel towards us, it was still impossibly dark within. I was particularly nervous about the black expanse of nothingness before us; I'd only just barely survived the black lake, and I felt a disturbing familiarity with the abyss before us.

Maud had no such compunction. She didn't even look terribly worried; she was practically about to walk into the pitch-black tunnel, when she paused, and turned back to us. "You should all have lights. I can navigate without them, but we will be a lot slower."

I couldn't pull out my little lightgem fast enough, and it rattled against my breastplate now that it was exposed. Several other ponies had lights of their own; Rivet had a large, bright lightgem with a grip that he clenched between his teeth, which looked like it had been crafted for industrial work. Raindrops had a necklace of her own with a more finely-cut gem, while Roma had a magic-powered electric flashlight, which she hooked into a loop of her armor. Maud pulled out a mining headlamp, while Star Bright, of course, merely used his horn to shine a beam of magic light into the tunnel. Only Posey and Merry May had no lights of their own, and they stuck close by, in between me and Rivet.

Reluctantly, we started to walk down the tracks into the dark tunnel. Our lights did a good job piercing the lightless veil, but the fog persisted in here as well, and we could only see maybe thirty leg-lengths forward, at the absolute most.

Before we left it totally behind, I spared one last glance at the entrance. Already, it was a pinprick of light in the dark length of the endless tunnel, as we left the comforting embrace of sunlight far behind ourselves.

I could have sworn I saw the light flicker, just for a second. As though something entered the tunnel behind us, or moved across the light. But soon, the ember of light winked out entirely, as we moved deeper under the mountain, and it didn't matter any more.


*	*	*


We paused a short while later, at the entrance to one of the side tunnels. Though we'd passed by a few already, they had been short little passages, and when Roma shined her electric flashlight over the barricade, we could clearly see the end. But now they were starting to get deeper, and they curled away through the stone. We could only see up to the first bend, and the shadow of the curve within.

Maud opened up a bit as we looked around the stone, or, at least, as much as she seemed capable of opening up. There was just the faintest hint of liveliness added to her voice. She reminded me more of a tour guide, as she led a group of foals on a field trip. "We're half a mile deep inside the mountain. This is where the Royal Equestrian Blasting Company found the main vein of coal ore. Then they started to widen the tunnel so they could lay down tracks for their minecarts, to haul the ore to the surface—"

Rivet coughed to interrupt her, and she looked at him. "That wasn't a real cough." The edge in her tone was subtle. Knowing Maud, the metaphorical knife may have even been completely blunted, more of a club. The implicit dissatisfaction was no less biting.

"Uh. No.” He grinned sheepishly at her. “But we should keep moving, you can tell us more about coal as we walk."

Maud simply shrugged in agreement, and we started to move again, bringing the chorus of clopping hooves echoing through the tunnels once more.


*	*	*


"...Most of this mountain range is formed out of metamorphic granite and marble. This is speculated to be because continents are actually large rocks, called tectonic plates, which move around the planet over the course of millenia. A very long time ago, the continent on which Gryphonstone is located pushed against the continent where Equestria is now, which forced the stone upwards to form a mountain range on the leading edge of both continents—"

"W-wait, hang on," Merry May suddenly said, as she interrupted Maud's lecture. She looked twitchy; she constantly glanced back and forth down the tunnel. I followed her embered eyes, but there was nothing there, and she clearly didn't see anything either. "Do you hear that?"

We were all silent for a few moments, as we stood still in the tunnel. The echoes of our hoofsteps faded quickly; soon, the only thing we could hear was the sound of our own breathing. Mostly my own—though practice had made the anatomical process mostly automatic, my throat and lungs were both still damaged, so my breathing was ragged and punctuated by long, slow wheezes.

After a few moments, Roma shot Merry May a glare. "Do we hear...what, exactly?"

The Hollow pegasus looked even more nervous than usual. "I heard...or...I th-thought I heard...um…" She glanced around the group, then shook her head. "N-nevermind. Just my im-imagination."

"...Okay?" Roma muttered, before she shook her head and started to trot down the tunnel again. "Whatever. Keep talking about rocks, Maud."

"Okay. The Himallama mountains are speculated to be another example of this kind of geological interaction, with two plates being forced against each other over the period of millions of years…"


*	*	*


Our positions drifted slightly as we moved down the tunnel. Mostly Merry May stayed a lot closer to Rivet and Raindrops, while Roma wanted to put distance between herself and the nervous Hollow. I ended up trotting beside Star Bright, who pointed his light mostly at the tracks under our hooves while we moved.

After a bit, I glanced at him, and noticed his lips were moving. Short words, under his breath, and I had to really strain to hear him over the sounds of horseshoes on metal and the quiet murmur of conversation around us. He seemed to be counting, as he pointed his light forward.

Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me. I gently poked him in the shoulder, and that got his attention. I asked quietly, "Are you...c-counting?"

"Oh!" His eyes brightened behind his glasses, as he really focused on me. "Yes, actually, as we move. Though that's been making it hard to keep track, admittedly; it'd be easier if we stayed still for a few minutes."

He turned back towards the tunnel, and his lips started to move again as he resumed his counting. I blinked at him for a moment in confusion, before I gently poked his shoulder a second time.

"Hm? Yes, what is it?"

"W-what are you counting?" I put a bit of emphasis on the question this time, in hopes of earning a full explanation.

He looked at me, confused, for a few moments. Then, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, he tapped one of the wooden beams of the track under our hooves. "The track crossties."

He turned back to face the tunnel, and I tapped his shoulder again. This time, he looked annoyed at the continued interruptions, but before he could say anything, I asked, "W-why are you counting the t-track crossties?"

"Oh!" Realization flickered across his face. "Well, that depends, actually. Is the space between crossties consistently equidistant?"

I blinked at him in confusion. "Huh?"

He tapped the wooden beam under his hoof again. "Is the distance between track crossties the same, all the way down the length of the track?"

I looked down the tunnel one way, then the other. "I g-guess so? They l-look like they are, or at least c-close enough I'd need to m-measure them."

The stallion's face brightened. "I thought so too! So I started counting them properly, up to the edge of our lights. There's less crossties visible, so that means either there's more space between them, or our lights are dimming."

All conversation in the tunnel came to a sudden end, as everypony froze where they were. Silence reigned, aside from the echoes of our hooves.

"Run that last sentence by me again," Raindrops said quietly, from behind us. "I want to make sure I heard you properly."

He shrugged. "We can see less crossties in front of us, so that means either there's more space between them—which we're reasonably sure there isn't—or our lights are getting more dim. Or less bright, I suppose."

The tunnel was silent for several long seconds, as we all looked at each other, then down the tunnels, and finally at each of our respective light sources. There was no doubt about it; we definitely couldn't see as far down the tunnel as used to, in either direction. What had been thirty leg-lengths was now twenty-five, and it must have happened slowly enough that nopony had noticed. Nopony, that is, save for the spaced-out Hollowed astronomer.

He looked back at us a moment later. "I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear you. Could you repeat your question, but louder this time?"

We all looked at each other again. Rivet tilted his head in confusion at Star Bright. "Uh. Nopony said anything."

Star Bright blinked dumbly at the larger stallion. "Are you sure? I thought I heard somepony whisper a question."

Slowly, we all shook our heads...except for Merry May, whose eyes were wide. "You hear them too?"

Star Bright looked around the tunnel, and his ears flicked in different directions. "I hear...something…? But I'm not sure what, it sounded like a pony’s voice before…"

The tunnel was silent, except for the distant echoes of our hoofsteps. Except...nopony had moved in a minute or two. Why could I still hear that? 

I swallowed, and looked at them. "D-does anypony else hear hoofsteps, o-or echoes of…" I trailed off, as Rivet, Posey, Raindrops, Roma, and Maud slowly and silently shook their heads.

Posey in particular moved closer to Rivet, as ancient herd instincts compelled all of us to huddle closely around the largest member of the herd for safety. "Okay…" she nickered nervously. "Getting creeped out now…"

Roma glanced at me, Star Bright, and Merry May. "It's just the Hollows hearing whatever it is, maybe they're losing it? Down too long in the midnight sea, and all that?"

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Raindrops declared. "I don't like this tunnel any more than they do, so let's keep moving. Maud, how deep are we?"

"I...think we're about three miles down the tunnel." For once, a flicker of emotion crossed Maud's face. A flash of uncertainty, as she made her educated guess.

"Then we're past the halfway point." Raindrops pointed out. "It's faster to keep pushing forward, all the way through. If we turn back now, then it'll be longer, and we'll need to find an overland route to Baltimare."

Rivet nodded, as he peered down the tunnel. "Yeah...yeah, that makes sense. Let's get moving again, everypony."

We started to move down the tunnel again, with a little more urgency in our step. The sounds of our hoofsteps drowned out the phantom echoes I’d been hearing...at least for the moment.


*	*	*


Now that I was aware of it, I couldn’t help but watch the edge of my little pool of light as we broke into a gallop down the train tunnel. It was like watching paint dry, or a shadow crawl across a wall: the change was just too slow to see when you were watching it constantly, but if you looked away, and then looked back a moment later, it had undeniably changed.

It wasn’t the only thing that had changed. I peered into the black abyss of the tunnel, and I swore I saw things. But that was impossible, because there was no light down there, nothing to reflect light or illuminate the endless tunnel before me, until we moved our pool of light further along. I saw it in the side tunnels too, as we passed by, but only in the brief moments before our light flooded the tunnel, and the brief moment after we moved on.

There was movement in the shadows. Black on black, things darting and slithering in the dark. I couldn't see them specifically, but I could see the movement, or I saw where they had been only seconds before. The void where something should have been, but when the light was shined on it, there had never been anything there at all. It was like trying to see something just at the edge of your vision, but it always hid as you turned your head.

Everypony else saw them too. I knew they did, but nopony said anything. Nopony wanted to be the first, because we were seeing impossible things. The first pony who admitted to seeing them, they’d be called crazy. I knew it. We all knew it, and we didn’t need to agree that we knew the things we couldn’t admit to knowing.

Right?

But Merry May, she was very happy to admit that she was hearing things, even if she wouldn’t admit to seeing them. She was very loudly talking about how she could hear them as we galloped quickly down the tunnel.

“How can you not hear that?” She cried, head twisting wildly to look all around herself. “That’s so loud, where is it coming from? Where are they?”

“What are you talking about?” Roma screeched. “I don’t hear anything, you crazy rutting Hollow!”

“The voices!” Merry May howled. “So many voices, coming-coming from everywhere at once! They’re all talking and laughing and crying and screaming-”

“I can’t-” Star Bright gasped as his hoof caught on a railroad crosstie. He’d been moving too fast, and couldn’t watch where he was putting his hooves. He stumbled, and tipped forward in an ungainly mess with a terrified yelp.

Our frantic gallop came to a sudden, screeching stop as we kicked up gravel, and Rivet spun on his hoof. Star was just at the edge of the pool of light, but Rivet grabbed the nape of his armor in his teeth, and started galloping back while he held the stallion.

“Everypony stop!” Raindrops shouted, and almost everypony staggered and slowed. “We’re not leaving anypony behind, and I don’t hear anything! You three, explain what the hay is—”

“We can’t stop!” Merry May whinnied in blind terror, as she nervously drummed her hooves on the gravel floor of the tunnel. “If we stop, they’ll catch up to us! We have to keep moving!”

“What will catch up to us?!” Raindrops barked, but Merry May had already bolted in wild panic. It took everything I had not to follow her, as she galloped down the tunnel into the darkness, and disappeared from our sight.

I could hear them too. Whispers in languages I couldn’t understand, that had never been spoken by ponies. Voices of a hundred thousand dead, all around us, crushing our pathetic little light, waiting to snuff it out for good and draw us in with them. I couldn’t let them catch us, but I couldn’t run off on my own but I couldn’t let them catch us but I couldn’t stay I had to run I had to run I HAD TO RUN

We could hear Merry May’s hooves as they kicked up gravel and she bolted, unseen, down the tunnel and away from us. We all stayed put, panting quietly as Star Bright and I shook in terrified panic. It took everything I had to stay exactly where I was, with panic overwhelming me. I could see how much Star Bright wanted to run, as he struggled against Rivet’s strength.

And then suddenly everything stopped.

Merry May’s hoofsteps just ended, very suddenly. As if she came to a dead stop, except there was no skidding of gravel, no rattle from down the corridor, no other steps. At the same time, the whispers were just gone. They had been getting louder the longer we stayed here, and had only reached the level of normal conversation when suddenly they stopped altogether.

There was only the sound of our panting, as we all recovered from our brief gallop down the abandoned train tunnel.

I trembled uncontrollably as I looked at Roma and Raindrops. “Th-the whispers. They were-they’re gone. S-Silent, now.”

They glanced at Star Bright, who nodded quickly, but I still saw his eyes darting amongst the darkness. Behind them, Posey looked incredibly nervous; had she only just started to hear them, before they were cut off? She was the next-most Hollowed among us.

Maud only glared down the corridor, back the way we’d come, and she watched for any movement with her massive stone club at the ready. But there was none to be found. There were just seven ponies sitting in a tunnel, shining their lights out through the darkness.

Raindrops took a step forward down the tunnel, but only a step. She stayed well within the light. “Merry?” She called quietly, then a bit louder. “Merry May? It’s okay. Follow my voice, come back to us.”

There was no response.

“Merry May!” Raindrops said again, with worried agitation in her voice. “It’s alright, I’m not mad at you, just come back! It’s safe here!”

There was no movement. No noise from further down the tunnel. No hoofsteps, no panting, not even a scream. Not even echoes of a noise. The dark tunnel was silent.

“I don’t-I don’t like this.” Raindrops growled. “I really don’t like this.”

“W-we should keep moving,” Maud declared, but her voice trembled.

If Raindrops noticed, she didn’t comment on it. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s start moving again. Slowly. Roma, follow her hoofprints. If she ran down a side tunnel, we can lead her back out.”

For once, Roma’s only response was a silent nod.

We started to carefully move down the train tunnel again. My hooves trembled, but as more time passed, they began to shake less. Star Bright didn’t seem to recover like I had; he was still shaking across his body, and his eyes and the light from his horn kept darting wildly around the tunnel. It was distracting, but twitchy magelight was better than no magelight at all.

Roma was careful not to disturb the indentations in the gravel where Merry May had kicked up the loose stones, and we all stayed on the other side of the tunnel to her path, just to make sure. Eventually, Roma held up her hoof. “Wait, the trail…”

She looked back down the path, and followed it again with her eyes. She peered down the tunnel past us, but the gravel down there was undisturbed, so far as we could tell.

“Raindrops, the trail just...ends here. There’s no side tunnel, there’s no hole, there’s nowhere she could have gone.”

Raindrops shook her head. “She had to have gone somewhere. Ponies don’t just disappear.”

“Look for yourself!” Roma shook her hoof at the end of the path. “Step, step, step, nothing. It just ends there, like she just...ceased to exist, mid-stride!”

“What the hay is going on?” Posey whimpered.

Maud stepped forward. “Gravel doesn’t eat ponies. It’s too small. And there’s no such thing as quick-gravel.” Roma looked like she was going to argue, but Maud glared at her. “I know rocks. I know tunnels. Something is wrong here. But I don’t know what.”

Rivet looked down at the stallion still shivering at his hooves, then back up at her. “Knight Maud. What’s your call?”

Maud didn’t respond for a moment, but Raindrops used that moment to glare at Rivet. Raindrops had settled into a leadership role, but Maud was officially in charge, even if the reminder from Rivet was unnecessary.

When Maud spoke, she was back to her usual monotone; clear and concise, and seemingly without emotion. “We should keep following the tunnel. Roma, take the lead. Look for any more hoofsteps. If we find Merry May, then we can continue as a full group.”

“And what if we don’t?” Raindrops asked icily.

“We can’t stay here.” Maud declared simply. “Something is wrong here. If Merry May is gone, then she’s gone.”

“So we’re leaving her?” Raindrops lowered her head, and spat on the clean steel rail underhoof.

Maud was impassive as ever. “Do you know where she is?”

“No, but—what kind of question is that?”

“An important one. Let’s go.” Maud started walking along the tracks, and after a moment, Roma moved with her. Rivet grabbed Star Bright’s collar in his teeth again and dropped in behind them.

As sure as the wind, I didn’t want to stay. I went with them, but turned to look at Raindrops and Posey behind me, in an ever-shrinking pool of light. After a moment, Raindrops snarled “Stars-dammit.” Then she turned and started to trot to catch up to us, with Posey in tow.


*	*	*


Nopony spoke, not even Maud. We were too busy listening for any movement besides our own, and we warily watched the darkness with trepidation, waiting for something to leap out and attack us. But nothing ever did, and that was worse.

This wasn’t like the demons. They were terrifying because they were big, and strong, and had teeth and claws and would rip a pony limb from limb if given the chance. But the demons were, at the most basic level, wild animals. They had a presence, and if you knew where they were, then you could avoid them, or run from them.

Even being hunted by ponies, pigs, or skeletons, wasn’t too different. They still had to occupy space, and they had to cross the distance to get close to you. They might be able to ambush you, or you could ambush them. No matter what, we all still had to play by the same rules, and you still had to actually be present to hurt the other, even with guns and bows and cannons.

This darkness was absolutely nothing like that.

There was nothing. There was absolutely nothing in the darkness. I know what I had seen, or maybe what I hadn’t seen, except it hadn’t really been there. Now that I wasn’t seeing it anymore, I wasn’t sure they had ever been there, just like the shape that followed me out of the lake. It was only there in my mind, and maybe not in reality, but it was just as dangerous as if it had been a physical creature.

I had heard the whispers too. They had come from absolutely everywhere, but what were they? There had been screaming, and panting. Voices of ponies being chased, or trying to escape things. But they spoke no language that I knew, and their languages used vowels and noises I couldn’t replicate, even if my throat was undamaged. Voices that could only be made with alien throats and mouths, and they had been screaming too. Had they disappeared into the dark, just like Merry May had?

Where did it come from, this consuming abyss? Had it always been here, and the coal mine had unearthed it? But there hadn’t been any hints of that. Surely, they would’ve blocked it off if this had been happening when the mine was dug out. Instead, they kept digging, and ran a train through the extended tunnel. So this couldn’t have always been happening.

What was the dark? I’d been encountering pockets of whatever this was all throughout my journey, even from the moment I first awoke. My cutie marks had been consumed by it, and when I had bled after my first dozen deaths, even my blood had been black. It had been present in abandoned buildings in Ponyville, and Dinky had dragged us through it in her frantic teleport. The bottomless bags were filled with the abyss as well, and Trixie had kicked me into a lake of darkness, which I had only just barely escaped.

One thing was consistent; the sun’s light burned away the darkness. In the sunlight, I felt purified, like a pony again, and the pockets of darkness could not exist in direct sunlight. Even on the shores of the black lake, the water could only lap at the sun-lit shore, and it had kept me safe once I emerged into the light. The cold mud that had stained me then had boiled away, repelled by the warmth of Celestia’s sun.

Even now, our inferior sources of light burned away the darkness that filled the tunnel, but they were slowly failing us. Even as I watched, I saw once again that our pool of safety was shrinking. The dark was intensifying, dimming our lights. It sought to swallow us whole, like it had Merry May. We weren’t safe here. We would never be safe in this tunnel. The only place we would be safe was outside, in the sunlight. We had to reach the end of the tunnel, we had to see the sun again.

Behind me, Star Bright suddenly stiffened in Rivet’s grip, and I knew he could hear the whispers again. He started to squirm, to try and escape, but he was being held too tightly, and the older unicorn was too weak to wriggle free of Rivet’s grip. Merry May had been the first to hear them, even when the rest of us couldn’t; she had been our canary in the coal mine, and now that she was gone, we had no warning until the darkness was already upon us.

Raindrops took notice of his wriggling, Rivet’s grunts as he kept the stallion restrained, and how nervous I must have looked. She whinnied to get everypony’s attention. “The Hollows are getting agitated—It’s happening again!”

We couldn’t stop trotting, so we had to talk while moving, even though Rivet was slowed by how he had to fight Star Bright. Posey started to hyperventilate as she muttered to herself, “What do we do, what do we do, what do we do, we can’t stay here—”

“Shut up!” Roma snarled. “Shut up, and don’t run off like Merry May did, you know what happened to her!”

“No we don’t!” Posey shouted. “We don’t know what happened to her, nopony knows what happened to her! She’s just gone! I don’t want that to happen to me!”

“Everypony, clam up!” Raindrops shouted, and her voice echoed down the tunnel into the darkness. “Maud, how far are we from the end of this tunnel? You said it was six miles long!”

Maud still looked unsure, and her hoof caressed the grip of her stone club nervously. “We can’t be far. We should see the end soon. Less than a mile.”

“Then we push.” Raindrops declared. “We all gallop, together, with the lights. Merry May ran off by herself into the dark with nothing, but we all have our own, and we can stay together. Six dim lights is almost as good as one bright light. We just need to get out of this tunnel!”

The lights had dimmed enough that they no longer illuminated the ceiling of the tunnel, and I saw something dart through the gloom directly above us. My breath caught in my throat, and Posey glanced at me, then followed my eyes, as we peered through the gloom together.

Raindrops stamped her hoof on the steel railroad, and the sound of her horseshoe echoed again. “On three, we all start galloping! Stay together, and the ponies who can direct their lights, point them forward! We can’t afford to trip over anything in the tunnel, but we can’t stay here!”

We all nodded nervously, and Raindrops shouted, “One, two, three!”

And then we all broke into a panicked gallop. That we ran together, as a herd, kept us sane in the darkness. We knew to break away from that herd was death, that the unseen predators would start to pick us off one by one, as they prowled the edges of our light. We couldn’t afford to stop, we couldn’t afford to stumble, we couldn’t leave anypony behind.

Rivet, in the back, was the slowest. He was a burly earth pony, and a strong stallion, but he carried a struggling unicorn in his teeth. He could have easily outpaced us all, if he dropped Star Bright and left him to fend for himself against the dark. But he kept his grip tight, even as the darkness lapped at his flanks at the back of our little pool of safety. For a moment, he looked as though he might fall behind entirely, but he grunted through his muzzle and snorted steam through his nose as the touch of the cold darkness behind him gave the stallion a second wind.

Posey and I galloped together, and I could see her ears twitch wildly as she heard the whispers, just like I could, even though they were faint. But they were growing louder, over the sound of our hoofsteps in the tunnel, and soon we could hear words and screaming and terrible song once more. Posey in particular seemed to be getting even more agitated than I was; tears flowed from her embered eyes as she whimpered, between breaths, “I can—I can hear her! Merry May’s back there, behind us! She’s calling for help!”

“No, she’s not!” Roma spat back at us. “You can go back and join her if you want, but I’m getting the hay out of here!”

“Everypony stay together!” Raindrops shouted. “I see it! I see light!”

I could see it too; a pinprick of light in the far distance, the light of a candle in the endless abyss. Just like a candle, it bobbed and shook and flickered, and I couldn’t tell if there was something between us and the light, or if the light itself were moving, or if that was just because of our wild galloping and our traitorous imaginations. Was it getting further away?

No. No, we had to be getting closer. We couldn’t lose it now. We would be lost without the light. As one, our panicked herd poured on the speed, and our breaths grew ragged in the dark. I could hear so many pants and gasps and wheezes, and they seemed to be coming from everywhere; was that just from our group, or was I hearing the last gasps of the dead as they failed to outrun this darkness for themselves?

The light grew brighter, and came into clarity. It wasn’t the end of the tunnel, though I could see that further on—it was yellow and flickered, a torch held in a grasping claw. A figure stood in the dark tunnel before us—tall, feathered and quadruped, and their eyes went wide as we galloped straight towards them.

“Hey! Whoa, slow down, what are you—”

“RUN!” We all shouted at once, and the figure turned, spread her wings, and took flight down the tunnel. I saw claws and a beak; a gryphon! She held her torch before her as we followed behind the gryphon, into the light at the far end of the tunnel.

We exploded into the light, and we were blinded as one. Hooves stumbled over railroad crossties, and ponies yelped as they sprawled into gravel, against the rails, or over each other. We all came to a stumbling stop just outside the tunnel, and shook our heads to clear our vision, even as we dragged ourselves further from the whispers following behind us.

I ended up staring up at the cloudy sky, and the mountainside above the tunnel, but the sun lit up everything in a loving orange glow. We were safe. We had survived. Nopony else had been lost to the darkness.

The whispers didn’t stop, so much as they slowly subsided. They grew more and more quiet as the sunlight warmed our fur, and there was never a point where I couldn’t hear them, only when they grew inaudible. I could still feel them playing over my ears, pulling me in with their siren song, even if they were just silent vibrations.

A moment later, the gryphon fluttered down into view, and waved her torch at us. “Hey! Crazy ponies! What the hay was with all the galloping and noise, what was chasing you?”

Nopony spoke for a few moments, because we didn’t have an answer to give her. Eventually, I heard Raindrops pull herself to her hooves. “Something...inside the tunnel. Something bad. Don’t go in there. Don’t ever go in there.”

“Fine, whatever.” The gryphon growled, “Made me jump, with all that shouting and galloping echoing from inside. How big is the big nasty that had you so scared?”

I sat up to look around. Of all ponies, Star Bright spoke, with his voice trembling. “Too big. Too big. It can’t be measured. It’s the space between stars, ever expanding, ever consuming.”

The gryphon rolled her eyes. “Great, that’s really helpful. Was he Hollow before you guys walked through the tunnel, or is this a new development?”

Raindrops shook her head. “He—look, it’s not important. Whatever that was...it won’t follow us out of the tunnel. I think.” She shivered as she looked back into the tunnel entrance. “...I hope.”

Posey stood next, and shuddered as she staggered a little bit further away, then collapsed again by the side of the tracks. “D-did you see...was there anypony else, b-before us? From the t-tunnel?”

The gryphon hen shrugged, as she landed in the gravel. “You’re the first ponies I’ve seen since I left Fillydelphia, and the only ones I’ve seen come out of this tunnel. You're chasing after somepony, then?”

“No, there was another pony, she...she ran ahead.” Raindrops sighed, and I could hear how exhausted the mare was. Not just physically, but emotionally as well. She looked just a bit paler, more Hollowed, from all this. “You’ve been camped out here, then?”

The gryphon nodded, and pointed a thumb-claw over to a tiny little campsite beside the tunnel entrance. A broken tent had been patched into a lean-to, which kept the rain off a small campfire. An old fire poker had been stabbed into the middle of it, and it looked like she had been tending to the flames before we’d gotten her attention. “Been camped out here for a bit, was considering whether to move through the tunnel or go around the mountains. You say it’s not safe in there?”

“It’ll never be safe.” Raindrops whinnied quietly, as she stared at the tunnel entrance. After a moment, she shook herself. “I’m—sorry. We just…I’m Raindrops.”

“Gilda,” the gryphon said, as she held out a claw.

Raindrops shook it eagerly, then looked around at all of us. “Is it alright if we catch our breath at your camp? We’ve been running for a while in there, we’re exhausted.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever. Was getting lonely anyways. Did you guys bring any food? Game’s been ruttin’ scarce since I crossed the strait...”
> 31 - Gilda of the East
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gilda’s campsite was barely even a hovel, set up in the shadow of the mountain, and the raised gravel barely avoided the grimy streams that ran past as rain rolled down from higher up the mountainside. We were in a high-pressure zone for the moment, as it was pressed up against the Canterhorn range, and so despite the clouds overhead, the rain did not fall on us directly. Here on the sunlit coast, the fog that covered Equestria had thinned somewhat. Between the clouds above and the blanket of fog near the shore, we could just barely see the rooftops of the coastal city a few miles away, and the glittering sea beyond.

The ponies without wings—Rivet, Star Bright, Posey and Roma—looked up nervously at the clouds above, likely worried that the clouds would shift and douse Gilda’s tiny campfire. Us pegasi knew we would be kept safe and dry until the winds shifted, however, and our focus lingered on the tunnel, which still loomed behind us. If I focused, I could still hear the whispers...or maybe that just the distant sound of the rain falling down the mountain. I would never be sure again. I found myself wondering if I might hear that noise lapping at the edges of my consciousness for the rest of my undead life.

I turned—forced—my attention from the mountain to our not-so-gracious host sitting by the fire. I was surprised to see a gryphon here; I remembered them decently enough, from before, though I couldn’t recall if I’d ever met one. Maybe only in passing. Relations with their country had always been strained, mostly because their society was wildly unstable. Gryphons seemed averse to being governed, even—or especially by—each other, and theirs was a long and bloody history of coups, revolutions, and infighting as the old families fought for dominance.

Gryphonstone—the most recent name of the country, thanks to King Guto, the last king before it had most recently collapsed—was a broken land of thick, boreal forests, sharp rock crags, snow-tipped mountain peaks, and desolate highlands. The gryphons lived in little feudal villages, where they hunted and scavenged to survive. That was one thing that was universally true about gryphons; they were hunters from birth, and those that couldn’t hunt didn’t last long, since they’d only be a mouth to feed.

How had that changed since the sun had stopped, I wondered? Were gryphons susceptible to the curse, just as we ponies were? Had the curse even spread that far, or was it localized to Equestria? Assuming they still hunted for meat—which perhaps could still be found, even though the plants of the world were dying—then perhaps Gryphonstone had never felt the throes of starvation such as Equestria had. In fact, it was possible that there were gryphons out there who hadn’t ever become undead.

If Maud was nervous about approaching the gryphon hen, then she didn’t show it; she seemed to be the only pony who seemed to have exited the tunnel with their wits safely about them. She joined Gilda by the fire, while we spread out slightly and looked for our own shelter, where we could look anywhere but that cursed tunnel. Maud set her club down on the ground slowly, a clear sign of peace, just in case. “You said your name was GIlda.”

“Yeah,” the gryphon in question confirmed. “No family name. Long story, and not one I feel like telling. What’s it to you?”

“I’ve heard the name before. My name is Maud Pie. My sister Pinkie Pie told me a few stories about you.”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “Of course I haven’t escaped that freak. Are you like that apple horse, family everywhere? Or do I just have the absolute worst luck?”

Maud blinked, very slowly, stone-faced as ever. “We’re related to the Apple family.” She said it so plainly that I couldn’t gauge how much it might be something she regretted nowadays.

“Ahhh, of course it’s both. Ponies.” Gilda spat, before she grabbed the fire poker and started to jab at the smoldering logs in annoyance.

“My sister’s not a freak,” Maud stated very clearly, and very bluntly. “And she said you were a friend.”

“She would,” Gilda snarled, before she shook her head. She clearly bit back a few more acidic words, then looked up at Maud. “That she doesn’t know—or hasn’t told you—why that’s changed, then that’s all you need to know.”

Maud had leapt to defense of her sister, but now, even she seemed very slightly confused. “I’d like to know more.”

“That’s cute. No.” Gilda jabbed the fire poker at the yawning maw of the train tunnel. “Instead, how about you tell me where you’re all headed. I figure since I’m being such a gracious host in my little nest here, it’s the least the seven of you can do.”

“Could ask the same of you,” Rivet interjected pointedly. He and the others had started to calm down somewhat, now that the danger of the tunnel had faded, and was quickly being replaced by the annoyingly acerbic gryphon hen.

Gilda cackled, but there was no humor in it. “Nah, that’s not how this worked in Fillydelphia. Everywhere I went out there I had ponies asking me for my life’s story, as if any of them cared. No, I’m sick of talking. You talk, and I’ll decide whether I care.”

Roma stood and took a step forward, just enough to assert her presence. She held her head up high, and her face had turned to stone. She spoke as if she were in a market, haggling over prices with a rude customer. “You’re a gryphon, and you spoke about the hunting of game. You’re a hunter, through and through, right?”

That earned another quiet cackle from the gryphon hen. “Heh, sure, if you wanna play it like this, mud pony. I have to kill to eat, to survive. Just like any other predator.”

If the pejorative bothered Roma, she never let it show on her muzzle. “Then we’re not so different. We’re hunting a pony; a blue unicorn mare, wearing a witch’s hat. Have you seen her?”

Raindrops glanced warily at Roma. “Hey, not hunting. We don’t want to harm her, remember?” There was an edge to her tone, and I couldn’t be sure how much of it was just a matter of her still being wound up from being in the tunnel.

Gilda just seemed amused by the explanation, though. Her beak clicked as she spoke, and if she could, I got the sense that she was grinning. “We’re not at all similar, pony. Not in the slightest. But I get your point. So what did your prey do, to earn a party of seven chasing her down?”

“Eight,” Posey whimpered quietly. She was still staring at the tunnel, and her ears twitched as she listened for phantom noises.

Raindrops whinnied at Roma, and the ex-merchant stepped back, satisfied that she’d at least gotten Gilda interested. Raindrops wasn’t as confident as her, but she made up for it with subtle signs of aggression obvious only to flyers. Her wings were rigid on her back, and her pinions twitched as she subconsciously fluffed her fur to look larger. “She stole an artifact, important to Equestria. We just need it back, but we’ve also been asked to escort her to safety, unharmed.”

“Uh huh, sure. And this artifact, where will it need to be taken once you’ve separated the two?”

“Canterlot. To the Princess herself, and to its rightful bearer.”

Gilda’s claws tapped at her beak thoughtfully. “Canterlot, you say...Now you have my interest. As it happens, I need to get to Canterlot. I think I’ll come with you.”

There was a confused silence in the camp for a few moments, the other ponies exchanging concerned looks, before Raindrops shook her head. “What? No, that’s not how this works. We just need to know if you’ve seen her.”

“Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t,” Gilda said with a dismissive grunt. “But it sounds like you’re down a pony now.” She had a smirk in her eyes as she gave the slightest glance toward Posey, who wilted from her in turn. “If this unicorn is so dangerous that they needed to send a party of eight after her, then you can use all the help you can get, hm?”

“She’s not dangerous, there’s just a lot of ground to cover,” Raindrops said pointedly.

“Sh-she’s a little d-dangerous,” I pointed out. My side still ached where Trixie had kicked me.

“Holly,” Raindrops groaned. “Not a good time.”

“Either way, this seems like something I want to be involved in,” Gilda said, as her claws drummed against the fire poker. “I’ll do it for free, even. If any of you know anything about gryphons, you should know that means a lot.”

“Yeah, and that actually makes me more suspicious,” Raindrops stated. “What’s your angle, Gilda? Why do you want to get to Canterlot so bad?”

“Family reunion,” she replied quickly, with a click of her beak.

I tilted my head as I looked at her. I don’t know if my embered eyes could convey a dubious squint. “You s-said you didn’t have a f-family name.”

Gilda cackled in amusement again, as she waggled the fire poker in my direction. “Oooh, you caught that! Perceptive little Hollow, I like you.”

Raindrops nickered in annoyance. “If you’re not gonna tell us—”

“Raindrops.” Maud spoke clearly, and loudly, and all eyes turned to her. Raindrops let out a sigh as Maud spoke. “Princess Celestia wanted ponies to know about this. She sought help. We are allowed to acquire helping hooves for ourselves.”

“She’s just screwing with us!” Raindrops groaned. “I bet she doesn’t even know anything. She just wants to use us to get to the city.”

Roma spoke up as well. “I don’t like to agree with Raindrops, but we need something up front. If she won’t even give us that, then I can’t trust her.”

Maud turned back to look at Gilda, who had barely moved from her spot. The gryphon’s only movement was to stir the fire, and in the dull light of the camp, we all took in how bedraggled she was. Her feathers were faded and tattered, and her fur thin. But she wasn’t Hollowed yet. As rough as she had it, Gilda still had her sanity.

Maud shook her head. “I don’t care. This is for myself and for Pinkie; I want to know what she did, or what you think she did, to break your friendship.”

Gilda huffed through her beak. “Hmph. Nice that you can pretend to care. Show me I can trust you, and we’ll see.”

“Then that’s good enough,” Maud declared. “Welcome to the search party, Gilda.”

Raindrops groaned in annoyance, before she turned to walk away. I almost thought she was going to abandon us entirely—she’d demonstrated enough that she didn’t appreciate being challenged—but she only walked to the edge of the camp and sat down next to Posey.

Gilda flicked the fire poker around in her dexterous claw so that the tip pointed downwards, and then stabbed it back into the gravel and the fire underneath, where it stood until it was needed again. “Alright! Now, tell me about this unicorn you’re hunting. Has anypony here actually seen her for themselves?”

I sat up a bit, which got Gilda’s attention. “I t-traveled with her for a while, b-but Maud said she used to be f-friends.”

Maud looked down at the fire. “Friend of a friend. But Trixie’s changed since then. You knew her more recently, so you should tell us about her. I’ll fill in any gaps.”

I was still uncomfortable with speaking at length. Really, I was still somewhat uncomfortable with speaking at all, even with how my stutter had been slowly fading. But my throat still ached, breathing while talking still wasn’t entirely natural to me. Most of the time, that seemed to suit me just fine; I was alright with hanging off to the side of a conversation and just listening in, unless I really had something to say. But it seemed like I was being called forward to speak at length, just like this, more and more as my journey went on. It certainly didn’t help that it felt like I needed to take three times as long to talk, in comparison to an un-Hollowed pony.

It really didn’t help that I wasn’t a terribly interesting speaker; I could see Gilda was getting bored of my brief summary of Trixie before I’d even gotten to the Ashen Wallowers, and her attention quickly wandered to her thin little pack of supplies, and the weathered recurve bow sitting on top. After only a few moments, she plucked it from the pack and started to check the tension of the string, then each of her arrows in a large quiver. Those arrows seemed to have been fletched with her own feathers, though the tips were forged from proper steel.

I knew a little about bows; when I tried to remember how I knew, it felt similar to how I knew about Cloudsdale’s weather machinery. Subjects taught in school, even if the school itself had long been forgotten.

They weren’t pony weapons, and never had been. They required claws to pull and release the string, which ponies didn’t have. Earth Ponies could close distance quickly enough to make up the difference, and deal damage a dozen times more traumatic with a club or axe. Pegasi could, in theory, draw the strings with their wings. But the tension of the string was often too strong to get a half-decent draw, so only experts could become bowmares, and it usually wasn’t worth the effort without a specific talent. Unicorns could hold, nock, draw and release a bow using their magic, but for all the effort it required, they could also just sling magic from their horn. That was infinitely more versatile, and didn’t limit them to ammo in the way that a quiver full of arrows would.

Instead, they’d been developed by gryphons and minotaurs, across the ocean, and usually the two races used them against each other. They were an ancestral gryphon weapon, long used for hunting by way of weakening prey and tracking them by following the trail of blood left behind. They preferred their bows quick and light, so they could strike fast and silent, while minotaurs had iterated for power. Minotaur bows were meant for sieges, with broad-chested warriors launching arrows that could impale a pony all the way through in a single shot from their greatbow, or a team working to set up and fire a ballista, a massive mechanical crossbow that could punch right through a city wall.

Even then, most gryphons had long upgraded to gunpowder weaponry. The grips and hammers of firearms had been another invention of theirs, albeit one which was much more easily adopted by ponies, and boasted power that made them worth the effort to fire, reload, and maintain. While Gryphonstone still mostly used blackpowder, ponies had the advantage there; equine alchemists had crafted more powerful powder loads, percussion caps, and brass cartridges that could be safely stored and easily reloaded. Applejack’s shotgun took ammo like that, and the cannons of the Firebreak were, again, minotaur siege weaponry.

And yet, Gilda still used a bow. It wasn’t a weapon I had ever expected to see here in Equestria, at least not without wandering through an armory or a hobbyist’s collection. It made sense to be wielded by a traveling gryphon, but then, so did a rifle or pistol, neither of which she seemed to have on her. She even looked at Star Bright’s revolver with distaste, while she ran a talon down the inlaid bone of her bow.

Even though Gilda claimed not to have any family, she seemed proud of her heritage. She was a long way from Gryphonstone, and maybe the ancient gryphon weapon was her own personal way of remembering that heritage, or upholding what she felt was tradition. That, combined with the fact that she had clearly come all this way and hadn’t yet Hollowed, told me that Gilda was an extremely capable Gryphon. She was acerbic and dodged questions, so, just like Raindrops and Roma, I didn’t trust her personally. But she could absolutely hold her own in a fight, and I resolved to try my best to avoid being on the wrong side of her arrows.

When I finally finished telling GIlda about Trixie, she had questions, though I could tell she was reluctant to have me talk more. “Okay, hold up. The skeletons you fought, why couldn’t she use her stupid unicorn magic on them? Sounds like the skeletons saw right through her illusions, but only sometimes, and that screwed you both over. It’d make sense if she used that to ditch you, flee like a coward. But you made it sound like she was baffled whenever it happened.”

“I might be able to answer that,” Star Bright said, as he sat up. “I have a little bit of illusion training, though this Trixie sounds like a master of the art. Two possibilities; first, whatever magic animating the skeletons also allowed them to see through the illusions, or the necromancer controlling them had cast the ability on himself which propagated it through his thralls. But I don’t know enough about the actual mechanical spellwork of necromancy to say for sure.”

“And that doesn’t explain how she could still sneak around them by turning herself invisible,” Raindrops pointed out, and then she grimaced. “Which is a real problem we’re going to have to worry about too.”

“Precisely.” Star Bright nodded to her. “Second possibility: Trixie’s illusions are designed to be seen from specific angles, like wooden scenery in a play. From the audience’s perspective, they look passable, but from behind, they’re just painted wood. It’s very likely that the necromancer, being able to see the same illusion from multiple perspectives, realized that the illusion was just that, and promptly ignored it. However, her invisibility would be a cloak used to hide herself no matter how she was viewed, and that allowed her to sneak past unnoticed.”

Gilda nodded. “Alright, that makes enough sense for me, but doesn’t really help us when we need to fight her. Thanks for the magic lesson, horn-head.”

“You’re...welcome?” he asked, in a confused tone.

Roma tapped her hoof. “We still don’t want to fight her, remember.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, ponies and friendship and forgiveness. Eugh, that scat is like a disease you ponies spread, wherever you go.” Gilda let out a feral bird call from her beak, as she yawned directly at Roma. “This Trixie sounds like she ruttin’ cracked as soon as she got her hooves on that necklace. I’ll bet you ten-to-one when we find her? She’ll be wearing that necklace, and both it and her eyes will be glowing as she slings big angry blobs of magic at us. See how much she’s in a talking mood then, I dare you.”

A sad silence fell over the camp as we looked at each other. We’d brought weapons, to be sure, but they were for our own protection as we traveled. Actually raising them against Trixie...that went against what the Princess wanted, and the thought that we might have to do so sat heavily on our shoulders, like the rain cloud above pressed down against our little warm pocket of air. I didn’t want to think about it, but I knew Trixie—this Trixie, not the one Maud had known—better than anypony else present. I knew that she wouldn’t be the sort to just go quietly.

“We’re...hoping it doesn’t come to that—” Rivet started to reiterate.

Gilda cut him off with a frustrated clack of her beak. “Yeah, keep pretending the world’s not how it is. You gonna keep that up until she’s bashing your skull in, and sucks out your soul? You might think ponies aren’t capable of that, but lemme tell you, I’ve seen some real heinous scat go down in your friendly little country.”

So had I. Apple Bloom and Applejack had been proof enough that ponies were capable of terrible things, if they were properly motivated. And they’d still had their minds; the Hollows I’d fought, the Hollows I’d killed and drained for myself, they didn’t even have that. They had long gone mad and feral, and the only reason that weren’t as vicious as the Apple family had been was because they were no longer smart enough to do so.

I didn’t totally buy into Gilda’s rhetoric; ponies were still good, and that we were working together for the Princess to save Equestria was enough proof that we were worth saving. But as much as I hated to admit it, as much as we all hated to even think about it, Gilda had a point. We might have to fight Trixie out here. Maybe even kill her, if she attacked us.

Would we still be able to return to Ponyville, and give the Princess the Element of Generosity, with bloodstained hooves?

“What’s your plan, when you get to the city?”

Gilda’s question dredged me out my thoughts, and I saw several other ponies look up suddenly as if roused from their own. When a response didn’t come, Gilda jerked a clawed thumb towards the distant rooftops of Baltimare. “The city. You said it yourself, it’s a lot of ground to cover, and I only count three flyers, including myself.”

“Two flight-capable creatures,” Maud corrected. “Holly’s state prevents it.”

“Rut me, Hollowing clips your wings too?” Gilda looked at me with a fleeting glimpse of sympathy. She understood how much it hurt me, how much it burdened my soul, that I couldn’t fly. Or maybe she was just thinking ruefully of the idea of it happening to her. It only lasted for a moment, before she looked back at Maud. “Alright. So two flyers, everyone else is ground-bound. That’s not too bad for a city, but the main burden’s gonna be on you guys to check interiors.”

“It gets worse,” Roma chuckled darkly. “We’re planning to split the party when we reach the main highway entering the city.”

“You’re dickin’ me,” GIlda groaned. “That’s a bad idea. Why?”

Raindrops sighed, and stood up to trot back to our group and rejoin the conversation. “We don’t know if Trixie made it to Baltimare, or even came here in the first place. While the first team searches the city, the second team is going to follow an overland route back to Cloudsdale, or at least that valley Holly mentioned. They’re going to look for Trixie in case we beat her here, or if she was attacked on the way here, or even just for clues that she actually did go this way to begin with. The second team will search the city itself, starting with her destination—the Baltimare public library—and spreading out from there.”

“Still dumb, but it’s less dumb than it could be,” Gilda admitted. “And you’re all that the all-powerful goddess-Princess could send, huh?”

“There might be other groups,” Maud explained. “She sent couriers with copies of the...bounty, to other settlements. They may be en route as well already. I should have authority over them, as a member of the Golden Guard.”

“Sounds like competitors to me,” mused Gilda. “Keep an eye on them, if we do come across any. Maybe they’re as foolish and optimistic as you all are...or maybe they see things my way, and don’t feel like cooperating.”

More dead ponies, potentially. I was already regretting the decision to come out here.

Gilda pointed to Raindrops. “You, the pessimist. City or wilds?”

“What?”

“Nothing personal, but we should split up the flyers.” Gilda counted on her claws. “One on each team, so if either finds anything, they can fly to the other team and tell them to regroup.”

Maud grunted in agreement. “Raindrops. You take the wilds. I’ll be on the city team with Gilda.”

Raindrops grumbled in annoyance. “Great, you get to be the bird wrangler then.” After a moment, she sighed, and shook her head. “Be careful out there, Maud. You’ll need somepony else to argue with you about your plans. Rivet?”

The large stallion shook his head. “Nah, I’m staying out of this one. I’ll be on the wilds team, I’m better out in the open. And I have the endurance for all that walking.”

And so it went for a little while, as both team leaders worked out who should go with whom. After a bit of arguing and debate, it was decided that Raindrops should take Rivet, Roma, and Posey, while Maud led Gilda, myself, and Star Bright. With four ponies—creatures, rather—to each team, we were evenly split, and should be able to handle most minor threats without too much difficulty.

With that decided, we were nearly ready to set off. We only delayed for a bit longer, to check our equipment and examine Maud’s maps, but when the wind shifted and Raindrops had to shield the map from her namesake using her wings, we decided it was as good a time as any to get moving. We left in a single large group towards Baltimare, where we were to split up and begin our search for Trixie, the wayward illusionist.
> 32 - Baltimare, the Silent City
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rain eased up a bit as we moved under the blanket of fog, and towards the distant city. Maud was at the top of the formation, as she led us towards the road marked on her map, and Raindrops and Gilda fell into step behind her. Every once in a while, Raindrops would glare at the gryphon hen beside her, which only seemed to amuse Gilda. With how she cackled at the dirty looks, it almost felt like she wanted Raindrops to attack her, though I couldn’t imagine why.

We managed to find the highway without breaking out into infighting, and we continued to follow that. I took the time to examine the gravel road, which was one of the largest I’d ever seen, and seemed hard-packed despite being left to decay for who knows how long.

Rivet chuckled from behind me. “First time seeing a macadam highway?”

“A w-what?”

The stallion scuffed the gravel under his hooves as we walked. “This is called a macadam road. Near a century back, this clever earth pony worked out a cheap way to build good roads, so he could move carts of nuts from his family farm. The Princess saw how valuable the design was, and she started having ponies build the roads between most major settlements.”

I nodded, then looked back down the road. The highway I’d followed back to Ponyville, after Cloudsdale, it had probably been one of these too. “I’ve s-seen them before, I think, b-but this one is so wide…”

“Yeah, this one runs down the coast, and they probably widened it further to play around with those...auto-mobiles, I think they’re called.”

I turned back to Rivet, whose muzzle was screwed up in thought as he tried to dredge his memory. “Auto-w-what?”

The stallion was silent for a few moments as he tried to remember, then shrugged. “I never saw any of them myself, just rumors from out here. Like carts, but they burn prismapetrol to turn the wheels instead of being pulled by ponies. Or maybe magic crystals, or steam power, like the trains? All experimental stuff, and I didn’t see the point, really.”

Powered carts? Maybe those would be useful for hauling cargo, but trains did that just fine. Carts would be limited to roads like this, and prismapetrol was dangerous and expensive to refine from rainbows and lightning. That couldn’t be worth the effort, surely. Not when pegasi could just fly something where it needed to go, or hire an airship for long distances. I shook my head in confusion. “W-weird.”

“Yeah, I didn’t really get it either,” Rivet agreed. “Seems like they’re just tinkering with them, or at least, they were. Even if things weren’t how they are now, I don’t think it ever would have caught on. At least the wide roads are better for hauling carts.”

I shrugged, and turned my eyes forward as we approached the city.


*	*	*


Baltimare, or what we could see of it, was actually somewhat reminiscent of Cloudsdale to me. It had a similar sort of sprawl, but it had to be constrained by roads that wove between the buildings. Even on the edges, where the roads speared out into the wilds away from civilization, the buildings followed alongside. Little restaurants, and stores selling camping and survival necessities for travelers, had all been built to tempt those same travelers into making just one last stop before they left Baltimare behind. There was no wall around the city, and no gate to mark the entrance, only the road in, where the buildings stopped. Out beyond was the dim glimmer of sunlight upon the ocean, but from this vantage point we couldn’t identify any of the docks and portside storefronts that the city was known for.

And so, Maud had us pause here. She stepped under the awning of an abandoned shop to shield herself from the rain, and unrolled her map again. “If Trixie came to Baltimare, then she most likely came through here. It’s the closest road into the city, from the valley where Cloudsdale fell.”

“Assuming she didn’t go through the tunnel.” Posey said quietly from the back of the group.

Raindrops shook her head. “If she did, then we didn’t find any trace of her in there. If she did go through the tunnel, and disappeared like...like…” She swallowed, before moving on. “If she did, then she’s gone too, and the artifact with her. We have to assume she went around.”

Rivet, Posey, Raindrops and Roma all crowded around the map to trace their route back, which left me, Star Bright, and Gilda by ourselves. I moved to a bench at the side of the building, where I looked out at the fog. Star Bright started to pick through the building itself, but, oddly enough, Gilda followed me. I would have figured she’d want to do some scavenging of her own.

She took a seat at the other end of the bench, and I felt her avian eyes as she looked me over. After a moment, she spoke, “You said this Trixie gal killed you, right?”

I winced, then nodded. As much as I didn’t like to think about it, and though I knew Trixie wasn’t exactly in her right mind...she had kicked me to yet another death. And I knew that she had the nastiness within her to do that again, if sufficiently motivated. Even before that betrayal, she hadn’t had any problem blowing flames in my face. “Y-yeah. But I’m t-trying not to think about it.”

Gilda nodded at that, and looked out at the fog with me. There was only the murmur of quiet conversation from the group, until she spoke again. “I get that. But it’s not healthy; you can’t just shove those emotions down and not think about them, or else they’ll strain you, stress you out. The pressure will make you crack eventually, and it’ll all come pouring out.” She flexed one of her claws, then clenched it into a fist, which she squeezed tightly enough to draw a drop of blood. “For me, I get violent, and stupid. You ponies...I don’t know, you’ll probably break down crying, or something soft like that.”

I blinked at her for a moment. “Um...”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, this is uncool. I’m not good at this, and I don’t open up much because I suck at it. Just...I’ve been screwed too, alright? You and me, we know what that feels like. These other ponies, they don’t know.” Gilda fluffed her feathers and wiped rain off her breast. “If you ever wanna talk, plan things out, it’s cool.”

Plan things? “I...I d-don’t wanna hurt T-Trixie.”

“Right. Right, I getcha. But if we do have to fight her, and you wanna screw her back for screwing you, then I’ll cover for you. ‘Cause I know how that feels.” Gilda slid off the bench, then started to make her way back to the group. As she left, she turned back to me and added, “That’s the best way to make things right, when someone screws you. Screw them right back, so they can’t screw you—or anyone else—ever again.”

I watched Gilda rejoin the group, but I lingered on the bench. That was something I hadn’t considered; I didn’t want to hurt Trixie, but if she was going to hurt others, then...would I have a choice? It was good to fight in self-defence, or to defend others. And though I wasn’t vengeful, if Trixie was going to hurt others and I happened to be the one to stop her…

I sat there for a while, thinking that over. Long enough for the group to say their goodbyes. Maud handed Raindrops the map so they could use it to navigate the foggy roads. Star Bright had found a map of Baltimare itself inside the abandoned store, and Maud replaced her own map with that one, and began to study it just as intently. With one final wave, half our number started back down the macadam-topped highway, and soon had disappeared into the mists. I watched them go in much the same way that I had watched Pinkie Pie when we left Ponyville. How many of them would I see again? There was already one member of the expedition who wouldn’t be returning home.

The rest of us soon started to move into the city, and I finally slid off the bench to follow behind Gilda, while Star Bright trailed behind me. He mumbled absent-mindedly about the world around us, but I didn’t hear any of it. I assumed he might have just been counting things again.

I was too focused on wondering what would happen when we finally found Trixie.


*	*	*


Once we’d entered Baltimare properly, it reminded me even more of the fallen ruins of Cloudsdale. Though the city had been built with brick and mortar instead of cloud and cloudwood, the urban environment made me nervous, and I started to watch the streets and peer through windows in search of glowing skulls.

But we never found any. Oddly enough, we never found anything; no piles of bones, no blood, not even really any damage. There were some shattered windows on the edges, but once we really got into the city, it seemed almost preserved. There was no wreckage, nothing had been broken, and there were no fortifications of any sort. Store displays were undisturbed, the carts on the streets had been parked properly, and even the brakes on their wheels had been fully engaged. Nothing was left half-done, nothing was amiss, nothing was missing...except for the ponies.

There was simply nopony here. No ponies looked out through the windows at us, nopony peered around the corners of buildings, and the city of Baltimare was eerily silent.

Sometimes we thought we saw silhouettes deep in the fog, but whenever we got close, they seemed to disappear as though they had never been there in the first place. And there was nowhere they could have gone, most times; sometimes they could have disappeared inside a building or down an alley, but often they just faded into the fog.

If we hadn’t all agreed we were seeing them, then we might have thought we were going mad. I still thought we might have been, and perhaps there had been some lingering damage to our minds from the journey through the tunnel. But Gilda was seeing them too, and she hadn’t been in the dark long enough to be affected by it.

Whatever was going on, it had started to affect us. Star Bright’s mumbling had gotten louder, as he counted things without rhyme or reason, and multiple times, Gilda had squawked for him to shut up. But after the third time her voice had echoed through the silent city, she gave up, and we just tried our best to filter out his mad murmurs.

I tried to focus on the city around us again, and found that Rivet had been correct earlier; every once in a while, we’d pass by what looked like a cart carrying mechanical parts, only to realize they were part of the cart itself. I saw several different designs of “automobile,” from the basic ones that looked like the wheels were turned by the machinery, to other, more exotic designs that were jet-propelled or seemed designed to “walk” like ponies could. I even found a strange one that looked more like a boat with a flat bottom, and Star Bright paused in his rambling long enough to speculate that it was some sort of hovercraft, that used industrial levitation to push itself away from the ground.

They seemed to be more common the closer we moved to the city center, as well. The streets narrowed, cement paths taking up space on the outermost edges of the roads. A sign called these stone paths “sidewalks,” and warned us to stay on them to avoid being struck and killed by speeding automobiles.

That wasn’t a problem for us, now that we appeared to be the only ponies left in the city, but it seemed like it must have been a major point of contention for the residents of Baltimare before they disappeared. We passed by old, painted graffiti—not the sort made with glowing orange soapstones—that decried the automobiles, and protested their growing dominance over the roads that had always been used by pedestrians. In some places, the sidewalk had been smashed to expose the stony soil underneath.

I relished those more than I thought I would; both the surface of those sidewalks and the roads between them were hard on my bare hooves, and they began to ache as we moved deeper into the city. Maud and Star Bright seemed unaffected, but their horseshoes sparked on the cement as they walked. Gilda was just generally uncomfortable, and I couldn’t imagine the surface was any more pleasant on paws and claws, but maybe she just couldn’t ignore the feeling of being watched.

And soon, neither could I. While I couldn’t actually feel myself being looked at, the creeping feeling of dread, of being stalked, began to build. It was like the tunnel, almost, but in the sunlit fog, we knew that nothing could hide. There were only the distant silhouettes, and I swore we began to see those even more than before.

And then we heard singing.

It was almost imperceptible at first, just more whispers in the distance. But soon, it began to echo down the streets, and our group pulled together into a tight cluster as we watched the foggy streets all around us. It was a slow, sad, mournful song that had no words, and only one voice, but it had no source. And for me, it was unnervingly familiar, because it was the song of the Gravewardens.

I knew it almost instantly, after having only heard it clearly for a few moments, but it was unmistakable, even if it was slightly different from the song I knew. It had been modified, or maybe without other voices to repeat it and sing in harmony, the memory of the song had wandered.

Whoever the lone singer was, we never saw them. Or at least, we never saw them clearly. The song seemed to come from everywhere, and soon, the silhouettes did too. We saw them on rooftops, down the streets, sitting atop the carts. They still faded as we got close, so we could never see them clearly. But I noticed that they were undeniably equine in shape, like shadows of the ponies that were supposed to be here, supposed to reside within this city.

Soon, we came across a large square built around a stone monument. While the base seemed to be a small, boxy museum that described the history of Baltimare, the top section was a narrow stone tower that seemed to be just over sixty leg-lengths tall. A small balcony ran around the top, and at the absolute apex of the tower, a weather-worn statue of an old earth pony general looked out over the foggy city. I considered suggesting that we should climb up to the top to look around for the library, but there was no need; Maud pointed at a large building on the other end of the square. “There; that’s the library. Let’s get inside. Quickly.”

We broke into a brief gallop as more silhouettes seemed to emerge from all around us, coalescing out of the fog. Something was wrong here, I knew we weren’t imagining these ghosts, but we couldn’t stop and inspect them. And I had the horrific sense that to stop now would be death; I got an awful feeling whenever we came too close to one of the pony-shaped specters, as though their very touch could turn us into one of them.

Gilda took wing, and was the first to reach the door, which she ripped open before she waved at us. “Come on! I don’t wanna stay out there for any longer than we need to!”

I only got a few seconds to glance at the library before we sped for the door, but I could tell in that glance that it was a grand, two-story building that seemed to combine both modern unicorn design and ancient pegasopolian columns around the entrances, both rendered in weathered stone. Two sets of old narrow wooden doors waited at the top of a short staircase up from the sidewalk, and Gilda was the first one to reach them. She shoulder-charged the doors to knock them open with a slam, and we quickly followed her inside.

As soon as we were in the building, the gryphon hen slammed the doors shut once more, and we heard that slam echo through the building. While we took stock of ourselves, and Maud checked on the shuddering Star Bright, I glanced around the narrow lobby.

It looked, surprisingly, as if only half the building was actually the library. Half was dedicated to a college, to which this library had been part of, perhaps to provide reference materials for the students, and this lobby sat between the two halves of the building. Opposite the front doors, a corridor with a skylight extended down a staircase to the back entrance. The floors inside the building were made of gleaming marble, and a chandelier hung above us, while a small reference desk sat in a nearby corner. A lone, still-standing sign clearly marked that the library was to our left, while the college was on our right. Gilda noticed it too, and after we caught our brief from our brief sprint, we moved deeper into the library, while Maud pulled Star Bright to his hooves so they could both follow behind.

After we passed through a small art gallery, we entered the library itself, which would have been Elysium for a bibliophile. It looked almost like a grand ballroom, but five floors of balconies reached high above us, each one laden with hundreds of bookshelves packed with thousands of books. The center was mostly clear, but benches and tables ran in two lines down the length of the room, with built-in reading lamps and for ponies to sit at, late into the night.

But the room looked like a hurricane had torn through it. Books had been torn from shelves and lay in great heaps, ruined by damp, and several shelves had collapsed in dominos that had fallen across one side of the room. Several shelves had fallen, or been pushed, from the literal heights of knowledge above and reduced to splinters on impact against the marble floor. Benches had been overturned, tables had been smashed, and several panes of the massive skylight in the ceiling had been shattered, allowing pale sunlight gentle rain to filter into the room.

And yet, somehow, against all odds, a pony resided in the center of the room. The tall pony sat open one of the few intact benches, at a table which looked to have been smashed and then propped up by a stack of books. The flickering light of a lamp illuminated the mare as she turned towards us, and I was able to take in her purple fur, and her pink-and-purple mane. A long, delicate horn spiraled away from her forehead, lit with green magic, and her wings fluttered nervously as she turned towards us.

Maud blinked in disbelief. “Twilight Sparkle?”

But the missing Princess was terrified as she saw us. Her eyes instantly went wide, and a strangled cry leapt from her throat in panic. She was surprised, as if we weren’t supposed to be here, weren’t supposed to see her.

But I think we were more surprised than her, when a half-dozen dark shapes leapt from the balconies above, and the air was filled with an angry buzzing as they swarmed around us.
> 33 - Shadow of Twilight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wasn’t familiar with the shapes as they descended upon us in a swarm of six, but Maud was. “Changelings!” She barked, the word itself an order, as she drew her great stone club onto her back, then swung it wildly in a wide arc. Wind rushed past as the boulder swiped through the air, and it was a testament to Maud’s strength and balance that she wasn’t pulled off her own hooves by the weight.

The swing missed the changelings by a mile, but it wasn’t meant to hit them; the swing would have been deadly if any of them had stayed close, so it forced them back, and gave the rest of us time to react. Gilda let out a war cry—which sounded like an eagle screeching with the deep, rumbling lungs of a lion—and she leapt back as she took wing, her bow already drawn in her claws as she picked a target. By the time I drew my sword, Star Bright had already begun to fumble for his revolving pistol, but his magic slipped as he grabbed for it. By the time he’d unholstered his firearm and drawn a bead on one changeling, another was on top of him, and he only managed to fire a single shot before he was tackled to the floor by a black, chitinous blur.

Smoke exploded from his gun as the shot went wide, and a distant window shattered—a miss. But it gave me a smokescreen to hide from the flying creatures, and I leapt into the cloud of gunsmoke to pull the attacker off of Star Bright.

I pushed through the pungent smoke towards a dark silhouette—too dark. But by the time I’d readied my sword, the changeling spotted me...only for a massive stone club to swing down through the cloud. The changeling disappeared in a grisly crunch, as the pony-shaped bug was smashed to paste between the marble floor and the granite club.

I was spattered with blue blood—by the wind, I pretended it was just blood—as the smoke cleared from the jetstream of the swing. Maud gave me a nod, before she turned on a hind hoof and swept her gore-spattered club once again at head height, which smacked another changeling out of the air. It bounced off the floor a few times as it rolled away, leaving blue smears every time it landed.

We could see Star Bright clearly now—the changelings had evaded me by taking to the air as well, and Star Bright with them. Two of them had hooked a foreleg each under one of his, and they were lifting him up past the floors high above. It looked as though he was struggling, which slowed them down, but if they pulled him to one of the top floors—

“GIlda!” Maud barked, but the hen had already picked her target. There was a whistle as an arrow sunk into the neck of one of the changelings, and it let go of Star Bright to clutch futilely at its own throat. Another arrow whipped through the space previously occupied by the second changeling, but it was a miss—it couldn’t pull Star Bright into the air by itself, and they fell together, soon to be back amongst us on the ground floor.

I didn’t see them actually land, for I was tackled myself by another changeling, but I heard a pair of wet, crunching smacks from across the room. I was more preoccupied with the fangs and the snapping teeth that leapt for my own throat, and I just barely managed to jam my sword into the jaw to force my insectoid opponent away. This was my first up-close look at one of the bugs, but I didn’t have the luxury of time with which to examine it. I saw fangs, and glassy blue eyes that seemed to have no retina; just faded blue pits of color, and the tiniest spark of fire within.

There was no time for sympathy now. I shoved the bugpony back, and it sprawled, wings buzzing, as it tried to roll around onto its...hooves? If it even had those. I couldn’t let it, so I pounced on it myself, and tried to use one hoof to grab the creature’s flailing limbs and hold it steady. The other held my sword, and the moment I felt stable, I stabbed downwards with my blade.

It scraped like I’d driven it against stone, and for a moment I thought I had—either it had pierced all the way through, or I’d missed entirely. But no, the changeling’s chitin was too strong to pierce with the tip of my blade. At least, not one-hooved. I brought my hoof up again as I let my sword drop, and punched the changeling as hard as I could in the cheek.

There was a sharp cracking sound as the back of the bug’s head smacked against the marble floor, and that seemed to stun it for a few seconds. Those few seconds were all I had; I didn’t waste any time, and grabbed my sword again, this time with both hooves. With all the strength I could muster, I drove the tip of the blade down again. This time, I aimed for a crack in the chitin, where the plates overlapped, and allowed the creature to move. If there would ever be a weak spot in the changeling’s natural armor, it would have to be there.

I managed to jam the tip under the plate, and forced my weight down on it. That got the changeling's attention, and it let out a hiss of pain and fear as it battered against me. There was no coordination to the movements, no higher brain function. It fought like a cornered animal, hissing and spitting and biting as I forced my blade further and pried the chitin plates apart with unyielding steel.

Blood began to well out as the changeling screeched, and suddenly the blade slid in, all too easily, up to the hilt. Insectoid legs kicked wildly as I tugged and twisted at the grip wedged against the chitinous breastplate—both me and my opponent wanted the sword pulled from its chest, now.

But as I jimmied the grip, trying to find a good angle from which to pull the weapon, the changeling’s eyes began to glow. Once more, my own eyes were drawn to those glassy blue orbs, and I found I couldn’t look away. My blue-stained hooves slackened as my mouth fell open, and those eyes seemed to pull me in as I looked at them.

There was pain in those eyes. So much pain, so much loss, so much fear. This one desired only to survive; neither it nor its sisters would have struck if they had known its prey were so organized. It regretted that decision, even though it had not been the one to make it; it regretted so much it had done, and so much that had happened, even if it no longer had the words to express why. It was all out of this one’s control—it always had been, save for a brief, fleeting time long ago. And now that it remembered only the hunt, and the heart-bleeding of prey, it would never have that control ever—

A massive stone club swung between us, mere hairs from my muzzle, and the floor shook as blood splattered across my hooves. In an instant, the spell was broken, and I sucked in air greedily as I flinched back. Between my hooves, the dead bug’s body spasmed and twitched. With the head now reduced to a blue-stained, crumpled pile of chitin, the body was dying, and soon stilled.

I felt it die. Not just in my hooves, but in my mind as well. The creature was confused, and that was the last thing it felt before the body went cold before me. Deep within its chest, there was still an ember, and I instinctively grasped for it, and tried to protect it, pull it into my own breast. The poor little creature was hurt, alone, and afraid, and that felt so wrong to me that I couldn’t bear it.

I was smearing my bloody hooves across the dead changeling’s chitinous torso. The feeling of self slammed back into me, and I recoiled again, as my hooves shook. This time, I fell away from the corpse entirely, and my hind hooves kicked in a panic, pushing it away, or pushing me away from it—it didn’t really matter, so long as I put some blessed air in between myself and the dead bug.

Maud was there. She peered down at me from above, and my mouth spasmed as any words I wanted to say got tangled in my throat. What just happened? What had Maud done? What had I done?

Why did I feel so utterly awful?

“Holly. Say something.”

I flapped my jaw at her for a moment, and she narrowed her eyes as she tightened her grip on her club. “Holly…”

“H-help…” I managed to whimper. It was all I could say, to stop Maud from smashing my undead body into paste as well.

Thankfully, it was enough. She relaxed, then looked away. “She’s not Hollow. It almost drained her, but I killed it in time.”

“Greaaaat,” Gilda groaned, from elsewhere in the room. “Star Bright’s taken care of, too—let’s see him do that ruttin’ neurotic counting without a throat. Now help me find that decoy, she’s hiding somewhere in here.”

Star Bright was…? I forced my hooves underneath myself, and pulled my body up into a sitting position, before I looked down. While my armor was painted blue, it had begun to seep through the joints and soak my fur underneath. I was coated in changeling blood, from both of Maud’s kills and from my own struggles with my lone assailant, and I’d have to strip all of the armor off and clean it, once we were safe. But I’d never be able to scrub the blue blood from my hooves.

It took a few seconds to find Star Bright, or...what remained of the older stallion. His old bones clearly hadn’t survived the fall from the third, maybe fourth, story—both his forelegs had been shattered up to the shoulder, and black blood ebbed from a nasty head wound, where his forehead had slammed against the marble. Between that, and the mess Gilda had made of his throat, it was clear we had lost another member of our search team.

It took me a few moments to realize I didn’t feel nearly as bad about that as I probably should have. We’d lost a pony—another life snuffed out, or at least turned Hollow, eventually. Star Bright had been useful, even if I had to tune him out for the most part. But I found it hard to care that he was dead, aside from the cold assessment that we lost a set of hooves.

Was I becoming numb to death?

I’d seen—and experienced—quite a lot of it now. I’d seen lots of ponies die, whether they were going to turn Hollow or not. I’d walked through two cities of the uncountable dead now. At some point, the deaths stopped meaning as much to me in the abstract sense—what was another dead pony, by this point? Just another enemy to fight, later?

I forced my thoughts back to Zecora. I cared about her death still, and the speculative thought of Dinky, Pinkie or Maud dying repulsed me. But that was because I was attached to all of them; I considered them both friends, which I never had with Star Bright...or Merry May, for that matter.

The thought that death mattered little to me, unless it was somepony I personally cared about, disgusted me more than all of the dead bodies that lay around me. I looked down at my blood-stained hooves again, and realized I even cared more for the changeling that Maud had killed, right in front of me, than I cared about Star Bright. For just a moment, something had connected our minds, even if it was the changeling’s own attempt to kill me.

“Ah-ha!” Gilda crowed in satisfaction, and interrupted my thoughts. She flipped over a wooden desk, and grabbed the mare hiding underneath by the throat before she could bolt. Gilda spread her wings for balance, as she leaned back on her hinds, and her other fore-claw reached for a knife on her belt. The blade was already stained black with ichor—Hollow blood, and she made sure the pony saw it as Gilda held her high, in a single claw. “Quit squirming, before I gut you!”

The pony whimpered, but let her hooves drop in defeat. Maud gave Gilda a hard look, but didn’t rebuke her as she approached. She focused on the captured mare, and silently inspected her for several moments.

Eventually, she spoke. “It’s a decent attempt. You got her mane wrong, and her cutie mark has five stars, not six. You’ve seen her personally, haven’t you?”

The mare swallowed, before she responded, in a scratchy voice, “Knew...Ken Ti’lit. Before. Long...long ago...”

Maud’s eyes flicked to GIlda. “Loosen your grip, she can’t breathe.”

“Bullscat, they have gills.”

“Spiracles. And not while transformed.” Gilda huffed through her beak, but did as Maud asked. The knight set her blood-stained stone club on the floor, before she looked back up at the mare being held by the throat before her. “I knew Twilight too. Back in Ponyville.”

“P-Pony-ville...yesss…” Even without being half-strangled by Gilda, the mare’s speech was subtly wrong, in a dozen different ways. She emphasized the hisses and glottal noises of the worlds, and she seemed to have trouble using her own lips, as she stumbled over P’s and W’s. She paused often, as if it took effort to speak, to even remember how the words worked. “I rem-remember P-Pony-ville. You...there...”

Maud’s face betrayed no emotion. “What do you mean?”

“Taught...classs...I learn...rocks, cryssstals.”

Gilda snorted at that. “You’re a teacher?”

“A few times. Long before the sun stopped.” Maud stepped closer, and looked into the panicked eyes of the mare. “I remember Changelings in my class. I remember their names. What’s yours?”

The mare was a changeling? They could talk, they could think? As Gilda sputtered in surprise, I glanced back at the cold pile of bloody chitin a few leg-lengths away, and wanted to vomit. But that one had been feral, Hollowed. Hadn’t it? The emotions I felt as it died washed through me again, and guilt followed soon after as I looked around at the blue smears of the dead, all around us.

The mare—or changeling—seemed to have great difficulty answering this question, most of all. She screwed up her eyes, and her hooves twitched as she clenched her teeth. I saw Gilda shift nervously, and she held the knife a little closer, but a firm look from Maud had her lower the bloody blade. After a long few moments where the changeling wracked her mind, she eventually was only able to whimper. “Name...can’t...wrong in p-pony tongue. I called...Och’alis, by sisters…”

Maud turned fully back to Gilda. “Drop her.”

“What?” Gilda did a double-take at the order, but she didn’t loosen her grip.

“I said drop her. She won’t run. I know her.”

Gilda shook her head again. “Wait, wait, hold up, you were serious, before? You’ve taught changelings? In a classroom? On purpose?”

“They can be students as well. They’re very passionate about geology, but they don’t know our words for the stones.” Maud tilted her head slightly. “I thought the news of the peace accords would have reached Gryphonstone a long time ago.”

“They did, and we didn’t believe them, because they were clearly changeling propaganda written to make us drop our guard! Didn’t stop any of the local hives from replacing gryphons, I can tell you that!”

The mare in GIlda’s claw shuddered again. “Hives b-beyond...do not b-believe either. That Kris’alis, ken a kens...that she could b-be defeated...humiliated…”

“‘Ken a kens’?” Gilda repeated. “I got ‘Chrysalis,’ but what in Tartarus—”

“Queen of Queens,” Maud explained. “A very old changeling honorific, and it only applies to Chrysalis.”

Gilda shook her head. “Of course you speak bug. Fine. Rut it. I’m gonna drop her, and if she goes for your throat, bug-lover, I’ll wait until she’s finished to squish her.”

“She won’t,” Maud stated. “I trust you, Ocellus.”

Gilda released her grip, and the purple pony slumped to the floor. After a moment, green fire washed across her body, and where a pony had sat moments before, there was now only an emaciated changeling. She was gaunt, covered in scratches that marred the smooth surface of her black chitin, but she looked just a little better than the others had.

There were a couple of dead, but mostly-intact changelings lying around us, and I took the time to examine them and the one called “Ocellus” in detail. Their wings and legs were riddled with pockmarked holes, either battle damage or decay, and that seemed to be totally absent on her. Instead, she was just thin, as though she were half-starved. What was more, I could feel her from here—she had fire in her, like a pony. It was faint, but it was there, and though the flame wavered, it wasn’t the weak ember the others had.

She slowly turned her head to look at the dead changelings around her as well. Eventually, she lowered her head, and her voice wavered. “Sssorry...so...sorry. Too m-many dead, changeling and p-pony. Keep...keep coming here...look for Ti’lit. F-find...find me, instead. Then...changelings f-find them.”

“You’re the bait for their trap,” Gilda growled.

Ocellus shuddered, and closed her eyes as she hugged her hooves around herself tightly. “Don’t want...never want. Try to...hide f-from sisters. Come here alone, b-but...always watching.”

“Then why do you keep coming back here, huh? If you don’t want to be bait, then why keep coming back to the trap?” Gilda seemed to have made a point of not stowing her knife away just yet, ready to use it again at a moment’s notice.

Maud slowly approached again, and placed a hoof on Ocellus’ shoulder. After a moment, the changeling started to gently rub her head against the hoof, like an animal. “You said they’re looking for Twilight. Why do you keep disguising yourself as her?”

Ocellus shuddered again, and she sucked at her fangs as though the question caused her physical pain. Slowly, she looked down, and picked up a book, one that had fallen to the floor it’d been knocked off a shelf in the fight. “M-much gone. Can’t rem-remember all. Was slipping away...like heart-b-bleed, but...in head, and slow.”

The changeling opened the book to a random page, and her head twitched as she read the page. As she did, that green fire washed over her again, in a slow inferno across her chitin. She barely seemed to notice , she was so engrossed in the book. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to be real fire, as it left both Maud’s hoof and the book in Ocellus’ hooves unharmed. When the fire faded, the purple pony was sitting in front of us once again.

She closed the book, and whinnied quietly. “Reading...helps. I remember...some. B-better than none. Try to b-be...more p-pony, less changeling. Remember...Ti’lit. She...was b-better pony than me, b-before. Teacher. F-friend. Take her f-form...try to remember more. Always b-bleeding. But...bleed slower, when trying to...b-be her.”

Gilda retched. “Of course! Why should I even be surprised? Even changelings got infected by weak pony morality after long enough.”

Ocellus shook her head. “No! Not...inf-fected. Co...co…” She paused, as she tried to remember the word, but after a few moments, she seemed to give up. “Changelings…p-ponies call p-parasites. Creatures suck blood...suck heart-soul from host. Tried...tried to b-be different, without ken a kens...give back to p-ponies. Still need to...f-feed to survive, b-but...give back for p-payment, for take.”

The book she held gently slipped from her hooves, and landed with a thump on the floor, as the mare sobbed quietly. “P-ponies gone...twisted...wrong. No heart-soul to...take. Without host…” Ocellus swallowed sadly. “With...without host, p-parasite die. St-starve.”

Gilda looked like she wanted to say something, but stopped herself, twice over. As I looked at her fighting some insult back, I couldn’t help but hear that singing from outside again. It had faded when the battle started, and then I thought it had just been the wind. But that lonely song, like that of the Gravewardens, was still weaving through the broken windows of the library, and still echoed through the streets of the city all around us.

Eventually, Gilda kicked at a burned book, and sent it fluttering across the floor. “Ruttin’ hate this. Always shades of gray with ruttin’ ponies. There can’t be a good, simple fight any more. No, always gotta care about each other’s dweeby feelings and junk. Eugh!”

Maud watched her carefully, and I saw her take a step back, towards her club in case Gilda chose to attack Ocellus anyways. But that was never needed; instead, Gilda padded over to me, and the dead changelings all around. “Keep talking, like I know you want to. I’m gonna check the bodies for anything useful, grab my arrows. When we go back to hunting and killing things, and not talking about our rutting feelings, you let me know.”

She did pause next to me, and I saw that flash of sympathy once more, before she reached down and grabbed my leg, then pulled me to my hooves. I stood there, shakily, for a few moments, as Gilda continued to check the other bodies. When I felt able to stand, I started to limp over to Maud, who asked Ocellus, “Are there any more changelings?”

The disguised changeling shook her head, as she looked at me...and all the changeling blood that I was soaked in. “Attack as sw-swarm. Weak alone. Need...numbers. No m-more, in building.”

“What about elsewhere?” Maud asked bluntly.

Ocellus looked between us again, hesitant to answer. She must’ve thought we’d go and kill them all, and maybe she was right to be afraid of that. “M-more elsewhere. Hidden. But...separated. Will n-not attack. B-Banshee outside, kill them.”

“B-Banshee?” I repeated, quietly. Was that the source of the singing? I’d heard of banshees before, but only as folk tales. They were mournful wailing ghosts, that heralded the death of a family member, though...I couldn’t remember if they were just an ill omen, or if they did the killing themselves.

Ocellus nodded. “Sp-spirit, outside. Deadly, v-very deadly. Cannot be touched, f-fought...many sisters try. All die.”

Gilda looked up, from across the room. “Tartarus. Can it get in here? Should we be getting ready to move?”

Slowly, Ocellus shook her head, though I noticed she was looking at the windows. “Library...safe. Had l-lucid moment, long ago. W-warded building...all walls...all entrances. Cannot enter. But only this b-building, and...entrance to hive. To protect.”

Both Maud and Gilda relaxed at that, and the hen slid her bow back over a shoulder, content it wouldn’t be needed. “Good. So it can’t get in here to fight us, and as long as it’s out there, we don’t have to worry about changelings coming in?”

Ocellus shrugged. “N-not sure how long...B-banshee stay. Not f-first time...it hear f-fighting here. Waiting for p-prey. She louder lately...stay l-longer.”

Maud sat down, beside Ocellus, and the disguised changeling leaned up against her again. I felt a little strange about standing there, coated in the cooling blood of her...sisters? But at the same time, it didn’t seem like there was much to be done. I righted an old wooden bench, and sat down on that while we talked to Ocellus.

Now that Maud knew we were safe, she didn’t waste any time in regards to our mission. “Ocellus. Do you remember Trixie Lulamoon?”

The disguised changeling frowned as she thought, then her eyes widened a moment later. “Ti’see, she...teacher? At...school? Unicorn?”

“Guidance counselor. Yes.”

Ocellus nodded eagerly, then slowed down, and her eyes fell. “Came here...l-looking for Ti’lit. Attacked. B-but remembered her...stop sisters. Not kill. Only...capture.” Ocellus sighed. “Cocoon in Hive. Asleep, for slow f-feeding.”

So...Trixie had come here, and the Changelings had captured her, then taken her back to her hive. That made our job considerably harder.

Maud was silent for a few moments, as she thought about that as well. Then she looked back up to ask, “Did Trixie have a necklace on her? She was supposed to have one, and we need them both.”

Surprisingly, Ocellus actually shuddered at the mention of it. “Cursed jewelry. Like heart-soul...but missing. Hungers, like Changelings. No sister wanted to touch...thought it would make crazy. Like Ti’see. Still wears it...in cocoon.”

“Can you bring her here? From the hive?” Maud asked.

Ocellus shuddered again at the suggestion. “Sisters stop. Maybe kill...for steal food. Sisters st-starve already.”

“Pl-please.” I murmured, just loud enough that both Maud and Ocellus looked at me. “We just need Tr-Trixie. She’s imp-portant, for Equestria. The Pr-Princess sent us.”

“Ken Ti’lit?” Ocellus asked, with fragile hope in her voice.

It hurt that I had to shatter that hope. “No. Pr-Princess Celestia. N-nopony knows where T-Twilight is. W-we thought she might be here...like everyp-pony else.”

Ocellus slumped, silent, and the only noise in the library for a few moments was the sound of Gilda flapping her wings to reach her arrows, still stuck in the walls. I took the time to look again at my hooves, and the drying blood that stained them. After a moment, I looked up, and noticed Ocellus had been staring at my hooves too.

I tried to hide them, as best I could. “I’m s-sorry. For killing your s-sisters.”

Ocellus swallowed, and a quiet sob escaped her as she spoke. “F-fought. Survived. Can...cannot blame for survive. Other p-pony...didn’t.”

“We didn’t come here to kill anyone. We came to talk to Trixie, and bring her back to Ponyville.” Maud explained. “That necklace she has is one of the Elements of Harmony. It’s very important that we retrieve both of them.”

Again, Ocellus was silent for a long while. Gilda continued to move around the library, and started to drag the corpses around into the open, so they could be more easily picked over. The changelings didn’t have anything, of course, but Gilda seemed content in knowing for sure that each one was dead. She spent a bit longer picking through Star Bright’s saddlebags, and she stripped his armor off to leave him just as bare as the others. She seemed to be trying to finagle some of the looser plates into armor around her own body, since she was unable to wear the pony-sized armor entirely. Neither Maud nor I moved to stop her, since Star Bright wouldn’t need it any more. Especially not when he woke up later, Hollowed and hungry.

Gilda paused midway through, before she reached down and picked up something—Star Bright’s discarded revolver. She held it with clear distaste, before she flicked open the cylinder and counted the ammunition inside. Then she checked his corpse again, and made an avian sound of annoyance.

“W-what’s wrong?” I asked, curious what she’d discovered.

“This idiot—all that counting he was doing, and he doesn’t have any spare ammo on him. Did he forget to grab more, or what? There’s only three bullets for this damned gun, and I don’t feel like going scrounging for ammo in this city.”

Well...that wasn’t much use at all, then. “St-still,” I started to say. “We should k-keep it in case we f-find more, or we need—”

I was suddenly cut off as Gilda pointed the revolver at the ceiling, and squeezed off the last three shots in quick succession. The deafening sound of the gunshots echoed through the library, and for a moment, it blocked out the singing from outside. But only for a moment. With all the ammo now depleted, Gilda carelessly lobbed the empty gun into a corner, and clearly cared little for where it landed. 

After a moment, she noticed we were all staring at her in confusion. She rolled her eyes, then explained. “I’m not going to use a gun with only three shots, and the rest of you physically can’t. But changelings might be able to steal it off us and use those last three rounds against us. I’m being ‘proactive,’ ya get me?”

Nopony said anything, and eventually GIlda just growled again, before she started to pull the rest of Star Bright’s armor onto her shoulders.

“One p-pony,” Ocellus murmured, eventually. “Can sp-spare one. Lost m-many sisters...hive less hungry...but...how many? Until hive...until changelings...w-wiped out?”

“Yeah, what a tragedy,” We heard Gilda mutter across the room. Both me and Maud glared at her, but she neither noticed nor cared.

Ocellus didn’t seem to notice either. She was too lost in thought, and her eyes were closed. “Sisters...f-fight me. Will not allow entry. Need kill...m-more, to get Ti’see.”

“C-can’t you reason with them?” I murmured, hopefully.

But Ocellus shook her head again. “An-animals. No words...Not like me. Only...almost only one left...can think. Can speak.” Ocellus’ eyes flicked open, but she didn’t look up from the floor. “Will do...what can. Keep most away...but some hunt anyway.”

“Then that will have to do,” Maud decided, quietly. “Can you take us there now?”

Again, Ocellus shook her head, and she looked back up at the broken windows, where that haunting song still echoed through the building. “N-no. Banshee outside...hunting. Will kill all. Need slay Banshee...then get Ti’see.”

“What?” Gilda asked, as she walked back towards us, with metal plates hap-hazardly wrapped around her shoulders and throat. “How the hay do you kill a ghost? You’re joking, right?”

“No!” Ocellus cried, as she suddenly stood up, and began rummaging through the piles of fallen literature and papers freed from their books. “Here...lost...pamphlet, about museum. Knife, displayed. Saw before, when p-ponies lived...felt cursed b-blade. Like cursed j-jewelry.”

“And th-that will kill the B-banshee?” I asked.

When Ocellus nodded, Maud looked at Gilda. “Find a pamphlet for the museum. Check the lobby.”

“Yeah, yeah. What else, I wonder…”

I looked back at Ocellus. “W-what is the Banshee? The s-song is familiar…”

The disguised changeling shuddered. “Pony...before. Was captured when happened...but ponies above changed. Lived. Breathed. Then...not. Ghosts, now. Cannot fight, but...can kill. Killed many sisters. Always...singing.”

Was that what had happened to Baltimare? Something, or somepony...had changed them? I thought back to the silhouettes we’d been seeing outside, and wondered if those had been the citizens of Baltimare all along, stalking us in ghostly forms. But Baltimare was a big city...and we’d only seen a few silhouettes, until the last few blocks. We should’ve seen more, so many more.

I shook my head to clear my mind. It didn’t make any sense, but I did trust poor Ocellus. “So...g-get the knife, k-kill the banshee, then we s-save Trixie?”

Ocellus and Maud nodded, and as Gilda approached, holding a faded pamphlet in her claw, I steadied myself. Baltimare was a city of mysteries—a city of the dead. But at least we had a plan now.
> 34 - City of Ghosts
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Baltimare public library was a grand, classically-styled building, which meant that the roof was decently high. While we couldn’t see over the sea of fog that blanketed the city from here, we could at least see a bit further, and that allowed us to do some scouting. I held the map under Gilda’s outstretched wing, to shield it from the rain, while she pointed north. “Okay, so it’s somewhere on the waterfront southeast of us. I can’t see it from up here, but it’s an enclosed bay; if you hit the bridge, you’ve gone too far. Don’t move along the open roads or you’ll get spotted, stick to the side roads running in parallel.”

I pointed at the tall stone monument in the center of the square, directly adjacent to the library. “Sh-should we go up there? We m-might be able to see a little f-further from the top.”

Gilda glanced over the tower, but shook her head a moment later. “Nah. They’d see us if I carried you up there, and they’d be on us before we saw anything useful. Plus I’ve never been good at carrying heavy weights while flying—same reason I can’t just fly you to the museum for this supposed knife.”

“S-supposed?” I asked.

Gilda shook her head. “I’m not doubting it exists, I saw the pamphlet. But I do doubt that it can kill ghosts or whatever, I bet it’s just an old knife in a museum. I’m thinking that the bug was desperate and crazy, and convinced herself the knife would solve all of her problems so she had something to work towards. Except she never actually went to get it herself, so she’s too lazy to do anything about it.”

“M-maybe she really was just scared of the g-ghosts?” I asked, as I leaned over the side of the building. I could see vague silhouettes as they milled around the front door, and the shadows of flying pegasi on nearby rooftops. They were watching us atop the roof, but they couldn’t get in, thanks to Ocellus’ wards.

In fact, we wanted to be seen up here, so their attention was focused on the roof. That way, when Gilda took off for the outskirts of town, they’d be following her. Their attention would be off of the side doors, and hopefully I could sneak out on the ground level without being detected. Between the four of us, we’d decided that was the best way to go about things; Gilda would fly back to the other group to bring them back here as reinforcements, while I snuck out to get the ghost-killing knife, and brought it back to the library just so we had some way of actually fighting back. Maud would stay here with Ocellus, to keep her company and help her gather herself, and they’d both be ready in case other changelings managed to sneak past the blockade of ghosts for themselves.

It was tempting to want to ask Gilda to get the knife first and then get reinforcements, or simply wait to get the knife until Raindrops, Rivet, Roma and Posey had all come here, but then we wouldn’t have a distraction, and it’d be monumentally harder than it already was. And GIlda had just shot down the idea of flying me over to the museum, plus she already was grousing that she might not be able to outfly the ghostly pegasi. Carrying a pony with her would slow her down, and nearly guarantee that both of us were slain.

This whole city felt like it had been set up as a trap for curious travelers. I could only imagine the years of attacks and counter-attacks the changelings had attempted that would lead to this being so commonplace. Ocellus even speculated that the ghosts must have thought we were changelings ourselves, or that maybe all ponies were changelings in disguise, which was why they attacked ruthlessly on sight. But they’d let us get into the city almost completely unmolested, so that couldn’t have been totally true.

It was a shame we couldn't just talk to the ghosts. But we’d tried from the open front door of the library, to no effect, except that they tried to beat themselves against the wards to get at us even more frantically. They seemed mad, like they’d been Hollowed before they became ethereal. Could ghosts go Hollow? Or had becoming specters driven them insane?

"Scared of them?" Gilda repeated, with a scoff. "Ehhh...I could see that, I guess. I agree they're stars-damned creepy, at least. I can't see them clearly, just their wake in the fog, so it makes it rutting impossible to watch them. And then there's the rutting singing that just keeps going!"

She'd ended her sentence looking over the side of the roof with me, as she shouted at the spirits below like a mad hen. If the source of the endless, haunting dirge heard her, it paid Gilda no heed, and didn't even pause. Even the echoes of the hen's shout were drowned out by the slow song from below.

Gilda fluffed the feathers of her crest, as she shook her head. "Rut 'em. Whatever. At least I won't be able to hear that while I'm flying, at least not as clearly. I hope."

I didn't quite share her sentiment. The relentless dirge was unsettling, to be sure, but after having heard it for so long here and in Cloudsdale, it was starting to grow on me. It helped that here in Baltimare, the unseen singer had a beautiful, singular voice, as opposed to the version hummed in harmony by the gravewardens before. Theirs was a pale rendition of the song being performed for us now, and I dearly wished that same singer didn't wish me dead so I could tell her so.

Maybe I would anyways. Part of my mind wanted me to step out and find her regardless, even though it would be suicide. The rest of my mind tried very hard to keep that desire in check, because that seemed like a strange compulsion that I shouldn't listen to, even though it was getting louder and louder the longer I listened.

But another thought did occur to me. I looked back at the gryphon and asked directly, "Y-you are coming back, r-right?"

"What?" Gilda tilted her head at me, and narrowed her hawk-like eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I—" I swallowed. "—I d-don't know. C-call me paranoid, I g-guess. It'd b-be really easy for you to l-leave, and f-forget all of this…"

I trailed off, but Gilda completed the thought for me. "You want to know I won't flake on you. Yeah, alright, I get that. Hay, I'd be wondering the same thing in your place."

She looked back down at the ghosts, and then she turned south, towards the foggy outline of the Canterhorn range. "And I'd be lying if I told you I hadn't considered it. But there's two reasons I won't; first, I'd be screwing you over if I did. Then I wouldn't be any better than the pony that screwed me over." Gilda shook her head. "As easy as it would be. I've got just enough pride left to be stupid, I guess."

"W-what did Pinkie d-do?" I found it hard to believe that the radiant mare could hurt a pony—or gryphon—this badly. Maud wasn't the only one curious of Gilda's intentions and motivations. But Rockhoof had said Pinkie had led a battalion in the army, against the dragons, so maybe the mare had a nasty streak that I somehow hadn't seen yet…

"I'll tell you later, I think." Gilda said, with the ghost of a smirk at the soft edges of her beak. "After all, I'm not the only one that could run off on their own. We just met, and I still don't exactly trust any of you."

"That's f-fair," I conceded. "W-what about Ocellus? What's your t-take on her?"

"That's a lot easier—I don't trust bugs, and neither should you." Gilda shook her head. "Rutting naive ponies, you get suckered in too easily with some tears and a sad story. I've seen the bugs pull that a few times, it's one of their favorite tricks. Mostly because it keeps working on you morons. Never worked back in Gryphonstone, though. We're too damned smart for it, so they need to play nastier tricks to feed off us. That's the way the world's always worked—one blade sharpens another, tempers steel with steel.

“Besides, they’ve always been shapeshifting soulsuckers, even before everyone else picked up that little trick. You ponies always pretty up the story so it doesn’t scare the foals and chicks too badly, but softening the story, making it so they drain ‘love,’ or whatever, instead? That means they miss the lesson. Ponies tell their foals that, and no wonder Maud ends up with bugs in her classroom.”

Speaking of Maud...I glanced back at the door that led down into the grand library below us. “D-do you think she’s okay? You don’t t-trust Ocellus, but we left them t-together…”

“Eh,” Gilda grunted dismissively. “I’m already pretty sure this whole story is some ploy to get us split up so we’re easier to kill. Or get the ghosts to kill us, so she doesn’t have to. If we go down there and Maud’s already a Hollow husk, then all that tells us is that we can leave, because the mission’s over.”

“W-what about Trixie?” We couldn’t just leave her in a hive, or the Element of Generosity.

“Well, if she is lying to us and Maud is drained, then it’s easy to gather that she was lying about that too, and your ex-friend Trixie was dead before we got here. So we leave, you go back to whatever you were doing, and I go back to trying to figure out some way into Canterlot.”

That was...fatalistic. It worried me that Gilda had clearly been planning for the worst, and expecting the worst-case scenario…but then, maybe it was a good thing that somebody was. I looked at the gryphon hen again, and changed the subject. “Y-you’ve been trying to get into Canterlot?”

Gilda nodded, and started to preen her wings. Maybe she was just double-checking one last time before she started her flight to the other group, or maybe she was remembering one of her former attempts to enter the capital. “Yeah, for a long while now. They’ve got the works, in terms of security. Interdiction fields, anti-flyer weapon emplacements, and good old-fashioned barricades on the main gates. Pretty impressive pile of trash and rubble blocking the main road and the train lines in, and it looked like they collapsed part of the mountain below that. They don’t want anything getting in, and the only way they could have made that more clear is if they dropped a dead dragon on top, as a warning.”

Gilda extended her wing fully, and now that I had the chance to examine it, I noticed a distinctive pattern of burn marks across the feathers—lightning scarring, likely magically-generated. “I did work out that there are flight paths into the city through the interdiction fields, but they change them all the time, and I learned real quick that trying to figure those flight paths out through trial and error would be a bad idea. I might duck the fields, but they’d spot me flying in and gun me down regardless.”

And yet, access to Canterlot was our prize. Obviously it was a test, but if they just needed more soldiers, then surely they could recruit ponies normally from across the country? What did they really need us for? Were they testing our motives, to see how precisely we solved problems like this?

Speaking of motives, I looked back at Gilda, who was almost finished preening her wings. "W-why do you want g-get into Canterlot so badly, anyway?"

Gilda clicked her beak. "I told you, I'll tell you later, if I trust you. It's all part of the same big ball of dogscat."

It frustrated me that she was so secretive. It made sense, but everypony—everybody, that was—was so damned secretive. Dinky, Trixie, Opal, Red, even the Princess. Sometimes, I'd give the wind and the sky for a nice, direct answer to my questions. At least Dinky had opened up eventually, and that was part of why I trusted her still.

The thought did give me pause. Gilda was not unlike Trixie in several ways, and yet again, I'd been trying to get close to her despite that. I hadn't even realized I was doing it, and to be fair, Gilda seemed to be the one with an interest in my affairs. But that was a two-way street, and I'd certainly told her plenty. I needed to start being more careful about that, I needed to start consciously...what, closing up? Not offering vital information?

I didn't want to start talking to ponies and creatures through multiple layers of conversation, just to think about what I could and couldn't say. If I had to start, then I'd just clam up again—I could tell I had neither the focus nor foresight to even lie well, as Hollowed as I was. It was just too much to ask of me.

Thankfully, Gilda had begun to fluff her wings in preparation to leave, which meant I at least wouldn't need to start now. "Alright, let's do this. Start moving, I'll count to a hundred, then make a real racket up here to get their attention. When you hear me make this sound—" Gilda let out an ear-splitting eagle cry that made me clap my hooves over the sides of my helmet. "—get moving, because that'll be when most of them are watching me. Got it?"

"G-got it…" I whimpered. Gilda nodded, and turned to the edge of the building. I gave myself a shake, then made for the stairwell back down into the library, and shakily took the steps two at time on the way down, to make sure I was in place when Gilda gave the signal.

Maud seemed fine, when I checked on her and Ocellus on the way down. She was reading a water-damaged visual dictionary to the disguised changeling in her usual monotone, presumably in an effort to jog her memory and help Ocellus speak more clearly. For that, I was thankful; she'd been difficult to understand before, and any miscommunication when we brought the rest of the group here, or ventured into the changeling nest, could cost us more lives. Maybe even my own, yet again.

So far, I had narrowly avoided the cold embrace of death on this leg of my journey. Hopefully I could keep it that way, whether my deaths were another inconvenience, or the end of my travels. My fire could only be snuffed out so many times, before it could burn no longer.


*	*	*


By the time I reached the side door, I didn't have to wait long. I was starting to see the ghostly figures outside in slightly more clarity, enough to tell that the closest one was nearby. The shape of the pony was foggy and wispy around the edges, but I could see that, just like me, her eyes seemed to be two little burning embers of magic, which flickered occasionally as she blinked, or at least, made the unconscious action of a blink. Only sometimes did her head turn towards the door, which helpfully already hung askew by a single hinge. A heavy blow during some ancient fight had occurred to this door, but now it was the only evidence that the fight had ever happened.

Gilda's cry echoed between the buildings, and through the distortion of the fog, it nearly sounded as alien as that distant, mournful singing. The ghost's head turned to look, and that was when I made my move, to escape the spectral blockade beyond the protective wards.

I knew their field of vision was just as limited as when they were ponies. If they could look through the backs of their heads, then they wouldn't have been nearly so focused on us when we were up on the roof. And I also knew they could hear; the ghostsong seemed to coordinate them somehow, for when it intensified, the ghosts had probed the wards of the library with worrying ferocity. They had also jumped when Gilda let out her avian cries, as if startled, which confirmed that they could hear more than just their own ghoulish murmurs.

So, I tried to keep my hooves quiet as I slipped out of the door. Maud and Ocellus had agreed that rolling one's hooves over the concrete would be more quiet than the loud clop that occured when they struck the surface normally, and had even demonstrated on the marble floors of the library. That was enough for me to move relatively quickly to a lawn of dead grass, which would have crunched were it not soaked from the rain.

I'd made it to the street, and around behind the ghost, by the time she looked back at the door. I ducked behind a cart—it looked as though ponies had been interrupted suddenly, midway through unloading its cargo—just in case she swept the street looking for ponies who had done exactly what I had just done, and then paused there to calm myself.

That was one step. Next, I needed to get off this street and into the alleys. The more distance I could safely put between myself and the crazed specters here, the better. I waited for a few moments, until I was ready, and started for the space between two buildings across the street—only to immediately knock over a ponnequin that had been standing beside the cart.

A wooden clatter echoed around the street, and for a second, I froze. The ghost must have heard that. At best, I had seconds—the ghosts were only about as fast as any normal pony, maybe even a little slower, but if I ran, then she could follow the sound of my hoofbeats. She could summon the others. I had to hide. But where?

The cart's presence was luck, both bad and good, because it must have belonged to a seamstress like Rarity. Several other ponnequins, like the one I had clumsily knocked over, stood in an orderly line beside a pile of faded bolts of cloth. Half a dozen others lay in a haphazard pile, as if carelessly dropped from the cart. That was my only chance; I flopped onto the pile of ponnequins as though I were one of them, and forced myself to end my almost-instinctual breath once more.

This was stupid. I was wearing armor. My eyes were still glowing embers. I stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the discarded cargo, and when the ghost took one look at this terrible hiding place, she was going to spot me in an instant. I was going to die here.

And yet, when the ghostly mare, an earth pony with a flower-shaped mane clip, rounded the corner, she glanced across the pile of cargo...and seemed to look right past me. While her eyes lingered on the ponnequins at first, she seemed to realize what they were after a moment, and then she barely spared the rest of the pony-shaped dress mares a glance, including me.

I remained frozen, too terrified for my life to even think to move, as I watched the phantom approach on silent hooves. I waited for any sudden movement, any hint that she saw through my basic ruse, but it never came.

Instead, she seemed utterly focused on the bolts of cloth. She sat next to one, and a trembling, transparent hoof extended out towards them. When her hoof touched it, her fire seemed to ripple, like water disturbed by a stone. Instead of passing through the solid object, her hoof dissipated and spread outwards, like mist rolling through a valley. She realized what had happened a moment later, and held up her hoof to inspect it. She watched as her foreleg coalesced back together from the fog around us, and she shivered, then tried to touch the bolt of cloth again, more gently this time.

The ghostly mare shivered again, as she ran her hoof over the faded, discarded cloth. She traced the fibers, but not the pattern dyed into the cloth, which she either ignored, or didn't see at all. Once more, her form rippled, and she pulled her hoof back, to press it against her own chest. 

The edges of her body...shifted. In a way that was difficult to describe, the mare seemed to slowly diminish, and become less real than she had before. Her features became harder to distinguish, and her misty form grew thin. The ghost faded, just a little bit, as she clutched her hoof to her own breast. It was near-impossible to tell...but I thought I could hear her crying.

Eventually, she let her hoof drop silently back to the sidewalk. She still seemed thin, and ethereal—for some reason, seeing the cloth and ponnequins had done something to her. She didn't recover, but she did start to move again, and silently began to trudge back to the door of the library.

I waited until she had been gone for what felt like a few minutes, then slowly pulled myself to my hooves. I was careful to keep the cart between myself and the spectral mare as I crossed the street to the alley, and quietly fled into the safety of the foggy city. I didn't have time to stay and ponder what I'd seen; I needed to get that knife.


*	*	*


Once I’d escaped the immediate area surrounding the library, I quickly stopped seeing the patrolling ghosts. Presumably, the sounds of our battle, and Gilda’s distraction, had lured all of them to that single location and cleared the rest of the city. While I suspected that was only true for maybe a mile before the sounds had failed to carry so far, it was still useful, and I allowed myself to pick up the pace a little bit. I was still cautious of course, and tried to keep my hooves quiet, but the longer I went without seeing any specters, the sillier I felt for ducking between carts and abandoned auto-mobiles as if actively being hunted.

Without that to focus on, I quickly became unnerved once more by how empty the city was. It was even worse now that I knew we had been watched, and followed, on our way into the city; now that I was alone, I was more perceptive than ever for distant silhouettes in windows and down long streets, and I wasn’t even seeing those. Soon, I started to grow paranoid, worried that they might actually be there, but I simply couldn’t see them like GIlda could. But surely, if the ghosts had noticed me, then I would already be dead?

I moved downhill, towards the bay. The library was in an older part of the city, but several larger buildings had been built right in the middle of them. I skirted east around them, then south towards the waterfront, towards the low buildings that were all a historical landmark in their own way, near the waterfront. The museum was described as being close by the bay as well, to show off a fair few aquatic exhibits, but further east, where more modern construction had been forcefully isolated. The town had sprawled because of that, but it still wasn't more than a couple miles.

I could smell when I was close, more than anything else. Baltimare always smelled like ocean, of course, but it was only when I actually approached the water that I could smell the salt that caked the shoreline. The smoky, oppressive smog of burnt coal, and the heady stench of fish, combined into what could only be a harbor, scarred by industry. The fish especially caught my attention; while I was far removed from the concept of food now, it still tickled my avian palate, and made me yearn for their oily flavor.

Part of me knew there would be no fish left, and the smell had simply soaked the waterfront. After hundreds of years of nets being hauled into the harbor, heavy with their catch, the scent would never fade from this place. But it burrowed into my mind, and I forced that part of my mind down and howled for it to shut up. I'd never forgive myself if I walked right past a meal because I'd convinced myself it wasn't there.

The actual waterfront was much less rustic than I had been imagining. The buildings closest to the water were an odd mix of historical architecture, and modern housing and commercial structures, like restaurants and shipping offices. Hard concrete piers formed a wide walkway between the water of the bay and the buildings of Baltimare. Wide enough, in fact, that automobiles could drive on the walkway—which somepony had, judging from the wreck.

I approached it slowly; it seemed to be a cargo-hauler, at least as much as the experimental auto-cart could be. The seat sat high in the front, while a steel bed had been mounted in the back, covered by a tarpaulin. I could see scars in the wood that led to the wheels, as though they'd scraped across the surface while the machine skidded uncontrollably. Perhaps it had been too heavy, and turned too sharply? Or perhaps something had happened to the driver, which had caused them to lose control?

The wind shifted, and my breath caught in my throat. What was the cargo? I galloped around the crashed auto-mobile to the back, where the bed had been split on impact with a brick wall, and I couldn't believe my eyes. 

Fish. A great bounty of them, somehow preserved from the time that Baltimare was abandoned. Untouched, unclaimed. All for me.

I didn't hesitate for a second, as I leapt at the pile and began to gorge myself. My teeth were still looser than they should have been, but my pegasus foreteeth gripped at the scales and rent them apart, and delicious fish meat spilled into my maw, across my tongue, down my chin. Raw, delicious, oily fish slid down my throat in damp chunks as I chewed through the pile, and I only stopped when that first fish had been stripped to the spine. The smaller bones crunched at the back of my teeth, as I chewed them, and I flicked that first fish away as I moved to another.

I only stopped when I had filled my belly to near the point of bursting, and I felt sick from overindulgence. I laid on my side, atop the pile of fish that the wind had guided me to, and groaned in a satisfied mix of sated hunger and pain, from stuffing my stomach with the first food I had found since I had first awoken. I felt sick, but in a satisfied way, though perhaps in hindsight I should have considered cooking the fish instead of ripping into them raw.

Though, that line of thought gave me pause. As I began to preen my wings, using the oil that freshly coated my muzzle, I wondered how long the fish had been here. And yet, I didn't taste rot or decay; even when I picked at my teeth and ran my tongue around my mouth, I could taste only oil and fish blood, which admittedly, repulsed me slightly. I’d have to wash out my mouth, when I got the chance.

A drink, in general, would be extremely nice to have. The fish had been dry, strikingly so, and the oil on my lips dried far faster than it should have. Out of curiosity, I flipped over a half-eaten fish in front of me to inspect it more closely, now that I wasn't quite so mad with hunger.

The meat looked fine, at least to my untrained eyes. Again, no rot, decay, or parasites lay within the folds of flesh and muscle. But those insides were pale, and where I ripped bloody chunks free with my teeth, the blood that seeped from within was dark. Not unlike my own, ichorous blood. I also had a very hard time identifying the fish; what little knowledge of fish I could dredge from my mind seemed to mostly be fresh-water. A salt-water species, I could only guess at.

The most striking detail was a set of whiskers, which extended from just behind the jaw, but they seemed too short and bulky to be like whiskers of a catfish. What was more, they seemed jointed, with tiny, flexible bones, capped with a solid, blunt tip. The eyes also grabbed my attention; they were surprisingly large, and expressive despite belonging to a dead...haddock? Perhaps. Even the jaw seemed strange for a fish, which made it especially hard to identify; when I opened the mouth, I even found teeth—short, blunt teeth, designed for chewing.

What kind of fish was this? It didn't look like any fish I had ever seen. In fact, the face looked oddly...equine. And if I looked at it like that, and tilted my head slightly, the whiskers almost looked like...hooves…

All of a sudden, my belly, flush with fish meat, felt repulsively heavy.

Something in the pile under me shifted, and I leapt to my hooves as my half-preened wings flopped loosely against my sides. But nothing moved in the pile, so I drew my sword. I winced as I saw how it was still stained blue from the battle against the changelings, but I had no intentions of eating more fish—I'd quite suddenly lost any appetite I once had.

I slid the blade between the fish, and used it to sweep several of them aside. Slowly, I turned over the fish in the pile, and shoved them aside as I dug inwards, searching for whatever had moved at the bottom. The thought that I might have imagined it was just as worrying as the thought of finding something, and to my horror, I didn't have to search for long.

The deeper into the pile of fish I dug, the more transformed the dead fish seemed to be. Scales receded, replaced by fur, and the nascent hooves lengthened, while a second set appeared just before the tail, which narrowed and became long, thin, and separated.

Finally, it all came to a head. One last layer of fish slid away, and revealed a gasping, twitching body—a fish, undeniably, as twisted as the anatomy might have been—but a fish with the face of a pony.

The pony-fish's face sucked and gasped, drowning in the air, and the anemic hooves shuddered and squirmed as its body writhed. This creature wanted water to inhale and filter through the fur-covered lungs behind its jaws, but it had been trapped here. Trapped under thousands of other fish who were mutating, twisting in exactly the same way.

This wasn't like the demons—their transformations seemed chaotic, twisting them from moment to moment, as the fires of chaos burned away their flesh and replaced it with that of another animal. This was purposeful, all aligned towards the goal of "pony," and I had stumbled across the wretched creatures in some horrific liminal state. It was not a fish, not any more, but it wasn't a pony either. But it seemed it had gotten close enough for the Hollow curse to consider it as such.

It was not life, but something akin to it.

My hoof moved, as if on instinct, before I even knew what I was doing. In an instant, I ended the miserable creature's life with a sudden stab of my sword. I pinned the abomination's body to its kin below, and it went still in moments as I pierced something vital. I felt fire, weak and flickering, from the tiny body—from every one of the pony-fish I stood amongst. They were a bed of embers, but nothing more, and for once, I refused the fire. This, I would not take. I couldn't bring myself to do it, and I nearly emptied my stomach at the thought. Maybe I should have—I’d eaten these things, and the thought that their flesh sat in my gut made me want to rip myself apart to make sure it was purged.

All I could force myself to do, however, was stumble backwards, away from the pile of fish. How long until the curse brought that creature back? Would it Hollow, like ponies? Was it already Hollowed? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I never wanted to think about it again, or the weight in my gut.

Away. I had to go away. The museum wasn’t far now; I was along the waterfront, amongst the more recent constructions. I remembered how it had been drawn in the pamphlet, and it was a large building, easily identifiable. I’d find it soon.
> 35 - The Museum
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was expecting a large building, but the Baltimare History Museum was almost comically so.

While I could see the original base structure clearly in the red light of the sunset, it was obvious that the building had been extensively modified since its original construction. The centuries-old brick had been aggressively reinforced with steel supports, which had been stabbed right through the bricks all the way down to the foundation. The museum's core still seemed to be the modest townhouse at the front, which looked as though it was still in use as the museum's lobby, but everything else had to have been more modern additions.

The back of the building was notably taller, more akin to a warehouse, though I couldn't see how far back it extended. The right-most expansion of the building was painted with faded murals of fish and whales and waves, and appeared to be some form of aquarium. Meanwhile, most of the steel reinforcements around the main building seemed designed to support the domed structure around the front left side of the building, which had been itself painted with murals of stars and planets. I recognized the dull red of Bucephalus and the rings of Lucidus, but the others were too faded, and I had never been very knowledgeable about the upper reaches of our firmament.

I was still lost in thought—contemplating whether I should stop to inspect that part of the museum, and maybe clarify that knowledge, to be specific—when a horrific chill overcame me. My skin crawled suddenly, and I gasped as I spun around. Not five paces from me, one of the ghosts stood, a stallion, who seemed just as confused as I was.

His glowing eyes flickered at me dumbly, and he looked down at his hoof, which solidified very slightly. Had he walked right through me, and I'd been too lost in thought to notice his approach? Had he been just as unaware of me, as I was of him?

Realization seemed to strike us both at the same time—I drew my sword, for all the good it would do me, and a ghostly knife appeared in his own hoof. As he waved his own weapon at me, I couldn't help but notice how the ethereal blade sliced through the thin fog between us. That blade was real enough to cut, I could see that, and I had no intention of being sliced to ribbons by a ghost.

So I turned and bolted into the museum's front doors. I paused only long enough to glance back and see if he was giving chase, but the ghost seemed almost relieved (though the wispy visage was no less sad and forlorn). As I fled, his own dagger dissipated, and he silently galloped away into the city.

For the moment, the spike of terror that had risen up in my mind eased back down to its prior neutrality; I had no way of fighting the ghosts, in any real sense. Neither blade, nor magic, nor Gilda's bow had done anything but to disrupt the mist they were made of, and only briefly at that. It would barely have been a fight, even against a single ghost. But as he bolted, I realized where he was going: in the direction of the library, to report my presence, or worse, fetch reinforcements.

All thoughts of lingering here in the museum fled along with the stallion. I needed to get that knife, and get the hay out of here, before more ghosts—maybe the Banshee herself—arrived to overwhelm me with their numbers. I returned my sword to its sheath, bucked the glass doors open in a panic, and leapt over the bouncing glass shards as I entered the museum properly.

I'd been right; this original building had been retrofitted as a lobby. I could still see the marks on the floor where old exhibits had stood, before they had been moved to another part of the building to allow for a wide information desk and crowd partitions. A grand staircase that led up to a second floor was roped off, with a sign labeled "Offices - Employees only." Thankfully, the rest of the building seemed to be just as well signposted. To my surprise, there were still lights on here and there, at varying levels of dimness.

I had been somewhat correct in my guess, about the right side of the structure. A large sign declared that wing to be the "Baltimare Oceanological display," and explained that if you were following the tour, that door was the exit, and instead recommended that visitors start in the planetarium. I eagerly agreed with the sign, as my too-full gut twinged again with nervous anxiety. Fish were the last thing I wanted to think about right now.

Instead, I struggled over an old turnstile that had rusted in place, and entered the planetarium wing. Most of it seemed familiar at a glance, though only at first: the museum seemed to display both major theories regarding our world, with the first being that of the Firmament, which I knew well. In fact, their display, which showed our dome-like world sitting upon the ocean with the sun and moon slowly rotating overhead, was perhaps one of the most detailed that I'd ever seen. It even had the other planets overhead, as they slowly spun on thin cables like our sun and moon in the far reaches of the void above, or rather, the dark recesses of the ceiling.

But several signs pointed out the flaws in this long-held belief, most notably the ocean around our dome. It presumed that our world bobbed on the surface of a great stellar ocean, like a buoy on the water, but our world was far too heavy for that. It would sink beneath the surface in seconds, and we would all drown in the ocean of the void. Ponies had yet to sail to the edge of our world, let alone transition onto the water of the star-ocean. It also pointed out that the other planets floated high above that water, seemingly so buoyant that they were like balloons, which only worked if those other planets were so light that air was like water to them, and that was the ocean upon which they floated.

The next room over was the other major theory, which was relatively new; the display was dedicated to an equine astronomer from nearly two centuries ago, who had been the first to work out the details of what she had apparently described as a "Celesticentric solar system." In that display, Celestia's sun was at the center of everything, and Equus was a sphere, just like every other celestial body above us. They all spun and spiraled around each other on thin cables above me, and it was hypnotizing to watch.

But if anything, this display had even more signs that pointed out flaws in this concept. How did the planets stay in their rotation? Why didn't they just fall into the sun, if it was the center of everything? If they were all spinning as fast as the display described, then why did everything not fly off, like water in a cyclone? What kept our world's air in place, if not its own weight? What kept our own sun stationary, in the great void above? And most importantly, this display implied that the Princess wasn't actually doing anything when she raised and lowered the sun.

Such beliefs and suggestions had never been heretical; the Princess had never persecuted ponies for their beliefs or disbeliefs, unless they were so opposed to the views of Equestria at large that it could result in war. But to suggest that Princess Celestia was a fraud…it had a certain stigma to it, and if nothing else, it was certainly disrespectful. Plus, the sun had been threatened too many times in the past for it to not be under the Princess' control. The pony who had made these signs at least tried to sidestep that insult, by suggesting that perhaps Princess Celestia actually moved Equus around her sun, as opposed to moving her sun around Equus. But that still implied there had been deception in the past.

Another display in the next room seemed to be about the sun itself; ponies had studied it for a very long time, but had very few answers. The actual brightness of the sun made it difficult to study, and there was a large sign warning against ponies from staring at the sun directly, even astronomers, because plenty of ponies had gone permanently blind that way throughout history. Some thought it was a giant ball of molten magma, while others thought it to be a massive comet that the Princess had snared long ago, and controlled to give everypony light and warmth. Another display suggested a familiar theory, that it was Princess Celestia's own Pyromancy flame, and that she externalised it to warm Equus.

None of this, of course, explained why the sun was now stationary. It didn’t even seem to be considered as a possibility that it wouldn’t move across the sky.

Princess Twilight Sparkle, to my surprise, had donated a display of her own creation. She had studied ancient star charts and noticed one that started small and was described as yellow, then a later star chart corrected the "error" by describing it as orange, while a third chart marked it as large and red, correcting them both. But she had noticed it was even larger now, and seemed closer to blue, before it had apparently faded entirely over the last two decades.

The planetarium ended with a long letter, preserved under glass, and apparently written by the former director of the Baltimare Astrological Society to Princess Celestia, as well as her reply. In it, the pony explained that they had been studying those subjects for their entire life, but the Princess had to know more than they did, and could surely assist them by answering some of their questions. They described several times where the Princess had visited the museum over the centuries, and had delighted in the displays and theories presented to her, often praising the detail and creativity present in the models...but apparently she had always dodged any questions as to their accuracy.

Princess Celestia's reply was surprisingly short, aside from her agreement that she quite enjoyed the models and theories of the museum. But in her own words, "If I told my little ponies how the heavens truly function, then they would not be your discoveries, but my own. To be told the answer would be as to ruin it, and devalue all of your hardest work. But the uncertainty of not knowing the answer motivates you to heights even I had not imagined possible, and seeing that hard work and creativity makes me more proud than you can ever know."

It was kind and warm, just like the Princess herself, but I could absolutely understand the director's frustration. Still, it got me to chuckle quietly, in the empty halls of the abandoned building, and that little bit of mirth warmed me for a moment before I returned to my search. I had lingered in this section for too long already, and I had to keep moving.

The next room was modeled after a cave, or quarry, and the walls were painted to represent the geological layers of stone in the ground below. Samples of each stone were placed around the room, as well as some raw ores under glass. While Maud might have been interested in this room—or thought it to be incredibly basic compared to her own deep knowledge of the world beneath our hooves—it was of little interest to me, and I passed through it with barely a glance around.

I hesitated at the threshold to the next room. It had no windows, nor any sources of artificial lighting. While the electric lights had been sparingly used so far to intentionally keep the planetarium dark, the geology hall had been decently well lit. But in the room ahead, it looked as though all of the light bulbs had burned out a long time ago, with nopony left to replace them. I still had my lightgem, though. I pulled it out from under my armor so it rested on my steel breastplate, and watched the darkness only barely recede. 

This darkness was unnatural, and I wondered if it might have affected the light bulbs themselves in some way. But this was only the edge of the abyssal spread; here, it was weak, and I wouldn’t need to plumb the depths for long. Hopefully, before I started to hear the whispers again.

I moved slowly into the darkened hall of the museum, with my little pool of light, which only managed to extend a few leg-lengths around me, far more obscuring than the omnipresent fog outside. I couldn’t tell what the theme of this room was, without being able to see the displays, but it looked to be a large room. I swept the edges of my vision with quick glances just in case something emerged...which meant that I wasn’t as focused on where I was going, and my ragged breath caught in my throat as a sharpened speartip was suddenly thrust against it, out of the gloom.

“W-wait, wait!” I yelped as I froze, my voice tiny in the darkened room, but there was no response, and no movement from the spear. Was the owner inspecting me? Evaluating me?

After a moment, I swallowed, and leaned away from the spear. It failed to follow me, and I took a full step back, as I continued to watch the deadly tip of that weapon. “H-hello?”

Tentatively, I stepped to the side, and began to follow the wooden shaft of the weapon. I jumped again as the sharp beak of a gryphon lunged at me from the darkness, but when death failed to find me, I dared to breathe again, and moved forward once more. I found the gryphon again a moment later; stiff, unmoving. And as I inspected their fur and beak closer, and their glassy eyes, I realized I’d nearly impaled myself on a wax statue.

No, even that wasn’t accurate; I poked at the side of the blade and felt it flex. Maybe I would have poked myself in the eye, at worst, but this fake weapon on display would never break the skin. At that moment, I was very glad I was alone, so that nopony—or, including Gilda, no-one—was here to see me scare myself half to death over a historical display.

Said display seemed to be about ancient gryphon weapons and armor, and spoke of their ancient raids against Old Ponyland. Because only a single mountain range had been declared the border between it and Gryphonia, such raids were common occurrences, and had been one of the major factors that had led to the great westward exodus. I glanced at the chart that explained the meaning of each marking on the fake leather armor, but I didn’t have the time, and I suspected Gilda could tell me more about them in much greater detail, if I was curious.

I must have been in a section dedicated to history, then; while I couldn’t see any of the other displays, presumably they were also about Old Ponyland, Flutter Valley and the westward exodus, history so ancient that it had partially passed into old mare’s tales and legend. That meant, since I was here to look for an ancient knife, that I had to be on the right track. If only the lights worked, so that I could search the room properly!

Eventually, I moved towards a wall, or at least one of the wall displays. There, I found the legendary sunstone, placed with great reverence—but in the dark gloom of the hall and the pale light of my lightgem, the cloudy glass revealed itself to be nothing but a cheap replica. I kept the wall on my right as I paced the edge of the room, and passed by an exhibit that displayed a life-size bust of Tirek.

I jumped again when I saw him, and had a momentary flash of memory. I’d been flying with other pegasi, in a formation so loose that it barely merited the name, and then he’d been there. There’d been a horrendous feeling of draining, and then we all fell together. But there, the memory ended.

Tirek had hurt me, I remembered that clearly enough. He’d hurt all of us. Clearly I hadn’t been the only pony to remember that; this statue was part of a display about the old legend of Midnight Castle, but it had recently been defaced. Ponies stuck gum across his body, one of his forelegs had been kicked off, and somepony had dumped their drink over his head...but his face had escaped it all, and still leered at me from the dark. I shivered in the pitch-black room, and forced myself forward again.

A display about the Yak war-tribes of the cold north seemed to start a theme, and soon, I found myself in a section dedicated to artifacts from before, during and after the disappearance of the Crystal Empire. A replica of a crystal pony, with his limbs and head connected by thin wires to emulate the unique appearance of the crystal automatons, greeted me warmly. Behind him was the dark features of King Sombra, rendered in alarmingly-realistic wax. More conquerors, and more flashes of terrible memories. They even had one of his horrible blacksteel mind-control helmets that I'd heard of, and it took more willpower than I was comfortable admitting to keep myself from giving it a kick into the darkness.

Beyond them, there was a small snowy display. Under a massive plaster dolmen, three hooded ponies leaned over a mare, her face frozen in terror. One held a knife, and I knew I’d found what I was looking for...almost. The one held in the wax stallion’s glass aura was a fake, meant for display purposes, as stated by the sign that explained the scene. Apparently it had been used by a reclusive northern cult, who had been trying to summon the Crystal Empire back to their time. They’d never succeeded, and eventually had died out by themselves, leaving only their ritual sites and tools. Even the scene on display was a dramatized speculation as to the nature of their rituals, inspired by local tales from the yaks and mountain mares of the north.

The real knife wasn’t far, however. At the far end of the display, under a layer of thick glass, my prize lay on a plain cloth pillow. While they intended for the knife to be seen, they clearly didn’t want anypony to get any ideas about taking it. But I didn’t have any choice; not if I wanted to slay the Banshee, and get out of Baltimare alive.

I drew my sword, took a deep breath, and slammed the pommel of the sword as hard as I could against the pane. A spiderweb of cracks appeared across the surface of the pane, and my sword’s pommel had a new dent, but the glass would break. Another couple of smacks earned me an alarm; an ancient warbling siren gave me a start, before it whimpered and died a second later. The museum’s security system had been degraded over time as well, warning ponies that were no longer here that somepony was trying to steal one of their artifacts.

One final slam broke the glass into jagged shards, and I used the tip of my blade to flick bits of the case into the fake snow of the display, then lever the knife up so I could grab it. And yet...as soon as I held the knife in my hoof, I knew something was wrong.

This knife was too light, and—in a way that was difficult to describe—it felt magically inert in my hoof. From how the brochure and the sign before me described the blade, it should have a dark weight to it. It may have even been the source of the abyss, here in the museum, but this was not that source.

Still, if it was an accurate reproduction, it was a fascinating design. The grip was made of wood wrapped in thin cords of leather, and the blade wasn’t metal, as I thought it might be, but some form of black crystal. The edges of the blade were smooth, unbroken, while even the tip of the fake knife was sharp enough to draw black blood when I experimentally used it to prick the frog of my hoof. The knife’s blade had been sharpened from a single crystal, and yet a hole had been carved all the way through the center, which left a rough, cubical gap.

Even if it wasn’t the real knife, it made for a good reference point for what I was looking for, and I could think of several uses for a fake knife. I wrapped the dagger in some moth-eaten cloth to keep the blade covered, and slipped it into my bottomless bag.

But if this was the fake, then where was the real knife? Even the fake had a reinforced case, one with an alarm; the ponies of the museum must have known that ponies would try to steal the knife, or maybe others had already tried before. It had to be here.

It had to be.

There’d been offices in the lobby, a staff-only area. Maybe they kept the real artifacts in there for study, and only put the fakes on display for exactly this reason. I started to head back that direction, though it took me a disturbingly long time to find my way to the exit; the oppressive darkness of the room had even obscured the light from the doorway, and I’d had to follow the walls again to work my way back around.

I galloped through the geology hall, then the planetarium, and by the time I climbed back over the rusted turnstile, I had to stop and retch. My full stomach made that kind of galloping uncomfortable to the point of nausea, and something felt wrong in my gut. My meal was still too heavy, as if no time at all had passed. Something welled up in the back of my throat, and I stumbled over to a corner to cough up lumps of pale fish meat.

As I wiped my mouth, and tried to cleanse my tongue of the repulsive taste, I found myself staring at the greasy meat piled on the carpet. It was wet, and chewed, but it didn’t seem terribly affected by the brief time it had spent in my stomach. Barely any brownish-black bile had come with it, and it still looked nearly as dry as when I had greedily sucked it down.

Could my stomach no longer digest food? Was that because of my own personal trauma, or did the stomach of an undead no longer produce the needed bile? If that was the case, then I might as well hack up the rest of my bounty; it would never be digested, and would only serve to weigh me down until the next time I was compelled to empty my stomach. But the thought of wasted food, in a world where food was so scarce as to be non-existent...it was frustrating. Not least because it had been fish, delicious fish, even after what I found at the bottom of the pile.

At the very least, my stomach was no longer uncomfortably full. I still didn’t feel healthy enough to do any long-distance galloping, but at least I no longer felt bloated. For the moment, I forced the thin bile back down my throat, and moved to the staircase. I glanced out the broken doors of the lobby for a moment, but the street outside still seemed clear for now.

The top of the stairs was mostly a small landing, with a few public offices for employees. A small hallway ended in a security station, and two locked steel doors. One door was for the security station itself, but the small, reinforced glass window of the other one showed only a hallway that ended in shadow. If I followed that darkness...I felt confident that I would find that knife.

But the door was locked. I could see a rack of labeled keys inside the security station, but aside from a window with a cutout for passing paperwork and identification through, there was no way inside. I spent a few minutes jamming my forehoof through, hoping to find a button or lever that would unlock the door, but no luck.

How had the door been locked to begin with? I could see the key for the security station on that rack, and unless there was another key...had the guard locked themselves out, before they had disappeared? Or was it that whatever had happened to Baltimare taken them while inside the booth? I was sure if I were made of mist, I could get in and out of the security station with ease.

As I sat in the hallway and tried to work out how to get inside, a set of pipes running across the ceiling caught my eye. They were much too small to get into; the faded red paint meant they were part of a fire sprinkler system. I’d heard of systems like this, but they were rare and complex, most commonly found in buildings owned by the crown, hospitals, and private laboratories. Apparently museums were important enough to require them as well, and judging from how it was crudely bolted across the ceiling, the system had been part of the building’s restoration and retrofitting.

If the lights were flickering, and the alarms systems still briefly functional, then the building clearly had power. Degradation had not caused the structure’s infrastructure to fall apart, not yet, so it was possible the fire sprinkler systems still worked. It was a long shot, but maybe, just maybe, I could force the doors to open.

I jammed my hoof back through the security’s station’s window, and summoned my pyromancy. The gentle flame in my hoof didn’t seem to do anything, but the floor inside was carpeted. I focused on my feelings of frustration, with Trixie and our chase after her, and my fear that I might be found, and slain, by the ghosts of Baltimare.

My fireball—if it even really counted as one—was sloppy, and mostly just rolled off my hoof onto the ancient carpet floor. It smouldered for a minute before it finally seemed to catch light, and I pulled my hoof out of the window to watch the security office grow brighter with the paltry flame as the carpet burned.

I had just started to panic that I might have screwed up again, and set the building aflame without any way to extinguish it, when the pipes exploded above me. I was showered in fetid water that stank of mildew and rust, as several pipes sputtered and hissed. The sprinklers themselves seemed to spin lazily, barely sprinkling the water around the hallway, while most of their contents spurted down the walls and soaked the old carpets. There was a fire alarm as well, a bell being struck by a mechanical hammer, but that suddenly stopped with a strange noise as the clockwork failed and the hammer ricocheted out of sight.

There was a loud click from both doors as they unlocked, to my surprise. I’d only needed the security office open, to get the keys, but after a moment I realized that of course it would open both doors. I hadn’t needed to jam my hoof through the window to drop that fireball, anywhere in the building would have worked. Still, I pulled open the security door to check the keys anyway, and grabbed a keyring labeled “storage” as well. Better to take that now, just in case I needed it later.

Water had begun to run down the hallway like a thin stream of watery blood, as the carpets became too saturated, and yet the rusty water kept coming. As I pulled open the door to the storage area, I was hit with yet another splatter of water from a broken pipe within. Was the entire building like this? How many exhibits had my little trick just ruined, throughout the entire museum? Worse, I could hear dozens of other fire alarms ringing throughout the rest of the building—if the Banshee and the rest of the ghosts weren’t already on their way here, they certainly were now.

After I cleared my eyes of the rusty water, I paused in the doorway, and had to check my lightgem. The darkness that obscured the other end was almost certainly unnatural, and I wouldn’t last long if I pushed into it without Dinky’s gift of light. When I did move forward, it was carefully, only for a few steps. Another door, unlocked from the alarm like the first, was only a temporary barrier. Once I opened it and passed through, I found myself in a dimly-lit warehouse.

While the darkness was just as oppressive in here as it had been in the other rooms before, it had been pushed back. Grimy windows high above allowed dull rays of sunlight to play across the room, and kept them from swallowing the shelves upon shelves of crates and historical artifacts. But everywhere the light didn’t touch, the shadows leaked out and spread across, and had enveloped so totally as to be impenetrable without shining a light into them. That far left side of the room looked to be the worst of it; I could almost see the dark fighting the light over there, wisps of black flickering wildly at the edges of the trails of illumination. Across the whole room, hay seemed strewn hap-hazardly, perhaps from packing and unpacking the crates, and strange white dust seemed to have caked a layer atop that.

My hoofsteps kicked up puffs of that dust as I descended a steel staircase down to the ground floor, then moved to where the darkness was deepest. As I pushed in, my lightgem shining like a beacon, even the sunlight from the windows above seemed to go dark, as though I was descending under the surface of that black lake once again. I tried not to think too hard about it; instead, I focused on the shelves, and the open crates, hoping to find some sort of filing system by which I could locate the knife.

A bundle of spears, made of dulled, rusty iron instead of wax this time...tribal masks from Zebrica, made of wood and stone...dusty furniture from Prance...A minotaur puzzle box...A small statue of Princess Celestia, carved from amber—that last one took a moment to identify, for the shadows seemed particularly dark around it, and the edges had begun to soften, as though the darkness was trying to erode and destroy it specifically.

A small wooden box caught my eye soon after, as I started to hear those accursed whispers once more, just at the edge of my hearing. I had to move fast, before the madness of the dark took me again. I yanked the box off the shelf, and my breath caught in my throat as the crystal blade flicked past my face with a scattering of dusty, desiccated hay. The knife rattled across the floor as the darkness writhed, and my hooves shook as I picked it up.

There was no doubt; I didn’t even need to pull out the fake from earlier, to compare the two. This knife was the original. Even holding it in my hoof, I could feel the weight of the dark that suffused the weapon, that seemed to twist the magic around it. I could feel the Aether as it was drawn through the hole in the center of the blade, something that should have been impossible to detect without a magic-sensitive horn. It flowed through that hole as though it were a portal to somewhere else, a fixed point in reality where the darkness converged, but no larger than a pinprick.

I didn’t test the tip on the frog of my hoof. I was afraid of what might happen if I did. I was already on edge from my close call earlier, as though the knife had been trying to slice at me of its own volition. It wanted to draw blood, I could feel it. The blade hungered for it, or something more than that. Ocellus had been correct; this was a cursed weapon, one that could undeniably slay a ghost, or perhaps even a god.

It had no sheath, and time was running short. I kept the knife’s grip in my teeth as I began to gallop all the way back to the entrance. I’d lingered for far too long, here in the museum, and the ghosts had to be nearby, or at least on their way. I might even need to confront them before I returned to the library, and deal with the problem by myself. If I did, then I had to have this knife handy, for it might be my only defense against the spirits.

My hooves sloshed through the fetlock-high water in the warehouse, where it had nowhere to drain to. The shadows seemed to distort around me as I moved their source, but they receded as soon as I reached the pale sunlight that shone through the windows once more. The knife’s crystal blade glittered in the sunlight, as the dark magic within reacted in bizarre ways.

I took the steel staircase two steps at a time, then pushed through both doors to reach the lobby, where water ran down the grand staircase in a dozen tiny waterfalls. I nearly slipped on the wet stairs, but I managed to grab at the railing and avoid that, which prompted me to descend just a bit slower. Then it was only a quick gallop to the doors, where I leapt over the broken glass and into the pale, blinding light of the red sunset.

As I blinked to adapt my eyes, I suddenly froze, for I was not alone.

Ghosts. A few dozen of them, in a small crowd outside of the museum. Spectral pegasi fluttered overhead, their wings part of the mist. Snarls were common across their muzzles, and several had already summoned their translucent knives to their hooves, as if waiting for the order to swarm me.

An order from the ghost in the center, the tallest, and undeniably the most powerful of them all. She seemed even more real than they, but her fur was still ethereal, and drifted like her mane in winds unseen. Her horn was curved, just slightly, and the spiral ended in a wickedly sharp tip. The feathers of her wings fluttered, just a little bit, as she kept them just slightly spread—an order to hold.

But despite her new appearance, despite what seemed to be a ghostly ascension to goddess-hood, I still recognized the teenaged filly I’d seen in Apple Bloom’s memory. She may have been older, and much more powerful now from her experiences in fallen Cloudsdale and here in Baltimare, but I recognized this “Banshee,” now that I had seen her for myself.

Sweetie Belle, the Banshee, had done well for herself. And now, I had earned her ire.
> 36 - The Yearning Knife
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The only reason I wasn’t already dead seemed to be curiosity.

Sweetie Belle, the Banshee, must have realized that Gilda was a distraction. I saw her eyes focus on the dagger clenched between my teeth, but she didn’t seem to grasp what it was. She couldn’t feel the dark radiate off the blade like I could. It was like a twisted sort of cold that radiated through my jaw and into my very bones. Were I not in direct sunlight, fog-stricken though it might have been, it was entirely possible that the dark within would have coalesced into mist, and slithered from the tip of the cursed knife.

Who was she, I wondered? She was so much larger than when I had seen her last. She looked so much like Rarity, and, for a moment, I wondered if perhaps they were related. That she might have been Rarity’s daughter was my first thought; she looked extremely similar to the mare made of bone dust. But Rarity had spoken longingly of a sister...I had no way to know their relative ages, before or after the sun had stopped, and ponies had become ageless.

No matter their true relation, Rarity would be proud of her, I felt. It was fitting that her highest acolyte would ascend, just as Rarity herself had, when she became the Gravelord.

Sweetie Belle still had that air about her—she stood like the high priestess of a cult, with her own spectral acolytes around her, snarling and snapping and baying like dogs. Only her spread wings kept them back, kept them from tearing into me with teeth and blade and fog. And even that was barely enough; one ghostly mare in particular seemed particularly mad, with her own knife clenched in her teeth, just like my own.

If she attacked—if they all attacked—what options did I have? Could I outrun them all? Could I fight? I had no idea whether this knife would even actually work, or if all it did was make my fur stand on edge. Would it wound them, make them bleed ghostly blood? Would it even affect them, or would it only rend the flesh of the living?

This was a stupid plan. I knew now why Ocellus hadn’t gone to get this knife for herself now—it would have been an unacceptable risk for her alone, to expose herself so thoroughly. She would have been caught out in the light like a cockroach, and I doubted that either of us could have outrun the ghosts. But I was expendable; so she sent me to at least try.

I didn’t want to die here.

That twitchy mare leapt at me, and I had no time to react. She may have been dead, or mist, but she still moved like a living equine. I jerked to the side to dodge the tip of her own ghastly knife, and the tip of my own blade met her neck.

There was no impact, and barely any resistance as the blade of the dark knife slid through her ghostly form. It was like cutting through fog, or slush, more than striking a living thing. But where the blade stabbed into the ghost, it left an ugly black smear, and the attacking spirit stumbled right through me as she clutched at her throat. I turned, as I shivered from the familiar, chilling sensation.

She was unimaginably more wounded from our brief contact. The black smear from the wound that I’d inflicted had not sealed or healed in any way; in fact, it looked as though it was spreading wider, along her neck, threatening to rip her head from her body. She scraped at her face with her hooves, mouth agape in horror and confusion, as she tried to keep her ghostly form together, in one piece, but the wound seemed to have sundered her very soul. Her own knife fell from her lips, and dissolved into mist before it touched the street.

The dark smear spread, writhing, as it crawled across her ethereal fur. Her limbs seemed to stiffen and tremble, all at the same time, and her frozen body spasmed and shuddered and vibrated faster than any physical pony could. Her body became a blur, all except for her face. That was horrifically still, as the rest of her body was overtaken by yawning dark, save for her eyes.

Her eyes turned towards me, and the other ghosts behind me. The Banshee, at the head of their formation. As the crawling, spider-leg tendrils of dark ripped at her ghostly fur and crawled up her dissolving head towards those eyes, they locked back onto me, and her mouth opened.

A bone-chilling scream shook the air and mist and stones all around me, as the ghost of the mare was ripped from her liminal state, and utterly annihilated. Anguish, fear, and pain all washed over me in a wave as the dark took her, and she was suddenly torn away as if pulled down a drain. The body of the spirit was reduced to black blood, which spiraled into a central point, a single condensed stream of dark. That stream leapt towards me, and I flinched away, but it found the blade of the ancient knife I held in my teeth regardless.

I wanted to drop it, as the consumed spirit of the mare was stretched impossibly thin, and pulled screaming into the circular hole in the center of the wide blade. Not a hoof-length from my eyes, I saw the strand of dark, thinner than the width of a lock of hair, get pulled into the absolute nothing the blade had been built to contain.

I’d nearly cut myself on this dagger when I pulled it from the shelf. If this cursed blade had split my own skin, would I have suffered the same fate? And what fate exactly had I just condemned that ghostly mare to?

I wanted to stumble away, as the last trickles of dark filtered into the cursed knife. Instead, I turned, and realized my hooves were shaking as I looked over the crowd of ghosts. I’d just murdered one of their number, in one of the most uniquely horrific ways I could have ever imagined. They, who perhaps had not known defeat since they surrendered their physical form. They would surely rally in moments, and it wouldn’t matter how many I sliced and stabbed with this accursed knife, I would fall eventually.

But for the moment, the Banshee—Sweetie Belle—looked startled. Death for her, for her kind, was suddenly a reality once more. And though the knowledge that the blade existed made me want to puke, and the fact that I held it in my teeth—and had just sundered a spirit from reality using it—made me want to turn the dagger on my own throat...it gave me the upper hoof, for only a moment.

It wasn’t a moment I could afford to waste. I’d fight my way out like a cornered animal, if I had to do that to escape Baltimare.

“Back!” I snarled through my clenched teeth, through the dagger held between them. I brandished the cursed blade at them, feinted a lunge, and the ghosts scattered in terror. Only the Banshee remained, and even she stepped back, startled.

Maybe I could have used that moment; maybe I could have leapt at her then, in that moment, and slain the Banshee where she stood. But I had my opening, and so instead I turned to my right, and bolted down the street. I ran, with the knife in my teeth and a city of fog between me and the others. Soon, a legion of ghosts would be on my heels, and I needed to put as much distance between us as I could before they caught up.


*	*	*


The singing started again, only moments after I broke into a gallop, but the ghosts that gave chase didn’t actually catch up to me until I was almost back to the library. Until then, it was only the singing, and this song was not slow and mournful as it had been before. This time, the song was angry, aggressive, and I knew I was being hunted.

It was two pegasi that reached me first, and I only knew they were coming because of an errant glance backwards. Even then, at a dead gallop through the fog, I only just barely saw them. The fact that I was able to dodge at all was sheer luck.

One of them still caught my leg, and I stumbled as they used their ethereal grip to tackle me, while the other swept past, too fast to halt their own momentum. Meanwhile, I couldn’t afford to stop; I stabbed wildly with the cursed knife until the grip on my hindleg went slack, and I heard that ear-shattering scream as another of the ghosts was ripped asunder by the dark.

The other stayed back after that point, afraid to close in for the kill by himself. But one ghost I could handle, so long as I kept an eye on him. I resumed my gallop, but between a bruised leg from the fall and the occasional glance back, I was slow enough that the rest of the ghosts caught up soon. By the time I was a block from the library, I had three earth ponies galloping behind me, two pegasi above, and a unicorn that kept teleporting ahead of me. He was particularly hard to dodge, because he seemed to teleport by dissolving into fog, which then swirled past me to coalesce on street corners.

I could outpace the others, but his knife slashed at my armor and stabbed through the leather joints as if they were barely there. He had to die, or else he’d cut me down for the others to tackle. The next time he began to coalesce in front of me, I leapt right for him, and the knife was already in his chest when it formed.

The unicorn stallion was split in half by the mere presence of the knife, and both halves exploded into swirling dark as he howled. Trails of needle-thin abyss wove through the air around me as I kept galloping—I hadn't even slowed down for the strike.

And then I was flying. I thought I was dead for a moment, or about to die, but the sensation of claws around the armor of my barrel gave me pause. As we shakily rose over the rooftops, towards the tall, safe haven of the Baltimare Library, I looked up at GIlda, who asked, “What in actual ruttin’ Tartarus was that noise, Hollow? It sounded like the sky screaming—I’ve never heard anything as horrific as that in my life!”

“L-later! Later!” I yelped around the knife in my teeth, as the two pegasi easily caught up to Gilda in the air. One clamped her teeth around Gilda’s leonine tail, and the other started stabbing wildly at Gilda’s back—he was trying to ground her, trying to stab at the base of her wings!

Gilda spun and dove, which flicked the pegasus off her tail, but now I was face-to-face with the pegasus stallion that had been at her back. I couldn’t grab at my knife while we were moving—I was too afraid that if I unclenched my teeth, I’d drop it in the street, and then we’d never get it back. Instead, I slapped my hooves together, and grabbed for my fire, then forced it to flare as brightly as I could.

A wave of heat rolled over me, as my hooves ignited, with the flames of combustion burning brightly in both. It wasn’t more than a flash of fire, but it made the ghost jump, and blinded us both, and it bought us just a few more seconds.

“Hah, nice, Holly! You scorched that dweeb’s eyebrows real good!” Gilda crowed happily as we swooped low, but I’d have to take her word for it; I was seeing spots still. A moment later, Gilda leveled out, and I was falling—

My back slammed into the rooftop of the library, and sparks exploded all around me as my metal armor left a nasty dent in the corrugated copper. I bounced, and it was only after I came down  from that teeth-rattling bounce that all of my momentum had bled off, and I was left lying on the sloped roof, with black blood drooling from my loose jaw.

Gilda landed nearby, slightly more gently, but her focus was on the ghosts that swarmed around the building, trying to bash their way in through the wards once more. In the short time between dropping me and now, she’d already drawn her bow, and though she couldn’t actually use it to harm the ghosts, drawing her aim on them seemed to bring her a small comfort.

I’d lost the knife on impact. I knew I needed to get up and find it, more importantly than anything else, but the broken pain sending sharp stabs of agony up my leg to my shoulder told me that, no, I should probably not get up quite yet. It felt broken, at least; it was still connected, because I could feel too many different stabbing pains down to my hoof, but I think i would have preferred if I had lost it in this case. My jaw, too; it hung loosely, and when I shifted, it didn’t even try to close. I tried not to think about that. 

At that moment, I kind of missed my old quilted armor. My metal armor felt like it had only acted as the hammer to the anvil that was the roof, and I was the soft steel in between the two. My belly roiled, but I didn’t even have the energy to hack up another lump of pale fish meat, no matter how my guts had been compressed. In fact, I strongly suspected they were still being compressed—I’d left a pair of dents in the roof, and it would be very strange indeed if my armor was not just as dented from the blows.

After a few moments, Gilda calmed enough to look back down at me, and a flicker of regret passed over her face. “Damn. Sorry, you came down heavy for a pegasus. Can you move?”

“Eeeeengh…” There had been words in that, or at least, there was supposed to be. I took a wet, ragged breath, and tried again. “B-ba...aa...ag…”

To her credit, Gilda didn’t ask any questions. She looped her bow back over her shoulder, then moved to my side. Her claws unhooked the bag from my belt, then she paused as she looked inside. “Uh, woah, okay. That’s a trip…” A moment later, she’d set it down in front of my face, and when I struggled to shift myself, she grabbed my unbroken foreleg for me. Fresh pain raked across my body as my broken bones ground against each other under most of my body weight, but the cool interior of the bag felt nice as Gilda jammed my hoof inside for me.

Healing. Warmth. Fire. My thoughts were scattered and disorganized. Everything hurt. But I managed to recall that little green glass bottle, and I felt a smooth, dusty surface press against my hoof. I grasped it tightly, and groaned, which Gilda took as indication that my hoof should be withdrawn.

The glass squeaked against the metal roof as I dragged the bottle out of the bag, and Gilda actually jumped in surprise when the warmth of the bottle washed over us both. Her eyes locked onto my bottle of healing instantly, and she eyed it warily as my hoof went limp. Thank the wind I'd landed on a less-sloped section of the roof, so it didn't roll far.

"What is this? Some kind of zebra potion? How did you—" Gilda ruffled her feathers. "—Agh, time for that later. Hopefully this fixes your dumb undead rump." She uncorked the bottle and upended the contents across my body. Mostly on my face, but she sloshed a decent amount of the liquid sunlight within across my back and leg as well.

There was a horrendous shifting feeling of suction from my jaw, and I felt my teeth move under my tongue. Then it suddenly snapped back into place, and left only a dull ache as the warmth spread through my body. I took a sharp breath as my broken bones boiled under my flesh. I wasn't sure, but felt as though they were melting, then reforming as they should have been, like a broken sword melted back into steel and recast whole once more.

I let out another sharp intake of breath, and needles lanced through my barrel. My armor was too tight, and my body didn't fit right inside it now that I was being un-crushed. I could barely breathe, and I had a horrible pang of deja vu as I groaned at Gilda, "St-top...save…"

"Yeah, no, I'm not leaving you up here on the roof to hollow out. Noble, but that sentiment gets you killed."

"Not…" I croaked, as Gilda sloshed more liquid sunlight across me. "W-waste...save...p-potion..."

That made her pause for a moment, and she considered the remaining contents inside the bottle. "Can you walk?"

I tried to gather my boiling leg underneath myself, to roll myself over so that I could stand. There was a wet snap, and it collapsed under me. My face met the verdigris-stained roof with another clang, and Gilda snorted through her beak. "That's what I thought. Hold still, let...whatever this stuff is...do what it needs to."

Gilda grabbed the edge of my breastplate, and used that to flip my over onto my back, which sent a fresh wave of hot agony rolling through me, as my broken hoof flopped limply against the metal. Then she dumped the rest of the liquid sunlight over me, until there was nothing left but drops inside the bottle. She nearly tossed it away, since to her, it was just a mundane glass bottle, but I yelped and struggled, which made her hesitate long enough that I could explain. “Don’t! The b-bottle...it’s imp-important.”

Gilda glanced at it in her claw, then shrugged, and carefully set it down beside my limp body. “Alright. How do you feel?”

White-hot agony continued to stab through my broken foreleg as the fire mended it for a second time. My chest was still painfully compressed, and my jaw felt uncomfortably loose. My collarbone seemed to be getting reforged as well, and I tried not to move around too much in case that caused it to heal wrong. “Hurt...hurt all..all over.”

Gilda winced, and looked away, at the ghostly pegasi that, even now, were circling the wards of the library in search of a gap. “I’m sorry I...that the landing was so rough. I figured you’d spread your wings, or land lightly, or...something. You’re wearing really heavy armor for a pegasus.”

“S’okay…” I groaned, as my collarbone began to cool. That was quick; maybe it’d been nothing more than cracks. “Knife...W-where…?”

Gilda glanced around for a moment, then flapped her wings to hop across the roof. A moment later, she returned, holding the crystal dagger at leg-length, like it was going to try and bite her. “Okay, wow, this thing is actually cursed as all Tartarus. Take it, I don’t wanna be touching it.”

“Wr-wrap it, f-first...blade can’t...can’t touch the f-flesh.” I didn’t know that for sure. It was possible the blade itself was harmless, aside from the usual danger inherent to being a knife. But after seeing what it had done to those ghosts, I didn’t want to run the risk.

Gilda’s face tightened around her break. “Great. And it didn’t come with a sheathe, huh? Alright, I can improv something. Stay there.” While I healed, Gilda drew her own knife from her belt, and compared it to the cursed knife. After a moment, she’d decided it would fit, albeit loosely, and she slid her own blood-stained knife into a loop of leather along her hindleg. It didn’t look comfortable, but it kept it handy without having to worry about stabbing herself. She’d end up shaving the fur off her leg if she moved around too much, though.

The cursed knife went into the now-empty sheathe, and she used a spare loop of twine from her pack to tie it into place, so it didn’t rattle around loosely, or even fall out. We wouldn’t be able to draw it without untying the grip, but that was fine. I could tell that we needed to be very careful about when we used that knife, and keeping it safe until then seemed more important for our own protection. She also picked up my bottomless bag, and the empty bottle of sunlight, which she slid back inside. Though she spent a moment after that staring inside the bag, like she was trying to figure out where it had gone.

By the time she was finished with all that, the burning pain in my leg had dulled to an uncomfortable pins-and-needles feeling, and I struggled to stand once again. Gilda grabbed me around the barrel and helped haul me to my hooves, but as soon as I was standing, she started to tug at the straps that held my armor around my barrel. After a minute of finagling, I sucked in a lungful of air, with the pressure crushing my barrel suddenly relieved.

Gilda had opted to just remove the belly plate entirely, and held up what should have been a concave plate in front of her. “Okay, so this thing is screwed. Might make a decent shield, but bending it back into armor is a little beyond us out here right now.”

I took a deep breath, and relished the feeling of the bare leather armor underneath. After a moment, I smiled at her. “Th-thank you though. For gr-grabbing me, you s-saved—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gilda waved off my gratitude. “Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t. I don’t...eugh, it makes me feel weird when you ponies do that. I heard the howl, and figured it was worth taking a look. That’s all.”

She glanced around the roof to make sure we hadn’t left anything behind. My sword was still sheathed at my side; at least that hadn’t been damaged in the fall. After a moment, she shrugged. “Come on, Holly. Let’s get downstairs.”
> 37 - Together, yet Divided
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wasn’t halfway down the stairs before Raindrops and Rivet were upon me. “Holly!” Raindrops called, as she glared up at Gilda and anything else that might have followed us inside. “Are you okay? We heard that howling outside, and that singing ever since. Maud said you went out by yourself?”

I nodded. “O-Ocellus had a lead. I’ve g-got something we can use against the g-ghosts.” Raindrops looked skeptical, but she followed behind as I moved towards the rest of the group, in the middle of the wrecked library.

“I’m fine too,” Gilda groused from behind, as she followed me down the stairs.

Rivet chuckled, and took the metal plate that Gilda passed to him. “What’s this?”

“Holly’s breastplate. She had kind of a rough landing, this got messed up from the fall. Think you can beat it back into shape?”

Rivet blinked at that, then looked back at me as I walked away. “Hah! You’re tougher than you look, filly. Better the armor than you. I’m no smith, but maybe I can bend it a little.”

Gilda smirked at me as we all rejoined the group; apparently she wasn’t going to mention the sunlight flask if I didn’t. I didn’t really see any reason to do so, since it was empty now, and would take a while to refill.

Posey seemed to have joined Maud in teaching Ocellus Equush again, but all three of them stood up as I approached. Roma had been checking over the dead changelings, and gave me a friendly nod, while Raindrops paused before rejoining the group. She looked at Ocellus—who had assumed her disguise as Twilight Sparkle once again—with a surprising amount of fear. RIvet stopped at the edge of the group to consider the ruined breastplate, and Raindrops hovered around him, instead of coming any closer to the changelings, living or dead.

“Hey, Raindrops, catch.” Gilda flicked the sheathed knife to her, and Raindrops caught it out of the air, before she looked at it in confusion.

“Thanks. I thought Holly went out to get it?”

“Like I said, bad landing, I carried it down. She also stirred up the ghosts in the process, but that’s not a bad thing, considering.” When I looked at her in confusion at how riling up the phantoms outside could ever be a good thing, Gilda chuckled, then explained. ”Means they left the library unguarded, so this group got back without even seeing one. Couldn’t get away from the damn singing, though.”

Raindrops turned it over, still confused. “Why is the sheath...tied shut?”

“You can’t feel how rutting cursed that thing is?” Gilda scoffed. “Holly said not to let the blade touch your flesh, and that sounds like a good rule to me.”

“I mean, yeah, I can feel there’s something wrong with it, but we’re gonna need to untie it when we need to use it—”

“Keep closed,” Ocellus chittered quietly from across the room. “Blade...like neck-lace. Hungers, for heart-soul.”

“Great, so like everything else in this damn city,” Roma mused from beside the corpses. “Changelings, cursed artifacts, and now evil knives. Why did everything that eats souls end up here, in this city?”

“Well, it’s a good thing there’s so many wandering souls outside to feed all these things, huh?” Gilda said, with a quiet cackle.

Raindrops shook her head. "It's a good proof of concept, but it's still only one knife. You girls did good getting it and bringing it back, but what exactly does that do against an army?" Her gaze drifted to the door, and to the rest of the college beyond. "Dammit, Star Bright…you were our group's only unicorn, you could have told us something at least…"

Gilda glanced at the dead changelings, in which Roma seemed to be quickly losing interest. "Where'd the old Hollow coot go, anyways? He's not with the dead any more."

"He woke up just before we got here. Maud and Ocellus were...containing him...when the rest of us arrived, but you'd already flown away by then. We just finished barricading him into a bathroom a few minutes ago." Raindrops' voice was heavy with regret. "Roma, the changelings?"

Roma hopped over the last dead insect-pony, and joined our group properly a few steps later. "Not Hollow, as near as I can tell. There was fire, but...not any more, like it's been extinguished. Whatever ponies have that keeps at least an ember, Changelings don't. All that's left is empty husks." Her eyes caught Ocellus, and the disguised shapeshifter looked away, her muzzle scrunched up as though she were in pain. Roma winced at the sight, but she didn't apologize.

Maud nudged the purple faux-pony's side, and they sat down together, though Ocellus kept glancing back at the bodies.

“Holly.” I turned back to look at her, and she held the sheathed knife up. “You just got back from what seems to be our closest encounter so far with those ghosts outside. I didn’t believe Gilda when she told us about them, and I didn’t get a good look myself on the way here; what’s your take on them? What are they, and is there any other way we can fight them?”

What were they? That was a difficult question to answer, but I tried my best to explain what I had seen, and how they had acted. The ghosts were separate entities from the Banshee; they had individuality, and if the one I’d narrowly escaped by hiding as a ponnequin was any indication, they seemed to remember at least some of their life before they became ethereal. But the Banshee undeniably controlled them, and commanded them through her song in some way. Only the twitchy pony who had attacked first outside the museum had disobeyed the Banshee, and she had suffered greatly because of it.

As for the ghosts themselves...as far as I could tell, they seemed to be made of mist. I had heard of ghosts, and had vague recollections of old ghost stories, but the details were lost. In those, I’d always gotten the sense that they were an illusion, or could pass through walls and floors. But these ghosts seemed limited, and could only flow like the mist they were made out of with a great deal of effort. Otherwise, they moved like normal ponies, and needed their hooves to pound the ground and wings to beat the sky, albeit all silently. Perhaps the Banshee herself followed different rules than her followers, but I hadn’t seen any proof of that yet.

I kept my suspicions as to the Banshee’s true identity a secret; I didn’t think any of the ponies here, save perhaps Maud, would recognize the name “Sweetie Belle,” even in relation to Rarity. To tell them would only invite confusion, or grief, and right now...right now, we needed to be strong, and to be prepared to fight our way out of here, whatever that took.

Ocellus was able to fill in some gaps I missed, and the practice with Maud already seemed to have helped her. She stuttered much less now, and the words came easier, more confidently. Her speech was still heavily accented, and names were still given in Changeling tongue, but she was much easier to understand now, at least.

She could tell the ghosts were extremely magical in nature, even more so than ponies or changelings were, almost as if they were beings of pure magic. Because of that, it seemed that magic could stun or distress the ghosts for brief periods of time, but anti-magic weaponry was incredibly effective. That was what had given her the idea of the knife—her next guess would have been attempting to locate cold iron in some form. But now that we had the knife, that wasn’t necessary.

“About that,” Raindrops said, as she passed the knife back to Gilda. “I still need to see this knife unsheathed, just so we know what we have. Holly, did you check to see if it works?”

I shuddered, and the memory of the ghosts being shredded into wisps and consumed by the blade flashed through my vision, as I heard their final screams in my ears. “It w-works. It’s...it’s h-horrible. But it works. V-very well.”

Gilda eyed me sympathetically, as she undid the knot, and carefully exposed the blade. “I didn’t see it get used, but that howling we heard? Pretty sure that was the ghosts that this thing touched. And the other ghosts behind her, that she was running from? They looked rutting mad. Like they were gonna rip Holly into pieces too small to rip apart any more, and then maybe keep ripping anyways.”

Everypony unconsciously stepped back from GIlda as the knife was unsheathed. We could all feel the cold dark radiate off from it, as though it was sucking in any warmth the library had. Wisps of fog oozed from the crystal, and it left vapor trails in the air as Gilda held it closer for Raindrops to examine.

Now that she was seeing it up close, Raindrops seemed to grasp just how wrong the artifact was. The fur on the back of her neck stood up, and her wings shifted nervously under her armor as she forced herself to lean in close. Her ears twitched erratically, listening for whispers that nopony else could hear. She could only handle it for a moment or two before she stepped back, and shook her head. “That’s-that’s all I needed to know. Sheathe it again, please. I’m sorry I asked.”

We were all much happier when Gilda did so, and even then, none of us took our eyes off the knife until she had securely re-tied the knot to hold it closed. As if it would suddenly escape Gilda’s grasp and lunge for one of our throats if we took our eyes off of it, even for a second.

“So this cursed little toy will definitely kill the ghosts, right? And we’re pretty sure it’ll make quick work of the Banshee, if we can get the blade across her throat.” Gilda looked around the group. “What’s the plan to make that happen, exactly?”

All of us were silent for a few moments, as we looked around the room, or down at the floor. Raindrops eventually sighed. “Dammit, Star Bright. If he hadn’t...augh. We’d have a lot more options if he weren’t Hollow now.”

“Can still use sorcery,” mumbled Ocellus. “Little b-bit. Lift, throw. W-wards, and light. M-magic bolts...weak, but...w-will stun.”

“What about shapeshifting?” Rivet asked. “Can you sneak past them, somehow?”

“Any other creature…b-but not Banshee.” Ocellus shook her head. “M-mimic material. Physical. M-meat...bone...chitin...stone. All, can do. M-mist...cannot.”

“They’ll attack anything physical anyways.” Maud stated. “Ocellus told me the ghosts attacked ponies too. She thinks the ghosts are convinced they were disguised changelings, and still are.”

“So it’s a psychotic legion of paranoid ghosts.” Gilda huffed through her beak. “That’s a little harder for ponies to solve with rainbow magic, huh?”

“I wish the Elements of Harmony were here now. Maybe they could solve this.” Posey whined quietly.

“Yeah, well, I rutting don’t, and they’re not, so we gotta work the problem ourselves,” GIlda snarled, with a clack of her beak. “We’ve done distractions; they might be wise to that now, they might not. If they’re smart, they’ll be hesitant to chase after me again, wait for the rest of you to make a move first. Or just split up, like before, and leave the rest here to watch the building.”

“We definitely can’t sneak out now,” Raindrops nodded. “Not with pegasi flyers circling the building. You two have already broken through their blockades twice, so they’re extra vigilant that it won’t happen again.”

“Maybe we bank on that, do the dumb thing? Rush the Banshee with the knife, hope the element of surprise lasts long enough to strike?” Gilda glanced at the windows around the room, and the skylight above.

Raindrops shook her head. “That might work, but it’s all our eggs in one basket. If it doesn’t, then we’re down a pony, and we’ve lost the knife.”

“This was a private university, or something, right?” Rivet asked, looking at the door to the rest of the building. “They have a chemistry lab? I might be able to whip up something to give us a smokescreen, or blow out a wall to confuse them.”

“I already checked.” Maud bluntly stated. “It’s not that kind of university. They held lectures here, and exhibitions of art.”

Gilda glanced around, claws tapping at her beak. “Actually, the idea’s got merit, just not an explosion...a fire would be weird enough that it would get their attention, confuse them…”

“Are you insane? We’re in a library, and I’m not burning books.” Raindrops said, as she glared at Gilda.

If the hen noticed, she didn’t acknowledge it. “I’m not saying a big fire, and this place is full of fancy wooden furniture—I’m sure we can break enough tables and chairs to make firewood. We just need a nice thick smokescreen. There’s another building close by, I bet you could jump from one window of this building into that one.”

Raindrops looked up at that. “I’d need to see this other building, and the windows in question...but that would get a pony or two past the blockade at best. What then?”

“With all eyes on the fire and the library, they could do...what, exactly?” RIvet mused. “What does that get us?”

I had an idea. A really stupid idea. But it was an idea. “Th-there was an auto-mobile...we p-passed by it on the w-way here.” I looked at Gilda and Maud. “St-Star Bright said it hovered on air, r-right?”

Gilda shrugged, but Maud raised her eyebrow. “He speculated that it worked by forcing air away from the underside and sides of the hover-mobile.”

I nodded, and stood up. “If...if they are m-made of mist...do you th-think I could b-blow them away with that?”

Ocellus blinked, then looked contemplative. “Banshee...hates w-wind. Hides during the heaviest of storms...has tr-trouble moving during.”

“It might not kill them, but if it stuns them long enough that we can get in and get a stab in on the Banshee…” Raindrops mumbled to herself.

Gilda shook her head. “Rut me, you’re serious. That is a pony plan if I’ve ever heard one, stars and moon…”

Rivet glanced at me. “Do you know how to drive an auto-mobile? Or even start it?” I shook my head, but that didn’t dissuade him. “I bet between the two of us, we could work out the controls. I’ve used other heavy machinery, it can’t be too different. You find prismapetrol to gas it up and get it flowing through the engine, and I can drive—or fly—the thing.”

“Wait, why do you need Holly for that?” Posey asked.

Rivet chuckled, in response. “Prisma engines are pegasus-made; pretty often, if they haven’t been run in a while, they need kind of a kickstart. And the fuel’s less volatile when they pour it; no idea why, seems like the stuff just prefers pegasi.”

“Oky, but why Holly specifically?” Raindrops asked, hesitantly. “Any pegasus—or Gryphon—could do that.”

“Are you volunteering?” Rivet asked bluntly. For a moment, Raindrops looked like she might, but Rivet cut her off anyways. “Seriously, don’t. This is kind of a silly idea, and if it gets us killed, then it’s your job to stay safe and come up with a better one. Gilda should stay here too; she’s got opposable thumbs, she can get that knife into the Banshee’s throat if it does work.”

“Yay me,” GIlda chuckled, though she looked perfectly happy to sit out on this plan until she was needed.

“So,” Raindrops said, as she looked around the room at everyone. “Just to be clear; the plan is for Rivet and Holly to sneak out, get that one single auto-mobile running, and then hope that distracts, or stuns, or dissipates the ghosts long enough for Gilda to stab the Banshee?”

Rivet chuckled. “Anypony got a better plan?”

There was an awkward silence for a few moments, as all of us failed to offer suggestions. Eventually, Raindrops clapped her hoof to her face. “Okay. Great. At least it’s something, I guess...what about after that?”

“W-what do you mean?” Posey asked.

Raindrops glared at Ocellus suspiciously. “After we deal with the Banshee. We’re heading into a Changeling Hive to rescue Trixie, right? Where is that? What’s our plan once we get in there? How many Changelings are we expecting to have to fight our way through?”

Ocellus was suddenly hesitant to answer. “Hive entrance...not say specific, but near factories. Sisters killed...f-few. Wish for zero. B-but sisters defend hive with lives, keep safe. Will not b-be able to bring all p-ponies in. Some...stay put, distract. Sisters w-watch, do not attack. This...I hope.”

“So, you want us to stay put somewhere, while you take some of our group off into parts unknown.” Raindrops repeated, just to clarify.

“Not...some. One. Too many...too noisy. Two b-beings much more quiet.”

Roma scoffed at that as well. “Bug, you have to know how shady that sounds. How do we know you won’t just pick us off, one by one? Don’t you share a hivemind?”

Ocellus shook her head vigorously. “No! No Hive...mind. Changeling brain...doesn’t work. Too m-much. Too in...divided?”

“Individual.” Maud corrected.

“Yes, too that. Hive-mind...simple, l-like ant, bee. Changelings share em-emotion—through scent, through magic.” Once again, Ocellus glanced at the dead changelings lying on the floor, and the blood soaking into the carpet. If she could smell the blood so well, I realized...no wonder it seemed like she was so nervous.

She shivered again, and continued. “Will distract...scent-mark path, for dangerous hazards. Direct towards ponies, as...curious intrusion. Changelings should scout—not attack. We two sneak past—unseen.”

Raindrops nodded slowly, but she shifted her wings under her armor nervously. “And once you get into the hive...I wanted the rest of you here as well, before I asked this question. Ocellus, You told Maud, Holly, and Gilda that you took Trixie to your hive, right?"

At Ocellus' nod, Raindrops continued. "And she's safe there, how? How do we know the other changelings won't suck her dry, or haven't already?"

Ocellus shook her head, violently. "No! Still live...know it true. Changelings p-parasites! Need living host. Kill host—kill hive. Ti'see live."

Raindrops nodded. "Okay, but I know Trixie. If she hasn't already tried to fight her way out, then she will, and soon. What if she makes herself too much of a problem? Would they kill her, to keep the hive safe?"

“Cannot fight. Changeling venom...deb-debil…” Ocellus stumbled over the word. Eventually, she just repeated herself. “V-venom. Cannot fight. Sleeping, in p-pod. Dreams of...b-better times. Before...sun became sick, maybe.”

“To generate love for the Hive, right?”

“Close enough to truth,” Ocellus admitted. “Slow bleed. Soul r-repairs self. Still does, but...must be slow. M-much more slow.  Something...in soul, sick. Like sun. Fights f-for control, consumes weakness. Always w-wins. But...pod slows soul-death. Take just enough to s-survive. Have to s-survive…”

Raindrops sighed, and forced herself to look away. “Okay. Ocellus. I need you to tell me the truth: how many other ponies are down there, in pods, besides Trixie?”

Ocellus stiffened, for a moment, against Maud’s side. Then suddenly she stood, and Posey jumped back as the changeling snarled suddenly, “Will not take! Will not help you st-starve hive!”

“Both of you. Calm down—” Maud stated as she stood as well, and stepped in front of Ocellus.

“Pony know. P-pony always knew. Then pony know answer. Too m-many.” Ocellus interrupted her, but the face of Twilight started to slip, melting like softening wax. Maud stepped away, startled, while Raindrops subtly shifted in her armor, so that she could draw her sword if needed. “Hive starving now. Hive dies without pods.”

“The ponies in those pods are dying slow deaths as you suck them dry,” Raindrops spoke calmly, but she couldn’t keep her gaze focused on Ocellus. “I know how it feels to be in those pods, Ocellus. Changelings kept attacking Ponyville for a while; I’ve been captured three, four times? Enough to know how this all works, and how your damned Queen likes to treat her hostages. Those ponies need to be rescued. All of them, not just Trixie.”

“Mistake. Mistake to trust…” Ocellus mumbled, apparently to herself. Her eyes darted around the room, at the ponies and Gryphon all looking at her.

Raindrops hissed through her teeth. “Ocellus, I’ve already lost two ponies. I can’t just leave a bunch of ponies in danger like that. I know you don’t like it, but—”

“Don’t like?” The disguised changeling hissed. We could see her fangs, between her melting lips. “Ask to kill Hive. B-betray sisters all!”

Of all ponies, it was Posey to speak next. “Raindrops! Stop and think about this.”

“What? I am thinking about it, we can’t—”

“No, you’re not.” Posey was standing now, and stamped her hoof against the marble floor with a loud clack. “These ponies, they’ve been captured for a very, very long time. Some of them since before the sun stopped. That means they’re like me, like Holly, like Merry May was.”

Merry May’s name brought Raindrops to a halt. “What?”

“They’re civilians. They don’t know how to fight; they don’t know this world, now.” Posey clenched her eyes and teeth, and shivered. “Raindrops, if you pull them out of there and try to march them all back to Ponyville, how many do you genuinely think are going to make it all the way there? Past the rest of the changeling swarm, past whatever ghosts are left, past the demons and Hollows that wander the mist.”

Raindrops tried to answer, but couldn’t.

Posey sighed, and looked down. “Tartarus, I envy them. To not know all that’s happened...To dream safely of happier times. Isn’t that a better fate than our own? Wandering this world, dying over and over until we lose everything that made us ponies?”

“We—we have to give them a chance—” Raindrops mumbled.

“Do we?” Posey looked back up at her. “Especially when it would come at the expense of killing so many other beings. From how Ocellus is talking about it, it sounds like every other Changeling there would die to keep them in those pods, because they’d die anyways without the ponies there. What do we really have to gain from trying to ruin the thin peace there?”

“You’re talking about leaving them there!” Raindrops shouted suddenly. “To be bled and drained slowly until they go hollow anyways! At least this way they have a choice!”

“Really? If you sit them down, in the middle of this breakout, and explain the state of the world to them, you’ll really let them crawl right back into those pods if they want?” Posey asked, incredulously. “That’s no choice at all.”

“We can’t just give up on them either!” Raindrops said, but tears were welling up at the corner of her eyes. “We can’t lose them, like we did Merry May and Star Bright, or Cloud Chaser and Flitter…”

Posey sighed. “None of them should have been put in those situations in the first place. None of them were like you are, Raindrops. You’re tougher than them, tougher than me. You can handle this fighting, handle the killing. But they couldn’t. They weren’t ready for any of this, and ponies that aren’t ready for this, can’t handle what you can...the only reason they haven’t gone Hollow already is luck. Their number hasn’t come up yet.”

Raindrops was silent for a few moments, before she narrowed her eyes “This—this world...it’s a forge now, Posey. We have to adapt. We have to be tempered, like swords—”

“And what if the forge makes those swords shatter, Raindrops? Instead of tempering them.” Posey sighed and shook her head. “I’m not afraid to admit my steel is weak, or brittle. I’d rather not be tested at all, when I know I’m going to shatter.”

“But you still came out here,” Raindrops pointed out.

Posy just nodded. “Yeah. I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have come with you. Neither should Merry May or Star Bright.”

Raindrops wanted to argue. Really, desperately wanted to argue. But as she looked around the room, no one else wanted to. Eventually, she sighed. “We should at least tell Celestia about this—about the Changelings.”

“Yes.” Maud agreed. “She has more resources. She will know what to do here. But all we’re here to do right now is retrieve Trixie. We need to keep focused on that mission.”

“Can spare Ti’see,” Ocellus agreed, as her face reformed, and she looked like a pony again. “No others. H-hard line.”

“Well, first we gotta get rid of the damn ghosts,” Rivet said, as he stood. Posey took his spot, and he gave her a relieved nod as he started moving towards the staircase to the upper floors. “Come on, Holly. Let’s go find a good window.”

As we left, Raindrops looked exhausted, but that didn’t stop her from working out everyone’s orders. “Gilda, head to the front door. Stay out of sight for now, and when you strike, stay low. The pegasi might not be affected by the attack. Posey, Maud, keep Ocellus safe; I don’t trust her…but she’s our guide.”
> 38 - The Banshee
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Yeah, this one should work fine. East side of the building, third window from the north end.”

Rivet stepped away from the window, while Raindrops nodded behind him. I was still busy checking the straps of my armor, as they worked out the specifics of the plan. Raindrops repeated the location a couple of times, and smiled nervously. “You’ll have your smokescreen...as long as you’re still sure about this?”

Rivet chuckled. “I’m sure, though I’m glad you’re tryin’ to dissuade me. Only plan we have, right?”

“That still doesn’t mean it’s a good plan,” Raindrops mused sadly.

Rivet shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be; just has to work.” He turned to me, and gave me a nod. “Holly, find me a brick or a heavy paperweight or something. I can open this window, but we’re gonna have to smash the one in the other building. Anything small but heavy should do—it’s old glass, it’ll shatter easy.”

Small and heavy; I could do that. I started to poke through the room while Rivet gently gave Raindrops’ shoulder a friendly nuzzle. Ponies tended to be very casual about that sort of comforting affection, though it had been rare throughout my journey so far. It wasn’t professional, being that we were technically knights on a mission at the moment, but Rivet could tell Raindrops needed some reassurance. “In case this goes pear-shaped—”

Raindrops jabbed him in the breast. “Oh no you don’t! Don’t you dare die doing this, you absolute ass. I’ve already lost two ponies under my command.”

Rivet laughed again, even as Raindrops glared at him. “Alright, alright. We’ll come back, safe and sound, and the Banshee will just blow away when we sweep in. Feel better?”

“Not really,” Raindrops mumbled.

Rivet shrugged. “Them’s the breaks, miss. We’ll die, or we won’t. Not much room in between that, not even these days. All I can promise is that we’ll try our best not to die.”

“I hope nopony else dies, or hollows out, or...whatever. All this, just to rescue Trixie, of all mares…” Raindrops muttered with a sigh. “I’ll go tell Roma and Maud, and I’ll send up Posey and Ocellus to watch. They’ll shut the window after you, and they’ll tell me after, so we know to douse the fire.”

“Alright, and tell Gilda we’ll be coming in from the west, so we’re not driving uphill into the ghosts. Hopefully that should help her work out her own plan of attack.”

As Raindrops left, I noticed a perfect projectile; an old bowling trophy, made of tarnished brass, and shaped like a candlepin bowling ball. It was set on a base, but it still fit fine in my pyromancer’s grasp. Rivet approved as well, when I passed it to him, and he spent a few minutes tossing it from hoof to hoof to get used to the weight while we waited.


*	*	*


We actually didn’t notice the smoke until it actually started to block out the light of the sunset; I’d been quietly chatting with Ocellus and Posey, and while we occasionally glanced over to the window, we only saw wisps and heat-shimmer until suddenly dark smoke was billowing up past the window. Rivet cursed, and started to open the window, while our other friends stepped back to watch from the doorway, just in case glass or ghosts fell back into the room.

The window opened with a clack, as the paint that had glued it shut suddenly came free, and instantly Rivet was blasted with a cloud of smoke. He leaned back, coughing, but waved me forward. After he cleared his throat, he gave me a smile. “Ready?”

In truth, no; I wasn’t ready for any part of this since we left Ponyville, it felt like. I don’t think I was ready for any part of this journey since I woke up, really, despite my best efforts every time. But we had to get moving before Raindrops and Roma ran out of furniture to burn, so I nodded, and Rivet turned back to the window.

We could just barely see the gleaming surface of the other window through the dense smokescreen. Thankfully, it seemed like the smoke also warded off the ghosts; maybe it was too dry, or too thick for them to push into, as living mist? It was a shame we didn’t really have any other way to use that knowledge, but it would keep us safe, and hidden, in the meantime. Hopefully, all of them were down there, looking at the fire below, so that our escape went unnoticed.

Rivet tossed the brass bowling ball in his hoof one last time, before he set it on the window sill, and turned around. A single, powerful buck from the construction pony turned the trophy into a blur, and the sound of shattering glass followed quickly after. More than just the window; it must have broken something glass inside the room across from us, as well.

We both peered through the smoke again afterward, and now the gleaming glass was like teeth, jagged and sharp in the window frame. It had broken into long shards, all pointing towards the point of impact in the middle of the window. Suddenly, I was very glad that Rivet would be the first one through.

Speaking of, I gave the stallion space as he stepped back, to give himself a bit of a run-up. He was a large stallion, and while both windows were large, it would be a tight fit. Not to mention the two or three pony-lengths of space between the two buildings, which we were both trying very hard not to think about. He took a few last, deep breaths, and then started galloping. 

He leapt off the edge of the window frame and disappeared into the smoke, but the sound of shattering glass and cursing from within told me that he’d made it that far, at least. I peered through the smoke once more, and tried to spot him, but all I could see was that almost all of the shards hanging from the top of the frame were now gone. “Are-are you okay?”

“Spawn of a bitch!” He responded, then a moment of grunting later, he added, “Yeah, I’m—agh—It’s fine, come on through. Mother pus bucket!”

That wasn’t exactly encouraging…but I didn’t really have any other options. I mimicked how he’d done it, and took a few steps back from the window to get a good gallop ready. I nodded nervously one last time at Posey and Ocellus, who gave me their own reassuring—albeit nervous—smiles, and began to gallop forward, until my forehooves kissed the window frame.

My hind hooves joined them, and then I sprung forward through the smoke, leaping towards the dim outline of the window. I had a sickening moment of fear, that I’d miss the frame entirely, and I almost did miss it; I landed in the frame of the window itself, and sharp, stabbing pain sliced up my hind leg as I flopped forward into the room. Glass crackled and crunched under my armored body as I rolled across it, and cold blood spattered across my belly from my lacerated leg. But my ichor still had the consistency of sludge, so the wound only spilled reddish-black blood, as opposed to gushing bright crimson lifeblood across the floor.

Speaking of, Rivet had fared much worse than I had. Even as I struggled to stand on my slashed leg, I noticed two long shards of glass stabbing out of his barrel. Clearly, he’d landed directly on them, which had snapped the shards out of the frame, and nearly turned his defenestration into a disembowelment. He was trying not to shift around too much, and risk pushing the broken glass deeper; or worse, risk snapping part of it off inside his body. “Careful, be—agh!—careful, dammit…”

I shuffled across the glass on the floor, as I used the window frame to pull myself up to my hooves, and managed to stab my forehoof with another remaining shard. I cursed quietly to myself, as I clutched the wounded leg to my breast, but at least I was standing. I could make out a silhouette through the smoke, and while I couldn’t tell if it was Posey or Ocellus, it didn’t really matter at the moment. “W-we’re through. G-go, we’ll be alright, as soon as we p-pull the glass out…”

The silhouette visibly shuddered and winced, but nodded, and the window slid shut once more. We were alone, and I pulled the curtain across to cover the broken window. Hopefully the smoke would keep the ghosts from noticing it; this building wasn’t warded, and we weren’t sure how well the ghosts could hear with a roaring fire below, so any kind of stealth we could maintain would only help us.

My wounds were deep, but they were only slashes; I was bleeding a decent amount, but slowly, and while they hurt, there was no glass in the wound. I’d be fine with some bandages and whatever bit of liquid sunlight had filled my flask, but I needed to help Rivet extract his own shards first, before we could tend to my comparatively lesser wounds.

Gently, I rolled Rivet onto his back, and even that motion caused a fresh wave of blood to ebb out from around the glass shards. He swore, but bit his lip until that was bleeding too, to try and stay quiet. “Careful, careful…” He growled again, warning me as I wrapped my magical grip around one of the large shards.

While I much preferred this method to pulling it out with my teeth, it was harder to get a solid grip on the slick glass, and it was more delicate than I was expecting. I actually gripped the shard too hard at first, and with a crack, the shard split down the middle. That earned me a fresh list of curses from Rivet, as two shards had become three. “S-sorry! I’m sorry—”

“Just be careful, dammit…”

I was, indeed, a bit more careful as I pulled out the glass shards, one by one. RIvet passed out as I was pulling out the third one, and I was feeling a bit light-headed myself. When I was done, I tossed the bloody shard onto the wooden floor, grabbed the nape of the large stallion’s neck in my teeth, and pulled him, as hard as I could, out of the room and down the hallway. We left a trail of blood, I’m sure, but we were out of that room with all of the broken glass.

As luck would have it, the room I dragged Rivet’s cold body into had a few racks of moth-eaten clothes sitting inside, which I eagerly yanked off the hangers and pressed against our wounds. Actually tying sleeves and ties and skirts into knots to hold our makeshift bandages in place proved unsuccessful; I couldn’t focus, and I was losing my grip on my magic. My hooves shook as cold overtook them, and soon, it all went dark, as I collapsed alongside Rivet’s corpse.


*	*	*


I woke up first, which was new for me. Usually I was the one who had suffered the most grievous wounds, and so I was the last one to wake up from our brief flirtations with oblivion. But when I shook myself awake, fur crusty with dried blood and ichor, Rivet was right where I’d left him. I could feel his fire, slow and gentle, sealing his wounds and replenishing his lost blood, but it would be a little while yet until he awoke. I did what I could to hurry it along, by properly bandaging his wounds to hold them closed.

My own wounds were already mostly sealed, but I could examine the new scars through my thin fur, at least. I’d actually gotten slashed up a bit more while leaping through the window than I’d first thought, but the leg wound had been the worst of them all; no wonder it had drowned out the rest of my scrapes and stabs. Still, pulling the smaller shards of broken glass from my frogs gave me something to do, and I used the time to try and focus on those wounds. Without Zecora, or even Trixie, I was on my own regarding Pyromancy. Meadowbrook had spoken of healing pyromancies, back in Baton Verte, and they were part of the potion I carried with me now. Surely I could work out some fundamentals, in the time I had?

As it turned out, no, it was a bit more complicated than that. While I could feel my fire, and even kind of direct it around my body a bit, it didn’t seem to speed up my healing at all. Either I wasn’t feeling the right emotion, or I could only heal others, and I didn’t want to test that idea on Rivet when I still wasn’t sure what I was doing. At worst, I could drain his fire into myself by accident, and turn him hollow before he ever awoke. I resigned myself to waiting for him, and I watched the hallway through a crack in the door in the meantime.

No ghosts came to investigate, or if they had, then they had done so while both of us were dead. Still, I was hopeful that we had somehow slipped out of the building undetected, thanks to the smokescreen. It would be incredibly frustrating if we awoke to find this building had been surrounded as well, but it wasn’t warded like the library was; if they were aware of our presence, then surely they would just steal our fire and leave us hollow.

When RIvet awoke, he did so with a start and a gasp. His hoof slapped at his belly in panic, but when he found only dried, matted fur and a clotted bandage, he let out a sigh of relief. “Ugh...Holly?” His voice was a little more rough. Deeper and growling, but undeniably still Rivet. Hollowing took its payment for death reversed, as it always did. Thankfully, that seemed to be the only thing it had done to him, so far.

What had it done to me, I wondered? Surely I didn’t have many of those deaths left before my sanity was whittled to nothing. “I’m here,” I murmured, my voice quiet but clear. “I dr-dragged you to another room, so w-we could hide, before I collapsed m-myself.”

“Agh...everything still aches, it’s been a long damned time since I died last. Forgot how cold it was…” Rivet rubbed his muzzle with a shuddering hoof, before he started to gather his legs under himself and stand. “Thanks Holly, good thinking. Are we clear?”

I nodded. “I haven’t s-seen any ghosts. I think we g-got away.”

“Good. Let’s get moving, can’t keep the others waiting. Spent too long dead on the floor in here already.” RIvet shook his head one last time to clear the fog from his mind, and then moved to the door beside me. We both peeked out, and when nothing leapt for our faces, we opened the door the rest of the way. Rivet took the lead again, and I fell into step behind the muscled stallion.


*	*	*


We slipped out of the building easily enough; we peered around corners at the ghosts, but they were entirely focused on the library once more. We were always careful to keep as much of a building as we could in between ourselves and them, and that allowed us to slip away into the city undetected.

We had to loop around a bit to find the path Gilda, Raindrops, Star Bright, and myself had taken through the city originally. The second group had taken a different, slightly faster route, and that meant they had avoided the hovering automobile that our first group had seen. That meant that we were not only relying on my memory, but my memory in reverse, which was much less useful. Still, we only took a few wrong turns, and found the auto-mobile eventually.

When we spotted it, Rivet was the first to approach. “You’re sure this is it?”

I looked over the craft. While I’d only really given it a cursory glance before, as one would to a pile of scrap metal on the side of the road, the faded paint and four large steel hoops were too distinctive to forget. Three of the hoops were mostly level with the ground, with two on either side of the navigation wheel, and one in front at a slanted angle. The one in back was entirely perpendicular to the ground, and must have been somehow used to impart forward momentum on the craft.

I nodded. “Y-yeah. Either this is it, or...there was t-two ponies with the same m-mad idea.”

“Probably more,” Rivet said, chuckling, as he moved forward and carefully began to climb behind the wheel of the hovercraft. “This thing’s big enough, and complex enough, that there was probably a team of ponies trying to get this thing flying. They must’ve had some success, since I don’t see a workshop anywhere around here, and I doubt they’d just drag this thing around.”

I glanced around, and noted that Rivet was correct; this was an outlying urban area of the city, with small houses and a school built from dilapidated wood, alongside a park full of dead grass. They probably could’ve been using that field for test drives, but even then, this auto-mobile was parked a good distance from there.

By the time I looked back at him, Rivet had clambered back over the seat to the exposed engine, and was gently tugging at tubes and wires to find out where they connected. “Okay…okay, yeah, I see what they did here…this is basically an old-fashioned steam boiler that pumps the steam out through the tubes into the big metal hoops...the actual engine just heats the boiler and keeps it cycling, because the prismapetrol runs alongside the steam and conducts electricity...it’s not cutting-edge, they must’ve been trying to do it on the cheap, and that means this thing’s covered in weird patch jobs and they’ve had to build around that central boiler…”

He trailed off, then nodded. “I’m barely a mechanic, and this is more a job for a plumber...they left a toolkit here too, probably for more patch jobs on the fly. But, all of the prismapetrol’s basically sludge in the tubes. Gonna have to clean that out and get more to replace it...I can get this running again though, I think.”

“D-do you need any help cleaning out w-what’s left in there?” I asked, peering at a brown fluid that seemed to be oozing out of the edges of the steel hoops and into the gutter. It reminded me of oil paint, but paint where a pony had mixed all of their colors together into a single disgusting shade of brown.

Rivet popped open a sealed, steel weather-proof case, and pulled out a loop of black rubber. “Nah, they left enough spare tubing that I can just rip ‘em out and replace them. Hopefully, the pressure should pump out whatever’s still in the engine once I open a gap in the system, but it’s definitely not gonna like it when we start this thing up. Expect a lot of pops and banging as the little sludgy pockets combust. Hopefully that doesn’t tear open the lines, but eh, we’ll see…in the meantime, take a look around the neighborhood, see if you can find a can of prisma that’s still sealed. The more the better, I don’t know how much this thing needs.”

I nodded, and set off into the neighborhood to search. After wandering down a street or two, it became very easy to find the houses I should be investigating, since they were usually the ones with large yards filled with long-dead grass, and ugly stains that ran down the gutters like faded brown ink. Usually, the source was a shed alongside the house, filled with dull red canisters, and rust had punched holes in all but a few of them, aided by the caustic oily fluid within.

Prismapetrol was...I struggled to remember, because it was relatively new. Liquid rainbows had long been distilled in Cloudsdale, of course, to varying degrees of purity and intensity. The most common form of the fluid was lighter and thinner, like dyed water, but the magic within kept the different colors separate to create rainbows. That fluid was pumped into clouds, and somehow was only released when the clouds were fully rained out, to signal the cloud was dry and would dissipate soon. It was safe to touch and ingest—in fact, I’d even heard of some pegasi using the stuff as hot sauce, though nopony was quite sure what the long-term effects of that were.

But the factory we’d passed through in the fallen cloud city was where they’d continued experimenting with that mysterious magical liquid. There, they’d distilled it further and further, testing new additives and processes just to see what that did to it. Sometimes, the mixes were highly flammable, even explosive, while other times they were inert but fantastic conductors. Prismapetrol was a refined version of the fluid that served as both while still being technically safe to handle and transport, though it was highly recommended that only Pegasi do so in order to keep it stable.

Unfortunately, that didn’t mean it was safe. While nopony had died due to ingesting it—even the rainbow-drinkers had their limits when it came to industrial runoff—it was definitely a magical hazard, and almost certainly poisonous. These ponies’ yards had long died from the fuel getting into the soil, and if the land weren’t already cursed to death unending, it was possible the ground here would be permanently poisoned. At least that meant I didn’t have to search terribly hard to find little stockpiles of the cans, though I noted a distressing amount of small craters, obliterated sheds, and half-burned houses as I wandered through the neighborhood.

Eventually, I found a sturdy-looking sealed can that was pretty much empty, and I was able to consolidate a few other smaller cans into that one without much difficulty. While the prismapetrol looked noticeably darker when I poured it in, it sloshed around fine, and I wasn’t reduced to a reddish-black smear when I shook it. After however long it took me to search the scattered houses and sheds, I had most of a large can of rainbow fuel, and headed back to Rivet.

When I arrived, I noticed the brown trail in the gutter had grown to a disgusting smear, and a sludgy river ran down the street. Rivet himself had a splash of the stuff across his breast, and he’d smeared it afterward, maybe to try and get it off, before he’d given up entirely. More smears covered the hover-craft, and a bunch of the components had been stripped out of the engine and laid in mostly-orderly lines on the sidewalk, similarly smeared with brown gunk. But the engine itself looked a bit less broken, with several more shiny components in place of cracked ones. The tubes had been entirely replaced, and the old ones lay in a heap in a road, with more brown gunk slowly leaking from the ends.

Rivet looked up as I approached, and finished tightening a pipe before he set down his wrench. “Whatcha got?”

I shook the can gently, just enough so that he could get an idea of how much it contained. “M-most of a can? There’s not m-much left, I brought all I could f-find.”

“Well, we’ll see,” Rivet said, as he scratched his chin with a hoof. Then he realized his hoof was covered in brown goop, and he swore as he realized he’d just smeared it across his chin as well. “Ah, dammit, this stuff...it gets everywhere, and the little squalls of rain that keep passing through just make it worse. The stuff never dries.”

We spent a little while after that just repairing the last few leaks in the system. Most of the mechanics of the auto-mobile were way over my head, but I could understand when something was supposed to be flowing but wasn’t. I got brown goop smeared across myself too, and I would have been worried about how poisonous it was if we weren’t both already undead. Neither of us had any idea how it was actually supposed to fly, though; we could see where the tubes connected, but not why it worked, or what the power was supposed to do.

After the last tube was screwed in and the last bolt tightened, Rivet had me pour the prismapetrol into the brass fuel tank. He winced when I splashed some of it, since we didn’t have much to waste, but he seemed satisfied when the can was empty. “Okay, that looks like just enough. No leaks either, thank the sun. We should be good to go now.”

I climbed down into the seat just behind the pilot’s seat, and Rivet took the wheel, since he’d used heavy machinery before at least. “Anything else, b-before we start it?”

“I don’t think so…” Rivet mumbled, as he looked over the control panel. There were dials, pedals, levers, knobs, all probably important in their own way, but neither of us had any idea how. He glanced back. “Only thing I can think of is that we’re probably not gonna be able to hear each other. That one hoop back there is basically right behind us, and even if this thing ran like it was new, I’m gonna guess it would be loud. Really loud. Any last words before we maybe explode?”

I swallowed nervously. I didn’t want to explode. For a moment, I entertained the idea of walking back to the library, while Rivet took this bizarre auto-mobile into battle...but I didn’t want to leave him to fight the Banshee all by himself. “I hope this w-works. And that w-we don’t explode.”

Rivet laughed heartily. The noise rattled more in his chest now. “Heh! Me too, filly, me too.” He flicked a couple likely looking-switches, and I heard the fuel tank gurgle behind me as the prismapetrol started to cycle through the system. Rivet grabbed a pull starter with his hoof, and took a deep breath. “Alrighty! Let’s get this gizmo started.”

He yanked the cord back, and the engine coughed and sputtered, while the pipes gurgled. The rope retracted, and he yanked it again. This time, the engine roared to life, and a cloud of black smoke belched out of the top of the boiler. We glanced back at it in confusion, but steam started to whistle out of it a moment later as the engine sputtered. After a moment, the pipes around the steel hoops whistled as the steam ran through them, and escaped the holes, until clouds of steam started to wheeze and flow out into the hoops themselves.

As lightning crackled across the engine, I understood what the prismapetrol was for. It corralled the steam into those hoops, and didn’t allow it to escape. Instead, it caused it to swirl, spinning faster and faster, until each of the four hoops had a miniature cyclone swirling at their center. All of a sudden, bolts of lightning crackled across all of the hoops at once, and the auto-mobile jerked as the air above was slammed into the street underneath us with the force of a hurricane being funneled through the hoops. We were suddenly in the air, and our breaths caught in our throat as we bounced on a violent cushion of air, until we came to a hovering stop about a body-length above the street. Discarded parts, junk tubing, and loose papers blew around the street as the craft hovered in place.

Rivet shouted something back, but the cyclones ripped the air from his lips, as if we were flying through a storm. It felt like we were riding atop a thundercloud, with the hoops full of angry sparking vortices of vapor blowing the wind around. My best guess was that he said something about how this should work against ghosts made of mist, and even then, that was mostly wishful thinking on my part.

Rivet looked forward again, and pressed his hoof down on a pedal while grasping the steering wheel firmly. Even that little bit of impulse was enough for the storm behind our heads to turn deafening, and we leapt forward down the street. We could’ve stopped there, allowed Rivet to get a handle on the controls, but there was something intoxicating that we could feel about this machine, and the sheer power that shook the frame we were sitting in.

Or maybe it was because the air was actually getting sucked out of our lungs and making us kind of loopy.

Either way, RIvet chose to spin the wheel and slide around the corner at the top speed possible, and we were thrown against the side of the craft as it bounced off a wall, before we sped down the next street. We would figure it out on the way to the library, Rivet had apparently decided, and I had absolutely no intention of dissuading him.


*	*	*


Among the things that we worked out about the craft, as we flew down the streets on a corralled storm, was why the design had remained a unique prototype. I was already lightheaded from the airflow problems, and it was entirely possible that we both would have passed out already if we’d actually needed to breathe still. It was also deafeningly loud, and not just for us; we’d blown past several shops loud and fast enough that the ancient glass had shattered in the frame, and everywhere we went, we blew a bulwark of trash before us that scattered high into the sky, only to get soaked by the rain and come down heavier behind us.

It was also hard to tell if the auto-mobile was just fragile to begin with, whether time had done damage that we hadn’t seen, or if we had just repaired something wrong. We hadn’t made it more than a mile before the machine started to list to the left, because that turbine had started to spray green sparks into the stormcloud at the center. Something was clearly wrong with the crystalline wire on that side, and I had no idea how to fix that. It kind of looked like it was melting, and if it turned to slag entirely, what would happen to the storm contained within?

Between that and the alarming rattling sensation that seemed to be getting worse the longer the engine ran, I started to worry that the machine wouldn’t last long enough for us to get to the library. But as I saw the great stone monument of Mt. Verhoof Place, and the library beside it, I felt as though maybe, just maybe, we would actually make it there and save the day.

Our angle was wrong for a sharp turn, so Rivet banked right around the monument, then slammed the wheel back to turn the hover-craft towards the front of the library. Scattered ghosts were upon us already, almost certainly attracted by the noise, but they feared our roaring turbines, and the few that attacked anyways were sucked through and spat out behind us, looking confused and disoriented.

As we faced the main force of the ghostly army, I saw the Banshee herself in the center of them all. It was hard to tell from here, but I had no doubt that she was surprised. I wondered, just for a moment, what she was singing as she saw us. Could the others hear confusion in her song?

Then we slammed through the banks of ghosts like a ship crashing into a sand dune. Mist exploded around us as it was drawn through the turbines, and the Banshee just barely leapt to the side as we scattered the army, and just kept going.

But then, we were going too fast. We’d expected to slow down going through them, and now it was too late to turn. Rivet tried, bless him, he really did, but all he could do was spin the wheel and slam on the braking pedal. It still wasn’t enough to keep us from slamming the hover-craft into the face of the library with a sound like a lightning storm splitting a sky made of bricks.

To the craft’s credit, it didn’t completely shatter into tiny pieces. It stayed mostly in one piece as it slammed against the building, and instead of crumpling or splitting apart, it bounced back and up. We were both thrown bodily from the auto-mobile, and I wondered for a moment if perhaps those straps attached to the seats might have had some sort of function to prevent exactly this. Then, I slammed into the cobbled street belly-down, and had just enough time to gasp and throw my hooves up before the bulk of the hover-craft landed on my back.

Pain spiked through my body as the fish threatened to escape my throat again, and I suddenly lost all feeling below my belly. But the craft settled without completely crushing me, and I let my hooves drop as I gasped quietly in pain. My head slumped to the street, and my vision swam as I looked around. My eyes quickly found Rivet...and standing over him, the Banshee.

He hadn’t landed any better than I had, it seemed, though he hadn’t had the wrecked auto-mobile land on top of him. Instead, he was trying to crawl away from the red smear he’d left on the street where he landed, and more importantly, the Banshee. The ghosts hadn’t avoided our attack, but it seemed like she had just barely managed to do so, and now sought vengeance as her army pulled itself back together all around us.

Either because Rivet had landed closer, or because I was thoroughly trapped, she seemed intent on slaying him first. Rivet, the strong construction pony, could only whimper in pain as she drew in close, following his trail of blood to the broken stallion himself. She held up a forehoof as she paused just above him, and instead of a knife like her followers, Sweetie Belle’s own hoof coalesced into a wickedly-sharp point.

It seemed to slice through the air itself as she brought her ethereal hoof-blade down into Rivet’s back, and the stallion gasped and coughed blood as she stabbed right through him, into the street. If that wasn’t enough, she smirked, and wisps of pink fire swirled up through her hoof into the mist that made up her body. Just like Apple Bloom had to Zecora, Sweetie Belle was draining Rivet of his fire, his Equinity, and I was helpless to stop her.

Rivet gasped and shriveled before my eyes, as his life was drained, and everything the stallion had been was stolen from him. In seconds, he was a lifeless husk of a pony—barely a broken Hollow, pinned to the street to bleed out, dumb and mad. The Banshee turned to me as she ripped the tip of her hoof free from Rivet’s crawling corpse, and she started to sing that horrible song once again as she approached me.

Then there was a blur as something shot past me, and Gilda tackled the Banshee as much as one could tackle a goddess made of semi-solid mist. The yearning black knife was unsheathed, held high in her claw as Gilda tried to stab at the Banshee, while both fell together onto the street. The Banshee was quick, and evasive; she nearly slipped out of Gilda’s grasp, but all the gryphon hen needed to do was land a single blow.

I knew she had done it when I heard the Banshee scream.

Gilda was thrown to the side and out of sight, but the knife stayed, buried up to the hilt in the Banshee’s shoulder. She writhed and screamed, louder than any dying ghost I had slain so far, as the dark crawled across her body. It would take her soon, it would sunder her spirit from this realm and draw her into the knife. Good, I thought. That’s payback for Rivet.

But she was stronger than the other ghosts, and more powerful. As she screamed, the Banshee grabbed at the knife, and ripped it out of her own shoulder. All around us, the ghosts of Baltimare suddenly found themselves being drawn into the Banshee’s body, like they were nothing but fuel for her own ghostly fire, wisps of smoke being pulled through a chimney. As they dissolved, the Banshee herself grew stronger, cannibalizing the spirits of her followers to save herself.

Slowly, somehow, the dark began to recede. Not because she was stronger than it, but because the Banshee was overfeeding it. I could feel the souls of Baltimare, the fire in the fog, all being drawn towards this central point. It tugged at my own soul as well, and I held it tightly to keep it safe, but the wild spirits all around us didn’t have the same strength that a physical body provided. They were consumed by the Banshee, all to feed the dark faster than it could consume them, so that she could isolate it.

The Banshee dropped the knife onto the cobblestones with a clatter, and her hoof instead pressed against her cursed shoulder, as though she were trying to staunch the bleeding. But after a moment, I realized, no, that wasn’t her intention. As she pulled at her ethereal shoulder, she ripped her own diseased leg free, and it was suddenly separated from her ghostly body, corruption of the dark and all.

She let it fall as soon as it was fully disconnected, and the dark surged back, consuming the discarded limb in seconds. Her eyes followed it, as the limb was dissolved and pulled into the knife as a hair-thin strand of abyssal energy, and when it was finished, the Banshee picked up the knife once more.

Fire surged around us, powerful, like Celestia or even Pinkie Pie was suddenly here before us. The last of the ghosts were consumed, and now only the Banshee remained, holding the knife in her hoof, a maddened scowl upon her muzzle.

She held it in her hoof as her mist coalesced, and she summoned fire, even in her ethereal form. That fire wreathed the knife, fighting against the dark contained within. I heard a whining noise as the dark within strained to escape, tried to consume the fire, but couldn’t, because it wasn’t tainted by the dark anymore. Eventually, it just tried to keep itself intact, and it couldn’t even do that; it failed, and failed spectacularly, as the knife exploded suddenly into shards of broken crystal, which punched holes in the steel frame that was crushing my body and missed me by hoofwidths.

As the fire faded from the square, the Banshee sagged; she was still missing her forehoof, and loose mist bled from the stump like smoke, as if the fire inside her had just been snuffed. The broken, useless hilt of the knife fell to the street, and the Banshee glanced at it, before looking at her own hoof. Then, with one last glance at the glow of the distant sunset through the thin rain above, she swept away, like a fogbank that was pulled by a rope. I saw it leave the square, and then the Banshee was gone.

Not dead. Most certainly not dead. But she was defeated, at least for now, and her ghost army with her.

Out of my range of vision, I heard the library doors slam open, and then swooping wings as Raindrops leapt out of the building. She flew to Rivet, still hollow and bleeding on the ground. And as my own injuries began to overtake me once more, I heard the others galloping out of the building towards us, as well as Gilda trying to find a good place to grab onto the wreck that was still crushing my body.

As darkness crept in, I could only look at Raindrops, staring down at Rivet’s Hollow form, lying broken on the street.
> 39 - The Baltimare Tunnels
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hearing was the first of my senses to return this time. It wasn’t surprising, since the argument going on nearby was loud enough to wake the dead.

“Why’d you let him die?!”

“Listen, dweeb, I moved as fast as I could! The debris hadn’t even all hit the ground yet!”

“You should have been ready! Should’ve been out the door before they even hit the building!”

“Yeah, sure, and I should have let myself get pasted when they crashed that crazy contraption! Or maybe let myself get swarmed by ghosts when it didn’t work! And then where would you be, huh?”

“Stop it!” Posey shrieked, and both Raindrops and Gilda went silent at the outburst. “Raindrops, I feel just as bad about Rivet as you do, but it’s not Gilda’s fault!”

“You’re taking her side—?”

“Ha! See what I—”

“And Gilda, you shut your beak!” Posey’s voice was still shrill, and silenced the hen once more. “You’re right. But you’re being a real jerk about it, and we’ve just lost another one of our friends. Stop twisting the knife.”

Gilda huffed, but only responded a moment later, after she seemed sure that Posey wasn’t gonna shriek at her again. “Ruttin’ sue me. I get to take credit for killing an entire city, which was really cool, but I guess you’re the wrong beings to brag about that with. Typical ponies.” I heard her claws scrape across gravel as she stood, and moved closer to me.

As Gilda stepped away, Posey’s voice grew quiet. “Raindrops. Don’t. You’re not mad at her.”

“Rutting try it, feather duster!” Gilda cackled.

“Go nest in an outhouse!” Raindrops shot back, but she stayed put. “I dunno, Posey, I’m pretty mad at her specifically.”

Gilda apparently decided to join me, instead; I felt her presence more than anything else, because she moved so quietly that I couldn’t hear her over the rain. After a moment, she gave my shoulder a shake. “You’re still dead, huh?”

I let out a low whine. My back still burned, and I didn’t really wanna get up just yet. There was still plenty of gravel to lie in uncomfortably. But it seemed to be enough for Gilda to stop shaking me. “Oh cool, guess you’re back already. I tried to get that bottle out of your bag again in case that’d help, but I couldn’t find it. Sorry.”

“...s’fine...lemme st-stay here...hurts…”

“Yeah, will do for a while. That junked contraption pretty much pinned you to the street, and it took some doing to get you untangled from it, but I guess it must’ve looked worse than it was.” 

“...great…”

“I’m gonna sit here, by the way. You look a little less likely to start shouting at me.”

“...s’fine...”

“Cool.” Gilda paced around my body a few times, patting down the gravel with her claws and paws, before she settled down beside me.

Now that she was still, I could hear the conversation a short distance away again. Raindrops was talking, and she sounded nervous. “—still watching the rooftops, though. I don’t believe that was really all of them, and even if it was, the Banshee herself is still out there. We gave her a black eye, but that’s a long way from killing her outright.”

“That’s good. Focus on that, instead of shouting at Gilda. All that does is attract attention anyways.”

There was silence for a long few moments, aside from the sounds of the rain above. It still didn’t sound like it had progressed properly to a storm, but I could hear the insistent pattering of rain all around me. It spattered the gravel, and rattled the tin rooftops that seemed to be all around us. It wasn’t striking me directly, so wherever they’d carried me to was outside, but dry, and safe from the rain.

Raindrops spoke, eventually. “I hate that we left him like that. Him and Star Bright.”

“We did what we could. He’s not wandering around outside, so he shouldn’t hurt anypony else, including ourselves.”

“But still, locking him up like that…” Raindrops trailed off, and her voice trembled. “Should we have at least blocked them into the same room? So they had each other for company?”

Posey’s voice was soft. I could barely hear her above the rain. “I don’t think they would have understood that. They’d just keep fighting each other forever, trying to take the last little scrap they have left, that can never be taken. Better to leave them separate, so they can rest.”

“I guess...I just...augh.”

“Besides, that would have been dangerous. Maud and Ocellus put a lot of work into barricading Star Bright in—we would have had to disassemble that, kill him again, then block it all up again. We could have lost others doing that.”

Raindrops was silent again, for a while. “How many more do you think we’ll lose?”

“We shouldn’t be asking that.”

“Do you think any of us are going to make it back to Ponyville?”

“Raindrops.”

“Sorry. I just...I should’ve gone with him, instead of Holly.”

“What would you have done better?”

“...I don’t know. But I feel awful. I had to have been able to do something.”

“At least Holly didn’t get drained too. They could have both gone Hollow.”

“Stars and Moon, we should have had a better plan than that…” Raindrops started to mumble to herself, and she quickly grew inaudible as she tried to work out any better way to accomplish what we’d done, long after the time for planning had passed.

After a short while, my back pain settled down to a low roar, and I heard more hoofsteps approach. Maud, Roma, and Ocellus presumably, though that guess was confirmed but moments later by Maud’s own voice as she spoke to Raindrops. “Ocellus has finished placing her pheromone trails. She would like us to hurry.”

“Yes. Scent-m-markers…loud smell! But sisters cover, when f-find scent wrong. Little time.”

Raindrops sighed, and started to get up. “Maud. You’re sure you trust Ocellus?”

“With my life.” There was no hesitation. No worry. Maud spoke with conviction, as she always did, and even then...her words had a weight to them. If she was wrong, then those words would have stood strong, like a boulder in a river, until reality changed itself around them.

“Alright. Then let’s do this.” Raindrops raised her voice a bit, as she turned to us. “Gilda! We’re going. Can you carry Holly? We need to put her corpse somewhere safe while we do this.”

“Don’t need to, she’s already back!” Gilda gave me another shake to wake me up, and I forced my eyes open, as much as I didn’t want to start moving just yet.

“What?” Raindrops asked incredulously, and she hopped into a quick glide that terminated in a scattering of gravel when she landed. “Holly? That was fast, you’ve been dead for...a few hours, at most. The scouting team couldn’t have taken longer than that.”

“Hey, she’s a tough mare!” Gilda cackled, as she slapped my shoulder. “Kinda groggy though. Let’s go double-check everyone’s gear while she gets her hooves under her.”

Raindrops hesitantly nodded, before she turned back to the others. Gilda dropped low, and whispered through her beak. “Need you up and moving, Holly. Neck some more of that potion, I’ll keep their eyes off you.” Then she stood up, and fluttered her wings as she stepped out into the rain, towards the others.

The liquid sunlight really wasn’t as big a deal as Gilda was making of it; she seemed to think it was some sort of secret that I was keeping from the others, when really it just hadn’t come up. If it would have saved anypony who’d gone Hollow, I would’ve been happy to let them drink the whole bottle. But so far, I hadn’t been in any position to rescue them, mostly because I was too busy fighting for myself.

Still, the fact that Gilda was happy to keep my secret, such as she was, to put so much unnecessary effort into keeping that secret...I’d earned Gilda’s friendship, even if I wasn’t entirely sure how. That made me wary, especially after what I’d gone through with Trixie, but so far it seemed like the other horseshoe hadn’t dropped yet. For now, I was happy to have the support, and I’d just need to be wary about what exactly I agreed to do for Gilda going forward.

While Gilda kept the others distracted, I reached back into the cold darkness of the bottomless bag, and withdrew the flask once more. The sunlight within had yet to refill past half, but it would be enough for a quick swig, at the very least. I brushed the fine white powder off the glass, uncorked the bottle, and felt liquid fire spread through my body once more.

It was over too soon; I needed to save some for whatever fight came next, and I could feel my very soul yearning for more of the fire as I tilted the bottle vertical once more, and re-corked the flask. The liquid I’d already drunk flowed through me, and my back burned hot for a few moments as the last of the pins-and-needles sensation in my hinds began to fade.

I’d left myself maybe a quarter of the flask’s contents, and it still felt like I’d taken too much. I felt confident that I could move normally again, at least. I stowed the bottle back in the bag, and stood on shaking hooves, before I moved to rejoin the others.

I’d woken up in...what seemed to be an industrial area? I saw smokestacks and tin-roofed warehouses all around us, and we seemed to be in a storage lot behind a factory. The ground beyond angled sharply into a steep hill, forming one border of the lot, and an ancient rusting train sat atop the hill, presumably on a track that ran the length of the ridge. A large underground access tunnel, part of Baltimare’s own infrastructure, had been built into the hill itself, and the rest of the group was standing in front of that.

But the biggest surprise, as I looked around us at Baltimare, was how clearly I could see all of it. The fog that had filled the city was almost totally gone now, and I could see the mountains and the rest of the city clearly for once, despite the stormy clouds above. Ever since we’d arrived here, the city had been like the rest of the wilds outside of Ponyville, drenched in fog so thick you could hardly see more than fifty body-lengths, unless you could get above the fog layer. But now it was more akin to Ponyville itself, with how shockingly clear the air was.

I soon found my eyes drawn to the factory buildings themselves, however. They were clearly hollow shells of what they had once had been, since it appeared a fire had raged through this district of the city at some point. It was too large for a bucket brigade or pegasus weather crew to have even tried to extinguish it, or maybe they’d been too busy. Maybe the Changelings had attacked the buildings, or the ponies had been trying to attack this entrance to the hive, and the buildings were the result of collateral damage? Or had the ghosts been attacking the ponies within, or had it just been a skirmish between the specters and the Changelings inside of a great, dead city?

No matter the cause, the buildings themselves were the only clues left now, and all that was left of them were the brick smokestacks, steel girders that had once held up the walls, and slumping catwalks. It must have been an incredible blaze to warp the steel itself; I wasn’t surprised to spot a distant steel mill, just as ruined as the others.

Everypony else seemed a little surprised to see me up and moving again, but nothing else was really made of it. I noticed that Ocellus was no longer wearing her Princess Twilight disguise, presumably to move amongst her sisters within the Hive. They were all focused on Maud, who was giving an explanation of the area. As she spoke, she indicated the large gated entrance, and the smaller access door set into the grate. “—marked on the map which entrances were locked, unlocked, and blocked off. The changelings spent weeks gathering rubble and detritus to funnel all incursions into a few specific tunnels, but most of them still connect to a series of cisterns. We’ll stop in cistern 12-West, while Ocellus and another being continue deeper into the Hive.”

“I thought you fillies didn’t like tunnels anymore.” Gilda chuckled.

“That specific tunnel had something...wrong with it. Like the knife. That same sort of dark magic,” Roma explained with a shudder. “We won’t be going back through that tunnel, but this one should be fine.”

Maud nodded. “Ocellus told me they’ve left the emergency lights on, and we all have miner’s headlamps now. We should have more than enough light. Any other questions?”

“How bad is it gonna smell?” Raindrops asked tiredly.

“It won’t.” Maud stated. “This is a storm drain, not a sewer. It redirects rainwater from the mountains under the city and into the harbor, so the streets themselves don’t flood.”

Several ponies all looked up at the storm that had been lazily showering us with rain since we’d arrived in Baltimare. Somepony, maybe multiple someponies, made a noise similar to “Uhhh.”

Maud must’ve expected the question. “Changelings don’t like being flooded out any more than ponies do. They’ve kept the actual active parts of the tunnels from being blocked, but sealed off the redundant flow chambers. Eventually the weathering will cause the concrete in that single tunnel to erode, but that will take several centuries. Any more questions?”

“Who’s going with Ocellus into the Hive itself?” Raindrops asked.

“That hasn’t been decided yet. It was the next major point of discussion.”

Gilda shrugged. “I don’t have any other questions. Unless someone else does?”

There was a quiet chorus of “no”s from around the group.

“Then we might as well work that out now. We’ve got a bait team and the rescue team, right?”

Maud nodded at the gryphon hen. “Correct. The ‘rescue team’ will be Ocellus and one other being. Everyone else will be part of the ‘bait team.’ It’s ultimately up to her, but I strongly suggested you, Gilda.”

“What?” Gilda balked, and tilted her head. “Why? You trying to get rid of me, now?”

“No. You’re exceptionally skilled at moving quickly and quietly, as well as being a competent fighter. The rescue team is likely to encounter patrols along the way. I’d go with her, but Avalanche needs clearance to be swung, and I’d be more useful as a distraction.”

Ocellus spoke up. “Not Gil’da. Don’t...trust.”

Gilda cackled at that. “Hah! Then we’re in agreement, bug. Besides, I don’t do cramped tunnels like that, I’m already disliking the cisterns you mentioned before.”

Raindrops nodded. “I understand that. But it limits our options a bit. I can do cramped tunnels, but I can’t fight in them, I need space for charging and bucking. Roma?”

Roma shook her head. “Same, plus I don’t do quiet very well, and Posey doesn’t fight. Holly?”

Everyone looked at me, and after a moment, I shrugged. “O-okay. I can do cramped tunnels, as long as w-we’re quick, and I can f-fight.”

Roma nodded. “She’s got some earth pony in her too; she can haul Trixie out on her back. You alright with that, Ocellus?”

The changeling in question examined me, and I was struck with an immense feeling of guilt as I peered into her eyes. They were just like that poor changeling from before, the one I’d killed in the library. One of her sisters. And I think she remembered that too; she seemed hesitant, maybe because I hadn't really done anything to earn her trust personally. Eventually she looked at Maud."You...trust, yes?"

Maud nodded. "Holly's shown herself to be both competent and reliable, as well as extremely resilient in combat. But she does get confused easily, and she may panic if overwhelmed."

"You sure you're not directly related to that honest apple pony?" Gilda grumbled, as she rolled her eyes. "Holly, bug, you'll be fine. Keep yourself focused, stay low, and take things slow. Once you get past the perimeter patrols, the bugs inside the hive itself won't be expecting intruders, so sneaking past them will be a breeze. Gryphon sapper teams used to do it all the time, to clear out infestations."

Ocellus still looked unsure. "Need sneak past Ken...Ken a' Kens, royal nurse caste too. Steal f-food, own hive...great danger. Treason."

"So don't get caught. Simple as that." Gilda said with a shrug, and turned back to Raindrops. "Are we gonna get moving, or are we just gonna stand around and squawk while the bugs work out the bad scent-marks?"

Raindrops and Maud looked at each other, and Raindrops sighed. "Yeah. Let's get moving, and hope for the best. Ocellus, you know the tunnels, so split off when you need to."

Ocellus looked me over one last time, and I tried to look as non-panicky as I could. After once glance back at the group, she nodded. "Hol'lee. Will trust. Walk with...need pr-practice, move silent."

I nodded, and did my best to follow behind the others as Ocellus watched my hooves, and started to give me helpful tips in broken Equuish.


*	*	*


Maud and Ocellus' description of the storm drains had been detailed, and extremely accurate. The tunnels were wide enough that the seven of us could almost walk abreast, and they were decently well-lit. The emergency lighting itself was spotty along our route, with most of the little lights having burned out long ago with nopony left to replace them, but those pools of light were supplemented by plenty of light from above. Access hatches and gutter drains allowed dim, spotty sunlight to shine down into the tunnels. We also had headlamps, though I left mine off, since I still had the little lightgem given to me by Dinky.

Unfortunately, the one thing they hadn't mentioned as how wet everything was. We were mostly following the tunnels that ran directly below the streets on the surface, as opposed to the deep tunnels below, which were supposedly being flooded with rainwater. But that same rainwater had to pass through this surface section to flow down to those levels, and that meant that every gutter and grille we passed under was gushing filthy rainwater right on top of us.

We avoided it where we could; often we could step around the gushing cascades, and only get spattered by the edge of the torrent. But several times, the tunnel narrowed, and we had to push directly underneath the ice-cold flow as it soaked our armor and fur pelts underneath. If that wasn't enough, the water was almost constantly rushing around our hooves, and sometimes it rose up to the knees. When it did, it was hard to push past the pressure of the flowing water, but Posey and I only slipped once or twice. We recovered quickly enough when we did, though Gilda did start to jokingly worry that our chattering teeth might attract the attention of the changelings.

If nothing else, she added, the flowing water would make us nearly impossible to track by scent or hoofprint. Ocellus did warn us briefly that the walls in the tunnels had ears, but even she admitted a few minutes later that Gilda was probably correct.

Raindrops and Gilda were still debating combat positions, based off of Maud's description of the cistern's layout, when we broke away from the group. Posey noticed us moving to a dark side tunnel, and she gave us a worried wave as we left, which I returned. From how it sounded, they shouldn't be in any major danger; since the large, loud group was staying put and not advancing directly towards the hive, the Changelings shouldn't attack them, or so Ocellus had claimed.

But the changelings weren't handling this calamity any better than we ourselves were. If anything, it sounded as if they had it even worse than us Hollowed Undead did, somehow. That kind of desperation, that futile struggle for survival, could drive any creature to fear, panic, and even madness.

The side tunnel itself was much darker than the main tunnel; the emergency lights in here looked as though they'd been intentionally smashed, and since it seemed to be a maintenance hallway, there were no gutters or grates above to let in natural light. But that also meant the tunnel was blissfully dry, or at least it was just uncomfortably clammy, instead of being filled knee-deep with running water. Compared to the main storm drains, this was a relief, though it quickly became nerve-wracking in its own way.

Without the light from the other headlamps, we were both relying almost entirely on the dim pool of light that my necklace provided. While I'm sure that it would have been worse with a bright, directed beam of light, I couldn't keep myself from getting jumpy whenever the shadows shifted. Soon, every discarded toolbox or broken pipe became a changeling lurking in the dark, waiting for us to look away so they could tackle us from behind.

But Ocellus seemed more confident in the dark; she could probably see through the gloom a lot better than I could, and now that it was just the two of us in the darkness, she didn't seem quite so nervous.

That meant that, when we came across a gloomy intersection and her head suddenly snapped to the side in alarm, I froze. I hadn't even begun to consider moving, before Ocellus spun, grabbed my lightgem in her hoof, and shoved it back under my armor. We were plunged into darkness, and I felt Ocellus pull me down one of the other passages before she held me still. Even if she didn't keep a hoof over my muzzle, I wouldn't have said anything—I was sure she had her reasons, and I had no intention of blowing our stealth by doing a stupid thing like asking about them right this second.

We laid still in the darkness together for a long few moments. Long enough that I started to notice how surprisingly warm her chitin was. I thought it would be cold, like my own hooves, but the hard, dry insectoid surface was warm to the touch. It was smooth, too; for some reason I thought the edges of the overlapping plates would be sharp, but they didn't even catch my fur in between them, as I was afraid they would.

Then I heard the buzzing, distant and echoing, and that became all I could focus on. Something pony-sized, and fast, buzzed past us at the speed of a galloping pony. It was followed by several others, all flying down the tunnel in single file, and they whizzed by fast enough that I couldn't have counted them if I tried. They felt, and sounded, like a single buzzing mass. They were moving too fast to dodge, and they would have caught us for sure had Ocellus not yanked us into hiding.

The buzzing faded slowly, but Ocellus didn't move. A moment later, I understood why—one last straggler passed by our hiding place, hidden by the buzzing of the main group, and moving just a bit slower. I remained as still as I could, not even breathing, and that seemed to be enough. The last changeling disappeared down the tunnel in the direction we'd come from, and soon the tunnel was silent once more.

Ocellus waited another minute to be sure, and then fumbled with the neckline of my armor. She exposed my lightgem just enough that I could see her fanged, black-chitin muzzle in the dark, and her own hoof before it; a warning to stay quiet. "W-walls. Ears. F-follow, yes?"

I nodded in understanding, and Ocellus began to lead me through the darkness blindly.


*	*	*


That happened twice more, but by the third time it did, Ocellus hardly had to do anything. I heard the distant buzz, and was already halfway to dropping to the side of the corridor. I did knock over a discarded beer bottle, but it only rattled once before I clapped my hooves over it to hold it still. If the changeling patrol heard the rattling glass, they gave no indication, and passed by us without slowing down.

I’d also quickly worked out that, while I couldn’t see, I could still sense Ocellus’ fire, and the fire of the other changelings on patrol. So long as I stuck to her closely, and moved carefully, then I could maneuver the tunnels blind just fine. But that was only because I had her guidance. Still, it gave me a small bit of insight into the changeling patrols themselves.

I had come to be fairly sure that the patrols moved in groups of six. There was the lead, a mass of four, and then a rearguard that seemed to be watching for anyone trying to get around their patrol pattern. Now that I knew she was there as part of their formation, she was easy enough to avoid...but then, that trick only had to work for the changelings once. I tried not to think about how many beings had learned about the rearguard the loud, sudden way.

Once they were long gone, we started moving again, and I found my attention drawn to the floor under my hooves. The bare concrete had begun to change slightly, as the ambient moisture in the tunnels turned into an actual film of...something. It wasn’t liquid, but it wasn’t solid, either. My hooves slipped easily into faint hoof-shaped grooves, pressed into whatever the soft, fluid material was. Those grooves were too old to be from Ocellus, since the material was still stiff enough to retain its shape for a while.

I was reminded unnervingly of a wasp nest, and the wax such hives were built from. Wasps mostly used plant material, layered with their own secretions, but there was no fibrous texture under my hooves. It felt more like a layer of grit, like river silt, mixed with thick snot. And the further into the tunnels we ventured, the thicker it had been layered over the floor. Already, I could no longer feel the concrete under my hooves. I tried not to think about whatever sort of residue it must have been leaving on my armor whenever we dodged the patrols.

Eventually there was a distant glow of light from the end of the tunnel, dim and green. As we approached, I mimicked Ocellus’ crouched movement, as we slowly crawled forward. I couldn’t recognize this tunnel as being part of Baltimare’s infrastructure any more; they’d completely coated the tunnel with whatever changeling resin I was seeing now. It was hard to tell in the dim green light, but it looked like the resin was naturally black—or perhaps a green so dark as to be close to black?—almost like they’d wallpapered the tunnel with their own chitin.

Ocellus motioned to the left side of the glowing entrance, and I followed behind her as we stuck to the wall, trying to stay undetected as we entered the room. For once, I could almost see clearly despite having spent so long in the darkness, since the dim green glow wasn’t bright enough to blind me. Together, we entered the changeling hive, and I tried to take it all in while remaining as small and hidden as I could.

The grand cistern was undeniably pony-made, and I could still see bare concrete on the ceiling and near the tops of the support pillars. But everything lower than that had been coated in slick black changeling resin, applied in layers that were pulled downwards by gravity like glaciers made of goo instead of ice. They seemed to have taken offense with the level floor of the cistern, and the new structures in which they’d covered the room sloped upwards into hills, which were then riddled with hundreds of tunnels bored through the resin.

Princess Celestia could have comfortably walked through the tallest of the tunnels, while others were merely large enough for a pony to crawl into, and some were even smaller than that, barely large enough to poke the tip of a quill into. A great many of them were occupied, filled with the dark forms of sleeping—or dead—changelings. Others were filled with piles of trash they must have dragged down from the surface and bound together in bright green webbing, like spiders that had picked up hoarding. I saw tools, clothing, toys, and even some small furniture, all packed away in storage for purposes unknown, maybe even to the changelings themselves.

And there were a great deal of changelings themselves, beyond those inside the holes. Too many to count buzzed through the hive like honeybees, or clambered over the resin to check the edges. I saw a few of them hacking up some foul liquid and smearing it on as a fresh layer, but sometimes I saw it steam as it touched the hardened resin that was already there, and they began carving new holes in the melting material. Others did nothing but buzz their wings, circulating air through the holes and the hive overall to keep it from overheating. A few even checked the dim green bioluminescent blobs that lit the rooms, and the lighting flickered occasionally as a changeling eclipsed the strange organic lamps.

Ocellus stuck to the shadows as we moved through it all, and I followed her as closely and as quietly as I could. Though she could likely walk amongst her sisters normally, I would be on my own if she needed to do so, and so her stealthy movements were more for my benefit than her own. Occasionally, we’d pause as she peeked around a resin curve, or the rare exposed concrete wall, and then nod as we moved forward once more.

It was impossible to know if we stayed in that one singular cistern, or if we moved into a series of similar cisterns that had been completely overtaken by the changelings. We entered the tunnels, and we only grew more wary creeping past the sleeping and the still. At one point Ocellus shoved me into one of the sleeping-holes, and I panicked for a moment—it had been occupied, or so I thought.

As Ocellus covered my hiding place with her body, my hoof brushed the changeling I lay alongside, and the empty husk wavered in the breeze that blew through the hive. Though it was hard to see for sure, it seemed to be nothing more than a hollow exoskeleton; the changeling it had once belonged to must have died, or shed their skin in some way. And so it had just been...left here. How many others must have been like this, all around me?

I didn’t like touching the discarded chitin. It felt disrespectful, somehow. I was relieved when Ocellus stepped away from the hole, and helped me crawl out so we could continue forwards.

Eventually, our smaller side tunnel joined a very large tunnel, and Ocellus was visibly nervous as we moved through it. The holes in the sides grew fewer and fewer, and soon, smooth solid resin surrounded us entirely. Eventually, the tunnel opened out into another large cistern, but one with a large, open area in the center that seemed to be well-lit by the green lighting overhead. Dozens of changelings buzzed around the edges, and their transparent bellies glowed a bright green as they disappeared and reappeared from small side tunnels.

We were halfway through the room when a loud hiss echoed through the chamber, and every creature within froze. There was a large opening at the far end of the room, undeniably our destination, and just above that, a smaller opening, like a guard tower that had been dug into the resin itself. From within, a large, dark form crawled out, eyes glowing as they looked directly at the two of us.

“Och’alis. What’s the meaning of this? Bringing a p-pony in here, awake and armed. That’s not safe for us...especially since you seem to be leading her into the deepest p-parts of our Ken’s hive...” The voice sounded male, to my surprise. Ocellus had described the other changelings as her sisters...though, I supposed, gender was more of a preference when used to describe a race of shapeshifters.

As the other changelings in the room fled to the ceiling, and their searching, blinking eyes found the two of us, Ocellus shuddered in terror. “Tor’inx! Wait, can, can explain!”

“I’m eager to hear this ex-explanation, then. I would like to know how you can p-possibly justify this b-betrayal.” This male changeling was larger than the others by about a head, if not more, and the buzzing of his wings as he descended into the light before us made the air whistle through the holes that riddled the walls. His fangs were bared, and I dare not move, because Ocellus might still be able to keep things peaceful.

“Remember p-pony princess, yes? Ken Ti’lit, and Harm-monic Elements. P-pony captured, not long p-past, had element. Need take, p-pony too. Dangerous. B-but important, to p-ponies.”

“You need to take them?” The changeling—Tor’inx—repeated to me, in the form of a question. I nodded slowly, and he hissed again. “I remember the p-pony princesses. Enemies. Old enemies. And to take a p-pony from the hive...no. No, cannot. Cannot weaken ourselves b-before the enemy.”

“Not eme-ene-enemy!” Ocellus protested. “Important! Keep w-world safe, f-fix the sun, they th-think!”

“I don’t think so,” hissed Tor’inx. “I’ve seen the w-world above, Och’alis. Can’t be f-fixed. Not anymore. The Ken a’ Kens dealt a deadly blow to the p-ponies, just like she p-promised. Soon, won’t be any p-ponies left. Just need to wait for them to die out.”

Tor’inx then narrowed his glowing eyes at me. “So...w-why would we help them try to f-fix this? Go against the w-will of our Ken a’ Kens? Defy her, so openly?”

“Can’t kill,” Ocellus whimpered, as she withered under his gaze. “Can’t kill. Changelings...parasites. Host dies...hive dies.”

“I trust our Ken, unlike you, Och’alis. You’re helping the enemy...led them into our hive, seek to steal our f-food for yourself.” Tor’inx hissed again, and it sounded like a sword being dragged across a whetstone. The changelings above receded back into their holes in the walls, but I could still see their eyes glittering in the dim light as they watched, like an audience. “Traitor. Selfish, hungering traitor...Ken would have you killed, both of you. M-make an example out of you, so other sisters know not to challenge her orders.”

Ocellus stepped back, trembling in fear, and Tor’inx began to buzz his wings as he advanced on us. All I could do was draw my sword, and step in front of Ocellus, because any semblance of stealth we had carried with us so far was gone. This changeling wouldn’t allow us any further, nor would he allow us to leave. If I didn’t fight, then our journey was going to end here, in this dark, damp changeling hive deep underneath Baltimare.

Only one thought filled my head, as Ocellus shrieked and ducked, and Tor’inx leapt towards us. “I don’t want to die in here.”
> 40 - Daughters of the Hollow Hive
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tor’inx was going to kill us here. I had to act, I had to move, I had to fight. My sword was drawn already, but Tor’inx didn’t seem to need one himself; he merely bared his fangs and leapt at us, and I couldn’t parry that.

Ocellus fled vertically, her wings buzzing like mad as she flew straight upwards to temporary safety, and that left me to fight Tor’inx alone. I jumped backwards, just barely dodging what would have been a vicious bite, and before I could recover, Tor’inx ducked his head and slammed his jagged horn into my un-armored breast. The chainmail shrieked and pinged off as the horn broke the rings, then ran me through, and I felt blood leap up my throat as I gagged. But I wasn’t dead yet, which took him by surprise.

I slammed the pommel of my sword into the side of his skull, and he jerked away from the blow, dazed, as my black blood spurted across him and spattered onto the waxy floor. I had to catch my breath for a moment—figuratively, at least, as I felt the air leaking out of me, he must’ve pierced a lung—and by the time I’d swung my sword at him again, he’d recovered enough to smack it down.

My longsword dug a shallow furrow in the changeling resin, but I didn’t drop it. Instead, I whipped it back around in a wide windmill, which he easily sidestepped, and the pain from my breast brought me fully off-balance. Tor’inx used the opportunity to tackle me, and I fully lost my grip on my sword. Distantly, I heard it clatter across the floor, but I was more focused on the angry bug trying to get his fangs in my throat.

I battered him with my hooves to keep him away from the gaps in my armor, and a horrible feeling of deja vu overcame me. Hadn’t I just done this, with that other changeling back in the library? This same “tackle and go for the throat” trick, where I battered at them and tried to keep them away? The memory of that poor half-maddened drone back then made me hesitate now, almost as if I could feel her inside my mind, disapproving as I attacked another one of her siblings.

My hooves trembled with the weight of her eyes, just before Maud had smashed her to paste, but Maud would not be saving me here and now. Tor’inx grabbed my forehoof and pulled. Pain shot through my body ,as the bones within cracked, and my leg went numb and fell limp. He merely slapped my other hoof aside, since that single hoof was barely worth the effort to fight with any more. Instead, I saw the flash of fangs before Tor’inx ducked under my chin and clamped his jaws around my throat. Hot, white pain, and then a terrifying ice-like numbness, spread through my body as he pumped venom into my cold, dead blood.

I saw his eyes, but then, it was hard to focus on anything but, since they weren’t more than a hoof-lengths distance from my own. There was hate in those eyes, and fire, just like us ponies. But more than anything else, there was this odd sort of exhaustion. He could have killed me in a dozen different ways, done more damage to ensure I was dead, and he seemed to be considering them, since I’d recovered so quickly from the horn stab. But in the end, he decided I wasn’t worth the time, now that I’d been pumped full of his horrible freezing venom.

He opened his jaws, and let my body drop back to the floor with a clank as my armor smacked the resin. I felt it, distantly, as though hearing echoes down a tunnel. That it was happening to me didn’t really seem to register any more, as the cold crept through my veins and my hind legs turned to cold mud. Tor’inx stepped over me like I was already a corpse, and his eyes were searching for Ocellus, his next victim in his crusade to defend the hive from us.

The cold wasn’t like death, not exactly. I’d felt death over and over now, the cold nothingness creeping over me, breaking me down on the spiritual level like ice-cold water, like the black lake of Cloudsdale had. I couldn’t know what returning from that cold death felt like, for obvious reasons, but I felt as though I glimpsed it every time I drank from that flask of liquid sunlight. Just for a moment, as the fire flowed through me, and burned the death out of my body.

The chill of Changeling venom was similar to the creeping, all-encompassing cold of death, but slower, less thorough. It didn’t seek to remove from this world, only preserve me. It didn’t kill, not by itself, but it kept the victims docile, and stationary, until the changelings decided whether that target would live in a pod, or if the cold veil of death would finish the job that the venom had started.

My fire fought it just the same as it fought the cold darkness of death, and against the venom, it could just barely keep up, just barely outpace it. Enough to give me the faintest hint of control, while Tor’inx was distracted. The single, intact foreleg that I could still feel, and could still move, crept down my side.

It felt like I was tugging at the strings of a puppet, and I dragged my numb forehoof clumsily across my armor. It scraped over the resin of the floor and the metal plates that were meant to keep me safe, and then across the strange texture of the metal chainmail between those plates as I searched, blind, numb, for the flask. It was in my bag, and I had just barely enough control to tug at the drawstrings. Slowly and laboriously, I tried to fumble the mouth of the bag open.

My hoof fell into the yawning darkness of the bottomless bag, and hung in the nothingness. I had to think of the flask, but the venom was in my head, and it made my thoughts foggy. I was losing control of my hoof.

Please.

I just need a sip.

I don’t want to die in here.

Warmth bloomed against my frog, and I grasped that warmth as firmly as I could, before pulling my limp hoof back. Glass clinked against the resin, and it sounded so loud, I was sure that the rattle must have echoed through the whole hive. Tor’inx must have known what I was trying to do. He would try to stop me soon, I had just moments to act. But it was taking an eternity to drag the flask of sunlight merely into my vision, let alone to my lips.

My eyes were doing strange things, thanks to the venom in my blood, in my heart. Light dimmed as my body fell into stasis, and my limbs were forgotten, all except for that single forehoof, and the flickering Pyromancer’s grasp that held the flask. The colors of the hive distorted, and the edges of the walls and the buzzing changelings above twisted and spun, and it all hurt to look at them. But when I saw the flask, when my limp forehoof finally dragged it into my own vision like a lazy workhorse dragging a plow through the dirt, that made it all so very worth it.

The sunlight within roiled and spun, flowing and swirling inside the glass like whirlpools of fire. It churned like the stormy surface of an ocean, crashing against the internal walls in waves, and erupting upwards from the surface wildly. Explosions of light and fire shined through the glass as coronal maelstroms made strange arcs, like solar flares on a miniscule level. I’d never seen this before, but I’d never looked so deeply into the fire; it felt like I’d have gone blind, just as anypony would go blind from looking directly into the sun.

My mouth. I had to find my mouth. I had to understand my mouth, to raise the flask to my lips. Otherwise I’d only waste what little I had, as I poured it across the resin uselessly. I tore my eyes from the hypnotic sunspots shimmering and undulating within the flask, to the silvery cork, which even now, gleamed in the dim light of the hive. I pushed the cork closer, until I forced it into my eye directly. Then, down from there, as I dragged it across my muzzle.

I missed it the first time as my venom-numbed hoof learned the contours of my face, but the second time, I pushed the cork into my mouth, and used that contact to try and return feeling to my jaw. It was still numb, and I felt the heat more than any sort of contact, but I trusted my jaw to move like I told it. In the end, I think I nearly bit through the cork entirely, and what a problem that would have been, if my clumsiness had permanently sealed the bottle until I found a corkscrew. But I had a grip, and I pulled the flask away from my face until I felt it pop.

Warmth poured across the numb surface of my face, and I jammed the neck of the flask back into my mouth, until it was clogged with the flask and the cork for the same. If I still needed to breathe, I would have drowned with how the liquid sunlight filled my throat, and bubbled from my nose. I couldn’t swallow, I could barely force the liquid down my throat by shoving the flask deeper between my teeth, until feeling started to return to my body.

Liquid fire flowed through my muscles, so hot that it seared them, and still I couldn’t move, because the venom had frozen them solid. But the fire began to melt that icy chill away, and feeling spread outward from my lips and my belly, spreading through my body slowly. So slowly. Surely, Tor’inx had to see this happening, and was surely moving to stop it, and end me permanently.

Tor’inx. The changelings...both he and that changeling drone from before, they’d done something to me with their eyes. It was as though they’d left a little piece of their soul stabbed into my own, to make me behave. The drone from before, her little mental fang had lain dormant, until Tor’inx’s had joined it. Then they had both made me hesitate, froze my hoof when I needed it to strike.

Maybe Ocellus had done that too, without me realizing it. I’d looked into her eyes several times now. Maybe she wasn’t even aware she’d done it herself. I’d have to burn it all away, cleanse myself with my fire, until it consumed me. When I emerged from the ashes, born anew, I would know that I was purified of any control except that of my own.

The fire roared within my very soul, like an inferno at the heart of a furnace, and my veins carried the heat through my limbs as it burned away the venom, burned away the broken bones and torn muscles. I drew in a gurgling breath as the liquid sunlight filled my lungs, but I did not stop, as it suffused my very being. I turned my head and spat out the empty flask, and the silver cork as well, as fire danced across my lips.

I rolled to my hooves, like I’d never been sundered by Tor’inx. Like his fangs had never pierced my throat, as though I’d never died to begin with, however long ago my first death had happened. I was alive now. I was reinvigorated.

And there was to be a reckoning.

My eyes flicked across the drones buzzing around the ceiling, but I saw neither Ocellus nor Tor’inx up there. While I had been incapacitated, he’d chased her down and grounded her, and seemed to be mid-monologue at the far end of the cavern as he stood above her. I didn’t bother to pick up my sword; I wouldn’t need it.

He never saw me coming, but he might have felt the heat of my fire as it approached. He’d been turning his head, to look back at me, but I slammed into his side like a train crash before he even knew anything was wrong. I tackled him right off of Ocellus, and we fell to the ground together.

Tor’inx hit the ground first, and hadn’t even raised his hooves before I slammed mine down on his shoulder. One held his hoof in place, while the other grabbed him by the holes in that same leg, pulled, and twisted. I learned that trick from him, and just like when he had done it to me, I felt his leg crack as I yanked it out of the socket.

But I had bones, while he had an exoskeleton. Muscle and flesh and blue changeling blood squirted from the broken gaps in his chitin as it sheared through the soft flesh under the surface, but he could still move his leg. So I pulled harder.

Tor’inx screeched so loudly that it echoed through the hive, as I started to yank his foreleg free of his body. When it still didn’t come loose, I punched him in the jaw, and dove in like he had done to me, but I clamped my teeth around the bleeding muscles of his shoulder. I chewed, with my flat, broken teeth, meant for crushing and gnashing, and ground his chitin between my jaws as my mouth filled with blue changeling blood. It tasted like salt and like copper, and it dribbled down my chin as I ground through the muscles of Tor’inx’s shoulder, until I had chewed all the way through. There was a satisfying sucking noise, and I was reminded of pulling the leg from a sandcrab, as the limb shuddered and gushed blue blood. I threw it away, now that I was done with it, and realized that Tor’inx had clamped his own jaws into my shoulder in kind.

Now that I wasn’t focused on his leg, I could feel his fangs, stabbing deep into my flesh, injecting more cold venom, but the pure fire within boiled it to nothing as soon it entered my body. I grabbed his horn with my other hoof, and yanked his head away from my shoulder. His fangs were flexible, like a snake, or a spider, which was a pity. I wanted to feel them shatter as I twisted them out of my own flesh.

I’d have to settle for his horn.

I tried to slam his head down onto the resin, but he jerked himself free, and staggered away, tottering unsteadily on three hooves and a bleeding cavity in his shell. Green magic crackled up his horn, as he charged up a spell to kill me instead of his bare hooves.

I wasn’t a unicorn, but I could do magic too. He fired a missile of magic towards my chest, and I leaned to the side a split-second before it would have struck me. As I did, I felt fire coalesce in my hoof, hot hatred given form, and I slung the fireball at him in retaliation.

He dodged, but it didn’t need to hit him. It struck the floor between his hooves, and a burning wave of pressure exploded outwards, blasting him back and ruffling the colorless strands of my mane. The resin didn’t like to burn, but it melted with enough heat, and a scent like cooked rubber filled my nostrils as puddles of boiling resin hissed and spat angrily in the new crater. I strode forward as smoke poured from within, and Tor’inx leapt from that smoke, hoping to take me by surprise.

The underside of his body was charred white, like a boiled lobster. Heat had permanently changed the color of his chitin, and the surface was cracked, dribbling blue as he moved. He held my sword in his magic—he must have grabbed it while in the smoke—and he whipped the blade down in a crescent slash that was meant to separate my head from my body.

I threw my foreleg into the path of the blade, and only the armor and the fire within kept the sword from removing my foreleg, like I’d ripped away his. It still smashed into the metal, broke the chainmail underneath, and bit into my leg down to the bone. To say that it hurt was an understatement; I bit through my lip as a feral howl filled my throat. But I didn’t need that leg to tear Tor’inx apart.

I jerked my foreleg down, sword and all, and that wasn’t enough to dislodge Tor’inx’s magical grip. So I grabbed at the blade directly, felt it slice at my frog as a burning corona of pyromancy grasped the sharp edge itself, and I yanked it back up into his side. He let out a pained hiss as the blade—now turning red-hot from the heat of my fire—stabbed right through his chitin, and I forced it deeper, until his magic flickered out. Then I slammed him in the chin with the hoof he’d slashed, which knocked him back on his hinds, where he was unsteady.

The blade still protruded, stabbed a hoof-length into where the ribs would be on a pony, not far from his ruined, bleeding stump. Instead of tackling him, I grabbed the hilt of the sword, and watched it steam as blue blood dribbled down onto the hot metal. Then I forced it forward, towards myself, through his breast, as he desperately tried to stop me with his remaining foreleg.

The chitin across his barrel cracked like the shell of an egg, but did not split. Judging from his scream, it hurt, but he wasn’t finished yet. I twisted the blade, then yanked it back out suddenly, and watched as blue blood gushed from the wound and the cracks across his shell. Tor’inx seemed stunned from the pain; he might not have been totally conscious anymore, between the lost blood and the litany of wounds I’d carved across his body. He was only barely managing to stand.

My longsword was long ruined now, warped and eroded by the heat. Maybe a skilled blacksmith could have repaired the blade, and sharpened it properly. But I didn’t have the time. Now that it was no longer as a sword, it became a club, and I brought that blunted steel rod down into the chitin of Tor’inx’s shoulder, hard enough that the cooling red metal bent from the blow. Then again, as Tor’inx toppled to the ground, and now that he was immobile, I was free to pound the broken blade down on his body again and again and again.

The blade shattered after the fourth blow, then again not long after, and I was merely holding a jagged, broken hilt. Even then, I stabbed that broken hilt into his side, and felt his chitin crack again as fresh blood welled out. Without a weapon, I resorted to my armored hooves, and I slammed them down again and again on his broken body until his pulped insides started to ooze through the cracks in his exoskeleton, and he looked like nothing more than a smashed insect.

But he wasn’t dead yet. I could still feel fire within his corpse, and I knew I wouldn’t be done here until I took it, every last ember. I grabbed his jaw and pulled his mouth open, full of broken teeth, and grasped his fire with greedy, burning will. And then I pulled.

Tor’inx struggled one final time, and tried to fight me as I tore his soul out of his body. Maybe he recognized the feeling; this was what chagelings did, after all, so he must have been familiar. But I don’t think he ever expected to be the victim of such an attack, and so he had no way to fight it.

Everything that Tor’inx was, everything he ever knew or saw or said, it was all drawn across my own soul like the tide across a beach. There was too much; I knew I should have slowed down, should have paid attention. He must have known things that could help me, since he seemed to know so much about their “Ken a’ Kens.” But I didn’t care, and I could feel another changeling approaching, so I ignored it all, forced it down, and left him nothing more than a broken, bleeding husk in the belly of his own hive. The fire within me ate it all.

The changeling drew close, from behind, trying to get the drop on me. But I could feel their fire, and so I waited until they were too close to dodge away. Then I spun, snapping my hind hoof up and back. The blow landed true, and I felt the chitin of their cheek crack as they fell back, screaming. I glanced around me, waiting for more to approach. I would fight every damned bug in this hive if they stood between me and the exit.

None approached. I was disappointed; they were all hovering around the ceiling, and I could feel the fear radiate off them as they cowered, afraid to descend and face my fire. The changeling I’d struck down lay on the floor, sobbing; they weren’t a threat any more. I’d take their fire next.

They struggled as I drew close, and I pinned them down with a hoof as they babbled incoherently at me. They were weak, nothing like the changeling soldier I’d slain moments ago. Just a drone. I reached for her fire, and grasped it tightly—

“Hol’lee! Please! Stop!”

That sounded familiar. Enough that I hesitated, and the changeling under me shuddered as their fire twitched in their chest. I still held it tightly, and could tear it from their body with little more than a thought.

“P-please...stop…” The changeling sobbed, shaking. Why did their voice sound so familiar?

It was so close. I could almost remember. But the fire was too loud in my ears, pounding like my pulse. Waves crashed in my ears as I tried to listen, as I tried to slow down. Tried to recall where I’d heard that voice before.

The fire in the changeling’s chest slipped away as I forced my own fire to cool. It wasn’t so easy to grab, now that I was letting myself grow weak. Nothing would ever be so easy again. Already, I could feel the aches and pains of my Hollowed body returning, because they’d never left; the fire had just kept them at bay while the inferno raged. My leg burned, and I felt my black blood gush down my hoof, more fluid than I’d ever remembered it. My shoulder too; now that the flames weren’t protecting me, I felt the venom again, dulled, but still filling the wound, mixing with my blood.

“H-Hol’lee…?”

I’d heard that voice before. Where had I heard that voice before?

In an instant, reality snapped back into place, and I staggered back from Ocellus as if struck by lightning. I’d almost—to her! I’d almost taken her fire, killed her more thoroughly than Tor’inx or the ghosts above could have, because I’d forgotten about her!

I forced my eyes down, and looked at Ocellus on the resin floor, cowering. Cowering from me, because I’d nearly killed her. And she held a hoof pressed against her cracked cheek, where blue blood leaked out around her chitinous frog.

There was blue blood everywhere. She lay in a puddle of the stuff, and I felt it, warm and sticky around my hooves, cloying in my fur. I was absolutely coated in blue changeling blood, yet again, and this time I knew it was all because of my own vicious attacks. The last of the fish emerged from my throat, and I doubled over as I emptied my stomach at the thought of what I’d done, and what I’d almost done, the scene I’d left behind, and oh Celestia, the smell…

When I was finished emptying my stomach for good, I collapsed again, lacking the strength to stand. I instantly regretted that, because I fell into another puddle of blood, but I would have had to stagger a good distance away to fall onto resin that wasn’t thoroughly stained.

I don’t know how long I laid there, trying not to think about what I’d done. Eventually, Ocellus stood, blue blood dripping down her cheek, and she shook my shoulder with a shaking hoof. “H-Hol’lee? Get up. P-please.”

How could she ask that of me? Even after she’d seen what I’d done? After I’d come so close to ending her, too? She must have been scared out of her wits, and yet, she still shook my shoulder, and tried to get me on my hooves.

“Can’t carry Ti’see...not strong enough. Need save...w-world. Need...element, yes?”

She was dedicated to that idea. Even after everything I’d done, and everything I’d almost done, and even now that we’d invaded her hive and slain its protector...still, she wanted to help us ponies. It would have been admirable, if it wasn’t so stupid on her part.

I didn’t deserve whatever fragile trust she was granting to me now. But she was insistent, to the point of trying to haul me to my hooves. Soon, I realized that fighting her would take more effort than it would to merely stand, and follow. If Ocellus thought she needed me still, then that was her mistake to make. She began to lead us once more, and I dumbly staggered behind. We left a trail of dark blue footprints and spatters across the resin floor of the hive.

My eyes turned upwards, away from the viscera I’d torn from Tor’inx’s body in our battle. Back to the other changelings, where they continued to hover around the ceiling. Like big black bumblebees, huddling in fear. They were nothing like the patrols we’d dodged on the way in; I doubted they even knew how to fight.

Ocellus followed my eyes, and said something that was meant to calm me—something about how they were the Hive’s nurse caste? The specific words were lost beyond that. It was surprisingly hard to focus on anything in particular. She led me deeper into the hive, away from them and the dim light they huddled around, and Tor’inx’s broken, bleeding body. We passed under the little nook he had been resting in, when we first entered, and descended into the tunnel that he had stood guard over for...who knows how long.

The tunnel itself was surprisingly short; not much more than fifty body-lengths, and again,  bored through totally smooth resin. I almost didn’t believe this had once been part of the pony-made tunnels under Baltimare, it looked like it had been hewn from the rock itself before being coated with the quick-drying organic building material.

The room that we entered was dark; there were lights here, torches and braziers, held up by folds and pillars sculpted from that same resin. But every one of them had burned out long ago. There weren’t even any of the organic changeling lights to be found here—seemingly by design. The only light source was at the back of the room, where a large mass of glowing ovoids had been piled, in the deepest part of the hive.

In the middle of the room, I could see the silhouette of a large throne, carved from the same resin in intricate detail. The carvings themselves were impossible to make out in the dim light, but I could see the care and attention that had gone into crafting this grand throne. All around it were changelings, huddled as though in prayer, or bowing in submission.

Ocellus spoke, in the quietest of whispers. “Here...Ken sleeps. Qu-quiet...do not wake. Tor’inx was r-royal guard, but Ken...Ken trains guards. She eats those that f-fail her. Cannot be caught here.”

I nodded, and we silently shuffled into the room, sticking to one of the walls, hoping to avoid the throne entirely. I kept my eyes on it, watching for movement, but I could make out a tall shape sitting on the throne as we passed by. A massive silhouette, the size of an alicorn, and unmoving. For now.

It couldn’t last. A voice, surprisingly male like Tor’inx, echoed through the room just as we passed by. “What? Who-who trespasses the Ken’s nest? Och’alis? I smell...I smell you, and kinblood. What has happened?”

Ocellus swallowed, and motioned for me to keep going. She stepped closer to the throne, and approached it from the side. A shape that I had thought to be part of the throne shifted, and I saw the glint of eyes, but they didn’t seem to see us in the darkness. Ocellus bowed to the throne, but spoke to the shape. “Tor’aks, adv-visor to Ken. M-minor attack...ev-everything is alright now. M-more ponies await in tunnels above...sisters watch them now.”

The shape reached out to her, with a thin, withered leg. The holes in the chitin were so large that I could see right through the limb, and I pondered briefly how it was still so flexible with so little mass. It came to rest gently on her face, feeling across it, and it smeared the blood as “Tor’aks” blindly caressed her broken cheek. “Wounded...you are wounded. Others m-must be as well, so much kinblood I smell...disturb not our Ken a’ Ken, but take what you m-must. W-when she awakes, she w-will reward you for defending our hive, I’m sure…”

“H-how has...b-been?” Ocellus asked quietly. I reached the back of the room as she continued to distract the odd, withered changeling, and peered into the dim glow of the eggs...cocoons? The blurry shapes within were shaped like ponies, but it was hard to make out any features, through the resin shell and the fluid within the cocoons, that the ponies floated in. Perhaps that sustained them, fed them, and kept them alive and dreaming, while the Hive whittled from their souls over the decades. Or perhaps it was like the venom, and merely preserved them as they were. I had no intention of finding out for myself.

Tor’aks responded quietly, back in the center of the room. “Our Ken...still sleeps. I worry sometimes that she may sleep overlong...I do not know how much time we have hidden down here, from the ghosts above. Perhaps...perhaps they are weakened now, and she could banish them, when she awakes?”

As they spoke, I focused on the cocoons before me. Trixie had to be at or near the top of the pile, for there weren’t many, and Ocellus claimed they had only just captured her. I had to place my hooves onto the flexible resin of the cocoons, and push down, causing the flesh to bulge outwards as the ponies within came into focus. A mare gave me hope, but she was a pegasus. I saw a horn on another captive, but he was a stallion, and deeply Hollowed besides—barely more than a desiccated corpse. An earth pony of indeterminate gender...then a filly, barely older than six winters…

Raindrop’s wishes to raid this Hive, and rescue all these captives, echoed deafeningly loud in my ears. So many ponies...all lost down here, kept in cocoons to sleep for what might be millenia, and certainly for the rest of their lives. It hurt me, to look them in the face, and know that I couldn’t help them. No matter how much I wanted to do so, I knew that I could only barely carry Trixie out of here.

Of all ponies, it had to be Trixie I was rescuing. Not that filly, or any other pony in this pile of cocoons, who I knew to be more deserving of rescue. Would she even thank me? Or would she simply attack me on sight? If she did, and I had to slay her here, maybe I would cut open a second cocoon after all…

That thought brought me pause. Damn. I’d broken my sword, and left what remained back there...even if I went to get it, I was sure it was no longer in any condition to cut. I brushed my hoof across my broken and heat-scarred armor, to see if the edges of any of the plating was still sharp enough to cut the thick material, but I was not so lucky. Mostly it had been dented and bludgeoned. Yet again, my body seemed easier to fix than the armor that was meant to protect it.

I still had my bottomless bag...and within it, I realized a moment later, Zecora’s axe. I withdrew that weapon, the first that I’d been trained to use, and peered at the edge of the blade in the dim glow from the cocoons. Hopefully, it was sharp enough.

I found Trixie not long after; her hat was soaking in the cocoon along with her. Somehow, the changelings hadn’t taken it from her when they captured the cantankerous mare, nor the Element of Generosity—It was still clasped around her neck. Ocellus had mentioned that it was cursed, like the knife, so perhaps they’d been too afraid to take any of her belongings in case they were cursed as well? In any case, that made finding her easy, and I only hesitated for a long few seconds, considering how much I really wanted to save Trixie, before I brought the axe down onto the resin.

It didn’t cut cleanly, like I’d hoped. It made a nasty wound in the side of the cocoon, and glowing green fluid began to bleed from within, but the resin stood strong as the wet noise of the impact echoed through the room. Ocellus and Tor’aks both jumped at the sound, and Tor’aks twisted oddly, as though he was trying to look back at me. For some reason, he seemed immobile, unable to move away from the throne. “What…?”

There was no time. I brought the axe down in the same spot, and this time it carved through, only for the head to get wedged in the new crack I’d carved into the material. I had to grab it tightly, and brace myself in a strange way to get enough leverage to pull it free, and glowing green fluid gushed free, pooling around my hooves. For some reason, the smell reminded me of a midwife...foals and nursing. It smelled like amniotic fluid, but...off, in some way. As though mixed with honey, and a faint scent of poison.

Tor’aks began to grow more agitated, as I had to grab the axe head directly to laboriously saw through the resin, and widen the hole. “Och’alis! Don’t just stand there! What’s going on? I smell eggfluid, has one of the wounded cracked a cocoon? They take too much! Stop them!”

Ocellus seemed to be panicking, and her eyes glinted as they reflected the glow of the fluid, then turned back to Tor’aks. Her loyalty was being split in two, torn between the sleeping Queen and Equestria above, and she didn’t know how to handle it. She must have known this would come up; we couldn’t have avoided fighting the hive’s guardian before, nor waking Tor’aks here. Unless she really had been so naive to think that we could do all of this undetected?

I was a fool to volunteer for this, and to come with her. Gilda should have been here, she wouldn’t have hesitated. And that was all I could think, as I sawed—painfully slowly—through the resin. The changeling fluid within was beginning to get everywhere, all over my hooves, and it made my grip on the axe head and the cocoon itself slippery.

And then the cocoon yielded. Either I had sawed through too much of the flesh for it to maintain its shape, or I had cut some unseen support structure deep within, but the cocoon ripped open suddenly, and Trixie was flushed out with a wave of insectoid amniotic fluid. I was knocked to the ground, and coated in the gunk as I tried to scramble to my hooves, but it made the resin floor slippery. New light filled the room as the glowing fluid pooled outwards, and ran towards the throne through the carvings in the floor. 

“Och’alis! Stop them! You are Kenbrood, wake her!” Tor’aks shrieked in fear.

Ocellus had already made her choice, it seemed. “Sorry! So sorry, Tor’aks! Need save Element! Promise I return!” She shouted, voice trembling, as she spread her wings and buzzed over to help me stand. Tor’aks shook and tried to pull himself from the side of the throne, but to no avail, and as the glowing fluid illuminated more of the room, I saw why—he was bound to the throne by more resin, trapped against the side. Other changelings were as well, but they remained still, and there was one space on the opposite side of the throne to him that was completely vacant.

“Ken...brood?” I murmured in confusion, as Ocellus hauled me to my hooves. Any further questions were knocked from my mind, as Ocellus dragged Trixie towards me, and started trying to pick her up. I ducked low, and soon, Trixie had been tossed over my back like a sack of potatoes. Her head lolled over my shoulder, not even a hoof-width from my face, and she seemed to be starting to groggily stir. Ocelleus slapped Trixie’s waterlogged hat onto her head, where it seemed to stick as if glued in place by the glowing goop.

“Leave now! Before Ken aw-wakes!” Ocellus hissed, and I nodded. But first, I made sure to reach up to Trixie’s neck, and unclasp the Element. It disappeared into my bottomless bag, safely hidden from Trixie when she awoke. Zecora’s axe followed it inside, still coated in glowing amniotic fluid. Now, we just had to get out here in one piece.

I was slowed down significantly, with the weight of a waterlogged pony across my back, but we made haste as best we could. As Ocellus galloped past the throne once more, she whimpered out a quick “Sorry, m-my Ken...”

I paused as I passed by the throne for myself, and came to a clumsy stop. With the glowing amniotic fluid trickling through the resin carvings in the floor, and with how both I and Trixie were coated in it, I could see the throne much more clearly. The imposing, princess-sized figure seated there was not what I was expecting.

She was clearly dead, and had been dead for a very long time. She sat, with her forelegs curled into her chest, and her eyes—no, her entire skull, and the space where her soft midsection should have been—were all empty. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anything left of her except her chitinous shell, just like the other changelings. All that was left of the Ken of Kens was a long-dead husk, bound to a throne.

And still, Tor’aks beseeched her corpse for help. I saw his eyes, as I turned and followed Ocellus towards the exit; even for changelings, his simple eyes were dull and glassy, almost milky green. He was blind. “Ken a Kens! Betrayal! Traitors, in our hive! Wake up! Like you promised! Help us repel the invaders, protect the eggs! Please!”

He kept calling as we fled the Queen’s nest, her grand throne room. Soon, the other changelings would return. There was no way that our attack had gone unnoticed now, and the closer we were to the surface when they returned to the hive and found the Queen’s protector dead, the more time we’d have to flee. I only paused one last time in the antechamber to retrieve the emptied flask of sunlight once more, and I re-corked it before dropping it back in my bottomless bag. It was a good thing I did, too; I couldn’t stomach the thought of carelessly leaving that here.


*	*	*


Trixie started to wake up shortly after we left the hive proper, but we’d a long time yet before we escaped their territory. The walls were a dancing pattern of changeling resin, as we galloped down the tunnels of Baltimare, glowing like green fireflies. The other changelings within the hive itself had kept their distance as we ran past them, and though they might have been giving chase or watching us as we left, none attacked. I think they were afraid of us—afraid of me—after seeing what I’d done to Tor’inx. Blue changeling blood still soaked my body, and left smeared hoofprints in my wake.

Good. Maybe they should be afraid. It would keep us safe, until we put some distance between ourselves and the evidence left below.

When Trixie was conscious enough to speak, she indicated as such by making a whining noise, and clumsily wiping her eyes with a goop-stained hoof. “Whuh...why am I wet…? Starlight...? Come back, please, where’d you go…?”

“Shush!” I hissed up at her. As though her groans of pain and confusion would hinder our stealth more than the glowing fluid with which we were soaked through.

“Don’t shush me, you nag...where’s Starlight? She...she was right here, in our hammock...is this  a pony-napping? You’ve drugged me, haven’t you?”

“We’re r-rescuing you, Trixie! You and your...your st-stupid ego and the stupid element that you st-stole!” I snarled back up at her.

“Element…?” She mumbled drunkenly. “Element of what…? Unless you mean...that was..so long ago, before Starlight, that can’t be right…”

After a moment, Trixie groped at her own throat, searching for the necklace. “You...you took it! That was mine, I earned it...had to fight an army of skeletons for it, give it back…”

“Trixie. No you d-didn’t, I was there, r-remember?”

“You were...? Who are…?” She continued to mumble to herself. After a moment, she flinched, as though struck. “The...Hollow? You came back for revenge, kidnapped Trixie? Tracked her all the way to...where did I...you…”

She trailed off again as she wiped at her eyes, but her hooves were still as sluggish as her mind. Mostly she just smeared more glowing gunk across her face, and seemed confused at the taste in her mouth. She started to drool on my shoulder as she pondered, and we galloped onwards.

It was good that my focus left her a second later, because that was when we ran headlong into a changeling patrol once more. They had been buzzing down the tunnel back towards the hive, either to report back or to serve as reinforcements; it didn’t matter. We were intruders deep within their nest, covered in precious fluids from their food stores. They only paused for a split second, before they bared their fangs and dove towards us.

Ocellus let out a pained wail as she fired a volley of pitiful magic missiles down the tunnel. Her aim was inaccurate, and in any other situation they would have been trivial to dodge. But the tight tunnel made that extremely difficult, and the changelings had to halt their advance to avoid the glowing darts. One changeling who had tried to move faster, and dodge through the fire, only ended up being struick. He spasmed and tumbled to the floor, hissing in pain, but still very much alive.

I had a pony on my back, and no weapon to speak of; to drop Trixie and draw the slippery handle of Zecora’s axe from my bag would take too long. No, it was better to use my weight and mass to my advantage, and I charged forward with Ocellus behind, galloping headlong towards the halted patrol. Two of them leveled their own horns, either to charge spells of their own or just to impale me upon their jagged lengths, but I lowered my head as far as I could without exposing Trixie, and slammed right into them anyways.

I felt a horn snap as it was driven against steel, and the other changeling was smashed in the muzzle by my armored shoulder, spattering me with more blue blood. I kept charging as though they weren’t even there, and my steel-clad hooves stomped down on chitin as I galloped, trampling one of them underneath as I passed.

More horns ignited around me as I stumbled over the changeling under my hooves, and my momentum was lost. One changeling buzzed overhead—probably Ocellus, since she didn’t seem to be stopping as she continued the way we’d been going—but the others were all around me. I could slam myself into one of them before the other three blasted me with whatever spells they were preparing, but I could never get all three of them.

Instead, I snapped my eyes closed and called upon my pyromancy once more. What was meant to be a simple combustion spell, a flash to disorient them and buy me time, became tainted by fear and hate. I heard hissing and a yelp of pain from atop my back, as fire rolled over me and filled the tunnel. My armor turned hot against my flesh, and Trixie began to struggle, throwing me off balance.

I snapped my eyes open to look around, and found that the spell had worked too well. The resin coating the floor was smoldering, as was any bits of exposed, colorless fur I had remaining. The changelings around me reeled, blinded by the light and heat of the flash, and as they moved, I saw inverted shadows on the walls behind them. I’d scorched the bricks, except in those places, and burnt the silhouette of the changelings permanently on this tunnel’s walls.

Even that wasn’t enough to dissuade them, however. Hissing in pain and anger, they leapt blindly at me once more, and I had to duck out of reach as I continued my mad gallop down the tunnel. They pursued, stumbling and skittering, as I ran to follow Ocellus again.

Trixie seemed more awake now, and the heat of the blast had dried the fluid coating us both, caking it into a hard, crunching layer that flaked off with every step. “That was—those were changelings!” She whined, confused and blinking on my back. Then she caught sight of Ocellus. “Watch out!”

“Not her!” I barked. “She’s our g-guide!”

“What?” That can’t have helped her, considering how confused she was already. Trixie shook her head, but didn’t blast Ocellus—instead, she turned her head back the way we’d come, and saw the blinded changelings giving chase. “They’re still following us!”

“We know!” Both Ocellus and I barked.

Trixie screwed up her eyes, and a point of light sluggishly formed at the tip of her horn. “Did they…there was...Twilight Sparkle, but…but not…”

“Captured!” Ocellus hissed back at her. Apparently she wanted to try and explain the situation while we were galloping. “Sisters captured Ti’see, captured you. We save you! Save Harmonic Element! Save world!” I noticed she left out her direct role in Trixie’s capture—not that I blamed her. That was too much information for Trixie right now.

“Wha…” Trixie blinked at the changeling drone dumbly for a second. “I...you sound really familiar…”

“You, teacher! School, under Ken Ti’lit! Was student there, Och’alis!”

“You...that’s not how their names are pronounced, why are you saying them like that...?”

“They’re g-gaining!” I groaned, glancing back at our pursuers. My legs and lungs were beginning to burn. So much running, I’d been doing so much running my entire unlife, and I was still really bad at it before I had been carrying another pony on my back…

“Ugh, rutting—why does my head hurt, why‘s my horn feel...clogged…?” Trixie groaned again, wiping the crusted fluid from her forehead. The sparks at the tip started to grow, and after a second, they began to glow brighter and brighter. Trixie blinked at her own horn in abject confusion, before mumbling to herself, “If it’s working, why is it so numb…? How much power do I need to feed into this stupid—”

Her whole body jerked on my back as the point of light leapt from the tip of her horn, and fired like a firework rocket into the ceiling of the tunnel above us. I was instantly deafened by a world-shattering explosion of lights and colors and sound, and it was all too much—I had to focus on my hooves, and the tunnel underneath them, and the burning in my lungs and my chest.

The tunnel rumbled, and I was tackled from the side. The three of us fell to the floor as a wave of dust and splatters of mud—stars, yet again I hoped it was mud—washed over us. After a few seconds of vibrations, my hearing and vision began to return, and I lifted my aching head from the bricks it had been smacked against.

The tunnel behind us hadn’t entirely collapsed, but the ceiling had definitely fallen in, and a pile of rubble at least partially blocked the path behind us. Several pipes and wires had burst or been torn, showering the pile with water, sparks, and steam. And even then, one of the bricks at the top shifted, and a changeling hoof pushed through, already trying to rip apart the pile and make a path through for the others.

It bought us some time, which we used to start galloping again and put more distance between ourselves and the changeling hive, but even that collapse wouldn’t stop them for long.


*	*	*


Ocellus had the lead, and she knew the tunnels under Baltimare by heart. I don’t know why, but I was expecting to emerge from the same tunnel where we’d first diverged from the group. Instead, she clearly decided that all subtlety was to be abandoned, and we emerged into a massive cistern littered with the black, chitinous bodies of the dead. A stone figure stood in the middle of it all, and I thought it an odd place for a statue, until I realized it was Maud, her stone armor spattered with gore. She was waiting, still as a coiled spring, for the next challenger to leap out at her.

Ocellus dodged an arrow that just barely missed her by a hair, and she leapt for cover behind a concrete office that was labeled “Flow Control Station 12W.” I continued forward into the room, taking it all in, as Ocellus yelled as loud as she could in her buzzing voice, “Friend! We are friends! Have Ti’see!”

“Scat!” Gilda swore, and dropped down a few leg-lengths to see us clearly. “You got her? Let’s get the buck outta here then!” She and Raindrops had both been hovering near the ceiling, where one of the larger grates allowed natural cloudy sunlight and wet rain in. That made them harder to see and to target, while allowing them to see the entire room. It was clever, but it only worked for winged creatures, and I couldn’t see any spots of color amongst the scattered piles of black bodies, aside from all the blue blood running down the channels…

Gilda and Raindrops both swooped down to cover us from above, as Ocellus took wing and buzzed towards the largest tunnel out. Gilda had her bow out, and she spiraled and dove to avoid blasts of green magic from the dark corners of the room while matching them, shot for shot, with an arrow each. Raindrops focused on the changelings that attacked directly, and dove down to slam her hinds into a changeling’s spine with a horrific crunch, before knocking another one senseless with a brutal-sounding right hook. Maud rolled Avalanche onto her back, and the floor shook as she silently galloped alongside us. They were all covered in blood, mostly the blue blood of the changelings, but their bodies were marked with several wounds of their own. One of Gilda’s eyes was clenched shut, and Raindrops had a variety of slices across her forehooves where her armor had been ripped away, and the chainmail hung loosely. Only Maud seemed to have avoided injury, thanks to her unbreakable armor.

“Wh-where’s Roma, and P-Posey—?” I asked, between gasps of air.

The look of pain on Raindrop’s face would have answered the question by itself, but GIlda confirmed it. “Whatever you did in there, it set them all off! Got hit from multiple sides by three different patrols, and we lost Posey too fast. Roma fought for a few minutes, but they overwhelmed her too, and we had to retreat to the ceiling.”

“W-what if they’re—”

“Then they’re Hollow! Screw it, we have bigger problems right this second!”

Two more, gone. No wonder Raindrops looked so miserable. It was a minor miracle the three of them were still alive to greet us. Maybe if we’d moved faster, or been just a little bit more quiet…I couldn’t think about that, in that moment. We left the cistern behind, and consigned the bodies within to whatever fate awaited them.

Most of the changelings faltered there, maybe because they saw how many of them had fallen, or perhaps because they thought the immediate threat was retreating. Only a patrol or two kept up the chase, firing magic at us as we fled, but that was enough that we knew we couldn’t afford to stop.

The bright light of the exit loomed, too bright to see outside after hours spent within the dark tunnels, and we pushed ourselves harder. One final effort was all that was needed, so long as they didn’t follow us outside of the tunnels. Until Ocellus gasped loudly enough that we could all hear it, and froze in place at the boundary, where she’d laid her wards.

“Why’d you stop, they’re still following us—” Raindrops tiredly groaned, but the question was answered as the rest of us saw what awaited us outside.

The Banshee, Sweetie Belle, stood only a few paces from the wards. Her foreleg had begun to regenerate, leaving her with a misty stump that terminated at her knee. Her wings were spread in full pegasus battle-stance, and her song, slow and patient and powerful, echoed through the tunnel. Her eyes were cold and hostile as she looked at our group, and the glowing eyes of the changelings in the tunnel behind us. And she said nothing; she merely waited outside, for either we would emerge into the open space where she could rip us limb from limb, or she could continue to wait until the changelings did her work for her.
> 41 - Sweetie Belle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

If losing her leg affected the Banshee in any permanent way, then she didn’t let us see it. The stump oozed wisps of mist, and it slowly seemed to be reforming, though it would take a long time to be fully restored. Longer than the time we had remaining, I was sure.

The Banshee stood before us; the changelings, hungry and maddened, snarled behind our backs from the darkness of the tunnel. Maybe we could fight the changelings, but more would replace those we slew, while we couldn’t fight the Banshee. Not without that cursed knife, or some form of cold iron.

But I had another item on me that was meant to be cursed—Rarity’s Element of Generosity. Ocellus had said it hungered for souls, like the knife had, though it hadn’t felt like the knife had. So either she was wrong, or it was different in some way, or...I had no way of knowing. But it was all I had. And it was fitting that of all ponies, Rarity’s Element of Harmony should be reclaimed by her sister.

I couldn’t reach into my bag with Trixie on my back, and I wouldn’t want to carry her out into my fight anyways. I kneeled, and Trixie slid off my back with a startled yelp that brought all eyes to me. Gilda raised her remaining eyebrow at me. “Holly? What’s your plan?”

“D-distract her. I’m g-going to distract her.” I growled. If I was to die here...then so be it. At least the Element wouldn’t be lost in the bottomless darkness of my bag. Maybe I’d even distract the Banshee enough that the others could get away, report what had happened here. Another group, maybe a better-prepared group, could follow in our hoofsteps. They could finish what I could not, they could slay the Banshee and take the Element of Generosity back to Princess Celestia in my stead.

I hoped that Ocellus didn’t tell her what I’d done down in the hive. What horrors I’d wrought upon her siblings, and the trail of bodies and blood I’d left behind. But it was Ocellus’ hive, and so it was her grievances; it was her decision how I should be remembered.

But it would be better that I was stopped here. Before I did it all again.

I drew the Element from my bag, and listened to the clasps rattle against each other as I looked at it one last time. At the black gem, set into that tarnished gold. It had been purple before, a bright purple, before Trixie stole the soul from within. That must have been Rarity’s soul, but only Trixie would know for sure. I didn’t have the time left to ask her.

The burning eyes of the Banshee locked onto my own as I stepped over the threshold of the door. While I couldn’t see the wards, Ocellus had described them as covering the door, and I could see where the thin mist that flowed across the ground came to a hard stop. The Banshee watched me, unmoving, waiting for my inevitable trickery. She was smart, and patient, and waited for me to make the first move.

What if I just rushed at her with it? Would throwing it at her, through her body, be enough to consume her like the knife had? Did it need to be worn, for the power within to be invoked? Was it a spell I had to practice to learn, or one that required others to activate?

I had so many questions, and they all went silent as the Banshee’s gaze drifted to my hoof. The embers of her eyes went wide in an instant, and I had no time to react before the mist under my hooves leapt upwards over my body. I was consumed by the mist like I was being submerged in it, and it coalesced in my hoof, under the golden necklace.

The Banshee flexed the stump of her leg as though her hoof had never been taken, and the mist that had ensnared me pulled my body forward to her, instead of waiting for me to move. My hooves slid over the ground like slick ice, and I couldn’t even struggle against it. I heard Raindrops gasp my name as I was pulled away from them, and I hoped they didn’t follow me out. Not yet, not until I truly had a monopoly on the Banshee’s attention.

The Banshee’s song became quiet as I slid to a stop before her. Slowly, the lonely heartsong wound down to a close, as she peered at the necklace before her. Her remaining hoof lifted, shaking, from the stone lot in which we stood, and she brought it to my own. She touched the necklace, and the black gem itself, and then slowly began to caress it, as if unsure it was real.

After a few moments of silence, she stopped, and raised her own hoof to look at it instead. She stared at the ghostly appendage as though seeing it for the first time, and though it was hard to tell, with features made of mist...I think her expression turned remorseful.

She looked down at me, before she raised her hoof to the gem once more. She hummed once more—one last song, a few bars of a tune I could never have recognized—and then I felt my hoof grow hot with the fire of a soul, refilling the gem. But something was wrong, something was different, I felt the fire go through the gem, and into my own soul—


*	*	*


Power. I held so much power in every fragment of my being. Every hair, every feather, every bit of flesh and bone and horn. My body burned with power that I could barely contain, that it felt as though was straining to escape. But not yet.

The flight up to Cloudsdale wasn’t long, but I had never gotten used to flying. The wings still felt unnatural, and the way my bones and muscles had been changed to include them had been too sudden; I’d been granted wings, but I had to develop the instincts to fly by myself, over the last decade. I ended my all-too-awkward flight by landing atop the pad of the Cloudsdale Weather Factory, where a young colt gasped and snapped to attention. “Wha—Lady Rarity?”

I didn’t know his name, but I wasn’t surprised that he knew mine. I’d spent a lifetime cultivating that reputation, and I was proud that it was a name on everypony’s lips, even now. “Indeed so, darling. Apologies for dropping in so rudely like this; Princess Twilight wanted to inspect a specific part of the facility, but she couldn’t come for herself.”

His eyes went even wider, somehow. “It’s no trouble at all—it’s a pretty quiet day—but she needs an inspection done? Does she think something's wrong?”

I chuckled politely. “She’s always worried that something’s wrong, the poor dear. I’ll only need a few minutes of your time to make sure everything’s in working order. The formal request should be drafted and brought up by a courier in only an hour or so, if you don’t mind waiting?”

He looked over the edge of the building incredulously, down at the Canterhorn range, far below. “An hour? You came up here—I couldn’t leave you waiting for an hour!”

“Really, it’s no trouble at all!” Tilt of the head, gentle wave of the hoof, bat of the eyelashes…

“Nah, miss, you’re a hero! My mother served under you in the war, you kept her alive! I can’t leave you waiting here!” He turned around, and pulled a brass key out from under his safety vest. “Especially not for a minor inspection. I’ll walk you through the place, even!”

“Well, if you’re so sure,” I said, with a gentle tittering laugh that was playfully conspiratorial. “I’ll just fill out the paperwork when it arrives, so I don’t have to do the inspection then—I’m sure Twilight won't mind, so long as it’s done properly. You said your mother served in my division? What’s her name?”

“Flight Captain Hyacinth Dawn! You saved her life, and the life of her squad during the battle of Cobalt Ridge. She tells that story all the time!”

Cobalt Ridge was an ugly fight. Three squadrons had been turned to char before we even had a hoof-hold in the area, and it seemed like the drakes would never stop coming out of that tunnel. Eventually we had to collapse the whole thing, and trap them inside. They’d chew their way out through the rocks eventually—or at least, that was what we told ourselves, and what we wrote down in the after-action reports. None of us knew if it was true. And I couldn’t remember any faces from that battle...nor did I want to do so, after we counted all of the wounded.

“Flight Captain Dawn...now I remember, yes! She helped turn the tide of that fight, just when things seemed like they might get hairy!”

The Weatherworker pranced happily as we moved down the hallway, and I used the chance to look around the building. This all seemed to be support structures and offices, while the factory itself was below us. I remembered, only vaguely, my last visit to this building, and that had been a very long time ago. My wings hadn’t been quite so permanent then, but Rainbow Dash was still so happy to show us around the factory on that guided tour. The building had a very unique “industrial Pegasopolis” aesthetic, though that was getting lost over time, it seemed; lots of pillars and facades had been aggressively torn out to make room for the newer machinery, and the cables and pipes required to feed water and lightning into that machinery. That was a shame—I’d always liked those classical designs, and how they curved and swirled fancifully, unbound by gravity or the weight of stone, like Old Unicornia construction always had been.

The factory itself was sparsely populated; I’d come here on a local holiday. Commander Hurricane’s birthday, or was it the founding of Cloudsdale? Something like that. To me, it mostly meant that the factory was running with a skeleton crew, and the ponies working now weren’t as stringent about the rules as they normally would be. Instead of stopping us, or asking questions, they mostly bowed and stepped aside, since they assumed I was supposed to be here. The fewer ponies that could potentially get in my way, that could potentially stop me, the better.

I couldn’t afford to be stopped now. If I was, then I’d never get this chance again, or at least not for a very, very long time. And by then it would be too late.

I moved through the factory like a sleepwalker. Faces blurred past me; I only focused on the colt I was following behind, as we paused at the stations. I glanced at charts that I didn’t understand, made nonsense notes on a notepad I’d brought with me, and made indistinct humming noises as I nodded. And so we continued onwards, until we crossed a catwalk that passed over the main mixing room, near the top floor of the factory once more.

“One of the last steps we do for the day is a visual inspection of the mixing equipment—you can see it down there, protected by a shield. The feed tubes fill it with aetheric water, which is mixed up inside there, forming raw fog for the rest of the factory to work with. Up until a few years ago, it was always a really slow process, but the expanded weather control area around Equestria led to cloud shortages, so we had to upgrade. Now, the machine spins at upwards of six-hundred rotations per minute, which is really cool to watch!”

I nodded, as I propped my legs atop the railing and looked down at the whirling mixer below us. Yes, that would do nicely. I turned to the colt. “I’ll need to do a scan of the mixer while it’s in operation, but the shield might distort my readings. Can you shut that off for a few seconds?”

For the first time since my arrival, the weatherworker looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Uh. I mean...I can, but...I really shouldn’t. It’s dangerous, super dangerous. They put in the shield after a pony got drunk and fell in, and—” he swallowed. “I’d prefer not to, if that’s okay?”

Bat the eyelashes. Tilt head, smile gently. “Please? We’re almost done here, and I’d hate to keep Twilight waiting. And she’s just going to ask the same thing.”

He shifted around uncomfortably on his hooves. In a moment of regret, I realized I’d never gotten his name. That was a shame, but it didn’t matter now. “Well...I...alright, but just for a minute, okay? No longer, I don’t wanna get fired. I don’t even wanna think about if…” He trailed off, and shuddered. “I’ll hit the switch. Go ahead when the shield shuts off, alright?”

The colt hesitantly moved to a large switch, locked under a glass cover, which he unlocked with that key around his neck. He barked “Hey! Maintenance check!” down the hallway, presumably towards his supervisor, and pulled the switch.

There was an echoing clack as the mechanical switch locked into position, and a bell began to ring as the dome of white energy that had covered the mixer shimmered. After a moment, the power was cut, and the shield oscillated one final time before collapsing. Now I could see the blades of the mixer, unobscured, as they whirled through the fog blow me. They spun faster than the eye could track, as they churned the water below into fog.

This was it. I had to do this. After all I’d done, all I’d seen, I didn’t deserve the gift I’d been given. Not while other ponies around me withered and died. So I’d give it back, in the only way that I knew. The only way that I’d learned, when we fought the dragons. When we watched each other die, I saw what it did to the five of us, and how we returned to life, as if we’d never been slain. Everypony else deserved that power, instead of me.

I swallowed, and looked over at the colt, one last time. I think he knew. Maybe because my horn wasn’t glowing, maybe because of how I’d been looking down at those swirling blades. But he couldn’t move fast enough, couldn’t flip the shield back on, before I leapt over the railing.

As I plunged into the mixer, my last thoughts were of Sweetie Belle. I was so proud of my sister. And I hoped she’d use my final gift well, when I didn’t deserve it myself.

And then there was only pain and screaming machinery.


*	*	*


f r a g m e n t e d

d i s s o l u t i o n

e m b e r s

s c a t t e r e d

t o 

w i n d


*	*	*


Everywhere, and nowhere, simultaneously.

There was no sense of self. No sense of being. No cohesion. No unity.

Something was wrong, but I couldn’t even begin to understand that I should understand as such. I couldn’t even understand what was wrong, what needed to be fixed.

I couldn’t think while I was broken.

I had to fix myself. I had to pull myself back together.

I had to gather myself. Then I could fix what went wrong.


*	*	*


I felt everything through the fragments of my being. I was everywhere and nowhere. I covered this land, clouded the air with my essence, from coast to coast and desert to mountaintop. But out there I was scattered.

There was a place, in the center of this world. Somewhere I was strongest, where many of my fragments were drawn to me once more. Like metal filings, drifting towards a magnet. It was an enclosed space, and I was not alone there, but the others were just as fragmented as I was. They mixed with me, as I mixed with them.

In this space, we collected ourselves, and many became fewer, as my core became physical.


*	*	*


It was a slow process. My fragments moved erratically, in ways I couldn’t understand. But as more came together, I was able to connect thoughts together once more. I’d never regain all that had been scattered to the winds. They’d been lost/taken/stolen/gifted.

But I could move. I could find more fragments of myself. I could think.

It wasn’t life. But it was something akin to it.


*	*	*


Sometimes, there was other movement around me.

Small figures, like ants, wandering across my flesh. They itched, but I didn’t have the strength to shrug them away. And within them, I felt fragments of myself.

So close, yet so far. But I couldn’t take it; couldn’t steal back that which I had gifted to them.

So instead, I sang to them, as best I could remember.


*	*	*


There was movement, once more, and whatever approached came closer to the core of my being than any had, ever before. I had to pull myself closer. I had to compress my being further, so that I had enough focus to observe them.

Eyes. I required eyes to see what was before me. And ears, to hear the vibrations. I could decipher their meaning, but first, I needed to know the shape of their speech.

“—there’s so many dang bones…” The voice was young, female. And speaking quietly, in awe, or perhaps absolute terror.

“I know. I see them too. I’m trying not to think about that.”

“And ya’ll are sure this is where you heard that singing?”

“Apple Bloom, I’m very sure. I can still hear her now.”

The two figures jumped backwards as I began to coalesce my being into a unified form, and they both let out a yelp of fear. The lighter one, a young mare—color, colors and hues and shades were important, but I didn't recall why—and her coat had no color. Even here, in my lightless lair—lair felt both accurate and inaccurate, for some reason I couldn't understand—her coat gleamed bright white, and her horn emitted a glow that outshone even that.

No magic struck me; instead, I heard a song. Like me, it seemed to come from both everywhere and nowhere, but only thin this room. My being beyond the walls heard nothing. So I focused my attention upon the room, upon the mare in front of me, and the song all around us, which seemed familiar, somehow…

It wasn’t my song, but it was so very close, and tantalizingly familiar. I felt my soul settle as I calmed, and my being relaxed. My core slumped forward, towards the young mare, but I was not afraid of her.

A hoof, so tiny, touched the surface of my being. And the song we sang together asked me to show her all that I was. Layers of dust and bone and power flaked away, and split at her touch, until there was only a soft core within. Blind, deaf, unknowing, unaware.

She touched something, some part of my core of which even I was unaware. And I felt as though I could finally rest, as my song faded, and her song lulled me to sleep.


*	*	*


I gasped, as I jerked my hoof backwards from the gem, as though it had bitten me. Apple Bloom was still watching the titanic remains of the creature, that terrifying alicorn made of bones, but she glanced over at my sudden movement. “Sweetie! Ya okay?”

I didn’t think I would ever be okay again. I’d seen...I’d seen Rarity, or I’d...I’d been Rarity. I saw my sister...I saw her throw herself into some kind of mixing vat, through her own eyes. I wasn’t prepared to see that—no little sister ever could be.

Apple Bloom’s hoof shook my shoulder, and I started in surprise. “Sweetie! Ya in there?”

“I...yes, I…” I looked back up at the equine shape, within the powdery mass of bone before us, and Apple Bloom’s eyes followed mine.

She saw the necklace, and the gem set within. It had been a bright purple only moments ago, but now it had turned onyx-black. What had I done, exactly? “Sweets? Ain’t that…”

I nodded.

Her eyes wandered across the dusty form of the mare once more. “Then...d’ya think…”

I nodded again, as I started to choke up. Tears came easily, though I tried to fight them back. The words were hard to say, but I tried to fight through the grief, and forced myself to say her name. “I think...that’s Rarity. Or...it was Rarity.”

“W-was…?” Apple Bloom murmured, before looking back at me. “Sweetie, Ah don’t understand…”

“I don’t think I do either…” I whispered, as I sniffled. “I saw...I think she’s...everywhere? I think...I think she’s the fog.”

Apple Bloom blinked at me. “Wha? Like she’s makin’ ‘em?”

“No, I…” I swallowed. My throat was so dry, and we were coated in bone dust from how the beast had shifted. It had kicked so much into the air when it rose from the carpet of bones, and I could feel my tears carving trails down my cheeks. “I think she is the fog, Apple Bloom. She did…something in Cloudsdale. Destroyed herself. Scattered herself across Equestria.”

“W-what? But then...how is she here? She’s...she’s right here in front of us, ain’t she?” Apple Bloom still didn’t understand. I reached out again, to touch the gem, but my hoof drifted over Rarity’s breast, and that seemed to be too much. Apple Bloom hauled me back with a yelp, as Rarity’s body turned to powder under my hoof, glowing powder that filled the air and dissolved into nothingness. It was a good thing I was pulled away, because the beast’s body followed soon after, and it collapsed into very real bones and dust, which would have crushed us both if we’d stayed there.

As we stood there, coughing bone dust from our lungs once again, Apple Bloom shook her head. “That-that’s crazy! All’a this is crazy! The demons, the dead ponies gettin’ back up, the sun...none a’ this is real!”

I didn’t argue with her. I couldn’t stop staring at the slumped pile of bones that had been alive, or some mockery of life, only moments ago. “She called it a gift. To...to me. To us. To everypony.”

That got Apple Bloom’s attention. “A gift?”

“She remembered the war...the terrible things she’d done. She never told me those stories—I don’t think she ever told anypony those stories. She wanted to forget them, but...she couldn’t help but remember them.” I looked down at the bones beneath our hooves. How deep did they go? “That...that thing that Princess Twilight did. When she made them all princesses, sorta. Rarity loved that at first, but...what I saw...she hated it. She felt like she didn’t deserve it.”

Apple Bloom was silent, for a long few seconds. When she finally spoke, her voice was trembling. “Ah...Ah saw Applejack get hurt a while back. Really badly hurt. Somepony knocked a brick off the wall a’ the fort by accident, and it hit her in the head. There was b-blood everywhere. But a minute later, she...she got up like nothin’ ever happened.”

“She didn’t die…” I murmured quietly. “Like...how we can’t die now?”

Apple Bloom nodded. “Yeah. But...faster. Way faster. Takes us moons or seasons to heal still, it feels like. Like ponies normally heal. But Applejack...her head broke, Sweetie belle.” She shuddered. “Ain’t...ain’t never told anypony that. Thought I was goin’ crazy...goin’ Hollow.”

“If Rarity wanted everypony to live forever, instead of her…” My voice cracked, and I couldn’t complete the sentence. I remembered those whirling blades inside the machine, and I couldn’t think of anything else.

When I regained my senses, Apple Bloom was hugging me, but I didn’t know if it was for my sake, or her own. Maybe it was both. After a moment, she sniffled and wiped her muzzle. “M-maybe we been lookin’ at this ‘curse’ all wrong, ya know?”

I stared at her, confused, for a long few moments.

She grinned, nervously. There was a look in her eyes, like after she’d been working the farm all day, or more recently, when Applejack had her running errands back and forth without rest for what must have been days at a time. It was some mix of exhaustion, and that little bit of madness that comes when you’re too tired for the world to make sense any more. “If...if this is a gift, then we can use this. You did something—she listened to you when you sang. If we know we can’t die anymore, and you can work the magic like those ponies down in the valley below were doin’...Sweetie Belle, we could win against the demons with that kinda knowledge.”

“Fight the…” I trailed off. Apple Bloom wasn’t wrong, but...this was a lot of responsibility. A lot to try and understand all at once. And I still couldn’t breathe in here, not with all the bone dust filling the air. “M-maybe...I don’t know. I can’t...I need fresh air, it’s hard to think in here.”

“Was just about to say the same thing.” Apple Bloom helped me stand, and we began the long journey through the darkness back towards the door. As we walked, I thought once more of the Element of Generosity her dusty form had been wearing.

She hated that necklace, because she’d had to wear it every day in the war. But she never told me why she had to do that, or what it did. That was another question I could never ask her, now.


*	*	*


I looked out over the...well, it wasn’t a classroom. It was a creaking ruin of cloudstone, the remains of what had once been a classroom, before Cloudsdale fell out of the sky. We’d pushed the chairs and desks to the side—after the lesson, we’d break the desks into firewood, while we melted down the metal parts into rudimentary tools—and most of us sat in the newly-cleared space in the middle of the room. Apple Bloom still looked nervous, and she stood near the door just in case, but as I looked around the curious faces all around me, I knew her fears were unwarranted.

I was reminded of my own tutoring under Twilight. It felt like a lifetime ago, but I suspected it was several lifetimes ago. It was hard to tell, nowadays, without the rise and setting of the sun. She’d be proud of me someday, I knew, taking on students of my own. It wasn’t as intimate as being an Archmage’s personal apprentice, but the more ponies had this knowledge, the better.

“Okay! So, what have we learned since last time we all got together? Lilly Love, you looked excited, what have you got for us all?”

An orchid-colored unicorn nodded, though she suddenly turned sheepish as she looked around at the other ponies. “Um. Right! Well, I was helping move the, um, skeletons, around. To help clear some of the buildings. And I was staring at this broken leg bone, and I found myself thinking how it was strange that so many of the bones are still intact…”

No reason she was nervous; none of us liked to think about the endless dead in the buildings all around us. But just being here in this city was breaking a lot of taboos ponies held about the dead, and I’d made it clear that we shouldn’t turn away from any possibility, if we thought it might help us learn something about...her, up in the weather factory above.

“So, I scraped together some more bones, the ones that were crumbling and turning to dust, and I focused on them. And I remembered the lessons that Mint Swirl has been teaching us, about communing with each other, and your beautiful singing voice, Sweetie Belle. And so I kind of started, um, humming a little bit? While I focused my uh, fire, on the bone dust.”

She reached behind herself, and withdrew a long leg bone from her bag. Everypony swallowed—still uncomfortable with discussing the bones, let alone touching them—but she passed it directly to me, and I couldn’t appear to hesitate. I took the bone in my own hooves, and examined it closely.

“You see here? This really jagged seam, where the bones have kind of bulged out a bit? That’s where the break was. I think something I did, somehow, fused the bone back together using dust from the others! But, um, it’s not perfect. It’s a really messy mend, and I don’t know if it would work on different bones, or if it just fixes the broken one. And I really don’t want to try this out on a living pony—or, um, you know—”

“I know,” I said, with a smile. “It’s okay, Lilly. We’re alive, remember that. We’re more alive than anypony has ever been.”

She nodded, looking down at the floor, and I continued to look over the leg bone.

After a moment, I looked back up at her. “Do you think you could do it again? While the rest of us watch?”

“Sure!” She said, smiling. “Um, I was even kind of thinking, you know, what if we all hummed together? To see if that makes a difference?”

“I think that’s a good idea,” I said slowly, as I looked around the classroom. “Maybe I’ll give everypony more of a musical education than I thought.”


*	*	*


She was rebuilding, or...reforming herself, somehow.

I didn’t believe it when South Pole told me; I thought he’d been making some sort of sick joke, or maybe our—I hated calling it worship, I really did, but there was almost no other name for what we did up here—had finally begun to go to his head. And there was no way that he could know about the significance of what he said; I never told any of them who she had been before. So I had to come up and see it for myself.

And Rarity—or the beast to which Rarity had reduced herself, reborn from dust and magic—was making herself new once again. I kept my distance, to avoid rousing her, but I had to be close enough to see her at all. The shadows were oppressive in this room, and it felt like they grew darker all the time. I needed to have somepony set up lamps in the cavernous room at some point.

She was nothing more than a slowly-shifting mass of bones, growing into a shuddering hill in the center of the room. And in the center of that mass...I could feel the fire of a pony. Dull, dim, but still smouldering. Growing stronger, just a little bit over time. Eventually, the Rarity to which i spoke...eventually, she would rebuild herself again.

She hadn’t recognized me last time...at least, I didn’t think she had, on any conscious level. Would she recognize me this time?

I was alone with her. Apple Bloom was guarding the door, and she wouldn’t allow any of the others inside. I had all the time in the world...maybe literally. However long it took, I had to try and...commune with the entity, like we did with our fire outside.

No. No, that was a bad way to frame this.

I had to try and talk to my sister. Try and wake her up. Just...without words.

I stepped forward, and bones crackled under my hooves as I approached. I focused on my flame, and I felt her own as I approached, though it was weak, and timid. The bones rose out of the ground, but I exposed my soul to the soul of the creature before me, made clear that I meant no harm.

There was a connection, unlike what I felt with the other ponies outside, when we tried this on each other. There was some fundamental difference between our beings that made us alien, made things not translate properly into concepts that I understood...but there was something else that superseded that, that brought us together even despite being our differences.

I gasped, and stepped back, to collect myself. Had that been Rarity? Had she still been in there, somehow? Some tiny part of her, that couldn’t be taken, couldn’t be stolen, couldn’t be gifted?

But she’d given it to me, when I sang to her before. I was special to her, even though she didn’t know how. She must have known it was me.

She must have.


*	*	*


I had a beautiful view of our valley below, from up here, atop the dam.

I came up here from time to time, daring the increasingly shaky elevator and the wild skeletons that seemed to rise by themselves. (We kept killing them, but more always eventually replaced those we slew—was Rarity creating guards, to defend herself?) From up here, I could look over the foggy cloudstone rooftops of the fallen city below, and I could see all the way down to the end of the valley, where the mountains curved and followed the river. I could even see my little acolytes down there, building new houses and outposts with scrap wood and steel scavenged from old Cloudsdale.

Acolytes. I’d fallen into calling them as such, just as they’d fallen into calling me “Mother,” and the creature within the weather factory “Grandmother.” Honorific titles, for what was quickly forming into a reclusive little cult.

I had to curb that soon, I really did. I hated all those titles, and I was growing to dislike the traditions and beliefs that were forming around me. Some of the first fools from Canterlot, they’d carried that here, seeded their damnable dark beliefs and the terminology, and it had all caught on before I even knew I needed to stop them. If I didn’t act soon, I might find my stewardship of this group superseded, founder or no. At least Apple Bloom had been mindful, watching for ponies who spoke that way, and I was quickly amassing a list of ponies I would need to admonish personally.

“Ahh, I thought I’d find you up here.”

I closed my eyes, and let out a long sigh. And then, there was Starswirl. “You didn’t come up the elevator. I would’ve heard that.”

“Perceptive, and correct; I prefer not to use that rickety contraption. How have things been here?”

I turned away from Cloudsdale to look at the old, bearded stallion, his cloak and hat adorned with a hundred silent bells. He always dodged the question of “where did you come from?” Every time. Many times, I’d been in places where he would have had to pass by a guard, or disturb a trap, or at least disturb the cobwebs. Somehow, I never saw him arrive nor leave.

I’d known of the stallion, of course. We’d all learned about him in history classes, growing up, for over a millenia. My sister, and the Elements of Harmony, had helped rescue him from Limbo long ago. As far as I could tell, he had been capricious at best both then and now. Sometimes he was a crucial agent of good that guaranteed success, other times he would sabotage a pony at the prime of their life, and ensure they were broken and powerless forevermore. One never knew what he was planning, until long after he had left. And nopony knew why he did the things that he did.

He’d certainly never been forthcoming with me about that information, no matter how I asked. He cleverly dodged all my questions, eluded giving any answers. He had appeared early on, when none of us recognized him, and instructed us on the finer points of necromancy before disappearing once more. After a few of his visits, I’d dug up every bit of information I could find about the ancient mage, and yet I learned effectively nothing.

But I humored him, for he was useful, at least for the moment. I shrugged. “Progress is slow, but the new skeletons are more resilient than ever, and several acolytes are becoming incredibly proficient at seeing through their eyes. Some of them have begun to internalize that control, however, and I worry about their personal hunger for power; I’ll need to address that personally, to keep them in check.”

“Mm, I know that feeling well. I’ve had more than a few apprentices who felt they deserved more than their means. You continue to impress me, however, Sweetie Belle.”

The dream cracked.

The sky turned cloudy green, and blood poured from Starswirl’s eyes. His mouth moved, but his body didn’t—like a stiff puppet, frozen in time. The ethereal, musical voice of the Banshee spoke through his lips, directly to me. “DON’T TRUST HIM. DON’T EVER TRUST HIM.”

And then nothing had ever changed at all.

Starswirl smiled. “In fact, speaking of apprentices, do you think you could come with me? I recall you’ve been asking for answers for a while, and now may be a good chance to learn some for yourself. I was just on my way to Baltimare, to assist them with a Changeling problem that’s been growing progressively worse.”

I glanced back down at my acolytes below—Dammit, ponies, my ponies below—whose courses in our new and strange school of magic I still needed to correct. Could I allow myself a reprieve, in search of answers like this? “How soon do you need to leave?”

He chewed his lip. “Soon; lives hang in the balance. But you’ve enough time to give interim orders and goodbyes, before we depart.”

I sighed. “Alright. Give me an hour, I’ll meet you back here.”


*	*	*


This was my last stop. I’d actually spoken to Starswirl one more time after coming back up the elevator, and he’d been eager to leave...but I couldn’t leave, not yet, without doing this.

Rarity—or the beast that Rarity had become—had only grown more solvent since that first encounter, so long ago. A great alicorn of bone sat in the darkness, surrounded by candles placed by our acolytes; a gift to their “Grandmother,” when they came here to try and commune with her.

None of them shared our connection. Only myself and Rarity knew each other in such a way, and that gave me precious, fragile hope. Someday, Rarity would live again, and she could tell me why she did what she did. Why she still wore that necklace, that cursed Element of Harmony.

She lifted that titanic skull as I entered, but lowered it as I approached, to great me; a goddess nuzzling an ant. I closed my eyes, as I pressed myself up against the solid mass of bone, and felt our fires connect.

I was Sweetie Belle, her sister of old. I would be leaving, for a period of time. Our family would stay here, and protect her. And when I returned, I would embrace her once more like this, and she would know thusly that it was I.

She understood, at least as far as I could understand. The structure of her thoughts was still alien, disjointed. I had to interpret vague feelings of emotion sometimes. This time, I sensed worry, and protectiveness—she didn’t want me to go.

But when I stepped away, and turned to leave, she didn’t stop me.

Maybe it would have been better if she had.


*	*	*


It was strange to return to a city of the living. I’d never visited Baltimare in its prime, before the sun stopped in the sky, but it didn’t seem as though it had changed too much. There had been a major demon attack, of course, but it had been fought back, and they’d avoided the city since. While changelings stalked the alleys and ponies tried to move in groups, the city was almost unchanged. There was even still a struggling fishing industry, even though a group of unicorns was trying to buy up all the fish they could for study, for some reason.

We’d been greeted warmly by the city government and the citizens of Baltimare—especially Starswirl, since it seemed ponies here knew the legends. I was included just as warmly, as his “apprentice,” since he didn’t seem to mention how temporary the arrangement was. I felt no need to correct them; mostly I just wanted to return to Cloudsdale.

The mayor had been particularly warm to us, and granted us plenty of space to work, so long as she got to watch us work directly. To her credit, she made a good effort to understand what we were doing, and how; as a unicorn herself, she could grasp the fundamentals, at least.

As I stood on the balcony outside our little command center, atop the city hall, I looked back at the throngs of ponies inside, searching through scrolls and sifting through old books of magic and history. They were searching for anything regarding changelings, that they could use to find their hive, and root them out. There were changeling detection spells, of course, and one could test their blood easily enough. But we needed a solution on a mass scale, something that could clear the hive in one fell swoop—or at least detect it.

But all the ponies inside...somehow, I’d gotten used to my quiet little valley, and our relatively small group of ponies. The familiar faces that I knew well. I missed them, and I felt almost...overcrowded here. The whole city felt choking, like it was crushing me.

I had to swallow that feeling down, and focus on saving them. Once the changelings were gone, I could return to my ponies. Return to Rarity.


*	*	*


I’d been humming again while I worked. It hadn’t caught on here like it had in Cloudsdale, but that suited me fine; I preferred to keep these unfamiliar ponies at leg-length, so I didn’t get attached. Starswirl was the opposite; he had been schmoozing and chatting with city officials, and more ponies than I could count that came and went, delivering analysis scrolls throughout the city to perform magical scans, and then returning the results to him.

There was no night to work long into any more, but I definitely felt fatigued after I’d been working for long enough. My idle humming grew mournful, and slowed down. The spellwork I was working on...it was based on what I knew of how Rarity had dispersed herself, but intentional, and it would keep my form coherent, instead of scattering to the winds like she had. Starswirl approved of the idea, and he improved on it further; under his guidance, the spell expanded from being cast on a single target, to being cast within an area of effect, while excluding changelings, even those in disguise.

In theory, I could cast it within a room, and everypony within the room would take on a ghostly appearance, while the changelings would be left unaffected. A longer-term version of the spell would allow ponies to chase the changelings down into their tunnels, map them out, and find the hive, without fear of being struck down. After all, there wasn’t much that a changeling could do to harm a being of mist.

In the meantime, the transformed changelings—those liberated from Queen Chrysalis, long ago, by Starlight Glimmer—were as helpful as they could be. But their numbers fell every day, as it seemed as though they were being hunted by the dark changelings from below. Killed in the streets, or worse—I’d heard stories about the King’s own brother Pharynx, being dragged down into the storm drains alive and whole. King Thorax himself was still free, however, and acted as a liaison between our command center and the civilian changelings of Baltimare.

The work was slow, but it was nearing completion. With Starswirl always double-checking my spellwork and correcting my errors, I was sure that soon, we would clear the hive, and finally strike a real blow against Queen Chrysalis.


*	*	*


This was it, the first full-scale test of our new spell. We’d tried it in private, and ironed out any unwanted side effects. Starswirl had been checking and double-checking my spellwork even just a few minutes ago, but I’d learned by this point how to integrate the new changes into the spells as needed. Starswirl needed me to be an adaptable caster, and so I became as such.

We stood in an auditorium, on a stage before what must have been a hundred ponies. Mostly city leaders, determined reporters, and the Captain of the Baltimare guard; all in various states of Hollowing. Though this spell wouldn’t cure that side effect of my sister’s gift, it would hopefully reduce its severity, while exposing any changelings in our midst.

For that reason, the reasons for the press conference had been scheduled and set up in secrecy; only the mayor had been given even sparse details, and she thought that we were going to explain the fundamentals of the spell, with no live demonstration. We needed a large crowd to test it upon, and changelings needed to be enticed to attend while wearing disguises. If they knew what we really intended, then they’d disappear back into hiding.

The mayor stepped away from the podium, after giving a speech to which I hadn’t bothered to listen. Starswirl took her place behind the megaphone, but he didn’t say much else of note either; he was just buying time, waiting to get as many ponies into the room as possible.

He turned to me, as though introducing me to speak next, and gave the signal. I walked up alongside him as a corona of pale green magic surrounded my horn—it amused him that my own natural magic color was so similar to that of the changelings around us. I stepped up to the megaphone, pointed my horn at the ceiling, and released the spell.

There was a flash, as a wave of magic washed through the room, and—something was wrong. It kept going. The wave of magic pushed through the walls, beyond this room, rolling through the city. I could feel it, because I was part of it. The particles of my body stayed in place, but the space between them grew, and I felt myself b e g i n t o d i s p e r s e

N O

F I G H T I T

I pressed myself back together. I couldn’t lose control of it, or else I’d end up just like Rarity. I had to be coherent, had to remain together, even if my particles became mist.

When I opened my eyes—or what I understood as the particles of my eyes—my vision was wrong. I could see no colors, no texture, only the most basic outlines of shapes in a pale light that seemed to have no source. It took a moment of focus, but I could make out the shapes of ponies in front of me, even with my vision so altered.

So few ponies. And so many more changelings.

How had so many gotten into the room? I saw the few pony shapes—not whole, mist like myself, and infinitely more confused at their newly-altered state—leap away from them in shock, but there weren’t enough. Too many pillars of Baltimare society had already been replaced. The very city government had been deeply infiltrated. Even the Captain of the Guard; where he had sat, a very surprised changeling bared her fangs at us.

Noise rushed back as I turned to Starswirl, and tried to form words, but they wouldn’t come. Starswirl was radiant, somehow; he alone had retained his true shape, that of a pony, and his horn was leveled at the mayor. Even she had been replaced, supplanted by a changeling infiltrator. How long ago had this happened? Had we ever known the real mare, or only the changeling that wore her face?

“What is this, Starswirl?!” She hissed, scraping at her chitinous legs. Her horn flared, trying to reform her disguise, but the spell had disrupted that. It wasn’t permanent, and it wouldn’t last long. Nor would the mist-forms of the ponies throughout Baltimare, now. But it would be long enough to see things how they really were.

“Consider our deal broken, Kitt’raak.” Starswirl’s horn burned bright with pony magic, in a way that I’d never seen it, except in the echoes of Rarity’s memories. “You can cancel the negotiations we’d planned with your ‘Ken’ as well.”

“Traitor!” She hissed in shock, and leapt at him, only to bounce off his wards. She landed at my ethereal hooves instead. “You have betrayed us, and betrayed the loyalists! You would see us all dead?!”

“I’ve fought you insects for decades, a millennium in the past. I’d have hoped that you would be hunted by extinction by the time I returned, but it seems as though the sisters would prefer to hunt larger prey.” Starswirl lowered his head, so that only the three of us could hear him. “It makes no difference to me whether you follow the dreams of Celestia, or Chrysalis, or any other Queen. I created you insects by accident, and it’s time I corrected that mistake.”

The changeling-that-had-been-the-mayor bared her fangs, and leapt—but not at Starswirl. Instead, she twisted and tackled me, only to fall through my body. I shuddered at the sensation, as I’d expected an impact, but there wasn’t enough of my physical form for her to touch.

She stumbled, and looked at her chitinous hooves, then back at me. “What—what is this? This isn’t the spell you—Lies! More lies! Damn you!”

Starswirl let out a satisfied chuckle. “Sweetie Belle? I think it’s time we rooted the changelings out of Baltimare.”

I stared at my hoof, and willed the particles that were my hoof to reform, to turn solid. What was a pony’s hoof became thin, and the tip sharpened, into a blade made of solid mist, that was part of me. My eyes fell to the changeling that had worn the face of a pony this entire time, and the chaos that filled the room as the few other ponies of mist created knives of their own leapt upon the swarm of undisguised changelings. They fled for cover, but there was nowhere to run.

We might not be able to see color. But I was sure the carpets would be soaked through with blue very, very soon. And it was hard not to let out a hum of satisfaction, as the stress of the ages since the sun had stopped was released through my blade.


*	*	*


Everything was wrong.

The spell hadn’t worn off. It was supposed to wear off. I missed my physical form. But all I could feel was the cold mist that I had become.

I couldn’t even leave. Something tethered me here, to Baltimare, to where I’d cast the spell. Trying to go too far yanked me back, like I was wrapped in an invisible leash.

The others were trapped, just like me. Trapped in this city, where the Changelings had fled, and gone to ground in a million tiny nesting-holes. But none of us could escape now. All we could do was kill, as Starswirl had wanted.

But Starswirl himself was gone. His horn had flashed, only moments after I killed the changeling-that-was-the-mayor, and I never saw him again. He must have known.

He must have known, because he had to be the one who did it.

He had been editing my spellwork, adding in bits and pieces to correct my errors; it would have been simplicity itself to insert little conditions, extend durations and range and side effects. Fragmented pieces of additional spells that I didn’t understand, that combined to change the overall work of the spell. To corrupt my casting.

This was all his fault. He had betrayed me, just as he had betrayed the changelings.

He must have seen what I was doing in Cloudsdale; he must have felt I was dangerous, or my little acolytes were. And this was how he stopped me. He tied me here, in a form that could cast no magic, while he returned to slay them himself.

I was a fool to trust him. I had always been.

And now all I could do now—all any of us, converted to mist, could do now—was kill.

Just as he intended.


*	*	*


I paced outside the entrance to the tunnel. This was one of many entrances to the hive below, but I dearly wish I could have found it before that damnable insect covered it in wards. More rules that my ethereal form had to follow, that the bugs did not.

A noise; I looked up, and found the ponies that had slain my kin, had tainted me with the dark. I was alone now, because of them, and I knew them to be agents of Starswirl, or changelings in disguise.

Eventually, they would emerge from the tunnel. And I could wait forever for my chance to cut them down. Without that damnable knife, they had no defence.

One of them, that ragged Hollow, emerged first from the tunnel. She was cautious, but I knew to be wary; she had been the one to retrieve that knife from the museum. She could have found another, or some other artifact with which to slay me.

As I thought, she held something in her hoof. I could feel the pull of the dark, familiar—too familiar. I focused on it, and every particle of mist that comprised my being froze solid.

That was the Element of Generosity. Rarity’s element. She had it, here.

She must have been to Cloudsdale. She must have seen what had become of my ponies. And if she had that, then she must have slain my sister, for she would commune with nopony else. Or she must have been one of Starswirl’s agents, and he must have done so for her.

Why had she brought it here? To mock me?

Mist coalesced under her, freezing her in place, and I brought the Hollowed fool forward. There was no mistaking it, but the gem in the necklace...it had gone cold, and lifeless. Drained, once more. Had she done it, or another? Perhaps Starswirl...there was no way to know.

I’d often thought of Rarity, since I had been bound to this damned city. I’d tried to disperse myself, like her, but no matter what I did, I could not escape. No matter how small my being was, no matter the size of the particles or their density, I was trapped here.

I was so tired of it all. Tired of the killing. Tired of this city.

If this was his solution to my isolation...I would know my sister one last time, as opposed to being pulled into the howling dark at the end of all things, at a time far distant from now.

I looked into the little pathetic embers of the Hollow’s eyes. She wasn’t trapped here. She was free. And even if I could not have my revenge, then perhaps she could enact it for me. I could at least make her understand that Starswirl could never be trusted. That he needed to die. How much of all this was his fault as well? Were we all pawns in his sick game, slaying each other so he wouldn’t have to lift a hoof?

That bearded bastard had avoided the dark for too long. There would be no escape into Limbo this time. No peace.

Please. For me. For my students. For Rarity. 

Starswirl must be slain.


*	*	*


I fell to the ground, coughing and wheezing. I’d never appreciated the sensation of physical form, such as I did now. What I’d experienced in those memories was radically different to any sensation I’d ever known, on the most fundamental level. And I’d only known the sensation of being mist for brief flashbacks; to be permanently trapped as that, in that form, in this place...no wonder Sweetie Belle had gone mad.

Little wonder she’d become the Banshee.

Claws gripped the nape of my armor, and Gilda hauled me to my hooves. “Holly! What happened? What’d you do?”

I shook my head, as my hooves shook under me. I wasn’t ready to support my own weight, but I had to stand. “T-too much. Is the B-Banshee still...?”

Gilda shook her head. “Nah, she grabbed you, and she was staring into your eyes like she was considering whether she should bite your head off. Then she got sucked into that necklace? At least, that’s how it looked.”

That was it, then. The Banshee had been slain, or...perhaps Sweetie Belle had finally given up. Any feeling of success was bittersweet, after what I’d seen in her memories. After what she’d chosen to show me? I felt sympathy for the mare, no matter how badly she’d been trying to kill us before. Starswirl had betrayed both sides here in Baltimare.

I wheezed as I shuddered, my legs weak. “W-we shouldn’t say here—”

“Yeah. the others are already moving! Let’s get out of here before the Changelings catch on!”

I glanced back at the dark tunnel, and the gleaming eyes watching us from the shadows. Without the ghosts to patrol the streets of this dead city, the changelings could run rampant once more. It would be best if we weren’t here when they braved the outside once more, and discovered their newfound freedom.

Gilda took wing, and I followed her on the ground. Together, we followed the others out of the city.
> 42 - Leaving Baltimare
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We caught up with the others before we left Baltimare, but we didn’t stop running. The more distance between us and the changelings that would inevitably emerge from their hive, the better. Raindrops had hauled Trixie onto her back after I’d dropped her, and she was getting smeared in that same sweetly poisonous goop with every step. Gilda took wing after hauling me to my hooves, and she swooped back and forth above us to keep watch for pursuers, and direct us out of town by the fastest route. Ocellus took the lead, following Gilda’s directions, and while she could move the fastest out of all of us, she had to slow down so we could keep up, because Maud set the pace for the group. She could move decently fast in her armor—the fact that she could move at all in armor hewn from stone was a show of strength and power in itself—but her fastest speed was a stomping gallop that knocked chips of concrete from the sidewalks and dug furrows in the gravel roads.

Soon we approached the city limits, and reached a familiar strip of stores along the highway. This was where we’d rested before splitting our group, before we’d ever entered Baltimare to begin with. It felt like an appropriate place to stop, just before we left that cursed city for good. Even here, we were wary. A pony could call us paranoid, and they wouldn't be wrong; we kept waiting for a final ethereal straggler, or a changeling lying in wait, to suddenly spring out and ambush us. But it never came, and so eventually, we began to calm down.

Maud turned and stood guard on the highway without even removing her helmet, and kept watch for any changelings that might have given chase. We collapsed onto the road behind her, exhausted from our panicked gallop, and spent a long while just catching our breath. Trixie found herself dumped unceremoniously onto the road as Raindrops fell, with her legs still shaking. Ocellus was making pained wheezing noises through her spiracles, and her legs curled up against her belly as she slumped over. I collapsed onto my side next to them, while Gilda circled above us lazily, like a vulture, before she landed atop a copper awning. She remained perched up there, watching the road, the city...and us.

Everything burned. We’d done so much running, and I never wanted to move faster by hoof than a determined limp ever again. I had no idea how Maud was still standing—maybe she wasn’t, she just had some way to lock her stone armor in place so it appeared as though she was.

So it wasn’t really a surprise when Trixie, still groggy from her changeling-induced coma and having been hauled on ponies’ backs for multiple miles, was the first of us to try and stand. She wasn’t exhausted, like we were, but she clearly had yet to shake off the effects or physically wipe off the changeling amniotic fluid. She slipped and fell back onto the road a few times, growing increasingly exasperated that nopony was helping her, but she managed to find her hooves after that. Then the gunk soaked through her fur seemed to be her first priority; she stumbled off in the direction of one of the buildings, presumably to see if she could still find a working washbasin inside.

A blink of the eye later, and a somewhat-cleaner and more-awake Trixie trotted back to us, though it surely must have taken more time than it seemed. Not long enough for her hat to dry; though it was still sopping wet, this time it seemed to be merely waterlogged, and she held it beside her in her magic to air-dry instead of wearing it. She hesitated for only a moment before she moved to me, and I didn’t have the energy to protest as she rolled me onto my back and started to rifle through my bottomless bag.

Gilda did have the energy for it, however. “Hey! Get your hooves out of there!” She leapt off the awning, caught the wind under her wings, and swooped lo skid to a stop atop my prone body. I still couldn’t move my aching body, but I thanked her with my eyes.

Trixie had backed off at the shout, and she definitely took a step back now that Gilda was standing over me. “What? What’s your deal? Trixie was only taking inventory, while we had a moment!”

“Yeah, I bet you were ‘taking inventory.’ Keep your hooves out of other people’s bags, that stuff doesn’t belong to you.”

Trixie narrowed her eyes. “What kind of rescue operation is this? Trixie can fight and defend herself, but she requires equipment of her own! The Great and Powerful Trixie hardly expects to be hauled around like a sack of potatoes all the way to...wherever we’re going!”

“Canterlot. By way of Ponyville.” Maud was indeed awake, then. Though, she spoke without her helmet moving in the slightest.

“Ugh, Ponyville, back to that hick village—” The illusionist did a double-take. “Wha—Maud?”

The stone helmet barely moved. “Hello.”

Trixie unsteadily moved around to Maud’s front, and hesitantly peered through the slits of her faceplate, while her horn provided light. “It is you! How...what are you wearing?”

“My armor. I made it myself. I’m very proud of it, though it needs to be cleaned now.”

“No, don’t, the bug blood suits you.” Trixie snarked, as she rolled her eyes. They landed on Ocellus, instead. “Oh! And I’m still waiting for an explanation as to why I shouldn’t blast this bug, considering apparently they’re all dark and evil and hiding in tunnels underground again now!”

Ocellus coughed, and started to pull herself to her hooves, as she shook her head. “Not evil. Never evil. Always just...surviving. Do what needed, to survive.”

“Yeah, that’s not convincing me. And why is your voice so familiar?” Trixie asked pointedly, turning her head to peer at Ocellus.

“Trixie.” Maud spoke quietly, and slowly, so she could be clearly understood. “She used to be one of our students at the School of Friendship. Her name is Ocellus. She graduated with honors. I’m very proud of her, too.”

“Ocellus!” Trixie repeated, stamping her hoof. “That’s it! That’s the name you were trying to tell me before! I think my ears were full of glowy gunk though. Also, no, that’s not Ocellus, she had blue chitin. Very similar to Trixie’s own periwinkle fur, but inferior, obviously.”

“Not b-blue any m-more.” Ocellus whimpered, sadly, as she sat down on the road.

“Okay, so let’s assume that is Ocellus. Why isn’t she blue? She’s a shapeshifter, why doesn’t she just become blue again?” Trixie looked around at all of us. “Trixie feels as though she missed out on a lot while she was with Starlight, and she is owed an explanation!”

Enough of this. I let out a whinnying snarl as I struggled to my hooves, and the burning embers of my eyes locked with Trixie’s eyes. “You f-first.”

“What?” Trixie blinked at me, before recognition leapt across her face. “—ah! Trixie’s apprentice, yes! That flashy show of Pyromancy you did back in the tunnels, that was very impressive, even if Trixie is not entirely sure exactly what you did—”

“Trixie.” I snarled, as I staggered closer. My hooves were still burning with pain, and I felt the fire burning in my soul again. “You k-killed me. You r-ran away. Why? W-what did you see in R-Rarity’s necklace?”

“Ahhh, is it really that important? I mean, you’re clearly fine now, and I’m not sure where the necklace went, and really, this is all water under the bridge and Trixie should maybe be going now—” She turned and tried to leave, but Maud turned around to face her, and Avalanche was pointedly slammed into the road to block her way. Trixie spun around again, looking to run past me, but Gilda hopped into the air to hover in place above me, her bow drawn.

The message was clear. Trixie wasn’t going anywhere without answering some questions.

She let out a long, annoyed sigh, and sat back down on the road. “Fine. Trixie will explain things...at least, as best she can.”


*	*	*


The first bit of Trixie’s explanation I knew; she’d seen the same vision I had, of being Rarity, just before she threw herself into Cloudsdale’s cloud mixer. But I let her tell the story regardless, so I wouldn’t need to tell it to the others myself. As she spoke, I used the time to ponder about that memory, and how it fit with everything else I knew.

Rarity had been an alicorn too. On par with Princess Celestia, or Pinkie Pie. Feeling that much power, filling every fiber of my being, that had been intoxicating. Humming with fire, humming with pure goddess-like potential...I was baffled at how she’d even managed to contain it within herself, like she had. I think I would have burned away to cinders if I ever held that much fire within my soul. But nopony had ever mentioned as such; I’d thought her to be a unicorn, and she even thought about how she was still getting used to the wings, within the memory. So Rarity had not always been an alicorn.

Was she a Princess too? Was Pinkie? It didn’t really matter any more, but I was wondering, now. Princess Celestia hadn’t treated Pinkie as a Princess; just as an old friend. She’d treated Applejack the same way, up until the Commander had turned on her; even after that, she’d been incredibly reluctant to treat Applejack as anything less than her equal.

Questions. I had so many questions. Had Rarity—or what Rarity had done, what had become of her—been responsible for Cloudsdale’s destruction? Something about that fire in her soul being released like it had, all at once, or perhaps something about the weather factory itself...was that the reason Cloudsdale had turned to stone, and fell out of the sky?

In an odd way, it made sense that nopony seemed to know where she’d gone—the only ponies who’d witnessed her suicide had been caught in the blast. Only Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and now myself and Trixie, had ever known the true identity of the Gravelord in Cloudsdale’s ruins. Not even the Gravewardens themselves had known that.

That was sadly ironic—Rarity had been trying to spread her gift. She’d been trying to give everypony a fragment of her immortality, but in doing so, she’d accidentally wiped out a city full of ponies. But it had worked, to some degree; we were functionally immortal, even if that fragment of immortality acted more like a curse than a blessing.

We couldn’t die—Rarity had succeeded. But we could die—over and over and over again. All that fragment did was ensure that we recovered eventually from our wounds, no matter how grievous. That was one half of the puzzle of our eternal life solved; the other half was Hollowing. I had to understand why it destroyed ponies’ minds over time, as though it was feeding off of their spirit. Without that, ponies became little more than wandering, immortal husks of their former selves, hungering for more fragments, so Rarity—or the fire that had been contained within Rarity—could put herself back together.

Maybe that was all we were, in the end. Embers of a dead goddess, trying to pull ourselves back together, and make ourselves whole once more.


*	*	*


Trixie’s story diverged after Sweetie Belle had taken Rarity’s flame from the Element of Generosity, because it seemed as though she hadn’t. Part of Rarity had lingered within the gem, locked in place and unwilling, or unable, to leave. Whatever that was couldn’t be taken, couldn’t be removed, and had lain dormant within the gem as more power returned to her, charging the gem once more.

That was why Rarity had begun rebuilding herself, even after Sweetie Belle had lulled her to sleep. And she might have done so again, if I had left the Element there, in that pile of bone dust.

Trixie described a few interactions with Sweetie Belle, including their last meeting, but from the opposite perspective. I had to remember the story was being filtered through Trixie, because after having experienced it through Sweetie Belle’s eyes, I dearly hoped that Rarity had been much more emotional than Trixie described. According to her, Rarity mostly seemed hungry, but couldn’t stop the incredibly powerful filly from slipping through her hungering grasp. The thought that Rarity might have seen her sister as little more than a warm meal of her own fragments was incredibly depressing.

That perception seemed to have stuck with Trixie, however; she skimmed through a few more small fights, where the Gravelord took scraps from the occasional curious traveler, before ending the memory after our own fight with her. It must have been odd to have lived through that battle twice, seeing it from the eyes of our foe at the time. Once she finished recalling the memory, she talked about how hungry she was, and how she knew where Sweetie Belle had gone, because she’d seen it in their final communion. Trixie knew that she had to chase her down, and take that power, before something or somepony else did—such as Twilight Sparkle. She’d heard rumors before that the errant Princess had been seen in Baltimare, and Trixie had no intention of letting her steal the power that she felt rightfully belonged to her.

Maybe it was a good thing she only kicked me into an abyssal lake, instead of trying to drain me first. Either way, she skipped over that too, and I decided not to remind her.

When she reached Baltimare, she had gone straight for the library, without giving much thought as to the empty streets. She’d completely missed the ghosts; when we described them to her, she thought we’d all hallucinated them, because she hadn’t seen anything like that. Instead, she went inside, spotted Twilight Sparkle, and then...her memory got fuzzy.

She only got a few sentences into describing her “reunion with Starlight in her wagon” before we cut her off—though she didn’t believe us, that seemed to be the point at which she’d been captured.


*	*	*


“So...changelings.” Trixie summed up, after we finished explaining the actual situation in Baltimare, between the two major factions inhabiting the city. We’d avoided mentioning that Ocellus had been the one directly responsible for capturing Trixie, for which Ocellus seemed thankful.

“A whole hive of them, yeah. Real nasty infestation.” Gilda said, as she crossed her forelegs. Raindrops coughed pointedly, and flicked her head at Ocellus, but Gilda just shrugged instead of offering any sort of apology.

“And you all just decided to come and rescue the Great and Powerful Trixie?” She asked pointedly.

Raindrops sighed, and shook her head. “Not on our own; mostly, we were following the orders of—”

“A-ha! Trixie knew that country hick would want revenge!”

Raindrops blinked. “What? No. What? Princess Celestia asked for volunteers to rescue you, and to retrieve the Element of Generosity.”

That made Trixie pause, her eyes wide. “Wha—Celestia?” After a moment, her eyes narrowed again. “Maud, you said we were headed to Canterlot by way of Ponyville. Celestia wants to see me herself, doesn’t she?”

“She’s requested your presence,” Raindrops confirmed. “But she was genuinely concerned for your wellbeing. I think it’s a little misplaced, myself...”

“Yeah, yeah, screw you too,” Trixie said with a wave. “And the Element of Generosity; she was referring to that necklace, wasn’t she?”

“Yeees…?” Raindrops seemed wary, since she didn’t know where this question was going.

“So that means you retrieved it, right? We’re not going back into Baltimare again?”

Raindrops glanced at me, and I nodded. It was safely in my bottomless bag again, and I was the only pony that could remove it from within that bag. At least, as far as I was aware. She turned back to Trixie, and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, we got it. Are you suggesting we should give it to you? For...what, safekeeping?”

“Pffft, no.” Trixie rolled her yes. “You can keep your cursed necklaces; Trixie already got what she needed from it. She just has no inclination to return to that city. If Twilight Sparkle is still hiding there, then she can have the entire city, for all Trixie cares.”

“Uh...huh.” Raindrops said, glancing now at Gilda, who had kept Trixie’s hooves out of my bag. “Right. Well, unless there’s anything else, we should start moving. The sooner we get back to Ponyville and begin moving towards Canterlot, the better.”

“W-wait. Is...is something.”

We all turned to look at Ocellus, who was huddling her forehooves to herself nervously. She looked at all of us, and then glanced back down the road, back towards Baltimare. “I...stay here. Have to...stay here.”

“What? Stay here in Baltimare? Are you crazy?” Raindrops asked.

“Not crazy,” Ocellus shook her head. “Hive needs me...can’t abandon hive.”

“Ocellus.” Raindrops walked over to the changeling, and gently put a hoof on her chitinous shoulder. “You should come with us, to Canterlot. Princess Twilight made peace with the changelings, and Princess Celestia will understand what happened out here. She’ll forgive you. And she’ll do everything she can to help you and the ponies still in the hive, especially if you come with us, to ask in person.”

Ocellus looked down, but didn’t say anything.

After a moment, Raindrops continued, “Besides, you’re not safe there by yourself. You helped us rescue a pony. They’ll know it was you; you might be walking back to your death, if you do go. I remember Chrysalis, and I remember hearing the stories about how she punished traitors.”

It was so strange, being able to look at an undisguised changeling. Ocellus’ spiracles flexed like tiny gills, in a line down the chitin of her neck, as she let out a long sigh. “Don’t think...don’t think they w-will. Others...not like me. Forgetful. F-Feral. Very f-few remember names...or ponies b-before.”

“So you think they’ll just let you back in? Like nothing ever happened?” Raindrops shook her head. “That’s an incredible risk to take. And for what? You can help us, and we can get help for your hive, like I said.”

“Can help hive here, too...need help directly. Sisters need knowledge...b-books. Can’t read, not any more...but I can. Can’t steal knowledge from hive, like how I stole f-food.”

Raindrops looked utterly despondent at the idea of letting Ocellus go back to Baltimare. “But what about Chrysalis?”

“Ken...will know,” whispered Ocellus. “Cannot hide from Ken. M-Must see her myself. Must ask her mercy. She w-will decide.”

But...wasn’t…? I stepped forward, and Ocellus looked up at me as I spoke. “B-but...I saw your q-queen, when I was in the hive.” I lowered my voice to nearly a whisper, out of respect. “Ocellus...she w-was dead. Your q-queen.”

Everypony’s eyes widened, but Ocellus was the first to recover, and she shook her head. “No. Ken appears dead—one face of many she wears. Tricks to fool invaders. Ken slumbers, safe within the hive. Waits for right time to awaken, yes? And lead us once more.”

Raindrops looked between us both. “The queen bitch is dead?”

Ocellus made a face, but didn’t say anything. I answered instead; “Y-yes. Trixie was b-being kept in a p-pile of cocoons, in the s-same room as her throne. She w-was still sitting on it, there were c-changelings all around her th-throne, but...they were empty sh-shells. Dead husks. N-not alive, not Hollow. Except f-for one, still stuck t-to the throne.”

“Tor’aks,” Ocellus provided.

Hearing the name made Raindrops blanch under her fur. “Wha—Thorax is down there? Thorax, the big glitterbug with the deer horns?”

Ocellus nodded. “He serves Ken a’ Kens once more, as I, as does Tor’inx. Or…” She paused, to swallow quietly. “As did Tor’inx.”

Raindrops shook her head in disbelief. “Pharynx too—what happened down there? You two need to tell me, it sounds like it was really important!”

I couldn’t look at her, or Ocellus. I didn’t want to think about it. I could smell Tor’inx’s blood again, and the burnt rubber scent of melted resin. I could feel the fire in me, biting, snapping, hungry for more. I clenched my eyes shut, and tried to shut it all out.

Raindrops relented after a moment, but repeated the question, in a mix of sadness and fear. “What happened down there?” I don’t think she expected an answer; her imagination must have been running wild, with what could have happened to cause us both to freeze up like this.

“Trixie remembers Starlight, then darkness and disgusting, warm stickiness, then flashes of changelings. Whatever these two did, it was before I came around.” Trixie explained from behind us.

“Thanks, Trixie,” Raindrops said quietly. “Look, I can’t...ugh. I can’t force you two to tell me, I guess. But if you’re so dead set on going back anyways...Ocellus, can I ask you one question, at least?”

“Depends on question…” the changeling murmured.

“Why come back here at all? To Baltimare? To serve Chrysalis again? Maud was telling me about you, Ocellus, and I can see she’s right about you, how smart you are. You’re a good person. And so are—or were—Thorax and Pharynx. Why come back to Chrysalis?”

Ocellus was silent for a while—long enough that I opened my eyes, to make sure she hadn’t crept away when I wasn’t looking. But Ocellus was still here, still thinking. I got the sense that she hadn’t thought about those questions in a long time, and she had to dredge the answers up from the back of her mind.

When she spoke, it was quiet, and thoughtful, but clear. She needed to be coherent, to remember the reasons. “Came here...to Baltimare, by request. Tor’aks sent letter—was already here, with brother Tor’inx. Ken a Kens had built new hive, new sisters here.”

Her chitinous brow wrinkled, as though she was confused. “Old sisters, me, brothers Tor...all changed. Something new—not changeling, not like Ken a Kens, or Kens beyond. Something wrong, unnatural. She showed us that. Cured us. Needed to cure other sisters...every one we could find. Bring them here, to Baltimare. So Ken a’ Kens could cure them.”

Ocellus looked out, past the mountains of the coast, at Equestria. “Still need cure sisters, out there. Bring them to Ken. But Banshee stopped us, trapped us, starved us. Ponies disappeared. Heart-soul ran low. So Ken slept—trusted us to keep fighting. Maintain hive. She wouldn’t need heart-soul while she slept. Promised us, would awake when needed. But said...said her children needed to feed more than she.”

And now Chrysalis was dead. Or at least, she appeared to be dead. Had she starved herself on purpose, so her children could live? Had she ever truly intended to awaken?

And considering the state of the world now...I couldn’t decide whether sacrificing herself to keep them alive was even a noble goal any more. Maybe all she did was end her own suffering early, when she saw the deadlock in which she and the Banshee were trapped.

Raindrops caught my eye, and I could see it in her face—she’d come to the same conclusions, and was wondering the same questions. But it meant that if Ocellus was right about her sisters, and wrong about the queen, then she would be safe. But if that wasn’t the situation...Ocellus would be walking back to her death.

Raindrops shuddered, and looked down at the ground. “Okay. I think...I think I understand now. Thank you, Ocellus. But you’re sure, you can’t come with us? Just in case? At least to Ponyville?”

Ocellus shook her head again “Need to apologize to Ken a’ Kens. Betrayed her...betrayed hive. She decides fate. You, go on. Take Harmonic Element—fix world. If Ken a Kens is merciful...will keep Hive alive until world is fixed. Or try my best.”

Raindrops nodded, but she didn’t look up from the gravel of the highway under her hooves. “Okay. Thank you for helping us, Ocellus. We...we lost a lot here. But we would’ve been wiped out if you hadn’t helped us. You kept us alive as best you could, and we have the Element, thanks to you. If…” Raindrops swallowed. “If Chrysalis is, ah...not merciful. Or your sisters remember...remember that. You helped us fix all this. And we’ll always be thankful for that.”

For the first time in a while, Ocellus smiled, though it looked a little strange with her flexible fangs. That was fixed a moment later, when her horn lit, and green fire washed across her form, as she took the disguise of Twilight Sparkle once more. In her voice, but still in the broken changeling accent, she said, “Fix world; best thanks you can give. But appreciate it, all same.”

She started limping back towards Baltimare, and nopony stopped her. After a few steps, she opened her now-feathered wings, and took shaky flight—I don’t think she was used to having feathers instead of her odd insectoid wings, once again—and began a long flight back to Baltimare, and whatever fate awaited her.

Trixie had an odd expression on her face, as she watched her go. After a moment, she mused to herself, “I remember...Twilight Sparkle, right before everything gets fuzzy in my memories, right before Starlight showed up…”

“Trixie. Come on, we’re leaving. No point in dwelling on it.”

She grumbled in annoyance, but aside from that, we began moving again in silence. Away from Baltimare, and back towards Ponyville. I was all too glad to be done with this damned and accursed city.


*	*	*


We hadn’t been walking along the old highway for long, before we spotted a little clearing, off to the side of the road. It wasn’t more than a stretch of gravel, dumped here by the side of the road to make a very basic stopping point for carts and wagons before approaching Baltimare, and a couple of those carts remained, long abandoned. But what caught our eye was the campfire.

Raindrops didn’t say anything; she just started moving towards it, and we followed. She didn’t have to; we all knew that if someone was heading towards Baltimare, we had to warn them away, so they weren’t taken by the changelings.

She paused at the edge of the clearing, and I was right behind her, so I paused as well. Quietly, she pointed with her hoof, and murmured, “Looks like a Hollow…”

I heard the quiet rattle of arrows in Gilda’s quiver as she drew her bow, and Trixie joined me and Raindrops as we slowly moved closer. Maud, presumably, was watching the road. I glanced around to make sure they were alone, but there weren’t many places to hide; there was only the small fire pit, the old abandoned carts, and a brown, furry form laying next to the fire.

I got a better look as I drew close, bracing myself just in case they lunged at me like the other feral Hollows. But little moved, besides their brown feathers and fur fluttering in the wind. A pegasus stallion, with fur that might have been golden-brown, long ago. “H-hello?”

A dim ember in one of his empty sockets flickered to life, and turned to look at us, through the shattered remains of a pair of wide eyeglasses. After a moment, he looked away, at the fire. He made a quiet noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a sigh, and seemed to be something approaching a “hello” in return.

“N-not Hollow,” I said quietly, to the others. Raindrops relaxed, and the spell that Trixie had been preparing fizzled into sparks of magic.

The stallion made another whining grunt, and maybe it was originally intended to be a laugh. “Not Hollow,” he repeated, his voice aching and croaking as he lay on his side in the gravel. “Not yet. But not long for it.”

Raindrops looked away, and Trixie shrugged, before she started examining the carts. I heard Gilda take wing, as she had apparently decided to watch the road from higher up. I slowly stepped closer, until I was sitting next to the fire, across from him.

Now that I was this close, I could see the sorry state that the stallion was in. He was a mess, with his fur worn and stained with old ichorous blood, and his mane wild and limp in the gravel around his head. One of his wings was just gone, and there remained a ragged stump where it should have been, while the other lay, extended but limp, and pointed towards the fire. The rusted remains of a wingblade was clasped along the length, and presumably he had worn a matching set, before something took his wing. His hooves were swollen and his legs laid at odd angles; he must have broken his legs or torn his tendons at some point, and they’d healed poorly. His hooves were particularly distressing; the walls were worn down near to the fetlock, and he must have walked over a broken bottle, because small shards of glass stuck out of his frogs like crystalline leeches.

“Are y-you okay?” I murmured, but the question seemed stupid even as I asked. It was all I could think to say; the shock of seeing the extent of his injuries stole any other questions from my lips.

Slowly, that single ember looked back at me. “Been better in the past...not sure I’ve ever been worse.”

“W-what happened to you?” The smears underneath his body—I thought they’d been mud before, but it was more ichorous blood, dark like my own long before. It looked as though it had been soaking into the gravel under his body for a while—not that he was in any condition to really care.

“Traveling,” he groaned. “Surviving.”

Me and Raindrops glanced at each other, before I looked back down at him. “W-where are you from? Where were you tr-traveling to?”

The broken stallion let out a sad, quiet chuckle. “From...from Las Pegasus. Long time ago. Was trapped in that town, or...f-felt like I was. Had to leave. Had to go somewhere. Anywhere else.”

He tried to push one of his hooves under himself to stand, but his hoof collapsed under him, and wet ichor oozed out around the shards of glass. Raindrops winced, and turned back to Trixie. “Hey! Can you pull those out with your horn? He’s still sane enough to be helped.”

Trixie sighed and rolled her eyes, but she did move closer as her horn lit. She roughly rolled the stallion onto his side, and held up his hoof to inspect the glass jammed into the soft flesh, before she began to grip them and tug with her magic.

As Trixie did that, the stallion continued to speak. “Thought a lot about the world...where to go, where to run. But these pr-problems, I don’t think I can outrun them. They’re crushing. They keep me from running, ruin my body, they w-weigh me down, keep from leaving, and now...now there’s nowhere I can settle that they won’t catch up anyways.”

His single wing limply lifted a hoof-length, then fell back flat onto the gravel. “I k-keep moving in little bursts. All I can do. Keeps me distracted, as long as I think ab-about the next place I’m going...next place I can rest. Was Baltimare b-before...now it’s Canterlot. Just gotta get to Canterlot, then...then I can r-rest, for a little bit.”

Gently, I sat down next to him, and he lifted his head to lay it against my flank. “W-we’re heading to C-Canterlot next. We can t-take you with us.”

“We can?” Trixie asked, though I ignored her.

The stallion shook his head slightly in response, however. “Would s-slow you down. Be a b-burden. Can’t. G-gotta stay here for now...get my strength b-back. Might t-take a while, but...I’ll g-get to Canterlot eventually. Ev-eventually. Promise.”

We’d left enough ponies behind. My stomach roiled at leaving another, even one who wanted to be left here. “P-Please. Come w-with us.”

The stallion shook his head again, a little more vigorously this time, and huddled closer to my side. “C-can’t. Thank you, but...can’t.” He closed his eye, and let out a long, tired sigh. “But...stay here? Just...just for a little bit. Missed ponies. Missed contact. I talk so much, but never to others...never face to face. Often...just to myself. Miss the warmth...of others, of friendship. Always so alone.”

I laid my own hoof on his, and gently patted his head, while his eye turned back to the smouldering fire. Trixie finished pulling glass out of one hoof, and let it drop into the gravel as she moved to the other, while Raindrops looked on sympathetically.

After a few long moments, the stallion mumbled, “So warm...bright, and hot, like the mare in the fire…”

I blinked slowly. “Huh?”

His wing twitched again, as he tried to extend it towards the embers in front of us. “F-Feed the fire...just to keep it burning. So you can see…”

Raindrops spotted a couple of planks of scrap wood, but the stallion chuckled as she pulled them into the smouldering pit. “Not quite...mundane, too m-mundane. You…” He looked up at me, with that one eye. “The fire inside you...use that. You know what I m-mean.”

I did; he meant my pyromancy flame. It suddenly occurred to me that I couldn’t feel his, or rather, it wasn’t where it should have been. Instead of being part of him, he’d moved it outside himself, into the fire pit. As if he’d used his own soul, to keep his little campfire burning for warmth. And it was weak. I gathered up some scraps of my own soul, and kindled his fire with mine in a dull flash of combustion, just to keep it from getting snuffed by the wind.

He let out a relieved sigh as his eye closed, and he relaxed slightly against my flank. “Thank you...the mare in the fire, she’d...she’d thank you too.”

“What mare?” Trixie growled in frustration.

His wing shuddered again. “Look...look at the flames. Stare at them long enough...you’ll see a mare. She’s weak now...and so tired. She’s been burning...for a long, long time...longer than any of us. All she wants is rest...but she can’t rest, or else the fire goes out. Just like us.”

I tried, I really did. I looked at the fire, and stared into where it burned hottest. Past the trails of fire that wicked away into smoke, where the wood crackled and dissolved into ash. But I couldn’t see the mare he described within the flames.

Not this time, at least.

I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to crush his hopes, or reveal that he might be mad. I just patted his head as we stared into the fire together, resting as a group before we had to get moving again. We couldn’t give the poor stallion much comfort, but we could stay long enough to help him regain his strength. He’d need all the help he could get, to reach Canterlot and the places beyond—just as we would, after the ordeal that had been Baltimare.
> 43 - Fires on the Horizon
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We left the Hollowed stallion to his rest, after we’d regained our own strength. While I felt dissatisfied with merely leaving him there, he insisted on going it alone. We’d see if he made it to Canterlot; I dearly hoped he would, instead of remaining there by the side of the road forever.

The route we walked back to Ponyville was long and winding, around the south edge of the Canterhorn range. It was frustrating to take such an indirect route, but the quickest route would have taken us back through the cursed tunnel that had taken Merry May, and none of us wanted to repeat that experience. The road may have been long, and we may have only been safe in the fog for as long as it took a wandering demon to notice us, but at least we wouldn’t be lost in the dark.

We didn’t exactly space ourselves out much; ponies naturally grouped together when traveling, for warmth and for safety within the group. Still, it was a bit of a surprise when Trixie broke the silence of the fog with a question. “Did Celestia tell any of you why she wanted to speak to me?”

We glanced at each other, and after a moment, Raindrops shook her head. “No? She was pretty focused on the Element, but she did seem genuinely concerned for you. She wanted you to be brought to Canterlot whole, sane, and alive, if possible. I’m not sure if she actually had a reason, or if she just wanted to keep ponies from murdering you and taking the Element by force.”

“Right, wonderful.” Trixie said, with an exasperated sigh. “So maybe nothing, maybe more.”

“If it helps any,” Raindrops said quietly, “I’m not really looking forward to speaking with her myself.”

This olive branch was denied, however. Trixie was lost in her own thoughts, and it didn’t seem like she’d even heard Raindrops. I gave our leader a gentle head bump to get her attention, instead. “W-why’s that?”

Raindrops glanced back at Trixie, then sighed sadly as her eyes tilted down at her hooves. “We got them, but we lost so many ponies in the process. Ponies that were under my command, that were my responsibility—that were my friends, even if we didn’t know each other all that well. And now they’re Hollow, or worse, and whatever’s left of them...we left behind in Baltimare.”

“You handled it well.” Maud stated simply, from Raindrop’s other side.

Raindrops shook her head in sudden exasperation. “Is it always like that? The weight of the world on your shoulders? Knowing that other ponies are depending on your leadership to keep them alive? Is that what being a knight of the Golden Guard is like, all the time?”

“Sometimes.” Maud spoke bluntly, but every word was measured and deliberate. “I don’t have much experience leading big groups. That was Pinkie’s area of expertise. I just consulted on dragon scales, and lent a hoof in battle when she needed me.”

“Oh, that's all?” Raindrops muttered. After a moment, she shook her head. “I can’t do that. Not long-term. If being a knight requires doing this, all the time...I can’t handle it.”

Maud looked back at her, and tilted her head. “You’re not interested in the knighthood any more?”

“Not after this,” Raindrops said quietly. “Posey was stronger than I was, in spirit. She knew she’d made a mistake, but she still came with us into those tunnels. I should have had her wait outside. But she came along anyways, even though she couldn’t fight.”

Maud seemed saddened by that, in her usual restrained Maud way, like a minute flaw in the surface of a stone—I thought I was starting to grasp her mannerisms a little better by now. “I understand. Where will you go, then?”

Raindrops shrugged. “Back to Ponyville. Back to the Irregulars. There’s a lot of other ponies still in that town; ponies like Posey and Merry May, who can’t fight. So I’ll have to fight for them, and keep them safe.” She looked back up at Maud. “Can you report to the Princess for me?”

“Yes. And I’ll put in a good word for you, even if you’re not interested in the knighthood. You deserve commendation for your leadership and conduct, even if you don’t feel that way.”

Raindrops looked as though she wanted to argue, but she didn’t seem to have the energy for it. “Alright. Thank you, Maud.” After a moment, she ruffled her wings, and the metal wingblades she’d picked up for the mission rattled against her armor. “I’m keeping these, though. They’re good blades, even if I never really got a chance to use them properly.”

There was the barest hint of a smile on Maud’s face. “That’s fine.”

After a moment, Maud seemed to remember something, and reached back into her pack, still spattered with dried changeling blood. From within, she pulled out a folded bundle of cloth, wrapped in leather. “Trixie.”

“Hm?” Trixie took the offered bundle in her magic, and unrolled it. Her eyes lit up, as she recognized the star-spangled pattern, and a moment later, the Great and Powerful Trixie was wearing both her hat and her cloak, as though she’d never lost either of them. “Oooh! I missed these. Feels good to be wearing my full outfit once again!”

After a few moments, Maud added, “You should thank Holly. She got it from the jail for you.”

Trixie huffed, as she drew her cloak up around her withers for warmth in the fog. “Well. I don’t see why that’s really necessary, since we’re heading back to Ponyville anyways—”

“Trixie.” Both Maud and Raindrops stated her name bluntly, to make clear that it wasn’t a suggestion.

“Ugh, fine. Thank you, assistant.” Trixie said sardonically, without even looking in my direction.

“You’re w-welcome,” I responded quietly, and a little more sharply than was perhaps needed. I had to keep myself from spitting the words. “And f-for the rescue, too.”

“Ah, I’m going to reserve any thanks for that, I should think. After all, you didn’t do it out of the kindness of your hearts, or because any of you particularly liked Trixie, am I correct?” Trixie glanced between the three of us. “After all, it sounds as though you were ordered to do so by the Princess, as an afterthought. Her focus was on the Element of Harmony.”

“W-we still saved your life, T-Trixie.” I grumbled.

“Oh, I’m sure the Great and Powerful Trixie could have escaped from that if she’d really wanted to do so. Perhaps it would have taken a bit longer, but no prison can hold Trixie forever.”

My voice became a feral growl. “M-maybe I should haul you back to that hive s-so we can test that—”

“Hey hey hey! Break it up, you two.” Raindrops stepped in between us before the argument could escalate further. “We’re almost to Ponyville—don’t start this now. Let the Princess have her first, then I’m sure she’ll let you two hash out your differences, like civilized mares.”

With another huff, Trixie pushed forwards a bit more, so that she was a dozen paces ahead of the rest of the group. She didn’t go any further than that, but it put a clear distance between her and us. I decided to follow her lead, and dropped back a few paces, so I could grumble in relative privacy.

At least, until Gilda dropped onto her claws, so she could walk beside me. “Jeez. Some ‘friend.’”

I shook my head. “Not my f-friend. Not sure sh-she ever was.”

“Yeah. I get that. They talk all nice, but when the chips are down, where are they?” Gilda ruffled her feathers, and leaned in close, to speak quietly. “After the story you told me, I’ve been kind of wondering how this meeting was going to go. If I was in your horseshoes, Holly? I probably wouldn’t have bothered saving her at all.”

I let out a snort. “I’ve b-been thinking about that.”

Gilda chuckled. “I bet you have. Did you think she was gonna apologize? That’s not how jerks like her deal with this stuff. Nah, all they’ll give you is dismissal and platitudes. I’ve been burned too many times for it myself.”

After a moment, I looked back at her. “W-weren’t you heading to Canterlot f-for revenge? B-because a pony hurt you?”

Gilda chuckled. “She didn’t hurt me herself—nothing except my trust. But yeah, I get what you’re saying, the whole ‘fool me twice, shame on me’ thing. I get I’m a little hypocritical. But this pony that hurt me? I’m gonna make sure she doesn’t betray anyone else like that, ever again. I’m not gonna trust a jerk like that again, either. You never get anywhere by trusting jerks.”

I glared at Trixie again. If she felt the heat of my glare on her back, she never gave any indication of it. “S-sounds like a good rule.”

“I’d like to think so,” Gilda said, with a prideful clack of her beak, before she leaned in close again. “And hey...if you ever wanna really follow my example? I’ll back your play.”

It was tempting. Sorely tempting. It would put that smug mule in her place.

But I shook my head. “C-Canterlot first. The P-Princess wants her alive. Af-after that, though…”

“I getcha.” Gilda said with a smirk, before she took to the sky again. We continued onwards towards Ponyville, with Gilda overhead again, watching the road for hazards ahead.


*	*	*


We weren’t far from Ponyville when we heard the sirens.

They sounded like old weather warning sirens, long and droning—they were designed to be hoof-cranked when a pony spotted a tornado, or some other form of wild weather coming. They were a warning for everypony who could hear them to get inside, where it was safe. But the fog distorted them, and the warbling sound echoed strangely through the mist.

I wasn’t the only one to recognize them; Raindrops bristled as she heard the sound, and spread her wings. “Oh no. Come on, let’s move! Ponyville’s under attack!”

“What? Ponyville’s always under attack, what are you talking about?!” Trixie whined, as we all broke into a gallop. Gilda swooped low overhead to stick close, so we wouldn’t lose each other in the fog.

Raindrops glared back at Trixie. “Yeah, and they don’t use the sirens for that anymore! That means this is different, or the demons got through the wall! We need to help!:”

“If the demons already got through the wall, how much help would five mares—”

We’d seen the silhouette of the wall through the fog before, but as we broke through and saw it clearly, we all froze. The section of wall we’d approached had been blasted apart, and the buildings on the other side were burning, but the demons we’d suspected to be the culprits were nowhere to be seen. Instead, dozens of skeletons, empty eyes glowing red, turned to face us. 

Longingly, my hoof slapped against my flank, hoping I’d grab the grip of that enchanted mace once more. But that weapon was long ago lost in the black lake.

They’d been crawling over each other to get through the shattered breach, and they clearly hadn’t expected anypony to come from behind. That was the only reason we had any sort of advantage against so many, because it meant that they had to disentangle their bones from each other and turn around to face us. The ones at the back were the first to charge towards our group, their teeth chattering as they galloped to battle.

They ran headlong into a wide swing of Maud’s greatclub, and the bones that weren’t pulverized into dust were scattered across the foggy field in seconds. “Holly! Trixie!” She raised her voice only so that we could hear her; she still spoke in her usual unhurried monotone. “You fought these before. How do we kill them?”

“Smash them! Smash them and scatter them and burn them!” Trixie cried, lobbing a pair of sparkling fireballs from her hooves gracefully.

I looked up to Gilda, who had already loosed an arrow or three from her bow, and seemed hesitant to fire more once she saw how little damage they did to the undead. The arrows barely scraped or chipped the bone, whenever they didn’t pass right between the ribs of our enemy. “G-Gilda! There’s a N-Necromancer around here, m-maybe more than one! F-find them, and k-kill them, that will st-stop these skeletons!”

Gilda snarled and leapt into the sky, and a moment later, even her silhouette was lost in the fog. She’d find them, I was sure of that—and she could probably kill them without ever being spotted. But what of us, and what of the town? How many had already gotten through? Enough that the siren was still being wound, clearly. Above the town, black smoke from burning cottages within was darkening the sky, and soggy ash had begun filtering down towards us.

Maud clearly had the same thought. “I’ll clear a path. We need to protect the town.” Then she strode forward confidently, swinging Avalanche in wide sweeps that scattered the skeletons before her. Raindrops and Trixie followed behind, blasting and slashing at any stragglers. I took up the rear, jumping and stomping on the skulls of any skeletons that were still moving after the others had passed by. The bone fragments immediately started to pull themselves back together, but it slowed them down, at least.

After clearing the first wave, Maud moved onto the gaggle of skeletons clogging the breach in the wall. She did nothing fancy; all she did was swing Avalanche high, and bring the weight of the massive stone club down upon the pile. There was a single uncomfortable cracking noise, as powdered bones scattered from underneath and were tossed away from the point of impact. Then she swung it back around onto her own back, and leapt over the pile of dead, crushed skeletons she’d left in her wake, into the town itself. We followed, although Raindrops took to the sky soon after.

After we scrambled through the crack in the wall, I glanced around, while the other three started dispatching errant skeletons. There seemed to have been a crude barricade built up around the breach, but it had already been overwhelmed—a few defenders of ponyville lay scattered around us, including one unlucky stallion who had been impaled on the spiked barricades as though he’d been thrown. It was possible they hadn’t been drained, if the skeletons had simply wanted to get inside and cause as much damage as possible, instead of Hollowing every single pony they came across. But there was no way to be sure.

Maud had already begun to bolt forward into the town. “Holly, Trixie, hold the breach! Raindrops, with me!” They were both gone a moment later, and Trixie and I looked at each other, then the crack in the wall.

Okay. Hold the line. We could do this; Maud smashed most of them already, and Gilda was hunting the necromancers in the fog.

A dozen skeletons scrambled through the breach, and I felt that confidence wane sharply as I realized I still didn’t even have a weapon. Trixie tossed more fireballs into the crowd, as I started rummaging through the fallen for a spare sword, but it looked as though the skeletons had taken them as they pushed into the town; the best I could grab was a mare’s backup dagger. It would have to do.

Another skeleton leapt at me, and I shoulder-checked it, then grabbed the ribcage as we fell to the street together. The long-dead pegasus chattered their teeth at my throat as I started stabbing at their skull with the dagger, but all I could do was chisel dusty chunks out of the bone and blunt the tip. After a few attempts, I tossed it aside and just grabbed their skull directly as it bit me. I grit my teeth through the pain, and slammed the back of the skull against the cobblestones a few times, until it shattered.

I felt the heat of more fireballs pass over my head as I stood, with my leg now dripping ichor. Trixie waved to me. “Back here! We’ll toss fire at them from a distance, assistant!”

“I’m not your assistant,” I grumbled, but I followed her lead and galloped back to the barricades. As I did, I felt something else brush past me, but when I jumped in surprise, there was nothing. A piece of trash, blowing in the wind, perhaps?

We seemed to have cleared the first wave of skeletons, and there was a momentary lull as I leapt behind the barricade, beside Trixie. I still couldn’t find a proper weapon, but the barricades weren’t more than sharpened logs, and a few had come loose. I yanked a length of wood out of the barricade itself, and focused on the breach in the wall. I needed my fire; I still couldn’t sling fireballs as casually as Trixie herself could. But thinking about her made them come easier.

But as I glanced over at her, I could tell something was wrong. She was still standing in the same position she had been, staring at the hole in the wall. She was intensely focused upon it, and the skeletons that had begun stumbling through as the beginning of the second wave.

“Tr-Trixie?” I waved my hoof in front of her eyes. “W-what are you—”

Trixie waved again, exactly as she had before. “Back here! We’ll toss fire at them from a distance, assistant!”

“W-what—” The skeletons began to stumble towards us, but I was too focused on the mare beside me. I jabbed at her side...and my hoof passed right through her.

Trixie, or the illusion of Trixie, dissipated into a shimmer of light. She was already gone, and she’d left me by myself here. She’d left a copy so I wouldn’t see her run, so I thought we were still holding the line together. She’d abandoned me here—Trixie had left me to die, yet again.

Damn it. Damn it all. And damn her in particular. I should have left her to die in the hive, or killed her on the road with Gilda’s help. Now I’d never have the chance.

The crowd of skeletons approached, and all I had was my fire and the log in my hooves. The fireballs came easy now; I scattered the front of the line, but more came in moments, and I had to swing my club at them wildly. Skulls were smashed and bones cracked, but there was always more. At one point, maybe a third of the skeletons suddenly fell apart as their life fled them—Gilda must have found one of the Necromancers.

But there were still too many. Teeth clamped down on my foreleg, and I was tackled to the ground as they bit and chewed and tore at me. The last thing I saw was my own weapon, that sharpened log, as it was wielded by one of the numberless skeletons.

It slammed into my breast and pinned me to the street, and all went dark, except for the crushing pain of being impaled.
> 44 - Keep the Home Fires Burning
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There were flashes of pain and fire.

My body burned, and my mouth was hot and wet. My legs were numb.

Then the rest of my body went numb, as all went dark.


*	*	*


Warmth.

Sweltering, uncomfortable warmth.

Something heavy lay across my back, and I couldn’t catch my breath. Just gathering my thoughts was a struggle. Moving, or even opening my eyes, was too much effort to ask of my broken body. I lay still, trapped, and tried to focus my fire until I could feel my limbs once more.

Somepony—a young mare—was shouting nearby. I was becoming worryingly adept at understanding a conversation while only half-conscious. “—so let me ch-check them at least!”

“We already checked! They’re Hollow! All of them!” An older mare. Her voice was exasperated.

“I d-don’t care! Keep p-pointing that rifle at me the entire time if you want, but I’m g-going to make sure!”

A calm monotone voice cut through the conversation. “Let her work. She knows what she’s doing.”

“Ugh, fine, fine! She wants to get pulled into the pile and sucked dry like them, it’s not my problem! Everypony pulled rank on me, go take it up with the Golden Guard! That’s what I’ll tell them!”

Someone approached me, but...it was hard to describe how I knew. I didn’t hear them, or see them—it was more that I could sense their approach. They had fire within them, bright but wavering. They drew close, and I pondered whether I should take it.

I was so hungry. Something within me felt empty, and I wanted to fill it with that fire. A seam had opened within my being, and I needed to seal it, or else the yawning dark within the aperture would swallow me instead.

The weight atop my body shifted, and then something was dragged away from me. Cold air rushed in to fill the gap, and my chest wasn’t being crushed as badly. My throat let out a quiet rasping noise as I tried to breathe, and my hooves trembled as I tried to make them work.

“Holly!” Warm, living hooves wrapped themselves around my head, and the bones of my neck ground together as the young mare pressed her breast against my forehead.

I recognized that voice. Only barely. But that was enough that I stifled that hunger, and forced it down. I couldn’t let it win.

Scattered memories flooded back, of who and where I was, and my eyes fluttered open as a shaky forehoof pressed against her side. “D-Dinky?”

“Movement!” There was the distinct sound of a gun being cocked, and then a clack of claws on steel.

Another voice spoke—I recognized Gilda, even though her voice was low, dangerous, and yet still as confident as ever. “Keep that gun lowered, dunce cap. We’ve got this.”

I smelled smoke—ash and cooked flesh. I felt hunger again, almost different but not quite, and revulsion followed only a step behind. “Where—?”

“Hang on, let me g-get you out of this pile. Hey, you! Y-yeah, you! Help me pull this st-stallion off her, he’s heavy. Ch-check that he’s not Hollow again, b-by the way—in fact, check all of them, b-before you burn even a single more sun-damned c-corpse!”

More weight lifted off my back, as the world came into focus. There was fire off to my left—bright, too bright to look at directly. Muddy ground under Dinky’s hooves, and my own a moment later as she pulled me out of the pile. But I was weak, and they couldn’t support my weight—they collapsed almost instantly, and I fell face-first into the mud.

It was disgusting, and something was wrong with it. The wet dirt had mixed with Hollow ichor, creating a dark rusty color. A top layer of white ash had settled atop that, forming a crust that I broke through as I fell, revealing the rusty mud kept wet underneath. It only lasted for a moment, before Dinky hauled me back to my hooves, but she was clearly struggling under my dead weight.

“Wha—M-Maud, help me hold her up. W-why can’t she walk?”

Another fire, even brighter than Dinky’s, punched heavy holes through the ashen crust and knocked piles of dust aside as she strode forward. Maud came into focus, still wearing her armor, but her helmet was casually slung at her side. She ducked her head under my barrel, and the rough stone surface of her back pressed up from below, as Maud bore my weight. “She may have been crushed under the weight of the others. Or she may have other injuries. I’m surprised she’s awake.”

That older mare spoke again, from a few body lengths away. She was far enough that she was out of focus, but I could see the brown blur of a unicorn, and patches of fuchsia that were probably her coat color. “That one? She was already moving when we pulled the wagon over, but she was snarling and biting at the Irregulars. How…?” Her voice trembled. “She...she was Hollow. I know she was! Davenport had to get a pony to put stitches in, because she bit him so bad!”

“What? You’re sure it was her?” Dinky asked, unbelieving. She looked back at me, and my ears flattened back against my head.

The flashes returned; nothing more than fragments of memory. I swallowed, and realized my mouth was full of Hollow ichor. Was it mine, or somepony else’s?

“I’m positive!” The mare yelped, scared and confused. “Look, right there, above her eye! I stabbed her right there with my bayonet!”

The mare was right. But she couldn’t be right, because that meant I’d gone Hollow. I’d gone Hollow, and yet now I had my mind. That wasn’t possible.

“Sh-she’s not!” Dinky was adamant, but she sounded scared. She moved back in front of my eyes, and her hoof moved the colorless strands of my mane aside so she could look at the scar, and directly into the embers of my eyes. “Holly, t-talk to me. St-start with Trixie. Where is she? The m-militia didn’t see her, or s-so they said.”

Trixie. My blood boiled at the name, and I couldn’t keep myself from letting out a snarl, which made Dinky step back in shock. But that hatred gave me breath. “Trrrrixie. Yesss.” Cold air escaped my snout, and I tasted hot ash on the wind as fresh air replaced it. “L-left me. S-second wave came, more sk-skeletons. No w-weapon. Trrrixie...called me b-back to the b-barricade, said we sh-should throw fire at them f-from a distance.”

Dinky stepped forward again, eager for me to continue.

“She w-was already gone. L-left me with an illusion, to m-make me think she hadn’t l-left me to die. Th-think I bumped past her as she l-left...she has s-some sort of...cloaking m-magic.”

Maud let out a long, frustrated exhale under me, and through her stone armor, it was like a mountain shifting in anger as tectonic plates ground together. “Gilda. Carry Holly.”

The gryphon hen entered my field of view, and I was limply shuffled off of Maud’s back and onto Gilda’s. As she took my weight, Gilda asked, “Okay? Where are you going?”

“After Trixie. I know where she went. We’ll meet you in Canterlot.” For once, Maud’s voice wasn’t monotone, and that was terrifying in its own way. There was just a slight tone of anger in her voice, but as far as she was concerned, that may as well have been a scream of frustration. For a moment, I wondered if Trixie would actually make it there, or if Maud wanted to take revenge on our behalf.

Dinky blinked, and raised her hoof as if to step in Maud’s way, but decided against it. “B-by yourself?”

Maud was already walking back through the ashen mud. “Yes. Holly, Gilda, go see Rockhoof. You need new equipment for the journey to Canterlot.” She passed by a pair of soldiers who had been watching us nervously, and they stepped out of her way—not that they could have stopped her, even if they wanted to do so. Maud disappeared into the smoking ruins of the town around us, and that was the last I saw of her for a very long time.

That left me on Gilda’s back, with Dinky standing beside us. She swallowed, then looked up at Gilda. “Um. W-we should get away from the fires, this sm-smoke isn’t healthy.”

“What, not a fan of the smell? ‘Cause it’s making me hungry.” Gilda cackled while Dinky looked sick, but they both started to walk away from the intense heat nearby.

As they did, I shifted slightly to look around, and immediately wished I hadn’t. All of this had been happening in a cleared space near the wall, where buildings had been smashed down to the foundations by an attack long ago. The rubble had been cleared so great funeral pyres could be lit, and in between those were piles of bones...and bodies. So many bodies.

At least fifty Hollow ponies had been haphazardly thrown into piles, waiting to be tossed into the fire. I had been in one of those piles, until Dinky had pulled me out. I would’ve been burned like they still would be, unless anypony else suddenly had their senses returned to them. But somehow, I doubted that was going to happen. The bones had to have been the remains of the skeletons; they were splintered and broken, and being used as kindling.

The colors of one body caught my eye, and my rattling breath seized in my throat. Raindrops lay atop one pile on her back, with her head lolled back on a broken neck, and her eyes empty. She had gone Hollow, just like I had, but she had stayed a Hollow. After all that she’d done, after she’d fought as she’d had, the skeletons had overcome her. She had barely made it to Ponyville before her journey came to a very permanent end.

A cold sense of dread overcame me, and I desperately hoped I wasn’t the one who took her fire. If she had been the pony to find me as a feral Hollow...it was terribly likely. But nopony had mentioned as such, and that gave me a faint glimmer of hope that I wasn’t her killer too.

Gilda noticed I’d shifted, and gave me a nod  “You were on the money about those necromancers, by the way. The bones dropped when they did. I got six of them, but I think there were a couple more that I couldn’t find.” Her gaze fell. “Shame about Raindrops, though. Walked all that way, only for her to get snuffed out here.”

“J-just us, then...” I croaked.

Gilda nodded. “With Maud going after that magician, yeah. That’s why she was so intense about us going to Canterlot. Guess you’re the only pony she trusts left to make that delivery, now.”

“Delivery?” Dinky asked, suddenly curious. “Does that mean you got the Element?”

“Shush,” Gilda put a claw to her beak, and looked around. “Yeah, but don’t go blabbing that. Got enough problems now.”

Dinky looked between Gilda and me, suddenly nervous. “...What do you mean? What happened in Baltimare?”

The whole journey flashed through my mind’s eye. The tunnel, the changelings, the museum, the ghosts, Tor’inx and the hive, and every single pony we’d lost or killed along the way. Dinky didn’t know about any of that. She just knew that myself, Maud, and Raindrops had been the only ones from that group to return. An errant jostle from Gilda brought my hoof back into focus for a moment, still stained with dark blue changeling blood.

“Holly?”

It was better that she didn’t know what I’d done. And I didn’t want to remember what I’d done.

“Leave it, filly. Holly’s been through a lot.” Gilda understood; she’d been there for most of it. And she had her own secrets.

But that mostly just confused Dinky. “What? But...we’ve been through a lot together, too. Why can’t you tell me what happened, Holly?”

I just shook my head, even though she kept cajoling me as I walked. Gilda looked like she might shout at the filly because Dinky was so insistent, but she kept herself in check. Dinky led us to Rockhoof regardless, even though I spent most of the walk lost in my own thoughts, and the memories of what I’d done. What I’d lost. What I still had left to lose.


*	*	*


By the time we returned to the familiar town square, I’d regained some small measure of my own strength. Enough that Gilda gently let me slide off her back, and I was able to walk, albeit shakily. Dinky insisted on propping me up as I limped towards the junk-built forge, and the ancient stallion who worked endlessly on every sword and plate of armor that was placed in front of him.

Rockhoof hadn’t changed since I’d seen him last. He was still slightly Hollow, of course, but his embered eyes were bright as they fell upon me, and I limped towards him. They strayed to Dinky, who was still supporting me, but they stayed the longest on Gilda...and he paused in his hammering to subtly reach behind him.

Magnus—or at least his head, still independent of the rest of his body—was nearby, propped up on a crate. He was facing away from us, and couldn’t turn to see us approach. He could only see Rockhoof tense up, and that clearly made Magnus nervous. “What? What’s wrong?”

Rockhoof didn’t respond to his friend; his eyes never left Gilda, but for a second, to stray back to me and Dinky. “Fillies. You’re keepin’ strange company, these days.”

If anything, Gilda seemed amused by how much her presence made the old warrior nervous. “Strange, carnivorous company, that’s me. Careful, or I might go for your throat when I get hungry.”

Magnus was desperately trying to roll his jaw in order to turn around, but all he did was tilt over on the side of his head. Without looking, Rockhoof picked him up by his mane, and set him back down on his stump—facing us, now. As soon as he saw Gilda, his eyes went wide as well, then he clenched his teeth and exhaled. “Relax, Rocky. New era, remember? Equestria’s on good terms with the Gryphons.”

“When did that happen?” Rockhoof relaxed only very slightly; he’d moved a shovel behind his back for use like a war spear, but he let it rest against Magnus’ crate instead, still in plain view.

“A long, long time ago. We’re allies, although it’s kind of a weird situation.” Magnus spoke politically, not personally. He must have been caught up to speed once he’d joined Equestria’s modern military, or perhaps so he could advise Canterlot on diplomatic matters.

“Oh?” Rockhoof raised an eyebrow at Gilda directly. “And how is Griffonicus nowadays?”

“Pffffthahaha! What?” Gilda burst out in her cackling laugh as soon as she heard the name. “What did you call it?”

“Griffonicus…?” Rockhoof repeated, though he seemed unsure of himself now.

Gilda wiped her eyes with the back of a claw. “Oh Tartarus, I haven’t heard that name for the Republic before. What history book did you dredge that out of? You spell that with two Fs or a properly phlegmy Y-P-H?”

Magnus turned his eyes back to Rockhoof. “The Gryphon Republic—”

Gilda cut him off. “It’s called Gryphonstone, same as the capital, has been for around thirty years.”

Magnus squinted at her. “You just called it the Republic.”

“Sure, but I’m a gryphon.” Gilda fluffed up her breast with pride. “I can call it whatever the peck I want. And we’re calling it Gryphonstone now. You should too, pony.”

Magnus let out a long, frustrated sigh, which sounded strange, thanks to the magical modulation that simulated his voice. He didn’t have lungs, and so the spell only sort of knew how to make the right sound. “The country of Gryphonstone has been politically unstable since it was first founded, before our time, Rockhoof. They stopped calling it Griffonicus when the eponymous Emperor Griffonicus died about ten years after our abeyance, and his spymaster took the throne—and his name, but she spelled it ‘Gryphonicus’ instead. And then five years later there was a coup, and a tribal warlord burned down the capital, and declared that the new capital twelve miles away—and the country as a whole—was now named Gr’ta. That lasted for about twelve years, and so on…”

Gilda continued to hold her head high, and kept her chest fluffed with pride. “The Republic has a noble martial tradition of blade and claw. Old blades dull with time, and new, sharper blades replace it. The shape changes as new leaders take their place, but the metal from which all the blades are formed remains the same.”

“It’s a huge pain in the plot for diplomacy,” groused Magnus. “Celestia considered the Republic’s reunification to be one of her pet projects, and she was proud of this recent trend of stability, until the dragons and demons required her full attention instead.”

Rockhoof snorted, and finally relaxed a bit. “Gryphons or Griffons, it doesn’t matter that much to me. They were fierce warriors in my time, no matter what banner they flew, and they were always eager to raid our village. They considered ponies ‘easy prey’ in those days. It’s...good...to see things have changed a bit.”

“Well, only a little bit.” Gilda clicked her beak at him, and the soft edges curled into a smirk. “We still eat ponies after all—mares at least, though it’s a bit more intimate nowadays...”

Rockhoof let out a wary snort, but he relaxed a little bit more. His hoof found his hammer once more, and he returned to work rethreading a leather strap around the edges of an armor plate. “So, what brings ye both to me again? Holly busted up her armor again, I see. What about you, Dinky?”

Dinky shook her head. “You’ve already d-done an incredible job on D-Diamond’s sword—I should be f-fine. It’s just Holly.” She tilted her head up at Gilda. “Uh...unless you need any smithing done, m-miss?”

“The name’s Gilda, filly. Don’t call me miss.” The hen started to shake her head, then paused. “Actually, you got any arrows? Been losing a few lately.”

“Arrows, hm…” Rockhoof scratched his chin for a moment. “Can’t say I stock any, but I might be able to make some in bulk. We’ve got plenty of scrap. Could take a few hours, though.”

Gilda clicked her beak. “In that case, I’ll make ‘em myself. It’ll give me something to do while you’re fixing the scatshow Holly’s made of her gear.”

“Scatshow…?” Rockhoof repeated skeptically before he fixed his gaze on me, and I withered against Dinky’s side as he examined me in detail. “Holly, what’d you do to that armor? Let me see.”

I moved slowly and shamefully, as I stepped closer and allowed Rockhoof to look at it closely. His eyes scanned the scratched flank barding, the chainmail that hung in broken curtains, and finally the breastplate, or rather, the complete lack thereof. Without that armor, my most vital organs—if I was still alive and in need of them—were totally unprotected.

After a moment, he let out a tired sigh. "You've done worse; I might still be able to salvage most of this. It's a write-off for now though, especially since I'd imagine you'll be heading right back out on another errand. Better to give you a replacement than try to fix this now."

At that Magnus coughed, the sound echoing and magically unnatural. "Speaking of errands, where's Maud, Raindrops, the rest of the Baltimare expedition? You said you were going off to go find them, Dinky."

Dinky sighed. "As n-near as I can tell...only Holly, R-Raindrops, and Maud returned f-from Baltimare, but Holly won't say exactly what happened. They had Trixie, b-but she abandoned Holly. M-Maud went after her. Raindrops was ov-overwhelmed in the most recent attack, and t-turned Hollow by the skeletons."

"Damn...damn!" Magnus cursed. "Those are heavy losses. I should've gone with them."

Rockhoof chuckled tiredly, as he worked to undo the clasps holding my ruined armor in place. "And done what? Ye aren't exactly mobile, Magnus."

Gilda peered in curiosity at the talking decapitated head, but shrugged. "I joined that expedition early on. Another pony wouldn't have made a difference in Baltimare. Especially not...whatever you are."

"You were present?" Magnus raised an eyebrow. "Can you give the report, then?"

Gilda snorted. "Sure, a report. I can do that, Admiral."

"Commander."

"Whatever, head admiral. Baltimare was full of ghosts and changelings, both sides were insane and hated each other, and Holly here is a damned hero who rescued a real jerk of a mare that backstabbed us at pretty much the first opportunity that she could, while everypony else got sucked dry or torn apart. We killed the ghosts, but the changelings are a deep infestation that needs to be cleaned out with an army."

Dinky gave me a surprised look—she hadn't expected such a glowing retelling of my actions, after I'd refused to talk about them myself. Gilda didn't know the details—she didn't know what I'd done, deep within the hive.

"Damned hero" was more accurate than she could ever have known.

Magnus blinked, as he heard the story, and was silent for a few moments before he looked at me. "Did you find the Element?"

I nodded, and Rockhoof stepped back as I reached into my bottomless bag. A moment of memory passed, and I withdrew my hoof, with the golden clasp wrapped around my fetlock.

Magnus sighed in relief. "At least there's that. But with Raindrops Hollow and Maud off chasing that stage magician…"

I dropped the Element of Generosity back into the bottomless darkness of the bag. "M-Maud already told us to b-bring it to C-Canterlot."

"Good," Magnus replied, then repeated tiredly a moment later, "Good."

"In that case, I might have a replacement weapon for you, filly." Rockhoof grunted, as he started to remove my armor again. "One of the Princess' guards dropped it when they got attacked by the Apple militia. You should bring it back to Canterlot anyhow, not doing us any good here."

I nodded slowly. "Okay. W-what is it?"

"One of those fancy parade spears they have. Thought it was folded for compact storage at first, but the design's more complicated than that. I'll show you after I get this armor off."

Magnus was looking up past us, through the fog beyond the wall, and the blurry silhouette of the Canterhorn range beyond. "Dinky. You should go with them to Canterlot."

"What?" Dinky looked at Magnus like he'd gone mad. "I told you, I'm not interested in adventure anymore. Baton Verte was too much already. Ponyville's much more safe, and I can still help ponies—"

"But it's not," he interrupted. "The demons have never stopped coming. Applejack's mad deserters are raiding holes in our security that we don’t even know we have. And now the dead themselves are apparently rising to attack us from Cloudsdale…"

Magnus let out a long sigh. "Ponyville was already locked in a losing stalemate. Now we're fighting on three fronts, and we can't hold this town forever. We never really could."

Tears welled up in Dinky's Hollow eyes, though the filly tried to keep them in. "I don't want to give up on Ponyville. I don't want to lose my home."

"I know." Magnus closed his eyes. "But we already have. We don't have the ponypower to keep the town safe any more—we need to evacuate before the last attack comes. The one we can't fight off, the one that breaks our lines and can't be stopped."

Dinky let out a stifled sob. She couldn't find any words, and the tears were the closest that she could manage.

Magnus continued. "Go with Knight Holly to Canterlot. She'll deliver the Element, while you need to tell the Princess to evacuate Ponyville. She'll send others back, but you should stay safe there."

Rockhoof let out an indignant snort, as my barding fell away. "We're just letting the damn demons take Ponyville?"

"The demons, Applejack, and now the skeletons," Magnus confirmed. "If they all want the damned town so badly, they can all fight each other for it. But the ponies here can't be caught in the crossfire as well. Do you understand, Archmage?"

Dinky still had no words, but she nodded. Before, I'd been leaning on her for stability, but now she leaned on me instead. If I hadn't been there, she might have just collapsed outright.

To draw the conversation away, I inquired about something that had been on my mind during Magnus’s explanation. “D-deserters?” That faction was new to me.

Magnus grunted in response—it probably would have been a nod, if he could move his head. “Yeah. We’ve had militia ponies running off when nopony’s looking, sometimes small groups, and then attacking the cracks in our security when they come back. Not all of them, and we still have a lot of ponies loyal to the town—but more than I would’ve thought are apparently still loyal to Applejack, or maybe they’re trying to survive by themselves. Maybe a fifth, so far. The skeletons are new too; I thought you said they were keeping to themselves, Holly?”

They had been. They weren’t at all interested in attacking Ponyville, at least when I was there; they had seemed very content to stay in the ruins of Cloudsdale and practice their necromancy in secret.

But I had killed their goddess, and even now, I was holding her stolen heart. And that pony that Princess Celestia had freed from the jail—he’d been a necromancer as well, and if he’d returned to Cloudsdale and reported that he’d witnessed a change in leadership, they might have seen that as a weakness.

“It’s my f-fault,” I murmured, as my head fell. “It’s all m-my fault. I sc-crewed up, and n-now—”

“I doubt that.” Rockhoof shrugged. “Seems to me that if the fence is so poorly built that it’s ready to tip over, the pony that leans on it to catch their breath isn’t to blame.”

“B-but...it’s always me that t-tips over the fence posts,” I said quietly, and nopony seemed to have a response.

Rockhoof dumped the remains of my broken armor into a pile of scrap, and turned to the same crate that Gilda had been digging through for her arrowheads. As he did, he paused, and looked at her bow, still looped over her shoulder. “That’s hoof—well, claw-made. Your own work?”

Gilda fluffed her chest out again. “Of course—every Gryphon is trained how to make their own bow from scratch. I’ve broken plenty, but this one’s my best work so far. Had it for years.”

“It’s good work. High-quality,” Rockhoof said appreciatively, from one weaponsmith to another. “You use your own feathers for the fletchings of the arrows?”

“Wouldn’t trust any others. Are these the arrowheads?” Gilda held up a leather bag that clinked as she shook it.

“Broken dagger blades.” Rockhoof explained. “I don’t usually do daggers myself; too small and flimsy for these hooves. They’re all yours, but you’ll need to sharpen them a bit to make them work, and break the larger ones down into smaller fragments.”

“Eh, I’ve been using flint up until now. It’s good to have metal arrowheads again.” Gilda emptied out the bag onto another nearby crate, and started to sort through the sharpened metal within.

Meanwhile, Rockhoof turned back to me, holding a short, ornate spear in his hoof. “FIlly. Practice a bit with this, while I find you some more armor. There’s a mechanism inside, so be careful where you point the tip when it extends.”

Dinky heaved a quiet sob of a sigh and sat down next to Magnus while I stepped forward and took the shortspear with shaking hooves. The decapitated head glanced at it, and then began to explain, since he was obviously familiar with the weapon. “This design is Zebra-made, a gift from their people to the Princess a couple hundred years ago. It’s based off of their Ikwas, a type of short spear with a broad head, which they use for personal defense and close-quarters combat. But these have a twist—literally. Point the ends away from everypony, and then twist the shaft.”

I hesitantly did so, and there was a mechanical snapping sound, as the spear suddenly extended to the full length from both ends. The spear tip extended another leg-length, as did the capped, blunt end. I twisted the spear’s shaft again in the other direction, and it collapsed once more back into a shortspear.

“Nifty, huh?” Magnus chuckled, with a bit of pride. “They’re complicated, flashy weapons, which is why you don’t see them very often—plus the mechanism is partly magical, and a real pain to maintain when it’s been damaged, so the army prefers cheap and simple pistols, shortswords, and lances. The Princess keeps a small number for her personal guard, though mostly for appearance’s sake, plus they store easily inside her phaeton.”

“It mounts to armor, so it can be used as a lance as well,” Rockhoof grunted, as he hauled out a pile of leather and plating. “Assuming the armor has a mount, a’course. Speaking of, try this on for size.”

This armor was lighter than the armor I’d worn out to Baltimare, but not by much; the large metal plates on the breast and sides were replaced with layers of leather. There still seemed to be a thin layer of steel at the core, and the shoulder plates were apparently important enough to remain fully steel. But I could move a bit easier in the armor, and this time it already had slots for my wings cut in the back, along with a protective leather sheath that I could latch to my belly in case I needed to fly, otherwise keeping the wings protected.

Rockhoof nodded in satisfaction. “Right, now take it back off. I’ll do some custom fitting. Can’t have you going to the Princess wearing ill-fitting armor, I’d look like a sloppy smith.”

As I was doing so, he tilted his head back towards DInky. “You two should take a rest. Between this and the Gryphon’s arrows—”

“My name is Gilda.”

“—Gilda’s arrows, you’ll be waiting for a bit. Might well take the time to rest and catch your breath, before you head out again. Dinky, might be a good time to check in with your friends, tell ‘em where you’re going. Along with grabbing anything else you might need.”

Dinky nodded, and stood on shaky hooves, before she wandered off into the town. I considered going with her, but I didn’t have it in me, and she seemed like she wanted privacy to think. Instead, I pulled out my bottle of sunlight, and took a swig, just to try and heal any of the lingering damage from my Hollow stint. Then I relaxed against the crate, after storing the bottle safely back within my bag.

I couldn’t sleep. Hollows couldn’t sleep, for some reason. But I could rest my eyes, as I listened to Rockhoof hammering on his anvil and Gilda fletching and sharpening her arrows.
> 45 - In the Shadow of the Mountain
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gilda's focus was on her arrowheads alone, and nothing else. Nor did they deserve anything less; it was a tricky thing, working such flawed scrap metal into sharpened arrowheads. They would need to hold an edge for at least one use, and hopefully more beyond. But her main issue didn't seem to be related to the tips or the fastenings of the arrows, so much as the material itself.

Her old arrows were made of sharp stones, sharpened to a deadly point, and presumably made of whatever she could find. Other arrows were tipped with fangs or sharpened bone, and some seemed to be made out of sharp shards of dark, glass-like stone. There was one that was a distinctive shade of red, which I realized a moment later was made of sharpened alicorn—which is to say, she had removed the horn of a pony, hopefully a hollow, and filed the tip down until it was just as deadly as the others. I was aware that ranged weapons, like a bow, required a great deal of upkeep for ammunition, but that also meant it was possible to make use of a wide variety of equipment depending on the circumstances one was faced with.

Steel, bronze, and iron were not so easy to work. While she had a proper grindstone available for use, it seemed as though Rockhoof heated his metal using crystals that channeled fire directly. Dinky even recharged a crystal while we waited, and I was able to watch her draw magic from the air itself into the crystal to rekindle it. All of this annoyed and confused Gilda—who had expected a proper forge instead of pony magic—which meant that when Pinkie arrived, Gilda was too focused on her own borrowed fire crystal and pile of glowing arrowheads to notice.

"Gilda?! Ohmigosh it is you! Hi!"

“Who—?” Gilda let out a startled squawk, and a gout of heat was squeezed out of the crystal, which crisped her brow. She dropped it into the mud as she slapped at her forehead, but as she spun to look at Pinkie, she suddenly froze, and her eyes went wide. “—ahhh…?”

Pinkie Pie was as radiant as ever, if not more so. She regarded Gilda as one would an old friend that hadn't been seen in decades, which may well have been true. And as always, Pinkie retained no concept of personal space, which meant that she shoved her own smiling face into Gilda's to get her attention as she spoke. She very much succeeded in doing that. "It's me, your old pal, Pinkie Pie! Remember how me and Dashie helped out in Gryphonstone all those times? How is Gryphonstone, anyway? I bet it's probably a bit more comfy than here, which is a weird thought, haha! Oh! How's Gabby, and Grandpa Gruff, and how're you? You never write! Or maybe you do, I don't think we really get the mail any more. Have you been writing?"

Gilda swallowed nervously, and her wings twitched as though she were considering how best to flee. It was unusual to see a predator displaying such clear intent to flee. "I...uh. I haven't been...uh. Writing. I didn’t think I needed to—"

Pinkie giggled, and leaned back—which caused the tension in Gilda's wings to visibly relax, just a bit. "Aww, silly, of course you didn't need to write, I just thought you might! Since it's more dangerous than usual here in Equestria right now. But you're you! So of course you came here yourself. I bet you've got some great stories about the journey here, right? But it's really cool that you came all the way out here to—wait! I didn't even ask, whatcha doing all the way out here, away from home? That's a really long journey, now that the trains aren't running. Did you come all the way out here on hoof? Or claw? Or wing?" Pinkie gasped suddenly. "Didja come all the way out here just to see me?! Awww, I missed you too, Gilda!"

Before Gilda even had the time to flinch, Pinkie wrapped her up in a tight, squeezing hug, with both her hooves and her bright pink wings. Gilda stiffened, a breath caught in her beak, and I could see that if she wasn't so tightly ensnared, that would have been the last straw. She was afraid of Pinkie, and wanted to get away, and now she couldn't. And that realization was causing her to start hyperventilating in panic, as she began to let out labored huffs through her beak. I was astonished, unable to recall any time I had seen the nigh-unflappable gryphon more flustered. I would have expected that reaction to her being faced with the Banshee, not a pony as friendly as Pinkie Pie.

"G—get—get off—get away from me!" Gilda squawked, shrill and panicky, as she tried to force Pinkie off her. Pinkie, to her credit, released Gilda instantly, and stepped back, even though she couldn't look more confused—and more than a little hurt—by Gilda's rejection. That expression only deepened as Gilda hopped back, and yowled, "Stop, alright?! Just—just stop! I'm not here for you—I didn't even think you'd be here. Guess all these other ponies kept you safe, because I know you wouldn't be able to handle it outside these walls."

Pinkie was hurt, but she was trying not to show it. "Oh...okay. So...maybe you're here for Dashie then? She's super busy as of late, I dunno if she'll have time to catch up with you...she never has time for me anymore—"

Gilda let out a snort. "We'll make time. I'm sure of that." She fluffed her feathers, preparing to take off, but never looked away from Pinkie. "Don't—don't follow me. Don't you dare. And don't try to stop me, or...or…" She clacked her beak in frustration. "Just don't, alright?!"

Pinkie was moments away from tears. "But...what did I…?"

Gilda took to the air, but paused above me and Dinky, to shout down, "Meet me outside the walls!" before she swooped away over the rooftops of the square. There was a distant gunshot as she startled one of the town militia, but one little bullet wouldn't have been enough to stop Gilda now, even if it had hit her.

As soon as she was gone, Pinkie dropped to her knees, despondent and confused. "But...but why...what did I…?"

Dinky and I wasted no time in moving to her sides, where Pinkie embraced us in her shaking wings, and we relished in her brilliant warmth. We had no answers for her, so we occupied ourselves with comforting the mare, while Rockhoof gave his best guess. "She's a gryphon, lass. Fair-weather friends at the best of times, every last one o' them. And there hasn't been fair weather in Equestria for a long time now."

"Rockhoof…" Magnus warned, in a magically-synthesized chiding tone.

"Aye? Prove me wrong, Mag. We e'er have a gryphon stick with us for longer than it took to get paid, or get their petty revenge? Back in the old days, or now? I can't remember any, off the top of my head."

"But..that wasn't…" Pinkie mumbled, in between sniffles."She was acting like I'd...I dunno, done something to wrong her specifically. She...she was afraid of me...w-why?"

"D-dunno," Dinky mumbled, against her side. "We'll ask her, w-when we meet her outside of t-town. There...has to be some r-reason."

"Well, make sure she gets these." Rockhoof swept the pile of scrap-metal arrowheads into a small burlap bag, which he tossed to me. "She left so quickly, she forgot to take those with her. Gryphon she might be, but I can't use 'em unless I melt them back down. Too much effort for too little metal."

I nodded, and pulled the bag closed, before pushing it into my own bottomless bag. Then, it was all we could do to huddle up against the burning warmth of Pinkie Pie, to try and comfort her.


*	*	*


Rockhoof finished his work on our gear not long after Gilda departed. With his blessing, as well as those of Magnus and a teary-eyed Pinkie Pie, Dinky and I headed for the gate out of town, closest to Canterlot. My repaired armor was lighter, cleaner, and, most importantly, it was once again protecting my Hollow body. Hopefully, I would be able to take better care of it this time.

Dinky struck up conversation, as we passed through the dilapidated streets of Ponyville. "I d-don't like your new fr-friend."

I nodded. "N-never seen her l-like that...s-surprised me, too."

"Where'd you f-find her? I've seen a f-few gryphons, but they're pr-pretty rare these days. And they w-were all Equestrian natives."

"B-Baltimare." I murmured quietly. "After we l-lost Merry M-May…"

Dinky's expression softened, and she turned her eyes forward again for a short distance. But her curiosity couldn't be restrained; eventually, she had to ask more questions. "Holly? I know y-you don't want to talk ab-about Baltimare. Whenever y-you do, I'll listen. B-but I do want to know one thing."

I swallowed. My mouth was perpetually dry—all the water in the world couldn't salve my long-dead throat.

"The th-things you did, that you don't w-want to talk about. Were they M-Maud's orders, or did they come from G-Gilda?"

It was the wrong question to ask, but Dinky couldn't know that. In asking it, she'd given me two outs. I could blame my actions on my superior, or the new addition that we'd trusted too much. I could even blame Raindrops, and she likely wouldn't bat an eye; she just wanted to blame somepony for hurting me, like how Gilda had just hurt Pinkie.

But none of it was true. My actions were my own, even when I'd lost control. Even when I'd gone Hollow, however briefly it may have been. I had done those things, not some alter ego hidden within, not some puppeteer like the Necromancers of Cloudsdale. And I wouldn't have Dinky blaming somepony—or someone, or even something—else in my stead. She deserved to know the truth.

"No," I rasped, and she turned to look at me. "My f-fault. My fault they went Hollow. K-killed others that c-couldn't Hollow. My f-fault...m-my hooves. I sh-should've gone Hollow too...should have st-stayed Hollow when I f-fell here. But I...I keep c-coming back...why…?"

Dinky tried to say something, but failed, and continued to fail for a few moments. I don't think she had any idea how to respond to that. Eventually, she gathered enough of her wits to ask, "How m-many times…? Meadowbrook s-said you were dangerously c-close, maybe two or th-three…"

"M-more than that," I mumbled. How many more? How many times had I died since that diagnosis? And still I returned, the fire within myself flaring hot once more to bring me back to life. Even when I lost myself, even when I went Hollow, the fire within gave me life anew. The Hollow curse that afflicted us all—it was worse for me, and me alone.

Dinky was realizing that now too. She looked at me, with her own Hollow eyes, and I saw something new in them. Curiosity—and fear. I was something new, something different...something dangerous. It was dangerous to be around me; the ponies around me kept going Hollow, while I continued on. I expected her to quit, when she understood that. I expected her to stop, and stay here in Ponyville, because as bad as it was here, it was still safer than going out into the world by my side.

But she shook her head, and sighed. "I wish I knew more about Pyromancy—or ponies. Twilight was right, and the Princess too. I should have listened to them." She looked back up the street, towards the distant wall, and the foggy sky beyond. "You, I understand least of all, Holly. Who you are, and what you are, or what's happened to you. But I believe in you, and I don't want you to give up. So I won't give up on you."

She smiled, and I felt my own fire flare within, just slightly.

"But I think you need to keep better friends,” she then said, breaking off the tender moment with a low sigh. “Apparently the ones you currently have are giving you some weird ideas. The Princess will know something, I'm sure. She always does. So, let's get moving to Canterlot, and if Gilda shows herself on the way, well...we'll see what she has to say for herself."


*	*	*


We didn't have to search for Gilda when we left Ponyville; she found us. 

We passed through the gate easily enough—now that Applejack was no longer leading the militia and Dinky was once again the town's archmage, they snapped to attention as soon as we approached. They even saluted us as they opened the gates, and we left the town. We hadn't moved more than a hundred paces into the fog before Gilda swooped down from above, and fell into step at our side. She didn’t say anything, only glanced toward me with a steely gaze, the kind of look that said more than words could, and would defy any attempt to interject.

Dinky wasn't going to just let her join without comment, though, visibly bristling as she looked past me at the gryphon. "Oh no you don't! W-what the hay was that, back there?"

"What was what?" she asked gruffly.

"Pinkie! Y-you hurt her! W-why?"

Gilda shuddered, and looked back towards the town, as though she was afraid that Pinkie would be following right behind us. "I—look, I—"

Dinky jabbed me in the side. "St-stop. We're not g-going anywhere until sh-she gives us an explanation—and P-Pinkie an apology."

Gilda ruffled her feathers again. "That's not happening. If you're not coming with me, then I'll go by myself."

I looked between them, unsure who to follow, as Dinky stomped her hoof. "At least give us an explanation. I want to know why. Something I can tell Pinkie, next time I see her, so she understands why you hurt her."

Gilda shook for a moment, then let out a frustrated squawk. "I hurt her!' You keep saying that, like it means something! You know what hurts?" Gilda balled up her claw into a fist tight enough that her own talons drew dark blood. "That she doesn't know what happened to Gryphonstone. That she doesn't care enough to know. None of you rutting ponies know, or care to find out. Nopony told you, nopony went out to see, you're all so focused on your own problems that you can't even glance at what's happened to your supposed allies!"

Gilda took a deep breath, before adding, quietly, "That mare likes to talk a lot about promises. But when her friends break them, oh no, that's nothing, don't even ask…"

Dinky and I glanced at each other. After a moment, I cautiously asked, "W-what's happened to G-Gryphonstone…?"

"Nothing," Gilda spat. "Nothing that hasn't happened to the rest of the world, once you ponies got distracted, and stopped egg-sitting us."

After a long few moments, Gilda pushed past us, and started walking down the road through the fog. "I'm going to Canterlot, to remind somepony why you shouldn't break your promises. You can come with me, or not. It doesn't matter. I'll kill her all by myself, if I have to."

Dinky's rattling breath caught in her throat. "You—you're going to—you can't kill Rainbow Dash!"

The name was familiar to me. Magnus had mentioned her once, I was pretty sure...and I could almost remember a face… "Who…?" I mumbled, in confusion.

Dinky glanced at me. "You don't remember—? Of course you don't. She's a hero, one of the bearers. She was with the Wonderbolts until she got pulled into the Golden Guard, and protected us from the dragons—"

Gilda let out a loud snort at that, and started walking faster. We had to break into a gallop to catch up, but only trailed behind her, instead of walking alongside.

Dinky continued, as soon as we weren't about to lose Gilda in the fog. "She might've won the war all by herself! And now she's the Princess' personal guard! You can't kill her!"

Gilda exhaled sharply through her nose. "I don't care how tough she is," she saw Dinky starting to say something again, and cut her off. "Or how important she is to what's left of the country. You don't know her, how she really is. Not like I do."

"So you're going to kill her." Dinky said, her eyes narrowed.

"Or I'm going to die trying." Gilda nodded. "I get it—soft little ponies don't like killing. Hurts your delicate little hearts, oh no! That's not the pony way of solving problems!"

Gilda glanced back at us, and adjusted her bowstring against her breast with her sharp, predatory claws. "But I'm a gryphon, and this is the gryphon way of solving problems. Don't worry—I'll play nice 'til we get there, so you can see for yourself what Rainbow Dash is really like. Because, knowing her? By the time we get there, you're gonna wanna kill her too."

"That won't happen," Dinky said, though her voice wasn't as confident as it had been before.

"We'll see when we see, filly. It's not a bull's-eye until the arrow stops moving." After a moment, Gilda swore. "Damn! Left those arrowheads back in town."

"I have th-them," I said, as I shakily pulled them out of my bag. "R-Rockhoof didn't let us f-forget about them."

Gilda took the little bag of clinking sharp metal tips, and glanced inside. "Heh, that big horse is alright, for a stallion. Thanks, Holly. We're cool?"

I shrugged. I still didn't know what to make of Gilda—she had her own goals, her own problems, and they rubbed Dinky the wrong way. But I was still alright with being her friend.

Dinky sighed, and shook her head. "We need to get to Canterlot; we can agree on that, at least. But I'm not going to help you kill Rainbow Dash."

"That's fine, I don't need your help. You can cheer her on if you want. I know she'll want an audience, after all. Now, let's get moving."
> 46 - The Blighted Town of Hammerhoof
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

As we traveled, Dinky explained our course.

Canterlot was, of course, a city built halfway up the Canterhorn mountain, for which the rest of the range was named. Originally it had been a small mining town, with a monastery to the two sisters close to the peak; after the destruction of Castle Everfree, the kingdom followed Princess Celestia as she grieved, and expanded that small mining town into the modern-day capital of the nation.

Speaking generally, there were four ways to reach Canterlot. Flight wouldn't work; my wings still couldn't manage even a glide on demand, and Dinky was a unicorn. Gilda could have flown in, were it not for the city's interdiction field, which protected it from the aerial attacks of the demons. According to Dinky, a second field had been put into place within the first, to protect the palace specifically.

There had been a train line that ran up the range and into the city, and Dinky spoke of it fondly. It was the only way she'd personally visited Canterlot, long ago, but it too was unavailable. As Maud had explained before, the train lines across Equestria had been shut down because of the demons—aside from the most essential lines to and from Fillydelphia. Magnus had told Dinky that the tunnels had been blockaded in the meantime, which thoroughly eliminated the option.

By hoof, there were two roads up the mountain. The overland highway ran along the train tracks, and had been similarly blockaded, as Trixie had confirmed back in the jail cell. No carts, no wagons, and nopony on hoof could get into the city that way. While it was perhaps possible to reach the city by careful mountaineering, that was extraordinarily dangerous. The cliffs and slopes of the Canterhorn range were steep and erratic, and there was—perhaps intentionally—no known path, besides that which the road took.

That left the underground path, which began in Hammerhoof, and wound upwards through the interior of the mountain—so to Hammerhoof we went.


*	*	*


The fog cleared as we approached the base of the Canterhorn, but only that; the clouds were still too thick to see Canterlot itself higher up the mountain.

The mountain itself was plenty interesting, however. While the edges had been worn by wind, rain, and time, one could still see that the mountain had been suddenly cleaved by a great force a very, very long time ago—maybe all the way back in Equestria’s founding years. The sheer rock wall was too smooth, and yet it was riddled with hundreds of bore-holes, evidence of mining deep within the mountain that had been suddenly exposed by that great force.

The caves should have never seen sunlight, but it had been forced inside at the expense of the mines themselves. Even now, I could see the glitter of distant crystals left in the exposed cavities, and the water that ran out of the holes and stained the sheer mountain face as it formed a lake below. Some of the water flowed pure and clean, while others were tainted by industrial runoff from the mines deeper within the mountain, and from the grand city above.

It all washed down here, to this lake at the base of the mountain, which itself seemed to have been sliced in half; the lake simply ended in that sheer rock wall, while the other shores were much more natural and gradual. The lake’s water gleamed oddly in the dim sunlight, with rainbow patterns playing across its surface, and obscuring my view of the water itself.

On the shores of that lake, and adjacent to the mountain, a town had been built around the largest of the mining bore-holes. The town of Hammerhoof had been based around mining, just like its sister town of Canterlot above, but the gleaming city had buried that past when the Royal Palace was built. Now, only Hammerhoof remained to show what Canterlot had looked like, a thousand years past.

It wasn’t much to look at; the refineries and rock mills had long gone silent. Their smokestacks would never belch smoke again, without Cloudsdale to provide them with the liquid fuel needed, and with Fillydelphia now focused on producing munitions rather than exporting coal. Instead, it seemed as though the old buildings had been left to rot, while the town shrunk down around that bore-hole, which was plugged with a massive steel gate adorned with brass.

Like the train tunnels we had traveled through to reach Baltimare—I suppressed a shudder at the thought—Equestria’s engineers had cleaned up the oldest and largest mining tunnels to create a highway, which spiraled up through the stone of the mountain to connect Canterlot to the world below. This was to be our path up to the city itself, since the path through the mountain range was supposedly blocked, and the trains no longer ran, for the same reason as the refineries here.

But other ponies had similar ambitions, it seemed. From the town, and back over the lake, a baffling edifice of scaffolding and catwalks had been erected from mouldering wood and rusted steel. It started from the shores of the lake, and extended over the water a good distance, but the lake itself seemed to be filled with broken metal and floating driftwood. From there, it went up, up, up, so far up the sheer mountain wall that I could see the scaffolding rocking in the wind even from here, a mile away. The thought of actually climbing that rickety nightmare made me sick, and I wondered for only a moment why they had built such a shrine to unsound structural concepts and poor materials.

But my eyes wandered back to the bore-holes, punched through the stone, and the scaffolding which had been anchored—poorly—to those crystalline openings. They had been erecting a tower up to Canterlot, or at least as close as they could get. Once they entered the caves, they could spelunk their way up into the sewers of the capital, and from there to the actual streets and city above. My eyes fell back to the lake, and the jagged scrap that pierced the mud’s surface. These structures must have collapsed a hundred times over, and been rebuilt to be stronger, to go higher, every time. The ponies that were determined enough to keep trying, to rebuild their towers to Canterlot, must have been stubbornly determined to reach the city by any means...or perhaps the better description was “desperate.”

“What a scat-hole.” Gilda said, with a derisive snort. Both Dinky and I nodded in silent agreement.

After a moment, Dinky pointed towards that steel gate with her hoof. “They should let us through. Magnus gave us that seal, so they’ll know we’re working for the Golden Guard.”

“It’s never that easy.” Gilda was already looking at the mess of scaffolding, and I could see her eagle-like eyes darting as she followed the stairs like she was reading lines of text on a page. She was already trying to work out a route up to the top, though I hoped it wasn’t needed.

Well, she had time. We still had a mile to go.


*	*	*


The streets of Hammerhoof weren’t much better, but we didn’t need to linger in the town. The main boulevard had existed since the town’s founding, and led from a nearby highway connection directly to the gates of the tunnel, with factories and mining company buildings constructed on either side. When the carts stopped running, ponies had built houses on the large street, and it reminded me of flies buzzing around a stinking corpse.

Hollows shouted about their wares laid on moth-eaten blankets on the asphalt, while more wandered from stall to stall, carrying clinking bags of junk and scrap, looted from the town, taken from the trash, or pulled from the buildings directly. Anything they could take and sell, so that tarnished bits could change hooves. There were hunters here too, and we jumped as a dead chaos-tainted panther—how had a panther gotten into the Everchaos?—swung in front of us, slung limply over a large Hollow stallion’s back.

We passed a caravan on the way into town; a dozen carts just like what we’d guarded on our way back from Baton Verte, but in significantly worse condition. Hollows bartered with each other there too, trying to buy seats on the wagons. They wanted to get out of Hammerhoof, and traveling by caravan in large groups offered more safety than going it alone through the fog.

Even here, nearly everypony and everyone was in some middling stage of Hollowing, including members of species I hadn't seen since my awakening. I spotted a few diamond dogs, an armored quartet of gryphons—Gilda avoided their eyes, and they avoided hers—and a warband of yaks wearing fur plates, and bellowing in confusion when nopony wanted to buy the broken weapons they’d hauled back to civilization to sell. Every unliving creature we saw was Hollow, but not so far gone that they were feral. Not yet, at least.

We passed through it all unmolested—mostly we just saw more ponies leaving Hammerhoof. Maybe the news that Ponyville was being evacuated had spread fast; ponies were scouring the continent for anywhere that might be safe from the demons, and the mad Hollows that still inhabited the cities.

Would the residents of Ponyville be turned away at the gates too? Or would they receive special treatment from the crown, for holding back the tides of chaos for as long as they did? Somehow, neither answer sat right with me.

The steel gates came into focus as we approached, and I could see just how large they were; they covered the entire tunnel mouth so that even pegasi couldn’t slip in through the top, and they had steel catwalks of their own, high up off the ground, from which the Golden Guard could watch the ponies milling around beneath. The gate itself had two large doors, and smaller doors of several sizes set within that; they could be opened only as far as they needed to be, to accommodate heavy machinery on mechanical carts, the smaller vehicles of Baltimare, or ponies on hoof, without allowing for anyone or anything unwanted to slip past.

“Hold!” A Golden Guard mare shouted, her voice tired and resigned. None of the others even glanced our way; this must have been a frequent occurrence. The mare—I couldn’t see her rank from here, but she wore ceremonial armor—spread her wings, then hopped down from a higher railing down to one slightly closer to us, and leaned over to look over the side, while the three of us had to crane our necks to look up at her. “Turn around. Canterlot’s on lockdown—nopony in, nopony out.” She looked at all of us cagily, though I wondered if it was most directed at me, the shambling Hollow, or at Gilda.

“I’m not a pony, can I come in?” Gilda asked, her voice laden with sarcasm.

The guardsmare rolled her Hollow eyes. “No. Buzz off.”

“Rude,” Gilda declared with a snort.

Dinky stepped forward instead and held up the seal that Magnus had given us. “We’re here on behalf of Ponyville and Commander Magnus of the Golden Guard! We have business in Canterlot!”

The guardsmare’s eyes flicked to a nearby unicorn, who had been in the middle of checking his rifle. “Bouncer!”

The corona of magic holding the seal turned from Dinky’s golden color to the stallion’s green, and lifted up to the mare’s eye level for her to inspect. After a moment, she nodded, and the magic winked out, which allowed it to drop back down to Dinky. “That’s Commander Magnus’ seal, but I still can’t let you through. When I said lockdown, I meant it—the Palace gave me orders not to let anypony in, not even other Golden Guards.”

“What?” Dinky shook her head. “Why? And why hasn’t anypony told us?”

The mare leaned on the railing, just a little more casually. “Word from the tunnel is, there’s been a change in orders. Celestia went out somewhere, then came back, and the orders being sent out since then have been a lot harsher in tone. And apparently a lot of the palace staff have been kicked to the street; it’s all Royal Guard in the castle, nothing and nopony else except top-ranked Golden Guard. Even if Magnus himself showed up, I’m not sure he could get in.”

Dinky looked between the two of us. “...That’s weird. That’s weird, right?”

“I don’t like it either; we’re stuck on this side of the gate, after all we’ve done to keep Canterlot safe.” The mare ground her teeth together in a seething frown. “One of the royal guards came to take our keys, just to make sure. I can’t open this gate for you—nopony can, without those keys, and only Celestia knows where they are now.”

Gilda huffed air through her beak. “I need to get into Canterlot.”

“We all do,” Dinky added. “Again, royal business.”

“Hopefully, the kind of business that lets us open the damn gate,” the mare agreed. She rubbed her chin for a moment. “Alright, well...you didn’t hear this from me, but part of our duties out here is patrolling that scatheap of a shantytown on the lake. We’re supposed to cut the tall poppies, which is to say, any structures that get too close to the tunnel entrances need to be demolished.”

I winced. These ponies had been responsible for some of those collapses—and it was hard to imagine that they’d cared to make sure the ponies building them were safe on the ground before they did so.

“Stands to reason,” she continued, “that ponies getting into Canterlot that way must be a serious enough concern that they had us keeping watch for it. And now that we’re stuck sitting on this gate, we haven’t exactly had time to do that patrol, understand? Gotta keep all our forces here on the gate, to make sure it stays shut.”

“Right, I get it.” Gilda nodded. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” the mare said, as she spread her wings to flutter back up to the higher catwalk. “All I told you was my current posting, after all. Hope you figure something out.”

So, we were destined to climb the rickety nightmare of scaffolding, then. It was possible that yet other options existed to get to Canterlot, but it was extremely unlikely—and even if we found them, it was likely that they had been blocked off as well.

"N-never that easy," I echoed, as I turned to look at Gilda. "S-saw how you looked at the sc-scaffolding. Did you s-see a good path up?"

Dinky groaned in dread at the thought, but didn't object.

"Sort of," Gilda said, as she looked over the rooftops. "Some sections are more straightforward, others looked like a complete mess. It's not gonna be a fun time climbing up. I could fly up to the top, of course, but you two…"

"That c-could still be useful," Dinky said, hesitantly. "Getting a b-bird's-eye perspective on the maze c-can't hurt, at least."

"Right. I'll fly ahead and do some scouting, then meet you at the base of the structure."


*	*	*


We'd made one other assumption about Hammerhoof that quickly proved inaccurate: because the Hollows we'd seen on main street had still retained their equinity, we had thought that Hammerhoof as a whole was still sane. This was proven false the further away we got from the tunnel entrance, as the Hollows we passed grew more and more unkempt and disheveled, and polite nods and quiet greetings started turning into frightened avoidance, feral snarls, and whinnies of warning.

We were lucky enough that nopony attacked us, until we reached the base of the scaffolding proper. As we turned a corner and the lake came into view, so too did a group that had been shambling around the largest and most accessible ramp up into the vertical wooden labyrinth, a trio of feral Hollows accompanied by a dog that looked to have been twisted by the Everchaos. They spotted us as soon as we spotted them, and Dinky gave a few shouts of warning as her horn began to glow. I was neither as diplomatic nor as optimistic as the filly, and so I simply drew my new shortspear.

As soon as it extended to its full length with a mechanical snap, they began staggering towards us as quickly as they could, with hunger in their Hollow eyes. The demon dog reached us first, but Dinky easily blasted it back with a missile loosed from her horn; it fell back while it let out a series of warped yelps, and Dinky winced at the sound of an animal in pain. Then the first of the Hollows were upon us, and I stepped forward to strike while Dinky charged her next shot.

The nearest Hollow was armed with little more than a splintered length of wood, with a few rusty nails hammered through the end. She might well have yanked it out of the scaffolding itself. She swung it sloppily in a wide horizontal arc that I stepped backwards to avoid, before leaping forward with my own spear, which I stabbed forward through her breast. It skewered her with sickeningly little resistance, and she tumbled to the ground, gurgling as black blood spurted out from the wound.

As the second Hollow bore down on me, I realized a problem with the spear; it was still jammed in the body of the first, and I wouldn't have time to properly extract the tip. Instead, I twisted the spear inside her body to swing the other end of the shaft at my new attacker, and it connected with a stunning thump that made him stagger—just enough of a window that Dinky could fire another missile into his side, which blasted him backwards to sprawl across the ground.

But that left Dinky exposed. The third and final Hollow bore down on her, with a fire axe held in his shaking magic field, and Dinky couldn't recover fast enough to do more than throw her hoof up to shield her head. The axe slammed into her leg all the way to the bone, and she gasped in pain as her dark red blood gushed across the Hollow.

As the Hollow wrestled with the axe to try and pull it out of Dinky's leg for another swing, I finally dislodged my spear from the first Hollow. Instead of stabbing at him, I swung the whole spear around as though it were a hammer, and it smacked against the Hollow’s forehead with enough force that he dropped to his knees, and released his magical grip on the fire axe. Dinky gasped again as she stumbled away, and I stepped between them as he started to rise once again to attack.

There was a whistling noise, then a feather-fletched arrow buried itself in the back of his skull, and he collapsed with a wet thump onto the muddy shoreline. A moment later, Gilda swooped low above us, but didn't land; she was still watching for other attackers. "Making friends, I see! That's all of them?"

"F-for now," I said, as I twisted my spear to collapse it—thankfully, it looked as though I hadn’t broken it already with my improvised melee tactics, but I’d need to be more careful about how I used the weapon. Gilda didn't seem convinced, so while she glanced around, I moved to help Dinky pull the axe out of her leg. It came loose easily enough after a moment of yanking on the grip, but it left a jagged, sucking wound in its wake.

After a moment, Gilda landed next to the Hollow she'd shot, and started to explain. "There's some sort of elevator at the top, but I couldn't get it working—it's got some sort of enchanted runes on it that I think keep it locked in place. The filly could probably—" She grunted while she yanked her arrow back out of the Hollow's skull, and began to inspect the tip to see if it could be reused. "—probably get it working, since she has a horn and all. But we gotta get up there first to tinker with it, so it's not much use."

"St-still, it's—ah!" Dinky groaned in pain as she pressed the gaping wound in her foreleg shut, and I splashed a bit of liquid sunlight over the wound. One of the Hollows had been wearing a thin cloth jacket; the torn sleeve made for a decent, if grimy, bandage. As I worked, Dinky continued, "It's a g-good idea. If we ever n-need to come back here, it'll s-save us a lot of t-time."

"Gotta get up there first, though," Gilda reminded us. "And it's not an easy climb. Can you walk?"

"We'll s-see in a little while, I g-guess. What else did you sp-spot?"

Gilda flicked a thumb-claw over her shoulder. "That lake? Don't fall in it. I got a whiff when the wind changed as I was flying overhead, and it's nasty. Reckon it's run-off from waste running down the mountain. Hope this stupid town isn't drinking that, ahh, 'water,’ I don't want to think about how many toxins are in there."

"T-toxins?" I asked, after I tightened the makeshift bandage with my teeth. "W-what does that mean?"

Dinky responded first, with a dictionary definition. "A s-substance that causes damage to the b-body, usually p-produced via industrial means as a b-byproduct—"

"It's like poison but faster," Gilda interrupted.

"I—basically, sure." Dinky agreed with a scoff. "It might p-paralyze you, it m-might blind you, it might just k-kill you. Whichever it is, it's b-bad. Gilda's right, b-best to keep our distance and w-watch where we step."

Gilda glanced at my armor, and nodded as she saw my wings were uncovered now. “Try to glide, if you fall. And try to land on the scaffolding, instead of that muck. You might smash through a few layers of rotting wood, but that water’s too shallow to use to soften your impact. Even if it wasn’t, you might as well be hitting a stone road once we start climbing to any kind of serious height. I don’t know how well Hollows regenerate from splattering like that.”

“I d-don’t think even a Hollow c-could survive that f-fall.” Dinky agreed, with a shudder. After a moment, she started to try and get to her hooves, though I could see that she had barely begun to recover from her leg wound. Her dark blood had already soaked the makeshift bandage, but she could walk, at least. “G-Gilda, you should st-start explaining what our p-path is going to be. I’ll be g-good to move in a moment.”

“Sure, yeah,” Gilda turned to point with her talons as she explained. “There’s two entrances, one here on the shore, and one further out, which is probably the lower elevator landing. We’re here already, so we might as well use this one. Keep your head on a swivel, because these lower levels have the highest population of undead rumpholes…”


*	*	*


We only encountered dogs a few more times as we climbed, but they were always the worst enemy to fight. The twisted canines were fast, small, and agile, and they hunted in packs. A common encounter was one or two dogs amidst a group of hollows, and it seemed as though they retained enough of their training to be used as hunting animals by the maddened undead. Rarely, we encountered packs of just dogs, somehow surviving here in the scaffolding, perhaps after turning on their trainers and eating them.

Also, the hounds could breathe fire, somehow. That was an unpleasant surprise, the first time that it happened.

“What in rutting tartarus?!” Gilda screamed, as she leapt off the side of the scaffolding to avoid the stream of fire that the hound breathed out in a burning cloud. They moved like dragons in canine form, but their hunting instincts were undeniably canine. Another dog leapt through the inferno to give chase—which meant they didn’t seem too bothered by the flames themselves—and found his prey could remain airborne, while he could not. Gilda watched it plummet, as she nocked her bow and yelled, “What kind of dog breathes fire?!”

“It m-must be some kind of c-corruption from the Everchaos!” Dinky yelped, as she fired off three magical darts in quick succession. The first two missed, but the third struck the red-furred hound in the head, and it stumbled backwards, still coughing flames, before it slipped between the boards of the platform. The last we heard of it was a yelp as it struck a support beam on the way down, and then it was gone.

Two more instantly took that hound’s place, and I stepped in front of Dinky, with my wings shakily spread to keep them from leaping past me. I’d kept the spear extended and mounted it to my side, so as the dogs slowed to growl at me, I leapt forward to match them. My spear didn’t strike them, but I didn’t intend to do so; instead, I turned my body so that the speartip swept them both off the side. Gravity, and the thin walkways of this elaborate structure, were our best weapons up here.

The last two dogs behind them saw that trick, and pressed their advantage as I was still reeling, off-balance. One leapt for me, and latched onto my wing with his jaws. The other darted past me, intent on attacking Dinky, but an arrow from Gilda staggered it. Dinky grabbed the dog with her magic as it stumbled, and threw it off the side towards the distant rock wall. It fell far enough before it hit that we never even heard the impact.

That left the dog chewing on my wing, and lacking any other option, I started punching at it with my forehooves as I rolled around on the platform, as I tried to dislodge the hound without breaking my own wing.

“Careful!” Dinky shouted, and I felt her magic grab me as I rolled too far. I was too heavy for her to carry, but she pulled me back so I fell onto the platform below her, instead of tumbling off entirely. I fell directly atop the dog, and the end of my wing made a crunching noise as the hound’s grip slackened. After a moment, I struggled to my hooves, ready to stomp on the canine if it started to move again, but it seemed as though my weight and the steel of my armor had been enough to crush something vital. I winced as I tried to wipe blood off my armor yet again, and started to look for a ramp that would allow me to regroup with Dinky.


*	*	*


“Once we get past the stupid ones, we’ll get into really dangerous territory,” Gilda explained to us while she counted her arrows. “The structure gets more rickety, and the path looks like it’s been intentionally destroyed in some places. I guess some Hollows are sane enough to remember how to use guns and magic, and they’re funneling anything that climbs up into a couple of kill-corridors on the scaffolding. I’ll cover you as best as I can, and keep their attention, but they don’t want to let us pass…”


*	*	*


The wooden boards barely served as cover, and the topmost part of the fence exploded into moldering splinters as a magic missile aimed for me blew it apart instead. Dinky was already tracking the unicorn that had launched it, and after a moment, she fell howling off the side. But successfully eliminating one made Dinky a priority target amongst the others, and more followed the first, blasting boards and support beams around us as the structure groaned ominously. The best Dinky could do was create a magic shield, not only for us, but for the structural stability of our cover, and it was almost certainly already too late. We needed to move to another platform, before this one collapsed out from underneath us.

Gilda, thankfully, gave us a window. She swooped and dove through the fan of magic darts and missiles, and the occasional report of a firearm, to fire three arrows in quick succession. There came two howls of pain in response, and the barrage assaulting us ceased for a few moments, long enough for Dinky to drop the glowing shield. I galloped forward over the shifting planks, with the younger mare hot on my hooves, and we ducked into a makeshift stairwell as the section behind us fell, twisting and cracking as it plummeted hundreds of feet below.

“I r-really hope we’re not kn-knocking out the supports f-for this whole structure w-whenever we knock a s-section loose like that…'' Dinky mumbled, as she scanned the platforms above us.

I could only shrug; we weren’t dead yet, and this section felt stable enough, so long as they didn’t keep blasting it apart trying to kill us.

We heard Gilda squawk from above us, “Gimme that!” before another screaming Hollow plummeted past our little bit of cover. Then came a series of gunshots from a rifle, interspersed with the clacking of that rifle’s lever to work the action. After a moment, she swooped back down to our level, now holding a dirty gun in her claws with her bow looped securely around her breast. “Keep moving! I’ve got ‘em spooked for a moment, I don’t think they like having prey that can shoot back!”


*	*	*


Gilda couldn’t continue tracing our path as she explained, because she was basically pointing straight upwards, so she explained in the abstract instead. “After we get past that section, we get to what’s probably the worst part. The scaffolding gets weird, because I think that’s the level that they started building off of towards individual holes in the mountain. Lots of dead ends, lots of really unsafe towers with really short switchbacks. I can save us some time, but some of these, you’re just gonna have to try on hoof, and hope that it actually does connect.”


*	*	*


Gilda hadn't mentioned the ladders. Which was probably a good thing, because if she had, I think I would have given up and gone to live the rest of my unlife in Hammerhoof.

One of the potential entrances to the caves above seemed to be only accessible by climbing a rickety-looking ladder that hadn’t been built or attached properly to the scaffolding. Gilda was already sitting above me, holding the top of the ladder, while Dinky used her hooves and magic to hold the bottom steady. This wasn’t the first time we had to progress this way, so the method wasn’t entirely new to our little group, but it never got any more pleasant for any of us as quadrupeds. Ponies (or gyphons) simply didn’t do ladders, they were much more of an abyssinian or minotaur concept, and even our slow magical apocalypse couldn’t do much to change that.

It also didn’t help that it seemed as though I was developing a rather-justified fear of heights.

The ladder suddenly shifted, and my stomach dropped out from under me as the whole ladder dropped a leg-length under. The rungs under my hooves squeaked from my weight, and I heard both Gilda and Dinky swearing loudly. I glanced up, and noticed Gilda was slapping her claws against her shoulder in pain, as the ladder had dropped out of reach of the platform. Below me, Dinky had grabbed even more of the ladder as her horn blazed with magic, though her attention was split between holding it steady and avoiding the broken boards under her hooves; it seemed as though the ladder had smashed right through the platform on which she was standing.

Then the ladder began to slowly tip backwards, and my stomach lurched once more as I clung to the rotten wood for dear life. Soon, I could see the lake far below by looking over my shoulder, and I was hanging upside-down from the ladder in a way that made me feel more like a spider, or a monkey, than any kind of respectable pegasus.

“Hold on, H-Holly!” Dinky squealed, and her horn burned just a bit bright as she changed where she was holding the ladder in a dozen different fields. Above me, Gilda dove off the side of the platform to catch the top rungs, and she started to hover in place as it dragged her downwards. She was already flapping as hard as she could to drag it back towards the mountain, but had enough breath left to squawk, “Rutting tartarus! Holly! Start climbing down, now, before we lose it!”

I swallowed, my throat all too dry, before I forced my head to turn. I had to look almost entirely behind myself to look down at the jagged planks and rusted nails of the nightmare structure that we’d decided to climb for some insane reason. The ground far beneath blurred and swam in my vision. For some reason, my hooves refused to loosen from the rungs of the makeshift ladder, which were the only things between me and a very long drop, ending in what would doubtlessly be a sudden and messy stop.

Then the length of the ladder squeaked again in a way that wooden structures shouldn’t, and I suddenly found that I could actually move my hooves just enough to awkwardly crawl, backwards and upside-down, towards Dinky. I just wished the ladder would stop shaking as I shuffled down the length.


*	*	*


“And if we manage to somehow get past all of that, there’s one platform, connected to one tunnel entrance, which seems halfway viable. That’s where the elevator is rigged up. So presumably someone else managed to do all of that, and left themselves a nice shortcut up and down this whole mess, and then saw fit to lock it so nopony else could use it without their permission. I swear to King Grover, if I ever find who set this up I’m gonna throw them off the mountain myself.”


*	*	*


“I’ve never seen a magical lock like this…” Dinky mumbled, her horn aglow as she examined the glowing seal over the mechanical crane controls.

“So, what? You think you can’t get it working?” Gilda clicked her beak in annoyance as she looked up from checking the lever-action she’d taken off one of the unfortunate riflemares below. She only had a light pouch of cartridges remaining for the weapon, and she clearly favored her bow, but the gun had proven handy and accurate so far. Especially for firing through the thin wooden walls of the scaffolding, which had caught more than a few Hollows by surprise, when they had been planning to take us by surprise instead.

“I d-didn’t say that—I recognize the f-fundamental principles, but it’s much m-more advanced than anything I’ve ever p-practiced on. Give me a f-few minutes.”

Myself, I was just happy to finally get a chance to rest. Time was convoluted here in Equestria, but it felt as though we had been climbing this awful mockery of construction for days, moons, maybe even the better part of a year. Here, in the mouth of the tunnel, I felt as though I were finally on solid ground. Not for the first time, I remembered how Magnus had guessed at my lineage; I certainly felt more like an earth pony than a pegasus, at these heights.

Gilda wasn’t content to let me rest, however. She stood, shaking out her feathers as she slid the rifle into a mouldering holster that didn’t really fit across her back. “Alright, whatever. While you tinker with that, me and Holly are gonna check out this tunnel, and make sure it actually goes somewhere. Gonna be really annoyed if this one’s another dead end.”

“Uh. O-okay, just don’t go t-too far, okay?” Dinky glanced back over the side of the catwalk, nervously scanning the ladder back down to the level below. Thankfully, none of the Hollows we had fought past had seemed interested in chasing us up here. Perhaps it was too much of a gauntlet for their cursed brains to manage, or perhaps we’d proven ourselves to be too much trouble to deal with.

“Yeah yeah, whatever, mom.” Gilda cackled quietly as she walked towards the tunnel. She paused next to me, and her expression softened. “How ya holding up?”

I wasn’t good. Maybe I never really would be. But I wasn’t far below my undead baseline at the moment, just winded from the long climb up here. We had to be nearly a mile up the side of the mountain by this point, and the wind that would normally be soothing in flight was only nerve-wracking when I was clinging to a rickety wooden catwalk.

I shrugged to Gilda, and my head turned towards the depths of the tunnel. We were on the wrong side of the mountain for any light from the sunset to penetrate deeper than a few dozen feet, and the jagged walls of black amethyst felt like broken teeth in a twisted mouth. It made my flesh crawl to peer into that abyss, and I knew the Dark was here too, just like the lake above Cloudsdale, like the train tunnel to Baltimare.

Gilda felt it too, though it took her a moment to catch on. I saw her fur stand on end as she peered into the tunnel beside me, and after a moment, she tilted her head. “Holly. There’s something moving in there.”

That got me moving. My bones ached as I shakily stood, and slapped the shortspear at my side. With a clack that echoed through the tunnel before us, it extended back to its full length, and we stood together as we peered into the darkness, waiting for our eyes to adjust.

GIlda didn’t like waiting. “Dinky! You know a light spell?”

“Ahhhh…En-enchantment, projected, or f-free-floating?”

“Free-floating sounds good, just toss that into the tunnel. Can’t see a damned thing in there.”

Dinky’s magic coalesced into a glowing orb at the tip of her horn, about a hoof-width across, which she gently lobbed into the tunnel ahead of us. As it flew, it emitted a ghostly, pale light, which reflected and refracted through the crystals all around us and made the tunnel walls dance with shimmering, erratic patterns. As it neared a natural bend in the tunnel, something within defied the light, and remained dark even as the light source passed directly overhead, bounced off of the glassy wall, and bobbed to a stop.

It was a pony shape, but too tall to be another mere Hollow. And I recognized the twin horns spiraling upwards from their head, like the horns of a demon. Those red eyes never moved, but they were focused on us. How long had this creature, this dark knight—this Blackguard—been standing there, in the abyssal darkness of the tunnel? Had they been waiting for us?

“What in Tartarus?” Gilda mumbled, as she grabbed the rifle off her back again, and took to the air to hover above me. She glanced back down a moment later, and I must have looked terrified, because the bravado she normally had when we entered a fight was missing. “Holly? You’re wheezing. What’s wrong? Who is that?”

My vision was beginning to distort. I wanted to look away, I wanted to look at anything else, but all I could see was the black knight in the tunnel ahead. At those glowing red eyes of theirs, and the hatred that I could feel, even from fifty leg-lengths away.

My black blood turned solid in my veins, as the Blackguard began to walk forward, away from the gloom of the tunnel, towards us—and they drew their sword, with magic unseen, to float by their side. I recognized that sword instantly; it was the same sword that had kept my body pinned to a wall for an eternity.

I could hear myself now, wheezing in panic, even if I barely understood why. Gilda didn’t bother warning the Blackguard, and just cocked the rifle to chamber a round, before she drew a bead on the black knight’s form. As they approached, her rifle rang out a report that echoed through the tunnel once again, and sparks flew from the helmet as the rifle’s round struck true.

Slowly, the black knight’s helmet turned upwards to look at her, completely unharmed. Those burning eyes focused on Gilda, and she faltered under their gaze as well. Was it marking her for death, like it seemed the creature had marked me?

Dinky’s voice came from behind us, a question that was lost as she gasped. She recognized the Blackguard as well. She began charging another spell, and as soon as her horn ignited, the knight’s burning eyes focused on her.

But I was standing between them. And I was terrified of the knight, but I couldn’t let it attack Dinky. With a shudder, I dropped into a defensive stance, with my spear readied, but began backing towards the catwalks. Had Dinky gotten the elevator working? Was that what she was telling us about? It might not matter any more.

The Blackguard was still ten body-lengths away when I felt the burning heat of an inferno rolling over me, as if the creature before us radiated some sort of cursed fire. The blood staining my armor dried and cracked as though I were in an oven. It was almost akin to the warmth Pinkie and Celestia exuded, but…twisted, somehow. It was just as powerful, but wrong in some way that I couldn’t describe. It inhabited the armor, even though the pony within must have been nothing but cinders. And yet, it continued to advance towards us.

I backed out onto the platform as Gilda began firing again, and sparks ricocheted off of the helmet. But none of that was important, not when my attention was focused on the black longsword floating around the knight. It orbited slowly, the tip always pointed towards me, and I waited for the Blackguard to make a move.

Dinky moved first. Her spell finished charging, and she released a set of three magic missiles, which were fired up into the air, past a squawking Gilda, and slammed back down onto the Blackguard. One hit the head, another struck it in the middle of their back, and the last barely missed, and slammed into the worn stone floor of the cave, which blasted me with a shower of crystalline pebbles.

If the missiles hurt, or even inconvenienced the Blackguard, it didn’t show it. It barely shuddered when struck twice by some of the most powerful magic that Dinky could conjure, and it continued to draw closer. The black longsword completed one last orbit, paused at the knight’s side as though awaiting a command—and then they lunged forward towards me, knight and sword alike.

Everything burned, just by proximity to the creature, and my side exploded in pain as the longsword swooped in to attack my side, while I was transfixed on the knight’s eyes. It missed my wing by a hair and stabbed deep into my belly, but by the time I gasped in pain, it had already been wickedly withdrawn, leaving a sucking wound in its wake. I staggered back, as it advanced onto the wooden catwalk.

I couldn’t let it reach Dinky. I couldn’t let it kill both of us. She could find what was left of me at the bottom, once she got the elevator working.

The Blackguard continued forward, barely even slowed by the uneven wooden boards, and I could see my own black blood steaming off the hot blade held in its magic. But it needed room to swing the blade, and so long as it was held to the side of the knight, that gave me an advantage, however minor.

I feinted forwards, as though I were going to try and dart around the black knight on the same side as it held the sword, and for the first time, I think I caught it off guard. The sword was raised out of reach, just in case I was trying to grab at it, and that gave it the room the Blackguard would need to swing the blade back down towards me. But I never gave it the chance; instead of continuing around the knight, I threw myself to the side, shoulder-checking the black knight with all my weight.

It staggered, off-balance, and this time I tackled it intentionally. Touching the hot metal armor of my personal demon burned, like my flesh was boiling, but I held on as I shoved it against the railing. It worked better than I could have imagined; the wood burst into flame as the blackguard’s armor touched it, and the shoddy wooden railing buckled under only the slightest pressure.

Together, we tumbled off the wooden scaffolding, and plummeted down the mountainside towards the levels below, and the toxic lake at the base of the Canterhorn.
> 47 - Pillars of Stone
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We fell together, the Blackguard and I, towards the jagged pillars of wood that were fast approaching. I couldn’t kick away the Blackguard fast enough, as I burned and screamed, and it flailed as well in freefall. I was too busy slapping wildly at my armor to extinguish the inferno that had embraced me, boiling the leather I was wearing, to watch the black knight fall to its death. I lost sight of it as a sudden moment of clarity arrived, and I yanked my ruined wings open to desperately try and slow my own fall.

They barely worked. I was aflame, and they’d been ravaged by time and combat. My most recent stab wound and the crushing bite of that chaos-tainted hound from earlier were particularly problematic. But I managed to get them open, and soon the wind blowing past extinguished the fires.

But I couldn’t stop falling. I couldn’t get any lift. I could barely turn my plummet into a downwards glide, and it barely served to slow my descent. The poison bog below approached, and I knew at this height, it may as well have been stone. In fact, far below was a scattering of gray dots amidst an ocean of greenish-brown—rocks from the mountain, presumably. If they were that close to the surface, then the lake must have been shallow, and I didn’t have the time to change course away from them or to try and find a deeper part to aim towards.

All I could do was brace for impact as the lake fast approached, and then it all went black. I’d been killed too quickly to feel the impact, at least. If I could, I would have been thankful for that.


*	*	*


My world was muck. Filthy, toxic, opaque muck. It filled everything; my eyes, my nose, my mouth, my lungs. I tried to breathe, and all it did was make my chest hurt as it tried to compress the mud in my body.

Pain followed not long after. My chest kept burning, and it all felt like liquid. But the pain helped me become self-aware once more, and my limbs trembled as I tried to gain control of them. Soon, I realized that I could, and my limbs were whole, but the sludge in which I was drowning was too thick to swim upwards. Instead, I had to force myself to crawl through it, while I was still dumb, blind, and poisoned.

I lost track of time as I crawled. I think I succumbed to the toxic sludge, or perhaps my own injuries, more than once. But I continued to re-awaken, and continued to crawl, until I found something solid. Once I had, I forced my broken body to hold onto it.

I was drowning, or rather, I had drowned. But I had still found something solid enough for me to cling to, like the survivor of a shipwreck clinging to driftwood, and I could only hope it was enough for me to be rescued.

As I gathered my strength, I began to haul myself upwards, and soon cold air washed over my broken body. The toxic sludge still soaked my fur and my flesh, but it began to dry and drip away as I clung to what felt like thin stone pillars, or perhaps a seat of some kind. The mud hardened as it dried, and it only broke when I doubled over the side of my new perch, and tried to hack up all the mud that filled my lungs and stomach, to occasional success.

I felt like I was dying. But then, I had already died, a hundred times over. Fatally poisonous mud was just another reality that I had to live with, so long as it filled my lungs, my stomach, and my sinuses.

I stayed there long enough for the mud to turn solid. I felt like a statue, sealed in burning clay. The heat of the sunset only served to bake me in place, as I struggled to live.

Eventually, I heard a voice, though it was muffled by the mud filling my ears. “H-Holly?”

I tried to move, tried to struggle, but it was no use. Thankfully, the voice helped, and I felt fresh, cold air stab into my flesh as the seal of toxic mud was cracked once again. “Oh C-Celestia, Holly…”

Hooves and magic scraped at the mud, and a canteen was emptied over my head to try and wash some of it away. I heard a mare puking, and then a promise to return, and then there was more cold water being dumped over my head, now in buckets. Wet cloth was pushed inside of my empty eye sockets, and the mud within was scooped out until my vision returned.

Dinky looked awful. Her traveling cloak was ragged and mudstained, as were her hooves. She looked as though she’d Hollowed out a lot since last I saw her, but at least she was still recognizable. I’d have to get used to her new appearance, but I probably looked worse.

As she cleaned the mud off of me with buckets of cold, murky water and several thoroughly-ruined towels, she quietly explained what had happened since I’d fallen. Apparently the scaffolding had all come alight as the Blackguard fell through it, and the whole structure had collapsed into a blazing inferno as it fell into the lake. Thankfully, the elevator remained functional, if only barely, so we could still get up into the tunnel without need for a new structure.

Dinky guessed it had been perhaps a month, though as always it was impossible to know for sure. Gilda had already written me off as dead, and Dinky had reluctantly followed her into the tunnel, but something in the dark had turned her to stone in front of Dinky, after which she fled back to the elevator. Since then, she had been searching the lake using a hoof-made raft, hoping to find me, or at least what remained of me.

Surprisingly, I hadn’t lost much. However long it had taken for my cursed body to piece myself back together had been long enough for my bones to set, though my ribs were all wrong, and my wings had a few more painful kinks, as I discovered when I tried to flex them once more. My armor was still mostly intact, even if the plates were dented, and I still had the bottomless bag, which seemed thankfully mud-free. I wished I had the presence of mind required to pull out the flask of sunlight and the Element of Generosity as I fell. Perhaps Dinky could have used them to locate me sooner, or at the very least, she could have taken them from my lifeless body and continued on from Canterlot, if the bag had been damaged or if she had been unable to retrieve the contents from within.

But I had not come out of my fall without scars. My belly was swollen with toxic mud; I suspected I had splattered a bit on impact, as our group had discussed while climbing, and when it had reformed, that poisonous mud was trapped inside. I wasn’t sure which was worse; leaving that in there, or trying to open a hole in my barrel to let it back out. Between that and the time lost in a blink, that fall had been nearly crippling, and I almost had to hope that I wouldn’t survive it all if it happened again. The first time was bad enough.

At least it seemed the Blackguard had been killed by the fall as well. It had not made an appearance since falling into the burning scaffolding, and I hoped never to see it again.

Eventually, I was clean enough that Dinky lifted me off of my perch and onto her raft, at which point she made a startling discovery. My stone perch wasn’t just an oddly-shaped boulder, but a statue, and an oddly-realistic one. Dumbly, I realized I recognized the stallion’s image, because it was carved to resemble Red, the warrior with whom I’d shared a brief conversation on my way back to Ponyville, after Trixie had abandoned me the first time. I couldn’t tell Dinky about this yet, not until we had purged my lungs of mud, but I was reminded again of Gilda, turned to stone by an unseen creature in the tunnels above.

Which meant, almost certainly, that this statue was Red. He must have been encased in stone just as I had been encased in mud, and perhaps he had been down here in the lake even before we arrived. I glanced around the lake at the other stone protrusions, and I realized, all too suddenly, that they closely resembled legs and heads of fallen statues, sticking upwards out of the muck. They must have all been petrified by something above, and then thrown down here? Hopefully not to shatter them, but Red’s statue seemed intact, at least. The others were too weathered and mud-covered to make out any specific details.

Just like us, he had planned to make his way to Canterlot via Hammerhoof, and it seemed as though he had ascended the scaffolding only to be stopped by whatever else made those tunnels their lair. I could only hope that our journey would not be stopped so permanently as his own apparently had.


*	*	*


Dinky claimed that she’d never piloted a raft before she began her search, which only told me how long she had been salvaging amidst the muck. She navigated smoothly back to shore using her magic to control two long rusted steel poles, which she used to drag the makeshift watercraft forwards with ease earned through practice.

It hurt to watch, to know I had been absent from the world for so long, and that it seemed to matter so little to our mission. Had Ponyville fallen by now? Or were they still clinging on, waiting for us to deliver our request for aid? Had Maud already caught up to Trixie? Would we encounter them here in Hammerhoof, trying to reach Canterlot as well?

Instead, my eyes turned towards the blackened mass of burned wood at the base of the mountain, and I realized after a moment of confusion that it was all that remained of the scaffolding. I felt a pang of guilt; we may have cut a bloody path upwards, but surely there had to still be sane ponies living within the structure somewhere. They hadn’t deserved that fate, to have their home collapse atop them and trap them within the rubble for an eternity. I was only thankful that it hadn’t collapsed onto Hammerhoof, and I hadn’t wiped out the whole town with my shortsighted actions.

Not that the town seemed unscarred; the buildings closer to the waterfront seemed as though they’d been damaged somewhat by fire. Perhaps falling debris had fallen through the rooftops? Dinky caught my gaze, and she winced as well. “That, um…that c-creature, when it f-fell..The whole l-lake caught alight. I th-think there was a l-layer of oil atop the w-water, and that all b-burned for a while. We helped p-put out the w-worst of the f-fires.”

We scraped ashore a few moments later, and Dinky picked up a pile of rusty steel buckets in her magic. “W-wait here a few m-minutes, okay? It sh-should be safe, most of the H-Hollows have been c-cleared out by now. I n-need to return these, and f-find a healer for you…”

I nodded sluggishly, and Dinky limped away. Her wounded leg had never healed properly, and I felt another twinge of guilt as she disappeared into a scorched alley.

Time passed. I watched the waves of the lake roll over the shore gently, lacking the fluidity to lap as clean water would. Instead, there was a disgusting skin over the top of the liquid, like mold or floating ash, and that cracked as the water met land. I wondered how many other Hollows remained under the surface, unable to pull themselves out as I had, and unable to die.

Something gently approached from behind, sniffing and gently padding through the silty mud. I limply turned my head, and found myself looking at one of the red-furred hounds that had apparently survived both our ascent and the collapse of the scaffolding. It must have still been sniffing around the shore, looking for food. Despite my filthy state, it seemed as though I was still edible in its eyes, and it bared its teeth as I tried to reach for the spear still attached to the side of my armor.

I saw the creature’s dark throat brighten as it prepared to bathe me in flame—but it never succeeded. A bolt of magic lanced through its side and threw whatever was left into the lake a few body-lengths away, leaving only the smell of ozone and charred flesh.

“Holly?” A female voice asked. Not Dinky, but still familiar. I slowly flopped my head back to face the source, and found the wizened figure of Mistmane peering down at me from a short distance away. I tried to greet her, but all that came out was a wettish glob of toxic mud. She winced, but came closer, scanning me with her horn. “Goodness, you are in a state. But I trust you are still in there?”

I nodded shakily, and her old, cracked lips formed a smile. “Good. Meadowbrook is not far, and she may be able to help—”

“Get away from her!” Dinky squeaked, as she charged into Mistmane’s side—or tried to do so. Mistmane dodged faster than any mare her age should have been able, and Dinky skidded to a halt a few paces away, hooves barely splashing at the edge of the lake, ripples spreading across the filmy surface.

If anything, Mistmane seemed amused by the attempt. “Greetings to you as well, Dinky.”

That finally gave Dinky pause, as slow recognition crawled across her features. “M-Mistmane?”

The old mare tilted her head. “Indeed. You seem…confused? And I thought Twilight Sparkle trained you how to defend yourself better than merely charging at your enemies, like a raging minotaur.”

“It’s…I…I’ve b-been having a rough time.” Dinky quietly admitted while she slowly approached me. She still seemed somewhat suspicious, and she checked on me just in case Mistmane had done something in her absence. “I c-couldn’t find a healer…a l-lot of f-folks abandoned Hammerhoof w-when the scaffolding c-came down…”

Mistmane smiled gently at her. “Lucky for you that Meadowbrook is near.”

Recognition and surprise washed over Dinky all over again. “M-Mage Meadowb-brook is here?”

“Indeed she is,” Mistmane said with a nod. “And I presume you are the precocious young filly that she spoke so highly of, from the end of her time in Baton Verde? She mentioned that Holly here was accompanied by Ponyville’s young Archmagus. I’m only sad that we did not have the time to catch up properly before, when we met in Ponyville.”

Dinky shrank back in shame. “I…I w-wouldn’t…that was…” She stammered. Eventually, she gathered up the will to quietly say, “I d-don’t think she t-told you the whole st-story.”

“Then you may tell me the rest,” Mistmane said, with an old, knowing smile. “Come, we are staying with a friend nearby. You are lucky that I chose to take a walk along the shore soon after we arrived.”


*	*	*


Mistmane led Dinky—who carried my near-lifeless body in a field of levitation—along the shoreline, away from the mountain, but skirting the edge of town.

On the way there, Dinky related the rest of our story of escaping the caravan attack. Our panicked desertion, her ill-advised wink, and our first encounter with the black knight. She had taken to calling it “the Blackguard” as well, and she explained the name better than I could’ve. It looked like one of Celestia’s Golden Guard, wearing their full set of armor, but twisted and scarred and darkened, turned black by heat or by magic. Hence, Blackguard. I hoped that this would be the last time I had to think of them, but I knew we couldn’t have been so lucky.

Mistmane kept silent, but I saw recognition in her eyes at the description of the creature. She’d seen it elsewhere as well. I’d have to ask her about that, when I could move my mouth again.

After a short walk, we came to a nondescript building about three stories high, a block away from the edge of the lake. From Mistmane’s description, it seemed that even before the sun stopped, the small mining company that had built it had gone out of business, and the building’s next owners had converted the top floor into a loft. Her friend, Somnambula, had taken up residence there in the time since.

I remembered that name. She was another of the Pillars of Equestria, and Dinky had mentioned her before, back in the jail cell, when we were swapping stories with Trixie. She was studying the magic of Alicorns. But I had heard that she was still in the town that shared her name; what was she doing here? Had she been locked out of Canterlot as well?

While there was still a fire escape that could be used to access the third floor of the building, using a ramp made of wooden boards, Mistmane instead moved towards a cargo hook attached alongside the fire escape. After a moment of confusion, I recognized it as another elevator, of the same design as that which we had found at the top of the scaffolding. Mistmane’s horn flashed as Dinky carried me onto the platform, and I heard the pulleys of the machinery grind as we were gently pulled upwards to the loft. A moment later, we came to a bumpy stop, and Mistmane rapped her hoof against the door to let the inhabitants know they had visitors.

After a moment, the door opened, and the familiar figure of Mage Meadowbrook peeked out. Her Hollow embers flicked between the three of us, and she smiled only lightly. There was a pulse of pain in my heart at how she didn’t seem to recognize me or even Dinky immediately. “Come in, come in. Somnamb’la, we got guests!”

The loft’s interior was in noticeably better condition than the exterior would suggest. It was clean, without any debris or trash on the floor, the furniture was intact and almost undamaged, and the supplies stored in crates at the corners of the room all seemed well-organized and properly packed. Were it not for the faded colors of the carpet and the unpatched holes in the cushions, I could have almost believed that this room belonged back in old Equestria, before the sun stopped.

At the center of it all was a new mare, a pegasus, Hollowed but peaceful, who seemed to be sitting in meditation. What remained of her fur seemed to be pale scarlet, but her flesh was clearly visible underneath. She wore a transparent sheer dress, and a worn headdress that obscured her mane. She gently opened one eye to watch us enter—I was stunned by just how brightly her Hollow embers burned—before closing it again, as she gave us a welcoming nod.

“Dinky Doo. It is a pleasure to meet you once more, though I would not be surprised if you do not recall when last we met. And the other mare is Holly, I presume? The brave Hollow that lost my enchanted mace?”

I could barely move, but it was enough to wince. She knew about that, since Mistmane had probably told her. I could only hope repaying her for that lost weapon wouldn't cost me too dearly.

She let out a chuckle. “Fear not, friend. All I ask is that you keep better track of any future enchanted weapons with which we might entrust you.”

Meadowbrook gave me a reassuring smile as well, even as she checked my body for the extent of my injuries. “Looks like ya went swimmin,’ didja? Woulda figured you’d had enough o’ that in my little bayou—this mud’s even worse.”

“C-can you heal her?” Dinky asked quietly.

“B’lieve I can, but gotta wash her clean first. And I s’pect she’s gotten her lungs filled as well. I’ll get that cleaned out first, so’s she can tell me the rest of the damages. Dinky, you go settle in a bit, Somnamb’la and Mistmane can tell y'all ‘bout her work here in the meantime.”


*	*	*


I’d rather not recall the process of getting the mud from my body in detail. It wasn’t as unpleasant as discovering it had invaded me to begin with, but removing it was still disgusting, and took quite a while. Meadowbrook chose to work outside on the fire escape, to keep the loft clean, and at least she left the door open so I could be part of the conversation as Somnambula explained her work to Dinky.

“You are, of course, familiar with unicorn magic.” Somnambula began. “And from what Mistmane tells me, you have also recently begun to dabble in Pyromancy.”

“Barely,” Dinky conceded.

“It is enough for a point of reference. There is also earth pony magic, such as that used by Meadowbrook, Magnus, and Zecora, which is often conflated with Pyromancy. It is much more focused on the world around and below us, however. Pegasus magic relates to the creation and control of weather, air currents, and so forth. But there is another form of magic, which is even now developing all around us.”

“New m-magic?” Dinky asked. “As in…d-did it exist before, or d-do you mean it’s c-completely new?”

Somnambula bore an eager grin. “I cannot tell you for sure. I suspect it has always been present, but too weak to be noticed, let alone studied. Now, it grows in strength, building slowly but steadily, and it can be accessed by anypony willing to put their faith in it. I call this magic ‘miracles,’ for it seems truly miraculous.”

Meadowbrook paused, and spat the knife into her hooves so she could speak. “Zecora gave us the final piece we really needed. Proof of the magic. Holly, y’still got that flask of sunlight on you? I don’t see it here…”

“B-bag…” I croaked.

Meadowbrook glanced at my mudstained bottomless bag, and slowly nodded. “And y’haven’t noticed any odd interactions with it? The flask bein’ hard to reach, or maybe the bag gettin’ a little, ah, bitey?”

Dinky tilted her head at us in confusion. I slowly shook my head. “There’s…d-dust, sometimes. Have to b-brush it off…”

“Dust…interestin’.” She glanced back to Somnambula, who nodded as though she’d just slotted a puzzle piece into place. “But nothin’ else, good. The flask itself is kind of a livin’ miracle, pulling in the kind of fire that keeps us all alive, even after death, an’ stores it for later use. Some from the air, some from us. Guess it emits a little of it too, to protect itself.”

And maybe protect the pony holding it. Perhaps the flask of sunlight was why I seemed to be able to return, even after going Hollow? I didn’t have the words to ask that question now.

“Using the flask that Meadowbrook brought with her, I have been able to study this magic much more easily.” Somnambula continued, as Meadowbrook went back to cutting. “It is possible to channel this magic using not only a flask, but other talismans, to heal the wounded—such as Holly, once Meadowbrook has finished her work—and push back the Dark. That mace was one weapon that I tested the magic upon, as an enchantment, and I hear that it performed excellently against the undead of Cloudsdale?”

I nodded again, and Dinky raised her hoof like a student in class, before she sheepishly lowered it. “Um. B-but we’re undead t-too. It c-can heal us, and s-slays skeletons?”

“Intent seems more important than ever with this magic. An enchantment upon a weapon kills, while a spell to heal would do so for any near the caster, regardless of allegiance. The school of Pyromancy has a similar spell to heal the living. It is curious that miracles seem to have no such limitations. It all depends on what the caster desires, and making that intent clear with emotion, rather than incantation or magical focus is very important.” Somnambula smiled once more. “I have found that recalling pleasant stories of my past, my friends, and my thoughts of Princess Celestia all summon wonderful results.”

“Aside from that one time ya somehow teleported back home, and got us all panicked for weeks thinkin’ you’d exploded yourself,” Meadowbrook joked.

“Mm, yes,” Somnambula nodded. “Thoughts of home, specifically, have an unusual effect. I’m still testing that, in hopes that it may become more reliable and less…subjective. My hooves would certainly appreciate such a spell, I think, and it would certainly solve our current conundrum with Canterlot.”

Dinky sighed. “S-so you don’t have any s-secret way into the c-city that we c-could use.”

Mistmane shook her head. “That gate was our ‘secret’ way in. A service tunnel that saw much less use than the train tracks or the main road. Well-lit, well-guarded, and led directly to the city. Alas, it seems that Celestia—or somepony acting on her authority—has chosen to shut us all out.”

“There may be another way,” Somnambula said, gesturing to Dinky, “with which you already seem familiar. That elevator up the mountainside was created by Mistmane a time ago in order to aid these experiments, though it quickly saw use as a very dangerous shortcut up past the scaffolding on the lake instead.”

“Oh,” Dinky said quietly. “S-sorry. I k-kinda broke the locks. Any unicorn c-can use it now.”

Mistmane furrowed her brow at her with a displeased hum, and she glanced out over the lake. “I’ll need to fix that then. At least it still functions. In any case, the original test subjects present an issue that must be overcome if we are to reach Canterlot.”

“The..things, in the d-dark?” Dinky asked quietly.

“You have encountered the changed cockatrices, and yet you still live?” Somnambula asked, as she raised her eyebrow.

Dinky shrank down again. “S-sort of. Gilda w-wasn’t so lucky; it t-turned her to stone. But…y-you can fix her, r-right? I’m s-sure that Meadowbrook has c-cured petrification, since T-Twilight told me about one t-time that she got p-petrified, and Zecora s-saved her.”

Meadowbrook dumped a bucket of water over me, to wash more of the mud away. “Ain’t normal petrification; which is actually good, because I don’t have the herbs needed to cure that. Nor do I have Fluttershy’s, ahh…way wit’ animals. Filly apparently could talk a normal cockatrice into reversing the spell jus’ by staring it down.”

“This form of petrification seems more akin to a curse,” Mistmane explained. “The victim is neither encased in or turned into stone. Instead, it seems as though time no longer affects them as it does us. What seems to be stone to us is closer to an afterimage, such as that caused by a bright flash of magic; a remnant of the creature that was attacked, until time presumably catches up to them, and they are released. A form of ‘stasis,’ would perhaps be more appropriate as a description.”

“Not that we have seen any such creatures released normally,” Somnambula regretfully mused. “It may also be possible that the way they now experience time is reversed, in which case they will never catch up to our time. Perhaps the answers lie not in the victims themselves, but in the creatures spreading the curse themselves?”

“Y-you said it was a ch-changed cockatrice, r-right?” Dinky asked. “Like in the Ev-Everchaos? B-but how’d one g-get up here? The dogs m-might’ve just walked, but…” She trailed off.

“We are…not sure.” Mistmane admitted. “And the changes do not appear to be purely chaotic. Instead, they seem to be a mix of chaotic energy and the Dark.”

The Dark. I could hear the capital D. Not just mundane darkness, but something malignant that crawled out from the cracks and crevices of this world. I’d seen it everywhere, from the lake above Cloudsdale, to the caves above us, to the blade in the Baltimore museum, to the bag I kept at my side. I felt it inside me, inside everypony I knew, because it had wormed its way into all of us. It burned a hole through our flanks, replacing our cutie marks with that dark sign, and it seemed to overtake Hollows as it turned their blood black.

Every time I met these ponies, these Pillars of Equestria, they spoke about it. They knew something about it that they weren’t sharing. It was time for me to finally get some answers, now that Meadowbrook had fully emptied my lungs.

“W-what—” My lips cracked, and Meadowbrook gave me a canteen to sip from before I continued. “What is the D-Dark?”

Silence filled the room. The sort of silence where a pony could speak at any moment, but nopony wanted to be the one who did so.

“We don’t really know,” Mistmane eventually admitted. “I think…perhaps we are not allowed to know the true shape of it. We have experienced it, but we were protected. Starswirl pulled us into a space that he called ‘Limbo,’ in order to isolate the Pony of Shadows…poor Stygian was already deeply touched by it, though he seemed to recover eventually.”

Dinky frowned, and I could see her trying to fit this new knowledge with what she knew. “Is…is that like w-when a unicorn uses a W-Wink spell to travel?”

Mistmane nodded. “Indeed. I think that perhaps it is the same space, but where a Wink spell merely skims the surface—between the true space and the reality that we know—Limbo is somewhere deeper within.”

Deeper? I could still hear the space-that-wasn’t-space beating on Dinky’s shield, trying to break it, trying to consume us. I couldn’t imagine willingly venturing deeper within that nightmarish space. And if something was trying to get out…or had already gotten out…

Mistmane saw my countenance growing pale, and she continued. “There is something inside that space. Or…perhaps it is that space, like a force of nature, or an altered state of being. Princess Celestia can push it back using her sun’s light, banish it back to the dark cracks of the world…but she has less control over her sun than she normally would, and the dark is bleeding out of the cracks all over the world now. I do not know what is emerging from those cracks, be it creatures or some sort of Dark reality overwriting our own, but studying it is what eventually drove both Stygian and Princess Luna mad, so long ago. And now in our modern age, they have both disappeared into some sort of portal at the peak of the Canterhorn.”

This was a lot to take in at once. Only Magnus had mentioned Princess Luna before, and he had mentioned she was “recruiting” for something that had included a pony named Stygian. A Covenant of the Dark—or perhaps fighting the Dark—beyond a mysterious portal.

I forced myself to refocus on the here and now. “And…y-you think that the D-Dark in the tunnels above…it ch-changed a creature in there?”

Meadowbrook had been brushing more of the mud out of…I tried not to think about where she was brushing the mud out. I could only hope that the flask of sunlight would close the wound after she was finished. She paused to answer, “The Chaosfire changed the cockatrices once; the Dark changed ‘em again. Now they’re somethin’ else. But if Somnamb’la thinks she can use these Miracles to fight back against the Dark, I’m eager to try.”

“Specifically, I have enchanted a staff with a Miracle to emit sunlight, or the magical energy that we describe as sunlight.” She paused, lost in thought. “Were that I could get into the Royal Library; I would love to compare my notes against those of old Unicornia, back when they were forced to move the Sun and Moon themselves. With a powerful enough Miracle…”

She shook herself, to set aside the idea. “For now, our hope is that this Miracle will be enough to reverse the petrification, or at least weaken it. As I said, I have already enchanted the staff,” Somnambula indicated a plain-looking length of wood, carved into the shape of a staff. Mounted to the staff’s head was a carefully-crafted brass emblem of Princess Celestia’s cutie mark, a sun surrounded by whorls of fire.

The conversation passed me by for a moment as I stared at the symbol. I couldn’t help but think about how it looked unsettlingly similar to the mark upon all of our flanks—a central circle, surrounded by curling lines. But Celestia’s sun represented the light being emitted from within, while our Dark marks seemed to represent the opposite, the colors of our coat being pulled into the void like water down a drain.

I shook myself out of it, and forced my attention back to Somnambula. “S-sorry…Say that a-again?”

Dinky responded, instead. “She s-said she needs a t-test subject. A p-petrified pony that we c-can bring here, so she c-can use the staff on them.”

I felt eyes upon me. Somnambula’s in particular. They knew that I was the most expendable of the group. As much as it made my blood curdle, I couldn’t exactly say they were wrong.

“Not a volunteer,” Mistmane specified, easing some of the pressure I had felt. “There are already enough statues outside, and we cannot afford to lose more ponies should this fail.”

A statue from the lake, then; a pony that was to be revived from the stone death that was petrification, or at least looked like petrification. My mind flashed to Red, the one pony I’d recognized in that morass besides Dinky. Gilda was also apparently an option, though we would have to use the elevator to go up and retrieve her, and the area in which she was petrified might still have been dangerous. So Red was definitely a better choice.

I nodded. “Okay. G-get a statue from the l-lake, bring it b-back here, and we’ll t-test the staff. If it works, then we c-can use it to pass through the t-tunnel?”

“You’ll still need to fight the cockatrices, but yeah, that’s the gist of it,” Meadowbrook agreed. “First, though, we gotta finish cleaning you up. And you’d better not go for a dip gettin’ that statue, after all the work we jus’ put into gettin’ you clean!”
> 48 - Dredged
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The flask of sunlight could heal even grievous injuries, given only moments to work and a careful application of the magical fluid it contained. After I’d retrieved it from the bag, Mage Meadowbrook took it from my hoof so that she could apply it to my broken body. But I noted that all three of the Pillars present seemed interested in the dust in which the bottle was caked, and Somnambula held up a faded ceramic plate upon which Meadowbrook gently brushed the dust. Somnambula took that back inside for further study, while Meadowbrook uncorked the bottle and gently began to flick the liquid sunlight across my deepest wounds.

She was delicate with it, but not in the way that I expected. While she was more medically experienced, and could use the small amount of fluid more efficiently than I did—by sloppily pouring it onto my wounds, or drinking it—she seemed deeply uncomfortable with the glass bottle, holding it daintily, as if expecting it might explode in her grasp. At least I didn’t have to worry about asking for it back; when she was satisfied that I’d absorbed enough of the glowing power within, she nearly shoved the half-full bottle back into my hooves. I didn’t remember her being nearly as flighty when we first met her in Baton Verte.

“Is s-something…wrong?” I hoped that my Hollowed face and embered eyes could convey my concern. Or any kind of emotion, for that matter.

Meadowbrook glanced down at the bottle again, but shook her head. “Nothin’ you gotta worry about. Jus’...keep your friends close, is all.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant, but she didn’t seem as though she wanted to tell me. Instead, her attention turned back to Mistmane and Dinky, who were checking the raft before they set out. Surprisingly, the buildings between the toxic lake and this loft were all fairly low, and it occurred to me that a pony standing on this fire escape, or looking through the loft’s windows, could see the entirety of the lake, where the scaffolding had been, and most of Hammerhoof around it. Somnambula had chosen her workspace well.

I had already told Dinky that the statue on which she found me would be a good “test subject” for Somnambula’s spell, and so the decision was made. Mistmane was going with her in order to help haul Red’s petrified form onto the raft using their combined magic. As much as both Meadowbrook and I wanted to come along, there was barely room for two on Dinky’s makeshift boat, and the addition of a stone statue was dangerously pushing the limits of what it could do safely. As much as Meadowbrook wanted to check how intact the chosen statue was, so they wouldn’t have to waste time by hauling it all the way back here for her to check, she had to agree.

It gave me a little more time to rest, and for my bones and sundered flesh to knit themselves back together, accelerated by the glowing flask I kept clutched to my belly. Removing the last traces of the mud had been a painfully slow process, but I was glad that my body had been flushed clean. I suddenly appreciated the mere dull ache of Hollowing, as opposed to the constant splitting headache, the feeling of my flesh being eaten away as if by acid, and the bloated, nauseous feeling, which all came with being terminally poisoned, and yet unable to stay dead.

I was still in pain; my joints still ground together uncomfortably, my bones still felt brittle, and my muscles still ached, but now the pain was familiar. It was hard to imagine not feeling all that, at least in the back of my mind. The brief memories I had experienced through the eyes of other ponies, where they had not yet Hollowed—they felt like dreams at this point. The sensation I’d felt when experiencing them was being lost to time, even if the most important details remained. I almost felt as though my brief time as an alicorn, within Rarity’s memories, had been nothing more than wishful fantasy.

While I slowly healed, my attention drifted to my bottomless bag once more. Though the leather bag was just as stained by having been submerged in the lake as I, Meadowbrook had done her best to clean it, and the only real damage seemed to be aesthetic. As I proved by withdrawing the flask of sunlight, the actual magic of the bag seemed unchanged, and the objects within had never been touched by the mud. Maybe the bag wouldn’t allow liquid to flow past the lip? Otherwise, it could well have been possible to attach the bag to a weight and drain either of the lakes I’d fallen into—maybe even the whole of an ocean, given enough time. But placing corked containers of liquid into the bottomless darkness seemed to work fine, so long as they could pass through the mouth of the bag.

I turned my attention to that Dark expanse once more, as I held the bag open. I still didn’t enjoy staring into the abyss; I couldn’t shake the feeling that something deep within might have been staring back. Light seemed unable to pierce it, even the weak sunset that illuminated Hammerhoof, as though the light was nullified by the bag itself.

Was this one of the “cracks in reality” that Mistmane had described? Were our cutie marks? Neither seemed to be “leaking,” whatever that meant. The dam over Cloudsdale had been leaking, and the Dark seemed to bleed upwards from the depths of the black lake before being washed downstream. It felt more appropriate to say that it grew like mold from those dark spaces, and expanded to fill them until it touched the light.

What happened, when light burned away the Dark? Did it just disappear, like vapor? Was the Dark not destroyed, but instead pushed back, and compressed down within the infinite space from whence it came? Or that mysterious dust that caked my flask of sunlight whenever I retrieved it was a byproduct of their meeting, like ash left in the hearth. That would explain Somnambula’s interest in it; perhaps she could weave new miracles, using the sanctified ash as an ingredient.

All I could do was stare into the Dark and speculate. The Pillars seemed to know what was going on, so maybe one of them would at least fill me in a little bit. “M-Mage Meadowbrook?”

“Hm?” She glanced back at me, and I saw her eyebrows raise over her embers as she saw me investigating the bag.

I set the bag down between us, so she could pick it up if she needed during her explanation. “D-do you know how this b-bag works? The inside is…D-Dark, isn’t it? Is that s-safe?”

She broke out into a chuckle. “Safe? Hah! No, prob’ly not. You’re right ‘bout the Dark in it, though. Wish I knew how it worked myself, to be honest; I dont trust the Dark. But I trust Princess Luna.”

I blinked at her. “She m-made the bag?”

“Yup. I think she harnessed the Dark somehow, beat it into submission in small pockets, or contained it, or…I’m jus’ guessin’, she never told us about how it worked, jus’ how to use it. Mare knows the Dark even better than Stygian does, but…guess a thousand years will do that, even considerin’ when it don’t play nice with time as we know it. That and the repair powder; she just showed up with both o’ those one day, in the middle o’ the Dragon war.”

Repair powder…that sounded familiar as well. That stuff Bon Bon had used, so long ago, to repair my damaged sword—or rewind time so that the damage never happened at all—on the way to the rock farm… “Is r-repair powder…golden? And…glowing?”

Meadowbrook looked surprised. “You’ve seen it used? I didn’t think there was any left, after Princess Luna disappeared. She was the only real source, but she handed out a lot of it before she left, mostly to us Golden Guard and Celestia’s intelligence agents.”

“A f-friend let me use the l-last of theirs…” I mumbled. Hadn’t Bon-Bon said she and Lyra were headed to Canterlot? I was surprised we hadn’t encountered them here in Hammerhoof, actually. It couldn’t have been easy to keep herself and a Hollow safe, much less travel such a distance together. I could only hope that we wouldn’t encounter them both in the tunnels, turned to stone as well…or that we already had, as a pair of unrecognizable Hollows along our way.

Meadowbrook nodded thoughtfully. “Must’ve been a good friend. Oh, speakin’ of, Mistmane and Dinky are coming back now! Looks like they found their, ah—” Meadowbrook suddenly looked uncomfortable again. “—test subject. Hopefully they’re all there still, in all the ways that matter.”

I took one final swig of the liquid sunlight, and then recorked the bottle and slid it into the bottomless bag. The pain of my guts being opened up and cleaned out was still fading, but I felt well enough to stand. After a moment, and with Meadowbrooks help, I managed to pull myself to my hooves to lean against the railing. From there, I could see the distant shapes of Mistmane, Dinky, and a muddy blob on their little wooden raft, slowly pulling ashore.

“Come on, let’s go down and get some buckets. No sense in washin’ that mud off up here, jus’ gonna ruin Somnambula’s nice floors.”


*	*	*


It wasn’t just the statue that needed to be cleaned off; Dinky had nearly tumbled into the mud herself while pulling it out, and it was only thanks to Mistmane that she had only gotten her fores dunked. She still rubbed at them unconsciously, and the flesh of her forelegs seemed dark red up to her barrel, as a scar of the toxic bath. Mistmane had to wash away a few splatters of her own, and one splotch against her side from she’d accidentally leaned against the statue, having forgotten that it too was covered in corrosive mud.

“I hope this works,” Mistmane soberly stated. “I don’t think many other statues out there are recoverable. This one was only just; had it sunken any deeper into the lake, it would have taken Dinky with it.”

Meadowbrook had already paced around the statue a few times, as she splashed it with buckets of water from different angles. “Looks intact. No missin’ limbs, no big cracks. Those are the usual concerns with petrification, y’see. And y’think these got tossed out of that tunnel up there?”

“Such is my working theory,” Somnambula turned to Mistmane, though she winced as she saw the acid burn on her friend’s flank. “Were you able to repair the elevator lock?”

At this, Mistmane flashed a proud smirk. “Dinky did a rather thorough job of disassembling my spellwork; a novice wouldn’t have been able to do much aside from using magical brute force, which would have damaged the functions of the elevator as well. I had to dispel what remained to recast the spell, though this time, Dinky also has access.”

“S-sorry about that…” Dinky mumbled quietly, as she handed another bucket of water to Meadowbrook.

“No spell lasts forever, Dinky. It is quite alright.” Mistmane smiled at her again, though Dinky still looked guilty.

“It was so p-pretty, though…l-like it had been c-cast by an artist. I’ve never s-seen magic woven together like that…and I had to sm-smash it to make it work.”

“But,” Mistmane said, still smiling while nudging her gently in the shoulder, “you were able to identify where to strike the spell, and reacted when it adapted to cover the holes created as you progressed through the enchantment. A mere student would have pulled on the first thread of magic they understood, and again, that would have dispelled the enchantment in its entirety. You may not believe yourself deserving of the title of Archmagus, but I can see you’ve learned from the best.”

“Mistmane’s just used to workin’ with snobby Canterlot unicorns that graduated from Celestia’s school, thinkin’ their high grades are all they need,” Meadowbrook said with a chuckle. “Didn’t need grades when we were off savin’ the world; experience was the best teacher o’ all.”

“Formal training is important as well, Meadowbrook. But it does instill a sort of rigidity in modern students that can be…resistant to adaptation.” Mistmane looked upwards, at Canterlot. “Would that we only had time to work to improve that system, before the war.”

Somnambula and Meadowbrook nodded sadly in agreement, before the latter stepped forward to inspect the mud caked onto the statue. “Think I’ve done all I can with splashin’ water on ‘em. Gonna have to start scrubbin’, and I’m gonna leave that to the unicorns. Don’t wanna touch this stuff ‘less I have to. I’ll refill the water buckets while you start, though.”

Mistmane nodded, and both she and Dinky picked up some old, worn wooden brushes. They might have been used on coats or metal, a long time ago, but they’d work fine for this.

Somnambula smiled at me. “Best to clean off their face, first. It seems only polite.”


*	*	*


I had only barely recognized Red before, through all the mud that had covered us both at the time, but his clothing had helped significantly. Now that his face was clean, it was unmistakably him. While I was glad that I’d correctly identified him, and that we were on the cusp of freeing him from the stone that had encased the stallion, I had to wonder just how dangerous the creatures in the tunnel above us truly were. Red had seemed more than competent; he wore the pelts of animals for clothing, and he’d been covered in scars, but none of them were deep enough to slow him down. He seemed as though he were an experienced veteran. And yet, here he was before us, nothing more than a stone statue, as though none of that had even mattered at all in whatever fight he’d lost.

Curiously enough, I wasn’t the only one that recognized him. As soon as she stepped back to look at his mud-free face, I saw Mistmane’s eyes widen in surprise, and Meadowbrook nearly dropped a bucket she was carrying when she got back. Somnambula was harder to read, but she seemed silently lost in thought while our friends worked to clean the rest of the mud off his stone body.

I even noticed Dinky had paused to stare at one point; when I asked her if she knew him, she didn’t respond at first. “I…m-maybe? He looks…f-familiar, but I don’t r-remember where…”

“You said he was a fellow traveler, did you not?” Somnambula asked me.

I nodded; I’d already told them about my brief encounter with him, on my way back to Ponyville. I hadn’t described him beyond being a muscled stallion of a large build, wearing hide armor and carrying an axe; the colors of his mane and coat weren’t important, so long as he was petrified.

And on some level, I now wondered: If I had told them, would they still have rescued him from the lake? They all looked at him with some suspicion, and now looked at me the same way. More than they had before, I suppose, given I was already a Hollow.

“On his way to apologize to three mares,” Mistmane repeated. “Interesting.”

“W-what’s going on…?” I carefully asked.

The three Pillars all shared a look, and Meadowbrook was the one to voice the shared question. “Should we tell ‘em?”

“Perhaps it is not our secret to tell,” Somnambula said enigmatically.

“All depends how dangerous he is,” Meadowbrook replied to her.

Mistmane tapped her hoof as she continued to scrub using her magic. “He was dangerous enough to be banished. That much, we can tell them.”

“Banished ponies ain’t supposed to come back. Kinda the point.”

“I have never felt that punishment to be appropriate.” Somnambula stated bluntly, as she peered at Red’s stone eyes. The stallion was frozen in a pose that suggested he had been standing his ground against an incoming attack; his weapon hadn’t even been drawn. Instead, he must have been relying on his armor to take the blow for him, and perhaps it would have, if whatever struck him hadn’t petrified him instead.

“‘Course you wouldn’t,” sighed Meadowbrook. “Miracles, hexes, it’s all interesting to you.”

“A cartographer can hardly call a mountain explored, if they have only mapped one slope.” Mistmane said quietly. “We know so little about what we fight. Perhaps Princess Celestia had the best interests of Equestria in mind, but…we know she has dabbled for herself.”

“Mm-hm. Her, you, Zecora, Starswirl…like y’all learned nothin’ from poor Stygian or Luna. Keep shovin’ your hoof into places it shouldn’t be, and it’ll get bit.” Meadowbrook turned to look at Dinky. “Filly, keep your muzzle clean, y’hear? Don’t let them talk you into playin’ with things that’ll eat you alive if you stare at ‘em enough.”

Dinky didn’t seem to know how to respond; she looked between the Pillars for a long few moments, before she just focused on scrubbing at Red’s stone legs.

After a moment, Mistmane looked back at Somnambula. “Is that axe still locked up in the Canterlot Armory?”

“At last I knew, yes, at great risk to life and limb. If that is his destination…will he calm it, do you think?”

“Or he might let it loose, and it’ll do e’en more damage ‘fore they get it contained again!” Meadowbrook said, with a stamp of her hoof.

Nopony responded to that; there didn’t seem to be any interest in the argument. Eventually, Dinky stepped back, and ended up at my side, as she looked up at the stone statue. “I d-don’t understand…who is he? Sh-should I know him?”

Mistmane looked around. “Before their time, perhaps?”

“Or maybe Dinky has chosen to forget, like many others,” Somnambula said solemnly.

Meadowbrook’s shoulders slumped sadly. “They’re both from Ponyville. They oughta know the broad details, at least. ‘Specially if we’re still gonna revive him.”

“Especially considering their history with Applejack,” Mistmane glumly agreed, before turning back to the young mare. “Dinky. Do you remember Applejack’s brother, from before the Dragon War?”

The young Hollowed mare bit her lip as she tried to recall memories from several lifetimes ago. Back before all this, before her time as an Archmagus. Maybe even from before her time studying under Twilight Sparkle. I wished that I could help, but I remembered even less than she did.

Eventually, she nodded, very slowly. “I remember…A big stallion. A farmer. But not where he went…”

“He joined the Golden Guard to fight in the Dragon War, in Applejack’s division,” Mistmane helpfully supplied. “He made a name for himself, especially considering he was the brother of one of the bearers. I think that scared her; she pulled him back to Canterlot to keep him safe, but he had already seen more than his fair share of combat. Shortly after the demons emerged…we are not sure of the exact details, but he was involved in some dark magic. Somnambula, you have studied it.”

“He created a weapon, or was party to its creation. The actual casters who created it were dead; he admitted to killing them himself, and didn’t know much of the actual magic that transpired. But he contacted them, and they made the weapon for him by commission. And thus, Princess Celestia had him banished to the frozen north.”

Meadowbrook leaned in to look at his hide armor, and she ran a hoof along the stone fur that lined the edges of the plates. “Seems as though he’s been doing well for himself up there; took to huntin’ to survive. Is he even Hollow?”

That seemed to give all of them pause, as they inspected Red. If he hadn’t been made of stone at the moment, it might have been indecent for three mares to stare so intently at a stallion’s musculature.

“He doesn’t seem to have aged more than a decade,” Mistmane said, after a few moments. “At least, his first death was not from starvation, unlike the rest of Equestria. A beast of the wilds, perhaps? He certainly doesn’t seem to have died many times since.”

Dinky was still sitting by my side, looking distressed and confused. “Is he…is he g-gonna be as c-crazy as Applejack is?”

Mistmane snorted in brief amusement. “I would doubt that, judging by Holly’s story of meeting him. He seemed fully in control of his faculties then, while I would be very surprised if Applejack even remembered she had a brother, by this point.”

“Family was important to Applejack, when I knew her,” Somnambula said quietly. “Having one so close fall so far…perhaps that is where her own madness started.”

As we all sat in silence, Meadowbrook paced around the statue one last time, and inspected it for more mud. “Looks like he’s all clean. At least it’s easier to get this stuff off a statue than a livin’ pony, I s’pose. We’re really doin’ this, then?”

Somnambula nodded. “Guilty or innocent, repentant or vindictive, he does not deserve to be trapped outside time by the Dark. Bring him to the elevator; we shall test the staff inside.”

Dinky nodded, and together with Mistmane, picked up the statue and began to levitate it over to the elevator by the fire escape. As she did so, she asked, “C-can we at least know his name?”

Mistmane shook her head. “He has chosen to call himself ‘Red.’ I will not violate that pseudonym on his behalf. A pony is not uncomfortable with their own name without reason.”

Once the elevator reached the loft, it was only the work of a few moments to haul the statue of the stallion inside, and set him down on a clear space of the floor. Mistmane instructed that none of us block the door; and to leave it open; should he wish simply to flee upon awakening, then such would be his choice. All they needed was to test Somnambula’s staff, and it was outside their authority to carry out Princess Celestia’s judgment. Instead, we all sat off to the sides, while Somnambula checked her staff once more.

Her bright embers alighted on me, and she tilted her head. “Holly. You will wield the staff inside the tunnels. This will serve as excellent training for that incursion.”

I blinked at her dumbly, unsure whether to be honored or afraid. “M-me? But I…I don’t..”

“Holly.” Somnambula gently sat the staff down against the box, and sat down before me. “I can sense great capacity for miracles within you; your soul burns brighter than most. You also met Red as he was, before he was rendered unto stone. I cannot imagine anypony more qualified in this room, even myself.”

Dinky looked thoughtful at that. I saw her turn to Meadowbrook to have a whispered conversation, too low for me to hear. Hopefully, she was asking about Meadowbrook’s original diagnosis for me, and how I had exceeded it; I couldn’t think of many other details about myself that would make me particularly notable. But I allowed Somnambula to attach the staff to my barding, on the opposite side from my collapsible spear. While the weight was still unbalanced, since the staff weighed much more than the spear, it was better than the spear alone had been.

Somnambula directed me where to stand and face the statue, and then she turned back to the others. “Mistmane, Meadowbrook. Remember to observe the magical energies at play. Dinky, take notes for Meadowbrook, if you would please; Mistmane can write her own notes as she observes.”

Dinky found herself with a stained and faded notepad held out to her, and she hesitantly took them, as well as a thin stick of charcoal with a sharpened tip. Ink for quills had presumably dried long ago, after all. The filly hesitantly scribbled a bit on the paper to test, then forced herself to write smaller and more precisely. After a few moments of practice, she slowly nodded.

Meadowbrook gave her a smile. “Don’ you worry, I’ll take it easy on ya.”

Dinky tried not to look at Mistmane, who had a field of loose papers orbiting around her head as her horn turned aglow. The unicorn scholar was already writing, in an elegant flowing script that seemed just as much art as it did written Equestrian. My own body tingled a bit as a field of faint blue-green wrapped around me. I almost expected to be picked up and lifted into the air, but she was only observing, using magical senses that I lacked words to define.

By comparison, Meadowbrook simply closed her eyes and lifted a hoof in my direction, and her pyromancy flame sprang to life. It remained in her hoof, even as she rolled it around on her frog, and I could feel her own fire shift as she manipulated it around me, performing what must have been the Pyromancer’s version of whatever scanning spell that Mistmane was using.

Satisfied that everypony else was in position, Somnambula looked back at me. “I shall stand here, allowing ‘Red’ a clear path to the door, and I will attempt to keep him calm as he awakes. He knows the three of us, but seeing us all again could be shocking, after so long a period of loneliness.”

I swallowed, though it did nothing to help my permanently dry throat. “H-how do I…?”

She smiled gently. “Relax; think of better times, of happy memories. Think of Red as you met him, alive and awake, and believe in those memories as you focus the flame of your spirit through the staff.”

Happy memories. I didn’t have many of those, if any. I barely had any memories to draw from at all. I’d had small moments of relaxation, places where I felt briefly comfortable, times that I wished could have lasted forever. I thought back to Baton Verte, when Dinky helped me re-learn how to force my lungs to work. I thought back to the prison cell, where we had swapped stories with Trixie. I thought of my joy at swinging that enchanted mace through the skeletal foes in my way, and my relief in knowing that the Princess was so close now, and my belief that she would make everything right, one way or another. I thought of the mare in the fire, and the quiet Hollow that believed in her as he stared at the flames.

And finally, I recalled that moment I shared with Red, in the tiny store along the road. The small fire in the hearth, warm conversation with the muscled and experienced stallion, and the feeling that, for a brief few moments, I could relax in a place of safety. All of it, I remembered, and I placed my hoof along the wooden rod of the staff, as I gently extended the fire of my soul and channeled that heat down the wooden length.

I worried about igniting the wood, but the staff accepted the magic, and it…changed, in some way. What had been burning fire and heat became light and warmth, so bright that I could see it even though I had closed my eyes. It flowed back through the staff, and into me, suffusing my soul, and I felt it again. The power that Rarity had, in her memories. Like every hoofwidth of my flesh was powered by lightning, or perhaps as though I was, myself, made of fire and lightning and sunlight, and trapped within a prison of flesh—I yearned to escape, to tear my true self free from within—

I felt a dark cloud before me. A space that did not understand time, did not understand life, that did not understand movement. All was still. All was cold. But there was life yet, deep within, in the shape of a pony. I felt myself rush forward like a rising tide of burning air and feathers, and I washed away the dark clouds.

For a moment, only a split second, there was a connection. The stallion awoke, and we saw each other as we truly were.

And he flinched.

Feeling rushed back to my body, aches and pains and burning heat at the tip of my hoof. The staff dimmed as I flinched backwards, away from the light and the heat, and I stamped my hoof against the cold tile floor to extinguish it. But there was no fire. It was instead as though I had been stung by something I couldn’t comprehend, and I had to blink a few times to reorient myself within the room. By that time, the stallion had already awoken.

He dropped into a combat stance, his head low and muscles tensed, as though he had never been frozen in stone. His hoof touched the grip of his axe, but didn’t draw it from his back; it was a threat that he could draw and swing the deadly weapon faster than we could blink, but a warning that he didn’t want to do so. “What—what is—?” He glanced around the room, and his eyes met those of the Pillars of Equestria, then Dinky, and finally myself. There was a moment where we looked at each other, and I could see sadness on his face; sadness and regret. He’d trusted me, and yet, this looked more like a tribunal than rescue.

Somnamulba stepped forward, and his eyes met hers. She spoke as she looked at him, and slowly sat down on the tiles of the room, to show that she would not approach any closer. “You prefer to use the name ‘Red’ now. Is that correct?”

“I do,” he growled in his drawling tone. “Where am I?”

“Hammerhoof, near Canterlot. We are led to understand that is your chosen destination?” Somnambula used present tense, not past tense. That seemed to calm him a bit.

Red nodded, slowly, and scanned the room again. After a moment, his eyes turned back to Somnambula. “If’n ya’ll aren’t plannin’ t’ stop me.”

Somnambula tilted her head at him. “Did you plan to be stopped?”

Red let out a snort. “Planned, no. But I did expect it. Expected t’ be stopped at the northern border. Then I expected t’ be stopped by the army stationed across the heartlands. Then I expected t’ be stopped by the Golden Guard. Now, it don’t seem like there’s anypony left t’ stop me.”

It was the most I’d heard Red speak in one go since I met him, and after he finished, he looked around the room once more. “Y’all gonna be the ones t’ do it?”

“I do not plan to stop you. Neither does anypony here; the door is open, if you wish to leave.” Somnambula slowly indicated the door to the fire escape, without any sudden movements.

Red snorted, and he slowly let his hoof drift away from the grip of his axe. “That so?”

“We are on the third floor; mind the stairs on the way down,” Somnambula said, with a small smirk. “However, I’m sure you’ve found that the gate leading upwards to Canterlot has been locked down.”

Red creased his brow as he took a few cautious steps towards the door, slowly relaxing as we continued to not make any aggressive moves. He seemed especially wary of Mistmane, whose horn was still bright with magic as she scribbled notes, but Meadowbrook had already extinguished her pyromancer’s flame, and she was more focused on the conversation. He barely spared a glance towards Dinky, and the small pad of paper she held, waiting to take notes. “Didn’t try the gate. Too many guards. Why?”

“We are unsure ourselves, for we are locked out as well. An alternate route still exists, which it would seem you were in the process of exploring when you encountered something that blocked your path?”

“Could say that. Things in the dark?”

“Cockatrices,” Meadowbrook quietly corrected. “Twisted by some magic, and infestin’ the tunnels. Turned you t’ stone, and seems they do the same t’ any what try to enter Can’erlot from below.”

Red slowly sat down, still within easy reach of the door, but he had stopped to listen. He let out a long sigh, and then nodded. “Eeyup. And y’ cured me. Why?”

Mistmane finished writing, and the papers around her head shuffled into a neat stack, which she set down on a nearby table, with a paperweight on top to keep the wind from scattering them across the room. “Something is wrong in Canterlot. Nopony is allowed in or out, not even ourselves. Princess Celestia asked us for help, and I think somepony else shut us out. For what purpose, we cannot guess. But I suspect that Princess Celestia is not the one making decisions currently.”

Mistmane indicated me and Dinky with a hoof. “We would ask that you escort these two up to Canterlot, discover why the city has been locked down, and release said lockdown, allowing us to open the gate and resume our duties. And you would be allowed to continue your journey, in doing so.”

Red let out a quiet huff from his snout. Out of amusement or disbelief, I couldn’t tell. “An’ that’s all? Nothin’ else?”

“Time changes many things. Especially ponies, ‘Red.’” Somnambula glanced at me. “Holly has told us of your mission; to make amends, and apologize to three mares. I admit, I am curious; I can guess at the identity of two of these mares easily enough. But the third…?”

Red gently shook his head. “T’ apologize. But make amends…only if they’re willin’. They choose to refuse, decide I still don’t deserve that, then I’ll accept whatever comes.”

Mistmane and Somnambula looked back at Meadowbrook, who slowly nodded. “Alrigh’. Good enough for me, I reckon. Then you’re willin’ to open the gate first, before seein’ to ‘whatever comes?”

Red looked at me and Dinky again. “Long as y’ trust me with these two. None of y’all are comin’ with?”

“The offer is tempting, but it would be better if we didn’t.” Mistmane shook her head and sighed. “We will await the opening of the gate here in Hammerhoof.”

Somnambula pointed at me with her hoof. “You have met Holly.” it wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact. “She is equipped with the staff that freed you. It should serve to repel or blind the creatures, and it will certainly repel the Dark within the tunnel. Should you come across any similarly petrified victims, it may be helpful to free them, as you all see fit. There is certainly another companion of theirs up there; a gryphon by the name of GIlda.”

Red snorted—did he recognize her by name? “Right. I’m ready t’ leave.”

“Of course; I am sure you’re eager.” Somnambula nodded to Dinky. “Allow us a few minutes to compile notes on the experimental process that released you, then your companions will be along. You and Holly can wait outside in the meantime, if you would prefer the sunlight.”

Red smirked. “Could leave now.”

Mistmane chuckled quietly. “You could. But one of us unicorns must be present to operate the elevator.”

“Fought my way up there. Could do it again.”

Mistmane’s smile never changed, but she did let out a quiet, contemplative hum. Red stood up to leave a moment later, and I slowly followed him. As we left, I heard Meadowbrook begin to dictate to Dinky.

I caught a few snippets on my way out; stuff about “complex scans” and “fourth entity” and so forth, but it was all over my head. I joined Red a few moments later out on the balcony, as he was staring up at the mountainside—and the scaffolding that no longer reached upwards into the clouds.

I kept my distance, just in case he was angry, even if he didn’t show it. “S-sorry.”

Red didn’t move, but he did turn his eyes towards me for a moment. “Not worth apologizin’ to. ‘Sides, better than bein’ stone.” He didn’t sound angry, at least. Just practical. I wondered if he had always been like that, even before he was banished, or if it was a result of that happening.

I’d never heard of anypony being banished before. These days were bad times for societal justice, to be sure—the closest experience I’d had was with Applejack playing at being a militia leader, and going mad with power. But that didn’t seem like an appropriate comparison to make to her brother.

As I looked at him, I could see the similarities. He was powerful, like he was made of hardwood carved in the shape of a harder warrior. Applejack had caved in my armored chest with a solid kick, but a kick from this stallion would have sent my torso flying, sans my head and limbs. He could crush a Hollow’s skull like an egg, and if he ever swung that axe, I felt as though he could sunder the very mountain itself.

But he chose not to do so. He looked peaceful; even serene. Now that I was looking at him, I wasn’t sure if I could have made him angry. Anything that could inspire him to fight would need to be bigger, stronger, or at least more of a threat than myself. If I tried, I’d be little more than a reckless civilian standing in his way. Anything less than a rampaging dragon would perhaps get the same treatment.

He glanced at me, and broke me out of my thoughts. “Why’re you headin’ to Can’erlot now?”

The Pillars had been light on details. I decided I should do the same, for now, but if he was really curious, I didn’t mind telling the full story to another pony. Especially another companion in my own journey. “C-Celestia asked me t-to retrieve an art-artifact, from B-Baltimare. Gotta b-bring it to her.”

Red didn’t pry further. “And y’can handle y’self in a fight?”

“Enough to s-survive. Most of the t-time.”

He let out a sad chuckle, and turned his head back to the open doorway. “An’ Dinky?”

There was a bubble of pride, deep within myself. I’d seen the filly fight, and despite her hesitance to go out into the world and fight to make things right, she had survived. Even left alone, here in Hammerhoof, she had endured. But I regretted that she’d had to do that, and that I wasn’t here to keep her safe. “She’s inc-credibly powerful. Dinky was Tw-Twilight Sparkle’s p-personal student. But she’s not good in m-melee.”

Red nodded. “Sounds ‘bout right. She’ll stay behind us.”

With that decided, there wasn’t much else to say, while we waited for the Pillars to finish sorting out whatever magical knowledge they’d acquired. We chose to enjoy the quiet sounds of what remained of Hammerhoof, as we stared up at the mountain, and the distant silhouette of Canterlot above. If nothing else, I was happy to form another somewhat happy memory. It sounded as if those would be important, going forward.
> 49 - The Undertunnels
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Four ponies aboard made the raft unsteady, so Red and I remained as still as we could while Meadowbrook and Dinky piloted us forward across the lake, towards the elevator. It gave me time to look at the platform, and the cables of the elevator far above.

They’d been hard to pick out before; a single set of thin dark lines barely stood out, against a backdrop of crisscrossing scaffolding. But now that scaffolding was all so much splintered wood and rusting metal against the mountainside, the cables were the only reminder of the grand edifice that I’d helped destroy. They still ran in parallel to the wall, nearly disappearing into the clouds above, as I tried to see the tunnel entrance.

My vision lowered, towards the platform, as we approached. This end of it had originally looked just as ramshackle as the rest, but it seemed as though it had never actually been attached properly to the scaffolding. Instead, the tiny wooden pier had been cleverly built and disguised to look as though it were attached, and the supports that held it above the lake looked much sturdier than the rest of the floating detritus around us. Still, it meant that when the scaffolding fell, all around it, this tiny platform alone stayed standing.

The full construction of the elevator itself could not have been put together quickly, and it predated our arrival, which seemed strange. Mistmane claimed to have only just arrived before Dinky pulled me out of the lake, and yet this work would have been difficult to complete without a unicorn’s magic. How long had she, and the other Pillars, truly been here in Hammerhoof? And why were they lying to us?

But regardless of how long Mistmane had been here, why did she only emerge to aid us when Dinky had already pulled me out of the lake? Had they been watching her, or watching us, all this time?

I regarded Meadowbrook with some suspicion, but she was too busy piloting the raft to notice. Had she been honest with us so far? I wasn’t sure any more. I was suddenly reminded of Trixie, but I suspected that whatever game the Pillars were playing was a bit more grand than Trixie’s small, selfish goals.

The raft stopped with a bump against one of the wooden ties of the platform, and Dinky stabbed her pole into the silt of the lakebed before she began to anchor the raft. It would be fairly easy to climb up onto the platform a body-length above us, and then we’d take the elevator up, while Meadowbrook piloted the raft back to shore. From there, they’d keep watch over the lake, waiting for us to either bring the elevator back down or open the gate. This would likely be my last chance to ask her any questions, at least for a long time.

“M-Meadowbrook?” She turned to look at me, as did Red. “C-could I ask you s-something?”

“O’ course,” she said, with a nod. She glanced at Red, and he nodded quietly, then went to help Dinky up onto the platform. It wasn’t privacy, not really, but we would be harder to hear down on the raft while they were on the platform above.

It was hard for me to whisper; just being able to talk through my perpetual rasp and the unshakable rattle in my throat took effort, which often drowned words that were too quiet to overcome that obstacle. But I tried my best, and Meadowbrook leaned in close as I spoke. “Wh-what did you mean, b-before? About k-keeping my friends c-close, when I was t-talking about the flask of s-sunlight?”

The mare winced, and looked down at the muddy, poisonous water under our hooves. After a long sigh, she looked back at me. “Ah can only tell ya so much. Z’cora was the one who worked it out. Ah think ah can copy her trick, but…ah’d prefer not to, less ah had no choice.”

She waved a hoof towards me. “Mostly told ya the truth. Mostly. Somethin’ real important to know about Hollows, is that they always get back up, y’see? Kill ‘em, burn ‘em, cut ‘em apart, they don’t stop. The pony inside dies, but the body keeps’ goin, even if it’ll take all eternity for them to heal whatever damage they been dealt. I hear Magnus is just a head now, still livin’, still given’ orders.

“What ya found in Cloudsdale, that’s an important part of the puzzle. Mistmane tol’ me, ‘bout what you found…whatcha did. Ah think Rarity, or what’s left a’ her, is all around us now. Part o’ the background magic of this world, in every breath we take, in every drop o’ water, in every pound o’ dirt. And ah think she’s trying to put herself back together, or we’re trying to pull all o’ her into ourselves. Even the dead, whether they’re a pile o’ ash or a walkin’ skeleton. It’s just enough for the body to keep walkin’.

“Z’cora realized the one thing o’ which we had plenty, without any plants or herbs. Hollows. Even if she didn’t understand why yet, she knew that Hollows gathered that magic into themselves. So she…” Meadowbrook looked extremely uncomfortable now, and she swallowed some bile before she continued. “That pony that attacked us, in town. Your friend, Snips. And that other poor guard, Autumn Leaf. She picked ‘em.”

“P-picked them for wh-what…?” I asked, quietly.

Meadowbrook closed her eyes. “Don’t work with bone often. But I knew the theory, an’ Z’cora knew the rest. Burned the bones into ashes; mixed the ashes into glass. Blew new bottles out of the bone glass, and corked ‘em with silver. And jus’ like she thought they would, they started to fill with liquid sunlight.”

It took me a moment to catch up. When I did, I felt like I wanted to throw up again.

Meadowbrook saw me recoil, and nodded. “Ah didn’t like it. Still don’t. Z’cora went too far, damned near to necromancy, but we agreed to tell the Princess ‘bout what we did first, because we didn’t know whose side she’d take. But then the caravan got attacked, and Z’cora…” Meadowbrook swallowed again, as she looked down at the lake sadly. “Wish ah’d gotten to apologize to Z’cora. Said some stuff ah wanna take back now. And ah coulda pulled her back from the brink, ah know it, jus’...”

I was glad our conversation was quiet, and mostly private. Hopefully Dinky was too focused on the elevator to be eavesdropping; she didn’t need to know this. She wasn’t carrying around one of the flasks with her, wherever she went.

Meadowbrook slowly looked back up at Dinky and Red. “Like ah said, keep your friends close. You’re carryin’ Snips with ya, wherever y’go. Ah don’t think he would’ve minded that.” After a moment, she looked back at me. “Anyway. Anything else?”

I shook my head; I’d had more than enough answers for now. There were more questions, and there always would be, no matter how much I asked, but I didn’t think I could handle my own curiosity being sated any further.

Meadowbrook wished us all good luck, and I climbed up onto the platform with Red and Dinky, while the ancient Pyromancer untied the raft and silently began to pilot back to shore. The elevator sagged slightly as Red stepped aboard, but it looked as though it would hold our weight. Dinky was busy with the magical control mechanism, but she did tilt her head at me; she was curious about our conversation, and the expression on my face, but she didn’t ask what we’d talked about. I was thankful for that; I still had to work out how I felt about it myself.

The locks on the elevator released with a thump, and soon we began to ascend, away from the lake, and away from Hammerhoof. Quickly we passed a dizzying height, and I wanted to avert my eyes, or else I’d be thinking about how I’d seen all of this before in reverse when I was plummeting. My wings itched again, and they shakily spread on instinct alone, but I tried to suppress that instinct as much as I could.

Not that the other topics on my mind were very pleasant, either. I reached into the bottomless bag, and pulled out the flask of sunlight to look at it in the light. It was such a strange artifact, and it had saved my life a dozen times over by now. I could still see the tooth marks in the silver foil of the cork, when I’d pulled it out with my teeth in the hive under Baltimare.

The alternative would’ve meant that Snips was left mindless and wandering, trapped somewhere in Baton Verte. Or he would’ve truly been in one of the barrels on the caravan, and he would have been freed by the fight—I’d wondered where the bodies were, when those barrels had broken open. But even then, he likely would have been slain by Apple Bloom or the burned deer of the Everchaos. There really didn’t seem to have been any good end for the poor colt.

Instead, he was here, as a living miracle bottle that refilled itself whenever depleted. I peered at the green glass, and sloshed the fluid around inside idly. How much of Snips was truly left? Surely, his soul couldn’t have been here still. Just his bones, burned to ash and used as ingredients in some mad work of pyromancy. Maybe it was a better fate, but I didn’t envy him.

It repulsed me. It would be so easy to drop it off the side of the elevator now, and let the flask fall into the lake below. Nopony would ever find it, and I wouldn’t be using a dead colt’s spirit to save our own skin.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do that. As much as I hated what had been done to him, and what could have been done to me if I’d fallen before we reached Baton Verte, it would be doing him a greater disservice to discard the bottle. And I would be helpless the next time I was injured, since I would be forced to rely on my own natural healing, which was painfully slow.

The bottle was full now. It refilled so quickly now, and I wondered why that was. Maybe because we were so close to Canterlot? Or because we were surrounded by death, yet again? There were plenty of vaporous souls all around us, after what I’d done to Hammerhoof. Was it better that they were absorbed by the poor undead below, trapped under the murky surface of the lake, or used to refill this flask?

As it always did, practicality won out. I shoved the bottle back into my bottomless bag, and forced my attention elsewhere. Instead, I chose to focus on the extending spear strapped to my side. It had fallen with me into the poison muck, so it was important that I made sure that the mechanism wasn’t jammed or rusting, and that the enchantment still held.

“C-can I get some sp-space?” I asked quietly. Dinky stepped to one side of the elevator immediately, but Red seemed confused, and I tilted the spear up as an explanation.

Red nodded and stepped aside as well, but as he moved, he asked, “Where’d you get that?”

“B-back in Ponyville, one of the g-guards left it behind. So R-Rockhoof fixed it up, and g-gave it to me, since I was g-going up to Canterlot anyway.”

Red made a noise, a sort of thoughtful grunt that sounded like an acknowledgement, but he kept his eyes on me as I braced my hooves. Actually extending the spear while it was still strapped to my side was difficult; I had to reach under my barrel with the opposite hoof to twist the mechanism. It extended with a gritty clack, and launched flecks of toxic mud across the elevator. Both my companions flinched at the sound, and wiped a couple drops of the mud off their armor and fur hurriedly.

“S-sorry,” I murmured, with a wince.

“S’fine.” Red grunted again. “Still works?”

I flicked the spear in and out a few times, and the gritty feeling seemed to disappear after the first couple of transformations. As far as I could tell, the spear seemed to be in fine condition, though the piercing edge had blunted a bit. It would still stab, but I would need to charge an enemy at full speed to properly impale them. Better to use it for sweeping and jabbing attacks when I could, while Red and Dinky focused on killing the enemy outright.

I nodded to Red. “I th-think so.”

Red grunted again, then asked, “You usually use spears?”

“N-no. Used swords until now, m-mostly. A f-few clubs.” A wooden table leg, Zecora’s axe, the cavalry saber on the way to Baton Verte and back, the rusty shortsword given to me by Applejack, Mistmane’s magic mace, and then the army longsword I shattered in Baltimare. I’d seen a strange variety of weapons so far, but they were all designed to be swung, and only sometimes used to stab. That was probably influencing my sweeping attacks with the spear thus far, I realized. But so long as I didn’t break the weapon by using it poorly, and it kept me alive, then maybe my lack of expertise didn’t matter all that much. I had plenty of time to learn.

Red didn’t look as enthusiastic to be entering a fight alongside us as he had before, down in Hammerhoof. He glanced between us one more time. “Y’all know what we’re fightin’ up there?”

“The c-cockatrice?” Dinky asked.

Red looked upwards, at the cable that trailed upwards into the mist, towards the entrance high above. “Cockatrices are pests. The Dark, in the tunnels. It’s bleeding through here. Y’all ever fight it before?”

Dinky was silent for a moment; she was probably recalling what Mistmane had told us. “N-no, I haven’t. Holly?”

“In B-Baltimare. But n-never directly. There w-was a dagger…it’s not im-important.”

Red examined me, once more. “That staff. Light it.”

“W-what?”

“Won’t have time to wing it. Best learn how to light it now. Keep the lights on, push the dark back. That’s the trick.”

It was as simple as that—light to push back the Dark. Whether by keeping the fires burning, or by keeping the lights on. So long as the Dark wasn’t allowed to overtake us, we could push on.

I swapped hooves, to rest my other hoof on the wood of the staff, where it was hooked into the other side of my armor. I channeled my fire, and it came easier this time; after only a few moments of concentration, I pushed outwards, through the length of wood, and the end flared with brilliant sunlight.

Red nodded, but quirked his lip in frustration. “Too slow. And expect us to be running while you’re using that. We can’t afford to do no dawdlin’.”

So I had to channel my fire without touching it directly, then. Right. That made sense, even if it was asking a lot of me very suddenly. Maybe it shouldn’t have been the spear that I was worried about using. I didn’t have much time to practice before the elevator reached the top, but I spent the time following Red’s suggestion, as I kept the staff lit on our way up.


*	*	*


The elevator reached the upper platform with another jarring thump and a lot of disconcerting squeaking noises from the crane that operated the cables. There was barely anything left up here; just that crane, anchored to the mountainside, and a fragile platform that connected the elevator to the jagged cave mouth. Though the staff was now lit, it barely pierced the dark entrance of the cave—hopefully it would be more effective as we moved in closer.

The platform was still scarred by our brief battle with the blackguard, and we carefully moved past the missing section of railing that we’d smashed through on the way down, as our present group moved into the cave. It caught Dinky’s eye, however, and as soon as we were a comfortable distance from the edge, in the twilight between the dark of the cave and the light of the world outside, she looked at me. “H-Holly? I n-never thanked you, d-did I? F-for protecting me. That f-fall killed you, but y-you took the b-blackguard with you.”

Maybe I had; maybe I hadn’t. At that moment, I’d been terrified for her, and I wanted to keep her safe, but now that I was thinking about it…it seemed as though the blackguard had only cared about me. It had been watching me, and it had advanced on me, sparing only hateful glares at either Dinky or Gilda. Maybe if it had killed me, it would have left them alone…but maybe not.

Dinky smiled at me, and whether I’d made the right call at that moment or not, I was glad she was still here to smile at me. I nodded at her, and that seemed to satisfy the filly, who glanced at Red. “Are y-you two ready? W-we can rest here for a little w-while.”

Red shook his head, and when he held up his hoof a pyromancy flame sprang to life above it. “Nah. Let’s get movin’.”

He tossed a mote of flame into the shadows of the cave, and it flared to life as it bounced across the rough stone. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for us to peer inside as our eyes adjusted. Thankfully, there was no blackguard lurking at the back of the cave this time, and we started to walk forward, as the blinding light of the sun quickly grew dark against our backs. I kept my own miniature sun burning by my side, and it bathed us in a pool of protective light as we moved forward.

Red and Dinky traded off summoning sources of light ahead of us; Red with his pyromancy flares, which illuminated the cave in flickering, dancing red light and sharp shadows, and Dinky with her magical glowing blue orbs, which weren’t as bright but seemed much more stable. Together, the way before us extended inwards, and it allowed me the freedom to let my mind wander as I examined the walls of the cave itself.

Whatever had sundered the mountain must have done so a very long time ago; these shallow tunnels had already mostly been mined out. The walls were mostly bare stone, but as we pushed the dark away, I saw the occasional glint of a crystal fragment sticking out of a wall. Either they had been too small to be worth mining out, or they had simply been overlooked. As we moved deeper, those glints of light became more frequent, and I found myself looking for them as we advanced, since they seemed to be a good indicator of the tunnel ahead, like stars in the darkness of night.

Dinky seemed confused, as she looked around. “I…wait…this b-bend, it went the other w-way, before. Did we g-get turned around?”

“Nope.” Red shook his head, but his eyes never left the darkness before us. “The Dark does that. Time, space, it all turns weird. Sometimes you’re seein’ a place as it was a hundred years ago; sometimes a hundred years in the future. Sometimes y’ cross a mile in a step; sometimes y’ can’t move an inch for hours.”

That only seemed to unsettle Dinky, and she shuddered. “You s-sound experienced. You’ve f-fought it before, b-but I’ve never heard of this until n-now.”

“Good.” Red didn’t say anything else; he just let the word fill the room, all by itself.

After a long few moments of silence, Dinky spoke again. “Y-you said you saw the f-future? What did it look like?”

Red shrugged. “Mebbe the future. Mebbe a nightmare. But Twilight seemed pretty sure.” After a moment, he added, “Everything’s ruined, or broken, or underwater, or burned. Or jes’ all dark. It’s never good. It’s always empty—y’ never see anything livin.’ After a while, y’ stop lookin’.”

Dinky swallowed nervously, and her eyes turned forward once more.

We started seeing the statues not long after. Most of them seemed to be pegasi, but there were a few unicorns and earth ponies mixed throughout, wearing armor or rags, and all in various states of hollowing. I also spotted a few diamond dogs, a minotaur, and what seemed to be a pony whose body became that of a snake below their barrel. A gryphon gave me a momentary spot of hope that we’d found Gilda, but a glance at his face quickly proved otherwise.

And yet, there was something unsettling about all of them. It wasn’t that most were either frozen in combat stances, or as though they had been turned to stone while trying to flee. It was that for most of them, it seemed as though they were being eroded, like any other stone. Fine details of their fur and armor were smoothing out and becoming lost, and almost all of their faces had started to become blank, as though their sculptor had given up before finishing their carving. But these were living creatures, or at least they had been once. Red seemed fine; what had happened to them?

Dinky paused, next to another pegasus guard, with her wings splayed out to look more intimidating. “Sh-should we try r-reviving them?”

Red stopped to peer at the blank face of a unicorn; two thin strands of stone curled away from the tip of his horn, connecting a pair of stone pistols held in front of him, pointed towards an unseen enemy. “Worth a shot. Pick one of the faceless ones.”

I swallowed. That sounded like an awful idea, but Red had already drawn his axe, and he seemed ready to handle whatever came of it. I chose one nearly at random, so faded that I couldn’t even tell what type of pony they had been before—I could barely guess that they used to be a stallion, judging by size alone. I turned the glowing end of the staff to face them, and focused my fire once more. As our protective pool of light dimmed, just on the edge of my hearing, I thought I heard the whispers of the Dark again.

This time, it was faster. I still felt separated from my body, but only for a moment. I saw the statue, and for a split second, the stone peeled away to reveal…nothing. Suddenly, I felt as though I had been harshly forced back into my own body. The statue before me simply crumbled to dust, and I staggered backwards, coughing as my mouth filled with…I didn’t want to think about it anymore.

Dinky let out a horrified gasp at the sight, but Red merely grunted as he covered his mouth. “Alright. Again, but less faded.”

I turned to glare at him, and Dinky joined me a moment later, but Red met our eyes without giving an inch. “It’s bad. I know. But gotta know for sure.”

He was right; what if it was just him? What about Gilda?

Dinky shuddered, and moved a few paces away. “I d-don’t…I’ll watch the t-tunnel.”

This time, I picked the faceless minotaur. I didn’t have much experience or memory regarding the hulking bipeds, aside from them being a race elsewhere in the world, but he seemed as good a choice as any. I had to crane my neck upwards to look at his lack of a face, and when I focused my fire through the staff…this time, something seemed wrong.

I peeled back the stone, in that state of being that seemed outside my body, and I could feel there was something there, deep within, but it was only strands and fragments of being. I’d once heard that fossils weren’t the bones of creatures, but mud that had solidified in the space left by the bones when they decayed, and that’s what it felt like when I peeled back the stone. There was barely anything left but an animated fossil of a creature, with a faint flickering ember still trapped within. But I peeled the stone back as best I could, and then withdrew.

I fell back with a gasp, and watched the stone minotaur shudder. The hands twitched, and the chest shuddered, as it seemed to come unbound from its pose. But then it seemed confused, as if it didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, the hands slammed into the stone head, scraping and clawing at its lack of face, and Red glanced at me. “Holly! Did y’ finish—”

As soon as he spoke, the stone minotaur’s head snapped to face him, and it began to stagger in his direction. One hand continued to scrape at its throat, as the other reached for Red, who stepped backwards, gripping his axe once more. “Did y’ finish whatever it is y’ do with that?”

I slapped my side and extended the spear once more, as I responded. “I d-don’t know! There w-was nothing in there!”

Stone hands clawed at a stone face, and gravel scattered across the floor. If it could have, I think the minotaur would have been screaming. But all it could do was stagger towards us, on two unsteady cloven hooves made of crumbling stone.

Red didn’t let it take another step. He ducked under the grasping hand, and swung his axe into the minotaur’s side. It twisted, off-balance, and fell away from us onto its front—but when the full weight of the animated statue slammed into the cave floor, it shattered like the brittle stone that it was. The fragments bounced past our hooves, and between all the other statues, and the sound of the statue shattering slowly echoed down the cave. Both Red and I glanced around all the bits and pieces of stone, to make sure none of them were moving, but any life they might have had seemed to be gone now.

“No more!” squeaked Dinky, from behind us, and we turned to see her lighting up the cave with her horn burning bright with magic. “No more of that! Let them rest! We’re just k-killing them!”

Red nodded. “Fine. No more, ‘til we find Gilda.”

Dinky blinked at that, and her horn’s light dimmed. Behind her, the darkness of the cave flooded in to fill the void left by the light’s wake. “F-fine. And if she’s…f-faded, like that…then w-we leave her b-be.”

“Prob’ly for the best,” Red agreed, as he took one look around the room. “Keep ready. We’re bein’ noisy.”

Dinky jerked back to attention, and turned her horn back down the tunnel, as if expecting to see something hiding in the dark only a few body-lengths away. Nothing was there, but she didn’t relax either. “Right. R-right. Shouldn’t be f-far now, I hope.”

I swallowed, but it tasted like chalk. It was all I could taste in here. I forced more fire into the miniature sun by my side to push back the whispers, and we began to advance further into the cave, past the statues.
> 50 - Cockatrices
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I saw the eyes, before anything else.

I thought they were more crystals, deep within the dark, but they were the wrong color. Red, instead of purple. Eerie. Baleful. Piercing.

And then they blinked.

“Wha—” The startled noise was all I had time for, before a cloud of…something…rolled over us. In an instant, the light from Dinky’s horn was quenched, and Red’s pyromancy withered to an ember. Were it not for the staff burning bright at my side, we would have been plunged into darkness in an instant.

“Pull back!” Red barked, whipping his axe over his back and into a hoof in an instant. Dinky yelped and scrambled backwards, deep into the pool of illumination, and the three of us scanned the darkness around our little puddle of safety. Already, Red had started to stomp his off-hoof as though he were shaking off mud, and his pyromancy flame sputtered back to life, notably weaker than before.

“I s-saw eyes in the d-dark. J-just for a m-moment.” Whether our own lights had blinded us to the shadows of the tunnel, or the darkness had grown deeper and obscured the tunnels around us more thoroughly in some way, I couldn’t tell. But I now realized that I couldn’t even see the walls of the tunnel any more, nor any glints of crystalline refraction around us. The stone under our hooves was the only proof that we weren’t floating in a bottomless abyss.

Dinky swallowed as she lit her horn again, and four more bolts of magic were readied overhead, waiting for a target. “We w-weren’t this deep in w-when we got attacked. D-did we miss G-Gilda on the w-way in?”

That seemed very unlikely; we’d definitely only seen the one gryphon. I had already opened my mouth to say as such to Dinky, when Red let out a warning nicker, and we all stiffened.

Those long few moments, in the endless dark, waiting for something to emerge and attack us—those were the longest moments of my undead life thus far. It hurt to wait for so long, even though it was seconds at most, because it was impossible to be proactive when so thoroughly blinded. At best, we would be striking at nothing, and at worst, it would be a fatal mistake quickly capitalized on by the creatures around us.

The silence was broken by a spitting sound, from the dark, and something liquid spattered against my side, missing the glowing head of the staff by a hair. I yelped and spun to face the attacker, but all I managed to do was smack Dinky in the rump with the butt of the staff. Then I yelped again—the liquid that hit me was cold, impossibly cold, and it felt gritty somehow.

“Clean that off!” Red barked as he reared back and tossed a fireball over my head, into the dark. There was a brief flash of light, and the dark was repelled for only a split second before it rushed back in to fill the void left by the light, but it was enough that I saw something, faintly. It wasn’t a creature exactly, but more akin to the shadow of a creature, like a living afterimage. I could see through it, but I saw bright red eyes in the head of the silhouette, as well as ghostly wings and the trailing tail of a snake.

That was enough. I poured my fire into the staff, and the light around us shrank, save for where I pointed the glowing end. Dinky and Red pulled close as I focused the light into a beam, and pierced the darkness where I’d seen the creature.

The cold spread across my side. Dinky shouted something about it, but I was too focused on the light to catch her words. The cave wall emerged from the dark as though it were rushing towards us, and across it whorled trailing wisps of smoke—it had just barely escaped the beam, but I could adjust. I swung the light to follow the trails, and swept it across the tunnel. As I swung the light over the darkened crystals of the tunnel, they brightened only for a moment, before disappearing, and I spotted a shadow against the cave wall.

As iI brought the light to bear, there was a muffled screech, and the shadow gained definition. There was still no physical body, but being in the light of the sun weakened it—burned it—and it couldn’t escape while I held the light steady. “There!”

Red was already moving, as the cold sensation crawled across my body and down my legs. He was on the creature in an instant, and brought his axe down onto what should have been the shadow’s throat. It was hacked in half in a brutal instant—one shadow split into two, and then the creature dissolved into nothingness.

“We g—” Something was wrong; the words froze in my throat, and I couldn’t move my jaw. I couldn’t move my head. DInky screamed one last time, and I turned my embered eye to look at her as Red turned towards us, then leapt for the small pool of light that surrounded us. His Pyromancy flame flared to life as the light of my little personal sun died, and then my vision all went dark.

There was an odd sensation of…un-being. It wasn’t like death; it wasn’t even akin to unconsciousness. It was just this momentary feeling of not feeling anything at all, only for a moment.

Then there was a flash, and I gasped, as flakes of stone crumbled away from my body. Red was holding the staff with his teeth now, and swept the beam of light through the darkness around us. Dinky was ready to catch me if I collapsed, but I caught myself, and managed to only drop to my knees. The darkness around us was receding, slowly, and I started to see the twinkling of the crystals around us once more.

Dinky suddenly wrapped me in a tight, warm hug, and pressed my head to her breast. “Holly! It hit y-you with some s-sort of goop, and you st-started to turn to stone, j-just like Gilda…”

I’d been petrified, then. So that was what that felt like. It was better than death in some ways, but…I could see just from a glance that I’d missed a few moments of time. Red didn’t have any training to use the staff; he must have taken it from me, fumbled with it for a few moments at least, and then managed to work out how to use it to unpetrify me in turn. But I’d only been gone for a single moment, alone and unliving, or so it felt.

I looked up at him, and smiled. “Th-thank you.”

Red tried to say something, but with the staff clenched in his teeth, it came out as a grunt. He jerked his head at me then, an indication to take the staff, and I stood to do so. I reached out for it with my fire first, to keep the light burning brightly, and it was only when Red stopped powering the miracle himself that he released it to my grasp.

Now that he could talk, he did so, while I started to fit the staff back into the straps at my side. “We’re both idiots. New marching order, we need to protect Holly. We got lucky this time; might not happen again.”

Dinky nodded, and she lit her horn once again to start weaving a spell. After a moment, a glowing magic buckler flickered into existence beside me, then another on the opposite side of my barrel. They began to slowly orbit my body at withers-height, as if waiting for an attack to come so that they could block it, and Dinky let out a breath. “Th-that should help. I th-think I can do a third, m-maybe…”

Red shook his head. “That should do. Just keep ‘em floatin,’ and be ready to defend her.” He started moving down the tunnel again, and we fell into step behind him. I kept scanning the darkness again, and the twinkling crystals within.

“O-okay,” After a moment, Dinky’s eyes brightened again. “Hey, we g-got it though, right?”

Red shrugged. “Prob’ly more. Don’t know much about cockatrices, jes’ what Fluttershy told me a while back.”

“O-oh.” Suddenly our brief victory didn’t seem as important. We’d probably have to repeat that trick a few more times before we escaped these tunnels.


*	*	*


Bizarrely, when we found GIlda, she wasn’t more than twenty paces from where the mine had crudely intersected with Canterlot’s sewers. And she was facing towards us, not towards Canterlot.

Dinky in particular seemed baffled by this; she kept glancing around the tunnel, as if concerned that the layout might shift suddenly. Which was maybe a valid concern, when it came to the Dark. Red’s attention was on the rough tunnels behind us, in case we were attacked from behind. I busied myself with focusing the staff—my staff, I supposed, though I didn’t feel right referring to it as such—onto Gilda.

It was a relief to see that her time as a statue within the dark didn’t seem to have weathered her features very much. There was some subtle damage, a few sharp edges that had been worn down, and her feathers seemed a little too smooth, but she was still recognizable. When I used the staff on her, when I entered that strange magical state where I felt more like a living avatar of miraculous magic, Gilda’s form looked unchanged.

Within that altered state, that magical dream, her eyes snapped open, and I was yanked back to my own body as surely as she was to her own. The stone that encased her crumbled into dust, and Gilda let out a battle screech that startled us all—before she dropped into a combat stance, flicked her head around as though searching for prey, and then raised an eyebrow at the three of us. “Where’d you two come from?”

Before any of us could respond, Gilda focused on me, her eyes lighting up with recognition, surprise, and something that I believed was relief. “Holly? You’re looking better. Finally caught up to us?”

Dinky swallowed nervously. “Y-you’ve been petrified, G-Gilda. There’s cockatrices in these t-tunnels, and they attacked us. Y-you’ve been here for a w-while, and I went back d-down to look for Holly again.”

Gilda relaxed, only slightly, but now her focus was on the dark tunnels and the bricks of the sewer tunnel a dozen paces away. She took notice of our lights, especially the staff at my side, and Red’s flickering pyromancy flame. “Huh. Alright. Cockatrices.” Then she flicked her gaze toward Red, suspicious. “And who’s he?”

Red snuffed his flame, so that he could hold out a hoof in greeting. “Call me Red. Friend a’ Holly, and headin’ to Canterlot too.”

“Red. Right. Pony names, I swear to Grover…” Gilda grumbled, but she balled her claw into a fist to bump Red’s hoof. “Well, thanks for unpetrifying me. Would’ve been a dumb way for my little adventure to end, before I even got there. What kind of predator doesn’t even kill their prey properly?”

Dinky explained, “C-cockatrices normally do, b-but these ones are…weird. They’ve b-been in the Dark.”

Gilda clicked her beak. “The Dark. Like that knife you found, Holly?”

I nodded, and tapped the glowing staff I had strapped to my side.

Gilda understood after a moment, and stepped closer to the light that I was projecting. This whole dark versus light thing might have been a new concept for her, but she adapted to it quickly. “Alright. Let’s get out of these tunnels then, now that we’re all caught up.”


*	*	*


“Ugh. I already wish I’d just flown there. These tunnels stink.”

I winced, but Gilda didn’t notice. Sure, we were walking uphill through fetlock-deep murk, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Gilda was smelling me and the toxic muck that had soaked into my armor. She’d missed my whole dip in the lake, after all.

“We’ll be out of here soon ‘nuff. Wish we had a map of these—” Red froze mid-sentence as we approached an intersection in the sewer tunnel, and one of his ears flicked towards the dark.

I jerked the staff down the tunnel, focusing the light into a burning beam of sunlight, but all I saw was a glimpse of a shadow darting around a corner. Too slow, and it was too far away for the beam to have any real effect.

After a moment, Red indicated we should keep moving. “Least the cave tunnels didn’t branch.”

Dinky paused just after the intersection, to draw a magical slash on the wall; she’d explained it earlier, and the theory mostly went over my head, but apparently drawing slashes and then crossing them was a way to navigate mazes. “I’ve been k-keeping a mental map as we ex-explore. As long as we don’t f-fall through into a lower level, we sh-should find—”

We all heard the splashing from the intersection behind us, and turned to face that direction. Dinky still had her four magical bolts hovering overhead, and they were just waiting for a target, but that target never came. The splashing stopped, close enough to the actual intersection to send ripples across the murky water, but no further.

Gilda clacked her beak in annoyance. “It’s baiting us. Taunting us with how close it is, so we chase after it. It’s an old trick.” She glanced at Red, but never looked away fully from the intersection. “How smart did you say these things were?”

“Should be wild animals. But for anythin’ the Dark touches, the rules change.”

Suddenly, Dinky’s bolts of magic twitched, and launched themselves—in the wrong direction. They turned to target something, but too widely, and they shattered with a sound like glass as they struck the brick walls on either side of us.

I spun around to see what they had been targeting, and that instinct was all that kept me safe, as a wet glob whipped past my face. Just behind it, a fresh cloud of gas rolled through the tunnel, past an already-petrified Dinky, and it snuffed out Red’s pyromancy flame once again. I could see eyes—assuming they didn’t have any extras, there were three cockatrice shadows slithering across the brick ceiling like snakes.

My staff turned with me, and I forced my flame through it, to flare as brightly as I could for only a moment. “Back!” I shrieked through my ragged throat, and I could hear both Red and Gilda as they swore behind me.

The cockatrices didn’t turn back, but the light filled the tunnel enough to make them halt in their tracks. They became more real, somehow, as the light enveloped them, and they fell from the ceiling with a chorus of three twisted squawks. Two landed in the fetlock-deep water and disappeared from sight; the last landed on the narrow brick walkway on either side of the sewer channel, and barely had time to right itself before one of Gilda’s bone-tipped arrows speared through it. It fell backwards and exploded into wisps of smoke, as the arrow bounced and rattled down the tunnel, as though there had never been anything there at all to strike.

Meanwhile, Red had chosen to focus on the one that had been playing bait. I could feel the heat of his own fire as it flared, and he summoned a fireball powered by anger, and just a little fear. Then it was flying towards the intersection, and there was an echoing thump as it exploded, super-heating the murky water into steam in an instant. The heat turned the brickwork under the surface red-hot, until the water flooded back in to replace the liquid that had been flash-boiled away. I had no idea if he hit his target, or if he was even aiming for anything specific in the first place.

A moment later, the water between my hooves erupted, and I felt a stabbing pain in my left hind as one of the cockatrices dug into it with its claws. I let out a yelp, and kicked backwards on instinct, but all I managed to do was buck Gilda in the side. Her bow went flying as she swore at me, but her focus was stolen by a second eruption of water as the second cockatrice leapt out towards her face.

It never reached her; Gilda had already drawn her hunting knife from its sheath, and she caught the shadowy creature with a wicked slash in mid-leap. It exploded into wisps of shadow, and Gilda was back on her paws and claws in a moment.

That still left me with a cockatrice clawing apart my hindleg, exactly where I couldn’t reach. I was panicking as I tried to kick it away, with no other defensive option.

“Damn it, Holly!” Red shouted, as he tackled me, and we tumbled together into the water. There was one last stabbing pain, and then the pressure around my hind released as Gilda leapt into the tussle with her knife drawn, then retreated.

I kept kicking for a moment out of panic, but Red tightened his grip, and I was forced to relax as he and Gilda scanned the tunnel for more cockatrices. After a long few moments, where I mostly focused on the dark blood seeping out of my wound and into the sewer water, they seemed satisfied that the fight was finished. Red rolled off of me, and held out a hoof to help me up.

“S-sorry,” I murmured.

Red sighed. “Happens. Start workin’ on Dinky, then patch y’self up.”

As I started to work on her, Gilda checked her bow, then glanced back at us. “A baited ambush. That’s not animal intelligence.”

“Nope,” Red agreed, glumly.

“And they’re avoiding you.” She pointed at the stallion. “They were on the ceiling—you can’t fireball them there.”

Red grunted in annoyance. “Like ah said. The rules change.”

Stone gave way to flesh once more, and Dinky gasped in alarm, even as she realized she’d missed the fight. “There’s—! Oh.” Her horn lit with magic once more while she looked around, and then she focused on my ragged hindleg with another gasp. “Holly! C-come here, you should keep that wound out of the w-water…”

Gilda chuckled. “I think we’re a little beyond rot and infections these days, sister.”


*	*	*


We continued forward, stumbling through the dark tunnels of the sewers, and climbing upwards wherever we could find stairs or ladders. These tunnels had been designed for maintenance ponies and construction workers at best—the sort of civic worker that would have brought a map and a headlamp into the tunnels with them. We could barely make do with Dinky’s system of glowing marks and slashes, but I would’ve given a foreleg for a proper map.

We emerged into what seemed to be an artificial waterfall. The room was wide, and the hoofpaths converged into a bridge that passed over a great concrete crevasse. On our left, a torrent of raging water rushed down a nearly-vertical channel cut into the wall, which ran far below the bridge. On the right, the water continued pouring down into the dark, far further than any of us could see, even with the assistance of a faint coating of crystals that had grown up the wall like faintly-glowing lichen from far below.

I was half-heartedly considering whether I should shout to ask Red to toss a glowing flare of pyromancy down the waterfall to see how deep it went, but our attention was seized by another cockatrice first. It had been nesting on the other end of the bridge, and as soon as we emerged into the dim light of the room, it let out a squawk that was drowned out by the sound of the rushing water, then darted into the doorway beyond.

We exchanged glances—we couldn’t do much else with all that noise, and then slowly began to follow after the half-shadow creature. Perhaps it was a trap, but Dinky probed the bridge with her magic and said that it was still sturdy, so a trap seemed less and less likely. Still, we pushed forward, since our only other option was to double back, and we might as well follow this path to its conclusion first.

Through the door, the tunnel continued, taking a sharp left before it became a steady incline. Once we reached the top, it leveled out once more and curved a bit left—surely we had to be getting closer to the surface, at the very least.

Then the floor suddenly crumbled under Red’s hooves, and none of us had the time to even yell before the rest of the floor fell out from under us. We tumbled, lost amongst an avalanche of stones and rotten timbers, and it all fell with a series of splashes into a pool of water. That water only barely broke our fall, especially with the rubble underneath us, and we all scrambled to our hooves—or paws, in Gilda’s case—as we looked around the room, still standing in the knee-high pool.

This must have been atop the waterfall we’d seen before; the far end of the room was cloaked in water vapor, and the flowing water ran between our legs, towards that edge, accompanied by a distant roaring. More water fed the pool from the sides, at a more leisurely pace through pipes and small channels. I was worried that one of us had been killed in the fall, but we’d only been dropped a dozen or so body-lengths, and we all seemed relatively uninjured. However, that pile of rubble had blocked off what seemed to be the only exit: a steel gate set into the wall.

“Movement!” Gilda barked, as she brought her bow to bear. “Near the edge!”

I twisted back to face that direction, and watched to see just what was emerging from the pool to greet us. At first, I thought it was something made entirely out of sludge, or mud; then shiny scales emerged, tarnished from lying under the muck’s surface for so long, and I wondered if perhaps it was a small dragon of some sort. It certainly moved like one; it held its head high and proud, and let out an alarmed squawk as I finally realized what it was.

The other cockatrices we’d seen must have been juveniles—or this one was some kind of mutant. It was nearly the size and mass of Red, and as the water drained away, the feathers around its head began to smolder, then ignited, becoming a burning corona that illuminated the room in dim, flickering light that danced across the surface of the water—water which suddenly took on a strange, oily quality, recoiling from the light in tremors and waves. It had huge scaly wings, akin to those of a wyvern, which it used like claws to drag itself forwards us, through the water. As it sloshed forward, crowing angrily, the water erupted as a half-dozen more normal-sized cockatrices made of shadow leapt out, and began to glide towards us.

“Tartarus.” Gilda snarled, clacking her own beak. “That’s one big mother.”

“Split up! Target the little ones first!” Red barked, as he leapt forward into the fight, axe in hoof.

Gilda took to the air on shaky wings, and started to fire her arrows, which flew through two of the cockatrices, to no effect. They all dove back into the water, and Red was left swinging at nothing—which left him free to dodge a vicious peck from the mother cockatrice. Dinky had resummoned her floating bolts to hover around her head, and the two bucklers that orbited my own body shifted into defensive positions in case one of the cockatrices spat in my direction.

But I noticed something on the roof, in the glimmering light of the fight. More crystals, growing in uneven patterns, fed by the moisture of the large room, and glowing faintly. I pointed the staff of miracles upwards, at the largest crystal I could see.

Around me, the battle took a nasty turn. One of my floating bucklers caught a glob of poison, and deflected the impact, but shattered from the force into whispers of magic. Red had to dodge again as another glob whipped past his side, which left him exposed to a slash from the mother cockatrice that spattered blood across the surface of the water. GIlda swore as her wingtip was struck and began to calcify, but her knife was back out in a flash, and she sliced off the cursed feathers before it could spread to the rest of her body. Still, the disruption to her flight feathers grounded her, and she landed with an awkward splash back in the water, knife bared for the first cockatrice that approached. Only Dinky seemed to have avoided becoming a target, but that may only have been because she was retreating back up the pile of rubble, while the water around us writhed with movement that she couldn’t seem to target.

I focused on that crystal in the roof, and I thought of the few happy memories I had. Dinky leapt to mind first; I remembered her teaching me how to breathe in Baton Verte, and meeting her back in the jail, when Celestia freed her, and most recently when she pulled me out of the lake and bore me back to shore. Red, I remembered first meeting Red, and that cozy moment in the abandoned store, then waiting with him out on the balcony. Gilda had been supportive throughout, and though I didn’t have many happy moments, I treasured that support, and kept it in mind. I’d even had a scant few moments of enjoyment adventuring with Trixie; it hadn’t been all bad.

I heard my second buckler shatter as it deflected another glob of spit, but I was too focused on the fire in my hooves, and the fire in my soul, to stop now. I pushed that fire out through the staff, and I could feel it boiling the water around me as it became a glowing beam of sunlight that hurt to look upon directly. I pointed the beam upwards, towards the largest crystal above us, in a field of glittering crystals that were already reflecting the flickering fire of the cockatrice only a few body-lengths away, above a pool of water that was just as reflective.

The room filled with sunlight, warm and loving and unyielding, and I heard the beasts howl as they were blinded and burned all around us. Even my friends yelped in surprise as they too were blinded, but they recovered faster—the cockatrices were nearly consumed by the dark, and this burning sunlight killed them, in a way that mere magical light, or blade, or shot, could not match. They exploded into ethereal wisps of darkness, which dissipated like smoke, leaving only ourselves—and the mother cockatrice, which screeched in pain, and no doubt anger, given that we had slain her children.

As the sunlight faded, I suddenly felt all my aches and pains return in a rushing wave. I felt every crack in my bones, where they had broken and healed, or hadn’t healed at all. I was acutely aware of every bruise and blow I’d sustained throughout my journey, and I felt like a battered practice dummy made of rotten flesh. I collapsed into the water, and I would have gone under, if Dinky hadn’t dragged me back to the pile of rubble under her hooves. From there, I watched the rest of the battle, which seemed to be no less intense for my lack of direct involvement.

The mother cockatrice and Red were locked in a deadly dance amidst the knee-high water, but she had recovered quickly from her sudden blindness, which meant the battle continued. Dinky and GIlda fired magic and arrows into the melee whenever Red didn’t block their aim, and this seemed to exhaust the creature—right up until Red swung his axe directly into the joint where one of its wings connected to its body, and it reared back, hissing, which yanked the axe out of his hooves.

We hadn’t seen the underside of the creature before now; it had kept its belly underwater as it dragged itself forward to attack us. But we hadn’t considered why that might be, until we saw the state of its body, which was uniquely disgusting in our journeys so far. Below the throat, the beast had been split open, as if it had been disemboweled without dying. Black ichorous blood gushed out from between exposed ribs and decrepit organs, and even the creature’s pelvic bone seemed to have been shattered, which left its legs dangling, useless and withered. It had been able to move using only its wyvern-like wings, because if it didn’t have those, then it likely would not have been able to move at all.

And yet, it seemed to have adapted to this horrific state of half-evisceration. It flexed muscles that shouldn’t have been able to flex, and let out a hiss as two sets of broken ribs were snapped shut on Red’s torso like a pair of jaws. Then it fell atop him, pulling him deep inside its innards as it dropped back into the water, and tried to crawl away with one wing half-broken.

“Dinky! Grab it, before it gets away!” Gilda shouted, as she swooped in front of the creature’s beak to try and distract it. I started to shift, to try and get up and help. If the cockatrice leapt down the waterfall, with Red still captured within, would we see either of them ever again?

Dinky was already working before I found my balance, and I felt her horn flaring brightly—maybe too brightly. I could feel the heat emanating from her corona of magic, even from where I lay. She seized the whole creature in a field of levitation, and began to drag it back towards us, away from the waterfall. It writhed in her fading grasp, but it was enough to slow it down. Gilda used the opportunity to fire an arrow tipped with metal right into one of its eyes, and it cawed in pain, then began pecking wildly in her direction.

Suddenly it let out a sucking gasp, and a cloud of smoke, as the creature's whole body flexed involuntarily. After a moment, it rolled over in the water, onto its back, and seemed to disgorge Red from within its guts. He was spat out into the water a few body-lengths away, his whole body seared and smoking, and the room quickly filled with the scent of boiling flesh. Red must have started casting pyromancies while still trapped within the cockatrice’s chest cavity; the tight spaces meant the fire burned them both, but the beast had borne the worst of it. Even then, it wasn’t enough to kill it; after Red had been ejected, it rolled over again, and started trying to drag itself towards me and Dinky.

I groaned with pain, and forced myself to stand one more time, atop the loose rubble. The staff was still strapped to my side, and I began to channel through it once more, but something was wrong. The tip began to smoke, and the magic it produced was sluggish. I managed a beam, but I couldn’t get it to stay as bright as I needed, and the light flickered erratically as my muscles screamed at me to stop fighting. But if I did, then the cockatrice would kill Dinky, or me.

“B-back off…” I rasped, as the beam danced across the creature’s eyes. I forced it to squint in the bright light, but it didn’t even slow down. Even without being able to see, it kept crawling forward, towards us. I pushed the staff harder, just to get a flash, a ray of light to force the beast back, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. And the harder I tried, the more the tip of the staff smoked, and it started to vibrate against my side…

Dinky let out a grunt behind me as her horn burned with magic. I saw blue light dance around the room, and she swept her head upwards as magic crawled over the rubble, under the water, causing it to glow brightly. Then there was a sound like the blades of a dozen swords being dragged across stone, and glowing spears erupted from the water under our foe. They didn’t stop when they struck the split underbelly of the monster; they just continued up—and through.

The cockatrice was impaled by a dozen magical spears in an instant, and it made a final gagging noise as it was pinned in place, unable to move. But it lived yet; it squirmed on the spears, as though trying to escape, but with only one barely-working wing remaining, it just couldn’t manage the effort. The beast’s struggles slowed as the water turned dark with demon blood, and I knew it was finished.

I relaxed the beam of light, and the staff completely stopped vibrating, though I could see trails of smoke still winding off the metal of Celestia’s mark at the tip. Dinky grunted and strained behind me, and I turned back to look at her.

She had clenched her teeth, and she stood still as a statue as her horn burned with magic. I saw her corona doubling in on itself, writhing against her head like a storm around a volcano. She had been casting almost non-stop since we had entered these tunnels, I suddenly realized. And Dinky was strong, but everypony had their limits—this fight must have reached hers.

“D-Dinky…?”

“M-make sure it’s d-dead!” She grunted, through her clenched teeth. She didn’t want to release it until she was sure the fight was over, no matter how much it hurt her. How much longer could she keep that up? I’d heard unicorns could burn out their magic by overtaxing it, but I didn’t know what that looked like—Dinky’s horn looked like it was going to explode, and take her whole head with it.

Thankfully, Dinky didn’t have to hold it for much longer. Gilda sloshed forward through the water towards the cockatrice’s head, with her knife at the ready. Without even a moment of hesitation, she jammed it into the beat’s sole remaining eye, fully blinding it and piercing through into the creature’s skull. Her other claw, she slashed across the beast’s throat, to make sure it was dead.

Dinky gasped, and her magic winked out in an instant. She and the dead beast fell as one, now that her magic was no longer propping them both up. I stumbled up the rubble to check on her, and found she was still breathing, even if I could see waves of heat rolling off her horn. However, she seemed to have fallen unconscious, and I couldn’t really blame her. I tried my best to ignore the uncomfortable warmth, and flopped onto my side next to her, so that we could both catch our breath.


*	*	*


We’d all needed a break, after that fight. Dinky was completely out from overstraining her magic, and I was exhausted from…what I guessed to be something similar, even if I didn’t understand how it worked. Red had been protected from the worst inside the cockatrice’s guts by his hide armor, but he’d burned his fur and face badly by casting a fireball at point-blank range. Gilda had gotten off the easiest, it seemed, though she’d definitely damaged her flying abilities for the moment by slicing off that wingtip.

Needless to say, I was generous with my little flask of sunlight, and passed it around to the other two. It didn’t do much to help me, since my exhaustion seemed to be more spiritual in nature, but for Red and Gilda, it clearly helped a lot. Hopefully it would get Dinky on her hooves too, when she came around, but I was content to wait until then. In the meantime, I kept it clutched against my breast to feel the warmth within, and I watched as Red and Gilda began the long process of digging out the rubble that blocked the gate. Once that was out of the way, we could continue onward through the sewers, and hopefully upwards to Canterlot.

Once again, I was reminded about where that flask of sunlight had come from, originally. And it still disgusted me, but…it was just too useful for me to want to get rid of the thing. I tried my best to stop thinking about it, to stop agonizing over it, since it was far, far too late to do anything for Snips, but in moments like these where I had nothing else to do but wait…the thought crept back and reminded me, and I wished that it wouldn’t.

What must have been a few hours passed in relative silence, with little conversation, and the sounds of splashes as bricks were picked up and tossed aside, or timbers were dragged out of the pile. We briefly entertained the idea of climbing back up to the corridor that had fallen out from under us, but we decided that we didn’t know if it would just keep collapsing like that, and there wasn’t much point in making more work for ourselves unless we had to do so. We would investigate this gate first, at the very least.

We delayed a little bit longer, after Red and Gilda had cleared the gate enough to open it, just so they could move a little more rubble and open the door comfortably, just in case we ever needed to come back this way. We were also hoping that Dinky would rouse herself while we waited, but eventually it seemed that wasn’t the case, and so we picked her up and placed her on Red’s back, so that he could carry her forwards. Hopefully, somepony in Canterlot would be able to wake her.

Soon, we were back to exploring the sewer tunnels, though they seemed much more peaceful now. Perhaps we had slain all the cockatrices, or perhaps they were afraid of us, now that we had killed their broodmother. The reason why didn’t matter to us as much as the peace, for which we were thankful.


*	*	*


We had reached a corridor that was so close to the street that we could see sunlight, and hear the murmurs of a city, through a set of bars high above. Too far to reach, but it gave us hope, and assured us that we were headed in the right direction. And in that sunlight, we saw something metal and broken, glittering in the darkness.

“What’s that?” Gilda asked, and I moved forwards to pick it up, so we could all look at it clearly. 

What I found was strange; a birdcage made of brass. As I picked it up, a dusty layer of down fluttered out of the bottom lining. I shook it a bit to see if there was anything more substantial inside, but that seemed to be all that was inside the cage.

I held it up so Gilda could look at it, and she tapped the bars with a talon. “These bars have been forced open, but they’re bent wrong…it’s like they were pulled apart from the inside. Something was trying to get out, not get in.” She glanced around at the down, then back down the tunnel, from where we’d emerged. “You don’t think…?”

“M-maybe,” I mumbled. “If…if it was p-pregnant when it was caged…”

“Somepony tryin’ to smuggle a demon into Canterlot, maybe?” Red asked, looking up at the bars. “An’ they had to get rid of it, real sudden-like.”

“All this trouble, over an escaped pest,” Gilda groaned.

I nodded, then set the cage down again. “At…at l-least it’s dead now. These t-tunnels still aren’t s-safe, but…”

Red nodded. “Safer than when we entered. Let’s keep moving; can’t be far from the streets o’ Canterlot now.”
> 51 - Canterlot, City of the Sun
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We turned a corner, and for a moment, we were blinded by the light of the sun.

We had been in the dark for a long time, with only the flickering light of Red’s pyromancy—and the bright sunlight shining down from distant grates high above—for us to see by. But those had been small embers and pinpricks of light, and they were nothing in comparison to the glowing doorway at the end of the tunnel.

We reached it in moments, eager to leave these tunnels—and found a gate that barred our path. GIlda jiggled the handle, and found it had been locked securely, with a chain and padlock.

“You’re dickin’ me.” She said, with a tired sigh.

I peered out through the gate into the city beyond as much as I could. It wasn’t much; I was still blinded by the light, and as my magical eyes adjusted to the difference, I could only make out a backstreet, paved with smooth cobblestones, and pale-painted walls on the buildings around us. And in the distance—movement. “H-hello?”

“They’re not gonna hear you like that, Holly.” Gilda cleared her throat, then Red and I both jumped as she let out a shrill cry of “HEY! YOU!”

There was a startled yelp from the light, and a blurry figure stepped a few paces closer to the locked gate. A mare’s voice answered, nervously. “Who are y-you? Wh-what are you doing in there, that’s s-supposed to be locked!”

“Yeah, that’s the problem, genius.” Gilda rattled the locked gate again, to demonstrate. “You got a key?”

“N-no, the guards locked it, they s-said it wasn’t safe—”

“Well, it’s safe now, we killed all the nasties down here. Why don’t you go get a guard and tell them the exterminators are all finished with their pest problem?”

My vision cleared a bit, and I could make out the mare clearly now. She was a unicorn, and Hollow, of course, but she still had her mane and most of her pale yellow fur. She glanced between the four of us nervously, taking in our weapons, the dark blood that stained our fur and armor, and Dinky, still being carried by Red. “I…is she hurt?”

“Is she hurt? What about us? This guy got eaten!” Gilda pointed at Red, who leaned away slightly from the crazy ranting gryphon.

“I—uh. I don’t…” The mare trailed off as she glanced between the four of us one last time, then seemed to find some measure of resolve. “I s-suppose I can find a guard…?”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Gilda squawked. “Go, already!”

The mare seemed all too relieved to break away from our conversation, and she nearly tripped over herself as she turned and galloped away. I spotted more blurry movement further down the brightly-lit street; several lethargic townsponies were turning around and looking to see what was causing the commotion. Were they not used to seeing commotions like this up here at the top of the mountain?

“Smooth,” Red quietly grumbled.

“And if it was up to you two, we’d be stuck in here for all of eternity.” Gilda shrugged. “I’ve no patience for meek little ponies who are too damned delicate to work themselves into a good lather.”

After a few moments, Gilda rattled the gate impatiently again. “Can you believe we got all the way up here, only for the stupid gate to be locked?”

I chuckled a little bit to myself, though I was still occupied by the light from outside. I could barely see Canterlot, and after hearing so much about it, being so close and yet so far? Especially since we were blocked by suich a tiny little thing as this padlock? It was actually kind of funny, though it didn’t seem as though Gilda felt the same way.

“How strong do you think this lock is, anyway?” Gilda grabbed the padlock, and the chain rattled against the gate as she held it up to one of her eyes for inspection. “You’re a big tough stallion, Red. I bet you could stomp this lock into scrap, or maybe kick the door off its hinges, or use that axe, or…something.”

“Maybe,” Red conceded. “But then the gate won’t be locked when the next beast tries to follow us out.”

“Pshft,” Gilda blew through her beak. “They can handle it, it’ll toughen ‘em up. Come on, let’s get out of here already. I’m sick of these tunnels.”

“Eeenope.”

“Bah. Holly, what about you? Or maybe the filly, if she was awake. Bet unicorns have all kinds of tricks for picking locks, since they don’t even need picks—ahhh, nevermind.”

Gilda’s plans for escape were brought to an end when the mare returned, with a golden-armored guardstallion following close behind. He paused when he saw us clearly through the gate, and the mare stopped in turn, to look at him. After a moment, he nodded, and flicked his head back towards the rest of the town. “I’ll handle it from here, Lemon Hearts. As you were.”

The mare—now that he’d said her name, I could see how well it fit her coat before it faded from Hollowing—nodded, then darted back off down the street, out of sight.

Instead, the guardstallion approached alone, though he didn’t get too close to the gate. “Well, then. How’d you get in there? And for that matter, where did you come from? Canterlot has been locked down, by order of the Golden Guard.”

The flexible edges of Gilda’s beak curled into a smirk. “Yeah, we know. That’s why we had to go through the sewers.”

At that, the guard stepped back a pace. “From below? You came up through those tunnels?”

“You got mud in your ears, colt? I already told you. We cleared out your infestation, too—is there a bounty posted for that hunt?”

The guardstallion blinked. “We—infestation?”

That was about the end of GIlda’s patience. She grabbed the bars of the gate and rattled it frantically in the hinges, as she loudly squawked, “LET US OUT OF THIS DAMN HOLE!”

“Gilda!” Red barked, and the gryphon hen stepped back—though she flicked her middle talon upwards at the guard as she did so, which was probably meant to be a rude gesture. Red stepped forward to take her place, and nodded politely at the guard. “Sorry. We’ve been in here for a while.”

The guardstallion still seemed skittish, and he peered around Red to look at Gilda. “I’m not sure I want to let you out, even if I was allowed—”

“We’re acting under orders from the Princess.” Red stated in a formal tone. “Holly, show him that artifact.”

Here? Now? Just like this? It felt wrong, but if it would get us into the city, then I could hardly refuse. I realized, as I reached into the bag, that Red hadn’t seen it yet himself—would he recognize it? His sister was one of these Elements, wasn’t she? Or she had been, at least. How would he react to seeing another?

It was too late now to do anything else but find out for myself. I withdrew the tarnished necklace from my bag, and held it out in the light for the guardstallion to see. I heard Red take a sharp intake of breath by my side—which almost certainly implied that he did recognize it—but he said nothing, and gave no other indication.

The guard recognized it too, after a long few moments of confusion as he seemed to be trying to recall from where. His eyes went wide, and he let out a quiet, “Oh,” as he looked at the four of us once again. He peered intently at Dinky in particular, but whatever he was searching for, he didn’t find it in her. “Right. I’ll unlock the gate for you.”

“Wha—just like that?” Gilda said, with surprise in her voice as the guard started to flick through his keyring.

The guard nodded. “Yeah. Look, I don’t know who you all are, but if you have…that, then whatever’s going on, it’s way above my pay grade. You should take that to the castle, maybe you can get through to them…”

My thoughts turned to the Pillars of Equestria, still waiting for us. “W-we have friends w-waiting for us to open the way. D-down in Hammerhoof.”

“Hammerhoof?” The guard turned his head to look back at the town—presumably towards the gate in question. “I think that’s locked down even harder, they might not even have the keys. But if you can get them to open that gate, it’ll make lifting the lockdown a lot easier.”

“Worth a try,” Red said with a nod, as the guard found the right key, and unlocked the gate. “Thank you.”

“Just—try and solve this mess, yeah?” The guard mumbled quietly. After we had all moved out onto the street, he re-locked the padlock, and rattled it a bit to make sure it was locked. “I was retired, but, well…all this happened, you know? And the Princess pulled everypony back into active duty. I’d like to go back to those days, someday.”

“We’ll t-try our best,” I mumbled, half-heartedly.

He nodded. “Thank you. And if there’s anything else I can help with, I’m usually on patrol around this district. You know, royal guard and all.”

Gilda blinked at him. “Wait, I thought you were one of those golden chumps.”

He chuckled mirthlessly, and shook his head. “Nah, I was always just a royal guard, from before they formed that division. I’m just Sergeant Spearhead.”

Now that we were outside the dark tunnel, my eyes were fully adjusting to the light outside, and I looked at the guardstallion again, where I started to notice a lot of little differences. His armor seemed much more ceremonial, and decorated, with little cloth frills at the edges and gilding on the metal, as well as a blue crest that ran up the back of his helmet to his brow. The armor of the Golden Guard seemed to be made of a similar metal, but it had been stripped down and made much more utilitarian—perhaps because it was expected to be used in combat, as opposed to his role, which seemed to be that of military police.

Then my gaze shifted to the street around us, and I found, to my shock, that we weren’t even in direct sunlight. This whole street was in shadow from the buildings around us, and only the rooftops were lit by the sun. And now, I realized, we were above the cloud layer. I had gotten used to the oppressive gloom of the constant clouds and fog in the valleys below, that to see the world so illuminated, especially after the dark of the tunnels—I really had been truly blinded.

My gaze continued upwards, over the rooftops, and I saw the mountain above us; the cliffs of the Canterhorn, still looming over the city, the snowy slopes lit by the sun. But above that…

I gasped sharply as I saw the peak of the Canterhorn clearly, for the first time since my original awakening. It was as though the mountain’s peak were a jagged blade, which stabbed through the unseen flesh of a great beast, and the wound it had torn open still bled darkness across the sky. The tip of the mountain simply disappeared within the torn-open sky, and as hard as I squinted, I couldn’t see where it had gone. The wound itself seemed to be an abyss, like the one inside my bag, but I swore I could see a twinkling within…or perhaps I was just seeing snowfall near the peak.

Sergeant Spearhead followed my gaze, and he coughed. “Oh, yeah, probably your first time seeing that. We…we try not to look at it directly.”

“That’s…new.” Red murmured to himself. Even Gilda seemed unsettled by the sight. “When did that happen?”

“I was still retired when it happened,” Spearhead said, still pointedly not looking up. “As best as anyone can figure, Princess Luna did…something, at the peak of the Canterhorn. There’s nothing up there except an old monastery, but she hasn’t been seen since, and that part of the mountain was already on lockdown long before the palace kicked out all the staff. It doesn’t seem to be causing any trouble, but…it’s definitely unsettling to look at.”

I swallowed, and nodded, as I forced my eyes back down to street level. Red did the same, and nodded to Spearhead. “Sergeant. Thank you. Hopefully things are better soon.”

“Hopefully,” agreed the guardstallion. “Good luck.”

Gilda was still staring up at the peak when we started to leave, heading towards the Hammerhoof gate, but she caught up after we’d taken a few paces, and shook her head. “What did you ponies do to the world?”


*	*	*


We reached the Hammerhoof gate and spoke to the guards, but little came of it. We could do little to convince them, Element or no, and Spearhead was right—they didn’t have the keys to unlock the gate anyways. They were locked up securely in the palace, and without those keys and the authority to use them to open the way for the Pillars, we were out of luck.

However, as we wandered around Canterlot, mulling over our next move, I spotted a pair of familiar mares, sitting on a bench near the sun-and-moon square. A cream-colored earth pony, and a mint-green unicorn, who was still quietly strumming at her lyre. “Bon-Bon?”

The mare in question looked up in surprise, then recognition spread across her face…but she wasn’t looking at me. “Oh, wow. You’ve been gone for a long time.”

“I go by ‘Red,’ now,” the stallion quickly interjected, as we approached the bench.

Gilda hopped up onto a steel trash can—which nearly tipped over from her weight, since it was completely empty—and after she'd settled, she said snarkily to me, “More friends of yours, huh?”

Bon-Bon watched Gilda warily, but nodded. “There’s not a lot of other travelers out there in the world, and the few that brave the fog and the demons tend to take similar paths. We met a while back.” She looked back at me, and examined my new equipment in detail. “Didn’t keep the sword, I see. Picked up some new friends with your equipment…interesting choices, too.”

“Do you know me, pony?” Gilda said, as she fluffed up slightly.

“Only by reputation.” Bon-Bon’s eyes softened as she spotted Dinky on Red’s back. “What happened to Dinky?”

The entire time we spoke, the unicorn mare by Bon-Bon’s side never stopped gently playing her lyre, and slightly out-of-tune notes played under our conversation, rising and falling as whimsy took her moment to moment. She never even once opened her eyes; she seemed almost to be sleeping, but for the slow movements of her hoof on the strings, and the gentle undulation of her magical corona holding the instrument.

Red turned so that we could see the unconscious filly on his back clearly. “We got into a fight on the way here, and I think Dinky pushed herself a bit too far. She’s breathing, but she won’t wake up.”

“Pushed herself in a magical sense?” Bon-Bon asked. I nodded, and she frowned. “Then she probably burned herself out. I’ve seen it before, but not in a long time, thankfully. Didn’t know it could still affect Hollows. Speaking of, when did that happen? Last I saw her, she looked a lot better.”

Red turned to me, and I looked down at the ground as I started to explain. “Sh-she, uh—”


“Speak up, Holly. I can’t hear you when you’re talking to the cobblestones.”

I swallowed, then looked back up at Bon-Bon. “Ap-Applejack threw her in j-jail for a long time. That w-was when I met you, and Tr-Trixie was still traveling with me. Then…I got k-killed again on the w-way up here. D-Dinky spent a l-long time trying to f-find me, and she st-started to lose herself a little then, I th-think.”

“Holly died like a rutting champ, though. Tackled a knight made of burning metal off the mountainside.” Gilda said, with a grin at the corners of her beak. “Whatever happened to that guy, anyways? We lost you both in the fire.”

Bon-Bon’s ears snapped upwards, and she was suddenly very interested in my story. “A knight? Made of burning metal?”

“Y-yes…?” I replied, unsure why she was so interested.

“Did it have burning red eyes?” Bon-Bon asked, and at that moment, I knew she’d seen it herself. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t forget those eyes. I nodded, and Bon-Bon scowled. “So they’re still around. Fan-rutting-tastic.”

“Wait, you know that guy?” Gilda asked, as she perked up on her perch.

Bon-Bon let out a long sigh. “I did; they’re…dangerous. Thought we’d hunted all of them down.”

There was more than one? I felt my knees knocking together at the thought of encountering two or more of them at the same time. “W-what are they?”

Bon-Bon looked around the street, and I followed her gaze. This was a very public space, but the Hollows living in the city were closer to Lyra than Bon-Bon. Some seemed to be sleepwalking as they carried on their lives as though nothing had ever changed, and the more lucid ones regarded each other with wariness, as though prepared for any other citizen around them to suddenly turn feral. The royal guards paced the streets intermittently to help keep the peace, and a few body-lengths away, a deeply-Hollowed mare wearing a tattered janitor’s coverall checked another set of trash cans by the side of the road.

Satisfied, Bon-Bon leaned in close, and waved her hoof to indicate that we should do the same. “You don’t have clearance for what I’m about to tell you. But the world’s long past the point where I give a buck about that, and if you’re seeing one regularly, then it’s hunting you, and you need to know.” She spoke in a low whisper, to make sure that nopony else could hear. “When the Everchaos first came alight, the Princess sent a division of the Golden Guard in to investigate, beyond the burning front lines. They were meant just to scout the forest, see if they could determine the source, and then report back. But they never returned.”

“Spooky,” Gilda said, dismissively.

“Shush. In between then and a few years after Cloudsdale fell, we started getting reports of knights wearing melted armor out in the wilds, on the edges of towns. They never spoke, they usually kept their distance, and few wanted to get close, because they’d look at you with those burning red eyes, and you’d nearly wet yourself. I’ve seen a minotaur shrivel before that gaze.” 

Bon-Bon tapped her hoof on the cobblestones, and continued, “They were looking for something, or somepony. Sometimes they’d get into fights, usually because scared townsfolk tried to ambush them, but sometimes because they’d found whatever it was they were looking for, and they were trying to haul it back into the Everchaos. We didn’t know what they were working towards; we still don’t know. But they were causing a panic, so we had to hunt them all down.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Gilda asked, as she eyed Bon-Bon warily.

“Like I said, you don’t have clearance. Although he might have had that, once.” She gave Red a sad look. “Don’t worry, Red. Whatever your reasons are for coming back, I still trust you.”

“Thank you,” the stallion said, quietly. “What did they try to haul away?”

Bon-Bon glanced at Lyra, to make sure she hadn’t been distrurbed from her music, then continued. “Ponies, sometimes. Other times, artifacts. Anything related to Pyromancy, or sometimes a few weapons with fire enchantments. We thought they might be hunting phoenixes for a while. It’s always related to fire. Except for when they started going after Elements of Harmony.”

Red stiffened. “Necklaces, or bearers?”

“Either. Both.” Bon shook her head. “As far as we can tell, we did our jobs well enough that the remaining Bearers didn’t even know they were being hunted. But Fluttershy had already disappeared by that point, and we think one got to her early, before we knew what was happening. She didn’t do herself any favors, living out there in her isolated cottage like she was, though I was hoping that her…significant other”—Bon-Bon ground her teeth as she said those words—“would keep her safe.”

Gilda raised an eyebrow at that. “That filly actually got into a relationship? Hard to imagine any pony managing to get that close, before she bolted. Was always a skittish little bird.”

Bon-Bon and Red looked at each other, and I could see a whole conversation happening in their eyes, which went right over my head. Eventually, Bon-Bon looked back at Gilda. “If you don’t already know, then I’m not gonna tell you.”

“Gee. Thanks. So gracious of you to pick and choose what I’m allowed to know.” Gilda spat, before she shifted around on her trash can perch, and looked back out over the square.

Bon-Bon leaned back out of the huddle, and focused on me, instead. “If one’s hunting you, then you must have attracted their interest in some way. Does anything come to mind?”

Well, for one thing, I was walking around with one of the Elements of harmony on my person. But…I’d started seeing the Blackguard long before then. One must have been what killed me, long ago, for my first death, and they had left their blade stabbed into my gut up to the hilt. Then I’d seen one just before we began to sprint back to Baton Verte, though it hadn’t seemed interested, then. It had retrieved its sword, then confronted us just before we entered the tunnels…how had it gotten up there, I wondered? And why did it try to stop us there?

Eventually, I shook my head. “I d-don’t know…I have my m-mission, but I saw it b-before then. It’s been st-stalking me for a while…”

Bon-Bon rubbed her jaw with a hoof. “Hmmph. Alright. If you see another one, though…just run, alright? We’ve only ever seen them move faster than a steady march when engaged in melee, so you should be able to outpace it. Don’t ever let them catch you and kill you, or else…I don’t know what’ll happen. Come find me if you learn anything new.”

“How do you kill ‘em?” Red asked, bluntly.

Bon-Bon chuckled, but there was sadness behind it. “It’s not that easy. Dumping them in water, or blasting them with ice magic, worked to slow them down. But they’d always break free from the ice or boil off the water eventually. The few we managed to dispose of completely, we had to freeze solid, and then haul them out over the ocean before they thawed. Dropping them into the watery depths seemed to get rid of them well enough, though if you’re seeing one now, then maybe they’ve—”

Lyra’s gentle playing of her eponymous instrument was suddenly interrupted, and her eyes went wide when Gilda whirled around on her perch, and squawked at her, “Would you give that thing a rest for a minute—!”

Bon-Bon blurred in an instant, and a metallic ringing noise echoed across the street, as the grip of a throwing knife suddenly appeared between Gilda’s legs, embedded in the domed metal lid of the empty trash can. “Say one more word to my wife, and the next one’s between your eyes.”

Gilda slowly looked at Bon-Bon, and the second knife balanced by the tip of the blade atop her hoof. “Gryphons don’t go Hollow. You’d be killing Holly’s friend.”

“I don’t care. Don’t talk to her like that, and never interrupt her playing.”

There were a few more tense moments, before Gilda gently hopped down from the lid of the trash can, and onto the pavement. She seemed wary of even brushing the thrown knife by accident, and she pointedly didn’t look at it, or Bon-Bon, as she flicked her leonine tail at me. “I’ll be over there…somewhere. Come get me when you’re done talking to the crazy mare.”

I nodded, and the clicking of Gilda’s claws echoed off the cobbles as she walked down the street, perhaps looking for a safer place to perch.

When I looked back at Bon-Bon, the second knife was just gone, and I couldn’t figure out where she’d stowed it. She had already shifted closer to Lyra, to pull her into a tight hug, and she pressed the lyre to her wife’s breast. “Lyra. It’s okay, honey. You can keep playing.”

The mint unicorn was long-Hollowed, and her embered eyes timidly flicked to her wife, then to me, and Red and Dinky as well. She seemed to be seeing us, and the town around us, as if for the first time. She held the lyre in her hooves almost with that same kind of unfamiliarity.

“Lyra. Honey. Please, keep playing. Close your eyes, and just focus on the melody. I know it’s still there.” Tears were streaming freely from Bon-Bon’s eyes even though she kept her voice level.

Lyra still looked scared, but after a few moments of quiet confusion, she allowed herself to be lulled back into the trance seemed to have been lost in before. Her hoof strummed the harp, and after a few discordant notes to start, she seemed to remember the motions. The music started once again, but the rising and falling seemed to be mostly minor keys, now.

Bon-Bon kept hugging her wife tightly, as she gently turned back to us. She didn’t bother to wipe her eyes before she spoke again, and when she did, it wasn’t more than a whisper, to try and keep herself from interrupting the music. “Holly. You need to start finding better friends. I remember Trixie, and I remember Gilda, both from before. This… all of this…” She closed her eyes and swallowed. “Time makes everything, and everyone, start to fall apart. Sometimes, all that’s left aren’t the nice parts of a person. They used to be better… everyone used to be better.”

Red looked away, and I glanced between them, before settling back on Bon-Bon. “I’ll t-try.”

“Good,” she replied, her voice still a whisper. “Why’d you come to Canterlot, Holly?”

Once again, I withdrew the Element of Generosity from my bag. I really shouldn’t make a habit out of this; I wasn’t sure what repercussions flashing an artifact of such great significance in public might have, in the short or long term. “The P-Princess asked me to r-retrieve this, and b-bring it to Canterlot. But the g-gate was locked…”

“And the castle is, too.” Bon-Bon agreed. “You’ll need to get inside, then. That’s tricky to do; I’ve been contemplating it myself, but it’s extremely well-secured on both hoof and wing. Your best shot is a bar a few streets over that way, near the end of stonecutter boulevard, called ‘The Plastered Princess.’”

The ghost of a smile played across Red’s face, and he quietly nodded. “Remember that place. Been a while since I’ve had a drink.”

“It’s gonna be a bit longer, sadly. They’re just as much out of stock as anywhere else. But a lot of the palace staff have settled in there, since they got kicked out by the Golden Guard. If anypony knows how to get in, past the interdiction fields and the guards, then it’ll be them.” Bon-Bon closed her eyes, and leaned against her wife’s shoulder once again. “Don’t wait for me. I’m going to stay here for a while, and just…enjoy this.”

I looked around the street once again. Canterlot was filled with Hollows, and as much as they seemed to be trying to ignore what had happened, there was only so much they could do. Near the Hammerhoof gate, I saw a Hollow wearing weathered noble’s clothing trading golden bits for a chipped and faded vase, like they were tourists out visiting the sights of the capital. Another pony seemed to be mixing rainwater in a paint bucket with some rock dust to make fresh gray paint for the sun-baked plaster walls of the buildings. That pony wearing the janitor’s uniform barely gave us a glance as she checked the trash can that Gilda had been sitting atop only moments ago, but she did seem confused by the presence of the throwing knife.

It wasn’t safe here. Ponies couldn’t escape the reality of our world, even here in the capital. But it seemed as though this might be the only place that was close enough for ponies to try and forget. And after all that Bon-Bon and Lyra had done to get up here somehow, despite the demons and the lockdown, they more than deserved what little bit of rest they could get.
> 52 - Remnants of the Fallen
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After we wished Bon-Bon and Lyra luck and bade them goodbye, it only took us a few moments to catch up with Gilda. The gryphon hen hadn’t gone far; she stepped off of an awning that had been brightly colored—before the endless sunset had bleached the cloth white—and swooped low to meet us on the street. As she landed, she glanced back towards the pair behind us, and asked, “All done with the spy who’s got a license to kill?”

I blinked at her, and she shook her head. “It’s a reference to—agh, whatever, you probably don’t remember those books anyways. Ready to go find this bar?”

I nodded, and we set off, though I noticed Gilda kept glancing back at Bon-Bon until we turned a corner, and they were fully out of sight. “She’s n-not gonna come hunt you d-down.” I was pretty sure, at least; Bon-Bon just wanted GIlda to stop harassing her wife.

“That’s too bad,” Gilda said, and I was thrown for a loop. “She’s got spirit. Shame she’s too tied up with that mindless Hollow, or else she might be fun to pursue. If she had wings, I might have tried anyways, wife be damned.”

I stared at Gilda for a long few moments, trying to understand, and eventually Red just snorted, and thumped my shoulder with his own. “Gryphons. Threw me for a loop too at first.”

Gilda smirked at me, using the corner of her beak. “We take any chance we can get to sharpen our claws; especially against each other. Family reunions usually end with someone losing an eye or a talon.”

With a swallow, I forced my eyes forward, and started looking for street signs. “I’m g-glad I’m not a g-gryphon, then.”

“Yeah, you’re cool, but you’d be a soft little dewclaw by gryphon standards,” Gilda agreed. “Probably for the better.”


*	*	*


The Plastered Princess was close to the palace, on the side of the city closer to the snowy slopes above. As the city grew over prior centuries, it seemed as though the newer construction out near the cliffside was richer and higher-class, while this side, in the shadow of the peak, remained in use by the less wealthy and more utilitarian city workers. Even though Red knew where it was, it didn’t stand out much from any of the other dulled buildings around it, and if it wasn’t for the gryphon wearing the armor of a royal guard sitting outside, I would’ve struggled to find it myself.

He looked up as he approached, and I got a good look at him, then blinked in surprise. He was Hollowed, like me, and even his eyes had become glowing embers in his empty sockets. His fur was faded, but I could still see that it had once been a bright blue, and his voice, when he spoke, was still understandable, but raspy. “Hey there. G-going into the bar?”

As we came closer, his embers focused on us a bit more, and then he seemed startled as he jumped to attention. “Wait…G-Gilda?”

“Ugh,” she blew air through the sides of her beak. “Of course you’d still be here. Didn’t even have the decency to get torn apart by Hollows or demons out in the country.”

“W-what…?” The gryphon blinked at her in confusion while Gilda strode past him into the bar without even a second look. He glanced at us, as if looking for answers, but we had none for him.

Instead, Red held out a hoof. “Sorry. She’s like that. I’m Red.”

The gryphon nodded. “I…okay…? I’m G-Gallus. The bar’s open, I’m j-just getting some fresh air.” After a moment, he blinked at Red, as if recalling something from a lifetime ago. “You look…f-familiar?”

“We met once, long time ago. Friend of a friend.” Red said, then motioned to me, and the filly on his back. “She’s Holly, and this is Dinky. Know any unicorns that can treat burnout?”

“Not many s-sane ones, unfortunately…” Gallus sighed, then slumped slightly. “B-bring her in, maybe a couple of the other g-guards might know something.”

Red pushed through, followed by Gallus, and I was the last one to enter, letting the door shut behind me. The interior of the tavern was mostly made of wood, well-worn and cozy, with dusty old picks and hammers hung on the walls, as well as some broken weapons, and even a dented helmet mounted over the fireplace. A long bar ran the length of the room, with most of the barstools left vacant, as most of the occupants were sitting together in groups in booths or around tables. A few old stained carpets scattered across the floor only added to the cozy feeling of the bar, and a couple of Hollows had chosen to lie across those instead, so they could relax and lose themselves in the low ambience around them.

A couple of the groups seemed to be royal guards, wearing varying amounts of their armor and swapping old war stories, while in one of the booths sat three pegasi wearing blue and yellow flight uniforms. Another two groups looked like nobles, but their clothes were worn and untied, and they spoke with only the slightest hint of highborn accents. The only pony actually sitting at the bar was a unicorn mare with white fur and a dark brown mane, who had been speaking with the bartender—a much older, mustached unicorn stallion with beige fur, wearing a faded red coat. They both looked surprised when Gilda took her seat on one of the barstools next to the mare, having clearly interrupted a conversation they were having.

Red bumped my shoulder with his head. “Make sure she doesn’t start any fights. I’ll take care of Dinky.” As he moved towards one of the groups of guards, which included a few unicorns that would hopefully know how to help, I followed Gilda to the bar.

Now that Gallus had actually accompanied us inside, he seemed uncomfortable with the confined room, but he joined me as I moved to the bar. I sat next to Gilda, he sat next to me, and the bartender gave the three of us a raised eyebrow. In a highborn accent that sounded northwestern—Trottingham?—he stated, “We haven’t anything but water, I’m afraid. Boiled rainwater, at that. Terrible for tea, even if we had leaves.”

Gilda squinted at the bottles behind the stallion. “Well, what’s in those, then?”

“Vinegar at best,” he replied, without even a moment of hesitation. “The darker ones are just filled with mud. Trust me, I’ve checked. The last bartender went mad long before we arrived.”

With a frustrated clack of her beak, Gilda asked, “Well, then what’s the point of tending bar? Do you even sell anything here?”

“The atmosphere of a bar doesn’t require alcohol—though it certainly helps.” the stallion admitted. “It keeps us sane and off the streets, so I’ll serve water and toss out belligerents until things get better—or worse.”

Gilda stared him down for a long few moments, before she finally admitted, “Could use a drink, my throat’s getting dry. But I don’t have any money.”

“That’s fine; I won’t charge you for water, miss.” the stallion said, and his mustache twitched in a way that hinted at a smile, before he glanced at Gallus and me. “Same for the both of you, miss and sir?”

We nodded, and the stallion turned back to the bar to check the contents of a few corked bottles filled with clear liquid. As he did, Gallus leaned around me to look at Gilda. “T-talk to me, please? W-what are you doing here, at least?”

“Oh, I’ve come for teatime with the pony princess, can’t you tell?” Gilda snapped at him, before she took the proffered bottle from the bartender. “Don’t talk to me, chicken.”

Gallus leaned back on his stool, and I could hear him mumbling quietly to himself, “Ch-chicken? I’m n-not a…”

He trailed off, and the conversation seemed to wither there, as I considered my own glass bottle of water, and Gallus just stared at his own. Eventually, I took a swig—it tasted fine, though it had a metallic aftertaste, but being able to wash out my mouth with clean-ish water again in a cozy setting did a great deal to settle my worries. Afterwards, I looked at the bartender, and the mare with whom he’d been speaking as we came in. “Are you two p-palace staff? I was t-told to come here and f-find you…”

“We were,” the mare responded. “I’m Raven, former Secretary of State, and Kibitz used to be the Palace Majordomo, though I think he’s enjoying tending bar more.”

The stallion—Kibitz—snorted, but didn’t say anything. He busied himself with checking the contents of another bottle, and apparently decided whatever it contained was undrinkable.

Raven peered closely at me. “Who told you to find us, then?”

I swallowed another mouthful of boiled water before responding; whetting my lips helped me speak. “My f-friend, Bon-Bon. B-before that, the P-Pillars of Equestria, and b-before that, Princess Celestia.”

She considered that for a few moments. “You’re from Ponyville, then?” I nodded, and she continued. “So you’re likely the group she sent to Baltimare. You did a good job getting up here, considering the city-wide lockdown. The details aren’t too important, though you did mention the Pillars?”

“At the b-base of the mountain, in Hammerhoof. They’re w-waiting for us to open the g-gate.”

“Hm, then they’re as stuck as we are,” Raven grumbled, as she tapped her hoof on the bar. After a moment, she looked over at Red, who had passed Dinky into the care of a pair of unicorns wearing royal guard armor, and had begun to make his way over to join us. “Pick a large table; we’ll join you.”

Red blinked at her, then nodded, and changed course towards one of the unoccupied tables, near the blue-suited pegasi. Raven’s horn carried our bottles of water, and Kibitz joined us, so that after a few moments, myself, Red, Gilda, Raven and Kibitz were all relocated around the table. Gallus remained sitting at the bar, mumbling to himself, and Gilda seemed to prefer that.

“So, introductions,” Raven said, looking around, and she started with Red. “Kibitz and I know you, of course. I’m surprised to see you back in the city, without even covering your face.”

Red shrugged. “Not much point. I go by Red nowadays, though. Gotta earn back my old name.”

“I’m sure that’s the only reason,” Raven stated flatly, before she looked at me and Gilda. “As for you two…the gryphon seems familiar, but I don’t think we ever met in person.”

“Nah,” Gilda confirmed. “If we did, that was a lifetime ago. I heard you explaining you’re palace staff, though, so that means maybe you’ll know how we can get inside.”

“We’ll come to that,” she agreed, before then turning to me. “As for you…who are you, exactly? You’re a complete stranger to me.”

I gently lowered my chin to the worn wooden surface of the table. “I’m a st-stranger to me, too.”

“She goes by Holly,” Gilda explained on my behalf. “No memory of her life before, but she puts all she has into a fight, which is pretty good for a pony. Between the three of us, we can handle things.”

Raven considered us carefully. “You know what that entails, correct?”

“Maybe we do, maybe we don’t. What’s the situation inside the palace, exactly?” Gilda relaxed to listen, and tossed back a beakful of water.

“Before I can begin to explain that, I need to verify you are the team sent to Baltimare. Was there a written order given to you?”

“Give her the necklace,” Red said to me, as he bumped my shoulder.

“Necklace?” Raven’s eyebrow rose, and when I reached into the bottomless bag and withdrew the Element of Generosity, she took a deep breath. “Ah. That will suffice quite well. As an acting member of the Palace staff, I can take that now.”

“Again, just like that?” Gilda asked, looking around the room. “Lot of work and a lot of blood went into getting that piece of jewelry back. How do we know you’re legit?”

Red cleared his throat. “Gilda. Can’t think of anywhere safer these days than a bar full of guards and palace staff.” At his assurance, I passed Raven the necklace, and she let it sit on the table, where she could look down at the purple gem set into the gold. It didn’t seem nearly as dulled as it had before, though the gold itself was as tarnished as it had ever been.

Raven glanced back at Kibitz, who simply gave her a nod. “Very well. Since you are undoubtedly at least part of the team sent to Baltimare, then your orders were some of the last given by the Princess. She returned from Ponyville without incident, and immediately began to brief us, her administrative staff, on what had happened there. Knight Rainbow Dash was part of that staff, and had been left here to head the palace guard while the Princess was away.”

Raven closed her eyes. “She…did not take the news of what had occurred at Ponyville well. She immediately began to berate the Princess for leaving without including Dash herself as part of her protective detail. Eventually, she decided that the Princess leaving the Palace at all was too dangerous, and Dash assumed direct control of the Palace through the Golden Guard.”

Gilda’s eyebrows went up. “A coup? That had to be bloody. Is the sun princess even still alive?”

“There was no blood at all; the Princess surrendered command before blades could be drawn. She only lingered long enough to formally release the palace staff that had been deemed as ‘security risks’ by the Golden Guard, ourselves included. Following that, she has presumably been confined to her secure living quarters, while Rainbow Dash has militarized the palace and locked down the city. The Golden Guard may still even be giving commands to the troops around the country on the Princess’ behalf, though I have no way to confirm that.”

Gilda rolled her eyes at that, and growled in annoyance, “Of course she did. Soft little ruttin’ ponies! I swear, that love and friendship rot goes all the way to the top, and it’s why you’re still stuck grinding yourselves to death against a bunch of wild animals down there!”

“I’m not interested in debating that with you. The fact remains; Rainbow Dash is in command of the palace, and Canterlot will remain on lockdown so long as this state of affairs remains. If we are serious about returning the Princess to her throne, we will need to remove Rainbow Dash and the Golden Guard from command.” Raven looked at the three of us carefully. “Do the three of you understand?”

Red nodded, while Gilda threw a smirk back at the sleeping form of Dinky. “I told her! I told that filly that by the time we got to Canterlot, Dash was gonna put herself in our way! Just wish she was awake, so I could laugh right in her face.”

I swallowed, and my voice was fragile. “We n-need to kill her?”

Raven nodded sadly. “When last we met, Rainbow Dash had become…fundamentally unreasonable. She will not negotiate, and she will almost certainly try to kill the three of you, as invaders of the palace. She likely sees it as her duty. But if you can manage to merely incapacitate her, that would be much more preferable.”

Raven looked down at the element of generosity, still sitting on the table. “I have to ask again, are you willing to do that?”

“I’ve been ready!” Gilda crowed, as she slammed her fist down on the table. “I would’ve done this already if it wasn’t for that stupid magic shield!”

Everypony in the bar flinched at the outburst, and the sound of the impact against the wood. But after a moment, Red nodded, and looked over to me.

I couldn’t stop looking at that necklace, and the purple gem set into the gold. I’d already killed one bearer, though it seemed as though there hadn’t been much of her left by the time I’d gotten there. Now I was being asked to kill another, and she was apparently still coherent and aware of her actions…though it sounded as though her actual sanity might yet be up for debate.

How many more? Was I to kill all of them? I couldn’t raise my weapon against Pinkie Pie, I knew that. I’d fall on my own sword first.

But Rainbow Dash…to her, I held no particular loyalty. If we could incapacitate her instead, then I’d be happy with that outcome. But if the time came when it was me or her, when only one of us could be allowed to live…

I sighed, and nodded. “Okay…I’m w-willing.”

Raven sighed, and it seemed as though a great weight had been lifted from her withers. “Very well. Then all that remains is how to get you three past that ‘magic shield,’ as you put it. Once you’re inside, I’m confident in your success.” She turned to the three blue-suited pegasi, and waved them over with her hoof. “You three, we’ll need your help.”

As they took their seats, Raven indicated each of them. “These three are members of a flying team called the Wonderbolts, a stunt flying division of the Equestrian air brigade. They’ve always had access through the Interdiction Field for morale and security reasons, and they should be able to fly you three into the palace. Presenting acting captain Soaring Tide—”

“Soarin’,” the stallion corrected, and there was a clear habit in making that correction, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Maybe he was just used to going by that nickname. For some reason, he was staring at me very intently, and especially at my wings.

“—and lieutenants Misty Fly and Silver Lining,” Raven continued, with barely a pause for the interruption. The other two Wonderbolts were a stallion and a mare—and all three were pegasi, of course. It suddenly occurred to me that this may have been the single largest amount of living pegasi that I’d ever seen in one place, since waking up, though “living” seemed as subjective as always.

Soarin’ was the worst off of the three, and his embered eyes were dull as he silently continued to examine me. Silver Lining, the other stallion, had similarly lost his eyes to the curse, but he seemed to be handling it well. And Misty Fly, the mare, seemed the most stable out of the three of them. She even retained her eyes still, though I could see they were a bit sunken, and the crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes were deep and irreversible. Their flight suits were all faded, but in good condition—only Soarin’s seemed more tattered than those of the others, and it wasn’t by much.

“Fly us in?” Gilda asked, as the three pegasi took seats at the table. “What, right through the field? I figured we were going in through a side gate or another sewer or something.”

Silver Lining was the one to respond. “Those are all locked down too tightly. The interdiction field’s…sort of flexible, by design. Some intentional gaps in security were acceptable. As long as you’re flying in a loose formation, it will overlook ponies that haven’t been authorized to pass through.”

With a nod, Misty flicked some old napkins across the table. “Yeah, it’s not a complete shield, either. It’s like a bunch of overlapping walls in a bunch of circles around the palace. You just gotta fly through the right spaces at the right altitudes, and you won’t even know it’s there.”

Gilda narrowed her eyes. “But, a lone, unauthorized pony, or gryphon, even if they knew the path…”

Misty Fly traced a path between the napkins with her hoof. “Would hit the first checkpoint, and then zap, suddenly they’re falling out of the sky. Either into the moat, or onto the palace grounds, where the guards and medics would make sure they weren’t hurt too badly, then dragged back out onto the street.”

“Firmly but politely escorted,” Silver Lining corrected.

“Eh, same diff.” Misty tapped the napkins again. “Want me to draw you a map of the current path? It probably won’t matter too much once we’re flying, but some flyers like to have them drawn out.”

“C-current path?” I mumbled quietly.

“Indeed.” Silver Lining pulled on his flight suit, to make sure it wasn’t hanging too loose, then continued. “The field can be reoriented along several pre-configured patterns, but they all work the same way; the only difference is in the path that needs to be flown. In times before, the palace staff would have changed the configuration at random times, so that one pattern was not overused. However, they’ve grown lax about doing so, and I doubt the current residents even know how to change the alignment of the field, so it should be the same as it was before.”

“What if they have?” Gilda asked, as she raised her eyebrow.

“Then we all take a dip in the moat really early on, and try one of the others we know instead, after we’ve dried off and our flight magic starts working again,” Misty said, with a shrug.

“Alright,” Gilda muttered, as she tapped her beak with a talon. “Alright. Yeah, that should work. So we all fly through in formation…we’ll need two flyers to carry Red, that might as well be me and one of you two. Another carries Holly, and the last one is the formation lead.”

“Have you worked with the Wonderbolts before? Or another military flying unit?” Silver Lining looked at Gilda with curiosity.

That forced a chuckle out of Gilda, and she shook her head. “Naaah. Just, yanno, when someone chatters your ear off for months in flight camp about this stuff, some of it sticks.”

Raven coughed politely, and indicated towards me, as she passed a stick of charcoal over to Misty Fly “Pardon, but why is Holly being carried? She’s a pegasus as well.”

“She can’t fly under her own power,” Gilda explained again, on my behalf. “Too much damage from Hollowing. Best she can manage is gliding, and I’ve only seen her do that once so far.”

I shuddered. For a moment, I was there again, burning and screaming as I fell towards the toxic lake, with my wings only barely functional. But that time…one wing had been ripped up by a demon dog, just before. I wondered if I could manage an actual glide now, though I would almost certainly still need to start at high altitude, because I knew I couldn’t manage takeoff. Maybe Gilda would carry me up, and let me try, if we found a spare moment?

As I shook myself out of that idle thought, I caught the eyes of Soarin’, who was still looking at me oddly. That seemed to prompt him to speak. “S-so, wait, you don’t know how s-skilled you are at f-flying?”

I blinked at the Hollow stallion, then gently shook my head.

“And you d-don’t know who you are? What’s the f-first thing you remember?”

Misty Fly put her head in her hooves. “Celestia’s sake, Soarin’, not this again…”

I looked around the table, before I hesitantly answered, “I w-woke up on the edge of C-Cloudsdale, or the r-ruins of it…In a b-bookstore?”

His embered eyes seemed to flare to life, just a bit. He turned to Silver Lining, and hissed in very much a whisper. “It c-could be her!”

“It’s not her,” Silver Lining replied, without even looking up from the napkins on which Misty Fly had briefly begun to sketch the flight path.

“You d-don’t know that!”

“W-what’s going on?” I asked hesitantly, as I looked around the table. Everypony except the Wonderbolts seemed just as lost as I did.

Misty Fly looked up, and sighed. “Lovebird here has been asking every Hollow pegasus that comes through town where they came from, and what other pegasi they’ve seen, and how much they remember. Which isn’t many—there’s very few pegasi left, after Cloudsdale fell.”

Silver Lining nodded in agreement. “The rest of the Wonderbolts have been MIA ever since, presumed dead. Active, reserve, and training. All lost in…whatever happened, up there. We only escaped because we had been running an errand out to Dodge Junction at the time; we didn’t even see it happen.”

“We’re probably the last ones left, by this point. Anypony else would have tried to regroup by now. And that’s after a lot of flyers got poached by the golden guard, and thrown into that meatgrinder over in the dragonlands…” Misty Fly said, as a growl crept into her voice, and she paused to take a deep breath. “Anyway. The three of us have been coming to terms with that ever since. Me and Silver have mostly gotten over the coulda beens and the shoulda beens, but Soarin’ here, well…”

“We c-can’t just give up on them,” he mumbled. As Misty and Silver had explained the situation, his eyes had turned back to me. “What if they d-don’t remember?”

“If they don’t remember, then what difference does it make? They’re not the same pony, then.” Misty said, as she started sketching the flight path again. “We’ve had this argument before. We have this argument every time a new mare shows up. The next mare might be Spitfire, too.”

“Maybe they’re all Captain Spitfire,” Silver Lining said, with a tired roll of his eyes. “Seems just as likely as her just showing up one day, out of the blue…”

“Sh-shut up,” the Hollow stallion grumbled, before he turned to me. “Y-you’re sure you don’t r-remember...anything?”

I’d remembered some things, during my travels before. I was pretty sure I’d grown up in Cloudsdale, or at least another cloud city. I remembered flying in formation. But I also remembered other things too, like parts of Ponyville, from before the fog and the demons. I closed my eyes, and grit my teeth, as I tried to scrape whatever was left of my old, undead brain for anything else that might have been buried inside. “T-tell me about her. Anything that m-might jog my memory.”

“Here we go…” Misty muttered, around the bit of charcoal in her teeth.

Soarin’ shushed her again, though it sounded more like a hiss, coming through his Hollow throat. “Sh-she was strong. Stronger th-than anypony I knew. And sh-she could see the p-potential in others, knew how to d-draw it out. Enc-couragement, and admonishment. She would s-sit you down to talk about your h-home life, but she would th-thump you if you were being stupid at parade r-rest. She n-never gave up on anypony, j-just helped them be the b-best version of themselves that they c-could be.”

This time, the other two Wonderbolts were quiet. Silver Lining had closed his eyes, and was taking long slow breaths. Misty Fly had paused in her sketching, and her eyes were wet. Maybe they didn’t agree with him, but it seemed  as though Soarin’ could still bring back old memories. I wasn’t sure if they were happy memories, or painful ones—and maybe time had made good memories painful to think about.

The description didn’t do much to rekindle memories of my own, either. I had brief flashes of posters, and the suits seemed familiar, but I couldn’t tell him whether or not I’d worn one myself. I didn’t want to give them false hope, but I didn’t want to crush what little remained. And I didn’t know enough about myself, about the pony I had been in my life before, to know what the truth was. Eventually, I decided Silver Lining was right; even if I was Spitfire, that mare was dead now. Maybe these were her bones, her flesh, but I wasn’t Spitfire.

I tilted my head down towards the table. “I d-don’t think I am. Even if I w-was before…I don’t think I am, anym-more. I haven’t acted like Sp-Spitfire since I woke up, either. Not like you d-described her.”

Soarin’ swallowed, and he placed his hoof on mine. “Th-that’s okay! You still d-don’t remember. You’re still not s-sure. Just k-keep it in your m-mind, okay? Just th-think about it! I’ll b-be here, if that ch-changes. I p-promise.”

I looked up at him, again. I didn’t know the stallion that he was, before he went Hollow. But there didn’t seem to be much of him left. Maybe this faint hope was all that he had, now. The belief that Spitfire was still out there. And—though I hated myself for thinking about it—we needed him still, to fly us through the interdiction field.

“O-okay,” I said quietly, with an accompanying nod. “If something j-jogs my memory…I’ll c-come back. And I’ll t-tell you.”

“Thank you,” he said with a smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“If you’re quite done,” Kibitz interjected, “I believe you all need a plan once you are inside the palace. Unless you all are already familiar with the layout of the interior?”

“Could use a refresher,” Red rumbled.

“Well, hang on,” said Misty Fly, as she pulled out another napkin for Kibitiz’s own map. “Let’s focus on where we’re landing, first. And keep in mind, we’re not going inside with you.”

“You’re not?” Gilda asked. She looked up sharply, and her eyes quickly darted between the three Wonderbolts. “Why not?”

Misty Fly turned to the side, and pressed a hoof to her own side;where the suit should have been taut over the barrel it was instead hanging loose, hiding a form that was no doubt withered and malnourished. “We’re not frontline combatants, and we never have been, despite Dash’s best efforts. Anypony that was, she already poached. And as much as I’d like to get in there and wring her scrawny neck for that, I’m not stupid; the guards would turn us into bloody smears before Dash ever got the chance. We’re just going to drop you on the roof, then fly back out before they can shoot us out of the sky.”

“Cowards,” Gilda grumbled, with a clack of her beak.

“No, we’re stunt flyers.” Silver Lining declared. “Search and rescue was our most dangerous assignment before the Dragon War, and sticking to that has kept us alive since. Best not to hasten our division’s extinction just for glory.”

Gilda was going to snap back at him, but Raven cut her off before she could open her beak. “So. The Wonderbolts are going to drop you three onto the roof; there’s not much flat roof to land on, for obvious reasons, but the central palace should suffice, since that has the dining hall and throne room. There’s roof access on the northeast and southwest corners, which will allow you down into the palace proper. From there, you should be able to navigate to the throne room’s interior, where Rainbow Dash is likely still holding court.”

“Need to make one diversion,” Red said, as he leaned forward to look at the map Kibitz had been sketching of the palace’s layout during the conversation. “The royal armory. Ah need to go there, t’ pick someone up.”

“Someone? Not something?” Raven said, as one eyebrow curled upward. “Very well—though I’d still advise eliminating Rainbow Dash first, to disperse the golden guard. You may find other destinations within the castle easier to reach if the inhabitants are no longer hostile to intruders.”

Red nodded, but didn’t say anything else, and so Raven continued to explain. “Rainbow Dash has likely kept the Princess confined to her quarters for her own safety. While normally one could access those quarters through several other corridors, the palace was designed so that they could be easily barricaded at key choke points. It’s not unlikely that Rainbow Dash has done so, which means that the only remaining access would be through the throne room, and therefore dealing with her.”

Gilda smirked again at that. She was clearly eager for that confrontation, even if I wasn’t sure why.

“Once she has been dealt with, the Princess taking the throne should sway even the most Hollow members of the Golden Guard—hopefully. There may yet need to be some cleanup on that front.” Raven shuddered with distaste. “Once that nasty business is taken care of, then the Princess should send someone out to retrieve us and deliver the keys to unlock everything once more, and we can resume normal operations within the palace—starting with washing out the carpets, more than likely. We, in turn, will be able to unlock the gates to Hammerhoof, and send somepony down to fetch the Pillars, and start attending to what I’m sure is a cataclysmic refugee crisis at the base of the mountain.”

“There’s the steel and fury you ponies need! Stars, if you’d just done that to begin with, this never would have happened in the first place!” Gilda looked giddy at the thought of blood soaking the palace’s carpets, and she even turned back to look at Gallus, who was still sitting morosely at the bar. “You gonna help them fight this time, chicken? Get some blood in your beak again, like a real gryphon?”

Gallus shot her a nasty look, before his embered eyes dropped back to his glass bottle of boiled rainwater. “I…I am a real g-gryphon.”

“Sorry, what was that? Couldn’t hear you. Maybe you need to crow a little louder!”

“I’m m-more of a gryphon than you are!” Gallus squawked, as he spun around, knocking his bottle onto the floor. The outburst and the sound of shattering glass got everyone’s attention, and Gallus shrunk back from all the eyes on him. He still managed to mumble out, “At l-least I’m helping ponies out here, d-doing good work for the Pr-Princess.”

Gilda rolled her eyes. “Do you even hear yourself? What kind of gryphon cares about pony problems like that? What kind of gryphon sucks up to the pony princess and grovels at her hooves? I bet you lick her fancy golden hoofshoes clean, too!”

Gallus' eyes narrowed. “A b-better gryphon than you are.”

“Pffft! Don’t make me laugh, chicken.” Gilda finally turned around to face him fully. “A good gryphon would have come home, with tales and spoils of their hunts, and helped Gryphonstone flourish!”

That finally seemed to get through to Gallus, and his eyes fell again. “And…I w-will. After this f-fight is over. When things aren’t so d-desperate out here. I’ll go back to G-Gryphonstone and—”

“Back to Gryphonstone now? Pffft. Don’t bother. There’s nothing left, anyways.”

That caused Gallus to snap to attention. “W-what?”

Around the table, that sentiment was shared; Raven and the Wonderbolts stared at Gilda in shock, and Red blinked in surprise. I didn’t understand—how could a country just be gone?

And Gilda seemed to revel in our shock and confusion, though she eventually singled me out. “Holly, you remember when we were leaving Ponyville, and you and the twerp over there—” she jabbed a thumb at the unconscious form of Dinky, who had been moved to a booth to rest. “—both wanted to know why I was so pissed at the pink freak? That’s why. None of you ponies know what happened to Gryphonstone. None of you care. It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist any more, outside of your pathetic ruin of a country! Nopony even bothered to come and check on us, your supposed allies!”

“Gilda.” Red spoke firmly, and her eyes snapped to meet his. “What happened to Gryphonstone?”

“What didn’t happen to Gryphonstone?” Gilda said, with the edges of her beaks curling upwards in a mad grin. “I’ll tell you what didn’t happen. That trade with you ponies that our economy was dependent on, that didn’t happen, because the dragons made the seas too dangerous! That diplomacy that you ponies and your perfect pony princess prize so preciously, that didn’t happen, and so the fights at our borders started again! And that military support you promised us, the lofty statements about Rainbow Dash herself showing up to defend us from any retaliation from your big stupid war against those overgrown lizards?!”

Gilda had started ranting by this point, gesticulating wildly with her claws, but now her voice fell back to a low growl. “That sure didn’t happen. So the dragons razed Gryphonstone down to the ground. Burned the whole country to glass, killed everyone. You never showed up.” Gilda’s claws were digging into the table now, leaving deep scores in the weathered wood. “Dash, the Wonderbolt, the great Prismatic Dragonslayer, hero of the Dragon War, my friend—or so I thought—never showed up. Not even after the dragons were finished.”

“They killed everyone,” Gilda snarled, and I noticed again the arrows in her quiver—the ones tipped with volcanic glass and bone. “Everyone but me. And Gryphons don’t go Hollow; we don’t have the luxury of walking around as corpses after we get barbecued, even if everyone back home wasn’t cooked into the stone now.”

Gallus let out a snarl of his own now, as he approached Gilda, who turned to face him as he jabbed at one of his embered eyes with his own talon. “Gilda. If g-gryphons don’t go Hollow, then w-what is this, huh? W-what am I?”

I knew he was right; we’d seen gryphons before, as we’d passed through Hammerhoof. I hadn’t paid them much attention then, but surely they had to be Hollow as well. Gilda had been saying that gryphons don’t go Hollow for so long, that I’d started to believe it myself—though to be fair, she’d done a damned good job of not getting killed for the entire time that I knew her. And unlike Applejack, she wasn’t Hollow now, so the deception wasn’t as plainly obvious.

Not that anything Gallus said seemed to dissuade her. She just grunted at him, and narrowed her eyes. “You’re a Hollow. But you’ve always been more pony than gryphon—so no wonder you caught that stupid pony disease.”

Was she rationalizing this to him, I wondered, or herself?

“G-go rut yourself, Gilda.” Gallus mumbled to himself, as he turned away, and started walking back to the bar. “I hope you g-go Hollow too. So you c-can understand. I hope you d-die screaming, a d-dozen times over.”

“Nah,” Gilda said, turning away from him, towards the rest of us. “When I die, it’ll be once. I’m just hoping I get to take revenge on Rainbow Dash first. For Gryphonstone.”

Raven and Kibitz exchanged glances—it didn’t take much to imagine what they were wondering. My view of Gilda had been shaken as well, and now I was wondering if she’d always had this in the back of her mind, this entire time. And I wondered why she’d chosen to help us, and help me, because surely it couldn’t have all just been for the sake of getting here. She’d put herself in danger a dozen times for our sakes, and any one of those times she could have fallen; to think that it was all just for this one fight…that seemed mad.

But Gilda did seem mad—by both meanings of the word.

Raven and Kibitz seemed to agree on something, without a word being spoken, and Raven shuffled the napkins with the charcoal-drawn maps on them once more. “Well. Whatever your reasons, the fact remains. Rainbow Dash presents an obstacle, one that needs to be removed.”

“And it’ll be done,” Gilda said with a snarl, as she looked around the table once more, and especially focusing on me and Red. “Right, you two?”

We both nodded hesitantly, and with that settled—for the moment—Raven continued to explain the specifics of our path through the castle, and the various side passages that we could use to avoid the majority of the Golden Guard within.