Chapter 1

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Throughout history, earth ponies have been consistently regarded as having drawn a magical short straw. Their powers are mostly intangible, unlike their cousins in the other two tribes, and as such are sometimes regarded as lessers. This is backwards thinking, of course—earth ponies have exactly as much magic as they need in order to perform the vital tasks required of them to keep the empire running. Their place at the foundation of our society’s pyramid is essential to its continued survival.

There are unconfirmed reports, however, of earth pony magic developing far beyond its traditional manifestations, facilitated by a natural enhancement known as “mother sky” mushrooms. These mushrooms are, allegedly, able to induce unnatural strength, limited future sight, and even the ability to fly.

Such reports are factually devoid of substance and dangerous to our continued growth as an empire. Ponies overheard disseminating these falsehoods are to be considered anti-state actors and punished by summary imprisonment without trial.

—Senator Giesu

The pre-dawn mist coalesced into a snow leopard.

Hypha froze, squinting against the fog. The shape was no more than fifty yards away and slightly downhill from him. It glided along a ridge, then darted through the same thicket of stonewood trees Hypha had just walked through a few minutes before.

The snow leopard stopped suddenly. Its long tail flattened. The permanent frown on its face deepened as it sniffed the air.

Hypha ducked behind a nearby tree and held his breath. His bright orange robes stuck out like a signal flag against the monochrome mountainside and flapped noisily in the breeze. He bunched them up in his hooves and willed the wind not to blow.

The wind ignored him. A fierce mountain gust blew from behind, sending his scent downhill. The snow leopard turned his way, its pale eyes blinking slowly. It could probably see him. No doubt it could smell him. Hypha had been hiking around the mountain all morning. He was one big sweaty orange target in a sea of featureless white snow and black leafless trees.

Hypha’s mind raced. From the satchel bag on his side, he slipped a short knife and held it in front of him. Any second now, the leopard would leap from the trees and race towards him. The massive paws acted like snowshoes, distributing the cat’s weight evenly so it could run over snow instead of having to push through it.

Hypha had no such advantage. His big earth pony hooves would punch right through the snow and bog him down if he ran. If he stayed put, he’d get one, maybe two jabs with the knife before the leopard ripped him apart.

That was when he noticed a familiar cluster of brown mushrooms sprouting next to the tree trunk.

He let out a cry of laughter before he could stop himself. The leopard’s ears twitched. Uh-oh.

Without taking his eyes off the beast, he leaned down and sniffed the mushrooms. Earthy, almost garlicy, tinged with the faintest hint of sulfur. These were mother sky mushrooms. The exact kind he’d been sent out here to find.

The wind shifted. The mist lifted. Hypha saw the snow leopard clearly, its fur and scars and eyes and teeth. It took another step towards him.

Then it lunged.

Hypha flew into motion. He flung open his satchel and hacked at the stems of the mushrooms with his knife. They looked frail, but their deceptively rubbery texture lost him precious seconds sawing away.

The leopard cleared the trees. It flew over the snowbanks at top speed, kicking up plumes of powder behind it. Hypha finally cut through the stems and shoved them into his bag just as the leopard closed the distance. Its eyes were wide and frantic, its ribs visible through its thick fur, its paw pads black and cracked. It lashed out with enough force to break bones.

Hypha leapt into the air.

The Stonewood mountains on which Hypha and the snow leopard met were not the tallest, nor the widest, nor the most impressive in the world. But they were the only mountains that could float. Ancient magic ran through the mountains all the way to their cores, permeating everything around it.

The same magic that kept the mountains afloat could keep an earth pony afloat, too.

The snow leopard’s claws brushed the bottom of Hypha’s tail and passed through cleanly. Hypha hovered ten yards above the snow leopard as it wheeled around. Even with its hundred thousand collective years of animal intelligence, it hadn’t prepared for the possibility of a flying earth pony.

It coiled its body like a spring, then jumped at Hypha. Hypha pushed himself higher. The mist thickened, swallowing the snow leopard along with the rest of the mountainside.

Almost instantly, a stitch stabbed his side. Every muscle in his body tensed in exertion. Sweat formed and froze on the small of his back. Flying was work, and he was weak. He had to make a move, or he’d lose altitude and plop right back down into the paws of the snow leopard.

He banked left and flew along the base of a big stone outcropping, putting a hundred yards and forty meters of sheer vertical cliff face between him and the leopard’s last location.

He made it to the top of the ridge before collapsing onto the rocky ground. He was no longer on the menu, at least for the moment, but the exertion of even a short flight left him spent and defenseless. His heart hammered and his breath came out in vaporous puffs.The thin air burned his throat all the way down to his lungs. He wished he’d had the foresight to escape down the mountain instead of up.

As wrecked as he was, he knew he couldn't stay long. The leopard couldn’t see him anymore, but it might still be able to smell him. He needed to get home.

Before he set off, he checked his satchel to make sure the mushrooms were still there. He pulled one out and held it up to his nose, breathing in the mycelial smell. Pure elation swelled in his chest.

He didn’t have any energy left to shout for joy, so he pumped his hoof into the air instead.

On hoof, the route down the mountain would take approximately two hours, plus another thirty minutes of skirting the area where the snow leopard was likely to be. Way too dangerous and boring.

Instead, Hypha took a deep breath, got a good running start, and flung himself off the cliff’s edge.

This flight was significantly easier than the last one. Instead of fighting against the thin air to gain altitude, all Hypha had to do was keep himself banked at the correct angle and let gravity do the work for him. His core still ached with exertion, but it was nowhere near the full-body fire from before. Shoulda done this the first time, he thought to himself.

The mountain flew by beneath him as a single uninterrupted blur. The untouched snow gave way to a series of rocky outcroppings flanked by icefalls.More stonewood groves clung to the rocky earth. Further out, the hulking outline of the mountain range hovered on the horizon. Sunrise hadn’t yet hit this part of the mountain, but rays of light snuck through the gap between the floating mountains and the ground far below.

Hypha descended into one of the many banks of perpetual fog cling to the mountainside. Through the haze, he made out the shape of a temple hewn into the mountainside, rows of buildings, tilled land, and a tall rock wall shielding it from prying eyes below. Just like the snow leopard, the monastery complex of Roseroot coalesced from the fog.

——-

Flying was one thing. Landing made Hypha wish he’d stayed on that ridge with the snow leopard.

As usual, he came in way too fast. Slowing down was perhaps the one and only thing more difficult for Hypha than getting airborn in the first place. No matter how hard he flexed his magic, he simply couldn’t lose enough speed.

He grabbed his robes and flung them out to help slow his descent. He didn’t feel himself slow down at all, but he knew the difference between a bruise and a broken neck could boil down to an imperceptible difference in speed. Hypha held on.

There was a clear platform of soft earth directly in front of the temple that wasn’t, technically speaking, a good spot to land. But it was better than striking the side of the mountain or careening into a building.

At the last second, he pulled up. His hooves touched the ground first, followed by the side of his head. Dirt flew into his nose and mouth. He tumbled end over end, finally coming to a stop a few yards in front of the temple stairs.

Through the ringing in his ears, he heard an older pony laughing. “Very interesting technique. Where did you learn it?”

Hypha groaned into the dirt.

“Oh, you came up with it yourself? Very clever.”

Hypha tried standing up, but his legs went wobbly like a newborn fawn’s. Gravity wasn’t done with him yet.

“Consider decreasing your speed earlier in your approach, instead of relying on your robes to slow your descent at the last second.”

Hypha rose shakily to his hooves. “Thank you for your wisdom, Elder Cumulus.”

Elder Cumulus was the reason Hypha equated age with wisdom. He threw the runner of his sky-blue robe over his shoulder and let out a wheezy laugh. With the help of a walking stick, he stood up from the stairs and made his way over to Hypha. Cumulus’s smile was the kind that transcended time and place. You saw it in other people when they were at their happiest.

“You’re the second one in,” Cumulus said.

Second. A frown creased Hypha’s face. This was the fourth day in a row another acolyte, Wrender, had beaten him. It wasn’t a contest, strictly speaking. But Hypha had spent his entire childhood and early adolescence comfortably dominating the other acolytes in mushroom hunting. Was he losing his edge?

Cumulus seemed to sense something was amiss, so he changed the subject. “Did you find any mushrooms?”

The pain on Hypha’s face melted away. He stood up straight and pulled the mushroom caps from his bag. One of the caps had been dented in the landing.

Cumulus didn’t seem to care. “Five. Well done.” He tucked the mushrooms reverently into his robe pocket. “A little bird told me they’re making your favorite stew in the cafeteria.”

Visions of lentils and fresh baked bread danced in Hypha’s vision. The pains plaguing him suddenly didn’t feel so bad after all. “Thank you, Cumulus.”

“And remember, you’re training with me and Hirruck this afternoon. Don’t be late.”

“If I do well in the training, maybe I could participate in the next mushroom ritual.”

Cumulus laughed. “Patience is one of the many virtues you must cultivate before you can participate.”

With that, the old monk turned and ambled his way up the temple stairs. Hypha watched him pause at the center of the temple dias and extend one foreleg up to the sky. Then he drew it inward with a sharp slashing motion. The air crackled and condensed along the old monk’s hooftip into a glowing blue orb.

Cumulus drew a glowing circle in the air, then filled it in with a series of complex runes. The runes glowed faintly, then vanished. The temple trembled. Cumulus stretched his shoulders and smiled.

The temple doors, ten lengths tall and made of solid stonewood, weighing more than two tons each, swung open, moved only by the elder monk’s magic.

Hypha forced down the urge to gawk. Cumulus, utterly unphased, strolled inside.

Only once the temple doors swung shut again did Hypha tear himself away and take off towards the monastery mess hall. The smell of something warm and spicy and wonderful diffused into the morning air around the multistory mud mortar building.

His mood soured somewhat at the thought of Wrender sitting at the table by the door, breakfast half-devoured, wearing that same smirk he always wore when he beat Hypha at something. This was going to be embarrassing. Maybe he should have let the snow leopard get him.

The sun broke the craggy eastern horizon, Hypha’s second sunrise of the morning. Light draped the snow capped mountains in a rich orange robe.

Chapter 2

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Ten thousand candles lined the inside of the Roseroot temple. As they melted down, the wax ran into the cracks of the rocks and spilled onto the floor, moving like sheets of magma forming new strata atop the old.

One acolyte attended to the flames. Three more broke up chunks of floor wax with shovels and hauled them away to be recycled into the next batch of candles.

Hypha felt for the poor colts. “Almost done,” he said, giving them each an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “The floor looks great.”

Wax patrol was a menial task. All the same, it was vital these colts did their time. Buried within the labor was a lesson: the temple was a sacred place, and keeping it clean was a kind of prayer.

He went deeper into the temple, passing cavernous meditation rooms full of silent figures holding poses. The hallway shrunk. The light grew dim. A sudden wave of heat pouring from a room up ahead signaled that he’d arrived.

Inside, a fire crackled happily in a clay firebox in the corner. Wide-wicked candles lined the periphery. Two monks, elder Cumulus and the stout elder Hirruck, sat hunched over a book in one corner.

Without looking up, elder Hirruck said, “You’re early.”

“Just excited to train,” Hypha said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. But if he got done with his training early, there was a slim chance the elders would let him do a little exploring of the temple. No one, not even elder Cumulus, knew exactly how far down the temple tunnels went. Rumor had it they went straight down to the center of the earth, where the weight of the earth was so intense that no one could escape.

Hypha didn’t want to go that deep. Just until the light stopped. Then maybe a little further. Then he’d turn around.

The book was open to a page titled, “Foundational Movements: Internalization of External Realities.” Hypha felt a frown worming its way onto his face. This was a copy of one of the textbooks he’d been studying.

“Have you done your readings?” Hirruck asked.

“Yes. Sort of.” Hypha pursed his lips. “The last chapter is still giving me some trouble.”

“Aah” Hirruck chuckled, “‘Flight Mechanics’. Cumulus told me about the crater you dug outside the temple.” Hypha could only offer a sheepish smile in reply. “It’s okay. You’ll have the rest of your life to practice flying. You can only learn something new once. For now, put flying out of your mind. We’re going to focus everything we have on this next chapter.”

Hirruck stepped into the center of the room. The faint hiss of candlefire seemed to quiet as he raised his hoof to the ceiling. Then he flicked it down. A sharp crack left Hypha’s ears ringing. A blue ball of energy materialized on Hirruck’s hooftip.

“Magic is latent,” Hirruck said. “It follows predetermined paths. It flows through some places and pools in others. We can tap into those pools and flows and redirect it for our own uses.”

The words had come straight from the text. Hypha was more interested in the glowing ball of magic. The power. The potential. It awed him.

With a flourish, Hirruck threw the orb up. It swung around the room like a boomerang and blew out the rows of candles. When the orb remained as the only source of light in the room, it too went out, casting Hypha and the two elders into darkness. A moment later, Hypha heard another crack as Hirruck summoned a new orb. He drew a circle in the air. The magic lingered in the air as a pulsing light. Hirruck drew a series of complex runes within the circle. The whole room filled with an electric blue glow.

He touched the center of the rune with his hoof. The rune vanished. The next moment, every candle reignited simultaneously.

Hirruck smirked. Cumulus rolled his eyes and muttered, “That’s not in the curriculum.”

Hypha beamed. “How’d you do that?”

“We’re magical creatures by nature.” He set his stance and motioned for Hypha to do the same. “Start with summoning some magic. Feel it. Receive it.” He repeated the motion of lifting his hoof up then bringing it down to his chest. Another orb appeared. “Let it go.” The magic dissipated.

Hypha raised his hoof and felt around. “I don’t feel anything.”

“Think of strings. Find one, then pull it.”

Hypha practiced the motion a few times, but nothing happened. “I think I’m doing it wrong.” He tried again, muttering, “Feel it, receive it. Feel it, receive it. Feel it, recieve it.”

“Don’t forget, let it go. Letting go is equally as important. If you don’t let go, the magic will feed back into you and hurt you.” A smile graced Hirruck’s face. “It’s also an important skill for those who wish to participate in the mushroom ritual.”

Hypha threw himself into letting go. He let go repeatedly and with great enthusiasm. But as much as he tried, he found nothing to let go of. There was simply nothing there. Whatever latent energy Hirruck had just tapped into was gone.

Hypha let out an irritated huff. “How long’s it supposed to take?”

“As long as it needs to. Again.”

After an exhausting half hour of trying and failing to summon even the simplest spell, Elder Cumulus stopped Hypha.

“Let’s try a different approach. What do you think of when you’re flying?”

“I don’t know. I just kinda do it. If I think too hard, I get distracted and fall.”

“I see. It sounds like you may need to change the way you learn if you want to find success.”

Hypha let out a groan. “I gotta learn how to learn, too?”

Cumulus chuckled. “I’ll be willing to bet the hours you’ll spend retraining your mind will pay dividends with your flight as much as with your rune magic.”

“Hours?”

Hirruck gave him an encouraging smile. “Keep practicing the motion. That’s good enough for now. Cumulus and I have some kilning to take care of. Practice for another thirty minutes, then we’ll reconvene outside. Okay?”

Hypha nodded dutifully. “Okay.”

As the two elders headed towards the entrance, Hypha cast a sidelong glance down the hallway. Further down, the ceiling was so low Hypha would have to hunch over just to fit through. Darkness swallowed the rest of the way.

A shiver snaked its way up Hypha’s legs. The urge to run headlong into the darkness collided with the urge to cower in the light of the firebox. Who could say if those tunnels didn’t really go all the way down to the center of the earth?

Feel it, receive it, let it go. Feel it, receive it, let it go. Hypha was twenty minutes in and ready to collapse with boredom. Learning flight had at least been dangerous. He got to race to the tippy tops of mountains and leap off the edge and try to figure things out before he hit the ground. That was fun learning. This felt rote, like learning to read a language he didn’t understand, sounding the words out but failing to grasp their meaning.

He heard hoofsteps coming from the hallway outside. Wrender—of course it had to be Wrender—poked his head in.

“I think you’re doing it wrong.”

“No I’m not,” Hypha replied.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Because if you do it right, there should be a blue light, and—”

“Shut up. Like you’re any better.” Wrender opened his mouth to say something, but Hypha cut him off. “And don’t get to say you won mushroom collecting, either. I almost got eaten by a snow leopard.”

“Why do you have to lie? Why can’t you just admit I’m finally beating you?”

“Because you’re not.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Whatever. How much longer are you in here?”

“I was just about to leave.”

“Good. More practice time for me.”

The two held a fierce stare-down as they circled the room, Wrender coming in, Hypha going out. Only once Hypha stepped outside and felt the warmth of the room slip away did he start to relax.

Leaving Wrender behind, Hypha retraced his steps up the widening hallway until he emerged onto the temple’s main covered dias. He saw Cumulus and Hirrick standing near the main staircase. They were looking out on the expanse of the temple grounds where a few of the other acolytes tended to the monastery's modest crop of wheat and barley. Monks could not live on mushrooms alone, and where fungi were a rare commodity, barley and wheat had never been more plentiful.

“Feel anything?” Cumulus asked.

“Frustrated.”

The older monks laughed. Together the three walked along the fence separating the farmland from the main thoroughfare.

Cumulus said, “I have a question for you, Hypha.”

“Anything.”

“Our farm’s been doing well lately. Too well, in fact. Even with all the monks and acolytes working around the clock, we can’t harvest all the wheat. Some monks have proposed letting in outside help from the surrounding villages. Others feel more comfortable simply letting the harvest rot and adjusting the size and seeding habits of the next planting rotation.” He turned to Hypha. “What do you think we should do?”

The question took Hypha off-guard. “Uh. I’m not great with farming stuff.”

“I’m asking because the other elders and I have been struggling over this question all week. We’re hoping you might see something our old eyes have missed.”

Hypha nodded. “Well, it would be a shame to let the crops go to waste. But if the alternative is letting outsiders in...” He shrugged. “We’re not facing a food shortage or anything. No great loss.”

Cumulus seemed unsatisfied with his answer. Hirruck jumped in, asking, “What’s your reservation with bringing outsiders in?”

“Uh.” Hypha frowned. “Is that a trick question?”

“I, for one, think outside help would be mutually beneficial. We have plenty of barley and wheat to go around. What we really need is—”

“If we need more hooves, why not take some of the acolytes off other chores?”

“Our order isn’t growing like the wheat is, unfortunately.”

“Still. There’s gotta be a better way.” Hypha’s eyes lit up. “Oh! Wait. I’m being silly. We could totally let the outsiders in to help us with the wheat.”

The elders’ faces brightened. “Yes?”

“Yeah! All we’d have to do is shackle them and keep them under armed guard. That way they can’t cause trouble.”

Cumulus looked like he was about to faint. Hirruck let out a long sigh. “We will take your advice to heart, Hypha. Thank you. One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“If we decide to involve outsiders in helping clear the fields, would you be willing to take a leadership role in overseeing its execution?”

“Execution? I didn’t say we should go that far.”

Neither elder answered. They walked in stilted silence, following the path as it sloped up a natural ridge before depositing them by a cluster of acolyte hovels. From this vantage point, they could see the entire monastery complex spread out before them.

Life sprouted from every crack. Far from the spartan mountainside dwellings of the other order monasteries, the Roseroot complex was bursting with life. Flowering vines snaked up the low exterior walls. Beyond the plots of fenced farmland, a few monks knotted themselves into complex yoga poses on a small grassy knoll. Further out, all manner of monks and acolytes moved through the complex. A few made their way along the winding dirt paths. Most simply flew. On one side was the mountain, vertically sheer, grey as pre-dawn, and dominating in its presence. The other side was a sheer drop, cloaked in perpetual mist.

The monastery was a nest for all the strange mountain birds. Seeing it all made Hypha’s heart swell with pride.

“I love it here,” Cumulus said. Hypha noticed a twinge of sadness on the old monk’s face. Before he could inquire about it, Cumulus abruptly turned away. “Come on, Hirruck. There’s work to be done at the temple.”

The two monks started off, leaving Hypha with the sneaking suspicion they were keeping something from him. “Wait,” he called after them, “Did I give you the wrong answer?”

“There was no right or wrong answer,” Cumulus said.

“Okay.” Hypha dragged a hoof through the dirt. “I wanna help the order. I wanna be good.”

Cumulus gave Hypha an assuaging smile. “Your heart’s in the right place. With time, I think you’ll come to see—”

“You can’t let them in,” Hypha blurted. “They hate us.”

A grim, deep-seeded silence settled over the elders. Hypha covered his mouth. Shame and fear sent needles racing up his spine. He’d ruined a precious moment.

“They don’t hate us,” Cumulus finally said. His tone was casual, but the look in his eyes betrayed some deeper emotion running beneath the mask. “We maintain a friendly relationship with almost all the local towns in the greater Stonewood range.”

“Why else would we need to put up walls in the first place? If we let them in, they’ll try to hurt us or break into the temple. We can’t trust them.”

Cumulus took a step towards Hypha and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hypha, do you trust us?”

The question derailed Hypha’s train of thought. “Yes. Of course.”

“We trust you, too. We trust you so much that we’re going to put you in charge of the outsiders when they arrive at the end of the week.”

Every instinct in Hypha’s head screamed at him to fly away. Letting in outsiders was dangerous. An open invitation to discord. But this was an order straight from elder Cumulus’s mouth. He couldn’t say no. Worry grew like weeds. He couldn’t let that seed spread. He had to be solid. He had to fight the worry snaking its way deep into his heart. He had to.

The elder monks were waiting for him to respond. “Do you really trust me?” Hypha asked.

Cumulus nodded. “With all my heart.”

Hypha took a deep breath. “Then I’ll do it.”

“Good.” Cumulus squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “We’ll fill you in with the details soon. For now, keep your focus on your work.” With that, both elders turned and walked back towards the temple, leaving Hypha alone on the trail.

Outsiders. Inside. His head spun. He wanted to punch something, to fly away, to do something. Anything. He was almost certain he wouldn’t cry, but he wasn’t certain enough.

In the end, he settled on running straight back to his hovel and staring at the wall for the rest of the evening, fighting hard to keep from crying.

Coward, he thought. What kind of leader was so quick to tears?

Chapter 3

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Sleepless nights made the morning mushroom harvest a struggle. At least there were no snow leopards this time.

A bitterly cold wind whipped across the mountainside, battering Hypha and his meager harvest. He managed to find two mushroom caps—the first time in nearly three months he’d been successful two days in a row.

“That’s a good omen,” Cumulus said when Hypha returned to the temple.

Hypha clutched his robes, still feeling the bite of the wind. “You really think so?”

“Omens often disguise themselves in the mundane.” Cumulus flashed a wry, wrinkled smile. “Get something to eat, then come back to the temple.”

Hypha stood up straight. His tiredness vanished. “For more training?”

“No. Hirruck’s already on his way to the lower villages to gather laborers. They’ll be here in a few hours.”

The news made the hair on Hypha’s neck stand up. A part of him had hoped yesterday’s conversation had only been a bad dream. “How many?”

“However many want to help. But no more than ten.”

Ten ponies under his command. Ten outsiders, no less. The thought was enough to make his stomach flip.

Cumulus saw the grave look on Hypha’s face and laughed. “Remember what we said yesterday. We believe in you.” The smile gave way to measured apprehension. “Are you having second thoughts about your decision?”

“I... no. If you trust me, then I trust me, too.”

Cumulus patted Hypha on the back. “You have the potential to be a good leader. Just relax. You’re not leading an army. Just harvesting wheat.”

Hypha did what he was told and departed to get some breakfast before Hirruck arrived with the outsiders. All of a sudden he was very hungry and very angry. But for the life of him, he couldn’t force down breakfast any more than he could put words to the feelings that turned his stomach..

It’s not leading an army, he tried to reassure himself. No soldiers here.

From the moment they appeared on the horizon, the outsiders were a sensation in the monastery. For a few of the younger acolytes, it was the first time they’d ever seen outsiders. Hirruck brought back six of them in total: two younger boys, an older married couple, and two travelers in maroon cloaks.

Since every monk knew how to fly, no one had ever bothered to build stairs of any kind. The only way the outsiders could even get to the monastery in the first place was to have Hirruck pick them up and fly them over the walls. There was a door built into the side of the wall by the chicken coops, but it opened to a sheer vertical drop. The builders had an interesting sense of humor.

Hirruck made a show of flying the outsiders up one by one and parading them around the monastery. Once the six picked their jaws up off the ground, Hirruck led them over to Hypha, who waited by the entrance of the fenced-in farm.

“If you have any questions,” Hirruck said to the outsiders, “refer to Hypha. He is a trusted acolyte of our order, and will be overseeing your efforts today.”

Hypha put on his best intimidating scowl. The married couple saw right through and immediately started fawning over him. The mare, stout as a boulder, said, “Aren’t you precious!” and pinched his cheeks.

Hypha let out a very undignified yelp and leapt away. Hirruck, the colts, and the travelers shared a laugh.

“I’m sorry,” the lady’s husband said. “We’ve never seen Heavenly Peace monks before. We thought you were... I dunno.” A ghost of a blush crept across his face. “Grizzled kung-fu masters.”

“We are,” Hirruck said with a smirk. “We just prefer pacifism.”

A look passed between the two cloaked travelers, one Hypha couldn’t quite understand. It gave him a queasy feeling in his stomach, like he was being too nosey and saw something he shouldn’t have. But then all six outsiders turned their eyes towards him expectantly. For the sake of the task at hoof, he pushed his hesitations to the back of his mind.

Hypha found leadershipto be almost indistinguishable from doing grunt work, with the exception of being asked lots of questions he didn’t know the answers to.

Luckily, there was more than enough work to keep the party occupied. Between the monotony of harvesting wheat and the anxiety of having outsiders mere inches away, Hypha barely noticed the first four hours go by. By the time they took their lunch break around midday, they were well ahead of schedule, having cleared a full third of the excess farmland.

“Don’t wander off,” Hypha said in between heaping spoonfulls of lentils and bread. “We should rest for another hour, then get back to it.”

“Can we go play with them?” the two outsider boys asked, pointing to a group of acolytes playing soccer in the courtyard.

“No.”

“But—”

“No wandering off.”

A voice from behind Hypha said, “I don’t see the trouble in letting them play.”

Hypha turned around to find Elder Cumulus strolling up to the fence, a trademark placid smile on his face.

“I already said no wandering off,” Hypha replied, weaker this time.

“I could walk them over and supervise them.” Cumulus smiled. “But you’re in charge here. I defer to your judgment.”

Hypha’s frown deepened. Cumulus was being polite with his wording, but Hypha understood an order when he heard one. “Okay, you can take them.”

“And perhaps the others would appreciate a tour of the monastery.”

“They still haven’t finished their—”

He looked over his shoulder to find four sets of bowls and spoons stacked in a tidy tower in front of him. “Uh.” Cumulus had already wandered off towards the courtyard with the colts. “Okay. Fine. But we’re keeping the tour short.”

One of the outsiders in the maroon cloak flashed that same unsettling smile from before. “Fine with us.”

The married woman, Squeeze, was here with her husband Sifter purely out of boredom and a lack of business at Sifter’s blacksmithing business. As they walked the winding trails connecting the sections of the monastery together, they spoke at length about their children and how they all wanted to fly the coop as soon as they were old enough.

“I get it,” Squeeze said, “I was the same way at their age. But would it kill them to write a little more frequently?”

“I don’t see why not,” Hypha replied. Talking with these outsiders left him in a daze. They were nothing like what he expected. Come to think of it, he didn’t even know what he had expected in the first place. Outsiders had always been amorphous, a dark shadow lingering beneath trees and in the deepest parts of ravines. This married couple seemed downright domesticated.

“How often do you write to your parents?”

“The monks are my parents. I can just talk to them.”

“Which ones?”

“All of them. The order supplements its numbers by taking in a lot of orphans, so to eliminate favoritism we’re never told who our real parents are.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be. They need us as much as we need them. Monks are only allowed to breed during full moons, so the birth rate’s naturally pretty low.”

“That’s, uh. Good for them.” Squeeze fell silent for a whole thirty seconds—the first time all day she’d done so. The silence eventually got the better of her, though, and she turned her attention to the two cloaked travelers. “What about you? Do you have children?”

“Nah,” the one with the gruff voice said.

“Ah.” A pause. “Okay.” Another pause. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I got around to asking your names.”

“Yup.”

Another pause. “So, you are...”

“Just travelers.”

Hypha decided internally to call the one with the rocky voice Gruff and the other one Grim. Something was off about them. Hypha couldn’t quite put a hoof on it, but he was sure they were up to no good. In a way, it was almost comforting. Gruff and Grim were exactly the kind of outsiders he was expecting. He would have to keep a close eye on them if he wanted to make it through the day without incident.

“Could we take a look at the temple?” Gruff asked.

“Absolutely not. The temple is for members of the order only.”

“What if it’s just a teeny tiny peek?”

Hypha shook his head. “Even if we were allowed to, the doors are impossible to open without special spells.” He threw in an impulsively barbed, “I don’t suppose you know how to do those?”

Gruff’s lips peeled back in a toothy, manic smile. “Can’t say I do.”

When Hypha and the odd couples returned to the farm, they found no sign of the younger boys. Hypha took a lap around the complex and found them sitting beneath the shade of a stonewood tree next to the temple entrance, talking in hushed voices with Elder Cumulus.

“Hello, Hypha!” Cumulus pointed to his hind legs, currently twisted into a lotus position beneath him. “Perhaps you could help me. It seems I’m stuck.”

Hypha dutifully dumped Cumulus onto his side and untangled his legs while the two outsider boys stifled their laughter.

“I need the outsiders back,” Hypha said.

“Them?” Cumulus asked innocently.

Hypha frowned. Cumulus knew he hadn’t bothered to learn the outsiders’ names. What was the big deal? “Yes, them.”

Cumulus shot him a disappointed look. “Alright Brek, alright Skip. Our time’s up.” The two boys groaned. “No fuss, now. Good work is just as rewarding as good play.” He placed a hoof on Hypha’s shoulder, halting him in place. “I need to speak to Hypha for a moment. I trust you two to find your way back.”

When the two boys were out of earshot, Cumulus straightened himself up and cracked his neck.

“You could have just floated up to get out of that lotus,” Hypha said. “Why’d you do that?”

“I let them beat me in soccer, too. Did you know they’re both orphans?”

“I didn’t. So what?”

“They came here to work because they need food. At any point today, have you stopped and asked yourself where these ponies are coming from?”

“I know where they came from. Outside.”

“They’d make good acolytes, Hypha. It’s never too late to join the order.”

Confusion clouded Hypha’s head as he made his way back to the farming area. Was this whole thing some strange new recruiting campaign? If it was, why wouldn’t Cumulus just tell him? The elder monk was holding something back. Hypha could feel it.

He was so lost in his thoughts, it took him almost ten minutes to realize Gruff and Grim had disappeared.

“They said they were looking for the bathroom,” Squeeze said with a shrug.

Weird. Hypha had already shown them where the outhouse was. With a grunt of effort, he took to the sky and saw two maroon cloaks fluttering towards the temple.

His heart grew heavy. He sank back to earth. Cumulus was going to kill him.

He took a more direct route to the temple so he would beat the two pegasi without being noticed. When Gruff and Grim arrived at the temple entrance to find Hypha waiting for them, their faces registered surprise, if only for a moment.

“This isn’t the way to the bathroom,” Hypha said.

“Our mistake,” Grim replied. His voice was smoother than the finest silk, deep and low and authoritative. “We just wanted to take a look around.”

“I told you, this place is off limits.” He felt terribly exposed by himself. Two on one, he thought. But that was silly. This was a farming job. No soldiers here. Right?

“For the tourists and the brats? Sure. You and us? We’re all grown-ups. Let’s have a peek. Real quick.”

Hypha puffed out his chest. “No.”

The smile dripped off Grim’s face. “You got a problem?”

“Do you?”

A moment passed. The air bristled like the negative space between lightning clouds. Waiting for something to slip and set it all off.

Grim broke first. His features relaxed. His shoulders drooped. “No problem here, kid. Just curious, is all.”

Hypha let out a silent sigh of relief. Maybe he was being too harsh on these ponies. The memory of his conversation with elder Cumulus came back to him. It’s never too late to join the order. These ponies didn’t strike Hypha as particularly interested in joining the order. But maybe that wasn’t really the point.

“It’s okay,” Hypha said. “If you wanted to learn more about the order, I’m sure the temple historian would be happy to give you a lesson once we’re done working—”

Grim lunged at him.

The two collided and tumbled across the temple dias. The back of Hypha’s head cracked the stone floor. His vision flashed white. He let out a gasp as someone kicked him in the ribs. He felt something inside him crack.

All of a sudden, Cumulus was at his side, drawing runes in the air above him. An icy cold numbness, a healing spell Hypha recognized from a time he’d accidentally flown into a stonewood tree as a foal, froze the pain.

“Can you hear me?” Cumulus asked. Hypha nodded and tried to sit up, but Cumulus gently held him down. “Don’t move until the spell is complete.”

From the corner of his vision, Hypha saw a dozen monks hovering around him. Spears dangled from their hooves like hornet stingers. They floated so serenely, their faces masks of perfect focus.

He heard Grim’s voice, smooth and diplomatic, say, “I thought you were pacifists. Pacifists don’t lure unarmed travelers into a trap and stab them.”

“I said we prefer pacifism. And who’s trapping who?”

That was Hirruck. Hypha couldn’t see him. Where was he? He tried to sit up again, but Cumulus put both of his hooves on Hypha’s shoulders.

Grim spoke again, his voice all gravel and poison honey. “Y’know what? You’re right. I think I prefer pacifism, too.”

“Right now, I’d prefer to tress you and throw you off the mountain.”

“Please let me explain. This is a big misunderstanding.”

“What’s the design on your cloak pendant?” Hirruck asked. Hypha heard nervous hoofsteps on stone. The monks in the air tensed.

“I don’t know what—”

“They’re Derechans!”

More monks appeared, swords and spears and maces clutched in their hooves. Tension condensed in the air, thick like fog rolling unstoppably down the mountainside.

“We’re taking you down the mountain,” Hirruck said in a tone that made it clear there would be no negotiation. “If we find you within a mile of the monastery after sundown, we’ll fill you with arrows.”

“I’m not sure I trust you to carry me all the way down. Accidents happen.”

“You’re right. Accidents happen.” To the assembled monks, Hirruck said, “Someone get me a rope.”

There was a commotion and a fluttering of cloaks, and for a moment Hypha thought the two scouts were going to fight rather than allow themselves to be tied up. But after a moment, the sound of hoofsteps grew distant. Hirruck and a contingent of armed monks peeled off to fly the Derechans away.

“It’s alright,” Cumulus whispered into Hypha’s ear. “They’re gone.”

“Did they—”

“They didn’t get in the temple. You stopped them. You were very brave.”

“The others,” Hypha murmured. Speaking made his head throb, but he couldn’t help himself. His vision spun into kaleidoscopic spirals. “Brek. Skip.”

“Don’t worry. They’re safe.”

Hypha shook his head. “No—you should throw them out too, just to be safe.”

The healing spell worked its way through Hypha’s body at a glacial pace. Cumulus told him it took longer than normal because of the sevarity of his injuries. The Derechan scout had broken two ribs and fractured his skull. Injuries like that took time to heal.

“Everything will be back to normal in a couple of hours,” he promised. “Just stay still.”

In the hours Hypha was immobilized, the other four outsiders were expelled from the monastery. After some protest, they were allowed to take their portion of the already-harvested crops. The leftovers were abandoned in the field.

A council meeting was scheduled for the following afternoon. Hypha worried they would expel him too for screwing up his task. Cumulus insisted he did nothing wrong, but deep down Hypha was certain it was all his fault. He knew something like this was bound to happen. It had been his job to handle the outsiders. Someone had to take responsibility.

Hypha tried to imagine what Wrender would say when the expulsion order came down, but drew a blank. It hurt too much to think.

By the time the healing spell finished mending Hypha’s skull, it was nearly dark. The clasp of one of the Derechan scouts had come undone during their hasty exit. Hypha saw it shining on the stone floor and went over to examine it. Their sigil, two outstretched wings and a square spiral in the center, was stamped into the metal, along with a numeral, “V.”

An unseasonable frost hit the mountain that night. The crops that hadn’t already been harvested froze to death in the field.

Chapter 4

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The healing spell twisted Hypha’s dreams into feverish nightmares. In them, he was finally allowed to participate in the mushroom ritual. He donned an orange cloak and followed a line of similarly-dressed monks down into the deepest levels of the temple. As he entered the sacred chamber, he was shocked to see the two Derechans, Grim and Gruff. They loomed over him like stone sentinels. Fog poured from between their teeth. They leaned forward to devour him whole.

Cumulus took notice of Hypha’s state when he reported for mushroom harvesting that morning. “Reported” was not the right word to describe it—Hypha crash-landed and almost bowled the elderly monk over.

“Go back to bed,” Cumulus said. “You need more rest.”

“I’m fine.” Hypha huffed and puffed and rose wearily into the air. “I can go.”

Cumulus grabbed his tail and pulled him back to earth. Hypha didn’t have the strength to fight it. “Even if you didn’t fall off the mountain, you’d never find anything in your state.”

The look of concern on Cumulus’s face, along with the lingering aftereffects of having his skull cracked and magically mended, broke Hypha’s will to argue. “Ok.”

“Get some sleep, then report to the temple at three this afternoon. That’s when we’ll hear your testimony about yesterday’s incident.” He must have seen Hypha’s eyes go wide, because he hastened to add, “Again, you’re not in trouble.”

The words left Hypha entirely unmollified, but he was too tired to voice his anxiety. He had just turned around and started to trudge towards his hovel when he felt Cumulus pulling him back.

“Wait.” Cumulus gestured to someone behind Hypha. “Wrender, come here.”

Hypha spun around to see Wrender walking towards them, his face impassive save a single raised eyebrow.

“What is it, elder Cumulus?”

“Walk Hypha back to his hovel. He’s not feeling well.”

Wrender scowled, but he would no sooner disobey Cumulus than Hypha would.

The two navigated the winding dirt path back towards the acolyte hovels in simmering silence. Hypha waited for the taunts to start falling, but nothing came. Wrender spared a few glances his way to make sure he kept up, but otherwise said nothing the entire walk back.

When they reached Hypha’s hovel, they both paused, waiting for the other to say something.

“Good luck with the harvest,” Hypha finally said.

“Thanks. Uh. Sorry about what happened yesterday. That must have been pretty scary.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Hypha said defensively. But there was no malice on the other colt’s face. Just the tired look of someone who’d borne witness to violence.

“Well. See you later.” Wrender turned around and took to the air. Hypha watched him until he cleared the temple walls. Then he went inside to rest.

When Hypha emerged from his hovel several hours later, he found the fog had abated. Sunlight lanced his eyes.

Strange, he thought as he blinked away sunspots. The monastery sat just inside the cloud layer—a purposeful bit of planning by the original builders to help conceal it from the outside world. Direct sunlight was a rarity. Other monks took note too, clinging to the shady sides of buildings and pulling their robes over their heads.

Without the perpetual mist concealing them, outsiders could see the monastery with its ivy-choked walls and fluttering banners from miles away. Sunlight meant exposure. Sunlight meant danger. He hoped it wouldn’t last long.

When Hypha walked in the temple meeting room, the room went dead silent. Forty monks sitting around a central table all paused their conversations and looked directly at him in unison.

Hypha flinched. “Sorry. I can wait outside.”

It was Hirruck who responded first. “Stay. We understand you’ve been feeling unwell since yesterday. We appreciate you taking the time to see us.”

The warmth in Hirruck’s voice surprised Hypha. Cumulus scooted over on his sitting cushion and motioned Hypha over. The young acolyte wasted no time moving into the comforting shadow of his mentor.

The attention of the room turned back to Hirruck. He gestured to a large parchment map on the table which depicted the Stonewood mountains and all its surrounding areas. Five-pointed stars marked the nineteen monasteries of the Heavenly Peace order. A few of the larger outsider villages were also marked with plain circles.

“This map,” Hirruck announced, “is wrong.”

A beat of confused silence passed. Finally, elder Cumulus said, “We’ve been using that map for two hundred years.”

“And for those two hundred years, it’s been correct.” Hirruck shook his head. “Now it’s not.”

“The mountains may float, Hirruck, but they don’t float away.”

Hirruck laughed along with the rest of the assembled monks. “You’re right, Cumulus. The mountains haven’t changed. But I think something else has.”

Hirruck opened up several smaller scrolls and spread them over the map. “I’ve been looking through our weather records. In the past five years, we’ve seen rising air pressure driving warm air into the mountains. This is probably what’s caused the recent boom in our wheat crop.” His eyes flicked to Hypha, but didn’t linger. “This is important because if the air pressure gets high enough, it can start to affect the jetstream.”

“The jetstream is half a continent away,” Cumulus cut in. “What’s it got to do with the attack?”

Using his hoof, Hirruck drew a line along the top of the map from west to east. “At a certain threshold, the pocket of high air pressure here in the south would start to push the jetstream north. If that bubble of high pressure were to suddenly burst, or even just diminish slightly, the jetstream could snap south like a rubber band. Anything caught up in the snap would be dragged east.” His voice rose. “The jetstream can’t move a mountain. But it could move a cloud city!”

His words hung in the air, catching the candlelight like dust.

“I suppose it’s not impossible,” Cumulus said. “How far east do you think Derecho’s moved?”

“It’s hard to say for sure. Could be a few miles. Could be a few hundred miles.”

The room exploded.

Hirruck did his best to quiet the other monks, but Hypha could see the old monk wanted to shout right back at them. “Listen—please, just listen!” The voices grew louder. “We’ve got word from Yangshuah. From Gleeful. From Shining Rock. These Derechan legionaries are everywhere. Why would they shift their focus all of a sudden?”

“Why, indeed,” Cumulus said. “Let’s be generous. Let’s say Derecho moved three hundred miles east. That still puts them nine hundred miles away from us.”

“It’s a stretch, I’ll admit. A march of that length would push the limits of logistical capability. But if you take into account the political situation—” More voices drowned Hirruck out. “It’s irresponsible to ignore it. The old fifth legion’s general died six months ago, and this new upstart Romulus needs a successful campaign to prove himself.”

“That’s unverified outsider information. What if it’s false?”

“This attack is all the proof we need. The Derechans already conquered the entire west of the continent. There’s no place left for the new general to earn his stripes. Except here.”

Monks began rising to their hooves, arguing amongst themselves in wavering voices. Their cries knotted Hypha’s stomach. He’d never seen the elders so animated before. So angry. Even Cumulus’s face was twisted with worry.

“They’re here!” Hirruck all but shouted. “They’re here right now! And Hypha—”

All at once, the room went dead silent.

Hypha felt every set of eyes turn to him simultaneously. A cold shiver ran up his spine. He shifted from side to side on his cushion. Earth pony intuition was stalwart and preferred digging in to flying away, but in that moment every bit of his body screamed at him to bolt.

“They were my responsibility,” Hypha finally said. “I should’ve stopped them. This is my fault.”

Hirruck’s expression softened. The air in the room warmed from deathly cold to just above freezing. “None of this is your fault, Hypha. If anyone’s to blame, it’s us. We put you in danger without even knowing it.”

Something in the way Hirruck spoke struck a nerve in Hypha. “But you did know.”

Hirruck seemed confused. “What do you mean?”

“You knew bringing outsiders into the monastery would be bad news. They’re dangerous.”

“Ok, Hypha. We hear you. I asked you here because we need to know if you saw or heard anything that would help us understand why they’re here.”

“Why? They hate us. That’s why.” He looked to his side and saw a deep frown on Cumulus’s face. The weight of it was astonishing. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t speak out of turn. I didn’t hear anything about their plans. All I know is, they wanted to get into the temple.”

Cumulus stood and draped a hoof over Hypha’s shoulder. “Thank you. We appreciate your candor.” He leaned in close and whispered, “Wait outside.”

Hypha left the chamber and did as he was told, busying himself with watching the oil torches burn until the meeting adjourned. He racked his brain trying to figure out what he’d said wrong, but his thoughts kept slipping away before they could solidify. The lingering effects of the healing spell still left his mind shrouded in fog. Maybe that’s where all the cloud cover had gone—right between his ears.

The meeting adjourned. Cumulus was the last monk to file out of the temple. His smile was still absent, but his look was far less severe than before. His eyes had a strange faraway look, like he was trying to pick out a lone figure standing on a distant mountain ridge.

“I’m sorry,” Hypha said before Cumulus had a chance to speak. “I didn’t mean to speak out like that.”

Cumulus patted Hypha on the shoulder and turned him towards the courtyard. He gestured to the sky. “Strange, isn’t it?”

The sky had cleared completely. Aside from a few lingering traces of smokey clouds clinging to the neighboring mountaintops, the air was completely clear. The walking paths were packed with monks, shrouded in their heavy cloaks and burdened with an additional layer of shawls and sunhats.

“The sun?”

Cumulus nodded. “Seems like we’re seeing it more and more these days.”

“Does it have anything to do with that warm air and pressure thing Hirruck was talking about?”

“Perceptive! Yes, I think so.” He flipped up the hood of his cloak and motioned for Hypha to do the same. “Mosquitohawk spirits will be out in force today.”

Hypha nodded and did as he was told. Mosquitohawk spirits were dangerous, impossible to detect beasts. Their bites caused no pain—at least, not at first. Monks who’d been attacked would wake up the next day to find their arms inflamed and blistered red. The iching burn would fade, leaving brown spots at the spot of the bite. The only way to stop them was to not attract their attention in the first place. By covering up, the spirits couldn’t see they were ponies, so they wouldn’t attack.

Clear skies brought other monsters, it seemed.

“What do you think of Hirruck’s theory?” Cumulus asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of general Romulus before.”

“Some older monks keep up with outsider politics for practical purposes. But it’s not something I like discussing with acolytes. I’m making the exception now because you’ve been dragged into this mess, and you deserve to know what’s going on.”

Hypha smiled. Hearing that made him feel more grown-up. “Maybe they’re out here looking for easy targets, and because we put up a fight yesterday, they won’t bother coming back.”

“But why send only two of them? We know they’re here now.”

Hypha thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Try to imagine it from their perspective. What would this monastery look like to someone who’d never heard of the order before?”

“Tall? Mountainy? I’m sorry Cumulus, I just don’t know. I’m not one of them.”

Cumulus chuckled again. This time it sounded sad. “You’re not as right as you think you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hypha, we’re all family here. Everything I say, I say out of love. You have the potential to be a great leader, but there are many lessons you need to learn before you can assume that sort of responsibility.” He paused to consider his next words. “One of those lessons is empathy.”

“Empathy? I love the other acolytes. I know I argue with Wrender a lot, but I don’t hate him.”

“I’m not talking about the other acolytes.”

“Then who?” His own question crystalised the answer in his mind. “Them?”

“It’s one of life’s most important lessons. This monastery isn’t a monolith. There’s a whole world outside these walls, and if you want to progress in your studies and live up to your potential, you need to learn about what’s out there.”

“What’s there to learn?” Hypha snapped. His head started throbbing again. He turned away, and the first thing his eyes found was the farm area in the middle of the compound. The remains of yesterday’s lost harvest still sat on the ground, rotting into compost under the harsh sun. “They have nothing to teach me.”

Cumulus said something, but Hypha wasn’t listening. All he could think about was the map of the stonewood mountains, his entire known world. Where its western border ended, he tried to imagine the vast cloud city of Derecho floating above the parchment.

Thoughts of cities in the clouds kept him awake that evening. The healing spell finished working its way through his head, but the fog still lingered.

After a few hours of staring at the ceiling, he gave up trying to sleep and slipped outside. The sky was still clear, and the stars were out. He’d seen stars a million times before, but never directly from the monastery. They looked unsettlingly like eyes. He wished the mists would roll back in already.

Soft hoofsteps sounded behind him. He turned around to find elder Cumulus coming down the path.

“I knew you’d be out here,” Cumulus said with a wink.

“How?”

“Sometimes we just know what we need to know.” The old monk stopped short of Hypha and gestured towards the temple. “There’s something I want to show you.”

The interior torches in the temple were still lit for the few monks who wanted to practice late-night meditation or get a few extra hours of work in while the rest of the world slept. The shadows seemed darker down here. Hypha wondered if there was magic in them, too.

Cumulus took him deeper into the temple than he’d ever been before, into a small room about the size of his hovel. Parchment stacks lined the wall from floor to ceiling in a chaotic spread. Some were labeled. Most weren’t.

“One of these days, I’m going to organize this,” Cumulus muttered. He went to one of the stacks towards the back of the room and started thumbing through papers. When the papers became too high for him to reach, he floated into the air. Hypha marveled at how effortlessly the old monk achieved flight.

Cumulus pulled a massive dust-covered book from the pile. He set it on a table in the middle of the room and motioned for Hypha to come closer. The book was as thick as it was wide. Hundreds of loose pages were stuffed in between the bound ones.

“This is the record of all the new births and adoptions for the order,” Cumulus said.

Hypha let out a gasp and looked away. Monks weren’t supposed to know which of them were natural births and which ones were adopted from the outside world.

“Look here,” Cumulus said. “It’s okay. Everyone finds out eventually.” He thumbed through a few of the newer pages until he found the entry he was looking for.

Hypha looked. His own name was there on the page, written in Cumulus’s handwriting.

“I’m an orphan,” Hypha said softly.

“From one of the poorest, unfriendliest villages on the entire continent,” Cumulus said with a soft chuckle. “I was out there with a few other monks purchasing supplies when we found you. You were about six months old, still too young to take care of yourself. Someone had abandoned you a day or two before we arrived. If we’d been delayed even one day, you certainly would have died.”

Hypha’s stomach flipped. His name on the page looked so ordinary. Had he really almost died as a foal? “Who are my real parents, then?”

“Us. The monks. Your birth parents are irrelevant. Family is whoever raises you up.”

Cumulus slid the book over to Hypha. The pages were warded with preservation spells that made his hooves tingle when he touched them. He turned a few pages back from his own and leapt ten years into the past. Another few pages, another decade. He turned a quarter of the book over and saw names four hundred years old.

“How far back does it go?” Hypha asked.

“See for yourself.”

Hypha turned to the very last page of the book. The page had deteriorated slightly, and the wards were even stronger in order to hold the decaying page together. He could barely read the names, but the dates stood out clearly. The last one in the column read, 10,796.

Hypha’s eyes went wide. This was the roster of the founding members of the Roseroot monastery. The names on it were nearly two thousand years old.

In the column containing parents’ names, someone had made a crude drawing of a snow leopard.

Chapter 5

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An extra portion of dinner and an extra hour of sleep left Hypha feeling well enough to rejoin the other acolytes for their mushroom hunt the following morning. Instead of seeing the acolytes off, however, Cumulus held them at the temple dias.

“Air’s kinda weird today,” he said to no one in particular. None of the acolytes knew what he meant, and given recent events, no one really felt like asking.

They were all sitting there, patiently waiting for Cumulus to make a decision, when a colossal bank of clouds blew in from out of nowhere. Everything beyond the temple dias disappeared, swallowed up by a grey soup. Fog was supposed to come down the mountain at a slow, predictable pace. This fog seemed to rise right out of the ground. It felt clammy. Cloying. Downright creepy.

Cumulus’s face set in a deep frown. He closed his eyes, flung his arms out wide, then drew them into his chest. Bands of glowing vapor snaked up his arms. He drew a series of runes in the air, then took a powerful step forward and pushed them away.

The runes vanished. A magical wind gusted across the dias, blowing the fog away. Whatever mysterious energy had brought the fog down pushed back against Cumulus’s spell. The fog equalized into a domed lid of clouds, obscuring everything outside the monastery walls.

“Very weird,” Cumulus muttered.

Just then, Hypha noticed something moving through the fog.

A nearby monk taking a walk along one of the winding dirt paths saw the same thing. He looked up. A flash of black fell from the fog and hit him square in the chest. He stumbled sideways and collapsed.

Hypha pointed. “Is he okay?”

Cumulus and the other acolytes turned to follow Hypha’s hoof.

A spear fell to the earth in front of them with a dull thunk.

A few acolytes flinched. Hypha just stared. The spear looked different than the ones the monks used. The handle was jet-black. A red scrap of cloth was tied to the end.

A war cry echoed over the mountain.

The group of acolytes finally found their voices, shouting panicked questions over one another. Cumulus held up his hoof, silencing the whole group at once.

“Get into the temple,” he said. His voice radiated calm. “Seal yourself in and stay put. I’ll come get you when it’s safe.”

Wrender let out a nervous whinney. “Are we not safe right now?”

On any other occasion, Hypha would have laughed out loud at how childish Wrender sounded. But he had no doubt he’d sound just as ridiculous if he opened his own mouth.

Another spear landed in the ground. “I don’t know,” Cumulus said. “Please, everyone go inside the temple now.”

They heard a shout behind them. They turned and saw Hirruck shoot through the air at impossible speed and land effortlessly next to the dias. Half a dozen armed monks followed.

“They’re back,” Hirruck said, panting. “Hundreds of ‘em.”

“I knew it!” Hypha hollered. “Cumulus, I knew it—” The look of horror on his mentor’s face shattered his bravado into a million pieces. Cumulus was a master of finding the good in any situation. If he couldn’t do that now, then maybe they were even worse off than Hypha thought.

“Get inside,” Cumulus said—no, growled at the acolytes. Growled like a snow leopard protecting its cubs. “Now.”

Before Hypha could move, a whistling sound filled the air. Hirruck’s eyes went wide. He made a dash for the protection of the dias.

He was too late. A volley of arrows fell from the fog like water dripping off a high roof. One went into his shoulder. Another hit the small of his back. A third went through his neck. Thud, thud, thud. The monks around him got it even worse.

Hypha screamed. He took off towards the wounded monks, but Cumulus was on him in a second, smothering him in a vicelike grip. Hypha squirmed wildly. “We have to help him!” What was wrong with Cumulus? Hirruck was still alive, still crawling towards the dias. His orange robes overflowed with red. They had to get him.

“Keep the other acolytes safe,” Cumulus whispered to Hypha. “Please. I need you to—”

A pegasus in an alien suit of black tiled armor landed amongst the fallen monks. He wrenched a spear from the ground and moved towards Cumulus, murder in his eyes.

Cumulus drew another rune in the air. This one exploded into pure white light. An arc of lightning leapt from his hoof and struck the assailant squarely in the chest, knocking him back. The sickening smell of burning fur and ozone filled the air. He fell amongst the monks’ bodies and went still.

Hypha staggered back, his ears ringing. He’d never seen a spell that strong. His vision blurred with afterimages of the lightning.

Through the haze, he saw an entire formation of black-clad legionaries landing in the central field. A few monks managed to make it into the air with spears and swords to contest them. None of them lasted long. One by one they jerked and fell to the ground, bitten by invisible vipers.

The other acolytes fell over themselves to get into the temple. Wrender inched his way towards one of the dead monks, trying to get a better look at the poor pony’s face. Cumulus took off towards the cafeteria, where a group of twenty or so monks were making a move on the cafeteria. Black shapes crawled up the walls of the building, hacking away at the windows, trying to get in. There were acolytes in there making breakfast, Hypha thought. He could almost smell the lentils and bread through the burnt ozone. This had to be some crazy dream. It had to be. It—

Wrender stumbled away from the body of the dead monk. He took off in the opposite direction and ran straight into Hypha. The two hit the floor hard. The pain in Hypha’s head came back with a vengeance.

“Watch it!” Hypha said. He picked himself up off the stone floor just as two familiar ponies landed at the edge of the dias.

Grim and Gruff had forgone their maroon cloaks in favor of black-tiled armor. Their faces peeked out from behind pointed helmets. In their hooves, they clutched identical short swords.

“Hypha,” Gruff said in that awful, jagged voice of his. “Glad you’re okay.”

That voice put the final piece of the puzzle in place. Hypha understood with agonizing clarity that he was about to die. He’d die violently and slowly, having never experienced the mushroom ceremonies that all monks dreamed of. He’d die without ever learning the secrets of the world. He’d die next to Wrender, of all ponies. What a way to go.

Wender’s voice broke Hypha from his spiral. “What do we do now?”

“What do you mean, what do we do?”

“I don’t know! You were right about those outsiders.”

“I mean, yeah, but—” Grim and Gruff took a step closer. The crashing sounds of battle fell away. Terror dripped over Hypha’s heart like molten lead. “I—I—”

It was then that he noticed Grim and Gruff weren’t actually looking at him, but slightly behind him. He followed their eyes to the main temple entrance. The doors were wide open.

Of course. They wanted in.

Hypha knew it would be all but impossible to stop them. But perhaps he could slow them down. “Wrender,” he said under his breath, “do you remember which way Cumulus went?”

Wrender nodded. “The cafeteria.”

“Go get him and bring him back. We need him to close the doors.”

“The—” Wrender looked behind him. His eyes bugged as he caught sight of the open doors. “Right.”

Wrender threw himself into the air and took off towards the writhing orange and black shapes crawling over the cafeteria like so many warring ants.

“We’ll kill your friend later,” Grim said. “You got us in a lot of trouble last time we came around. When we’re done with you—”

He never got to finish. In a flash of motion, Hypha scooped up a chunk of rock from a shattered dias stone and flung it as hard as he could at Grim. It sailed wide of Grim but grazed Gruff’s ear, drawing blood.

Grim leapt forward and swung his sword wildly. The larger pony’s lack of speed was the only thing that saved Hypha from having his head lopped clean off.

Hypha backed up slowly towards the temple doors. He got his hooves on another rock, danced out of the way of another strike from Grim, and flung it as hard as he could. This one found Grim’s jaw. He staggered back, spitting out teeth. Gruff, his ear still trickling blood, leapt forward to cover his comrade.

Seeing Grim’s blood on the dias sent a dizzying rush of adrenaline through Hypha’s veins. But he let his guard down, and Gruff saw it. The legionnaire surged forward, tackling Hypha. The two ponies hit the floor hard and rolled together.

Hypha scrambled away. He saw another rock, but before he could go for it Gruff’s leather-bound hoof caught Hypha on the chin.

His head snapped back. Temple bells rang in his ears. His eyes fluttered. Gruff hit him again on the other side. Then he got on top of him and started pummeling his face.

This was it. One tooth came loose. Then another. Blood poured from a cut on his forehead. His eyes swelled until they were nearly shut. More blows. More screaming. Sound narrowed to a dull roar. He barely felt any pain now. The world closed to a sliver of light.

Just then, Hypha felt a rush of air surge through the dias. Something lifted Gruff off of him and flung him away. The world and the pain rushed back into focus. He was wheezing and crying and bleeding everywhere. But he was alive.

Through the blood in his half-shut eyes, Hypha saw Gruff land in a heap on the other side of the dias. Cumulus was on him in an instant, driving a right hook into his helmet before stomping on his forelegs with all his might. Gruff let out a trumpeting howl of agony.

Without pausing, Cumulus whirled around and drew a set of runes in the air with his hooves. A ghost of a smile crossed his face as he hammered them home.

The massive stonewood doors came to life, swinging shut at impossible speed. A long whoosh of air followed by a colossal sound like an avalanche shook the whole dias. The ringing in Hypha’s ears redoubled.

Somepony landed beside him. Hypha flinched. “Idiot,” he heard the familiar voice of Wrender say, “it’s me.”

“Oh,” Hypha croaked. Even his voice sounded bruised.

With Wrender’s assistance, Hypha limped to the edge of the dias. Fires burned in some of the adjacent buildings, painting the unnatural fog a patchwork orange.

“Boys!” The two turned at the sound of elder Cumulus’s voice. He stood halfway between them and Grim, who had regained his bearings and advanced on them at a slow creep. “This fight’s over. Can you fly?”

Wrender looked to Hypha, who nodded shakily. “Yeah, we can fly.”

“Good. You need to get out of here. Go north to Gleeful or Shining Rock. Tell them what happened.” He turned to face the approaching Derechans. “Keep each other safe.”

Wrender opened his mouth to protest, but just then a burst of arrows flew through the air beside them. Cumulus groaned as one struck him in the hind leg. Blood wept through his robes. More Derechans appeared behind Grim.

“Go now!” Cumulus commanded.

Cumulus reared up onto his hind legs and drew a complex series of runes into the air. Static electricity filled the air. A bolt of lightning flew from the elder monk’s hooves, splashing the group of legionnaires behind Grim. They convulsed, frozen in place, then collapsed. Their armor smoldered. A few rose shakily to their hooves. Most didn’t.

Hypha stared in awe at the display. He had no idea a pony could channel that much magic. Even as the spell dissipated, he felt ambient energy crackling in the air.

He would have stood there gawking forever had Wrender not grabbed him by his robes and dragged him into the air.

The momentary lift helped a little, but within seconds a scream of pain erupted from everywhere at once. It was difficult enough to stay airborne in the best of circumstances. Now, beaten, bloody, and terrified, it was all but impossible.

The two tumbled half a length above the ground, kicking up rocks and dirt as their hooves dragged along the surface. They careened around groups of legionnaires and monks locked in fierce combat. More lightning exploded all around them. The fires tinged the air with sulfur and smoke.

As they approached the northern wall, Wrender called out, “Climb, idiot!”

Hypha screamed in agony. His chest burned like he’d been hit with a red-hot arrowhead. He rose, sputtered, rose again, lost momentum, and started to fall. The lip of the wall loomed large. He wasn’t going to make it. He’d hit the wall and crack like an egg. Twenty yards. Ten. Five.

Wrender descended from above, locked his hooves around Hypha’s barrel, and dragged him over the wall with inches to spare.

They banked together and rose. The mountain dropped away beneath them. They plowed headfirst through the curtain of fog and out the other side. Vapor trailed like a comet’s tail behind them. The sun burned fiercely through a thin layer of morning haze.

The two settled into a glide but dared not dump speed. The sounds of battle grew muffled. Hypha heard his own breath rattling in his ears and let out an incredulous laugh.

“You’re heavy,” Wrender muttered.

“You’re lazy.”

An arrow whizzed past them.

The two acolytes let out a unison cry of surprise. Wrender dropped Hypha, who fell a terrifying twenty yards before leveling out. Hypha flinched as he heard another arrow go by. He looked behind him just in time to see a third rushing towards him, its edge glinting murderously in the sunlight.

He rolled at the last moment. The arrow passed beside him and fell harmlessly into the abyss below.

Hypha let out a desperate sigh of relief. He turned to Wrender and flashed a wide-eyed, amazed smile.

Wrender smiled back. That was when the spear hit him.

It caught Wrender in the foreleg and went all the way through his torso, pinning the limb to his side. Almost immediately he started to spiral downward. He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Hypha hovered in place, paralyzed, as Wrender picked up speed.

A flash of light above him caught his eye. Another arrow whizzed past. He saw black shapes breaking away from the mountainside and coming his way.

Hypha looked down and saw to his horror that Wrender was already a hundred yards away. If he could even catch up with him, would he still be alive? How could he pull Wrender out of a dive if he could barely fly himself?

Hypha turned tail and flew away.

Chapter 6

View Online

In the minutes after he lost sight of Wrender, Hypha managed to gain a little altitude. But fear and adrenaline could only carry him so long. He went into a glide and tried to take stock of his situation.

The mathematics of flight came automatically, honed by instinct and training. Gliding was easy, but not free. This part of the mountainside was relatively level. He needed to land here. If he dawdled, he’d lose altitude, and the mountainside would fall off into a series of sheer drops. He’d have to glide all the way down to sea level to find a safe landing spot. He’d be stranded without the strength to fly back up.

No, his best hope was steering towards one of the nearby rocky outcropping and trying for a clean crash.

Tears froze painfully in his eyes. When he tried to wipe them away, they scratched his eyelids so badly they bled. The cuts on his face had sealed themselves, but the swelling got worse by the second. He guaged he had about four hundred yards until impact.

He hadn’t seen where Wrender fell. Maybe he got lucky and caught an updraft. Maybe he fell all the way down to the valley, where the ice flows and glaciers gave way to fields of jagged rocks. If he found a smooth outcropping to land on, he’d have a chance. Maybe. Three hundred yards--no, more like two seventy five.

Blood got in his eyes. He blinked hard but couldn’t clear his vision. Two hundred. He was running out of steam now. One seventy five. He needed to land. He needed clear ground.

Who was he kidding? Wrender was dead. Cumulus was dead. All of his friends, everyone he’d ever known, was dead. One hundred yards. His ribs shifted again, sending a jolt of pain up his side. Seventy five. The ground began to blur beneath him. Fifty.

He remembered Cumulus talking of crops, of waxing and waning. Twenty five. He heard Hirruck speaking in a distant voice. Hypha couldn’t pick out the words. Ten. At the last second, he saw a flat outcropping and angled towards it. Five. It was all gone. All gone.

The mountain embraced him.

His front hooves absorbed the energy of the crash, shattering like eggshells. His head smacked against the rocks half a dozen times as he cartwheeled. The loose rib broke free. Whole chunks of his mane and tail ripped free. He tumbled over and over and over.

When he finally came to a stop, he laid there for a long time, staring up into space as the cloud of impact dust settled around him.

Slowly, he sat up and took stock of his injuries. His right hoof was completely degloved, shorn down to the fibrous vertical sinew. His left hoof was severely cracked, but could hold some weight. He packed the left with snow until the bleeding stopped, then took stock of his surroundings.

There wasn’t much to see. He recognized the outcropping he’d landed on and recalled it was about a mile away from the monastery. Fog—the natural kind—clung to the mountainside, cutting his visibility to a few hundred yards in any direction. That didn’t matter much. He’d flown around these parts enough to know where he needed to go. Whether or not he had the strength to get himself there still remained to be seen.

Cumulus had instructed him to get to a neighboring temple and tell them what happened. But the nearest one, Shining Rock, was a full two-day flight, and he was too exhausted to hover more than a few seconds, much less traverse multiple mountains.

He had two options: climb up a sheer mountainside on two split hooves and pray for favorable gliding winds, or stay put and die slowly of exposure.

A dry groan of pain escaped his lips. He laid down on his side to get the weight off his hooves. As he set his head down in the dirt, he noticed a familiar lumpy brown shape protruding from the far side of the outcropping, where the horizontal rock shelf met the vertical cliff. Four mother sky mushrooms at the peak of ripeness.

He stared, frozen, dumbfounded. It was a miracle. Nothing should ever grow on this ledge. What little soil clung to the rock was too thin. The winds were too harsh. And yet.

Mother sky mushrooms were supposed to be cleaned, cut into uniform size, dried, and eaten in the company of other monks in a warm and supportive environment. The resulting four to six hours of plant-induced ecstacy could range from profound to peaceful to psychotic. The monks considered it irresponsibly dangerous to partake of such a potent psychedelic without a partner present.

Hypha leaned down and pulled the caps out of the ground with his teeth. They were unexpectedly fibrous, bitter, with bits of dirt clinging to the bottom.

When he was done chewing, he laid down on the bare rock and closed his eyes.

The mist coalesced into shapes from Hypha’s memory.

Far above him, he heard the telltale rumble of an avalanche. He squinted to see where the rocks would fall and saw jagged shapes moving through the mist, coming right for him. He sat up only to fall right back down again. Ribbons of blood filled the cracks in his split hoof. He crawled away on his belly, pushing himself across the ground with his working rear hooves. When he chanced a look back, he saw the rocks falling towards him.

But Hypha was mistaken. The shapes emerged from the mist not as rocks, but as his friends and mentors. Hypha heard their laughter echo all around him. He cried out, but they didn’t seem to hear him. They flew right over his head and disappeared down the mountainside. When he managed to drag himself to the edge and look down, they were gone.

Then he heard another sound, this one rising up from the earth. He turned just in time to see a grove of massive stonewood trees split the rock beneath him and shoot into the sky. Something was wrong with the trees, though. All the branches were scourged away. Only the thick trunks remained, tapering to a sharp point at the very top.

Hypha crawled over to the nearest tree and pressed his cheek against its side. The bark was smooth like polished glass. In its reflection, he saw the mist behind him coalesce into a snow leopard.

It moved like smoke. Its eyes locked onto Hypha. He leapt up, terrified, and a piece of his left front hoof chipped off. He swallowed a howl of pain and fell back onto his haunches.

The snow leopard grinned at him, the greedy smile of a starving predator. Rivulets of saliva flowed between jagged, protruding teeth.

It closed to ten yards. Then five. The snow leopard opened its mouth impossibly wide, so wide its chin brushed the ground. Its jaw contained row after row of razor-sharp rocks for teeth.

It lunged. It swallowed him whole. Hypha tumbled end over end. When he tried to fly, he found a long black spear had gone through his torso and pinned his foreleg to his sides. A bright red scrap of cloth fluttered on the other end.

The snow leopard’s jaw snapped shut. The world went dark. Hypha felt himself come apart on the rocks.

Chapter 7

View Online

The order’s hard stance on never taking mushrooms alone was driven by practicality. Things could get dark in a hurry. Friendly faces and words of comfort were vital to keep a monk in the right frame of mind.

There were other reasons, too. Reasons which became abundantly clear to Hypha once the mushrooms wore off.

The stone outcropping was gone, replaced with an endless rolling hill of head-high grass that tickled his fur when he moved. A warm wind played with the loose edges of his robes. His whole mountainous world had been pressed flat and smoothed over.

The Stonewood mountains, the place that he’d called home for the past fifteen years, the only place he’d ever known, floated serenely on the eastern horizon.

Wordless terror gripped Hypha’s chest. He sucked in a lungful of rich air and choked. Pollen invaded his nose. The soft grass clung to his sweat-soaked fur like razors digging into skin.

The mountains were somehow all the way over there, and he was somehow all the way over here. The pain was too real for this to be an illusion. He was here. They were there.

This was the other reason monks weren’t allowed to do mushrooms alone: there was a chance they might accidentally float away.

After an hour or four, the panic attacks subsided from scorpion stingers striking his heart to dull needles. Things couldn’t be as bad as they seemed, right? He’d gotten down here somehow. That meant, in theory, there was a way back up.

An unencumbered earth pony monk, even a novice like Hypha, could fly fairly fast—almost as fast as an average pegasus. Hypha reasoned that if he found good thermals to assist in maintaining altitude, he could make the whole flight in under a day.

Then he actually tried flying.

With a herculean effort, straining every muscle in his body until he was certain he would pop, he got about five yards into the air. Then he pitched down, rolled over, and crashed right back down again. He curled up into a ball at the last second to spare his split hooves.

The mountains stared at him teasingly from the horizon, swaying faintly in the thick air, a mirage of moving stone.

Hypha felt failure in every ache and pain. His body was simply too beat up to fly. Creeping dread slithered noiselessly through the tall grass and bit at his hocks. He felt himself shudder. Suddenly he had to be out of this field. The grass was reaching over him, smothering him. It was alive, a single massive superorganism. And it wanted to kill him. He started off towards the mountains at a limp.

Hours passed. The mountains got no closer. He racked up an impressive number of cuts from the grass. At least his eyes weren’t swollen shut anymore. He had the profound healing effects of mother sky to thank for that. Unfortunately for him, there was no chance mere mushrooms could fix a degloved hoof. An injury of that severity meant a permanent limp if he was lucky, and a slow death from infection if he wasn’t. Recovery would be a risky and uncertain prospect in ideal conditions.

Idiot, he thought. That’s what you get. This was banishment. Punishment for his offense. He hadn’t been ready to partake in the mushroom ritual. While his friends and mentors fought and died, Hypha betrayed them and spat on his sacred vows. His limp turned to a shamble. That’s what you get.

Out of the blue, he stumbled onto a cobblestone road cutting through the grass. His still-split front hoof caught the corner of a protruding stone and sent him sprawling. Black spots fluttered on the edge of his vision. It took a full five minutes to summon the strength just to sit up again.

As he got to his hooves, he heard a rumble coming up the road. Images of soldiers in dark cloaks flashed through his mind. He ducked into the grass.

A single carriage rumbled down the road. The outside oozed opulence. Ornamental gold-leaf trim lined the box from top to bottom. Bells and tiny tubular chimes swayed from side to side, rattling and chattering. Metal-girded wheels groaned against the cobblestones. Four stallions clad in matching red uniforms strained to pull the whole thing over the uneven road.

Hypha hugged the ground as the carriage passed. He couldn’t tell who was inside, but he could tell from the smell there was food inside.

His stomach flipped. He hadn’t eaten since the evening before the attack. The cart was going deeper inland, away from the mountains. But if he didn’t find food, he’d have no energy to attempt a return trip.

It struck him as odd that he could contemplate robbery so easily. But the rules out here were different, he reminded himself. This was outsider territory. Generosity was not the norm. Even if one outsider was starving to death on the road, that starving pony wasn’t allowed to take another outsider’s food. The rule was a baldfaced insult to equinity, doubly so because Hypha was really hungry.

He made up his mind. The outsiders were cruel. Their laws were cruel. If they wanted to project their cruelty on him, then he would project a little cruelty in return.

He channeled his magic and found that, while he still couldn’t fly, he could suspend his front hooves an inch or two above the ground without much effort. His new walk was lopsided and taxed his rear legs, but it beat being completely immobile.

Hypha took off in pursuit.

The cart rolled on for several more miles before taking a southward fork in the road. After another mile, a tall butte emerged from the grass, sloping gently upward with the rest of the geography, then cutting off suddenly in a sheer cliff face a hundred yards high.

Clinging to the edge of the butte were a hodgepodge of mud mortar buildings encircled by a steep wall of earth. An opening in the wall just wide enough to let a wagon through served as the main gate.

Hypha snuck in behind the wagon, expecting resistance. He quickly realized, however, that there were no guards of any kind in sight. A few outsider locals milled around, draped in garb reminiscent of the Derechan soldiers but without any of the menace. A few carried swords, though no one tried to kill him. They seemed perfectly content to ignore him, even with his conspicuous orange robes.

The road widened into a central avenue lined with featureless buildings and sparsely populated stalls. The carriage came to a stop in front of a conspicuous white stone courthouse with tall columns lining the entrance.

Two stallions in black robes got out and walked inside. The smell of bread and rendered fat filled the air. Hypha’s mouth started to water again.

The pulling team didn’t follow their passengers inside, choosing instead to sit down next to the cart and start up a game of cards. Hypha retreated into a nearby alley with a clear view of the cart. The pulling team wouldn’t just camp out in the street, right? They would go inside to rest at some point. He just had to outlast them.

No problem. He’d outlasted blizzards and boarbears and every brutal act of nature in between. He could be patient.

In the meantime, he half flew, half dragged himself onto a nearby rooftop. From that vantage point, he could see the entire town laid out before him. There were about fifty buildings in total, mostly blocky residential abodes no more than two stories tall. Big wisps of smoke puffed cheerfully from the chimneys. Out here, with no mountains to cut through the view, Hypha could see everything from one horizon to another, every giant indigo-tinted cloud, every formless gust of wind moving across the tall grass, every lonely pony working their way through the alleyways.

He felt another panic attack coming on. It was all too strange, too alien. Too vast. The longer he stared, the more the clouds moved, until they were folding into themselves at impossible speeds. Shadows dripped down the creases like black ichor. They coalesced into the shapes of ponies perched on the edges, but as he watched their hoofholds evaporated and they went tumbling down. The wind twisted into a scream. Wildfire sunset danced on the clouds. The edge opened up. Panic rushed in.

Hypha seized up and fell off the roof.

He pushed back against gravity at the last second and managed to slow his fall. The landing was painful, but nothing broke. As he came to rest, he tried to tame his out-of-control breathing, but all he could think about were the pony shapes falling from the clouds. Why was mother sky showing him these horrible things? More punishment? Mental torment?

A soft whooshing sound sprung up from several directions at once. A system of magical torches lit up, one after the other, illuminating the main road and some of the more prominent alleyways.

The pulling team let out a cheer and hustled into the building. The door swung shut behind them. Hypha was all alone with the carriage now.

His patience died a swift death. He rushed to the carriage without bothering to look around for witnesses. The handle didn’t budge when he jiggled it. Thinking fast, he picked up a loose chunk of cobblestone from the ground and prepared to slam it against the handle.

“Psst. Hey. Street trash.”

Hypha whirled around, rock raised over his head.

Two mares stood in the center of the street. The one closest to him wore a red shawl over her head, concealing a tangle of curly auburn mane. The other wore a blue shawl and wore her mane almost shaved. Faint firelight flashed in their sunken eyes. Their heads were tilted up and to the side, half disappointed nobility, half curious apex predator.

“This is really bad for you,” the mare in the red shawl said. Her voice glittered like shards of broken glass.

Hypha dropped his hoof, though he didn’t let go of the rock. “Go away,” he said. His voice was so thin it barely came out at all.

“What are you even wearing?”

“I said—”

“What were you doing with that rock?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you breaking in?”

“No.”

“Good. Cuz that’s ours.”

The rock tumbled from his hooves and rolled across the street with a clatter. He hoped that in the red-tinted firelight, these mares couldn’t see the shameful blush on his cheeks. “Oh... I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. It’s so easy to take food out of another pony’s mouth until that pony’s looking you in the eye.”

“I—I’m sorry. Really—”

“Whatever, street trash. Just get lost before I call the pulling team out here.”

Hypha scampered away, eyes downcast. He felt sick. Stealing from strangers—what would Cumulus think?

Then he remembered Cumulus was probably dead, his spirit soaring around the mycilian layer connecting all things to each other. But how quickly could a spirit travel through the mycelium? For all he knew, Cumulus hadn’t even reached this part of the world yet.

The utter desolate loneliness of his situation settled like heavy snow. He heard a harsh metal scraping sound behind him. He didn’t turn around. What did it even matter, anyway?

He heard the sound again. Then he heard the mare in the red shawl cursing under her breath.

He risked a glance backwards. The red mare stood on her rear two hooves. She dug at the lock with a bobby pin clenched carefully between her teeth.

The gears inside Hypha’s head tick... tick.... tick.... click’d together.

“Hey,” he hissed. “That’s not your cart.”

“Of course it is.”

“No it’s not. You’re picking the lock.”

“I lost the keys.”

“No you didn’t.” He took a step forward. “Stop it.”

“Get out of here, street trash.”

As the mare in red spoke, the mare in blue circled around the cart and out of sight. A moment later she stepped out of the shadows halfway across the square.

Hypha let out an involuntary gasp. She was an earth pony, same as him. She couldn’t teleport. So how did she get all the way over here?

The red mare leveraged her whole weight against the pins in the lock. It gave with a creak of metal. She laughed and tossed it aside. The blue mare reappeared at her side. Together, the two dove into the cart. They emerged a moment later with their shawls stuffed with pastries and cheeses. The sight of so much food made Hypha’s legs go weak.

“There’s enough for all of us,” he said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion.

“No,” said the mare in red, “there’s not.”

She picked a shiny red apple from her shawl, gauged the weight in her hoof, then whipped it with all her might at the courthouse window. The glass, and all semblance of silence, shattered.

The pulling team burst out the front door a moment later, truncheons clasped tightly between bared teeth. But they were too late. The carriage door was shut tight. The street was empty.

Fear provided just enough adrenaline for Hypha to fly up to a nearby rooftop unassisted. He passed out for a split second on landing, but snapped awake before he could slide down to the street. His head throbbed, an ache of magical overload so intense it reached all the down into his stomach. He’d pushed past his magical limits. Now he was paying the price.

He tracked the mares to an alley three streets over. They hunkered down behind a half-wall, their shawls spread out like picnic blankets. They alternated watching the mouth of the alley for any unwelcome guests and stuffing their gaunt faces. Neither of them thought to watch the rooftops.

Hypha inched his way to the edge of the roof directly above them. “Psst. Hey.”

The two mares leapt in surprise at the sound of his voice. The red one assumed a fighting stance while the blue one swept up the food. Their faces went from ravenous to confused when they realized who had hailed them.

“How’d you get up there?” The mare in red asked. The other mare continued packing up their haul, though at a more leisurely pace.

“Someone could have gotten hurt back there,” Hypha said.

“Well, we’re fine, so don’t worry about it.”

“I’d like some of that food.”

“I’d like for you to leave us alone.”

Hypha casually hopped off the edge of the roof.

The mares let out a hiss of surprise and leapt back, assuming they were about to watch a stranger splatter at their hooves. Hypha channeled his dwindling magic and slowed his descent, landing without a sound on the cobblestones.

The mare in blue rubbed her eyes. The mare in red took a step back. The hardness in her face returned.

“I’d appreciate it if you shared,” Hypha said.

“You’re not a pegasus,” the mare in red said. “How’d you do that?”

“I don’t need much. Just some bread, or a rind of cheese—”

“If you come any closer, I’ll buck your eyeballs through the back of your head.”

Hypha held up a forehoof in what he hoped was a universal sign of surrender. “I really don’t want to fight. I just want... uh...” He noticed both mares’ eyes lock onto his hooves. “Just, um. Some food, maybe. Hello?”

The blue mare gagged.

Hypha frowned. “What? Do I smell or something?”

“Were you walking on those?” the red mare asked.

“Yeah? Sorta.”

“That’s—hey.” Hypha tried to put his hoof down. The red mare grabbed him. “Don’t put any weight on that. Sit down.”

“No.” Hypha took a step back. “I just need some food, then I’ll leave you alone.”

A look passed between the two mares, something significant in a language Hypha didn’t understand. The blue one stepped into a nearby shadow, disappeared, then returned a moment later with a hooffull of grey dust.

“How’d you do that?” Hypha asked.

“Shut up,” The red mare said. She rifled through her haul until she found a bottle of wine. She yanked the cork out with her teeth and poured half the bottle into the dust while the blue mare mashed the paste with her hooves. “Alright, now hold ‘em out.”

The undisguised worry in their eyes was enough to make Hypha obey. The mare in blue applied a liberal coating to Hypha’s hooves before rinsing her own hooves off on a tuft of weeds sprouting from between the cobblestones.

“That’s plaster,” the red mare said. “However you were walking before, keep doing that. Don’t knock the plaster off for at least another couple days. It’ll protect all the important stuff while the healing starts.” She paused, eyeing Hypha with those sharp eyes of hers. Her irises were red, too. “If the healing starts. How were you even walking?”

Hypha took a deep breath and levitated himself a few inches off the ground. The two mares leapt back. The half-empty wine bottle tumbled to the ground.

“It’s earth pony magic,” Hypha said.

“That is not earth pony magic.”

He shrugged and turned towards the mouth of the alley. “Whatever you say. Thanks for your help.”

“Wait up!” The mare in red grabbed him by the shoulder. “Are you from here?”

“No. I have no idea where I am right now.” He pointed to the Stonewood mountains, now little more than black blots on the horizon. “I have to get back there.”

“The mountains? They’re two hundred miles away.”

Hypha’s heart sank. Two hundred? “Still. I need to get back there. I’m an acolyte of the order of Heavenly Peace. Derechan soldiers attacked our monastery. I need to get to the other monasteries and warn them.”

“Heavenly Peace?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Earth ponies only, weird mushroom diet, everypony wears the same...” she gestured to his soiled, shredded robes. “Whatever you’re wearing?”

“They’re robes. And how do you know about the order?”

“I think there’s a bunch of you not too far away from here.”

Hypha’s head snapped up. “What?” The levitation on his front hooves flickered, leaving a soft wine-colored plaster hoofprint on the cobblestones. Pain shot up his legs. He didn’t care. “Where?”

“West of here.”

That didn’t make sense. There weren’t any mountains out here. He’d never heard of a monastery this far west, either. Could mother sky mushrooms even grow in non-mountainous climates?

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah. They got a whole temple out there in the grasslands. They’re big into spiritual wellness or whatever. It’s kinda tough to explain, you just gotta go there and see it—hey!”

He had already started off down the alley. Monks were nearby. If they hadn’t already been attacked too, they needed to know what was coming. “Thank you for your help,” he called behind him. “Good luck—urk—”

He found his flight suddenly arrested by a strong pair of forelegs wrapped around his neck. The mare in blue had closed twenty yards of distance in a single second. Hypha would have been amazed if her choke hold weren’t so firm.

“We won’t need luck,” the mare in red said in a low, ominous voice. “Not if we have you.”

“Ack—I don’t have money,” he said. He tried to pull the blue mare’s forelegs off him, but only succeeded in smearing plaster on her fur in the process. Her hooves didn’t budge, no matter how much he strained against them. He felt the muscles rippling beneath her fur, strong and stubborn like stonewood. “Please don’t kill me.”

“Let’s make a deal,” the mare in red said. “Right now, you still don’t know where this monastery is. Help us out, and we’ll take you right to the front door.”

“I don’t even know you. And my hooves are still busted. You should—hrrk—find somepony else.”

The red mare’s eyes caught the moonlight, glinting like curved knives. “I’m Red. That’s Blue. And you’ll do.”

Chapter 8

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Slowly, taking great care not to harm the still-solidifying plaster around Hypha’s hooves, the trio made their way down a set of winding alleyways leading back to the courthouse.

This town, Red explained, was a glorified rest stop, a place that just so happened to be at the intersection of several important roads. Its permanent residents, save the town’s judge whose food they’d pilfered, consisted entirely of ponies whose professions catered to traders and travelers. It was a nothing place, a convenient middle point between landmarks.

“That’s why they called it Median,” Red said with a smirk.

The alleyway deposited them behind the looming structure of the town’s courthouse. Hypha peered around the corner and saw several members of the pulling team lounging on the courthouse stairs. Several more were boarding up the window Red broke. They looked bored.

“Okay,” Red started, “here’s the plan. You’re gonna fly up to the second floor and unlock the door from the inside.”

Hypha paused for her to continue. Red and Blue stared blankly back at him. “Oh,” he said, “I thought there’d be more.”

“Nope, it’s that easy. Think you can do it?”

Hypha motioned to Blue with a plastered hoof. “Can’t she just teleport up there?”

“It’s not teleporting. She’s not a unicorn.”

“What is it then?”

“Don’t worry about it. Can you do it or not?”

Hypha looked up at the row of grimy glass windows. “What if they’re locked?”

“They’re not.”

Hypha frowned. “Whatever.” He took a deep breath, coiled his good legs, and leapt into the air.

Almost immediately, a skull-splitting headache shattered his concentration. His hurt hooves throbbed. A full-body cramp seized his muscles. He gained about three feet of altitude before dropping to the cobbles like a sack of bricks.

Red’s face twitched. “What was that?”

“Muh, muh—” The urge to vomit washed over him. Hypha doubled over. Nothing came out. “Magical burnout.”

“You just said you could fly.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“You were flying five minutes ago. You looked fine.”

“I wasn’t flying, I was descending.”

Blue stepped in front of Red, cutting her off before she could escalate things further. Blue nodded towards one of the buildings that shared the alley with the courthouse. A long tangle of ivy snaked up the full height of the building, leading to a decorative flower-lined balcony.

“Good eye,” Red said, “I’ll get up there and jump to the roof.” She shouldered Hypha aside. “Good luck finding that temple, street trash. Your services are no longer required.”

That seemed to set Blue off. She smacked Red squarely on the withers as she passed.

“Hey! What was that for?”

Blue nodded at the balcony, then shook her head.

Red smirked. “Are you calling me fat?” Without waiting for a reply, Red campused the ivy in just a few seconds. The balcony creaked under her weight, but held. Red bowed theatrically. Then she put both front hooves onto the railing, intending to vault over.

The railing buckled. Red let out a yelp of surprise and leapt back. Only her quick reflexes saved her from a nasty fall. Hypha’s heart skipped. Blue rolled her eyes.

“I’m fine,” Red said, more to herself. “I’m fine. Just gotta...” Her voice trailed off as she appraised the gap. “Uh.”

In short order, she was back on the ground, her face set in a firm scowl.

“Okay, new plan. Street trash climbs up and glides over.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Up you go. We’re burning moonlight.”

“Where should we meet up when you’re done?” Hypha asked.

“Meet up?”

“Yes.”

Red stared blankly back at him.

“To take me to the monastery.”

“Right. Uh. Right here is good. It might be a little bit before we’re back, though.”

“How long is a little bit?”

“It’s a little bit. Be patient. If you bail, we’re not looking for you.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

“Good.” Blue put her leg on Red’s shoulder, which seemed to calm her down a little. “Alright, off you go. We’ll be waiting down here.”

Using his teeth for leverage, Hypha was able to shimmy up the ivy. By the time he made it to the balcony, his whole face was stained green with ivy pulp.

“The window—” He spat out a hunk of chlorophyll. “The window looks locked.”

“It’s not,” Red said.

“But what if it is?”

Blue made a ramming motion with her shoulder, then flashed him a lippy smile.

Whatever. With a hop, skip, and a painful application of earth pony magic, Hypha cleared the gap and sailed towards the courthouse window.

His earth pony weight played to his favor for once. The whole window popped clean out of the wall. He landed in the hallway with the frame underneath him. The glass spidered, but didn’t break.

He stuck his head out the now-bare hole in the wall to wave to Red and Blue. Neither waved back.

Something about the smell of this place set him on edge. In the monastery, the monks burned oil lanterns and soaked torches in tar to generate light. This place was lit so brightly it almost overwhelmed Hypha’s eyes, but the air carried none of the telltale chemical smell he’d come to associate with light. The whole place must have been powered with crystal batteries. He couldn’t believe they had such luxuries all the way out here.

He found a set of stairs and followed them down. At the bottom was a cavernous courtroom lined in stone and wood accents. The lights were low, but even in the dimness Hypha could make out a raised judge’s bench and a small seating gallery.

He also saw a stone platform in the center of the room. Thick chains sat coiled on the ground atop it. They were dusty, peeling in places, and flecked with reddish rust and who-knew what else. One side ended in a set of manacles. The other was set into the stone itself. Their weight bent the room like a black hole bent space. Hypha felt himself pulled towards them.

Just then, Hypha heard a noise behind him. He whirled around just in time to watch one of the members of the pulling team emerge from a back hallway. The dim light illuminated something long and curved clutched in the stallion’s hoof.

The two ponies froze. Hypha’s heart pounded wildly in his chest. His inner voice screamed, Fly!, but he could no more move than if he’d been manacled to the floor.

The stallion squinted. “Hello?”

The voice split the dark room. Hypha jumped in fright, knocking the manacles off the pile of chains. They fell to the floor with a tremendous clatter.

The stallion screamed and chucked the object in his hooves at Hypha. It hit him squarely in the chest. Warm liquid splattered everywhere.

“Ghost!” the stallion screamed. He turned tail and ran back into the hallway.

Hypha collapsed on top of the chains. For a split second, he was certain whatever the stallion threw at him had cut his jugular. He touched his neck, but found no wound. He licked a wet spot on his foreleg and found it tasted sweet.

He picked up the object. It was the gnawed-on rind of a watermelon.

More voices came from the back hallway. Hypha dove behind the judge’s bench just as a dozen more stallions from the pulling team poured into the room, knives out.

“His clothes were all ripped up,” said the stallion who’d first spotted Hypha, “It looked like he just came out of the ground.”

“Calm down,” said another stallion. “If he wanted to haunt someone, he’d haunt the judge.”

“The judge doesn’t do any of the hanging.”

“Look, you wouldn’t haunt the noose that hung you, right? So you wouldn’t haunt the hangman either, cuz you’re just doing what the judge told you to do. So chill out. No one’s getting haunted.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

The stallion let out a soft sigh of annoyance. “Would someone turn the lights on?”

Behind the bench, Hypha clamped his hoof over his mouth to stifle the sound of his breathing. The sight of knives sent chills up and down his spine. He waited until the pulling team turned their backs on him, then dipped down the back hallway.

Outside, Hypha collapsed in the dirt, choking back sobs, curling in and out of a fetal position. Red and Blue exchanged a look, then wisely gave him some space.

“Uh. Good job,” Red said when the worst of Hypha’s panic died down. “We got it from here.”

“They’re all in there,” Hypha said. “In the courtroom.”

“I said, we got it.” The sympathy vanished from her voice. “Remember, if you leave, we’re not coming after you.”

With that, Red nudged open the door and slipped inside. Blue followed behind her, soundless as a shadow. The door shut behind them.

And just like that, Hypha was all alone again.

He put his ear to the door but couldn’t hear anything. Be patient, he reminded himself, and trotted off a little further down the alley where the shadows provided better concealment.

He relaxed his magic for the first time in hours, but all that did was make room for an even worse headache than before. A unicorn probably would have collapsed by now. Only ruddy earth pony resilience kept him upright.

He made a mental exercise of retracing his steps through the past forty eight hours in an attempt to distract himself. He made it as far as his second encounter with the snow leopard before the tears rushed in and buried him.

Beneath it all, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he somehow deserved this. Every cut from every blade of grass, every split hoof, every ache in his brain. The hunger. The pain. The image of Wrender falling that wouldn’t leave his mind. It was his fault. All of it.

If there was any penance to be found, he’d find it at the western temple. If he could save those monks from the same fate, then maybe this whole awful flight wouldn’t be in vain.

One leg at a time, he raised himself into a standing position. This was his path now. The only path that mattered. Save as many monks as possible. He clutched the orange robes tightly in one hoof. The long and perilous journey had shredded them to ribbons, but as long as he still believed in what they represented, nothing else mattered.

A tremendous crash from the other side of the courthouse made Hypha leap into the air. He landed on his front hooves and crumpled facefirst onto the street.

As he stared up, dazed, he heard another crash in the square. Then a shout. Then an inarticulate cry of rage that could only belong to Red.

As quickly as his plastered hooves allowed, Hypha ran around the courthouse. There he found Red and Blue fending off half a dozen stallions from the pulling team. The two mares beat a slow retreat across the square, darting forward to launch a flurry of blows on the nearest assailant before slinking back. Red had two bulging satchel bags slung over her shoulder.

More stallions emerged from the courthouse. Most carried truncheons. Several had spears. Red and Blue redoubled their efforts to escape. Torchlit shadows flashed on the walls of the square like diving birds.

Red and Blue were going to leave him behind, Hypha realized. A cold sweat draped across his neck. He needed to get to them, and fast. But as he started towards them, the torchlight in the square flared up, and the image of fire bursting through a bank of fog invaded his mind.

His legs seized up. Fear squeezed the air from his lungs. Where’s Wrender? he thought. We need to... to...

One of the pulling team—one with a spear—noticed him.

The glint of metal in the firelight snapped Hypha back to the present. He threw the last reserves of magic into a shaky takeoff. The headache returned with a vengeance. He managed to stay airborne despite the pain, hugging the walls of the square, circling around the fight.

He landed hard at the mouth of an alley, skidding to a stop beside the beleaguered Red and Blue.

Red turned on him, ready to strike. Confusion flashed across her face as she recognized him.

“You were—” Hypha wheezed. “Gonna leave me.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh.”

A spear hit the cobblestones between Hypha and Red. The impact sent the three reeling. In the moment they’d wasted arguing, the pulling team had closed in, sealing off the mouth of the alley with a wall of muscle and metal.

The closest one took a swing at Hypha. Blue leapt forward and pulled him out of range. Another assailant thrust his own spear and caught Blue just above her cutie mark. It was a glancing blow, but still enough to draw blood. Blue jerked away, limping. Her face twisted in pain, but not a sound escaped her lips.

The sight of blood on the spear broke something in Hypha. A fog rolled over his eyes. Torchlight tinted everything a rage shade of red. Hirruck’s voice came to him. Feel it. Receive it. Feel it. Receive it.

He wheeled around to face the pony with the spear. Rage replaced fear. He raised his forelegs to the sky, then drew them into his chest. Glowing vapor clung to his fur, condensing into a point of light on his plastered hooftips. He drew a circle in the air, then punched it with all his might.

A wave of energy rippled out from the point of impact, catching the three closest ponies. They seized up like they’d been hit by lightning and collapsed in bulky heaps on the ground. The buildings trembled. Windows shattered. The rest of the pulling team stopped short and backed away.

The plaster on his hooves shattered. The dizzying ache of magical whiplash made his head spin, dulling the edges of his vision. He fell backwards, holding his hooves up, staring in mute horror at all the new cracks in the keratin.

Blue and Red appeared by his side. Red hoisted him onto her back, muttering insensitive comments about his weight, while Blue lashed out at anyone who dared follow them into the alley.

This was how they left the small, nowhere town of Median.

As soon as the grass was tall enough to conceal them, the three fleeing ponies left the road. The grass whipped painfully at their faces, but they dared not slow down. Behind them came light and the distant sound of beating hooves. The grass, painful though it was, concealed them from sight.

Pain descended on Hypha like snowfall. Softly, in tiny pinpricks here and there, single snowflakes tickling his fur. Then more. And more. And more. Until it buried him, and the weight of it made him gasp for air.

“Please,” Hypha begged, “stop, stop, please—”

Red and Blue ignored him.

Once the sound of their pursuers dissolved and the lights of Median disappeared over the horizon, the trio finally paused to rest. From one of the satchel bags, Red produced a small lavender crystal that glowed when she shook it. That served as their fire in a flammable sea.

Aside from a few bumps and bruises, Red was the only one of the three who’d made it out unscathed. She tended to Blue first. Blue’s wound was surface-level, but the amount of blood leaking into the fabric of her clothes demanded attention.

Red casted a suspicious look at Hypha before peeling back Blue’s pants. Hypha, still writhing silently on the ground, caught a glimpse of Blue’s cutie mark. Some kind of white flower.

Once Blue had been bandaged up, Red turned to Hypha. “Let’s see ‘em.”

Hypha held up his hooves. Red’s lips peeled back in a grimace. “I don’t have any more plaster. I can’t set these.”

“It’s fine. I’ll use magic to walk.”

“When? Right now? You can’t even stand, idiot.”

“I just need to rest.”

He felt a surprising gentleness in her touch as she turned his hooves over. “They’re really messed up, Hypha. I don’t think they’re gonna heal right.”

“I’ll be fine.”

The scowl returned. “Idiot. You’re not thinking long-term. You might have just given yourself a permanent limp.”

Anger welled up in Hypha’s chest. She didn’t understand the gravity of his situation. A limp was the least of his worries. “It doesn’t matter. We have to make it to that temple as soon as possible.”

Red threw up her hooves and scooted back to the other side of the crystal. “Sure. What do I know, anyway? I’m not a doctor. Maybe you’ll magic them better.” She paused, considering her next words. “What did you do back there with the hoof smashy thing?”

“That was rune magic.” The words took a moment to register. Then it hit him all at once. He looked down at his shattered hooves. I did rune magic. He tried to recall the already-fading memory of the fight. “Those ponies...”

“It looked like they got electrocuted,” Red finished for him. Her face took on a darker look. “Who are you really?”

“I’m Hypha. I’m an acolyte of the order of—”

“Are you an alicorn or something?”

“No—what? No. I don’t have a horn. Or wings.”

“But you did magic. And you flew.”

“I’m serious, I’m from the Stonewood—”

Red snorted. “Whatever. Keep lying to us. We only saved your life.”

“I saved your life.”

“After you nearly got Blue killed. Those guys wouldn’t have gotten close enough to stick her if you hadn’t shown up and slowed us down.”

“They wouldn’t have been after you if you didn’t steal from them. What did you take, anyway?”

“None of your business.”

“Who are you, really?”

“Nobody. Don’t worry about me.”

“You’re a liar.”

“What are you gonna do about it, huh? Punch me?” She stood up. Stars flickered white-hot in the night sky. “Go on. Walk over here. I’ll give you a free shot.”

Hypha gingerly placed his hooves beneath him. Pain shot up his arms the moment they touched ground. He yanked them back like he’d just touched a hot stove.

“That’s right. You don’t know what you’re talking about, so how about you shut your stupid mouth before I leave you out here? You wanna be worm food? You wanna be fertilizer?”

Blue intervened, rising to her hooves with a grimace and punching Red in the shoulder.

Red turned the full weight of her furious gaze on Blue. “What?”

Blue shoved Red in the chest and returned the look in kind.

“You don’t get to push me like that. You wouldn’t have got stabbed if you didn’t save his sorry skin.”

Blue reached out, and for a second Hypha thought she was going to hit Red again. But instead, she cupped Red’s face in her hoof and pulled her back so they were looking directly at each other. The look in Blue’s eyes shifted from anger to something else, something glassy, like water flowing over rocks, wearing them down.

Red’s resolve shattered into a million pieces. “Sorry,” she mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

Blue nodded to her open wound.

“Right, okay.” Red fished a bandage out of her bag. The edge of the cut bubbled a little as she pressed down. She swallowed hard, and Hypha realized with a start that there were tears in her eyes. “I’m just upset cuz you got hurt. Sorry.”

Blue put her forehead against Red’s. A tremor passed through Red’s body, from her tail all the way to her nose. Blue held her up, sturdy as stonewood. Then their lips came together in a slow, mournful kiss.

That was the end of the argument.

Chapter 9

View Online

Pain could be many things.

The pain of losing friends and mentors was a dissociative pain. Hypha sunk into it, and hours would pass without him noticing. The pain of abusing something sacred was a shameful pain. It filled him with rage and made him want to lash out at whoever or whatever was closest without reason.

The pain in his hooves removed the possibility of feeling the other two.

Morning shed fresh light on the severity of Hypha’s situation. His right degloved hoof hadn’t healed at all. Grit clung to the raw, ropey musculature. The hoof on the left side was in marginally better shape, but he noted a few new conspicuous cracks in the keratin.

Rest had returned some of his magical strength, but a few hours into their trek through the grass, Hypha was once again running on empty.

“Can we stop for a minute?” he asked. Red scowled. Blue gave no outward appearance that she’d heard him at all. “My hooves—”

“We can walk a little slower,” Red said in a curt voice, “but we’re not stopping.”

Hypha turned to conversation to distract him. “How was Blue able to teleport like that?”

“She’s mute, not deaf,” Red said. “Don’t talk to her like she’s not here.”

“Sorry. Blue, how are you—”

“It’s not teleporting,” Red cut him off. “She can walk through shadows.”

Shadow-walking. That was a kind of thestral magic he had read about in old monastic texts. But no active users had been recorded by the order for at least three hundred years. It was a kind of magic not even powerful elder monks could master. It required batpony blood.

“Who was your guru?” Hypha asked.

“Gu-what?”

“Your guru.” More blank stares. “Who taught you?”

“She taught herself.”

“Really? That’s incredible.”

Blue shrugged the praise off, but Hypha could see the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips. He tried to imagine teaching himself rune magic. Then he remembered that, without any monks, that was exactly what he’d have to do.

His heart sank. The pain came back with a vengeance. He changed the subject. “What was so important in that courthouse you had to break in?”

“Records,” Red said.

“What kind of records?”

“Trade logs. Court documents. Birth certificates.”

“You stole other ponies’ birth certificates?”

“Yup. And the crystal lamp.”

“Why?”

“Cuz it’s cool. It’s really from the crystal empire. Got a stamp on the bottom and everything.”

“No, the birth certificates.”

Red quickened her pace. “We’re trying to find Blue’s dad.”

“Oh, that’s really sweet.”

“We’re gonna kill him.”

Hypha wisely shut his mouth and stowed the rest of his questions.

A full day of travel passed with zero change in the scenery. Hypha’s tracking instinct screamed at him to turn around. They had to be going in circles. Such a vast stretch of grassland wasn’t physically possible.

Then, like it had been teleported from out of nowhere, a colossal steppe of mud-brown rock appeared on the horizon.

“Canary’s Cage,” Red said. “The monastery’s on top of it.”

Hypha took stock of the monolithic piece of rock, the sheer sides extending vertically a thousand yards into the air, the vertical striations of darker colored rock reminiscent of the bars of a bird cage.

“There’s a path that wraps around,” Red said. “Takes us right up.”

Both of those statements were correct, in a loose sense. The path went up—dramatically up, at an angle intended for experienced climbers with four fully functional hooves. Hypha had all the climbing experience between the three of them and only two and a half hooves.

He turned helplessly to Red and Blue. “So.”

“Nuh uh, stuff it,” Red sneered. “You’re carrying yourself up there.”

“I don’t like it anymore than you do.”

“Fly!”

“I already told you, I can’t. Have Blue take us through the shadows.”

“It doesn’t work like that, idiot.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Your help almost got us killed.”

“Right after you almost got me killed.”

“Shut up, street trash. I’ll kick the jaw off your skull.”

Blue stomped her hooves, cutting off any further argument. She saddled up next to Hypha and motioned for him to climb on.

Red stewed in silence for the first stretch of the climb. By the time she’d cooked up the right words to express her displeasure at Blue’s choice, they were all so absorbed in the act of climbing she no longer had the energy to argue.

When they made it to the top, all three were caked in dust and sweat. Blue sloughed Hypha off her back, hacked a mouthful of dirt-stained phlegm off the edge, and collapsed. Red checked Blue’s hooves for blisters, then laid down herself.

Through dirt-ringed eyes, Hypha took in the view sideways. The flatland stretched unbroken all the way to the horizon. Waves of wind rippled across the grass. A familiar floaty sensation of flight flowed through him.

He found another well of strength within him and rose to his hooves. “C’mon.”

Red groaned. “Gimme a minute.”

“I bet they’ll feed you for helping me.”

That was enough to get the two mares going again.

The exterior gates were unlocked, and there weren’t any guards posted on the inside. Hypha filed these details away for later discussion with the monastery elders. They'd need to start fortifying the place if they were going to survive the inevitable Derechan attack. Locking the gates wouldn't stop an army of pegasi, of course, but not every legionnaire in the attacking force had been a pegasi. At any rate, they had to start somewhere.

The interior was styled differently than Roseroot, but it was laid out almost exactly the same. A large meeting hall and a multistory dormatory dominated the north side. Hovels and monk living quarters were stuffed into every available square inch. Instead of a soaring temple, this monastery went for a squat, round dome design with a central staircase that led down into the steppe itself. The roofs of the surrounding buildings were thatched with grass from the surrounding prairie, not unlike an actual bird’s nest.

Something about it felt off to Hypha.

He took about three steps inside before having his personal space invaded by a mare in a neon-orange vest. She waved a clipboard like a shield and spoke at a practiced clip.

“Welcome to Canary’s Cage, travelers! My name is Cheetah Print, and I’ll be your touchpoint ambassador for the first day of your stay. So sorry we didn’t get the door for you, but we weren’t expecting anyone today. Are you late arrivals for the... uh...”

Her rehearsed smile fell off her face at the sight of the bloody bandages on Blue’s flank. Her eyes got even wider when she noticed Hypha’s shattered front hooves.

“And... uh... you know this is a spiritual treatment center, right? Not an, uh.” She chanced another glance at Hypha’s hooves and shuddered. “Not an actual treatment center.”

“My name is Hypha. I’m from the Roseroot monastery. Where are the elders?”

“Um. The elders are, uh, not here. But I can help you. Probably. Those hooves—”

“The elders,” Hypha shouted. His voice rang through the monastery courtyard. Ponies stopped what they were doing and looked his way. “I need to speak to them,” he said in a more subdued voice. “We’re all in terrible danger.”

Cheetah Print’s bright eyes flashed fearfully, though Hypha couldn’t tell if it was because of the warning or the state of his injuries. “I’ll. Yeah. I’ll go find somepony.” She took off at a gallop, leaving her clipboard behind.

Hypha picked it up and saw some kind of standardized form attached to it. At the top of the form in stylized script were the words:

Canary’s Cage

Monastic Retreat | Holistic Wellness Center

“So which building is the one serving lunch?” Red asked.

The ponies in the cafeteria went silent as the trio walked in.

Hypha ignored them. Visions of lentils and fresh baked bread danced in his head. But the bread he found was a different color than what he was used to. It tasted underbaked and sank like a stone in his stomach. The lentils had some sort of foul fishy vinegar mixed in, rendering them almost inedible.

He wolfed it down anyway, pausing halfway through to gag. Waste not, want not.

Red and Blue kept their eyes on swivels as they ate. “Do monks stare as a sign of friendship?” Red asked. Hypha shook his head. “Ah. Well. That’s not good, then.”

Hypha was still trying to decide whether or not to ask for seconds when the cafeteria door swung open. Half a dozen ponies in leather armor hustled inside. Orange bands adorned their legs. Truncheons dangled from their belts.

The trio saw the clubs and leapt to their hooves. Red grabbed an empty bowl, presumably to hurl it at the attackers. Hypha looked around for exits but saw none. There had been at least five exits in the Roseroot monastery mess. How come this one was built like a tomb?

“Hold on!” cried a high-pitched stallion’s voice. “Stop with all this violent energy!”

The guards parted, revealing a short, lithe pony with a wispy brown coat and a mustache as meticulous as his gaze. He wore an immaculate orange robe with an intricate blue and white frill.

“That frill is unsanctioned,” Hypha said. “Who are you?”

“I’m elder Prairie Sky,” the stallion said. “Who are you?”

Hypha’s heart shot into his throat. “I’m an acolyte from—”

“I asked who.”

Prairie Sky’s interjection made Hypha stumble over his words. “What?”

“I asked who you are. Not what you are.”

“My name’s Hypha.”

“Hypha.” He paused like he was storing the name in a mental vault. “You must be from the mountains.”

“Yes,” Hypha said. “From Roseroot.”

“You’re awfully far from your nest. What brings you all the way out here?”

Hypha felt his hooves start to tremble. A surge of horror and sadness welled up in his throat. “Derecho,” he croaked. “They’re attacking monasteries. Roseroot, it’s...”

Hypha’s legs gave out. Prairie Sky was at his side before he could fall, lowering him reverently to the ground.

“All who are lost are welcome here,” he whispered into Hypha’s ear. “I’ll keep you safe.”

A vision of icy blue eyes and black Derechan armor flashed in Hypha’s eyes. He felt utterly helpless, a flightless bird dangling from the edge of its nest. He clung to Prairie Sky’s robes as he fought back sobs.

“I don’t wanna die. We gotta leave, we gotta, we gotta—” Hypha choked. His chest was being crushed by an invisible avalanche. The thick air choked him. His heart pounded in his ears.

Elder Prairie Sky sighed. “I’m sorry, Hypha. This is for your own good.”

He drew his hoof into his chest. A glowing drop of vapor materialized on the tip of his hoof. He drew a complex rune over Hypha’s head. When he touched the center, Hypha’s eyes fogged over in a magically-induced slumber.

With all the attention on Hypha, Red inched her way over to a bread basket at the end of the lineup and stuffed some rolls into her pockets.

Chapter 10

View Online

While a team of monastery ponies moved Hypha’s unconscious body to the infirmary, elder Prairie Sky turned his attention to Red and Blue. “Thank you for bringing him to me. I don’t think he could have made it on his own.”

Red hastened to swallow the piece of bread she’d been chewing on. “We’re just relieved to know he’s safe.”

“You must be worn out from the trip. Where are you from?”

“We came from Median.” She tapped her saddlebag. “Official government business.”

“Well, I’m grateful you made the effort to help my friend. Let me return the favor. If you’d like, we have a massage parlor in the building next door. And a full cloudsteam bath. Take as much time as you need to rest and refresh. You can even stay the night, if you’d like.” He smiled knowingly. “Unless, of course, your government business is urgent. ”

Blue’s eyes went starry. Red coughed and said, “Well, it’s not that urgent. Which way did you say the spa is?”

The sleeping spell wore off all at once. One moment, there was nothing. Then Hypha’s ears filled with the awful squeal of metal against metal and a deafening animal roar.

Fight or flight took over. Thinking he was still in the cafeteria, he threw himself into the air only to slam head first into a low ceiling. He landed with a whump on a soft mattress. Small mercies.

This new room was small and spartan-kept. He saw no trace of his old clothes. A clean and pressed robe sat folded at the foot of the bed, rumpled slightly from his attempted flight. The color was different than what Hypha remembered—lighter, almost peach. It felt thinner too, but it fit his spindly frame perfectly.

“Hypha!” Cheetah Prints was waiting for him outside. She went to take his hooves but paused at the last second. “We’re so sorry we had to put you to sleep. Elder Prairie Sky was worried you’d hurt yourself on accident.”

Hypha wiped the last bit of sleep from his eyes. “Where is he now?”

“He’s waiting for you downstairs. I’ll take you to him.”

They passed a dozen rooms on their way to the stairwell, each one identical to the one Hypha had just been in.

“Is this where the monks live?” Hypha asked. “I shouldn’t be here. I’m just an acolyte.”

“No, not at all. This building’s for our guests.”

Guests? Hypha’s mind raced. No way they needed this many rooms just for visiting monks. What kind of guests were they housing?

Down a few flights of stairs, they found Prairie Sky waiting in the lobby pacing nervously back and forth. When he saw them, he made a beeline over to them and wrapped Hypha up in a crushing hug.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Hypha said into Prairie Sky’s shoulder. “We don’t have time to waste.”

The smile dissolved from Prairie Sky’s face. “Right. Let’s find a quiet place to talk.”

The Canary’s Cage temple wasn’t much to look at from the outside—literally. Where most of the other buildings in the complex soared five or six stories into the air, the temple rose barely five or six yards. It was set in jointless tan bricks and bowed slightly at the edges, like a lost contact lense.

“It’s very. Uh. Minimalist.” Hypha squinted. “There’s more, right?”

Prairie Sky chuckled and gestured to the other side of the mound, where a staircase descended down into the earth. “Wait and see.”

The stairs went down ten stories. The ceiling grew taller as they descended, until the torchlight couldn’t even touch the top. The path grew wider, the echoes longer, until the staircase finally deposited them into a soaring central chamber. Colossal square stones formed the base of a massive dome stretching up two hundred yards. The top part of the dome must have been the mound he’d seen outside, Hypha realized. A massive fire pit was sunk into the very center of the stone floor, casting flickering shadows around the dias.

Prairie Sky paused for a moment to let Hypha soak it all in. Then he led him down one of several arterial hallways to a cluttered but brightly-lit office. A wooden nameplate on the door read, Director.

“Sorry about the mess,” Prairie Sky said. He hopped up and glided a few inches above the ground, settling at a wood desk on the other side of the room. He flew just like elder Cumulus. Hypha had to remind himself to breathe.

Prairie Sky motioned to a chair across from him. Flying was still out of the question for Hypha, so he picked his way through the mess, flinching at the sound of parchment crackling beneath his hooves.

“We’ll need to get those taken care of,” Prairie Sky said, pointing to Hypha’s hooves.

“Later.”

“Of course.” He tapped the wall behind him. “There’s about a hundred tons of stone between us and everyone else. Start at the beginning.”

Hypha took a few deep breaths before spilling everything. He made it as far as the moment Wrender got hit by a spear before his emotions got the better of him and he had to stop.

Prairie Sky flew over his desk and knelt beside Hypha. “Shhh. You’re okay.” Hypha hugged his shattered hooves to his chest and took slow, deep breaths while Prairie Sky held him. “You’re okay. You made it out. You’re safe.”

“Am I?” Hypha’s voice cracked. “The Derechans are still out there. They must have come through here—I don’t know how they missed you, but eventually they’re gonna run out of monks to kill out there and they’re gonna come back here.” His eyes flashed from Prairie Sky to the ten million tons of rock boxing him in. “We have to do something.”

“Are you an orphan, Hypha?”

The question took Hypha by surprise. His thoughts piled up. “I’m not supposed to say.”

“Everyone finds out eventually. I think that’s the real test—knowing and not judging.”

“Do you know?”

“Yeah. I’m an orphan.”

Hypha hesitated. “Me too.”

“You said you were from Roseroot, right? I was raised in Yangshuah. The order gave me everything. It gave me food when I was starving, love when I was unlovable, and guidance when I was on a dark path. Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done with the sole intention of keeping it alive. Today, that mission includes keeping you safe. Do you believe me?”

Hypha straightened up and nodded.

“I need to hear it.” His voice got lower. More direct. “Say you believe me.”

“I believe you.” The sudden intensity of Prairie Sky’s voice rooted Hypha to the spot. “What’s going on?”

“The Stonewood mountains are a paradise of isolation. The monks out there are idealists. And because they’re so far removed from the rest of the world, they don’t have to make compromises. But we’re not in the mountains anymore.”

Something clicked in Hypha’s mind. “Why did you leave Yangshuah?”

Prairie Sky stood up. “I want to show you something.”

“No. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Hypha, please.”

“No!” He leapt onto his chair. Papers stirred. “You’re not telling me something. Do you want to get us all killed?”

“Little bird,” Prairie Sky said, “you’re so far away from your nest.” He floated over the chaos on the floor and landed in the doorway. “Let me show you one thing. Then I promise, I’ll tell you exactly how I’m going to keep everyone here safe.”

The two ponies locked eyes. For a moment, only the papers between them moved.

Hypha nodded and followed him out.

They went deeper into the monastery, until the walls wept moisture and scraped Hypha’s shoulders. They turned an abrupt bend to find the hallway partitioned off by several thick wool curtains.

Without turning around, Prairie Sky asked Hypha, “What’s the most important thing to you?”

“Keeping the order alive.”

“Me too. Do you believe me?”

“Just show me what you want to show me.”

Prairie Sky pushed the curtains aside. Hypha followed him into a converted meditation chamber. Harsh purple light emanated from several dozen ultraviolet crystals dangling from the high ceiling. They reminded Hypha of the one Red stole from Median, though these ones were wired.

But it wasn’t the light that made his breath catch in his throat.

Large square stones, each one roughly belly-height and just as wide, formed half a dozen rows stretching the length of the long room. Loose earth had been scattered over the top of each stone. Plastic tubes connected a series of automatic misting devices to a water barrel in the corner.

Sprouting from the rocks were hundreds of mother sky mushrooms.

Hypha took a step forward, his face frozen in awe. He reached out and ran his hoof over the closest row of mushrooms. Then he leaned down and inhaled. An earthy smell, almost garlicy, tinged with the faintest hint of sulfur, tickled his nose.

The blood rushed to his ears. He pulled his head away. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Prairie Sky said. “They’re every bit as magically potent as the mountain variety. When I left Yangshuah, I took a sample batch of mother sky with me. I was down to the last seeding bundle before I found the ideal growing conditions.”

“This is impossible,” Hypha finally said.

“This is how we survive.” Prairie Sky hunched over and stared at the little caps. His eyes overflowed with pride and reverence. “They do so much more than keep us connected to the earth’s magic. They’re going to preserve our order for the next ten thousand years.”

Questions swirled through Hypha’s mind. Perhaps he had misjudged Prairie Sky. If he could pull off one miracle and grow mother sky mushrooms hydroponically—something that no monk had ever managed to do in the mountains—maybe he could pull off more.

“Did you document what you did to make them grow?” Hypha asked, his eyes still locked on the little mushroom caps. “We’ll need to know how to restart operations after we evacuate the monastery.”

In a soft, fatherly voice, Prairie Sky said, “We’re not leaving.”

Hypha looked up, confused. “Well, we can’t live underground. They’ll starve us out of the caves.”

“You don’t understand. We’re not leaving because we’re not in danger.”

Something about the way Prairie Sky said that set Hypha on edge. “They killed my friends in front of me. They almost killed me, too. We’re definitely in danger.”

“No,” Prairie Sky shook his head, “you don’t understand. These mushrooms are keeping us safe. Are. Present tense.”

Hypha stuck his mangled front hoof in Prairie Sky’s face. “The mushrooms don’t make you invincible.”

“No. They make you indispensable.” Prairie Sky’s eyes glowed in the ultraviolet crystal light. “The order’s mission is to help those in need. For you and I, that meant getting taken in as orphans.” He pointed at the ceiling. “Those ponies up there? They’re orphans too. Life damages them. They’re in desperate need, as desperate as any foal left out in the cold.”

“But they’re not monks.” The gears started to whir together in Hypha’s mind. There were so few ponies in orange up there on the surface. This harvest alone would last them half a year, if not longer.

The truth aligned in agonizing clarity. “You’re selling mushrooms.”

“I’m buying a shield. A shield that no spear can break. Rich ponies from the cities will throw obscene amounts of gold at me to relieve the torture this world inflicts on them. We give them the same reprieve the order gave us when they took us off the streets. Money and mushrooms buy our safety.”

“You’re working with Derecho.”

He let out a barking laugh. “The fifth legion marched through here last month. They didn’t touch us. I bought that freedom.”

Hypha’s eyes flickered from the mushrooms to Prairie Sky. Anger boiled him from the inside out. This went beyond disrespect. He felt his broken front hooves, gauging a punch.

Prairie Sky seemed to sense this. “They expelled me from Yangshuah. Is that what you wanted to hear? Look at where their idealism got them. They’re all dead.”

Hypha’s voice grew dark. “That was your family.”

“And I weep for them. But it’s too late to ask them to change.” He paused, something sharp on the tip of his tongue. “If you’re here... that means the legion’s already in the Stonewood mountains. The other monasteries are all gone.” He looked away. Shadows masked his face. “It’s just us now.”

Hypha stood absolutely still. The buzz of the crystal lamps rang in his ears. His hooves ached. A vision of Cumulus accepting a meager mushroom haul with a smile flashed through his mind.

With a roar, Hypha surged forward and ripped out the closest clump of mushrooms with his teeth. Before Prairie Sky could stop him, he’d chewed it up and swallowed it.

“Hypha, stop—”

“They’re not yours!”

Hypha went for the next bunch of mushrooms, but his legs seized up. His whole body shuddered. His pupils dilated. The ultraviolet light coalesced into mist, and the mist coalesced into rows of teeth like jagged rocks.

These mushrooms, it seemed, took effect much faster than the other ones.

His front hooves phased through the stone floor. He tipped forward. The earth swallowed him up. A moment later, somehow, he was outside, clutching onto Prairie Sky for dear life, choking on the syrup-sweet summer air of the mountain that was not a mountain, sobbing into his unfamiliar peach-colored robe.

Chapter 11

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“It was like a face made of faces,” Hypha said to Red and Blue. “Every face of every ancestor I’d ever had came together into one. And they were all glaring at me.”

Red horked down a third piece of sweet bread. “That’s crazy.”

Blue, who sat next to her, nodded in agreement before bringing her bowl of beet soup to her lips and slurping the whole thing down.

Listening to them chew made Hypha feel nauseous. He looked down at the lump of cold white rice sitting before him. He wanted to eat, but the Canary’s Cage variant of mother sky had completely ruined his appetite.

“Did you find anything in those documents you took from Median?” he asked.

Red scrunched up her nose. “Nah. We were hoping there’d be more court logs and travel records, but it was mostly birth certificates. And we already knew Blue’s dad wasn’t born in that backwater. If he was, he wouldn’t be who he is.”

“Who is he, anyway?”

Red gauged the look on Blue’s face, and sensing some hesitation from her marefriend, went back to eating without answering.

After a while, Hypha cleared his throat. “I think... I think it’s over. I don’t know where I’m gonna go next, but you don’t have to help me anymore.”

“Cool, that was always the plan.” Red noticed the sullen look on his face. “Hey, c’mon, don’t get so down. Ponies die all the time.” Blue elbowed Red in the ribs. Red hacked up the last bite of her sweet bread and flashed an annoyed look at her companion. “What I’m trying to say is, we’re sorry things didn’t work out. At least you tried.”

Blue nodded and went over to the food line to get another place. When she got back, she placed a piece of sweet bread in front of Hypha and motioned for him to eat. It stuck to the roof of his dry mouth, but he didn’t puke it up after the first bite. Baby steps.

As they left the cafeteria, Red pulled him aside.

A big group of travelers had just emerged from one of the big buildings opposite them—the group therapy building, Prairie Sky called it. Orange-vested workers moved between them, balancing water glasses on big plastic trays. Their conversation floated by on a faint breeze. The few puffy clouds overhead stool perfectly still. A hint of baking bread emanated from the mess hall.

“Is there a celibacy thing here?” Red asked.

Her question took Hypha by surprise. “A what?”

“A celibacy thing. You know.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I dunno. There’s no spell barrier or something, where if we—you know—” She bumped her hooves together. “I’m not gonna like, magically explode or anything. Am I?”

“Who’s we?”

“Not you, idiot.”

Hypha furrowed his brow. “Well, monks are only allowed to breed during full moons—”

“But I’m not a monk. So will I explode or not?”

Hypha considered Red’s question for a long time. “No,” he finally said, “I don’t think you’ll explode. But it would probably be prudent to abstain from doing anything that might be seen as disresp—”

Red grabbed Blue’s hoof. The two galloped towards the dormitory building at breakneck pace.

Prairie Sky found Hypha sitting atop the temple dome, lying on his back and staring into space with half-lidded eyes.

“You okay?” Prairie Sky called from the lip of the dome.

Hypha rolled his head slowly. “Yeah.” He paused. “Should I get down from here?”

“No, that’s fine. Most ponies choose not to sit on the temple, but it’s not forbidden.”

Nothing’s forbidden, Hypha thought to himself. Not here.

“Can I join you?”

Hypha shrugged. “Sure.”

Prairie Sky settled down beside Hypha. “I have a somewhat personal question. If you don’t want to answer, I understand.”

“Sure.”

“Did you partake in the mushroom ritual back in the mountains? Before...”

Hypha rolled a few responses around in his head before settling on a curt, “I did. It was a horrible mistake.”

Prairie Sky attempted to conceal a smile. “But you did it.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“A quarter of a gram. Maybe more. They weren’t dried, so it’s hard to say for sure what the actual dosage was.”

“How did my mother sky compare to the real deal?”

Hypha’s snout wrinkled. “What?”

“Were the visuals similar? Was the feeling the same? I’ve been using my own crop for so long, I’ve forgotten what the original feels like.”

Hypha considered getting up and leaving. Mother sky wasn’t a party drug. It wasn’t ergotized wine or hash. It was a sacred moment. But Prairie Sky had shown him nothing but kindness since the moment he arrived. Maybe information could repay that kindness.

“With yours, the visuals were stronger. It felt like I died, and everything was just gone, and I was moving around in the middle of the night with no lights. I felt hollow.” Prairie Sky nodded, silently urging him on. “With the mountain mushrooms, the visuals were less intense, but my whole body felt full of magic. Yours didn’t do that.”

“Yes. Wow. That’s significant.” Prairie Sky could no longer contain his excitement. “Thank you for your candor, Hypha.”

“Why’s that significant?”

“It confirms what I’ve been feeling for years. There are discreet differences between the mushrooms I cultivate and the originals. Mine produce a stronger sensory experience, but they don’t enhance magic as much.”

Hypha scoffed. “There’s no magic in them at all.”

“Oh, there’s plenty of magic. You wouldn’t believe the power in these things. They’ve cured addictions, released terminal patients from their suffering, forged bonds between strangers—that’s magic.”

Prairie Sky took one of Hypha’s front hooves and held it up to get a better look at it. Hypha flinched, but didn’t withdraw.

“How’d it happen?” Prairie Sky asked.

“Crash landing.” Hypha almost told him about the botched rune spell too, but he held that detail back.

“Have they shown any sign of improvement?”

“Why do you care?”

“My calling in this life is to ease the pain of others.” He glanced at the bare muscle fibers where Hypha’s hoof used to be. “That looks painful.”

Hypha sighed. “It’s not that bad. I don’t know if the right one will ever grow back. The left one—” He examined the spiderweb of cracks in the keratin. “I don’t know. Maybe it’ll fix itself.”

“We have something that might accelerate the healing.”

Hypha lifted an eyebrow. “You know healing magic?”

“The spells I know aren’t powerful enough to heal injuries this severe. But there are other ways.”

“Like what?”

“I want to try putting you in one of our mineral baths.” Perhaps sensing Hypha’s hesitation, he continued, “They’re meant to treat minor aches and pains, but I think if we combine the spells I know with the restorative magic of the bath, we might see some good results.”

Hypha considered the offer. He didn’t want outsider help if it could be avoided. But right now, he could barely hold a cup, let alone exact revenge. Perhaps in this case, a compromise needed to be made.

Another compromise, he reminded himself bitterly.

The seamless integration of white tiling into tan rocks gave the impression that the spa room had been here since the beginning of time. As Hypha watched, two orange-vested ponies filled a basin with steaming hot water, then stirred in several cups of sparkling blue mineral salts. The water frothed, hissed, then turned cloudy.

His hooves went numb the instant they touched the water. There was a faint throb of pain further up his arm, then nothing.

“It’s dangerous how much you idolize the order,” Prairie Sky said. He knelt before Hypha and started drawing a rune on top of the water. “I can’t lie though, it’s also inspiring.”

Hypha nodded. “Some things demand our entire being.”

“Agreed.” He finished drawing the rune. The water glowed white. He placed his hooves on the surface and started to agitate the mixture back and forth. “When I started this temple, I was worried the lack of tradition was going to strip away the spiritual value of the mushroom experience.”

Hypha pressed his lips together until they turned white. Little ripples formed where his hooves tapped the bottom of the basin. Don’t say anything, he thought to himself. Just shut up for five seconds.

“That must seem rich coming from me. But please believe me. I want this place to be legitimate.” Hypha let out a little sigh. “Sorry, did you want to say something—”

“No,” Hypha muttered. “No, go ahead.”

“I want this to be a legitimate operation, but I never had a deep theoretical knowledge of our order’s doctrine. I was never a good student, and the monks didn’t let me take any scrolls with me when I...” He trailed off. “I want to be upfront with you. I need you. Functionally, this place is a well-oiled machine. But spiritually, there’s a lack.”

Hypha nodded. At least they saw eye to eye on one thing.

Prairie Sky’s hooves sped up. The water sloshed gently from one side of the basin to the other. “Your knowledge of the order could be just what we need to turn this place into a true successor to the order. It might not be exactly the same—”

“It’ll never be the same,” Hypha snapped. He lifted his hooves out of the basin. The pain returned in an instant. Water splashed up Prairie Sky’s forelegs.

“Put them back,” Prairie Sky said.

Hypha set his hooves back into the water. “If you don't treat the mushrooms like a religious experience, then they’re not. You might as well just give them wine. It’ll taste better.”

“Promise me you’ll think about it. If you’re really so convinced that this place is sacrilegious, then help me fix it.”

“You already know how to fix it. Get rid of the outsiders.”

The water in the basin turned black. Hypha withdrew his right hoof and found it covered in a sticky black film. As it dried, it hardened into a thick carapace-like shell.

“The hooves still have to heal themselves,” Prairie Sky said, “but the spell set the minerals in a cast of sorts. It’ll last about a month. Two if you’re careful. It’ll be enough to protect them while the healing process begins.”

“Thanks,” Hypha said, still fixated on his hooves.

“I could teach you the spell. The rune is easy. The difficulty comes in sourcing the right rocks for the powder. A lot of rune magic intertwines with geology.” He smiled. “There’s so much we could learn from each other.”

“Maybe,” Hypha said. In truth, the whole process fascinated him. But a part of him dared not show his interest. Interest felt a little too close to validation. And he didn’t dare validate any of this.

Prairie Sky got to his hooves. “Your friends are in the guest dorm. Room 316. Have a little compassion for them. For everyone here. They didn’t come all this way by accident. They’re searching for something, too.”

Hypha thought about Prairie Sky’s words as he walked back to the dormitory building. His head still felt scattered from the mushrooms, but with the mineral spell protecting his hooves, he felt his confidence finally start to come back bit by bit. He decided that now would be a good time to get a little flying practice in. If in a month the mineral spell wore off and he had to go back to hovering all day, then he needed to be properly conditioned to take that punishment.

His pushed himself away from the earth. The first attempt was awkward and slow and ended with him pitching into the ground. The second try went much better however. He rose at a steady pace until he reached the roof of the dorm, where he paused to catch his breath. Four stories. Not great. Not terrible, either.

The rooftop was a mess, a scattered nest of deck chairs, sunning blankets, and a charcoal grill. A scattering of multicolored pegasi feathers were strewn around one blanket. The results of a mutual preen, by the looks of it.

A ghost of a smile appeared on his face. Even here, pegasi still refused to clean up after themselves.

From his perch, he could see all the way past the lip of the steppe, down to the grasslands three hundred lengths below. Broad waves of wind passed through the grass, turning their reflective sides towards the sun so they glowed yellowish white. In the mountains, the earth was immovable. Here, it danced.

The thick air slowed his takeoffs, and climbing was murder, but he managed six strong ascents in thirty minutes. Each time he made it a little higher, until at the apex of the sixth climb the headache returned. Six was good enough, he decided. Tomorrow, and every day going forward, he’d try to do one more practice ascent than the day before.

Hypha stayed on the roof until he heard the flapping wings of approaching pegasi. Without turning around, he hopped over the lip of the roof and glided down to ground level. No sense making friends here.

When Hypha knocked on the door to room 316, no one answered. The door wasn’t locked, so he inched his way inside.

“Hello?” He stuck his snout through the doorway. The single large bed in the center of the room was empty. The half-dresser and desk were undisturbed, as was the bookshelf beside the doorway. He sighed a little breath of relief and pushed the door open all the way. “Anyone here?”

“Hey Hypha.”

Hypha jumped in surprise and looked up. Red had wedged herself into the space between the bookshelf and the ceiling. She met his gaze with casual disinterest. She held something sharp in her hoof.

“What’s that?” he asked.

She put her hoof behind her. When she brought it back into view, it was empty. “Nothing.”

Blue emerged from underneath the bed. The two mares sat down on the floor. Hypha took this as his cue to enter and sat across from them.

“So when are you leaving?” Red asked.

“I don’t know. Soon. This place isn’t what it says it is. I can’t stay here.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “Where will you two go?”

Red frowned. “You can’t come with us.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to.”

“Right. But you still can’t come with us. You’ll slow us down.”

“Fine. But before we go our separate ways, you might be able to help me with one last thing.”

“Nah, we’re good.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

Red tossed her mane back with a smile. “If we’re being honest, this whole ‘help me find my tribe’ thing isn’t really worth our time. We got bigger fish to fry.”

“Just hear me out. I got us here, didn’t I? I got you fed and massaged.” Red and Blue didn’t instantly shut him down, so he continued, “This place is a sham. The elder stole my order’s sacred mushrooms, and now he’s selling them for profit. I’m gonna stop him, and I need your help.”

“Nah.”

“Nah? But you love stealing.”

“No we don’t. We stole food in Median cuz we were starving. We stole the book from the courthouse cuz we gotta find Blue’s dad. We haven’t stolen anything here. That elder guy’s been really nice to us, and you wanna steal his stuff? That’s pretty messed up, Hypha.”

Hypha blinked. He hadn’t been expecting this kind of pushback from Red of all ponies. “There are records in the temple. Lots of rich ponies come through here. Maybe Blue’s dad was here.”

That got their attention. The two mares sat bolt upright, sharing an unspoken conversation in a moment’s glance. “Show us,” Red said.

Chapter 12

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The trio waited until the last trace of twilight surrendered night before slipping out of their dormitory room. They moved single-file down the hall, heads down, tails swishing silently behind them.

Be like a snow leopard, Hypha thought. A faint afterimage of jagged teeth and claws flashed through his mind. He tuned it out. He was a pony on a mission. Focus was key.

Once outside, they crossed the grassy rotunda at a dead sprint. A few lights were on in the cafeteria, as well as a few in the dorm they’d just left. But the monastery grounds themselves were empty. Nopony stopped them as they made their way down the temple stairs.

Red and Blue paused at the bottom to gawk at the massive dome. Firelight from the eternal flame danced across their faces.

“Culty,” Red surmised.

After a few wrong turns, Hypha managed to retrace his steps back to Prairie Sky’s office. A torch still burned inside, but the room was unoccupied.

“Who leaves an open flame in a room full of books?” he muttered.

Red and Blue didn’t bother answering. They attacked the desk, stomping right over the fragile parchment on the floor. Hypha flinched.

“Be careful,” he whispered. “Don’t make too much noise.”

“Go do your mushroom thing,” Red said over her shoulder. Another old document crackled under her hooves. “We got this.”

“Last time we split up, you almost left without me.”

“You’re not coming with us, remember?”

Hypha lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching them work. Then he sighed and took off further down the hall.

The ultraviolet lights of the hydroponics room painted Hypha’s fur a luminous shade of purple. He blinked away spots, unaccustomed to the light after so much time groping around in relative darkness.

The first thing he did was take a notepad and pencil from his saddlebag and make a sketch of the entire operation. Then he got granular. He used a canteen to remove a sample of the water from the tank in the corner in case he needed to examine the mineral content. He studied the rubber tubing delivering water to the rocks, the frequency at which they misted the mushrooms. He took samples of the thin soil. He unplugged one of the ultraviolet crystal lights and stuffed it into his bag for good measure.

Then, with religious reverence, he plucked each of the mushrooms from their rocks and placed them in a separate compartment in his saddlebag. Handling so many mushrooms, even these toothless half-children of the real thing, made his heart race. A mountainous weight pressed down on his shoulders. With each rock he stripped clean, he recalled the face of another Roseroot monk. Cumulus. Hirruck. Wrender. This was for them.

When he was done, he paused by the exit. His eyes flickered towards the water container and the dozens of tubes snaking onto the now-empty rocks. A pen knife sat out on a small work bench next to the container. The blade gleamed in the light.

Hypha picked up the knife and drove it into the bottom of the water container. He jerked it free, and a thin stream spilled onto the floor. He slashed the tubes next. Then the wires connecting the lights. That was for Roseroot, too.

When the sabotage was complete, Hypha crept back up the hallway to Prairie Sky’s office. Red and Blue were still rifling through his paperwork.

“Have fun?” Red asked. She tore through a ream of legal ledgers with important-looking signatures on them, ripping half of them in the process and scattering the rest.

Hypha shrugged. The treasures in his saddlebag shifted awkwardly on his back. “Any idea when you’ll be done?”

“No.”

Blue’s head emerged from behind the desk. She shot Hypha a sympathetic glance, then dove back in.

Hypha stood outside the office until the sound of tearing parchment got under his skin. He limped off to the main room and sat in front of the eternal fire, not quite meditating, not quite thinking about anything. He felt himself dozing off, and decided to let it happen. Red and Blue would wake him up, intentionally or not, when they went to leave.

As he drifted off, he heard a voice behind him say, “I knew I’d find you here.”

Hypha shrieked and leapt into the air. His front hooves came down hard. The mineral seal held, but it didn’t numb the pain of the impact entirely. Hypha fell onto his side. The load of mushrooms in his bag compressed.

Prairie Sky stood before him, his eyes shining in the firelight. Patches of wispy mane jutted off in every direction. His mustache drooped. It looked like he’d just rolled out of bed.

“Sorry,” he said, chuckling. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you—”

“I’m okay,” Hypha snapped. He caught himself, took a deep breath, and sat up on his haunches. “I’m not good with surprises.”

“I should have known better than to sneak up on you. I’m sorry.”

Hypha went back to staring at the fire. “It’s fine.”

Prairie Sky took a seat next to Hypha. “So you’re leaving?” he asked, his voice neutral.

Did Prairie Sky suspect anything? Maybe he thought Hypha was merely paying his final respects to the architecture before slipping away. “Yes,” Hypha finally said. “Tonight.”

“Even with everything that’s happened, I still consider you a brother. You’ll always have a place here.”

Hypha felt a twinge of guilt. Even after everything Prairie Sky had done to the order—stolen their secrets, pimped them for profit—even after all that, Hypha couldn’t ignore the kindness in the false elder’s heart. He was a paragon of monkly virtue. In a way.

“I haven’t been the best guest,” Hypha said. “But I’m grateful for your hospitality.”

“You’ve been through so much. It’s an honor to care for you.”

Guilt twisted Hypha’s gut. “Thanks.”

“What about your friends?”

Hypha stiffened. His ears swiveled to the hallway he’d come from. He couldn’t hear the two mares trashing the office from here. But that hardly eased his anxiety. “They’re leaving too.”

He nodded. “Right. Official government business.”

“Is that what they told you?”

“Yup.” The two shared a knowing laugh. “They’re good ponies, but they’re on a bad path. Try not to let them fall into despair.”

“What makes you say that?”

“They’re burdened by hate. That’s my read on them, anyway. If you spend enough time wrestling demons, you start to see them in others.”

“You think you’re a hateful pony?”

“I know it. I’m weak, Hypha. Sometimes I worry I’ve pulled the wool over all these poor ponies’ eyes. That I’ve manipulated them.” He stared deep into the fire, as if he was searching a scrying mirror. “But I have to keep going. If I really believe what I’m doing is right, then I can’t let anything stop me. Nor should it stop you.” His eyes fell on Hypha like red-hot coals. “It takes bravery to do the right thing. Others might tell you it’s stupid. You might even convince yourself it’s not worth it. But if it’s really the right thing to do, then you have to do it. You can’t stop until it’s done.”

Hypha’s face went red with shame. To Prairie Sky, it must have looked like a blush of pride. “I’m not a strong pony.”

“You’re one of the strongest ponies I’ve ever met. You came all this way just to save a bunch of strangers. That’s strength.”

Hypha’s words turned to foul-tasting smoke in his lungs. “I’m not... I...” he trailed off.

Prairie Sky put a foreleg around Hypha’s shoulder. The warmth in the older pony’s eyes and the way the shadows flickered across his face made him look like a reflection of elder Cumulus.

“Where will you go now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I guess back to the mountains.”

“Can I give you some advice? Don’t.” Prairie Sky met Hypha’s challenging look with one of equal resilience. “Don’t go home. There’s nothing left for you up there.”

“Says the pony who got thrown out.” The bitterness in Hypha’s own voice surprised him. But it didn’t seem to bother Prairie Sky.

“If you go back now, you won’t find what you’re looking for.”

“I need to bury my friends.”

“You already did. You survived. You honored their sacrifice.”

“They’ll get eaten by birds.”

“They’ve already been eaten by birds. Hypha. Look at me.” He couldn’t. He tried, but Prairie Sky looked too much like Cumulus. He just couldn’t. “Don’t throw your life away for something that’s already lived and died. There’s so much more to life than chasing away birds.”

Prairie Sky reached into his saddlebag and produced a slim spiral-bound book with a dark blue cover. It was the same textbook Hypha had been pouring over with Hirruck.

“Never hurts to study the fundamentals.” He pressed the book into Hypha’s hooves. “For whatever it’s worth, I think you’ve passed enough trials for ten lifetimes. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a monk.”

Prairie Sky stood up and walked away. It took Hypha a moment to realize he was walking towards the hallway leading to his office. The office Red and Blue were still currently ransacking.

“Where are you going?” Hypha called after him.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d get some extra work done. You’re welcome to join me if you’d like, but I understand if you’d rather get going.”

“Wait.” Hypha’s mind raced. “Stay here with me. Please.”

Prairie Sky’s face unfolded into a fatherly smile. “Okay.”

Hypha breathed a silent sigh of relief and went to tuck the rune spell book into his bag. As he did, he accidentally jostled the contents. Two of the glass sample containers clinked together.

“What’s that in your bag?” Prairie Sky asked.

At that exact moment, Red and Blue burst from the dark hallway, triumphant smiles on their faces. Red held a decaying scrap of parchment in one hoof. “We found it!” she shouted.

As each successive repetition of her voice echoed back in the temple chamber, the horror on Hypha’s face grew. The jig was up.

For the first time since he’d appeared, a look of mild concern drew across Prairie Sky’s face. “What’s that?” he asked, his voice flat.

Red stepped in front of Blue. The mask went up. “We lost a document while we were touring the temple.”

“Official government business, right?”

Red’s eyes narrowed. “Right.”

“Why does it look like your document was ripped out of my client ledger?”

For a long moment, only the fire moved. The flames found a vein of moisture trapped within the wood. A whine of escaping steam filled Hypha’s ears, louder and louder, until it drowned out everything else. Prairie Sky saw right through him. He knew. And if Hypha didn’t do something fast, then Prairie Sky would do the same thing every other outsider did: attack.

Hypha did the only thing he could do. He struck first.

He drew a blank rune and bucked the floor with his hind legs. The chamber resonated like a tuning fork. The fire trembled. A piece of stone the size of a baseball cracked and dislodged.

Prairie Sky frowned. "Hypha, hold on—"

Hypha picked up the chunk of rock he’d dislodged and swung it at Prairie Sky’s head. The impact sent a meaty thud echoing through the dome.

“Run,” Hypha breathed.

When he reached the stairwell, he risked a look back. Prairie Sky laid on his side, his face towards the fire. A thin line of blood poured from his temple, anointing the floor.

Chapter 13

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Hypha tore away from the temple at a dead sprint. Pain bloomed in his front hooves. Bile bubbled in his throat. That didn’t happen, he thought. That didn’t happen. The moment was a black hole in his memory, eating everything. He strained against the pull and fell deeper into darkness.

He made it to the main gate without being spotted. Red and Blue followed close behind. They pressed their bodies against the wall and struggled to catch their breath quietly.

“Idiot,” Red panted. “Why’d you hit him?”

“I don’t know,” Hypha replied.

“He wasn’t gonna fight us.”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you hear the way his head hit the ground?”

“I said—” he realized he was being too loud and covered his mouth. The monastery radiated perfect serene silence. He was a noisy intruder. An outsider. “I don’t know,” he said again, softer this time.

Red turned around to face him. Her eyes caught starlight and pulsed in the darkness. “I don’t care about whatever your beef with him was, but he was really nice to us.”

“Since when do you care about other ponies?”

She slapped him. Hard. The sound echoed back and hit him a second time.

“Street trash,” she said, her whispered voice falling like blows against his ears. “You don’t know anything about me.” She shimmied the gate open, slow and silent. Hypha followed them through.

Without any light, the edge of the steppe and the empty air blurred together. Hypha shuffled forward until he felt the lip and looked down. The faint sound of rustling grass reached his ears.

Blue was beside him. She simply materialized there—one moment she wasn’t, the next she was. Before Hypha could even register surprise, she punched him in the side of the head. He staggered sideways and bumped into Red, who hip-checked him right back into Blue. Two more blows connected with his face.

Everything went white. A sound like an avalanche filled his ears. When he regained his bearings, he was on his belly with his legs splayed out to his sides. Red stood on top of him, one foreleg on the small of his back, the other clutching his mane, holding his head up.

“What—” Hypha tried to breathe, but dust clogged his mouth and nose. He coughed.

The two mares glanced towards the gate in unison. “Be quiet,” Red said, her voice flat.

Hypha let out a great big sneeze.

Red sighed and dragged him to the edge of the step, until his head hung off the edge. Hypha shut his mouth. At least there wasn’t so much dust in his face anymore.

“Blue and I were thinking,” Red started. “You said you weren’t gonna follow us anymore. But what if you were lying?”

Hypha raised an eyebrow. “Let me up.”

“It’s no big deal to us if you go around killing ponies with rocks. That’s a you thing. We don’t care.”

“I said, let me up.”

“But what if I did something that goes against your dogma or whatever? You gonna hit me with a rock, too?”

“I would never—”

She yanked his mane. “Shut up.” Her eyes turned to his saddlebags. “Those mushrooms must be pretty rare if you were willing to kill for them.”

“I didn’t—mmhf.” Hypha grimaced. “I didn’t kill him.”

“Sure. But they are pretty rare.”

Hypha tried to shimmy out of Red’s grip, to no avail. Her hooves bit his skin like iron shackles. “He got kicked out of the order. He stole mother sky and sold it for—”

“I already said I don’t care, right? I don’t care.”

“I saved your life.”

“And we saved your life. And fed you. And plastered your hooves—which you broke, but no big deal. And carried you up this mountain.”

“It’s a steppe—” He gasped in pain and shut his mouth.

“Since we’ve been helping you out all this time, I think Blue and I deserve to try some mushrooms.”

“They’re not yours.”

“C’mon. We’re your friends, Hypha.”

“If you were my friends, you’d let me up.”

“Just a precaution. We thought that monk was your friend.”

“He wasn’t.”

“Well, my bad. I guess that means we’re the only friends you got.”

“I’m not giving you any.”

Red shifted her weight above him. He felt her face mere inches from hers. He could just make out her sunken eyes, the faint starlight inside. “You don’t have to.”

Blue reached underneath Hypha and undid the clasp to his saddlebag. He writhed until his underbelly bled, but Red held him down.

Once the bag was off, Red put her lips right next to his ear and said, “We’re not mad. Really.”

Then she pushed him off the edge.

If Hypha had been able to collect his bearings just a split second faster, he might have been able to fly back up to the steppe’s ledge and take his saddlebag back. But the last ten minutes had taken a tremendous toll on him. By the time his brain caught up with reality, he was already halfway down.

This must have been what it was like for Wrender.

Now was definitely not the time to let his mind wander. Not that he could help it. He sucked in a breath and forced himself to focus on the ground. If he landed at this angle and this speed, he’d burst apart on impact. He put his hooves out in front of him to brace the landing, thought better of it, and curled up into a ball instead. The tall grass cushioned his fall, but the impact still rattled him all the way down to his bones.

As he shook the grassy pulp out of his fur, blind fury gave way to panic. The mushrooms were gone. All of them. After what he did to get them—

He recoiled away from the thought. The memory seared everything it touched. He had to focus on the here and now. He was here. Red and Blue would have to climb down if they wanted to leave. He had to find the trail. He had to be ready.

And do what? Jump them? Grab the bag and run? Find another rock? His face contorted—the memory was still too hot.

No rocks. For now, all he could do was hide in the grass and wait.

The climb up had taken about three hours. Hypha waited for four before he started to grow nervous. Had they fallen off the sides somehow? The two mares weren’t stupid. But if they’d eaten the mushrooms—and that’s what it was, to them at least: nothing more than a snack—then the risk factor grew exponentially.

No. Not being stupid meant not eating potent psychedelics before a dangerous descent. They’d be down here eventually.

A fifth hour passed before Hypha finally heard a dragging sound coming from the trail. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and stretched his limbs. This was his moment. He had the element of surprise. He had speed. He didn’t have to fight. Just jump them, grab the saddlebag, and fly away.

He wasn’t prepared for what came down the trail.

Red and Blue crawled on their bellies. At first Hypha thought they were laughing, but after a moment he realized they were both hysterically weeping. Red had wet herself. Her lips were pulled back in a terrified grimace. As she approached, Hypha noticed her robe had ridden up over her tail. He saw her cutie mark, a cardinal clinging to a branch like the last leaf of fall.

Blue’s eyes were glued to the ledge. Her mane was caked with sweat, plastered in patches to the side of her face. She still wore Hypha’s saddlebags, though one of the straps had snapped.

Hypha kept himself concealed as the two mares inched their way forward. Upon reaching the ground, Red attempted to stand. Her knees buckled. Blue dove on top of her, as if shielding her from invisible arrows.

“C’mon, Blue.” Red tore herself away. Her voice cracked. “We gotta go. We gotta—”

A lone songbird flashed overhead. Red screamed.

Hypha was stunned. In all his years in the monastery, he’d never seen mother sky do this to a pony. Had she done this to make it easier for him to take the saddlebag back? That had to be it. He’d been right all along. He coiled his legs beneath him, ready to leap.

Elder Cumulus’s voice echoed in his ears. One of those lessons is empathy.

He almost went through with it. It would have been easy. He could have roared like a moosebear and they would have fallen over themselves to give him what he needed. Without the voice of Cumulus cutting through, there was nothing but the animal impulse to take what was his.

But he couldn’t ignore the voice. He never could. Not then. Not now. Empathy. Fine.

Slowly, moment by moment, the tension in his body eased. He stepped out of the tall grass and walked over to them, one hoof raised in what he hoped was a universal sign of surrender.

“How many did you eat?” he asked.

Blue opened her mouth and let out an ear-rattling wail. Hypha recoiled in horror. All of her teeth were gone. Her tongue had been cut out and cauterized. Only a glossy stump remained.

Chapter 14

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In the fighting pit of Derecho’s infamous colosseum, a beast waited for its meal.

A zebra prisoner named Celiah waited in the tunnels below. The guards had corralled her and twenty other prisoners into a single file line at the bottom of a long ramp. Hazy sunlight filtered through an iron gate and stung her eyes. A few of the other prisoners whimpered. They were the fresh meat, the lucky ones who had arrived late and only had to spend a week or two in the labyrinthian prison, waiting to be killed. Celiah had been waiting for three months.

Celiah tried to tune out the cries of the other inmates and listen to the sounds the beast made. Back in Zebrica, animals of every shape and stripe roamed the earth, living and dying in harmony with each other. Celiah had listened to them as a child and made a game of putting names to noises. A single zebra could never hope to learn all the myriad calls. But with careful observation, telltale patterns appeared.

This particular beast sounded like some kind of big cat.

Another sound filled the air. The colosseum held a second beast of sorts: forty thousand screaming Derechans. They wanted her the same way the big cat wanted her. They were hungry.

The guards at the gate shouted down to the ones handling the prisoners. The smell of panic filled the air. This was it.

Standing at the precipice, Celiah found herself oddly calm. She thought of her home in Zebrica and the life she’d never gotten to live. She’d had three months to rage at the injustice of it all. Now, all that was left to do was go.

The massive iron gate shuddered. The prisoners shuddered too, but not Celiah. She stood tall with her head high. Let her captors see her calm. Let it agonize them at night when they closed their eyes. Let it—

A guard put a burly hoof on her shoulder. “Not you.”

In the time it took for her to snap out of her death reverie, the guard removed the chain connecting her to the other prisoners and pulled her roughly out of line.

The gate shot up with a deafening clank of metal. More guards appeared, screaming at the prisoners, prodding them with spears. The lineup stumbled up the ramp. Their eyes fell on her, bitter and contemptuous. Then they disappeared, swallowed up by the light.

The sounds of the colosseum floated softly through the open window, tickling lace curtains. Girasole paused to watch them flutter. The way the curtains caught the light pleased her. The skies were clear. The house was quiet. Life was good.

She’d convinced her husband, a senator named Giesu, to buy this place to better compartmentalize his home and working lives. Their twelve daughters needed a space of their own to live without getting in the way of his political duties.

There were ulterior motives, sure, but her stated one wasn’t a lie. Their old home—a mansion on the acropolis hill just down the street from the senate chambers, a home with its own private worship area, baths, offices, and enough rooms to house a small army—simply wasn’t large enough to accommodate twelve daughters and Giesu’s ego.

This new house suited her better, anyway. It was conveniently built on the same cloud base as one of the better markets in town, frequently orbited near the financial district, and never got closer than half a mile to the entertainment district, where the streets become clogged with ponies whenever an event came to the colosseum.

The view, too, was spectacular. Certain less affluent parts of the city, the grand markets and the slums across town, were cloaked in a near-perpetual fog. Not this neighborhood. From her balcony, she could see all the way to the shifting heart of Derecho.

Her nose twitched. For a second, she was sure she could smell blood in the air. Was it her imagination? Or was she having a stroke?

A uniformed guard knocked on the front door and announced, “The new servant is here, my lady.”

“Thank you.” Her voice sounded fine. No slurring. Just her imagination, then. “Take her to the basement. I’ll bring her up to speed.”

She paused as another roar went up from the colosseum. The sound brought a faint frown to Girasole’s face. They’d been at it all morning. How much longer could they go before they ran out of things to kill?

The guard dragged Celiah through the city streets. The cries of the colosseum faded into the background. High-walled villas of densely-packed cloudstone curled over the streets like hunched elders, blocking out the sun.

The street slanted up. The walk became an uphill slog. The buildings reclined against each other, mocking her effort. Eventually, they stopped at a large but unremarkable three-story structure. Celiah was ushered through a natural stone entryway, down a flight of stairs lined with shale and fine art. She stumbled several times. She hadn’t walked on anything truly solid in three months.

A pristine pegasus with yellow fur and a gossamer-thin lilac mane arrived behind her. She made a point of eyeing Celiah up and down, searching for defects.

“Should I pirouette?” Celiah asked.

The mare frowned. “No, that won’t be necessary.” A pause. “But show me your teeth.”

After another minute of inspection, the pegasus nodded. “My name is Girasole. This is your home now. I’ll give you the tour.”

As they wound through the estate’s many rooms, Girasole said, “You came from the colosseum?”

“Yes, mistress.”

“Don’t call me that. Girasole is fine. It’s not that kind of servitude.”

“Yes, Girasole.” Celiah inflected her voice so her new master’s name sounded like what it was: a title stamped on a sharpened blade. Girasole seemed to notice this. Good, Celiah thought. Let the pastel pig squirm in her own shit.

Girasole took her to the home’s servant quarters. Dozens of mares in simple linen dresses moved through the room, working and laughing. A few folded laundry. Others cooed over foals lying in a lineup of cribs.

A sense of unease filled Celiah. Was this some sort of upscale foal farm?

“Girls,” Girasole called. The servants peeled themselves away from the foals and lined up in a neat row. “This is Celiah. She’s here to help with the foals and general housework.”

The girls bowed their heads in unison.

“She came straight from the colosseum, so she’ll need a bath and some bandages. Perhaps a meal, too.” She turned to Celiah, eyeing her with a distant but friendly smile. “Is there anything else you require?”

“No, Girasole,” she replied. “But, a question, if I may.”

“Of course.”

“How many other servants are there?”

Girasole laughed. “You’re the only one.” She saw Celiah glance at the other girls in confusion. “Oh, dear me! I’m sorry. These aren’t servants. They’re my daughters.”

In truth, Girasole had a total of thirty eight daughters. Twelve were her true biological daughters. They slept on the upper floors, took music lessons, and learned how to speak in public and act at social gatherings.

The other twenty six were her husband’s illegitimate children, born from twenty four other mares. They crowded into the servants’ quarters and assisted in labor and general household tasks. The situation was far from ideal. But they made themselves useful in a variety of unexpected ways. Girasole loved them the way a mother might love a neighbor child who frequently played with her own children.

When Giesu’s first illegitimate daughter was born sixteen years ago, he suggested they tie her up in a sack and throw her into the river. Girasole pulled a knife on him and threatened to cut off his stallionhood.

As they came, he surrendered the other twenty five without a fight. That was the other reason why they’d bought this big house so far away from his official residence.

“Mama!” cried Azzurra Scuro, one of the twenty six illegitimate daughters of Giesu. She tottled into the formal room, where Girasole and Celiah were going over grocery receipts. Celiah couldn’t read, so Girasole was trying to teach her which symbols stood for which fruit. “Mama!”

The two older mares paused to watch little Azzurra. The foal pitched forward, landed in a shadow, and fell straight through. Celiah’s fur bristled. This is fine, she forced herself to think. This is normal. She can’t go far. Just listen and watch and wait and—

Azzurra Scuro reappeared in a heap on the other side of the room. She shot back up with a big squeal of laughter.

“Hard-headed,” Girasole commented. Celiah smiled.

Azzurra scrambled across the room and latched onto Celiah’s leg. “Mama!”

Celiah picked the foal up and hoofed her over to Girasole. “Want your mama? There you go.”

As she left Celiah’s arms, Azzurra’s little face darkened. She opened her mouth wide and screamed.

One day, when returning from her daily errands, Celiah found the front door to the mansion locked. She knocked politely and waited for someone to let her in. When no one did, she called out, “It’s Celiah, I’m at the door.”

No one heard her. After several minutes of waiting, she started to grow nervous. She knocked on the door again. A few passing ponies gave her hard looks, but turned away when Celiah met their eyes.

Then a cadre of Derechan soldiers appeared at the head of the street.

“You,” the commander called, “what are you doing? This isn’t your street.”

Celiah bowed so deep she almost overturned her basket. “I’m a servant of lady Girasole. I—”

The commander slapped her hard across the face. “Leave.”

Celiah gasped. Shivers wracked her body. “This is my—”

He shoved her. Her basket overturned. Bruised, wrinkled fruit spilled into the street. The soldiers broke ranks and stuffed them into their pockets. “I didn’t say you could speak,” the commander said.

At that moment, the door flew open. Girasole emerged like a banshee, screaming obscenities and swinging a rolling pin. She landed two solid blows across the commander’s back before the troops retreated down the street.

The commander shouted a few choice words at Girasole. The patrol reformed and marched off in the direction of the colosseum.

Girasole had another key made for Celiah that same day.

Fantasies of sprouting wings and flying away filled Celiah’s thoughts. More practically, with a key to the house, she had the luxury to pick and choose the best time to slip away. If she took just a few gold coins from the safe in the basement, and maybe a modest bundle of provisions from the pantry, she could buy passage back to the surface. Call it backpay.

Celiah wandered through the market, picking up provisions at random. Her mind was elsewhere. She could go wherever she wanted, provided she first got off this cloud. She could go east, where the orange trees grew in great groves of drained marshland. Or south, to the jungles of the baboon kingdoms, where the trees shed bananas like leaves in fall, and the harvest season never ended. THe possibilities were endless. Traveling alone would be dangerous, but so was living here with all these psychotic ponies. She could start over. She could be strong. She could—

She noticed someone was staring at her.

He was a zebra, a little older than her, with a confused look in his eyes. He crouched behind a stall of bananas and pretended to shop while stealing glances in her direction. When she looked his way, he ducked out of sight.

Seeing another zebra wasn’t a big deal in and of itself. The orbit of Derecho’s neighborhoods brought a constant flow of new creatures along Celiah’s path. It wasn’t uncommon to see half a dozen different species on the walk to the market, and another dozen more while she shopped. Most of them were servants of one kind or another. They all had their jobs to do, as did she. They left each other alone.

This zebra was ignoring that unspoken rule.

She saw the same zebra again the next day, and the day after that. His hiding spots changed, but that stare stayed the same.

On the fourth day, her patience broke. She didn’t have time for this. There were thirty six young mares to take care of. If he was going to try something, better she force him to try it here, where there were witnesses and guards present.

She walked up to the orange stand where he was hiding and picked a few fruits off the top row. The zebra ducked behind the cart.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him. “Never seen a zebra?”

The zebra stallion flinched. The jig was up. “No... In fact, I’ve seen you before.”

“Yes, I know. I saw you staring yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that.”

He lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“It takes more than that to upset me. You’d better find a different market to shop in, though. If I see you out here again, I’ll call the guards on you.”

“Please don’t.” He rose to his full height and emerged from behind the cart. Celiah took a step back, conscious of the distance between them. “I’m sorry. Really. My name is Walik. We’ve met before.”

“As I said—”

“No, I mean we’ve met before this. Before the market.”

“I don’t remember you from Zebrica.”

Walik shook his head. “Not that far back.”

Not that far back? The only thing in between her past life in her home country and now was—

“Nope.” Celiah turned on her hooves and took off at a brisk trot. “Nuh-uh.”

“Wait!” she heard Walik call behind her. “Please, this is very important—”

“You must be mistaken,” Celiah said, her voice cold. “Leave me alone.”

Walik galloped in front of her and fell to his knees. “I could never mistake you. You were the only light in that prison cell.”

Celiah froze. Her legs tensed. Her ears flicked at the air. Bystanders passed harsh looks at the two zebras from the corners of their eyes. They were standing still in the middle of a busy thoroughfare. Holding up traffic.

“You’re making an ass of yourself,” she finally said, ignoring a huff of indignation from a passing donkey. “Get out of the street.” Celiah stepped to the side, where the traffic was less congested. Walik followed close behind.

“I didn’t seek you out. But when I saw you, I knew I had to speak to you. I distribute food to the prisoners. I served your meals.”

Celiah tried to think back to those painful months trapped in the colosseum tunnels. The memories were still too hot to touch. “I don’t remember you.”

“But I remember you. I thought it was a crime against creation to keep a soul so pure behind bars, but I never said anything.” He lowered his eyes. “I was a coward.”

Celiah patted her saddlebag, just to make sure her coin purse was still there. “Uh huh.”

“I wanted so badly to help you and the other prisoners. Or even just say something. But if I did, I’d never work in this city again. I’d starve. I’m trapped.”

“Not literally trapped, like if you had been chained to the walls.”

A bitter laugh escaped Walik’s lips. “To see you here, alive, fills me with so much happiness. Happiness and shame. I beg you forgive me. I’m complicit in a terrible crime, but I want to be free.” He put his head down against the ground. “I’m begging you. Forgive me. Please.”

Celiah considered the pitiful zebra before her. The silence lingered. Sweat appeared on his brow. Just when he looked ready to run away and hide his face in shame, she said, “You really want forgiveness?”

“Yes. I’ll do anything.”

She unhooked her laden saddlebags and placed them over his back. “Help me walk these home.”

Summer waned. A dry, heady autumn rolled through Derecho. The visits from Walik grew more frequent. The fighting in the colosseum waned. Celiah still found herself wracked by cold sweats and shivers when she heard the sound of the crowds. Girasole found excuses to send her away to the western markets, further away from the city’s core and the sounds of prisoners being eaten by animals.

It was on one of those occasions that Celiah stumbled on something she wasn’t supposed to see.

Bad droughts in the southern farmlands meant even less fruit at the market than usual. An hour of scouring the stalls yielded little more than a bruised sense of pride and several equally bruised bananas. She was rehearsing how she would break the news to Girasole when she noticed a stranger’s cloak hanging on a peg by the door. It was red.

Celiah froze. She heard Girasole’s voice upstairs. She was making a noise like a cornered animal being prodded by spears.

The basket of fruit hit the floor. Celiah raced to the stairs, pausing only to grab a heavy iron pot from the kitchen. Brandishing it like a broadsword, she crept up to the second floor. Her mind raced. The biological daughters were away at their lessons, and the rest would be downstairs. What was wrong with them? How could they not hear their mother was in danger?

Celiah reached the master bedroom and peered around the corner. Girasole had her hooves wrapped around a stallion. She bared her teeth and bit his neck and growled.

Celiah’s cheeks went red. She turned on a dime and raced outside.

The streets were dangerous for an unaccompanied servant, even one under Girasole’s protection. But it was still safer than home. That stallion wasn’t Giesu. He would have been wearing the purple cloak of a Derechan politician. And even then, Girasole made it clear he’d sooner bind his wings and throw himself off the edge of the city than visit the den of his bastard children.

No, red cloaks meant army generals.

The following evening, after helping prepare dinner, Girasole took Celiah aside. They walked through the open courtyard running the length of the mansion’s east side. A fountain in the corner trickled liquid rainbow across stained stones, insulating them from the noise of the city.

“I need you to take a more active role in running his house,” Girasole said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve heard rumblings. Giesu and his allies in the senate are plotting some new political ploy. Politics means violence. Violence means long diplomatic missions away from home. Long missions means more mouths to feed.”

They reached the rear wall of the courtyard and took a seat on a stone bench. Celiah had imagined leaping onto the bench and scaling the wall a hundred times, back before she had been given a key to the front door. The bench was cool to the touch and somewhat uncomfortable to sit on.

“Anything you need me to do, I’ll do,” Celiah said. “I’m at your disposal.”

Girasole reached into her bodice and pulled out a sheathed knife.

Celiah leapt off the bench. A chill swept down her spine. The whoosh of forty thousand screaming voices filled her ears.

Girasole laughed. “I thought zebras trained their mares to fight.” She spun the knife around and beckoned for Celiah to take it.

Celiah took a moment to catch her breath. After a long, drawn-out silence, she said, “You know nothing of my tribe.” She made no move to take the knife.

“I’m the protector of this house. If anyone wants to touch my daughters—any of them—they have to get through me.” Girasole set the knife down beside her. “I believe that with this new round of politics, I’ll be spending a lot of time at the uptown mansion. Someone needs to run this house in my absence.”

“I’m just a servant. This is not—”

“Who could do it better than you?”

“Get one of your daughters to do it.”

“They don’t know this place like you do.” With a look as sharp as any knife, she said, “You know what goes on.”

Celiah’s brow furrowed. “I know what I’m supposed to know. Nothing else.”

“That’s not true. You see. And you understand. That’s what makes you invaluable.” Girasole suddenly rose from the bench. She pressed the knife into Celiah’s hooves. The tip of the blade pointed straight at Girasole’s heart. A pull to unsheath it, then a push—that was all it would take.

But Celiah wouldn’t let herself linger on the thought. She took the knife and slid it into her bodice. “Do you love them?” she asked. “All of them?”

In a motherly voice, Girasole said, “If a single one of them came to harm, I’d find whoever was responsible and bring the whole city down on top of them.”

It was a pretty sentiment. But it was a lie.

One day, without any warning, a loaf of bread flew over the courtyard wall. It landed with a splash in the rainbow fountain and almost instantly started to dissolve. Celiah and the foals gathered around to watch the water fizz. They weren’t expecting the glass bottle that fell next.

It missed one of Girasole’s biological daughters by inches and struck a bastard daughter squarely in the back. Glass went everywhere. Blood flowed down secondhoof fabric.

Celiah’s mind immediately went to rioters. “Children!” she called. All the kids, even the ones nearing adulthood, went silent at the sound of her voice. “Everyone go to the cellar. Bar the door.”

Azzurra Scuro paused to help the sister who’d been struck by a rock. “I’ll get her,” she said to her other bastard siblings. “You all go.” Then she gave her injured sister a kiss on the cheek and threw her over her back. Celiah’s heart soared with pride.

No sooner had she finished barring the windows than she heard a knock at the door.

“This is the home of senator Giesu, and his wife and children,” Celiah announced in her loudest, bravest voice. “Anyone who dares disturb us will face the wrath of—”

The lock turned with a soft click. The door swung open. Celiah came face to face with the round, red face of senator Giesu. Girasole stood behind him, undisguised rage in her eyes. Her saddlebag was open. Bruised groceries spilled out.

“Who’s wrath?” Giesu snarled.

Celiah immediately dropped into a deep bow. She felt the sheathed knife poking her belly. “Senator,” she said, her voice low and reverent. “We thought—”

Giesu stepped around her. “Where are they?” he asked Girasole.

“Gone,” Girasole replied. “I sent them away last week. You’ll never find them.” Her voice sounded strained. She motioned Celiah to follow her.

Giesu continued his rampage through the house, overturning tables and tearing embroidered patterns off the wall. When he got to the cellar, Girasole pushed her way in front of him and blocked the door.

“Move,” he growled.

“Take one more step. I dare you.” From her bodice, she produced a knife similar to the one she’d given Celiah. The pointed edge glinted in the dim light.

Giesu let out a rumbling laugh. “Do you remember when I gave you my first bastard? You threatened to cut my balls off.”

“If you take any of them, I’ll collect on that promise.”

“I’ve never been so attracted to you in my entire life.” His words had the intended effect of throwing Girasole and Celiah off balance. “You’re a tiger.”

“You’re sick.”

“I’m a slave in the arena, and I’m staring at a starving lion.”

“Shut up.”

“Devour me.”

“Shut up!”

Giesu dropped his leering smile. “Romulus needs to know we’re committed. Ears from one. Eyes from another. Tongue from a third. We can’t give him yours. We certainly can’t give him mine.”

“Take one of your own daughters.”

Giesu took a step forward.

Girasole made a wild swing with the knife. The blade flashed harmlessly in front of Giesu’s face. The near miss sent him into a blind fury. He rushed forward and slammed his hoof into her temple. She collapsed in a heap.

Giesu whirled around to face Celiah. “You. Go in there and pick one.”

Her hoof clasped at the knife, but she was paralyzed. The roar of forty thousand screaming ponies rushed in her ears.

“Use me,” she said. “I’ll say I’m your daughter.”

“You’re too old. They wouldn’t believe it.”

“I’ll put on makeup and wear their clothes.”

“It has to be one of them. I don’t care who.”

“I won’t give them up.”

“You will. Or I’ll drag you back to the colosseum and feed you to the cats myself.”

Celiah appraised her options. Giesu was spritely for his large frame, but if she turned tail and ran, he’d never be able to catch her. And if she jumped him... well, Girasole hadn’t been incorrect when she said Zebra women were trained to fight alongside the stallions.

She could pull the knife. Or run away. Or spit in his face and let him beat her to death. But his eyes pinned her to the spot like the paws of a big cat. The ghosts of the colosseum roared in her ears so loudly she couldn’t think.

The whole world was stacked in Giesu’s favor. How could she divert that much momentum? She was helpless but to obey.

Trembling, she stepped around Girasole’s prone form and put her cheek to the door.

“Children.” Her voice was lifeless. “Open the door.”

A murmuring whimper came through the cracks. Tears spilled down Celiah’s face. She felt the weight of Giesu’s gaze on her back, crushing her.

“Children,” she said again, more forcefully. “Open up.” Still, nothing. Giesu shifted impatiently. Celiah’s chest heaved, but she couldn’t draw in air. She was asphyxiating. If only she could drop dead on the spot. If only it were that easy.

“Children,” she said a third time, “come out. No one’s going to hurt you. It’s okay.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

She heard the scrape of the bar being lifted away. They trusted her so much. She turned around and looked at Giesu and asked herself again—how could she divert such momentum? How could she stop something so monumentally powerful?

The answer was, she couldn't. The door opened. Giesu stormed inside. A chorus of terrified screams erupted from the cellar. He emerged a moment later dragging the limp body of Azzurra Scuro by her hair. Her eyes were wide with terror. Her mouth was open. She was screaming.

Chapter 15

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Blue’s wail produced a magical shockwave. It lifted Hypha forcefully into the air and tossed him backwards into the tall grass.

The surprise and physical force of the impact left Hypha dazed. He took a second to collect himself and rearrange the last few hours of his memories—the fall, the wait, the wail. Recalling the last one, he leapt to his hooves and raced back to Blue.

“Can you do that again?” he asked breathlessly.

Blue shot him a caustic look and curled up against Red’s side.

“Right.” The excitement drained away. “Sorry.”

Falling back on his experience in Roseroot, he did his best to guide them through the remainder of the trip. Both Red and Blue were borderline catatonic. They melted deeper into the darkness the more Hypha tried to pull them out. All of his well-intentioned questions—how much did you take, when did you take it, did you see any snow leopards—went unanswered.

A sound further up the trail caught Red’s attention. Her ears perked up. “Someone’s coming,” she said. Her voice was all copper coins and powderized glass.

“Are you sure?” Hypha asked. “I don’t hear anything.”

Red found her second wind. She stood up and placed Blue’s limp body over her back. Then she trudged west. Hypha wheeled around to follow before the grass shifted and erased her trail.

They walked for perhaps an hour before Red’s strength failed and she collapsed in the dirt. Hypha started clearing the tall grass around her like Red had done that first night outside Median, but she waved him off.

“There’s pegasi,” she said, pointing to the monolith of the steppe jutting from the horizon. It looked free of pegasi to Hypha, but he didn’t want to argue the point. “No camp. This is fine.”

In a few minutes’ time, the wind erased Hypha’s efforts. The grass bowed over them, first from right to left, then left to right, then up to down and down to up. It formed a shifting cocoon over them. The three squeezed in tight with their bodies pressed against the earth as dawn broke over them.

Blue was tiny, Hypha realized. Especially for an earth pony. Even if she had been born a different race, she would have been miniscule. His saddlebags looked comically large attached to her.

“Hypha,” Red croaked.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me why you’re helping us. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“Do you not want my help?”

Her lips curled back in a pained smile. “Heh. I don’t know. Prairie Sky stole your special mushrooms, and you hit him in the head with a rock.” She nodded beside Hypha, where the edge of a sharp stone protruded from the dirt. “You could do it right now. We’re in no shape to fight back.”

“I’m not... no.” Hypha sighed. “Prairie Sky was trying to subvert our order. He’s no different than the legionaries who attacked Roseroot. What you did was wrong. But you didn’t know what you were doing. You didn’t know what would happen if you partook.”

“Wow, you’re a real saint. So kind.” Red lapsed into silence for awhile, not once taking her eyes off him. Just when Hypha started to wonder if she’d fallen asleep with her eyes open, she nodded towards Blue and asked, “You saw what happened to her?”

"Yeah."

Red nodded slowly. Her jaw worked from side to side, muddling a response. "That's why we're gonna kill him."

Hypha paled. “Her dad did that?”

“She was eight. I’m gonna kill him on the steps of his mansion so everyone can see.”

“You said you found something about him in.” Hypha swallowed a lump in his throat. “In the temple.”

Red nodded and patted her own saddlebag. “He goes here every year, apparently. We missed him by three weeks.” She shook her head. “He booked a sky chariot through the monastery. What kind of pegasus doesn’t want to fly?”

The question did not strike Hypha as needing an answer. “Where’s home?” he asked instead.

“Derecho.”

Derecho. Several pieces of a very large and obscure puzzle clicked together in Hypha’s mind. “That’s where you’re going next?”

“Hypha—”

“Let’s go there together.”

“We’re not going anywhere with you.”

“Hear me out. Please.” Red shook her head, but stopped short of saying no. Hypha took this as a sign to continue. “Prairie Sky... said Romulus marched through here on the way to the Stonewood mountains. When they’re done killing monks, they’ll go back to Derecho. I can catch him there.”

“And do what? Kill him?”

“Yes.” His fur stood up on end. Kill Romulus. Of course. This was why mother sky cast him all the way out here. She was starting him on a journey to Derecho!

Blue stirred. Red put her lips to Blue’s ear and went, “Shhh.” Blue’s eyes fluttered, then closed again. In a quieter voice, Red said to Hypha, “He has an entire legion around him. You won’t even get close.”

“I’ll find a way.” Determination stoked a fire in Hypha’s belly. Killing seemed antithetical to the mission of the order. But why else would mother sky have spared him? Why else would he be here right now, traveling west? Why else would he have done that to Prairie Sky? Why?

Neither mare stopped him when he undid the one remaining clasp connecting his saddlebag to Blue and took his pack back. A look inside revealed they’d eaten a full quarter of the bag’s contents. No wonder they had such a significant magic surge, even with the less-powerful version of the mushrooms.

“Either you’re indecisive, or you genuinely don’t want to hurt us. Either way, it’ll be safer if we travel together.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank you. If you follow through with this, you’re going to die.”

“As long as I take him with me.”

“Fine. I don’t care either way. I’m just letting you know.”

“You don’t think I can do it?” Hypha asked. "You don't believe me?"

In a voice as soft as the kiss of grass on the nape of his neck, Red said, “I believe you."

Dawn went on. Red and Blue came down with the moon. The light in the sky above seemed different than any sunrise Hypha had ever seen. He peered up from the grass on his hind legs like a prairie dog and saw a double sunrise lit up the western horizon. Plumes of gray smoke billowed from a massive fire burning atop Canary’s Cage. Flickering reds and yellows danced in the ashes. The entire steppe smoldered like the tip of a burning incense stick.

Slowly, like firelight fading, Hypha realized it was a funeral pyre.

Chapter 16

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“Have you ever worn real clothes?” Red asked.

Hypha didn’t look up from the rune spell book. He was halfway through a lengthy diatribe on something the author called “harness theory,” a philosophy of priming the body with magical energy in preparation to write rune spells. Hypha’s concern rested mostly in the margins, where a younger Hirruck had written some much-needed summaries. The three of them marched single-file through the tall grass, following the afternoon sun west.

“Hypha,” Red said, louder this time.

“What?”

“Answer the question.”

“I’m wearing clothes right now.”

“I said real clothes.”

“Robes are clothes.” A note of anger worked its way into Hypha’s voice. The tips of the tall grass had been getting progressively shorter throughout the day. At that moment, they were just tall enough to smack Hypha in the face, and just short enough to offer zero protection from the sun.

“They aren’t,” Red insisted.

“Yes, they are. I saw plenty of ponies in Median and Canary’s Cage wearing robes.”

“Those were dresses.”

“Same thing.”

“They’re not the same at all. Maybe you’re just too oxygen starved from living up in the mountains for so long. Ask anyone in Derecho. There’s a difference.”

Hypha’s eye twitched. The grass went, smack, smack, smack against his cheeks. “There’s no difference.”

“Even if there weren’t, your robe is busted. You looked like a compost monster.”

“If it’s too dirty for you, why don’t you wash it for me?”

Red leapt on him from behind, tackling him to the ground. Her hoof clamped over his muzzle, silencing his cry of alarm. Blue dropped to her belly beside them, her eyes trained on something ahead of them in the grass.

“Don’t talk,” Red whispered into his ear. She pointed ahead. Her voice dropped to nothing. “Listen.”

Under the wind and the oceanic rustle of grass came another sound. It sounded like a millstone crushing grain. It was getting closer.

Red let go of Hypha’s muzzle and motioned for him to crawl forward. A few meters ahead of them, a rutty dirt road split the grass, ambling west. A cart approached, pulled by a pegasi couple. Several large trunks were stacked in the back of the cart.

Red said in a quiet voice. “I’m just trying to offer some advice. You can’t afford to stick out. If you wanna last a day in Derecho, you gotta blend in.”

Blue slipped deeper into the grass and disappeared. Red rose to her hooves. Her eyes glinted, glasslike, utterly focused. Hypha heard the couple’s laugh, oblivious to the danger. They were talking about adopting a cat. The stallion purred, and the mare burst out laughing.

The details clicked together. They were about to commit a robbery. A pang of guilt split his resolve, but he buried it under cold logic. These pegasi were outsiders. They were the cruel ones. Their system had reduced him to this. Now they would reap what they sowed.

He coiled himself up on his hind legs. Another ten seconds, and the couple would be within striking distance “We need clothes,” he breathed.

Red nodded. “We need clothes.”

The cloud city of Derecho emerged from the horizon.

From this distance, the city looked like a singular disc of marble with shimmering diamond inlays. Hypha paused to squint at it, half because of its grandeur and half because of how unbearable his stolen tunic was to walk in. The fabric pinched his pits and itched in strange places.

“This is stupid,” he muttered. “Those ponies had robes, too.”

“They had nightgowns,” Red replied. “If you wore one of those outside, everyone would know you’re crazy right away.” She plowed right on through the prairie grass, which by now was down to their shoulders. If she was happy to finally catch a glimpse of her home city, she didn’t show it.

As they approached the city, the city approached them. Dust and pollen sucked up by Derecho’s convection tinged the air beneath it a bruised yellow. Drapes of gossamer rain fell from the lower strata of clouds and brushed the prairie. At first it appeared to Hypha that the whole city spun clockwise like a wheel, but as he got closer to it, and it to him, he realized the superstructure had no such grand cohesion. Entire city blocks came unmoored from their neighbors, shifted, spun, and resettled someplace else. There were dozens of such pieces, each moving independently of the others. Through gaps in the city’s foundation, he could see hints of building facades, pristine white columns and metal spires sunk into cloudstone bases.

It made Hypha seasick looking at it. Sure, the Stonewoods mountains could float. But they didn’t move.

“What a mess,” he surmised aloud.

A few miles outside Derecho’s shadow, Hypha heard the rumbling of carts and trailers. A teeming convoy of ponies and yaks and griffons and even a diminutive dragon or two plodded along beneath the city. Brass jingles and grinding wooden wheels and smells of incense and sweat and pepper overloaded the air. A few sang. A few ommm’d in a timbre unfamiliar to Hypha. Most toiled silently. All of them kept pace with Derecho in its long arc across the grasslands.

“How do we get up there?” Hypha asked.

“We?” Red and Blue shared a glance. Something significant in a language Hypha couldn’t understand passed between them. A sly smile split Red’s face. “Okay, sure. We can rent a sky chariot.”

Hypha breathed a sigh of relief. “And how are we gonna handle the cloudwalking problem?”

“I’m a quarter pegasi. Blue’s half thestral. We’ll be fine.”

“I’m an orphan.”

“Sympathy’s not gonna work on these guys. We’ll still have to pay to ride.”

“I mean I don’t know who my birth parents are. I don’t know if I’m any percent pegasi.”

Red frowned into her coin purse. “All that fancy monk magic, and you’re telling me you can’t cloudwalk.”

“Earth ponies can’t cloudwalk, Red.”

All the bells and jingles and wind chimes and singing voices made Red’s ears twitch. “They’re not supposed to fly, either.”

Their rental sky chariot touched down in the east square, which today happened to be on the northwest side of town.

Hypha tested one of his front hooves on the cloud ground before stepping down.

“Did it work?” Red asked.

Hypha nodded. The place had a faint spin, like the rocking of a large boat on calm seas—barely perceptible, but there nonetheless. His stomach clenched.

“I was kinda hoping clouds would be softer,” he said.

“If you didn’t get the enchantment, it would feel like nothing was there.”

The motion of the city seemed to have a calming effect on the two mares. Blue’s face melted into a smile. Even Red seemed to relax a little. “This isn’t too far away from the fountain,” she said to no one in particular. She turned suddenly. “C’mon, I want to show you where Blue and I grew up.”

Hypha followed without hesitation. He didn’t want to be the one to ruin her good mood.

They wove through throngs of travelers and shoppers until they arrived at an open square lined with fancy shops and open air cafes. The fountain sat in the center of it all. A plaque at its base said it had been crafted in the western griffon city of Kluegenhein. When Derecho’s legions wiped out the city three hundred years ago, prisoners from the battle had been forced to uproot the fountain and carry it back east as a spoil. After they put the statue down, they were all summarily sold at auction.

“Seems kinda weird to include that,” Hypha said.

“The what?”

He pointed to the plaque. “The price they got for the prisoners.”

Red rolled her eyes. “Just enjoy the fountain. Jeez.”

Dust and rain and daily traffic had worn away most of the inscriptions on the side. The pipes that fed water to the spouts had all shattered with age and inadequate maintenance. The centerpiece still survived, however. It displayed two young lovers, a mare and a stallion rearing up in a heroic pose. They each held a dagger. The blades pointed towards each others’ hearts.

Red gestured to the gaggle of foreigners standing at the lip of the fountain, admiring the worn-down statues. “We used to pickpocket ponies here all the time,” she said, her voice thick with nostalgia. “Remember Blue?”

Blue wasn’t content to merely remember. She melted away into the shadows. Hypha saw a flicker of motion in the crowd by the fountain. Then Blue was back, a shadow materializing into a pony. She shook her hips from side to side and winked at Red. Coins jingled inside her saddlebag.

“You idiot.” Red put her arm around Blue’s neck and gave her a big smooch. “We don’t need that kind of heat. Don’t do that again.”

Blue smiled and angled her cheek towards Red, an unspoken demand for another kiss. Red obliged.

“So how do the mushrooms work, exactly?”

The three of them sat outside a cafe on the edge of the square, blowing through the stolen money at astronomical speed. Imported coffee with sweet cream and cayenne, croissants with chocolate cores, fresh greens with candied walnuts and raisins, and half-crushed meringue cookies stuffed with pecans littered the table.

“Well, for starters, mother sky works specifically through earth pony magic. So the enhancing effects don’t work for pegasi or unicorns.”

“There were pegasi and unicorns at Canary’s Cage. They were are taking it.”

“The visions and sensations work regardless of your race. I’ve been meaning to ask, by the way. What did you see that night on the trail?”

Red grew quiet. She sipped a rare Zebrican birdflower tea and shuffled a little closer to Blue. “Old stuff.”

“Did you see any animals?”

“Birds.”

“What kind?”

Blue shot him a withering look. He was ready to drop the whole conversation when Red put a hoof on Blue’s shoulder. “How much do you know about this stuff?”

“I grew up with it.”

“So you know a lot of ponies who took it.”

“Yeah. You’re the first non-monks I know who partook, though. That’s why I’m curious.”

“You could have asked the ponies in Canary’s Cage.”

“I don’t think I could go back there and ask them about it.”

“Heh. Fair.” She took hold of Blue’s hoof. “Okay, lemme give you some context first. When I was born, my parents named me Rosefinch. That’s not my name anymore, so don’t call me that. But that’s what it used to be.” She closed her eyes. “Back there on the trail, I saw a rosefinch.”

“What was it doing?”

“Just standing on a tree branch. I think it could see me. But I wasn’t there physically, cuz a real rosefinch would never let a pony get that close to it. And there weren’t any trees on the trail, so mentally I was somewhere else.”

“What you see doesn’t have to be right or wrong. Just acknowledge you saw it.”

“Okay. I was certain I was there, wherever there was.”

Hypha nodded. “What did it feel like?”

“It wasn’t scary. The bird and I were just looking at each other, not saying anything.” She opened her eyes and looked at Hypha. “What does it mean?”

“Your visions aren’t going to make sense to me. They’re up to you to interpret.”

Red snorted. “Some zen master you are.”

“I’m just an acolyte.”

“Right.” Red stuffed a meringue into her mouth. “Oh, and then right after that, a big cat came outta nowhere and bit the bird’s head off. That was why I was crying when you found me. The bird was hopping around on the branch, and the cat had all these feathers poking out of his mouth, and it was looking at me like, ‘You’re next’, and I just—” She let out a harsh laugh. Little crumbs of meringue flew everywhere. “Are these visions literal? I don’t wanna actually get eaten. That’d suck.” She paused. “You okay, Hypha?”

All the blood had drained from Hypha’s face. His hooves clutched a scalding mug of spiced coffee, but he could no longer feel the heat. She had seen a snow leopard, too? What could that mean? “I’m fine,” he said, his voice chipped and shaky.

The two mares shared a concerned look. Blue discreetly poured out a pitcher of water and slid it his way, in case he needed something to vomit into.

Red said, “It’s okay. It’s just motion sickness. Happens to everyone.”

Hypha swallowed hard. He didn’t feel like correcting her. “Thanks.”

“You’ll get your sea legs in a day or two. Just ride it out.” She took another croissant from the pile and took a bite. In between a spew of crumbs she asked, “So, the earth pony magic thing. How does that work?”

The cafe spun, though it might have just been the entire city spinning. He gripped the edge of the table, and that seemed to help a little. One tiny island of stability in a shifting ocean. “You wanna know the chemistry of it?”

“No. But I wanna know how Blue got superpowers for an hour.”

Hypha nodded. His stomach eased itself down from his throat, inch by inch. “It’s not superpowers,” he started. “It’s magic. The same ordinary magic everyone else has. All the mushrooms do is amplify it. Canary’s Cage mushrooms aren’t nearly as potent as organic mother sky, but you two got past that by eating an ungodly amount.”

“So every earth pony could fly if they ate enough mushrooms?” Red’s eyes glittered. “Flying sounds fun.”

“It’s not intuitive for earth ponies to fly, so it takes a lot of practice to channel the magic and learn how to do it without crashing.”

“How long would it take me to learn?”

Hypha scratched his chin. “Twenty years.”

“Oh.”

“But certain ponies come predisposed to certain skills. Like when Blue screamed, it knocked me halfway across the prairie. That’s a latent talent she could cultivate if she wanted to.” He caught a wry smile breaking through Blue’s facade. “For most earth ponies, mother sky’s power manifests as a strength enhancement.”

“That’s it? You get to fly and Blue gets to sonic scream or whatever, and I get to be the pack mule?”

Hypha shrugged. “It’s different for everyone.”

Red gloured into her tea. For a second, Hypha was certain the liquid would evaporate. “I’m not carrying anyone’s stuff.”

“You’d only see those kind of enhancements if you partook in the rituals on a consistent basis.”

She turned her gaze on Hypha, and he was certain he’d evaporate, too. “So we can have more?”

“Have more what?”

“Mushrooms.”

“Remind me again, what are they called?”

“Mushrooms.”

“No, their name. I’ve been saying it the whole time. What’s her name?”

Red’s face somehow turned even more red. “We’ll pay you for them.”

“Mother sky. And they’re not to be sold, only given to monks of the Heavenly Peace order in good faith.”

“Do you really think anyone else from your order’s still alive?” Before Blue could stop her, she added, “If you’re the only one left, then you are the order. You can make the rules. And we’ll pay you for them.”

“That’s not how it works,” Hypha said, teeth clenched.

“Maybe you should change the rules. How about this: no sharing the mushrooms with the uninitiated. That’s fair. We already took them. That’s as initiated as it gets.”

“You have no idea what you did.”

“My visions are mine to interpret, right? Maybe the cat is the new me, and the bird is the old me, and I’m killing my old self and turning over a new leaf.” She leaned over the table and spoke in a slow, deliberate voice, “We’ll also pay you. You’ll need money if you want to avenge your friends.”

“You didn’t turn over a new leaf. You just beat up a defenseless couple and stole their clothes.”

“We.”

“That doesn’t sound like a new leaf. That sounds like the same old leaf with a flashy new robe. Oh, I’m so sorry! It’s a nightgown.”

Red’s eyes flashed with rage. She stood up. “Street trash.” She stormed off towards the fountain.

Blue flew to her side and smacked her hard across the withers. Red whirled around. Blue got ahold of her ear. She dragged her back to the table and spat her out into her cushion.

Red cast a furious look at Blue before squaring herself with Hypha. “Did all the monks get oxygen deprived up there in the mountains, and that’s why you’re acting so unreasonable?”

“Y’know what? I will help you.”

“You’ll—” Red drew up short. The gears in her head ground together. “Okay. Good.” Blue nudged her, softer this time. “Thank you.”

“I’ll help you, if after we kill Blue’s dad you help me get to Romulus.”

“Not possible.”

“All things are possible with mother sky’s blessing.”

For a moment, it seemed like Red was about to reach over the table and strangle him. Her whole body tensed. Her hooves trembled. Her ears, swollen and purple where Blue had bit them, twitched.

Then she picked up a croissant from the table and tore into it. “Deal,” she muttered. Crumbs flew everywhere. Chocolate dripped down her chin.

Blue leaned over and kissed her chin clean. Red flinched. The tension broke. “Ew, stop it! Weirdo.” Blue didn’t let up. “Stop, I mean it—”

Blue dove in and stole another kiss. Red’s eyes went wide. She grabbed Blue’s mane and pulled her in deeper. Then they were all over each other. There was a split second where Red made some very intentional eye contact with Hypha.

Hypha squirmed in his cushion and looked around, but nopony else seemed to notice. He touched his saddlebag just to make sure it was still there. Plenty of thieves in this part of town.

Chapter 17

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The air in Derecho wasn’t quite as thin as it was in the stonewood mountains, but it was noticeably better than the soupy sea-level air. Derechan air was good for flying.

Hypha took the first opportunity to slip away to the edge of the city. Outside of the main arterial roads with their hard-packed cloudstone foundations, what constituted solid ground became less clear. Even with the cloudwalking spell keeping him from falling through entirely, he found his hooves sinking into a few patches of porous clouds. Stepping in these sinkholes made his stomach lurch, but he reminded himself of the necessity of isolating himself out here. Wandering eyes were rare this far out. The mostly-pegasi population wouldn’t think twice about one pony practicing flying drills. If he was this far out, they wouldn’t even notice he had no wings.

His goal that day was twelve vertical ascents and twelve magic orbs. He wouldn’t do any runes yet. He wasn’t about to blow up his hooves again.

He managed eight vertical ascents this time, each nearly a full minute long, as well as seven solid orbs, before a splitting ache erupted from his temples and halted the session. He was drenched in sweat and panting like a dog. His back and core sang in agony. Lactic acid bathed his legs.

This would be easier with the mushrooms, he thought. He didn’t know where that thought came from. He threw himself into some cool-down stretches to get his mind off it, with little success.

The thought dogged him all the way back to the outskirts of the city. Near the spot where loose clouds gave way to hard-packed streets, Hypha paused to roll around on the ground. The moisture from the clouds washed away all the sweat and grime.

“If we’re gonna do this right, we gotta be armed, and we gotta be ready.” Red stuffed another hooffull of soggy hay into her mouth and chewed slowly. Hay in Derecho was disgusting and never fully dry like it was on the ground. But it was cheap, and their stolen cash was starting to run out. “We can enjoy ourselves a little. But we need to keep our eyes on the prize.”

Blue nodded. The remains of a bowl of mashed dragonfruit porridge clung to her muzzle. Her eyes radiated poise. She was ready.

Hypha took another tentative bite of soggy hay and surpassed a gag. “Blue’s good at pickpocketing. Why bother with jobs?”

“Blue is very good at pickpocketing” Blue beamed. “Even so, we can’t risk missing an opportunity to attack because we’re stuck in jail.”

“What if we just stole some swords, then?”

“Also too risky. If you try to steal a sword from somepony, you have to be aware that they’ve got at least one sword on them.” Red shook her head. “No stealing swords.” She pointed to Hypha’s hooves. “Think you can do some manual labor?”

He tapped the black mineral shell on the table. “Yes. At least for the next month or so.”

“Cool. You should check for work at the colosseum. There’s always stuff to do there.”

Hypha drew back. “The colosseum?”

“Yeah. The thing we’re all orbiting around. Can’t miss it.”

“I don’t know if I should go there.”

Red rolled her eyes. “You won’t be doing any deathmatches, if that’s what you’re concerned about. They need bodies to sweep seats and stuff.” She paused. “Ok, not bodies like that.”

Talk of bodies brought back the memory of Prairie Sky’s head bouncing off the floor of the Canary’s Cage temples. Hypha closed his eyes, and for a moment all he could see was the red flickering firelight of the temple walls.

That didn’t happen. He deserved it. The dissonance of his thoughts stole the words out of his mouth. He leaned down to take a bite of his lunch and found himself crushed between the weight of two impossible tasks: laboring to uphold a literal temple of violence and holding down his hay.

The next morning, before the sun touched the tops of Derecho’s metal spires, Hypha slipped away to the edge of town again.

He walked until he was alone, until the city had all but evaporated around him. He found a small but stable patch of clouds and wrestled them free from the main body of the city. Derecho kept on spinning behind him.

He took out a heaping hooffull of mother sky mushrooms from his saddlebag.

The first time he’d taken them, he wound up hundreds of miles away from home. The second time—he didn’t want to dwell on the second time. Maybe he really wasn’t worthy to partake.

Red’s words came back to him. You are the order.

In a way, she was right. With the monasteries destroyed, he’d never complete the trials. The dead could never bless him with their approval. That door was shut.

He could give up and burn the mushrooms. That would be the monkly thing to do. The order had never been overly zealous when it came to self-denial. But mother sky was so much more than just a conduit for pleasure. The very thought of deviating from the order’s path set off an avalanching cascade of guilt inside him.

There was another option, though. A much more dangerous one. He could partake again. See what lay beneath all this suffering. Maybe this was his trial, and his approval would come not from another monk but from mother sky herself—if he earned it. It was an idea as desperate as it was far-fetched. But wouldn’t it be nice if all this suffering had a purpose?

The simple truth was, he’d probably never know for certain. All he could do now was give up, or keep digging.

He popped the caps in his mouth, one after the other.

The next hour was a cascade of abstract sensations and visuals. He saw flickers of neon-bright light and heard ponies voices whispering from nowhere. The clouds shifted, though he didn’t fall through.

When nothing concrete coalesced, he started to grow impatient. Why me? he thought. He wasn’t only asking himself. Somehow, he knew he wasn’t alone out here. Maybe it was other monks. Maybe it was something else entirely. How am I supposed to start the order from scratch?

Words came to him from the void, spoken in his own voice. It’s never too late to...

To what? Anger rose from within him. He just wanted to hurt them. It wasn’t wise. It wasn’t monkly. But that drive was real. If they didn’t give him room to live, then he had to make room. Simple as that. The Derechans had killed so many already. If he failed in his mission, this whole deadly cycle would just keep on repeating, until the whole world was Derecho, or there was nothing left. The wheel of death was already turning. He hadn’t started turning it. He couldn’t hope to arrest. But as long as he was alive, there was a chance he could change its path.

As if in answer to his thoughts, the clouds before him coalesced into the shape of a snow leopard.

A bolt of icy fear shot down his spine. The snow leopard lunged. He didn’t even have time to scream. He closed his eyes, and it was all over.

When he opened his eyes again, he looked down and found that he was in the snow leopard’s body, looking at himself through its cloudy blue eyes. His dead pony body hung limply from the snow leopard’s mouth. As it chewed, Hypha tasted sweat and iron and ozone.

Then a knee-buckling, ravenous hunger overcame him, and he devoured himself.

Dawn broke.

Hypha opened his eyes. He took a breath in. He took a breath out. “Good morning, Red.”

Red let out a yelp of alarm. She’d been gauging the jump from the edge of Derecho to Hypha’s cloud. Hypha’s voice nearly sent her tumbling off the edge.

“Uh.” She collected herself, looking a little more pale than before. “Good morning.”

“You’re up early.”

“Blue was worried you’d wandered off and got lost.”

“That was thoughtful of her.”

She pointed to his cloud. “Is that a one-pony cloud, or a two-pony cloud?”

He patted the space beside him. Red got a running start and leapt across the chasm, kicking up tufts of white as she landed. She shook the moisture off before settling down next to Hypha.

“I wanna apologize for yelling at you,” she said. “I don’t think you’re stupid. You’re just scared. I’m scared, too. So is Blue. We’re all just trying to get through this in one piece.”

The genuine softness in her voice surprised Hypha. “I’m sorry too. For everything.”

“Can I be honest with you? This whole thing to get Blue’s dad—it’s a bad idea.”

“You really think that?”

“It’s as bad as your idea to go after Romulus. Blue knows it too.”

“But she won’t stop.”

Red shook her head. “I don’t think she could if she wanted to.”

Hypha knew the feeling, or at least some fraction of it. He tried to imagine what it must be like to stew in the violent haze for years on end. The thought made his heart ache. He’d already shed so much of who he thought he was, traveled so far from home and exercised so much heartless violence, and he hadn’t even been out here for a whole month. Blue was eight when she set out on this road. He barely recognized himself. Could she?

“I’m sorry.”

Red’s look hardened. “Whatever. Look, she’s not gonna stop, and that means I’m not gonna stop either, but killing her dad’s not gonna be worth it if one of us gets killed in the process. It wouldn’t be good for you, either. We can’t help you get Romulus if we’re dead.”

“Right. So what is it you want?”

“I know what it looks like on the outside. But you have to believe me when I say I don’t just want to use you or your mushrooms. I’m going to take this seriously. And in return, you have to be a serious teacher.”

“First of all, you don’t use mother sky.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” he said, trying to diffuse the tension. No sense rehashing old arguments. “But how much of this can I really trust you with? You want to use it as a weapon.”

“Well, it kinda is.”

“It’s not.”

“Look, maybe the first pony who ever forged metal took it out of the fire and thought, ‘Wow, this would make a really great plow’. But then somepony else noticed the sharp end and cut someone with it, and now here we are.”

“It’s not a weapon.”

“Fine. It’s not. Promise me you won’t hold anything back.”

“I can only give you what I know.”

“You know enough. You’re the monk.”

“I’m an acolyte.”

“Seriously? At this point, what’s the difference?”

Bitter memories flashed through Hypha’s mind. He was in Roseroot. Then he was flying away. Then he was being eaten alive by a snow leopard. He was afraid. Lost. Blinded.

“I’m a bad teacher,” he said.

“I’ll make up for that. I’m a great pupil. I want to learn.”

“Do you?” Hypha regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth. Why was he so quick to antagonize?

Red’s forehead creased in frustration. “What if I am? You didn’t see what I saw. You have no idea what I want.” She prodded him in the ribs. “No idea.”

Hypha let out a slow sigh. Patience. What would Cumulus do if he were here? He’d be able to see through Red’s mask. He’d know if she was telling the truth. He’d faced off against those Derechan legionaries with the same placid, beguiling smile. But that too had been a mask, as all faces were. What thoughts had he harbored behind it?

It’s never too late to... to join the order.

He leapt to his hooves, causing the whole cloud to tip from side to side. Red splayed out her hooves to keep from falling overboard. “Watch it,” she hissed.

“Become a monk.”

“What?”

“You already gave time to the order by helping me. You helped harvest mother sky, sorta. You partook in a mushroom ritual and interpreted its meaning. All that’s left is to swear an oath.”

“Oaths are stupid.” She tried to take a step back, except the cloud was too small. “That’s a stupid idea.”

“No, it makes perfect sense. You want to trust me. I want to trust you. What better way to solidify that trust?”

“I’m sure we can find something less blood ritual-y.”

“There’s no blood. It’s all ritual.”

“Hypha, no offense, but I don’t wanna wind up like Prairie Sky.”

Patience. Hypha heard the word as clearly as if he’d said it aloud. “You and him are nothing alike. Respecting mother sky and following the rituals is the only way to realize your potential. Even if you beat me up and stole the mushrooms again—” He let that word fly with a little more emphasis than was necessary. “She’d never give you what you wanted. If you really want to learn, then this is the only way.”

Hypha could see the gears in Red’s head whirring. She sat in silence for several minutes contemplating Hypha’s words before asking, “What’s the oath?”

“Defend the order. Practice patience. Harvest mushrooms. We’ll need to find a workaround for the harvesting bit, but all the others are doable. We might not have a monk to witness us, but if we do it in the presence of mother sky, then she could count as our witness.”

A hint of nervousness crept into Red’s voice. So much hung in the balance. ”You really want me in your order?”

He thought about Cumulus. If he could only put his own thoughts to the side and speak through the elder’s voice... “I think you need to be in the order.”

Red looked away, her brow furrowed. She opened her mouth to speak, but for a long time no words came out. Hypha was starting to believe she’d turn him down when she looked up and asked, “Can Blue be a monk too?”

That evening, as the sun set, Hypha floated them out to the very edge of Derecho’s orbit, so far out they could see the tails of moisture falling from the city and meeting the dry dust of the caravan below. The city turned weightlessly behind them, unaware.

“I wanna go over some stuff before we do this,” Hypha said. “In the mountains, we’d collect mushrooms every morning. Seeing as that’s not really possible anymore, we should spend mornings in meditation instead. Every other day, you’ll come out here with me. We’ll talk, we’ll work on monk stuff, but mostly we’ll meditate. Red, you can take odd days. Blue, you can take even days. Does that sound good?”

Red and Blue looked at each other, then nodded.

“Next thing. Giesu and Romulus are not the end goal.” Red and Blue’s faces turned flighty. “Hang on. I promised I’d help you kill Giesu, and you promised you’d help me kill Romulus. That’s still on. But when we’re done, we can’t go our separate ways. If you take this oath, we’re bonded for life. The order is everything. Killing Giesu and Romulus will make it safe to restart the order, but their deaths won’t restart the order for us. We have to do that ourselves.”

“That’s a lot to ask out of the blue,” Red said.

“It’s the only way mother sky will give you her blessings. If you don’t treat her like she’s a goddess, then she’s not. You’re in, or you’re out.”

Red mulled over Hypha’s words for some time. “If we even make it that far, how are we supposed to restart a whole order?”

“I don’t know. But we’re gonna find a way. Right now I just need to know you’re in it for the long haul.”

“Fine. We’re in. All the way.” Blue nodded alongside her.

“Okay. Last rule. Protect yourselves and each other over everything else. As far as I know, we’re the last of the order. We can’t afford to lose anyone else.”

“So we’re not allowed to die?”

“Yes.”

She chuckled. “You got it.”

In a slow, solemn voice, Hypha said, “Now repeat after me. I, state your name, intend to pursue the path of a monk in the order of Heavenly Peace. I will seek to deepen my connection to mother sky, to consume and to be consumed. I will never betray any of my fellow monks or acolytes. I will strive for peace, but will preserve the order by any means necessary. I will surrender to mother sky. I am the face in the stone and the voice in the wind.”

Red parroted the oath perfectly. When it was Blue’s turn, she nodded along to Hypha as he spoke. As the ranking member of the order of Heavenly Peace, Hypha decided that nodding was fine, too.

Chapter 18

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Feel it, receive it, let it go. Feel it, receive it, let it go.

Hypha poured all of his focus into the tips of his hooves. He could feel magic tickling his fur like static on silk. He repeated the mantra again, let out a breath, and pulled down. An orb of light coalesced on the tips of his hooves.

A surge of excitement rushed through him. He glanced down at the rune spell book at his hooves and drew a shaky circle in the air before him. His circle wasn’t nearly as elegant as elder Cumulus’s spells, but it also didn’t blow up in his face, so that was a start. He filled in the circle with a diamond shape made up of two symmetrical triangles.

The whole rune collapsed in on itself. Hypha flinched away, blinking back spots. When he looked back, he found a condensed orb of light the size of an apple floating before him.

Hypha let out a whinny of excitement. He reared back and punted the orb into the air as hard as he could. He counted to five, then took off after it. Fast air flowed around him, flinging sweat off his face. His tail splayed out behind him, whipped by the wind. Even in the thin air, gravity fought against him, willing him down. He pushed back harder, surging forwards.

Right as he reached the orb, however, a burst of pain erupted behind his eyes. His ears filled with ringing temple bells. The world pitched and rolled around him. Then he was falling.

He pulled up too slow and hit the cloud hard, bowing it like a trampoline. As the magical headache subsided, he rolled onto his back and watched the little orb of light rise higher and higher before finally disappearing into the jetstream. With what little magic he put into it, it wouldn’t last more than five minutes. Still, he imagined it whipping around the world, seeing places he couldn’t even imagine.

Once he caught his breath, he tallied that morning’s totals. Nine successful light spells and eight successful retrievals. Not bad for a morning’s work.

Not good enough, he reminded himself. He had to be better than perfect if he wanted to stand a chance against Romulus.

Over the course of the morning, the hideout floated to the opposite side of the city. Hypha didn’t bother going back, instead making his way into the city’s downtown core. The streets turned from raw packed clouds into immovable cloudstone cobbles. The buildings rose in height and grandeur block by block, until he arrived at the looming facade of the colosseum, an intimidating monolith of cloudstone that served as the centerpiece around which the entire downtown area was set.

Hypha made his way inside. No shows were slated to take place today, but the entire structure still hummed with activity. Pegasi buzzed around the bleachers, polishing stone and repainting signs. A team of unicorn engineers in the upper decks puzzled over a blown-out crystal floodlight. A hundred earth ponies labored at ground level, dragging in new stones to replace cracked ones, sweeping seats, and bringing supplies to the system of tunnels underneath the colosseum itself. The cloudstone arches holding the whole operation together gleamed bone-white in the sun.

In the center of the arena stood an impressively tall earth pony stallion with a bullwhip cutie mark on his flank and a second, much less symbolic whip hooked to his belt. His eyes scanned his subordinates, searching for sloth. He must be the foreman.

Hypha hopped into the pit. He froze as his hooves touched the natural cloud basin. The floor conducted a fearsome amount of energy. Ponies had bled and died here. They’d snarled and fought beasts. They’d killed.

Hypha put it out of his mind and walked over to the foreman. “Excuse me, sir?”

The foreman turned his head. His lancing eyes made Hypha’s skin crawl.

“Who’re you.”

“Uh.” Hypha balked. “I’m looking for work.”

“We got that. How long’re you in town for.”

"Two months. Maybe three."

The foreman’s eyes lingered unabashedly on Hypha’s mangled front hooves, still tinted black by the mineral casts. “I got no work for you.”

“I’ll do whatever the other workers don’t want to do. I’ll clear sewers and break rocks.”

The foreman took hold of one of Hypha’s hooves and held it up for both of them to see. "Quit wasting my time.”

“I’ll do anything you need. I just need work.”

“Anything. Okay.” The foreman nodded to the unicorns huddled together in the upper deck. “They’re having trouble mounting their new stage light. Do it for them.”

The foreman probably expected Hypha—a flightless earth pony—to realize the impossibility of the task, hang his head, and shuffle off to beg in the markets somewhere. He turned away and almost missed Hypha lift off.

Hypha made it all the way to the upper decks before the strain of flight forced him to land. He walked the rest of the way to the unicorn engineers, who’d stopped what they were doing to gawk at him.

“Foreman’s orders,” Hypha said, and took the bulb in his hooves. It was light despite being as large as a pony. It had a crystalline color that reminded Hypha of the crystal lamp Red had stolen from Median.

The empty socket was one of several mounted on a metal frame atop the highest part of the colosseum. Hypha hopped into the air, but almost immediately an aching throb in his head forced him down. The engineers lunged forward, ready to catch the bulb should he drop it.

Hypha shocked everyone, himself included, when a snarl escaped his lips. The engineers stopped short, their eyes wide with fear.

Hypha leapt back into the air. This time, when the pain came, he was ready for it. He swam through it, slowly but steadily, until all of a sudden he found himself level with the socket. But his strength was failing, and he knew it. He threw himself onto the metal light frame, perching atop it like a wingless bird.

When the ringing in his ears subsided, he noticed the arena below him had gone quiet. He peered down and found a hundred tiny ponies looking up at him. The force of all those eyes hit him like a stiff breeze. He tipped one way, then the other, then slipped off entirely.

With a herculean effort, he reversed his fall and forced himself into a hover. He pulled himself along the light frame until he reached the empty socket. He jammed the bulb inside. Nothing happened.

He pulled it out then stuck it back in again. Still nothing. He twisted the bulb around and felt something in between it and the fixture, preventing it from locking in and lighting up.

He felt himself starting to dip. Bells rang in his ears. His mane was made of white-hot filaments clinging to his scalp. He wasn’t going to get another chance. It had to be now.

Someone screamed at him from everywhere at once, Don’t stop! The shock sent fresh adrenaline through his veins. When he leveled himself with the socket, he saw the blockage: the remnants of a bird’s nest. He cleared the debris and shoved the bulb in place.

The bulb lit up. Searing white-hot light sent him tumbling backwards. The last of his strength gave out, and he went into a dive, desperately blinking away the spots in his eyes. He leveled out just above the arena floor, coming to a skittering stop a few paces away from the foreman.

“Got the light,” Hypha panted. He sucked air through gritted teeth. “You saw me do it, right? I can work.”

The foreman checked off a box on his clipboard, then pointed to a rusty plow with a long raking attachment sitting by the main gate. “Rake the arena floor. Work til dusk.”

Elation surged through Hypha’s heart. He held back a cheer and asked, "What's the pay?"

"You'll get paid at the end of the day."

"But how much?"

The foreman had already wandered off.

Hypha returned the next day to find all of his carefully-raked lines had disappeared. The natural cloud floor of the colosseum had reverted back to its natural curly, chaotic state.

The foreman nodded to the plow again. “Get to it.”

The foreman refused to answer Hypha’s questions as to why he was doing this apparently pointless task. He had no choice but to stow his questions and put his mind to his toil. Each line he raked blurred into the next, a strange mirror-image memory of his time spent farming in Roseroot rendered in liquid mercury.

Finally, on the fifth day, the foreman came up to Hypha and said without any prompting, “The cloud layer’s only a foot thick. Beneath that, it’s all cloudtone.”

Hypha poked the ground. The ground jiggled a little. “I see.”

“These clouds don’t get moved around like they would if they were in the air. So we have to treat them manually. Otherwise they won’t retain their spring” The foreman assumed a wide stance. “If a fighter needs to do this—” he swept his leg in a wide arc in front of him, ruining the line Hypha had just made. “The cloud needs to yield to this hoof and hold the other ones in place. Regular clouds’ll do that. But if the cloud’s just been sitting here for a few weeks, it’ll feel like mud.”

“Why don’t we just put clouds all the way down?”

“Bodies fall through clouds. The cloudstone’s there to catch them.”

“Oh.”

The foreman nodded. “Unhitch yourself and follow me.” He walked through the carefully plowed rows, ruining an entire morning of work without a second thought.

They went down into the belly of the colosseum. The cloudstone turned a deep shade of indigo. Without the sun’s warmth, the air gained a frigid bite. Deep recesses in the walls served as prison cells for the nearly two hundred prisoners slated to fight in the next tournament. The majority were crammed into communal squalor. A few more famous fighters relaxed in relative luxury. But they were all equally behind bars.

Around the corner, Hypha found a cart with a pair of massive steel pots. One was full of semi-rancid rice. The other contains beans tinged with a metallic arsenic smell.

“One scoop rice and one scoop beans per mouth,” said the foreman. “If there’s any left at the end, you can have some. But if you take one grain of rice out of the prisoners’ mouths, I’ll flog you to death. Got it?”

Hypha gulped. “Got it.”

The prisoners didn’t try to hurt Hypha. They didn’t push or shove. They stood in orderly rows and passed their bowls through the doors. The silence, broken only by the scrape of his metal ladle against the pots, sat heavily in the cool air.

One prisoner, a zebra with an impressive mohawk and a large collection of festering lash wounds on his right flank, lingered by the bars. “They’ll put you in here too,” he said in a low voice.

“I’m just a laborer,” Hypha said.

“So was I. Get out while you still can. It’s not worth the bits.”

Hypha tried to ignore him and focus on the work, but his words burrowed their way under his skin.

“Did you really do this job before me?” Hypha asked.

“Really really.”

“Why are you—” Hypha gestured to the bars.

“What did the foreman say would happen if he caught you stealing food?”

“Uh. Death by flogging.”

“He lied.” The zebra tapped the bars. “You go in here.”

Hypha turned to the other prisoners, who sat clustered at the back of their cell, savaging their food. “Were you all servants?”

“They can’t answer,” the zebra said. “This cell tried to break out just before I got here. They all got their tongues cut out.”

The silence grew heavier.

The zebra’s name was Walik. For the next five days, he spoke to Hypha on behalf of the cell, informing him of the urgent medical needs of the prisoners, the lack of water, the lack of blankets—the lack of everything but bars, really. Hypha struggled to come up with any meaningful answer beyond shrugs and sorries.

One day, Walik surprised him by asking, “What were you before this?”

Hypha stirred the pot of beans and considered how much he wanted to give away. Eventually, he settled on, “I lived in the mountains.”

“The eastern mountains?” Walik whistled. “There are demons in that mountain. Big cats.”

Hypha frowned. There was a crusty spot on the inside of the pot where the beans had fused with the metal. He scraped at it hard. “They’re called snow leopards.”

“Did you ever come in contact with the order of monks that lived up there? Heaven something or other.”

The ladle slipped from Hypha’s grasp and disappeared into the beans. “Heavenly Peace,” he said. His head swam. The spin of the city accelerated. “I’ve heard of them.”

“I heard they train with dragons. They can fly and breathe fire.”

Hypha stuck his whole leg into the pot to fish out the ladle and didn’t even feel the burn. “There’s no dragons.”

Walik eyed Hypha with a mixture of bemusement and concern. “I hope you washed your hooves.”

One of the mute ponies in the cell died the next day. Walik dragged the pony’s body to the front of the cell and got Hypha’s attention. Hypha didn’t know if it was his job to dispose of bodies, too, so he left it in the cell while he went to consult the foreman.

Walik seemed upset at him for that. Maybe it was a bit callus, but touching food after touching a corpse didn’t seem like a good idea. Hypha wanted to ask him what was the matter, but he held back. He didn’t want Walik to rattle off another list of horrors he and his cellmates had suffered which Hypha was powerless to prevent.

It was Walik that broke the silence. “Do you believe in soulmates?”

The question took Hypha aback. “Uh. I dunno.”

Walik chuckled. “I take it you don’t have a soulmate.”

“No.”

“Maybe you do, but you just don’t know it.” He smiled. “Now that you mention soulmates, I’m in need of something extra.”

“For what?”

“For my soulmate. She’s here with me.”

Hypha’s eyes scanned the mass of tongueless prisoners behind him. “Which one?”

“No, she’s not here physically. She’s here spiritually.”

“Spirits don’t need rice and beans.”

Much to Hypha’s surprise, Walik nodded in agreement. “So true, my pony friend. Soulmates survive on spiritual sustenance. And right now, he rspirit is starving.”

“I don’t get it.”

Walik’s smile fell away. “I need parchment. For a letter.”

“Are you allowed to send letters?”

“Of course I am. If I could just have a piece of parchment, I could relay to the foreman what an excellent job you’ve been doing.”

Hypha half-assed a look through the food card, and was surprised to find an ancient half-filled out request form crusted to the bottom of the cart.

Walike’s face lit up. He clutched the paper to his chest and said, “The spirit has been fed.” Then he turned and retreated to the back of the cell.

When Hypha returned the cart and walked back through the prison block at the end of his shift, he noticed Walik was having trouble seeing what he was writing in the dim light.

“Walik,” Hypha called. He thought, feel it, receive it, let it go, and pulled an orb of magic into being. A murmur rose up from the prisoners. Walik stared, his eyes wide and shimmering. Hypha drew a shaky circle, then a diamond shape made out of two triangles. The rune collapsed into a ball of steady white light.

“It’ll last for ten minutes,” he said, passing the orb between the bars. “Don’t tell the foreman.”

Walik flashed him a strange smile. The light from the orb cast his face like a mask. Then he was back in his corner, feverishly scribbling away on his piece of parchment.

The next day, Hypha returned to work to find the colosseum in complete anarchy.

A merchant caravan had parked in the center of the arena. A group of Saddle Arabian merchants hawked exotic animals to the foreman and a group of nobles in purple cloaks. Earth pony laborers and pegasi masons scrambled around like ants preparing for war, polishing stone, clearing errant clouds, barking commands.

The prisoners in the cage could sense the energy above. They grunted and groaned and pressed up against the walls. Even Walik, ever the voice of reason, had a frantic edge to his voice.

“Did you see what animals they were selling?” he asked Hypha as he served them lunch.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see.”

Walik pushed his muzzle through the bars. His mohawk drooped pitifully to one side. “You were just up there. You had to have seen.”

“There was a lot going on. I don’t know.”

“Please. It’s very important. What kind of animals were they?”

“I told you—”

Walik grabbed Hypha’s hoof and twisted. Fur tore. “What were they?”

Hypha panicked. He brought the metal serving ladle down on Walik’s hoof. The zebra let go with a hiss of pain. His grip was alarmingly strong for someone so emaciated.

Walik retreated further back into the cage, his head lowered. “I’m sorry. That was wrong of me. You’re just doing your job. Could you go up to the arena and see what kind of animals they’re selling?”

“I have to serve lunch.”

“We’ll skip lunch. We’re not hungry.”

“If I come back with full pots, I’ll get in trouble.”

“I see,” Walik said, his voice low. “Perhaps you could hurry then, and try to catch the merchants after you serve us.”

In a single motion, every last prisoner in the cell stuck out their bowls in unison. A chill shot up Hypha’s spine.

Idiot, he chastised himself. They’re mute. Not deaf.

By the time Hypha dished out the prisoners’ food and went back up to the surface, the merchants and nobles had all gone. An earth pony servant was raking even lines in the cloud floor where the cart had once sat.

Walik’s shoulders slumped when Hypha delivered the news. The primordial instinct that drove wild horses to stampede flickered in his eyes. “I see,” he said. “I see.”

“Why do you care what animals they were selling?” Hypha asked.

When Walik looked up again, Hypha was surprised to see his face twisted with anger. “Idiot pony. You’re so soft. You’re so—” He growled and stuck his muzzle through the bars again. Hypha jerked back. “You’re so stupid! What do you think this place is?” He pointed towards the end of the hallway. “In two days, there’s going to be another event. Whatever animal those ponies up there bought from the traders—that’s what we have to fight.”

The day before the event, the lower chambers of the colosseum echoed with the sounds of chains and weapons and hooves scuffling over cloudstone. The foreman pulled Hypha off feeding duty and instructed him to run errands between the various labor leaders. He barely saw Walik or the other prisoners, except for a few furtive glances as he rushed past their cell on the way to deliver one communication or another.

The mute ponies collapsed in a corner, their unmoving bodies frozen in place, spilling across the cell like a wave. The dim light filtering through the cloudstone tinted their bodies a cold shade of indigo.

Walik sat in the opposite corner, furiously scribbling on his scrap of parchment.

At the very end of the evening, Hypha said his goodbyes to the foreman and snuck down to the cell to speak with Walik. At first, the zebra didn’t acknowledge him, so absorbed was he in his note. Only when Hypha rattled the bars and spoke his name did he look up.

“Hypha.” Walik leapt to his feet. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot, but he wore a grim smile. “I knew you would come.”

“You did?”

Walik surged across the cell and stuffed the parchment into Hypha’s hooves. “You can’t let them see this. It’s a message for my wife. Her name is Celiah. She’s a servant in the noble district north of here. The address is on the note.”

“I—”

“No talk. Give this to her. She doesn’t know where I am. I have to let her know what happened.” Tears spilled down his cheeks, but his voice went on, strong as ever. “You’re one of the monks, aren’t you. Heaven Love.”

“Heavenly Peace.”

“Heavenly Peace.” Walik smiled. “One day, there will be no need to hide peace away in the mountains. It will be everywhere.”

Hoofsteps echoed down the corridor. Walik retreated deeper into the cell. His eyes burned in the dim light, fierce and alive.

Someone turned the corner. Hypha took off running.

The sun set, a slow process that painted rainbows onto every surface in the city, all the way down to the deepest parts of the colosseum complex. Hypha wound through the labyrinth, avoiding workers where he could and keeping his head down where he couldn’t. He wasn’t strictly forbidden from being down here by himself. But walking around down here without a direct task to complete would be very suspicious if someone were to stop him.

And just as the prison’s main worker exit came into view, the hulking form of the foreman stepped into view.

“Hypha,” he said, his deep voice echoing off the walls. “I thought you left.”

“I was leaving,” he lied. “But I was pulled back to help clean some cells.”

“Which cells.”

This was the most idle chit chat he’d ever heard from the foreman. The intensity in his voice made Hypha squirm. “Four through six. Just sweeping.”

The foreman nodded, ingesting the lie. “Good. Thanks.” Hypha nodded and turned to leave, but the foreman said, “Wait.”

The word alone stopped him cold. “Yes?”

“You’ve been doing good work.”

“Thank you.”

“If you stick around for a few more weeks, you’d be one of the more senior laborers on the team. I could increase your pay.”

“That would be nice.”

“Wait until after your first event’s over to make the decision. Clearing out the old and bringing in the new can be ugly. But if you can handle it, it’s stable year-round work.”

Year-round. Hypha’s mind wandered to numbers. How many prisoners had been through these cells in all the years this colosseum had been active?

“Can I ask you something?” Hypha asked. “About one of the prisoners.”

“Sure.”

He hesitated. “What was the zebra in for?”

“Which one.”

The foreman didn’t seem to notice Hypha’s face flush with shame. The zebra had a name. Why hadn’t he used it? “Walik.”

“Aah, Walik. He’s an interesting case. He used to be a laborer for us.”

Hypha swallowed a lump in his throat. “Really?”

“Really. That wasn’t all he was doing, though. We caught him setting up a poisoned booby trap in a senator’s private booth.” The foreman let out a laugh. “We let the senator he was trying to assassinate pick the animal for tomorrow’s event.”

Hypha paled. “Well, I’d best be headed home.”

The foreman placed a massive hoof on Hypha’s shoulder. Hypha went rigid.

“I know one of the prisoners slipped you a note.”

Hypha’s blood ran cold. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Someone saw you and ratted you out.”

“I didn’t.” Hypha’s eyes flashed to the whip on the foreman’s belt. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I’m not going to punish you. You’re a better worker than the pony who tattled. And one note’s not going to hurt anyone.”

“Then why would it matter if I had one?”

“Because—”

“If.”

“If. We can’t have every prisoner in the complex penning letters to their whole extended family every time there’s an event. We don’t make parchment up here. I don’t even know where that prisoner got it from.” The foreman held out his hoof. “Give me the note and we’ll forget it happened.”

“No one gave me any note.”

The foreman took a step forward. He was easily a head taller than Hypha. “I thought you were on my side here.”

Hypha’s mind flashed back to what Walik said about one-time workers becoming full-time prisoners. He reached into his tunic pocket and produced the note. It read:

they’re beheading us
don’t worry

i close my eyes
and you are there
like the kiss of the sun
lingering on my skin
after it has set.
i speak your name
and peace persists
like the promise of

sunrise

On the bottom was an address for a house in the perpetually north side of town. Hypha read it and repeated it internally, committing it to memory.

The foreman cleared his throat. Hypha hoofed the note over. The foreman folded it neatly and placed it in his pocket before producing Hypha’s wages for the day. The bag was much larger than Hypha was expecting.

“I take care of ponies who are on my side.” He patted Hypha’s shoulder. His hoof was large and radiated killing potential. “You’re a good worker,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” said Hypha. “See you tomorrow.”

The next day, Hypha arrived at the colosseum at the start of the work day. He stood outside the gate, listening to the sounds of hammers falling and laborers hemming and hawing. He felt himself reach a moment of impasse. In or out.

He chose out. He turned on his hooves and walked past the colosseum, due north.

This was a stupid idea. Monumentally stupid. Bailing on work, on one of the busiest event days of the year, no less, would surely mean demotion. He could kiss every future paycheck and the progress they represented goodbye. Those bits were crucial to his mission. The mission. The only thing that mattered. The thing he’d suffered for. What were these outsiders to his mission? What were they to him personally? He was here for the order, not for them.

Yet every time he slowed, some jittery tension manifested in his heart and his mangled hooves, forcing him forward. Maybe it was mother sky. Maybe it was guilt. At this point, it made no difference. It pushed him all the same.

He found the address Walik had written on the note, a smart summery villa that shared high walls with its two immediate neighbors. An older zebra answered the door and eyed him undisguised suspicion. “The lady Girasole is not accepting solicitors at this time.”

“I’m. Uh. Not here for her,” Hypha said.

The zebra raised an eyebrow. “Are you some kind of suitor? We’re not accepting those, either.”

“Are you Celiah?” The sound of her name made her bristle. She went to shut the door, but Hypha said, “I knew Walik. Know him. He’s still alive.”

Hypha expected shock. Or apprehension. Or hope. He didn’t expect anger. He also didn’t expect her to haul a broom from behind the door and jab him squarely in the chest.

“You know nothing of Walik,” she hissed. “And you know nothing of me. Keep my name out of your mouth, street trash.” She went to close the door.

“Please. He had a message.”

“No.” She swung at him again. “We have bodyguards. I’ll call for them.”

“Please,” Hypha said, dodging another blow. “Please listen.”

“I’m calling the guards.” Her blows with the broom became more frantic. Her voice rose. Ponies passing by looked their way. Hypha withered.

“Celiah—”

“Guards!” she cried out. She let the door swing all the way open. Behind her, at least a dozen mares crouched in the adjacent room, brandishing pots and pans and knives. “Guards!”

“He wanted you to hear this. He wanted—urk—”

Celiah caught him in the gut with the broomhandle. “No!” she cried. He collapsed on the street, clutching at the spot where the welt was forming. She raised the broom over her head, but instead of hitting Hypha, she hesitated before swinging it sideways to strike the doorframe. “You know—” Another blow. “Nothing.” Again. “You don’t—” Another. “You don’t know!”

The broom snapped in half. Celiah let out a wail. It started low in the back of her throat, a desperate animal cry, and glided up into a wavering falsetto.

On any other street in Derecho, the natural clouds would have dampened the sound. But this particular street was long and straight, and the buildings and roads were all made of cloudstone. Her cry echoed all the way down to the center of town.

By the time the echo faded, Celiah had regained her composure. “I’m sorry. That was rude. You said he had a message?” She extended a hoof to Hypha. “Please come inside.”

The interior of the manor was an explosion of green. Most houses kept a natural shade of cloud-indigo inside. Not this one. Vines clung to cloudstone walls. Potted plants with real soil sat in every room. The foliage alone must have cost a fortune.

Hypha’s primordial earth pony mind longed to stick his hooves in the soil and smell it, but he did his best to restrain himself.

Celiah hustled him to the courtyard, past the crowd of mares. Most looked at him with pity in their eyes. A few gave him distinctly flirtatious glances.

Outside, the two sat on the edge of a burbling rainbow fountain, where the high walls provided some shade. While Hypha was finished reciting the note, Celiah put her forelegs around his shoulders and wept some more.

“What else did he say?” she asked. “I need to know.”

“He didn’t say anything else.”

“I need to know. Tell me.”

Hypha thought back to the conversation. He remembered the thing Walik had said about the nobles buying animals, and a fresh rush of terror filled his heart. “There were other ponies in the cell,” he started, slowly. “They all had their tongues cut out. Everyone but him. He was trying to get them food and water, because they couldn’t speak for themselves.”

Celiah let out a bitter laugh. “Were they spies, too?”

“No. Everything he did yesterday was to help those other ponies. He barely had time to write that letter.”

“What happened to it?”

“One of the foremen found it.”

Celiah took his hoof in hers and squeezed it. If she noticed how mangled and black they were, she didn’t show it. There was none of the regular revulsion in her eyes. Only fear. Fear, and love. “Are you going to report me?”

“For what?”

“My lover was a spy. I might be one, too.”

“Are you?”

She looked down at the pool of liquid rainbows collecting in the basin. “Derecho’s moved a hundred miles just this year. Could one zebra pull it backwards? Could they even change its course a little? Walik thought he could.” She stood up suddenly. “It’s time for you to leave.”

“What?”

“You’re not supposed to be here.” Her face hardened into an unreadable mask. She pulled him towards the door, past the gaggle of mares and their wide, curious eyes. “Thank you for informing me of Walik’s whereabouts. Now get out.”

“Are you really just—”

She dumped him out the front door like yesterday’s chamber pot.

Traffic started to solidify as a mass of early risers queued up outside the colosseum. Hypha wandered aimlessly through the crowd. His stomach flipped, and for once it wasn’t because of the city’s spin.

How had he dug himself into this mess? The colosseum was a colossal vortex of violence, and he’d let himself get sucked in. Walik and all the prisoners were going to be ripped apart, and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it. Not that anyone in this city would. The way they crowded around the entrances and chatted away—they wanted this. They were animals, carnivorous creatures who’d stolen the skin of real ponies. They strutted around with their slapdash disguises like they owned the world.

He tried to shut the noise out. He didn’t want to care. Couldn’t care. He’d already let his emotions get in the way of his mission once. He had to remember why he was here.

To help him focus, he set his mind on a memory of elder Cumulus and Roseroot. The memory was twisted at the seams and full of white noise, but if he focused he could just barely pick out the movement of Cumulus’s lips, the words coming out of his mouth.

“One of those lessons is empathy.”

It was like elder Cumulus had spoken them directly into his ear. Hypha leapt in surprise and whirled around. The crowd surged around him, a single massive organism of flesh and noise squeezing him, consuming him.

He turned around and started walking again, his mind flying at a hundred miles an hour. Was that a sign? An idea started forming in the back of his mind, and the more he pushed it away the more momentum it gained, faster and faster, screaming down the mountain of his mind, leaving a trail of destruction behind it.

“No,” Hypha said aloud. Empathy. He had plenty of empathy. He had empathy for every monk in the order, every acolyte in every hovel. He carried that burden from dawn to dusk and deep into his dreams. There were so many faces to remember and no one else left to do the remembering. It all came down to him. The thought of forgetting a single face or name, even one, made his heart drop.

Wasn’t it enough to get revenge? Wasn’t it enough to carry the weight?

No, came the voice again. The crowd squeezed him until he was certain he’d pop. If it wasn’t enough, then what could he do?

He thought of Walik, alone in the cell, unable to speak with the ponies beside him. Alone. An outsider to outsiders.

The answer crystalized in a perfect moment of clarity. Hypha turned around and started pushing against the stationary crush of the crowd.

Hypha couldn’t save Walik. But there was something else he could do for him.

Back at the shanty in the alley, Hypha tore through the piles of trash and stolen valuables to find his saddlebag. He carefully placed a few mother sky mushrooms inside, then slung the saddlebag over his back.

Red emerged from the dumpster, a curious look on her face. “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?”

“I asked first.”

Hypha huffed. “Monk stuff.”

Red gave him an appraising look. Then she shrugged and dove back into the dumpster.

The square outside the colosseum had devolved into an immobile mass of bodies. They grew antsy as the sun dropped lower in the sky. No one wanted to be stuck on the outside once the show began.

The only relief came when the gates opened and the crowd poured inside. Hypha blended in as far as the main gate, then bolted down a service tunnel. From there it was a straight shot into the colosseum’s underbelly. Rattling chains and distant shouting echoed down the passageway. His run turned into a full-blown gallop. One more turn and he’d be at the prison cell. Almost there. So close. So—

A massive hoof grabbed him by the scruff and hoisted him into the air. Hypha’s hooves pumped hard but met only air. The bellowing voice of the foreman filled his ears. “You were supposed to work this morning.”

Hypha tried to hide the terror from his voice. “My hooves,” he finally stammered. “They were acting up. Lotta pain.”

“But you’re here now.”

His heart hammered. His mind raced. The mushrooms burned through the lining of his saddlebag. “How could I miss this?”

For a moment, neither spoke. Hypha was certain the foreman would toss him into the cell with Walik and the others. But instead, he let out a big belly laugh. “Typical. All play and no work. You young ponies don’t know anything about dedication.” He set Hypha down. “I’m sure there’s a place in the wings you can stand and watch. Come with me.”

The foreman turned and walked in the opposite direction of the cell. Hypha felt the moment slip through his hooves. He turned to follow.

The full fury of the crowd smacked Hypha across the face as he emerged from the tunnel. Ponies packed the arena, shouting and drinking and laughing and stomping their hooves. Above, the air was thick with pegasi lounging on clouds. The lights Hypha had helped install on his first day baked the crowd. Sunset surrendered to a black, starless night.

The foreman led Hypha to a service entrance where servants dashed around refilling baskets of fruits and fried hay. Every nerve in Hypha’s body screamed, Fly away.

“Not a bad view,” the foreman said, surveying the colosseum with a satisfied smile. “This is your day. You and all the other workers. You made it happen.”

Hypha tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. A familiar sensation, the moment right after the first spear dropped from the sky in Roseroot, rolled over him.

The foreman grinned, the glib confident smile of an abusive father. “Look for the way the blood bounces on the clouds. That’s my favorite part.”

A chorus of trumpets exploded from on high. The colosseum shook as forty thousand ponies leapt to their hooves and cheered.

Hypha heard the familiar clank of a chain gate opening. A group of about thirty ponies in rusty piecemeal armor rushed out into the arena. Hypha caught sight of Walik at the head of the group.

A second gate opened on the opposite side of the arena. The foreman bellowed, “There’s my boys!” as a pack of snarling wolfbears emerged from the darkness.

Hypha snapped. He turned on his hooves and threw himself into the air. He made it a full half mile before he came crashing back down—his longest flight since leaving Roseroot.

First light found Hypha on the edge of the city, sitting in his usual cross-legged position on his usual cloud. His knees ached from holding this pose. Long-dried tears matted the fur on his face. He stared straight at the sun with glassy eyes and waited for it to finish rising.

One of those lessons is empathy.

When it was done, Hypha picked himself up and headed north.

Celiah answered the door. She looked, for lack of a better word, like she’d done three rounds with a wolfbear. She took one look at Hypha, let out a curt, “Nuh-uh,” and went to shut the door.

Hypha stuck his left front hoof out to block it.

The impact cracked the mineral shell. His knees wobbled. Stars shot across his vision.

“Go away,” Celiah said, her voice laced with venom.

“You said yesterday,” Hypha said, “that I know nothing about you. Or Walik. Well, you know nothing about me.”

Celiah paused to consider this. Then she slammed Hypha’s hoof in the door again.

The shell shattered. He let out a howl of pain and sank to his knees. Blood beaded where half-healed keratin met skin. “I’m from the mountains,” he said in a trembling voice. “Walik knew where I was from.”

Celiah paused. “The eastern mountains?” Hypha nodded. “You’re lying. There’s only dragons out there.”

“And monks.” Hypha summoned all the will he could muster and floated himself off the ground. He brought himself up to full standing height, then set himself back down on his hooves.

Celiah gawked. “Wah di rass,” she mumbled. “You’re a demon.”

“No. I’m a pony who wants to help.”

Celiah laughed. “You want to help! You could have helped him escape.”

“No, I couldn’t.” Hypha felt his face grow hot with shame. “I couldn’t help him.”

“You—” Celiah drew her hoof back like she was about to punch him. It wavered in the air, trembling. “You... little rat.” Her voice cracked. Her face contorted. “Street trash.”

Slowly, so as not to scare Celiah, Hypha undid the clasp on his saddlebag. “Fear and hate start in the mind. They can’t be treated like other diseases. They need special medicine.” He opened his bag and produced a cap of mother sky. “This should have gone to Walik, but I couldn’t get it to him in time. So it should go to you instead.”

For a long minute, neither pony spoke. Hypha shuffled awkwardly from side to side, trying not to get any blood on the cloudstone. Celiah stared at the floor. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. She reminded Hypha of a monk in the throes of meditation.

Celiah looked up. “Come back tonight. You can fly, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then fly over the garden wall and hide behind the rainbow fountain until I come for you. Don’t make a sound.”

She shut the door in his face. He saw it coming this time and kept his hooves clear.

Lying prone behind the base of the rainbow fountain, the slow rambling sunset and the gurgle of the liquid rainbows gave Hypha all the mental real estate in the world to reconsider what he was about to do.

Twice he got up to bolt back over the garden wall. Every learned instinct told him to disappear. What if he was making another mistake? He’d barely survived mother sky’s retribution the first time. Even now, the blood still flowed from his broken hooves. And Prairie Sky—

The memory hit him like a lance through his stomach. He killed Prairie Sky. He was a murderer. He was no different than the wolfbears that ate Walik. Prairie Sky was a thief, and a liar, and an outsider turncoat who wanted nothing less than the erasure of everything Hypha held dear. But for every sin Prairie Sky committed against the order, Hypha sinned to match. He hated Prairie Sky because he was Prairie Sky. Hypha was every murderer and outsider, every thief, every liar. His love contained his hate. He had always been an outsider, just as much as he’d always been an acolyte. There was so much within him it threatened to split him apart. He was Prairie Sky. And Cumulus. And Red and Blue. And Walik. And the wolfbears, too.

This moment was a gift. He could run. Or he could stay. For the first time in months, he saw the path laid out clearly before him.

He laid his cheek against the ground and let the cool cloudstone sap the nervous energy from his body. He pictured ash rising from Canary’s Cage, blown across the grassland for a hundred miles in every direction, diluted by rain, saturated into the soil. Feeding new growth.

A voice beside him whispered, “I can see your tail from inside the house.”

Hypha shot to his hooves. It was Celiah, sitting on the lip of the fountain, staring at him with her intense golden eyes.

She scooted over and motioned for him to sit. Together, they watched the colors in the rainbow fountain as they overlapped. Reds and blues turned to purples. Purples turned to lavender. Lavender touched a yellow streak and turned into something indistinguishable in the low light.

“Are there really dragons in the mountains?” Celiah asked. Her voice took Hypha by surprise. It was soft, almost childlike, without a hint of harshness.

“No. But there are lots of other animals. There are these big cats called snow leopards that grow twice as long as a pony. They have a big bushy tail and sharp teeth and paws as big as my head.” That got a little chuckle out of Celiah. “What kind of animals are there in Zebrica?”

“All of them,” she breathed. “All of them and more.”

Hypha took out the mother sky mushrooms. He popped one into his mouth, then gave the rest to Celiah.

“Tell me about them,” he said.

Chapter 19

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“Again.”

Red sucked in a breath of chilly pre-dawn air and swung herself into a hoofstand. With her forelegs underneath her, she slowly spread her hind legs, one pointing in front of her and one pointing behind. At the apex of her stretch, her profile resembled a perfect uppercase letter “T.”

“You’re fidgeting,” Hypha said, his voice flat.

Red resisted the urge to say something nasty. Hypha sat beside her in a comfy criss-cross pose. He wouldn’t try a hoofstand even if his front hooves weren’t hamburger. He was the instructor and she was the pupil, so he got to sit there and she got to suffer.

“Stop fidgeting,” he said.

“I’m not fidgeting,” she hissed back. Everything about this exercise conspired against her. The flimsy little tuft of cloud shifting in the wind, the scant air giving her a headache, the cold stiffening her joints.

Even if she gave in to her intrusive thoughts and shoved him off the edge of the cloud, he’d simply fly right back up again. He got to fly, too. And she got to suffer.

“You’re still fidgeting.”

“You didn’t even open your eyes,” she said.

“I can feel you moving through the cloud.”

“Clouds move. You felt the cloud move, not me.”

Red’s whole body shivered at once, and she decided it wasn’t worth holding this pointless pose another fifty nine minutes. She tucked her legs in and rolled into a sitting position. The blood rushed back to her head.

“Clearing your mind is an active process.” Hypha said. “It takes work. All the distractions you feel when you’re in the pose can be tuned out with enough practice.”

“Maybe I should start with something less strenuous.”

“Not if we want to develop your strength.”

“Look, I can sit still, or I can do hoofstands, but I can’t do both.”

He smiled. “That’s why we’re out here.”

Red stood up and turned to get a good look at Derecho. They’d drifted nearly thirty yards away from the city’s edge. No chance of storming off now. “Fly me back.”

“Not until the hour’s up.”

None of this was fair. Hypha got to fly. Blue got sick sonic screams. She got hoofstands. Just as she was about to make another snide comment, the heaping hooffull of mother sky mushrooms she’d eaten at the start of the session kicked into high gear.

As the world dissolved around her, she forced herself back into a headstand, let her legs droop into a “T” shape, and tried not to count the seconds until she was done.

All that fruitless meditating left Red with a restless mind and a creak in her knees that lingered well into the afternoon. Maybe this was Hypha’s way of getting revenge on her. Maybe he decided all those times she’d ragged on him and called him street trash and pushed him off cliffs deserved a little retribution. She’d asked him not to hold back, but this seemed a little extreme. She promised herself that if it started interfering with her work, even a little, she’d push back.

Red had a much easier time finding work than Hypha. Before she left to scour the countryside for traces of Blue’s dad, she had worked at a pristine cloudstone bathhouse, one of the oldest and most prestigious in the city. Given her rapport with the owner, it was an easy task convincing him to take her back in.

A wave of slimy heat met her at the door. The main baths were packed to near capacity with earth pony merchants and laborers. Closer to the ceiling, a flock of pegasi lingered on long wooden racks suspended from the ceiling by metal chains. Their wings dangled off the sides. Condensation dripped off the primaries. Mares and stallions, upper and lower castes, rich and poor, all mingled freely. Conversation and streaming water padded the air with constant sound.

The hot water would work wonders on Red’s aching legs, and she had some time before she was slated to start working. She had just grabbed a towel and made her way to the edge of the bath when the owner, a slim Saddle Arabian stallion, walked over to her and touched her on the shoulder.

“Red!” he said with a leering smile. “So good to see you again.”

His eyes wandered over her with undisguised intent. It was a culture thing, Red tried to tell herself, though that didn’t make her feel any less creeped out. “Good to see you too, Al Bathaa,” she said.

“A few senators just came in. Would you indulge them and start now? I’ll prorate your pay so you’re compensated for the extra hour.” Al Bathaa’s eyes moved to her flank. Red clamped down on a string of insults before they could come out. If there weren’t enough ponies in here to satisfy his urge to peep, odds were good that no amount could.

“Sure,” she said. “Any chance you’ll have more work tomorrow too?”

“Yes, come back any time you’d like.”

“Same pay?”

His smile could make the algae on the walls shrivel. “Same pay.”

Red made her way past Al Bathaa, who gave her a wide berth with everything but his eyes, and went to the center of the room. There, a series of mirror-tiled mosaics lined a raised stage. A metal pole protruded from the middle.

The attention of the room shifted to her. She did her best to put her thoughts on other things. Like Blue in something revealing. The tips were always better when she thought about Blue.

There were other dancers at the bathhouse. Red might have been Al Bathaa’s favorite, but she was far from the best. Several of the late-night dancers had been working here since before Red was orphaned.

One of those dancers was an older mare named Serene Dream. When Red was finished dancing, Dream invited her to take a dip in the bathhouse’s cold pool.

“I heard you were back in town,” Dream said. The water barely rippled as she slid in. Red wondered how a slight pony like Dream could tolerate the cold. There was so little flesh and fur between the water and her bones. “You got better.”

Red shrugged. “I got more flexible, I think.”

“Still can’t take a compliment.”

“Still can’t hold down a meal.”

Dream let out a laugh and laid her head on Red’s shoulder. Red leaned into it. Dream wasn’t dangerous like that. She knew about Blue, if only superficially.

“We’re going out after Ambrosia’s done,” Dream said. “Wanna come with?”

“Nah. I’m trying to save money. Got some stuff I need to take care of in town.”

Dream frowned playfully. “What if I told you it was a special occasion?” Her voice could freeze fast-moving rivers. Red did her best to ignore a shiver as it shot up her spine. Making ponies feel things they shouldn’t was Dream’s special talent. Red knew from experience not to take it personally.

“What kind of occasion?” Red asked.

“Like, a certain somepony just got a rich new boyfriend, and she wants to spend all his money on her friends.”

“You get a new one every week. How’s that a special occasion?”

Dream booped Red on the nose. “You’re a bitch.”

Red recoiled on instinct. Dream let out another weightless laugh and snuggled deeper into Red’s shoulder.

“You don’t have to go,” Dream said. “But I’m serious about him paying for our drinks. You don’t even have to talk to him. He’s busy with government stuff.”

“He works in the government?”

She winked. “I didn’t say that.”

Dream lifted herself out of the water. Every stallion, and most of the mares, stole looks from the corners of their eyes.

The party went down in a bohemian artist colony, which that evening just so happened to be orbiting next to the palace district. Dozens of wealthy socialites mingled with the upper crust of the lower caste in a Bacchanalian haze. Fake jewelry rattled on low exposed necklines. The sound of lyres and drums and laughter drowned out most of the conversation. Servants wanderered through the mix with jugs of wine, stooping to beckon to the guests’ cups and ask, “More? More?” They poured heavier as the night went on.

Serene Dream split from Red and returned a minute later with a jug of something dark and cloudy. She poured a glass for Red and urged her to taste it.

Red put the cup to her lips, but drew it back when the smell hit her nose. Tangy. Spicy. A hint of char. “Is this Oldovian wine?”

Serene Dream squealed and nodded. “Don’t say you can’t afford it, cuz I’m paying for it.”

Red rolled her eyes. The crowd wasn’t bad now, but she knew the way of these parties. Crowds built up to a critical mass, then something went wrong and everyone scattered. It was the same in the slums as it was in the palace. The only thing that changed was the quality of the wine.

“So who’s your new boyfriend?” Red asked.

“Boyfriend?” Dream shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“C’mon.”

“Okay. He’s not my boyfriend. It’s more of a working arrangement.”

“Makes sense. What does he do?”

Dream looked one way, then the other. “He’s kind of a big deal. I dunno if I should say.”

“Who could possibly overhear us?”

Dream tilted her head to one side, pretending to be deep in thought. Seconds dragged by. The crowd grew louder. Red squeezed the cup of wine in her hooves. “Dream—”

“He’s a senator. A very important one.” She put her chin up, smug satisfaction written all over her face. “And I’m so sorry, but if I told you anything else you’d be a security risk. He made me sign contracts.”

A senator. Red’s blood ran cold. The sound of two hundred ponies shouting over each other dimmed to a low buzz, then came roaring back in time with her pounding heart.

“Which senator?” Red asked. Dream could read her like a book. Now that the hook was in Red’s cheek, Dream was free to do whatever she wanted. She rose from her seat, dumped her wine on the floor, and said, “Let’s dance!”

“Which senator? Which—hey!” Red tried to grab Dream’s arm, but she slipped away, floating through the crowd. The lyres and drums kept getting louder.

Hypha flicked Red’s ears. She dragged in an icy gasp of air. Her forelegs wobbled. “What was that for?”

“You were asleep.”

“No I wasn’t.”

Hypha’s face invaded her vision. She fell from her hoofstand, sending puffs of cloud in all directions. Her hangover, which she thought she’d left behind when she took—partook, she reminded herself, can’t get that messed up with Captain Stick-Up-Butt around—partook in the mushrooms, came roaring back. Serene Dream really knew how to party.

“Let’s try a different approach.” He stooped into an effortlessly natural crow pose and nodded for her to follow along. “Now close your eyes again and think of a mountain.”

Red’s pose was sloppy, but after a few moments of struggle she settled into it. “Why?”

“Because mountains don’t move.”

“Your mountains float.”

“They float, but they don’t move. Just try it.”

Red got as far as closing her eyes, but when she tried to bring a mountain into her mind’s eye, all she could see was a distant bumpy line of rocks on the horizon. “What kinda stuff is on your mountain?” she asked.

“Uh.” He seemed momentarily taken aback. “There’s trees. Stonewood trees. They grow up to a hundred feet tall and can take root in almost no soil. There’s mother sky, of course. All sorts of scrub brush. Lean forward and put one leg back.”

Red followed. “What about animals?”

“Snow leopards. They’re the apex predator. They’re solitary and there’s not that many of them, but they’re stunning. There’s also wolfbears closer to sea level, and clawnose hawks, and king coyotes, and boargoats, and dozens of kinds of mice. Lift the other leg.”

Red followed. Her whole body was parallel to the cloud now. She felt another shake coming on and let herself ride it out. “How do they all fit up there?”

“Mountains are tall. There’s lots of different altitudes for different creatures to live.” He peeked at her to see where she was at in the pose. “Good, now imagine being as still as the stone beneath you.”

Red couldn’t help but chuckle. “Can I think of something else?”

“No, that defeats the whole point.”

“I’m sorry, I’m trying, but I can’t picture it.”

“Don’t talk, just focus.”

This time, when the shakes came, they overwhelmed her balance. Red let out a growl and pushed herself into the air. Without any enhancement, she would have fallen right back down to earth again. But with mother sky’s magic in her stomach, she pushed off into a perfect backflip.

“Woah. Did I just fly?”

“No, but that was a very impressive feat of strength.”

She let out a groan and plopped down on her stomach. The cloud rocked beneath her. Hypha held his pose for dear life.

“I can’t fly, I can’t focus—what can I do?”

“You’ll learn how to focus. It just takes time.”

“What if it’s like flight? What if certain ponies are just naturally bad at it?”

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“Whatever. We should try something else.”

“Red, I know it’s frustrating, but true mastery of meditation requires stillness.”

“Then you’re better off teaching this cloud to stay still.” She dug up a little tuft and sent it floating into his face. “Go on. Tell it to stay still. See if it listens.” She turned around, kicking up little clouds as she did. Then she remembered they were nearly fifty lengths away from Derecho proper. “Fly me back.”

“Red—”

“Fly me back!”

He sighed and undid his pose. Halfway across the gap, he paused pushing the cloud and said, “If you just tried—”

“Either stop talking or dump me off this thing.”

He stopped talking.

Back in the city, Red pulled Hypha in the opposite direction of their hideaway, to the market district. This part of town wasn’t dangerous, not like it was when Red was little, but single mares attracted unwanted attention, and Hypha was an effective smokescreen against unwanted advances.

They wove their way through what seemed like a thousand stalls until Red found what she was looking for: a griffon stall with bottles of clear unmarked liquids on a rickety display stand.

Red reached for her coin purse. Hypha balked. “Are you serious?” he said. “We can’t splurge like this. You said it yourself.”

“It’s not for me,” Red replied. “I’m milking a lead.”

“A lead? A lead for what?”

“Information.” She counted out twenty bits and dropped them on the table. “I need the big bottle,” she said to the griffon behind the stall.

The griffon let out a nervous laugh and said in broken equish, “That one, very strong. Maybe you want the sweet wine? We have very good sweet wine. Pretty bottles, too. All your friends, they drink this, they go, wooo.”

In a deadpan voice, Red replied, “The big bottle.” A pause. “Please.”

Red wasn’t slated to work that day. But when she turned up at the bathhouse, Al Bathaa was all too happy to let her in free of charge. With the bottle of fancy liquor concealed under her towel, she went to the hot bath where Serene Dream was dancing and gave her a wave before retreating to the cold baths in the adjacent room. She reclined in the frigid water with the bottle tucked between her legs to keep it cool.

Dream finished her half hour and made her way straight from the stage to the cold bath. She let out an amused little hum at the sight of Red. Then Red spread her legs and let the bubble of air in the bottle carry it back up to the surface.

Dream recognized the bottle immediately and let out a squeal of delight. If the other patrons in the bath weren’t already stealing glances at her, they were now.

“What’s the occasion?” Dream asked.

“I’m gonna have to leave town soon,” Red said. “I don’t know when exactly, and I’ll probably have to leave in a hurry. So this is my preemptive goodbye party.”

Dream pouted. “Here’s to you then.” She uncapped the bottle and took a long, slow pull. Red went next. The brew tasted depraved, like durian and dumb decisions. She swallowed hard and grimaced.

“So why are you leaving?” Dream asked.

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

“C'mooon.”

“Dead serious. I’m sworn to secrecy.” Red mimed zipping her lips.

“You’re the worst. Is it for work?” Red pretended not to hear. Dream put the bottle to Red’s lips and forced a trickle of booze down her throat. Then she took another sip herself. “Gimme something.”

“It’s sorta for work. I’m having a tough time making ends meet out here.”

“But Al Bathaa loves you. He smells your towels after you leave, y’know. You should be charging him for the privilege.”

Red laughed. “I need something long-term. Or something with a bigger payout.”

“It doesn’t get better outside the city.”

“Says the mare with the rich boyfriend.”

“Ugh, I told you, he’s not my boyfriend.”

Red took another drink, then motioned for Dream to do the same. Her face betrayed no inebriation, but she started to rock from side to side. Red felt it too, a dull haze creeping in from the dark, narrowing her vision and dulling her senses. She pinched her thigh. She had to stay on top of this conversation. She had a plan.

“How do you do it?”

“It being—”

“Your work.”

“I’m a mare of many talents.”

“How do you find clients?”

“You’re serious? Red, you’re not cut out for that.”

“I need money. You seem to have money. Give me something.”

Dream considered Red’s request for a long moment. One hoof drummed the quarter-empty bottle. “It’s all a dance. Anyone can be a client. You just have to get their attention. Once you figure that out, you have everything figured out.”

Red took another drink. She stuffed the bottle into Dream’s hooves. “What do they want, though?”

“Depends. Most of them just want someone pretty to have an affair with. Those ones aren’t worth your time. That’s short-term thinking. You need one who you can brainwash. You gotta make them obsessed.”

“So how do I do that?”

“Depends. I got lucky and don’t have to change anything. You?” She took another sip. “You gotta change some stuff.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, to start, you got murder eyes.”

If only you knew. Red looked down at herself. The cold water diffracted the light, casting her body at an impossible angle. “I could dress differently.”

“That’s a start. But new clothes only work for a few minutes. Then they’re not new anymore, and the client gets bored. The real way to take up rent in their heads is to find an ideal they like and become it.”

Another drink. Red’s stomach flipped. She grimaced. “Become it.”

“Yup!” Dream’s voice was getting higher. A fiery blush burned her cheeks. The bottle was nearly a third empty already. “They’ll never love you. They’re all psychopaths. They don’t love. But psychos get really intense about certain things. They believe in things harder than normal ponies. So just figure out what they believe in, and become it.”

Red let out a belch. Another drink. “That seems tiring.”

“Naaah, it’s easy! Just get on their level.” Dream drank more. A shiver raced down her hooves, rippling the water around her. “Do they have a self-destructive habit? Become the habit. Are they obsessed with purity? Become purity. They don’t see ponies as ponies. They see ponies as collections. Most of the time, ponies are confusing and contradictory. They need something simple to latch onto.”

“I could make them latch onto me.”

“Exactly!” Dream took another drink without Red having to prompt her to. Red did her best to keep the smile off her face. Dream was snowballing. Just a little bit longer, and she could get what she needed from her.

“So what are you?” Red asked. “What’s your character?”

Dream’s eyes narrowed. “I’m me.” Red tried to take another drink, but Dream snapped the bottle out of her hooves. When she pulled her lips away from the neck, it was barely a third full. “I’m done changing. Now I just look for clients who likes the idea of me.” A wet belch slipped out of her lips. She giggled. “I’m freezing. Wanna hit the hot steam room?”

Dream stood up. Red pulled her back into the water. A few precious drops of rare griffonian liquor went into the pool.

Red got up close to Dream’s face. “Got any leads?”

“I’m—urk—freezing, Red.” Her eyes grew dull and listless. Her chin dipped until it touched the cold water.

“I need money, Dream. Who’s hiring?”

“Let go.”

“I can be anything he wants, as long as he’s rich. Who is it?”

Red phlegm flew from Dream’s mouth and floated on the cold water. She hiccuped and put on a wide, toothy, perfectly symmetrical smile.

“Oh no,” she said, her voice all glitz and glamor. Then she puked in the bath.

The patrons sharing the bath recoiled. Curses flew. Dream lifted herself out of the water, stumbled to one side, and fell like a ballerina finishing a solo.

“Reeeeed,” she moaned. “Help me.”

Clarity washed over Red as she stood up. The gossamer veil of inebriation burned away. Confidence flared inside her like gin touching the back of her throat. She was sober again.

The mushrooms. She stifled a laugh. Mother sky improved alcohol tolerance. Incredible.

Red dragged Dream to one of the back rooms, where the luxury of the baths gave way to the dark machinery that kept them climate-controlled. Pipes snaked up the walls, held in place by metal bearings and ancient slime.

Red figured they had a minute tops before the owner stormed back here and fired both of them. Favorite or not, an incident like this would require a great deal of refunds to smooth over. Red had to work fast.

She dumped Dream on the ground and grabbed her chin to keep her head from lolling. “Who’s the senator?” she demanded. “What’s his name?”

“Heeheeee, if I told ya, I’d have’ta—”

Red slapped her across the face. “Who is it?”

Dream started to hyperventilate. “I don’t—I—”

Red punched her in the stomach. Dream vomited again. Red didn’t stop berating the mare with questions even as she spat up what was left of the fancy griffonian liquor on the scum-crusted tile floor.

“Which senator do you work for, Dream? Which one?”

Dream let out a low, terrified wail. “Stop it, stop it. Please.” She trailed off into gibberish and curled up into a ball. She spat up something else, something red.

The surge of adrenaline in Red’s blood warped into fear. She’d pushed too hard. With a sigh of resignation, she threw Dream over her shoulder and made for the bathhouse’s rear exit. The hospital was nearly half a mile away.

The trip would have been an awful lot easier if she could fly. Stupid mushrooms, she thought.

When Dream came to, the first thing she saw was Red sitting at her hospital beside. Red had to threaten several orderlies to stay past visiting hours, but the payoff was well worth it. Dream looked confused and frightened, and Red was there to hold her hoof.

“What happened?” Dream asked, her voice still groggy.

“Bad liquor.” Red shook her head. “You were lucky you puked it all out. I went blind for two hours.” Dream’s eyes radiated concern. She tried to sit up. “Don’t. Just rest.”

Dream settled back into her bed. Her eyes flickered, sifting through the fragments of yesterday’s memories. Several puzzle pieces came together at once, and she let out a groan. “Did I—in the cold bath?”

“Yup.”

“Ugh. I’m so fired.”

“Nah, it’s nothing a little body language can’t smooth over.”

“Did anything else happen?”

“Well.” Red tapped her chin. “I mean, yeah, but I’m sure it wasn’t true.”

“What did I say?”

“You were being literally poisoned, and I was going blind. I barely remember anything we said.”

“Red.”

“Forget I said anything.”

“Red!” She kicked the blankets off. “What did I say?”

“You said your new client was senator Ardentious.”

Dream put her hoof over her forehead dramatically. “Not true. Not true at all.”

“Sure, of course, it’s not true and I never heard it. But for real Dream, Senator Ardentious? Really?” Red shook her head. “Isn’t he like eighty years old? How do you not stop his heart when you, y’know. You’re an artist with your body. That can’t be good for him.”

Dream burst out laughing. “I’m such a liar when I’m drunk. No, I’m not working for Ardentious. I’m too energetic. I’d kill the poor thing.”

“Hey, Ardentious isn’t too bad. He built a lot of affordable housing. You’re giving back to the community.”

“He’s a nobody. My clients aren’t nobodies.” A sly smile crept over her features. “I really shouldn’t say it.”

Red shrugged. “You already did.”

“God, I can’t have you thinking I’d ever stoop so low.”

“Is it that bad?”

“The truth is worse.”

Red leered. Dream cracked just as easy as anyone else. All Red had to know was which spots to poke. “Who?”

“He has a wife.”

“Who?”

“One of the bigwigs. Giesu.”

Red tried to contain the pounding of her heart. “No.”

“He’s depraved. The only thing more disgusting than him is how much he pays us.”

“Really? How much?”

“Did you really say you were looking for work?”

“Yes and no. Mostly I’m just curious.”

Dream nodded. “The money’s nice, but the freedom’s even better. I can walk right into his estate whenever I want. Full access. Everything I need to be my best self. And the estate is beautiful. There’s a big open courtyard in the middle with real plants in it, and I know he doesn’t care about that sort of thing, but I love it so much. He likes to take me on walks there in the morning.”

Morning walks through the open courtyard. Red’s smile grew wider. Perfect.

“Well, I should let you get some rest.” Red stood up. “I’ll see you at the bathhouse when you’re feeling better.”

“Wait.” Red saw something underneath the veil of Dream’s indifference. Something scared and lonely and childlike. “Would you keep me company for a little bit? I don’t want to waste away all by myself.”

Red interpreted the unspoken plea in Dream’s eyes. She settled down on the foot of the bed. "Anything for a friend."

“Has anyone ever tried another way of meditating?”

The question seemed to take Hypha by surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Like, any other way than just sitting still.”

Hypha thought for a minute. “The monks at Shining Rock used to float upside down. But they didn’t move once they were in the position.”

Red let out a huff. “What if I just—” she stood up from her spot and did a little stretch before going into the motions of her bathhouse dance routine. She breathed in time with her motions, moving to the faint whisper of the jetstream high above them.

I’m a cloud, she thought. I’m moving all the time.

“What are you doing.” Hypha’s voice contained not the barest hint of a question.

“I’m meditating.”

“That is not meditating.”

“It is. Look.” She pointed towards the city some eighty yards away. “I’m imitating clouds. Did you know Derecho is ninety three percent clouds?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Me too. It’s a cloud city. Shouldn’t it be one hundred percent clouds? Turns out, the other seven percent is almost entirely metal. The decorative spire tops, the pipes, the boilers—that stuff.”

“No. I don’t get—” he made a wiggling motion with his hoof. “That.”

Red paused, poised serenely on one leg. She shifted her weight slowly until her body was parallel with the ground. “Nothing up here is actually still.” She rocked back and went on dancing. “Even when it feels still, we’re still spinning.”

Hypha furrowed his brow. “You can’t empty your mind if you have to think about not falling off the edge.”

She drew her legs back down. “You have to worry about falling off. I don’t.” Her hips bobbed from side to side. She approached the edge, but each time backed away without even having to look.

Hypha seemed content to let Red wear herself out. She danced for three hours straight without stopping. The end of her meditation finally arrived when her knees buckled and her legs gave out.

She let out a soft, “Oh,” and collapsed into the cloud. It embraced her the way Blue did after a long absence.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Hypha leaning over her. “Are you alright?” he asked.

She shooed him off. Sweat caked her body, but she didn’t feel tired. She didn’t feel anything. She was floating on nothing, flying through her inner mind. Spots of alternating black and white danced in her eyes. Puffy white clouds filled the sky. As she watched, they transformed into faces, then fractals.

“I’m a cloud,” she said in a soft voice. “I’m a cloud.”

Chapter 20

View Online

“Let’s start with our breathing,” Hypha said. “In through the nose. Hold for thirty. Out through the mouth.”

As Blue began that morning’s meditations, she wondered what having teeth would taste like. Did they even taste like anything? They had to. They were teeth.

When it was time to release the breath, Blue exhaled through her nose instead of her mouth.

“Let’s try that again.” Hypha smiled reassuringly. “Breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth filters toxins and promotes circulation.”

They went again. In through the nose. Hold for thirty. Out through the mouth. Except Blue released through her nose again.

“Out through the mouth,” Hypha said again, a little less patiently than before. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. We’re monks now. We have to trust each other.”

Hypha didn’t look like he believed his own words. When they repeated the exercise a third time, she released through her nose. Hypha’s disciplined exhale crumbled into a groan.

“Okay, okay. Let’s try something else.” He repositioned himself so they were back to back, facing away from each other. “I’m gonna make a sound, and I want you to copy it.”

Blue raised an eyebrow. This wasn’t the first questionable teaching tool Hypha had employed. She reminded herself that these sessions were a two-way street. Hypha had as much to learn about Blue as she had to learn from him. If she really wanted to get the most out of it, she had to give him the space and patience to figure her out. She’d go along with it for now. As long as he didn’t make her do animal noises.

“Okay, here we go.” Hypha put his lips together and let out a rumbling, “Hmmmmm.”

Blue fidgeted in place. She suddenly felt very isolated out here. Hmmm’s didn’t require teeth or a tongue. so in theory she could make the sound just fine. Still, she hesitated. Could was up here in the clouds, but would was all the way on the ground. The gap felt insurmountable.

“It doesn’t have to sound good,” Hypha insisted. “You just have to try.”

Maybe it was the way Hypha’s voice was constantly on the edge of condescension. Maybe it was the mushrooms. Either way, something pushed her. She closed her eyes and thought of birds. She exhaled. Out came a thin and wavering, “Hmmmmm.”

“Good. Now higher.” He hmm’d a note.

Blue mirrored. Her voice was lower than she’d expected. Harsher. She tried to steady it, and it cracked.

“Try again,” he said. “Feel it. Receive it.” She felt energy in his voice. She went for the high note again. Then a lower one. Then low to high. Then high to low. Excitement rose as her sounds got stronger. They traded sounds back and forth until they were practically singing to each other.

“Now open wide!” Hypha bared his teeth and roared at the sky.

The moment took her. She peeled her lips back and pushed as hard as she could. Everything in her flowed out. A rippling sensation of energy washed over her.

A fine film of glowing fog trickled from her lips and landed in her lap.

Blue let out a squeal of terror and leapt into the air. Hypha had to grab her legs to keep her from falling off the cloud.

“That’s amazing!” He dragged her away from the edge and into a crushing hug. “Blue, it’s not just your voice that’s magic. It’s your breath.”

Blue shook her head and gestured to the saddlebag on the corner of the cloud where Hypha stored the rest of the mushrooms.

“No. Mother sky gave you the courage to open your mouth and sing. The rest was all you.”

She stared at the spot where the glowing fog had fallen. Voice. Breath. She knew these things intimately, but they’d always come from outside her. She couldn’t recognize the sound of her own voice. A deep and dysmorphic panic took hold of her. Her chest tightened. Her limbs started to shake.

Just when it seemed the fear would burst out of her like fire from a forge, Hypha’s hoof found hers. Everything she knew screamed at her to pull away. But when she looked into his eyes, she found her own uncertainty mirrored right back at her. He was scared, too. Terrified. Yet he was still here. Still trying to comfort her.

Maybe he really did believe she could be a monk after all.

Blue decided to celebrate her success by stealing something nice from the market. Red would be furious if a big bundle of bits mysteriously appeared in their saddlebags. But it would be a lot more difficult for Red to stay mad if Blue sauntered home wearing something pretty.

The robbery didn’t go exactly to plan. She canvased the market, found a susceptible secondhoof clothing cart, and picked through the items until she found a pearly white shawl that beautifully contrasted her blue coat. She pretended to hem and haw over a few other items, waiting for the perfect moment to stuff the shawl into her saddlebag. The owner seemed kind, but he was fat and frail. If she had to run for it, there was no way he would catch her.

She was just about to strike when a commotion at the market entrance caught her eye. The crowd parted for two brawny pegasi in tattered maroon cloaks. Their legs were covered in military tattoos. They wore no weapons but walked with the authority of soldiers on patrol.

They made a beeline to the fat, frail cart owner and proceeded to beat the teeth out of him.

The sudden violence sent the crowd into chaos. Blue took a step back in case the sphere of the fight expanded. It never did. Whatever beef the thugs had was solely with this cart owner.

When the thugs tired, they grabbed the cart owner’s coin purse and ran. The poor stallion let out a sound like a paint-filled balloon popping. His blood decorated the shifting street like see-through fabric draped over a statue.

Blue tucked the shawl into her saddlebag and left before the guards could get there.

Back at the hideaway, she found Hypha filling Red in about the details of that morning’s meditation session. Red paced back and forth, her eyes darting about. When she saw Blue, her face twisted into a bitter sneer.

“So you get magic smoke, too? This isn’t fair. Why did mother sky make me the packmule?”

If she noticed Blue’s new shawl, she didn’t mention it.

Hypha was so excited to work on Blue’s new magic during their next morning meditation that he skipped over the meditation portion entirely.

“If you can produce it, then you should be able to control it.” His eyes got wider as he spoke. “Try to feel the smoke.”

Blue thought of birds and breathed out a trail of glowing smoke. It felt cool on her hooves, like clouds without any of their signature springiness. When she tried to find a point of connection between it and herself, however, she came up emptyhoofed.

An hour ticked by. Then two. Blue flexed every muscle in her body, straining to create some sort of leverage. No dice. She tried holding it in her hooves, but it just evaporated. She tried breathing it back in, to no avail. She even tried whispering to it. Nothing worked. She could feel potent magic in the fog, but it remained frustratingly out of reach. As the morning wore on, it seemed more and more this smoke was purely cosmetic.

Blue could see Hypha was growing tired. Even monkly patience had its limits. They were both grasping at straws.

“Have you been asking it nicely?” Hypha said.

Blue resisted the urge to laugh in his face. She turned to the pool of smoke and grunted at it, a toothless tongueless, “Go.” Unsurprisingly, it stayed put.

“When I’m having trouble focusing, I like to think of a mantra. Do you have a mantra?” Blue shook her head. “Try this one. Feel it, receive it, let it go.”

Mantras. Right. Frustration seeped into her thoughts. This was worse than useless. It was a waste of precious time. She stared down the pool with all the intensity of a snow leopard and thought, feel it, receive it, feel it, receive it, feel it, receive it—

The light flickered out. The smoke vanished.

A shock passed through Blue’s body. She looked up and saw Hypha grinning like a madpony. “Don’t stop. Keep going.”

She blew more smoke into her hooves and thought, feel it, receive it. Nothing happened.

“Let it go. Don’t forget to let it go. Feel it, receive it, let it go.”

Blue nodded. Feel it, receive it, let it go. The smoke vanished.

“Yes! Now make it do something. Anything.”

This time, instead of dispelling the smoke, Blue tried to move it around. The smoke shot up, blowing Hypha’s mane back.

Elation swelled inside her like a balloon. She laughed out loud, savoring the strange guttural sound and the headrush that followed. She turned to Hypha. Her smile faltered as she took in the look of undisguised concern on his face.

“If you’d sent that smoke down, it would have poofed our cloud.” His eyes floated to his front hooves. The mineral shell over the less-injured left hoof had cracked, though the shell over the degloved right still held strong. “This is more powerful than I thought. We need to be careful.”

Blue nodded.

“I’m serious.” He reached out suddenly and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Promise you won’t be reckless with this.”

She nodded more vigorously. He pulled back, rubbing his front hooves together, flinching from phantom pains. Blue knew the motions. She knew them all too well.

The victimized stallion wasn’t there the next day, nor the day after that. But on the third day he returned, his cart tucked in defensively between several other larger vendors. He was missing a quarter of his teeth. One of his eyes rolled limply in its socket, the pupil stained red. Pockmarks of yellowish blue bruises ran up his side. He walked with a pronounced limp. One of his rear hooves had cracked. Half of his soft brown tail had been ripped out at the root.

He turned to address another customer, and Blue noticed one of his private parts had swollen to twice its normal size. Blood blackened beneath thin skin.

Blue stowed her stolen shawl before making her way over to him. As she approached, she felt him sizing her up with his one good eye. “Wha cah I—” his jaw shifted with an audible click. He winced. His nostrils flared. “Wha cah I do fuh... fuh—”

Blue cut him off. She pointed to her mouth and shook her head.

At first, the stall owner seemed offended. It was only when she repeated the motion that he understood she was referring to herself. A smile of relief crossed his face. In Blue’s mind, that moment sealed an understanding between them.

She didn’t outright give him any bits. She knew the type—too proud for charity, even in dire straits. But she did empty her entire coin purse on a lavish set of earrings. She showed them off to Red later that evening knowing full well the reaction it would cause.

“You... idiot,” Red said. She cupped Blue’s face to get a better look at the pieces. Blue leaned into the touch. “How much did you spend on this?”

Blue shot her a beguiling smile.

“We could starve next week. What’s wrong with you?”

In response, Blue dragged Red’s head down into a deep kiss. Blue had always been a slight pony. That plus intense malnutrition in her formative years meant she barely came up to Red’s shoulders. It was a kind of scar everypony could see but few could recognize. Blue had grown to appreciate her size over time, though. Being small had many practical silver linings. For one thing, she fit Red like a glove.

Red eventually hugged Blue back. “You gotta quit giving all our money to strangers. You’re worse than Hypha.”

Blue didn’t try to argue, but only because Red started playing with her mane, and she liked it when Red played with her mane. When they kissed, Red tasted like ozone and blood orange and the bitter tang of perfume.

First light found Blue back at the market. She nested in the rooftops, her eyes following a flock of finches as they flittered around the stalls. Red was with Hypha this morning, so officially Blue was doing solo meditation. That wasn’t the only reason she was up here. But she was making a genuine effort to practice her breathing. In through the nose. Hold for thirty. Out through the mouth.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two bulky shadows peel themselves off the cloud walls and slink into view. They went from stand to stand, picking through the baskets and trying the locks. They found a few moldy fruits, which they nibbled on before chucking them down the street. They managed to pry open someone’s locked cart, but found nothing inside.

A finch took flight. The flock followed suit. The thugs spooked and took off down the street. Their silhouettes melted into the mass of shadows.

Blue stood up. From her perch on the rooftop, she’d seen which direction they’d fled. She would return the next day, find a rooftop with a better view, and wait for them to give away the next part of their route.

They were gonna pay for what they did.

The thieves revealed themselves again two days later. Thanks to the density of the nearby homes and shops, Blue was able to trail them along the rooftops without being noticed.

The insulae unit they called home was hardly welcoming. It consisted of a single bare room, furnished only with two filthy sleeping pillows and a stack of stolen robes which they presumably used as blankets. The cloud walls were stagnant and stained grey with grime.

The two thugs talked for a while, then drank from a bucket of brackish beer and settled into an uneasy slumber. Blue noticed the tattoos on their legs covered a lattice of scars. Legionnaires who survived their service years were supposed to be treated like kings. How they wound up in this rathole was anyone’s guess.

Blue watched them all evening. Sometime before morning, one of the thugs woke with a start and grabbed a dagger concealed beneath his sleeping pillow. He leapt to the window and scanned the ground, breathing hard. The other thug woke up and tried to drag his friend away from the window. The one with the knife swung at him, missed, and toppled over. They fell in a tangle of limbs and disappeared. Blue heard a short scuffle. The knife skittered away. There was a pause, then the faint sound of crying.

This’ll be easy, she thought.

“Does it smell like anything to you?” Hypha stuck his head into the bank of glowing fog and inhaled. “Kinda smells metallic.”

Blue leaned in and took a whiff. Vague hints of lightning and lemongrass tickled her nose. Weird. This wasn’t anything like the brimstone and powderized basalt smells she got whenever she was around spellcasting unicorns. She didn’t know magic could be an olfactory experience.

Hypha pushed himself off the cloud and flew about thirty yards away. He’d already come such a long way from that first night in Median, when he could barely pull himself up the ivy-covered wall by the courthouse. Blue couldn’t help but be impressed.

“Okay, send it to me,” Hypha instructed.

Blue took a deep breath and released a stream of magic from her lips. She teased the smoke into a rough sphere, then pushed it slowly out towards Hypha. When she felt it approaching him, she made the cloud expand, shrouding Hypha from view.

“Good!” came Hypha’s muffled voice. “Now make it as big as you can!”

Blue thought, big, and started enlarging the cloud. It grew to nearly four times its original size, but as it got larger it also thinned out. Hypha’s frowning face phased into sharp relief.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “it’s only the first try. Let it go.”

Something about his words struck Blue as patronizing. It was time to test the waters with a little harmless horsing around. Hypha was stronger now. He could handle it.

Blue focused on the cloud and thought, feel it, receive it, let it go. She felt a new mental muscle strain, one she’d never used before. A mild magical headache bloomed in the base of her skull. The cloud color deepened as it pulled moisture from the surrounding air. The effect felt like sucking ice cream through a straw.

She smiled. This one was for making her get up so early.

She flexed her diaphragm. A strained grunt escaped her lips. The cloud condensed to an impenetrable fog in the blink of an eye. A sound like a sharp gust of wind hit her ears. Hypha vanished.

For a moment, nothing happened. Blue waited for Hypha’s muffled cries of protest, or for him to fly out and scold her. It was only fog, after all. He could just fly out.

Seconds ticked by. The fog was pristine and undisturbed. Blue’s smile disappeared. Hypha could just fly out. Why wasn’t he flying out?

From inside the fog, an orb of pale blue light suddenly burst to life. It traced a circle, then a rune within the circle. An orb of bright white light appeared, illuminating Hypha.

Blue’s eyes went wide. Hypha was flailing wildly, barely staying airborne. He lost control of the light orb and flung it towards the ground at lethal speeds. The fog had spooked him somehow. He was panicking.

He seized up and fell like a stone. Glowing smoke trailed behind him like a comet’s tail.

Blue raced to the edge but stopped short of diving after him. There were no shadows to leap through in thin air. She was powerless to help him. All she could do was count the seconds. At this height, he had about twenty before he passed the point of no return.

She counted an agonizing five seconds before he managed to recover. He shot straight back to the cloud and collapsed beside Blue, his chest heaving, his mane plastered to the side of his head. It was a long time before he was able to speak again.

“Very good,” he finally panted. “Very good.”

That night, Blue began her war of terror against the two thugs. She waited until they were asleep in their apartment, then hucked a brick through their window. The insulae in which they lived had no glass in the windows. Nor was there any furniture inside that the brick could destroy. All she wanted to do was wake them up. The sound of the brick clattering against their stone floor did just that.

Next was something a little more devious, and a lot more tricky. Blue waited until the two went out for the day, then proceeded to find all the best hoofholds in the pockmarked stone facade of their insulae. She spent all day ascending and descending the walls, marking all the unseen holds with charcoal.

Then, when the thugs returned that evening, Blue scaled the wall and whispered to them.

Without a tongue or teeth, it was impossible to make actual words. She managed to make a couple rudimentary sounds that, to a half-asleep pony’s ears, would sound like somepony was whispering just out of earshot.

As she whispered, a rippling sensation of energy washed over her.

She relaxed and poured her focus into her whispering. Fog escaped her lips, forming glowing tendrils that snaked across the floor of the apartment, converging towards the sleeping forms of the two thugs. The tendrils coalesced into shrouds, covering them.

One thug, the one with the knife beneath his pillow, stirred. Blue shut her mouth. The smoke vanished. She waited for an agonizing moment until the thug put his head down. Then she started whispering again.

She managed to rouse him up four more times before he woke up for real. By the time he leapt out of bed, Blue was already gone.

The next and penultimate step was pure earth pony magic. Blue once again waited for the thugs to go to bed. They’d been sleeping a lot less thanks to her stunts, but that meant that when they finally passed out they’d sleep deeply. They were right where she needed them to be.

She positioned herself on the rooftop opposite their apartment. With the moon at her back, the top of the roof cut a deep shadow behind her. She kept one hoof in shadow while she set her eyes on a dark corner of the apartment. Without moving her gaze, she stepped backwards and melted into the shadows, reappearing a moment later in the shadowy corner of the thugs’ apartment. The whole thing took place in an instant and made no sound.

She focused on the feeling of energy in her stomach and whispered a wordless incantation. Glowing smoke poured from her mouth, blooming into tendrils as it touched the floor. They snaked around the thugs’ sleeping bodies, rose up into the air in perfect synchronicity, and plunged down into the thugs’ noses.

One of the thugs, the jumpy one with the knife, jerked awake. She closed her mouth. The glowing smoke vanished. She merged back into the shadows and phased back to the roof.

Then she picked another corner and phased in. The motion of her appearing from nowhere was enough to catch the thug’s attention. He whirled around, but Blue was gone.

Blue watched him from the rooftop as he roused the other thug. They both started arguing.

She dove back in, emerging from nowhere, a shadow draped in gossamer moonlight. In a flash, she dropped her shoulder and knocked one of them down. The other one, the one with the knife, reared back. With the moon behind him, his entire front side was draped in shadows. Blue dove into him, through him, and emerged once again onto the rooftop.

The thug let out a scream that, had his apartment come with real windows, would surely have shattered glass.

Blue wanted little more than to leap back in and finish the job. But that wouldn’t send the kind of message she wanted to send. She didn’t merely want to stop these two thugs from messing with the stall stallion. She wanted to scare off every would-be tough guy for the next five years.

As she perched on the rooftop outside the apartment waiting for the sun to come up, she noticed that the two thugs curled towards each other like two halves of a yin-yang symbol. One watched the window, while the other watched the door. She and Red did the same thing sometimes. They weren’t so different. They were all just ponies with broken legs, cast ass-first into the meat grinder of life. She didn’t hate these ponies for beating up the stall stallion. Plenty of ponies beat up other ponies. Blue wasn’t out to save the world. She’d just happened to be there in that moment. They just happened to break the stall stallion’s jaw. Those earrings just happened to be beautiful. She just happened to be aching for an excuse to practice her newfound magical abilities. Maybe it was all of those things.

Dawn broke. A few blocks away, the usual morning market crowd would be gathering.

Blue stepped through the last remaining pool of shadows. She reappeared in the two thugs’ room. They were both huddled in a corner, leaned against each other, snoring softly. The sun broke over the rooftops. Her way out evaporated.

She cooed softly. Glowing smoke rolled across the floor and tickled the thugs’ hooves. They sat up straight, bloodshot eyes wide and trembling.

Blue smiled a faint, charmed smile. Then she threw open the front door and took off down the landing.

They threw off their blankets and took off after her. Blue led them through the shifting cloud streets at a leisurely pace, slowing up when they grew tired, speeding up when they found their wind. The streets bloomed with color from below, rainbows of rose gold and mist-soaked marigold. Color seeped through the buildings all the way up to the top of the city’s many metal spires. Derecho, for all the rot it contained, could be beautiful when it wanted to.

The street spread out. The buildings peeled away. The trickle of pedestrians turned into a throng. The market was busy today. And Blue’s favorite vendor had snagged a prime spot in the first row of stalls.

The crowd moved aside as she galloped in. She found the stall stallion’s eyes, and he found hers. A look of confusion passed over his still-swollen face. He started to limp towards her.

That was when the thugs caught up.

The sight of them caused a panic through the vendors. They rushed to finish transactions and lock their stalls. But they paused when they noticed the thugs’ haggard condition. The whole crowd stopped to stare.

A space cleared. Pedestrians and servants hastened to get out of the thugs’ way as they approached Blue. When they were just a few steps away, they stopped.

For a moment, nothing moved. The faint motion of the city gave Blue a sinking feeling, like she was caught in a whirlpool. No escape now.

She struck first, kicking a tuft of cloud into one thug’s face. He swatted it away, leaving him exposed. Blue rushed in and cracked him in the temple. His rear legs gave out and he sat down on his haunches, a dazed look on his face.

She hit him again. Blood poured from his nose and congealed on the cloudstone. The color of the sunrise gained an extra vivid band of red.

The other thug pulled his knife from his belt. But even then, it wasn’t a fair fight. Blue baited him into swinging the blade at her face, then bucked him hard in the ribs.

He fell atop the other thug. His eyes flashed between Blue and his bleeding friend, and instead of getting up to fight he spread himself out on top of the other thug to shield him.

All the same to Blue. She batted the knife out of the thug’s hoof and laid into him, kicking him in the stomach over and over. The thug puked. She didn’t stop, not even when he curled himself into a ball and cried out for his mom. His ribs broke one by one. He closed his eyes and stopped moving.

Just then, somepony flew in from behind and shoved Blue hard in the back. Blue whirled around, her mind racing. Another thug? Someone she’d missed?

The new arrival lunged again—no, fell across the two helpless thugs, shielding them. It was the stall stallion. The one the thugs had nearly beaten to death.

His eyes flashed with sunrise and rage. “No!” he screamed in a quivering tenor. “No.” His jaw clicked audibly as he attempted to form other words. All he could get out was, “No,” over and over.

A passerby shouted behind her. Blue heard the shuffling armor of approaching guards. Rage twisted her face. What was he doing?

She bailed before the guards could arrive.

Red wasn’t the most emotionally perceptive pony, but it didn’t take a psychic to realize something was off with Blue. That evening, Red hung a tarp over the alley entrance and set up her little crystal light, a fire facsimile in a place that couldn’t burn. The light reminded Blue of the times they’d spent camping out in the grasslands, raiding provincial government offices and searching for traces of her father. They’d been back in town less than a month, yet already that year of her life was fading into the haze of her memories. The more she tried to grasp it, the more it slipped like smoke through her hooves.

Blue took the earrings out of her ears and turned them over. They gleamed in the firelight like teeth knocked from another pony’s face. What was the stall stallion thinking? Why did he help those thugs?

Hypha appeared at the mouth of the alley. She could hear him, and smell him, from a mile away. Rolling around in clouds could clean a pony of sweat and grime, but couldn’t touch the stench of death.

“Dang,” Red said, “I gotta sneak you into the bathhouse sometime.”

He ignored her and sat down at the crystal light. Dinner was dutifully doled out.

“Nice earrings,” Hypha said between bites.

Blue pursed her lips. Hypha, seeming to sense something was amiss, wisely turned the conversation to other topics. He was finally starting to understand her, she realized. Not fully. No one could. But sometime in the course of the last month he’d learned a few words in her unspoken language, and now the two could communicate. It made a world of difference to lighten her spirits.

Blue pretended to turn in early. She waited for Hypha and Red to go to bed, then snuck off to the edge of town and tossed the earrings.

Chapter 21

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Hypha invited both mares to morning meditation. They spent an hour in awkward silence, half zoned out, half clued in on him. He tried his best to ignore it, but by minute thirty he was all but crawling out of his skin with anticipation. They were waiting for him to say something. He knew they were waiting. Meditation never felt more like torture.

Right as minute fifty nine ticked over to minute sixty, he blurted, “So how are we feeling?”

Slowly, Red opened her eyes. “Kinda chilly.”

“I meant, how are we feeling about the mission?”

Her eyes flicked to Blue. “How do you feel?”

The question made Blue pause. She’d been ready for ten years. But now that they were so close to actually going through with it, the question felt like a million tons of earth and stone hanging over her head. All it would take to set off the avalanche was pulling a single pebble out of place.

Blue took a deep breath. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. This feeling was an illusion. The anticipation was all in her mind. There was no avalanche waiting to sweep down the hill. Those rocks had been set in motion a decade ago. They’d already been falling. All that was left to do was see them to their inevitable crushing conclusion.

She nodded her head.

Red’s eyes narrowed. Then she turned her attention back to the horizon. Hypha’s lips drew back into a tight frown. He nodded.

Based on the information gathered by Red, they chose the following morning to strike.

While the moon was still high in the sky, the three ponies trekked to the city’s edge. There, they divvied up three portions of mother sky mushrooms and meditated in silence. Hypha sat perfectly still with his eyes closed. Blue focused on the ghost of the horizon as it came into focus. Red whirled and spun and lifted herself on her front hooves, mirroring the movements of the city behind her.

When day broke, they retreated back to their hideaway. All their earthly belongings went in a nearby dumpster for safekeeping. Hypha took extra care to bury the remaining mother sky mushrooms at the bottom of the pile, along with the spiral-bound book of rune spells. Leaving it here felt wrong somehow. He tried to remind himself that if everything went right, they’d be back in a few hours. But such thoughts did little to assuage the fear rising in his belly like the tide.

They went by rooftops and alleyways, steering clear of the main roads. The whole way there, Hypha couldn’t seem to find a point of balance. He kept coming back to that final memory of elder Cumulus racing into a flurry of Derechan legionaries. The mental image had been polluted by all the other new memories stacked on top of it. He could barely recall the old monk’s face anymore. The more he tried, the faster it faded.

The trio practically trembled with energy as they moved into position on the rooftop overlooking the senator’s courtyard. Blue breathed in through her nose, then exhaled a billowing cloud of glowing smoke from her mouth. It rolled off the rooftop and trickled into the senator’s courtyard.

A few minutes later, they heard hoofsteps in the near-light. The vague shapes of three ponies appeared in the courtyard.

“Sorry Dream,” Red murmured.

Something still felt wrong to Hypha. Horribly wrong. This was nothing like stealing food in the markets. Or even ambushing those ponies for their clothes outside of town. This was dropping on a defenseless pony knife-first. Just like the legionaries at Roseroot. Oh gods. His blood ran cold. He was them too, wasn’t he?

Blue stepped backwards and melted into the shadows.

Red crouched beside him. “Okay, go.” Hypha hesitated. “Go, dufus.” Another moment passed. She kicked him in the shoulder. “Come on!”

Hypha snapped out of it. He hooked his hooves under Red’s shoulders and leapt into the air. He glided down at a steep angle, aiming for the middle pony in the row.

The ponies on the ground didn’t see him coming. He chucked Red into the middle pony as hard as he could.

The two collided and tumbled across the cloudstone. Hypha landed beside them, rolling so as not to place too much weight on his front hooves. As he recovered, he saw Blue explode from the mist like a wolfbear. Her eyes glowed with magic and fury. Her face twisted in a toothless snarl.

Pure panic took over. Hypha hit the ground and curled up. Blue leapt over him and tackled one of the senator’s entourage mares. A wet crack filled the air. The shape beneath Blue went still. Blue got up, found the other mare, then pounced on her.

When she was finished, she flicked the blood off her hooves and walked towards Red.

Red and the senator grappled on the cloudstone, rolling over each other in a desperate bid for control. Red was the better fighter, but the sheer mass and size of the senator made it an even match. He was on top of her, trying to hold her down with one hoof and land a punch with another. Red writhed beneath him, kicking and biting, dodging the blows as fast as they came.

Blue bucked the senator squarely in the ribs. He let out a groan. Red’s hoof found his chin. He doubled over.

“Help me,” he wheezed. He took a stumbling step towards his cloudstone complex. “Help.”

Red grabbed his muzzle and squeezed it shut. The trio turned their attention to the senator’s complex, squinting through the haze for signs of movement.

A flash of black flew from the fog and hit Blue in the chest, just below her collarbone. She frowned, dazed, and touched the black shaft of an arrow embedded inside her. Then she collapsed.

Red screamed and dove over Blue’s body. More arrows flew past, skittering like snakes over the cloudstone tiles. A dozen guards clad in red and black armor spilled into the courtyard. Several moved to help the senator. The others spread out to surround the trio.

This was all wrong. There weren’t supposed to be guards. Blue wasn’t moving. She could be dead. His mind raced. Should he grab Red and bail? He couldn’t carry both of them. Red would want him to take Blue. But leaving one of them behind wasn’t an option. They’d sworn oaths. He had to figure something out right now.

He never got the chance. Just as he was about to reach his friends, a black-painted spear flew from the fog. It struck him in his right foreleg, went all the way through, and lodged in the flashing between two floor tiles.

Splinters stabbed through sinew. The momentary numbness of a new wound boiled away into pure agony. He couldn’t breathe. The world collapsed into twin tunnels of fog.

“Alive,” the senator wheezed. “Take them alive.”

Panic took hold. Hypha spun around to face the advancing guards, ignoring the agony of the spear moving inside him. Feel it. Receive it. let it go. He drew magic to his hooftips, drew a blank circle on the cloudstone floor, and bucked it with all his might.

A beltone vibration ran through every bone in his body. The mineral shell protecting his degloved hoof shattered into pieces. The agony was like his whole arm turning inside out. The closest cloudstone tiles exploded, sending shrapnel flying into the formation of guards.

A few went down, clutching bloodied faces. Most shrugged off the shrapnel and continued their advance. Someone threw a net over Hypha from behind. He whipped his head around to find more guards pouring in from the other side of the courtyard.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Red hoist Blue’s limp body over her back. She found a break in the guards’ line and made a break for it.

Just as the fog was about to swallow her up, she looked back. Her eyes found his. There might have been remorse. But Hypha couldn’t tell. Red had always played second fiddle when it came to speaking with looks.

The fog disappeared in the blink of an eye. A cloud of aides swarmed the senator, while no fewer than fifty guards took up positions around the courtyard perimeter.

In order to free Hypha, the guards pushed the spear all the way through his foreleg, a process exactly as painful as it sounded. Once it was out and Hypha stopped screaming, they patched him up, bound him in chains, and dragged him into the administrative section of the senator’s complex.

The interior of the mansion was made of the same cloudstone tiles as the courtyard. Large crystal lights hung from the ceiling by thin meal chains, casting a cold glow across the building’s common area. An open reception area splintered off into several similarly-lit hallways. Ponies laden with parchment poured in and out, occasionally pausing to gawk at Hypha before being directed by the guards to move along.

There were also half a dozen cages in the corner of the reception area.

Hypha spent the next few hours inside one of those cages, fretting himself to tears over the fate of his remaining mushrooms. Prairie Sky had proven they could fetch an ungodly sum of bits on the open market. If Red was willing to leave him to die, there was no doubt in his mind she’d be willing to sell the mushrooms too.

Liar. Everything inside him burned away, until only the hate was left. He opened himself up to her and she lied. Even his thoughts were consumed, reduced to ash. With nothing left to cling to, he clung to the hate.

A few hours passed before the senator reappeared, flanked by squads of legionnaires. He wore a striking floor-length purple cape which partially concealed a thick bandage around his midsection. Butterfly bandages sealed the cuts on his snout and forehead.

The senator walked right up to Hypha’s cage and asked in a booming performative voice, “So this is the pony who thought he could kill me.”

Hypha said nothing. He wasn’t really sure what to say. The pain in his foreleg made thinking all but impossible.

The senator knelt down and rested a hoof against the cage. “Why do you want me dead?”

“I didn’t want you dead,” Hypha said. His tongue felt like dry leather as it scraped the roof of his mouth.

The senator laughed. The whole palace flinched. “So you weren’t out there this morning? You didn’t attack me in my own home?”

“I wasn’t the one trying to kill you.” Confusion clouded the haughty look on the senator’s face. Hypha tried to clarify, “The two mares wanted you dead. I was there to fly them in, then fly them out once they finished.”

“Then what were they? Radicals? Mercenaries?”

“Blue...”

“The blue one?”

“She’s your daughter.”

The air in the room went from balmy and bruised to frigid in an instant. The smugness melted off the senator’s face. His eyes narrowed, razor-thin. “Do you know who I am?”

A lightbulb lit up in Hypha’s head. An absurd smile cracked his lips.

The senator’s face went beet-red. His voice burst like a thunderhead. “What are you laughing at?”

“I—” Hypha paused to reign in his laughter. “Blue never told me your name.”

“My name is Senator Giesu Popa.” He thrust his hoof at Hypha. “You will call me senator. Street trash like you aren’t allowed to speak the names of their superiors.” The senator stood and straightened his cape. “My memory wanes with age, and I’ve had a great many daughters. But I don’t recall naming any of them Blue.” He spat the last word out. “Her name is Azzurra Scuro. And even now, she serves my ends. She’s still my faithful daughter.”

The senator nodded to one of the guards, who opened a false cloudstone panel in the wall. Inside was a control panel inside lined with dials and switches.

A moment later, Hypha found out the cage was electrified.

Chapter 22

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The cloudstone walls of senator Giesu’s complex drank in the colors of the sunrise. Everything inside the massive main chamber glowed, including Hypha. As the day wore on, the colors cooled. His wound changed from gold to green.

Hypha laid on his side facing the wall. The static charge of the cell floor attracted a fine layer of dust, into which he practiced drawing rune spells. With the mineral shells gone, he had no more protection against his own magical powers.

That, of course, assumed he had a foreleg to draw runes with. This wound was getting worse. The smell alone was enough to make him wince.

Hoofsteps echoed down the hall, heading his way. Hypha lifted himself up. “Hello?” His voice echoed down the cloudstone corridors, bringing back memories of Roseroot monastery. The sun peered between the columns of the open east face of the building. “Hello?”

Giesu strode through the entrance, flanked by a dozen black-clad Derechan guards. A swarm of aides followed close behind. They all seemed on edge.

“Giesu,” Hypha called out.

The senator paused mid-stride. The guards paused with him. The aides looked at Hypha with barely restrained terror.

Hypha said, “My leg, it’s... I don’t know. I think I need medicine. It’s—”

“No.” Giesu resumed his stride. “No, that won’t do.” He motioned a guard over to the cell’s electrical control panel.

Hypha’s breath caught in his throat. He sank to the floor in a fetal position so he wouldn’t hit his head when the shock dropped him.

About a hundred ponies worked in the administrative wing of Giesu’s complex. They served as his support staff and his buffer from the ponies he represented, ferrying documents, drafting letters, handling finances, and generally insulating the senator from the tedium of his position. Also, if they screwed up, they’d go into the cages too.

On the fourth day of Hypha’s captivity, he was awoken from a feverish dream by the sound of a lower-ranked earth pony staffer storming across the hall.

“Excuse me,” he said, marching right up to the guards, “Are we gonna do something about this?”

The guards shared a tired look. “About what?”

“This smell. The kid’s rotting in there and it’s stinking the whole place up. I can smell it from my office.”

One guard tapped her spear against the floor. “You should get back to work.”

“The air doesn’t move. I’m bathing my office in essential oils and it still smells like a field hospital.”

“You don’t know shit about field hospitals.”

“Yeah, I do. I did my service, same as you.” He hesitated. “Except I was smart enough to get out when I had the chance.”

The guards didn’t throw him in one of the other cages. But they did chain him to Hypha’s cage. They pulled the restraints tight so his back rested against the bars.

“Get a good whiff,” one guard said. “We’ll let you out in a little bit.”

“Whaddaya mean, a little bit? I got work to do!”

The guards laughed and wandered off to patrol the courtyard. A few other workers passed sympathetic glances his way before hustling off.

It took Hypha a few minutes to muster the strength to talk. “I’m sorry they did that to you.”

“Shut up,” the stallion snapped. He was an older earth pony, lean, with a thin blue coat and a purple mane that showed the first signs of balding. He struggled against the chains to give himself some more wiggle room, but eventually gave up. He sighed. Then he gagged.

“What’s your name?” Hypha asked.

“Shut up.” The stallion twisted his head so he could see Hypha out of one eye. “Don’t talk to me. Crawl into the corner and wait for this to be over.”

Hypha tried to crawl, but a lance of pain shot all the way up the left side of his body. It took him a minute to get his breath back. “I can try to get the restraints off,” he finally said.

“No. Just stop.” A few worker ponies walked by and pretended not to notice the stallion chained to the cage. He tried to hide his face, but with his arms chained behind him there was nothing to do but turn his head and close his eyes.

“What’s your name?” Hypha asked.

“I don’t have one. Please stop talking to me.”

“Sino!” Another guard rushed in from the courtyard, the black plates of his armor clattering together as he ran. Hypha curled up again, anticipating a shock. But the guard ran past the electric controls and knelt down beside the chained-up pony. “I heard—” His nose twitched. He gagged a little. “I heard someone else got caged. I didn’t think—”

“Just untie me already.”

The guard drew back. “Sino—”

“What? Untie me, Dex.”

The guard, Dex, shook his head. He said in a soft voice, “I can’t. It’s a rank thing. Lieutenant Pograt—”

“That dirtbag? He couldn’t order a cloud to float.”

“Pograt’s the acting commander right now. Captain Aerie’s away on drill until tomorrow.” The guard patted Sino’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’ll get court-martialed if I untie you. If there was anything I could do—”

“Wait.” Sino strained to look at Hypha. “You could get some painkillers.”

“Do the chains really hurt that much?”

“No, idiot. For the street trash.”

Dex’s face flashed from pity to pure ice. “I’m not giving him anything.”

“Please Dex. He won’t shut up. Just give him something to knock him out.”

Hypha interjected, “I’m trying to be better about empathizing with outsiders—”

“See? He’s delirious. You gotta help me, Dex.”

Dex checked the main hallways for signs of other guards, then the courtyard. “Hang on,” he said, and ran off. A few minutes later, he returned with two pills and a paper ramekin full of coarse beige powder. He tossed them unceremoniously at Hypha’s hooves.

“Thank you,” Hypha croaked.

“Shut up. Take one pill now and another in four hours. And pour the powder on your leg.”

Hypha sniffed the ramekin. “Is this antibacterial?”

Heavy hoofsteps sounded from the courtyard. Dex patted Sino on the shoulder and started back off down the hall. “Good luck buddy. Maybe don’t be so antagonistic next time.”

“What’s the powder?” Hypha asked. But Dex was already halfway down the hall. Repeated attempts to ask Sino netted the same result. Hypha sniffed the powder experimentally, then dipped his hoof into it and tasted it.

It was sawdust.

They let Sino go after a couple more hours. Apparently, being in close proximity to Hypha for the morning was punishment enough.

The pills helped curb the worst of the pain, but it didn’t stop the infection itself. Hypha’s fever escalated. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. Sound dimmed. Even the crackle of the cage’s electric shockers fell away. He thought of Red and Blue feasting, laughing, selling mushrooms at an outlandish markup. The hate returned. For awhile, he was able to differentiate reality from the ghosts of all the might-have-beens. But with enough time, the two merged into a single entity, haunting Hypha’s waking thoughts.

There was only one reason why things had turned out this way. He was being punished for playing monk. He hadn’t just failed the order. He’d delivered mother sky into outsider mouths. Now the destruction of the order was complete, and he had only himself to blame.

The pain, the hate—it was all part of the punishment. That must be why he was in this cage. He deserved this.

Hypha tried to recall his conversations with Walik. How had he maintained his spirits in the face of death? Hypha regretted not asking. He recalled the moment the gates went up and the prisoners had poured into the pit of the colosseum. He ran ahead of them. Leading them. How?

The rhythm of pain and dissociation cracked his mind like weather-warped metal. Whole days disappeared, sloughed off like mountainsides collapsing into avalanches. He was free, careening through the sky. Then he was miles above a valley of fertile grassland. Then he went higher still, into the clouds. Then there was black.

When the guards checked on him the next morning, they found him convulsing on the floor of the cage. A thin trickle of foamy saliva poured from his mouth. His eyes were rolled up. The rising sun bathed him in gold.

Hypha came to on a morning-colored cloud. The pain had all disappeared. The air was fresh and free of rot. He could have been back on his cloud on the edge of Derecho. Or a nameless peak in the Stonewood mountains.

His heart soared in his chest. A smile cracked his dry lips. He was free. He was dead. Free—

He tried to sit up. The chains around his legs clanked.

“Oh,” he said.

What he thought was heaven was really a cloudstone-tiled room with a one-way mirror on the far wall. As he tried to regain his bearings, a dozen doctors in white coats spilled inside.

Endless questions and a great deal of uncomfortable probing followed. The doctors paid extra attention to his wounded leg, whose greenish tint had spread down towards his battered hoof. They prodded the center of the gash with a pair of forceps. Hypha found his voice and screamed.

When they were done, they swabbed his arm with iodide and cleanser, staining his fur a harsh copper-yellow. One of the doctors waved his hoof at the one-way mirror. A moment later, the door opened. Giesu stepped into the room.

“Do you know why you’re here?” the senator asked. Hypha opened his mouth to answer, but only a hoarse, pathetic gurgling sound came out. “Let me tell you, then. You’re here because I want to help you.”

Hypha tried to look down at his leg, but one of the lab techs placed a hoof on Hypha’s forehead, holding him down.

“I’m not heartless,” Giesu continued. “I pity you. You were misled. You never stood a chance.”

The doctor stepped in and slipped a belt around the top of Hypha’s leg. The leather bit into his skin.

“Azzura Scuro is a masterful manipulator. She had her way with you. It’s written all over your face.”

Hypha shook his head. “No,” he muttered. His throat ached. “She wasn’t... she—”

“Did she sleep with you? Were you lovers?”

“She’s with Red.”

Giesu let out a little hum of interest. “The other mare, right? She’s got her hooks in both of you.” A note of pride entered his voice. “Azzura Scuro doesn’t really love Red. And she was never your friend.”

“I know.”

An annoyed smile curled the senator’s lips. It was clear he hadn’t been expecting agreement. “You think I’m lying?”

“No.” The leather strap clawed painfully at his fur. “I didn’t want to see it before.”

“Do you want to live?”

Tears blotted his vision. “No.”

“Then why do you hang on?”

“Because I have to live.”

“Why’s that?”

“I have to kill—”

“Me?”

Hypha shook his head. The tears spilled over. “Romulus.”

At the mention of the general’s name, all eyes in the room immediately turned to Giesu. The senator’s ears perked up. He looked around the room, then leaned over Hypha until his lips almost touched his ear. Little ripples cascaded through his cloak as it resettled.

“Why do you want to kill Romulus?”

Bitter memories flooded Hypha’s head. “Roseroot.”

He snorted, his breath pungent with oil and fruit. “You’re a monk!”

Hypha started to shake his head yes, but couldn’t follow through.

Giusu burst out laughing. “Oh, he’ll be furious to know you’re alive. This changes everything.”

He motioned with his hoof. A lab tech removed a long, serrated saw from a leather holder. The others took up positions around Hypha and held him down against the table.

“I’m glad you’re here. Really.” Giesu’s eyes filled with bellows-blown fire. “I’m going to keep you alive because you didn’t know any better, and because I want to help you. But I won’t let this sort of thing slide twice. So I’m going to give you a little reminder. Every time you look back on this incident, I want you to remember that ponies of lower stations must always refer to their superiors by their title. It’s senator to you. Senator.”

Giesu patted Hypha on the shoulder and left the room, his purple robes flowing behind him.

The lab technician placed the saw against Hypha’s rotting foreleg and prepared to make the first draw.

Chapter 23

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In the east, a lone trumpet sounded. Sixty more echoed the call. The sound rolled across the endless grassy plains, swept upward by the wind. Citizens in the market, senators in their offices, servants in the slums, all dropped what they were doing. Those who could fly took to the skies. Those who couldn’t rushed for higher ground.

Senator Giesu heard the commotion and almost snapped his pen in half. It was finally happening. Romulus had come back.

Right as he rose from his cloudstone desk, ten aides burst into his room. He held up a hoof before any of them could speak. “I know. I heard. Secure a good spot in Hero’s Park for my entourage. Take the gold off my ceremonial armor and rough it up a little. Make it look like we were there with him. Get ale for his troops. Make sure they know who it’s from.” He pointed to one particularly scrawny aide. “You. Coffee. Now.”

The aides scattered, leaving him alone again. Sounds of pandemonium echoed down the hall. He put his head in his hooves and tried to enjoy a few final moments of relative quiet.

The scrawny aide knocked on the door and pulled him from his peace all too soon. “Uh, senator? Your coffee.”

Giesu motioned him in. “What’s your name again?” he asked.

“Veneer, senator.”

“Thank you, Veneer. I appreciate your patience with me.”

“Of course, senator. It’s a very stressful time. We’re all there with you.”

Giesu stared tiredly into his reflection in the coffee. “Do you think he’ll find our gifts acceptable?”

The aide swallowed hard. Everypony in the general staff knew the kind of gifts Giesu liked to give.

The aide finally said, “I think they’ll convey a strong message, senator.”

The parade came together in the courtyard. Ceremonial armor, chests full of gold and rare jewels from vassal diamond dog states, rare animals for entertainment and consumption, tributes of fur from the Griffon kingdoms, thrones of gold leaf and flowers woven from the grassland tribes, and narwhal horns from the northwestern shores were all carefully laid out on parade floats. When Romulus’s army arrived, the floats would be presented as tribute for all to see.

One of the senator’s senior underlings, a Prench unicorn stallion named LeBaine, hustled into his meager office. LeBaine’s assistant, an earth pony named Floore, was agonizing over a long list of items from the western changeling hive which would be included in the parade. Being changelings, most of their gifts were goo-based and highly corrosive to precious metals. Right now, Floore was trying to find a place for the gifts which would neither spurn the bug diplomats nor burn a hole through the city. —

“Get up, Floore,” LeBaine snapped, his accented voice heavy and harsh. “Those idiots down the hall forgot to prep the servants. Take care of it.”

Floore sprang up, saluted, and zipped out the door. A moment later, he peeked his head sheepishly around the doorframe. “Uh. Aren’t you coming?”

“I’ll meet you in the courtyard. I need to get the pony in the cage.”

“The cage, sir? It’s fifty yards away. Tell him to walk.”

“I don’t think he’s walked since—” He made a slicing motion with his hoof and went, “Zoop.”

“Oh.” Floore’s face went pale. He nodded and dashed out the doorway.

Hypha was in the same position LeBaine had left him in the other day. Senator Giesu, in all his satanic wisdom, had invited a cadre of medical students from the local university to practice healing spells and force-feeding on him, so physically speaking Hypha looked just fine. No one bothered shocking the cage anymore. Small mercy. The smell of burnt fur was driving everyone crazy.

“Okay, big guy,” LeBaine said, tapping on the bars of the cage. “Time to wake up.”

Hypha didn’t move. LeBaine rolled his eyes and fished out the keys to the cage. Stepping onto the electrified pad made his fur bristle, even if the controls were locked up.

“Where’s your leg?” he asked. Hypha didn’t respond. “I want us to go for a walk. Some real sunlight would feel good, yeah?”

Hypha relaxed a little. He untucked the splintery wooden prosthetic from underneath him and started to throw the leather straps over his shoulder. LeBaine stood over him and buckled everything together.

“Do you see it?”

Hypha's voice was weak. Almost a whisper. LeBaine nearly missed it with all the hustle and bustle going on behind him. He leaned closer to Hypha and said, “See what?”

“The mountains.” He nodded at the wall.

“I don’t see any mountains,” LeBaine said. “But if you put on your leg and promise to be good, I’ll see what I can do about getting you some fresh hay. Maybe there’ll be birds out today. You’d like to hear the birds, yeah?”

Hypha stirred. His eyes peeled away from the wall and his imaginary mountains. “Yeah.”

Hypha perked up the instant the sunlight touched his fur. In the middle of the crowded courtyard, with military units assembling into formation, aides scrambling from one side of the complex to the other, and pegasi going up and down, Hypha stood still, the eye of a strange storm.

“Feels good, yeah?” LeBaine asked.

Hypha nodded.

LeBaine produced a thick black thermos. “I have something else for you. Coffee.” Hypha reached for the thermos, but LeBaine pulled it out of reach. “You have to do something for me first. We need to go on a little walk. You can take the thermos with you, but—”

“He’s here,” Hypha said. His stoney posture broke. His eyes fell on LeBaine with unsettling weight. “He’s here, isn’t he.”

LeBaine had lived his whole life in Derecho. He’d never once touched the ground. But in that moment, he felt the pressure of a billion tons of earth hanging over his head.

“He’s here,” LeBaine said. “We’re going to go see him.”

The parade was one of the biggest spectacles Derecho had ever seen. For the past two years, Romulus and his renegade legion had marched east, sending back a steady supply of wealth and tall tales. Now it was time to return the favor.

From a pegasus-eye view, the parade looked like strands of rainbow thread spiraling towards the city center. Convoys merged and separated as the city rotated. All ground traffic ceased. Even pegasi, famously flighty, packed themselves shoulder-to-shoulder on rooftop ledges like rows of brightly-colored birds.

Senator Giesu’s convoy of tribute turned heads as it made its way towards Hero’s Park. Hypha found himself squarely in the middle, surrounded by carts of gold and cloudstone statues of Romulus and his lieutenants. Walking with the new prosthetic still demanded his entire attention. The snail’s pace agreed with him.

Hero’s Park was a living monument nestled equidistantly between the colosseum, the central bank, and the senate. Half a mile of pristinely manicured natural clouds formed the floor of the park. Cloudstone colonnades four columns deep and lined with ceiling mosaics ringed the park on three sides. The place had been hastily outfitted with a raised dias and banners bearing the black and red V of Romulus’s legion.

It took another hour for the tribute convoys to finish filing in. Citizens spilled in behind the carts, filling up every inch of the square. More pegasi packed the colonnade roofs as if they were colosseum seats.

Just then, a roar went up from the ponies closest to the dias. Shapes in dark armor stepped onto the stage. The air crackled with electricity as a magically amplified voice shouted, “Derecho! Here me now!”

The park exploded with applause. The crowd pressed in. Pegasi flocked towards the dias like clouds of birds. Hypha covered his ears. His prosthetic leg left a splinter in the soft flesh.

The voice went on, “When I left with my legion two long years ago, I promised to return with wealth and glory. And here I am!” Another cheer went up. “In return for all that wealth and glory, I asked all of you for something in return. Prosperity.” The crowd leaned in. “And from this gathering, I can see...” He paused. The tension soared. “That you have exceeded my every expectation!”

The crowd went wild. LeBaine tried to roll his eyes discreetly.

“What we’ve done together will ensure the supremacy of Derecho for the next five hundred years. The world is ever changing, but the sun always rises. The sun always sets. And Derecho keeps on turning!” Murmurs in the crowd turned to cries of adulation. “The earth is ever-changing, but the skies are eternal. Derecho is eternal!”

The crowd roared back, “Derecho!”

The figures disappeared from the dias. A moment later, a pegasus courier landed beside LeBaine and whispered something into his ear. Lines of worry appeared on the aide’s forehead.

“Are you serious?” LeBaine gestured at the crowd. “It’s impossible.” The pegasus gave a helpless shrug. “Well, maybe you could fly us out on your back.”

The pegasus laughed and flew away.

“Tarfeathers.” LeBaine tapped Hypha on the shoulder. “We have to go to general Romulus’s estate. Senator Giesu wants to present you and the other tributes to Romulus personally.”

Hypha glanced nervously at the crowd. “I can’t. I’ll get trampled.”

“It’s not up to us. We have to go.”

“We should wait until the crowd thins out. Then it won’t be so hard for me to walk through.”

“Hypha.” LeBaine’s voice grew dark. “We’re going.”

Hypha’s chest tightened. His breathing quickened. “I can’t. I—”

“I’m done arguing. If you don’t come with me now, I’ll take your leg and make you walk to the senator’s palace by yourself.”

A chill ran up Hypha’s spine. With all the pushing and shoving going on, he’d wind up flat on his back in no time. And excited crowds couldn’t just stop on a dime.

“I’ll go,” he said. “Please don’t take my leg.”

LeBaine relaxed his expression. “Was that so hard? Let’s get going.”

The interior of general Romulus’s estate reeked of cooked duck.

General Romulus had picked up the taste while subjugating the griffon territories half a decade earlier. The recipe in question called for a long, slow braise in wine-infused stock, followed by a short and heavy sear to crisp the carcass.

The smell of rendered duck fat clung to everything and made most of the servants gag. Hypha took one whiff and promptly fainted.

“Not to your taste?” asked LeBaine. He made no effort to hide the displeasure from his face.

“I’m fine,” Hypha muttered as he struggled to stand. He wouldn’t dare admit it out loud, but the smell intoxicated him. He hoped it had less to do with personal preference and more the fact that, in all the commotion of that morning, no one had remembered to force-feed him.

Inside a grand ballroom, thirty ponies sat on all sides of a long rectangular hardwood table—a colossal luxury in a place where no trees grew naturally. At one end of the table, Giesu was licking one plate clean and reaching for another simultaneously. Peas and carrots and bits of roasted tofu went everywhere. His high-ranking guests, not wanting to seem out of sync with their host, ate with similar abandon.

At the other end of the table, barely peeking over the other guests’ epaulets, sat a subdued earth pony stallion picking at a meager portion of roast duck. His frame radiated childhood malnutrition. The ornate gold chair all but consumed him. Around his neck hung the red cloak of an army general.

Romulus.

Hypha’s blood ran cold. The rage he’d tried to bury broke through, and every ounce of pain he’d felt in the past three months came roaring back to life.It ripped him back in time, held him over the hot coals of his worst memories until his lungs cooked and his skin crackled.

LeBaine pulled Hypha to the far side of the hall, to the end of a lineup of ponies looking similarly bleak. The rest of Romulus's gifts, no doubt.

LeBaine tousled Hypha’s mane so it would lay flat. “Don’t talk,” LeBaine said in a low voice. “They’re drunk. They’ll have you killed.”

Just then, Romulus said something across the table to Giesu. He had a naturally soft voice, and between LeBaine whispering in his ear and all the silverware clattering Hypha couldn’t quite make out the words.

Giesu, however, did. “Two million?” he shouted.

With a searing screech of silverware, the entire table went dead silent.

Without missing a beat, Romulus replied, “Sorry senator, I wasn’t being very clear. I meant two million more.”

For the first time in Hypha’s memory, Giesu fell silent. His face twisted up. His eyes blinked furiously. “So... that’s—”

“Four point two million in total.”

Giesu plopped back down in his chair. “Four point...” He picked up his fork and knife and attempted to saw through his meal. “I’m afraid,” he said, inflecting his words with draws of the knife, “that simply isn’t possible.”

The plate cracked. Hypha’s knees went weak.

“Southern plains buffalo are as prideful as they are large. Do you know how they hunt?”

“Who cares how they hunt?” Giesu spewed half-chewed tofu back onto his plate. “As far as I know, they haven’t even left the stone age.”

“They haven’t. But if you’ll indulge my inner historian—they hunt by herding their prey into a high-walled gorge to trap them. Once the entrance is sealed off, they leap off the top of the gorge like buffalo cannonball.” He clapped his hooves together. The ponies on either side of him flinched. “Can you imagine what clever things they’ll do to us when we come knocking?”

“I have every confidence that you can pacify them.”

“Oh, we will. But we have to be prepared to lose a great number of ponies in the process. That’s why going south is going to be so expensive. Coffins, life insurance payouts, not to mention treating the wounded. That’s on top of the usual expenses.”

“What are the other options? There’s got to be someone we can pacify on a budget.”

Romulus scratched his chin. “There’s the Uktu of the Southern Isles. They’re aquanomadic kangaroos.”

“What else?”

Romulus scratched his chin. “The griffon territories are getting uppity again. We could repacify them.”

“We’ve already done that three times. There’s no glory in it anymore.”

“The greatest glory comes with the greatest risk.”

“And the greatest expense,” Giesu grumbled.

Romulus took another bite of his duck. A dry smile cracked his weathered face. “If I march my legion halfway around the world, I need to sell them on a story. Otherwise they’ll abandon me and march home. We need to sell the public a story too, so they won’t string us up when we increase taxes.”

“Then make something up. I’ll codify it. Anything to avoid that sort of expense.”

“Power is something you can’t simply purchase the same way you could purchase an election. Elections are straightforward.”

“My senatorial seat didn’t cost four million bits.”

“That’s because your senatorial seat isn’t worth four million bits.”

A murmur rippled around the table. Giesu looked as steamed as the vegetables on his plate.

“I mean no offense, senator. I just want you to look at things from an outsider’s perspective. The senate and the army both run on bits. But no amount of bits will get the senate to stop scheming.” He speared another piece of duck. “Pay an army well, feed them, make them believe in the flag they’re flying, and ten thousand ponies will gallop to their deaths for you.”

“I’m glad your troops are finding honor in their lot,” Giesu said in a flat voice, “but honor isn’t usable capital.”

“isn’t it?”

“This tiff in the mountains put me out nearly two million bits. What do I have to show for it?”

“The parade was nice.”

“Be serious.”

“You want serious? This tiff gave you leverage, senator. Our empire is ten percent bigger and who-knows how much richer because you backed me when no one else did. Your political rivals see me, and by extension my army, as your asset. As far as they’re concerned, all these festivities are really for you.”

Giesu let the words soak in. “My asset...”

“Yes. The others see me as a rabid earth pony. You know what they call me in the senate.”

“We don’t need to sully this space with libel—”

“No, the nickname’s a blessing in disguise. Ratdog Romulus. And just by being here right now in your manor, they’re inferring that you hold my leash. That’s leverage. And with enough leverage, you could bend the senate, or even other foreign powers, to your will without ever coming to blows. Not Derecho’s will. Your will.”

Giesu nodded. “How many more campaigns will it take before we can move internally?”

“Maybe one. Maybe two. Maybe five.”

“Five?”

“Maybe less. We need to keep raising the stakes until some crack in the senate’s armor reveals itself. Maybe it already has. We need to be vigilant. That moment will be sweet, but we can’t force it.” His nostrils flared. His voice rose until it echoed in the cloudstone arches. “Perhaps after this next campaign I’ll march back and throw the head of the buffalo chief onto the senate floor and proclaim the senate is dead. And if I say the senate is dead, no one would dare cross me. And since I’m merely an asset in the pocket of senator Giesu—”

Just then, his eyes flashed like those of a predator to his plate. He snatched it up and lapped up a spot of congealing duck fat. The pony next to him gagged. Giesu raised an eyebrow. The ballroom was absolutely, perfectly still, so still the sound of Romulus setting down his plate echoed like cannonfire.

“Vigilance,” he said into the vacuum of silence. “Vigilance and four point two million bits. That’s the price of victory.”

LeBaine chose that moment to clear his throat. Giesu’s eyes flickered to the lineup of prisoners in the corner.His features lit up, a twisted mask of a smile. “Seems like we’re all done with dinner.” Giesu stood. His guests followed suit. Romulus remained seated. “I’ve provided drinks in the courtyard, if you wish to partake. General, if you’d be so kind as to indulge me and stay behind a moment. I have some gifts for you.”

Hypha’s heart shot into his throat. This was it. The hall grew quiet as the other dinner guests filed out. Romulus picked up a roll and chewed it absently as he made his way over to the lineup. He was even smaller than Hypha first thought, though that didn’t make him any less intimidating.

Romulus looked over the first prisoner in the lineup with a dispassionate eye. “What are you good at?”

The prisoner, a bulky stallion, opened his mouth, but a tremor wracked his body, stifling his reply.

“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. I need to know what skills you have.”

“I can... clean. And cook. Manual labor too.”

“Do you know any trades?”

“Back in Vermillion, I was an architect. I worked in cloudstone and traditional stone.”

“Impressive. If given the chance to design a bridge that would collapse and kill the soldiers crossing it, would you do it?”

The stallion seemed taken aback. “No, of course not—”

“Good.” Romulus gestured to LeBaine. “Have him folded into my engineer battalion.”

The pegasus was dumbstruck. “I don’t—I—”

“Please. Every senator and their asshole uncle gave me ten prisoners today. I don’t need any more of those. Give me ten years in the legion, and you’ll be discharged with full honors and titles.”

“Okay,” the pegasus nodded. The tremor returned. “Okay.”

And so, one by one, Romulus went down the line of captured ponies, listening patiently to their stories until he could deduce some niche into which he could fold them. The looks of relief on the servants' faces could have lit up the hall by themselves.

As Hypha’s turn drew near, an odd sense of calm filled him. This was why he’d been spared all those times. Why the spear found Wrender instead of him. Why the grasslands led him to Median. Why the infection had abated after the amputation. All the other paths that could have been fell away.

Romulus stepped up to Hypha, noting the poorly-made prosthetic. “Why would Giesu give me a crippled servant?”

“Why do painters paint skulls?” Hypha asked.

Feel it, receive it, let it go. In a single swift motion, Hypha coalesced an orb of magic on the tip of his prosthetic limb. He drew a blank rune circle and kicked it with all his might.

His prosthetic exploded into a million pieces. Wooden shrapnel flew everywhere. The impact sent a wave of energy crashing through the air, cracking the cloudstone tile and sending Romulus staggering. Servants tumbled over like dominoes. The hall filled with cries of panic.

With his good hoof, Hypha picked up a sharp tile shard and launched himself at Romulus. The general tried to throw a punch, but Hypha batted it away and cracked him over the head with what remained of the prosthetic. Romulus collapsed. Hypha pounced. “This is for Roseroot,” he said, and plunged the shard down.

Romulus caught it an inch before it pierced his chest. The shard sliced deep into Hypha’s hoof where he gripped it. Blood trickled onto the general’s face. But Romulus seemed unconcerned by that. In fact, he looked downright confused. Suddenly, his eyes went wide. He turned his head to one side and hollered, “Wait!”

The four burly guards in red and black armor froze where they were. Hypha hadn’t noticed them racing towards him. They would have skewered him with their swords had Romulus waited a second longer. Funny, the little things one can miss in the heat of the moment.

Hypha took advantage of the lull and leaned his weight into the shard. A bright red bead of blood sprayed across Romulus’s mouth. He grimaced. Hypha hoped he could taste it.

“Roseroot,” Romulus grunted. “The temple. In the Stonewood—” He jerked one way, then the other. Hypha wouldn’t budge.

The guards stirred. “Sir—”

“No!” he roared. “Stay back.” He turned back to Hypha. “The temple in the Stonewood mountains.”

“Yes,” Hypha said through clenched teeth. “And Yangshuah, and Gleeful, and Shining Rock.” For a second he thought he’d actually stabbed the general. Then he realized it was just more of his own blood.

“I didn’t know—hrrk—any of you were still alive.”

“Think again.”

Romulus found just enough wiggle room to plant a hoof firmly in Hypha’s gut. Hypha let out a sound like a deflating balloon and rolled off Romulus. He lashed out with the shard and caught the general’s ear at the base. The shard sliced clean through. Romulus barely made a sound as his ear bounced across the floor.

Blood flew everywhere. Hypha’s already mangled front hoof was covered with it. He picked up the shard again, wincing, and prepared to make another strike.

Then Romulus said, “So you’ve taken the mushrooms too.”

Hypha froze. Too? His heart pounded in his ears. His hoof throbbed, though the adrenaline kept the pain at bay for the moment. Romulus sat down on his haunches and stuffed a corner of his cape into the wound where his ear used to be. His eyes had an arresting quality to them. They towered over his physical body.

“You don’t take them,” Hypha started. “You—”

The guards tackled him.

Chapter 24

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In the mountains at the edge of the world, a line of legionnaires worked their way up a treacherous mountain slope.

“They don’t even bother naming the stupid things,” said one legionnaire, an earth pony named Border Storm. “That’s how many of them there are.”

“The monks have names for them,” the legionnaire behind him, Cherice, replied.

“We don’t got names for ‘em.”

Snow crunched under the legionnaires’ studded boots. They’d somehow been resupplied with fresh winter clothes a few days ago, after half the company broke through an ice shelf and got drenched in an underground river. They were back on the trail now, their meager possessions strapped to their backs, trudging slowly up a series of switchbacks and narrow escarpments that seemed to go on forever.

“Whaddaya think this one’s called, Cherry?” Border storm asked.

“My name’s not Cherry. It’s Cherice.”

“C’mon. What’s this one called?”

“Shut the Fuck Up Mountain.”

Border Storm laughed. “Don’t get mad.”

“Too late. Just because you got the stupidest name in the whole legion, doesn’t mean you get to ruin mine too.”

“You think Border Storm’s a bad name?” Border Storm puffed out his chest. “It’s badass.”

Border Storm’s hoof slipped. A spray of snow hit Cherice in the face. “Watch it,” Cherice growled.

“Sorry. I think there’s ice under this powder.”

Border Storm slipped as the last word came out. Icy sludge dripped down Cherice’s neck and into his undershirts. Border Storm let out something that sounded like a laugh. Cherice took two big steps forward and wrapped one hoof around Border’s coat collar.

Just as he did, the snow under Border Storm’s hooves gave way with a muffled crack.

Border Storm, along with a good portion of the trail in front of them, disappeared in an explosion of white. Cherice dropped to the ground, hooves splayed out in a desperate attempt to distribute his weight.

When the avalanche subsided, Cherise realized he was still holding Border’s collar. And Border was still in his coat, dangling limply off the side of the cliff.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered, spitting powder, “I’ll be more careful Cherry, I promise. I swear, I’ll be careful.”

Cherice and the ponies closest to Border Storm hauled him back onto the trail. “How about we name this mountain after you?” Cherice said. The extra layers of clothing concealed his heaving chest. Keep it cool. Keep it steady. “We’ll call it Bumblefuck Mountain.”

“Whatever you say,” Border Storm said. His hooves trembled, and not from the cold. “Whatever you say.”

The following day, the company commander called Cherise to his tent. When Cherise stepped inside, he was shocked to see general Romulus standing beside the commander, cradling a steaming mug of coffee in his hooves. His red general’s cloak hung around him like a shroud, shielding him from the cold.

Cherice saluted. He tried to click his hooves together, but the snow got in the way.

“At ease,” the general said. “I understand this is a rest block for you. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

“Not a problem, sir.”

“I won’t keep you long. Your commander told me how you saved legionnaire Border Storm from a nasty fall the other day.”

“Uh—yes, sir. It was nothing major.”

“If you hadn’t caught him, it most certainly would’ve been major.” From beneath his cloak he produced a small rectangular box. “I’m giving you a field citation. Your quick thinking and courage saved another pony’s life. Excellent work.”

Cherice took the box and examined the silver medal inside. “Thank you, sir.”

“This is for you, too.” He reached into his cloak a second time and pulled out a can of pinto beans. “You deserve a better meal than that, but that’s all I’ve got.”

“Thank you, sir. That’s very generous.”

“Least I can do.” The general saluted Cherise. Somehow, despite the snow, he made his hooves click as effortlessly as if he were on a cloudstone parade ground. “That’ll be all. Get some rest. We got another ten million mountains to climb before we reach the next monastery.”

The next monastery they came across had no accessible walking paths. From the nearest trail, it was a five hundred yard gap to the monastery walls. In the occasional breaks in the clouds, Cherice could just barely make out sets of pointed roofs jutting up above the wall. He also saw a slim wooden door built into the wall, leading to nowhere.

“Kinda funny,” Border Storm said. “Why do you think they put the door there?”

“Maybe they have a sense of humor.”

Border Storm laughed. His voice had this way of tucking upwards that made Cherice want to tape his mouth shut. “Good one, Cherry.”

The fighting at that monastery was brief. The pegasi legionaries found a protected overhang a few hundred yards up the mountain and farmed loose rocks to drop on the monks below. The earth pony reserves didn’t need to be flown across the gap to join the fray. Cherice and his earth pony friends sat the whole thing out.

The next monastery was accessible to the earth pony parts of the legion. They stormed the walls and saw heavy fighting. Border Storm didn’t make it, but Cherice survived with barely a scratch.

He was thinking about Border Storm’s laugh one day, for no reason in particular other than he was bored and he kinda missed being constantly annoyed, when nearly a dozen pegasi from the general’s personal guard detail landed in front of him.

This didn’t bother Cherice. What did bother him was when the leader, a brown-coated bird with enough muscled to be mistaken for an earth pony, said, “General needs you. Come with us.”

Cherice glanced over his shoulder at the mountain opposite them. He could see the general’s big white tent billowing in the breeze.

“Sure,” Cherice said, flapping his forelegs theatrically. “Lemme just—”

He paused. The soldiers looked serious. And one of them was holding up a pair of hooks that were only ever used for clipping one set of armor to another. They were going to fly him over.

“Oh,” Cherice said.

“Yeah,” said the big pegasus commander, and readied the hooks.

One short, gut-wrenching flight later, Cherice walked into the general’s tent to find some sort of meeting already underway. He groaned inwardly. Meetings sucked. His armor chafed horribly from the flight over, and he was in no mood to receive a briefing of any kind. That was what superiors were for.

The general looked up from his table and nodded at him. “Cherice, thank you for coming. First thing’s first, your corporal died this morning while out on patrol. I’m bumping you up to take his place.”

“Oh.” Cherice didn’t even have time to come to attention. A corporal. Damn.

“Secondly, as I’m sure you know, we’re approaching one of the more populated monasteries in the range. It’s big and the tunnels run deep. Our scouts are already out there gathering intel, but it’s tough with the fog playing against us. Cherice, I want to give you a leadership role in this operation.”

“Me, sir? I’m—”

“Spare it. You’re decorated. You’re good to go. The legion and I are behind you a hundred percent.”

Cherice didn’t feel particularly decorated. His head was still spinning around the question of whether corporals got extra rations.

Romulus continued, “I want you and your team to go into the temple once we’ve cracked the doors open and see what you can find.”

“Okay.” He realized ‘okay’ probably wasn’t a sufficient answer given his new rank. “What should we be looking for, sir?”

“Anything and everything. I know your team’s been dinged in the past for not being aggressive enough, but in this case that conservative approach fits the mission type. Keep an eye out for records, treasure, I don’t know what else. I want to know what’s in that temple. And don’t destroy anything you don’t have to. Understood?”

Cherice replied automatically, “Yes, sir.” Then he thought better of it and added, “Sir? I might need more ponies. We’re a few short from the last fight.”

“Sure, volunteer whoever you need. I’ll leave it to your discretion.” The general paused. “Who died? Just Able and Doxov, right?”

“And Border Storm, sir.”

“Oh.” The faintest hint of a frown crossed the general’s face. “After you saved him on that cliff, too. Damn.”

The fight for the next monastery, which was called Roseroot, lasted nearly all day. Cherice and his team waited anxiously on the opposite mountain as the sound of clashing swords and screams rolled across the gap. Archers took pot shots at a couple of fleeing monks, and one even managed to nail one with a spear, but other than that he saw almost no action. With all the fog, they couldn’t see much of anything.

As the sun went down, so too did the sounds of battle. A tremendous crash seemed to split the mountain in half. A red firework burst through the haze.

“Alright,” Cherice said, “let’s go.” The earth pony team hooked up to their pegasi cohorts and took off into the fog.

When they arrived, the temple dias was drenched in blood. The pegasi slipped and crashed as they tried to alight. Most of them simply stayed airborne so as not to dirty their hooves. Cherice fell face-first in it and came up looking, for lack of a better word, as red as a cherry.

“Who bleeds this much?” Cherice griped. He stood around for a few moments, blood dripping down his armor, until he remembered that he was the one in charge of this little detail. He pointed to the open doors, great stonewood monstrosities cracked open just wide enough for one pony to squeeze through, and said, “Uh, move out.”

The interior caverns seemed to go all the way down to the center of the earth. Even with strong torches, they stumbled through a near-total darkness. A weight hung over their heads. Cherice felt an irrational fear crawling up his spine. What if the whole thing collapses?

One of the first rooms they came to was some sort of meditation room. Aside from a few brightly-colored tapestries, the room was nothing more than bare rocks and thin mats.

The next room contained forty weeping foals.

They sat still as rocks in one corner, huddled up in their orange robes and sniffling softly. Their eyes glowed in the torchlight. They all seemed to be looking directly at Cherice, like somehow they knew.

“I didn’t sign up to kill foals,” one legionnaire said.

“No one’s killing anyone,” Cherice said. Hilarious, considering the amount of blood congealing on his armor.

After some thought, he left three guards to watch the foals and pressed on. The corridors got thinner and thinner, until it became impossible to pass through with armor on. The remaining guards reluctantly left their plates behind, set their spears against the wall, and squeezed through single-file.

Just ahead, they saw a room with a faint light glowing inside. Cherice, who was second in line, paused the column and pointed to it. The other legionnaires nodded their heads and undid the clasps on their swords.

The first pony got to the doorway and looked inside. His eyes went wide, and he opened his mouth like he was about to scream. Then a spear flew into his neck. The torch fell from his hands, illuminating two teenaged monks clutching knives between their teeth. One went low and doused the dropped torch. The other crawled up the wall like a spider.

The monk on the ceiling distracted Cherice. This would have been the death of him, as he forgot about the monk on the ground long enough for him to line up one good slash at his neck. But with all the chaos and flickering shadows, the monk missed Cherice’s jugular and swiped his shoulder instead.

Dark blood sprayed out, but Cherice didn’t go down. In fact, the wound just made him angrier. Without thinking, he swung his torch like a club and smacked the monk over the head. Sparks flew. A few landed on the monk’s robes and caught. In a split second, the monk was engulfed in flames. He screamed, pawed at the air like he was reaching for a bucket of water that wasn’t there. Then he stumbled off down the corridor and collapsed in a heap.

The other monk was so horrified by the sight of his friend being burnt alive he didn’t even let out a sound as another legionnaire skewered him with his sword. He fell to the floor. The remaining legionnaires, Cherice included, dogpiled him.

Inside that room, they found thirty pounds of mushrooms drying atop kiln racks. Cherice made a note of it, moved his fallen comrade out of the way, then continued on down the hallway.

In total, they found over a hundred record books detailing the history of the monastery, in addition to the mushrooms and the children. The children refused to come out of their hiding place, not even at spearpoint, and no one wanted to be the pony who actually hurt one of them. So they let them be for the time being.

Cherice had a table from the records room brought up to the dias. There he placed his findings for inspection. When Romulus arrived, he went straight for the biggest book in the bunch. He motioned for Cherice and the other legionnaires to gather round.

“Look at this.” Romulus turned the book open to the first page. “This is the most recent entry. Dated 3,012 YSA. That’s their year, like how our year is After Hurricane. Now...” He turned the book all the way to the back, where the pages were yellowed and barely held together with a magical weaving buff. “997 YSA.” He shook his head in awe. “This place is twice as old as Derecho.”

“Sir,” Cherice started, “there’s still the matter of the foals.”

“We’ll leave some auxiliaries behind. When they get hungry, they’ll come out. Then we can chain them up and ship them out, same as the others. Speaking of getting hungry...” He turned his eyes to the mushrooms. “Has anyone tried these yet? Are they safe to eat?”

The legionnaires, remembering the way the monk defending the mushrooms had danced as he burned alive, shrugged.

Cherice had a sudden thought that, if he ate with Romulus, it might mean higher favor from him somewhere down the line. So as the general reached for the dried mushrooms, so did he.

Romulus smiled at him. “Bottoms up.”

They both scooped up a big heaping hooffull of mushrooms and horked them down. They tasted bitter and slightly dusty, nothing like the fresh hydroponically grown kinds back on Derecho.

Nevertheless, he chewed them up and swallowed hard. “Tastes like dirt,” he surmised.

“Odd they were keeping these in the temple,” Romulus said. “They had the most incredible lentil stew and bread in the kitchen. They should have worshipped that instead.”

Thirty minutes later, Cherice started to feel strange. A film of brightness stained everything. Sunlight reflecting off snow seemed more intense. The wind cut deeper. Then he stopped feeling the cold. Then he passed the body of a monk tangled up in his bloody robes, and tears started to spill down his cheeks.

“Hey. Uh. Sir?” One of Cherise’s subordinates tapped him on the shoulder. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, yes.” He was fine, too. He wasn’t upset. There were just tears. But there were so many of them, he didn’t have any idea what was going on. “Must be allergies.”

Just then, one of the shadows at the edge of the monastery moved.

Cherise put his hoof on his sword. The other legionnaires bristled. “What is it?”

Cherise peered closer. The shadow was just a shadow. “Nothing,” he said. “Let’s keep—”

A roar like an avalanche split the air. A gust of wind beat at Cherice’s face, knocking him to the snow. He yanked his sword out and scrambled to his hooves.

General Romulus came stumbling over, a dagger clenched between his teeth. His pupils were dilated and his breaths came out in short, vaporous puffs.

“Cherise,” he said. He noticed the tears. “You too?”

The entire convoy of ten thousand ponies and all their wagons and chariots of equipment ground to a halt.

Cherice and Romulus holed up in the monastery’s old kitchen, barring the doors despite the protest of the general’s personal guard. They stoked a small fire in the oven and watched the shadows dance on the tall clay brick ceiling. The place smelled like blood and bread. Whatever affliction was upon them, they resolved to wait it out and hope for the best.

“Who was the pony who you saved on the pass?” Romulus asked. “The one who fell.”

“Border Storm.”

“How did he die?”

“A monk flew above us and dropped a rock on him. Broke his back.”

Romulus nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“We weren’t close.” Cherice regretted those words the instant they left his mouth. He and Border Storm had known each other since training. They’d spent nearly every day marching together since leaving Derecho. He didn’t like Border Storm. But did that mean they weren’t close?

“That elder,” Romulus said. “The one who fought on the dias—”

“I wasn’t there for that,” Cherice admitted.

“Oh. Well, this one elder fought off twenty of us on the temple dias. He’s the reason it’s so bloody. He—” He paused to swallow a lump in his throat. “When we finally killed him, he smiled. He got ripped to shreds. It was brutal. But he was smiling. How...” He let out a long sigh. “I don’t know how someone smiles at a time like that. These monks are different than anything I’ve ever seen.”

A noise from outside grabbed Cherice’s attention. He turned to look out the window and saw a lithe shadowy form pass by. He leapt to his hooves. “Something’s outside,” he murmured. “Sir, something’s outside.”

The two ponies trained their eyes on the next window. It was getting dark outside, but Cherice was certain he’d seen something.

Sure enough, a few moments later, the shadow floated by again.

They both jumped a little and strained to see if it would pass by a third time. This time, it stopped at the window, and they both got a clear look at it. It was a snow leopard, its teeth sharp as jagged rocks, its breath fogging the glass windows in rhythmic puffs.

“The troops,” Romulus murmured. “The troops are—” He let out a holler and leapt to his hooves. “The troops are out there. We have to warn them!”

Cherice wanted nothing more than to stay inside where the doors were locked and the hearth was warm. But when Romulus raised his voice, it felt like the whole building was going to come down around them. They had to go. There was no other option but to go. Not fear, not cowardice, not even the dim hope of survival could overcome it.

So they drew their swords and bundled up and kicked open the kitchen door with a great roar. The door, three lengths of solid stonewood, flew off its hinges like it was made of plywood.

“To arms!” Romulus cried in a wavering voice. “To arms! Beast in the camp!”

But there was no beast devouring his men. Not exactly. What they found instead were dozens of funeral pyres for the legionnaires and monks who’d been killed in that day’s fighting. Every shadow came to life and danced with the sparks of the roaring fire as they floated up to the sky. The snow leopard was nowhere to be found.

Cherice and his team got good at dashing into dark places and finding important things. They became Romulus’s go-to artifact recovery group. The regulars all got promoted to specialists, and they got to wait out the worst of the fighting from the safety of camp.

That wasn’t to say the position was an upgrade, however. The experience of crawling through the dark, cramped interiors of the underground temples and fighting in the dark made Cherise yearn for pitched battle under an open sky.

One of the final monasteries in the range was called Shining Rock. The mountain had a natural artery of beautiful silver crystal running through it, which the monks harvested to use in their architecture. Below ground, the crystal glowed, like those in the crystal empire.

Cherice and the team had ditched their armor and torches and went in with only their swords. They’d just passed a big meditation room that looked like a great place for a last stand, but had turned out to be empty. Soft white light from the crystals bathed them in as they crept deeper.

Ahead of them, perhaps thirty or so lengths, they spied a single monk in tattered robes blocking the way forward.

“Surrender!” Cherice called out. His voice echoed up and down the corridor.

In response, the monk pulled out a ball peen hammer.

The legionnaires tightened their grip on their weapons and inched closer. “Watch the rear,” Cherice said to the last ponies in the row. “This feels like a trap.”

As they inched closer, the monk raised the hammer over his head.

“Put it down.” Cherice heard his own echo and realized he wasn’t being very compelling. Really, he just wanted to get out of this cave. But if it meant sticking this monk and stealing his book of records, so be it.

The monk let out a piercing wail. Cherice’s blood went cold. The monk struck the vein of crystal running the length of the walls, shattering it.

As the crystal shattered, the light it produced went out.

Cherice had just enough time before the darkness swallowed them up to whirl around and see a dozen monks emerge from the meditation room behind them.

Above ground, Romulus had no idea about the ambush. While his legionnaires mopped up, he strode across the misty battleground. They’d captured one of the monastery’s elders, an ancient mare with a wispy white mane and icy blue eyes. Her hooves were shackled. Blood from half a dozen wounds seeped into her slate-grey coat. Someone had cut off her robe to check for hidden weapons.

Romulus knelt before her and pulled from his cloak a single mother sky mushroom. “I know you don’t want me to have this,” he said. “So you take it.”

He held it to the mare’s mouth. After a moment of hesitation, she took it, chewing silently.

“I took several last month without knowing what they were.”

“You don’t take mother sky,” she said.

“Sorry. I was hoping you could explain what exactly the effects are. When you...”

“Partake.” The mare drew the word out. “It’s an honor you don’t deserve.”

“Then I apologize for that, too. But I saw things. I want to learn.”

The mare barked out a laugh. “Don’t tell me you did all this because you wanted to learn about our religion.”

“No. But I’m here now, and I want to learn.”

“You have the power to stop this killing. But you don’t, and you won’t.”

“That’s true. I’m under orders. I’m here to compel you to agree to Derecho’s terms.”

“What are they?”

“Shining Rock and all the other monasteries bend the knee and sign formal treaties of vassalage to Derecho. We leave a garrison of Derechans in one of the empty monasteries. Once a year, you send us a modest monetary tribute. The monks can maintain autonomy on the ground level. No conscription. No buying or selling of ponies. We want your money and your land, not your lives.”

The mare raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“And, you take me in as your personal student. You travel with me and teach me about the mushrooms and the order.”

The mare mulled over his words for a moment before replying, “You’re an unworthy student.”

Romulus got right up in her face. “They make you see visions. But that’s not all, is it. They enhance your strength.”

“Those who chase power are doomed to be weak forever.”

Romulus rose. Anger gripped his chest. It wasn’t the old mare’s words that bit him. It was everything else. The wind, the cold, the smell of organs cooling in the snow. All of a sudden he felt more tired than he’d ever felt before.

“Tie her up and throw her off the cliff,” he instructed the guards.

The old mare laughed. “Is that all?”

Romoulus didn’t like the sparkle in the mare’s eyes. As the guards led her towards the walls, he murmured to one of them, “Poke her a few times for good measure.”

The guard did as he was told.

Cherice didn’t make it back to Derecho. But three large satchel bags full of dried mother sky mushrooms did. They were taken by Derechan couriers directly to his personal quarters, along with his cleaned and polished battle armor, his sword, and the book of records from every conquered monastery.

Chapter 25

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Romulus locked Hypha in a cage, but it was a far cry from Giesu's electrified torture box. There was a cot here, and a toilet, and a basin full of fresh water. There was a doctor on call who came by every few hours and redressed the cuts on Hypha’s hoof.

Hypha wondered if cages were some sort of grotesque status symbol in Derecho. There sure were a lot of them, at any rate.

That evening, Romulus came to visit him. He carried two bowls of rice and vegetables and brown gravy in his hooves.

“I was hoping we could eat together,” he said, passing one bowl through the bars. “Would you mind?”

Hypha inhaled half the bowl all at once. He nodded, paused, then trotted over to the toilet and threw it all up. Romulus grimaced sympathetically.

When the last wave of shivers had passed, Hypha said, “Thank you, general.”

“Please, call me Romulus.”

Phantom pain brought the memory of Giesu sneering, senator, into his face as a lab tech took a bonesaw from its sheath. He shook his head. “Okay.”

Romulus sat down on the floor outside the cell and started eating. In between bites he said, “I’ve been in the military since I was ten. I’ve seen a lot of nasty injuries. Ponies get their faces smashed in with hammers, or they get hit with cannonballs, or they get run over by chariots. Sometimes, they die. But more often than you might expect, they hang on. That begs the question: what do you do with a soldier who can no longer fight?” He paused to rearrange the contents of his bowl. He seemed to be avoiding the vegetables. “Ponies missing arms or legs. Or eyes. Or all their teeth. Or their hips are broken and they can’t walk. Or...” He trailed off. “They give so much. How do I honor that?”

He stood up and walked out of sight. When he came back, he had a sleek new prosthetic leg cradled in one hoof. The core was made of a series of struts and shocks, with a metal baseplate on a ball joint making up the hoof. Thin metal plates curved up from the hoof, protecting a set of tiny gyroscopes and counterweights concealed within. Leather and soft padding poked out from the top.

“The plates are thin enough to emboss them. Or you could paint them. I’ve seen it done both ways.” He pushed the leg through the bars. “It's yours, regardless. I wanted to give this to you up front, so what I say next doesn’t sound like I’m bargaining with your ability to walk.”

Hypha stared at the prosthetic for a long time. The leather flexed with supple softness. The mechanical bits in the leg clicked faintly, like the ticking of a fancy watch. The model Giesu had given him looked like a child’s toy in comparison.

“Can I ask you something first?” Hypha said.

“Of course.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Well, there are certain ponies who control most of the wealth in Derecho. They’ve been in power for a very long time. Giesu and I aren’t those ponies, but we think we should be. We need creative ways to consolidate power in our camp. War is good for that.”

“No. I mean why us specifically?”

Romulus tapped his hoof on the floor, weighing his response. “It was the weather. The jetstream dipped south and blew Derecho about two hundred miles east. Marching to the mountains was considered impossible on a logistical level, but that two hundred mile head-start put it in the realm of possibility.”

The air left Hypha’s lungs in a slow trickle. “That’s it?”

Romulus nudged a piece of carrot out of the way and ate another spoonful of rice. “That’s it.”

A distant draft blew faintly across Hypha’s face. The calculating look in Romulus’s eyes made him feel like he’d been pulled apart and squished between glass plates for examination. “Are there any monasteries left?”

“No.”

The word was so casual. So cruel. Hypha wanted to leap through the bars and strangle Romulus. But the connection between his mind and his motor function had been severed. He could feel the chill of the air on his fur and hear the ambient sound of Derecho like a perpetual wind battering a glass window. But he was powerless to interact with it. Powerless to do anything. He felt a sob bubbling up from within, and turned away so Romulus couldn’t see him cry.

When Romulus was finished eating, he put his bowl down at his hooves. The sound pulled Hypha from his spiral. He noticed all the rice was gone, but the broccoli, carrots, and gravy-stained water chestnuts had barely been touched.

His stomach twisted. He hadn’t eaten in days. He didn’t want to give Romulus the satisfaction, but as he stared at the bowl every ache in his body morphed into hunger. Hunger ate shame and fear and doubt. Hunger was the base force, the same primordial ache that made the snow leopard attack him that long-ago morning in the mountains. It wasn’t personal. It was what it was.

“Are you going to finish that?” Hypha asked.

Romulus slid the bowl between the bars. When Hypha finished eating, Romulus took out a key and unlocked the cell door. “Let’s test that new leg out.”

The leg made sounds that reminded Hypha of an old clock. Counterweights clicked. Ball joints rolled. The hydraulic strut in the middle sighed happily under his weight. As they ascended the stairs, the walls of Romulus’s estate turned from indigo to blue, then orange and pink.

They found senator Giesu pacing impatiently on the front steps of the estate. When he saw Hypha emerge, unshackled and wearing a sleek new prosthetic leg, the senator’s face turned a sunset shade of red.

“What on earth are you doing with that?” he howled.

Hypha’s whole body started to tremble. He hunched his shoulders and sunk his head to the ground. But then Romulus put a hoof on his shoulder and addressed Giesu with a soft politician’s smile. “He seemed a little lopsided.”

“He tried to—”

“Kill me, I know. But you gave him to me, and I need all my servants performing at their best.” The smile vanished. “He can’t do much with three legs.”

The senator seemed thrown. “He—tried to kill me too, you know.”

“He’s hardly the first.” Romulus led Hypha down the hall. Giesu struggled to keep up.

“I need a few moments of your time, general. We need to coordinate our next public meeting.”

“Coordinate with my secretaries, please. I’ll be busy for the next hour or so.”

“We have limited time until the public forgets about this campaign. We need to capitalize while we have their attention.”

“We’ll still have their attention in an hour. There’s something important we have to do first.”

“What could possibly be more important than this?”

“It’s an earth pony thing. It just needs to be done.”

As they walked away down the corridor, Giesus’s voice floated after them, spitting incoherent rage. “Dirty, grub-munching, simpleminded—”

Romulus led Hypha through a series of long hallways lined with ornate sculptures done up in traditional Derechan style: lots of flowing robes and shredded stallions rearing up in heroic poses. The hallways themselves didn’t get smaller like they did in Roseroot, but seemed to do the opposite and blow out to leave room for taller and more grandiose statues.

As they walked, Romulus recounted his experience in the mountains. He told him about the mushrooms, the vision, the dead soldier Cherice. When he finished, he looked up to find Hypha wearing a dazed look on his face.

“Do you need me to slow down?” Romulus asked.

Hypha shook his head. “I’m fine. You’re sure it was a snow leopard?”

Romulus nodded. “Positive.”

The hallway terminated at a large door flanked by cloudstone statues of guards. Hypha got the uneasy feeling those guards were actual ponies frozen in stone, guarding their post eternally.

Inside, Hypha saw a small bed and a bare work desk tucked into one corner. Facing it was a colossal pile of boxes overflowing with scrolls and maps and artifacts. Hypha recognized them immediately as those made by Heavenly Peace monks.

Seeing the precious art stuffed into boxes and stacked so haphazardly touched a raw nerve. Before he could articulate the feeling, however, Romulus pulled a wood crate out of the pile and set it on his bed.

“Politicians like things they can manipulate. Ore, precious gems, gold, ponies. They wouldn’t understand the significance of a resource that can manipulate them.” He unlatched the lid. A familiar smell poured out—earthy, almost garlicy, tinged with the faintest hint of sulfur.

The effect on Hypha was instantaneous. He threw himself between Romulus and the crate. Panic squeezed his lungs. His stump leg twitched. Idiot, he thought, you’re gonna lose another one.

“Those aren’t yours,” Hypha said through clenched teeth.

Much to his surprise, the general laughed. “Agreed! This is why I need you, Hypha. You understand the value of these mushrooms. They’re not just psychoactive, aren’t they? They enhance a pony’s strength.”

“They don’t,” Hypha lied. He flinched away from Romulus. His legs started to tremble, trapped by an invisible electric shock. “You’re wrong.”

“It’s too late for that. I know too much already. Mother sky is the true resource of the Stonewood Mountains. We could melt every rock in that range to its base metals, and it still wouldn’t match the value of this one box.”

“No!”

The general grabbed Hypha’s shoulder. His hooves dug into the soft skin like a vice. “Now that we know what to look for, we can go back. My legions can comb the mountains. Harvest them at the source.”

The thought of permanent Derechan bases in the mountains drove him to the edge of hysteria. “You don’t have to strip the mountain. You can grow them here. It’s been done. In Canary’s Cage.”

Romulus raised an eyebrow. “You went to Canary’s Cage?”

“No,” Hypha lied again. “I just heard stories.”

Romulus leaned away from Hypha and let out a little hum of discontent. “Even if it weren’t protected by the senators, it’s too late for Canary’s Cage.”

“What do you mean?”

“We flew over it on our way back. The whole place is abandoned.”

Prairie Sky. Hypha hadn’t just killed him. He’d killed his dream. Hypha’s knees finally buckled. He staggered to one side, grabbed at the bedsheets only to catch the edge of the box instead. Ten pounds of mother sky mushrooms tumbled to the floor. Several fell into the inner mechanisms of his prosthetic arm and tumbled out the other side.

Romulus reached out a hoof to help Hypha back up. In a soft, fatherly tone, he said, “I didn’t bring these back just to use them all myself.”

“You... don’t...”

“Right. Sorry. When I partook in the ritual, I saw things that weren’t there. I was stronger than I’d ever been before. I want to understand those effects and see if they can be replicated consistently.” His demeanor changed suddenly. His eyes gleamed excitedly. “Do you have any experience farming?”

“I managed a farm once.”

“Perfect. That’s how you can be useful to me. I want you to cultivate mother sky here in Derecho.”

Useful. The word filled Hypha with dread. “I can’t.”

“I saved you from the worst monster in the city. If that’s not worth loyalty, then what is it worth?”

“You didn’t save me from anything.”

“Don’t doubt for a second he could find ways to make it worse. The deal’s done.”

“It’s not.”

“It is. You just never got a say in it.”

Hypha shifted his weight and heard the crunch of a dried mushroom underhoof. He jerked his hoof back. “Give me that box,” he said, and stooped to clean the mushrooms up.

Instead, Romulus put a hoof on Hypha’s shoulder. Hypha froze. “Listen to me. Some of these will mold over and become inedible. Some of them will be lost. Some will be used for their intended purpose. But one way or another, they’ll run out.” He seemed to sense the hesitation in the downward bend of Hypha’s body. “I’m giving you the choice. You can use your knowledge and build a hydroponic garden here. You’ll have all my resources, and by extension Giesu’s resources. I’ll give you all the freedom you need. You can even proselytize the staff for all I care. As long as the mushrooms grow.”

“The climate isn’t right.”

“Then we’ll change the climate. Whatever needs to be done, we’ll do it.” He knelt down to look Hypha in the eyes. “My allies are not my friends. If it was more convenient for Giesu to throw me in a cage like he did to you, he’d do it without a second thought. And without my protection... well, you know what he’s capable of. A garden of mother sky will keep us both safe.”

Safe. It was almost funny. Hypha heard the threat lurking behind Romulus’s offer, a snow leopard concealed in a grove of stonewood trees. A bitter memory of Prairie Sky’s face flashed through Hypha’s mind. He’d killed for this. How could he say yes?

“Even if it worked... if. What would you do with them?”

“Convert my legionaries into monks. Then kill every senator in the city.”

Hypha sat still for a long time. Then, slowly, he asked, “Every senator?”

Romulus smiled. Crow’s feet and bluish bags framed his eyes, but he looked livid with youth. “Every single one.”

When the mushrooms had been safely stowed away, Romulus led Hypha on a walking tour around the estate grounds. They passed through a massive library warded against humidity, an open observatory aligned with the constellations, sparring rooms with hundreds of weapons Hypha had never seen before. In each room they passed through, Romulus suggested ways they could turn it into a growing room for the mushrooms. Each time, Hypha shot him down.

After awhile, they arrived in the deepest room in the estate, a spacious terrarium filled with the dust-choked relics of past conquests. The room was a story of Romulus’s past conquests. Redwood chifforobes and ornate mercury mirrors sat atop ornate purrsian rugs from the cat caliphate. Silks styled in spiraling geometries shared wall space with neo-classical battle paintings. Above it all, a massive segmented skylight let in a shower of natural light.

“What about this room?” Hypha asked.

Romulus shrugged dismissively. “It’s a prop room. My staff use it for parties when they want to impress guests.”

“Does the skylight ever open?” Hypha asked.

“No. Humidity swings are bad for the antiques.”

“So the room holds humidity?”

Romulus squinted at the high walls. “You think this room would be a good fit?”

“If it’s got good climate control, then yes. The air needs to be mostly dry with occasional humidity. And we need short bursts of strong, natural light.”

Romulus frowned. “They used artificial light in Canary’s Cage, didn’t they?” Hypha scowled. “Okay, okay, I trust you. Do it your way. The room’s yours. Just please keep the place clean. If there’s even a spot of dirt on the floor when you leave, the staff will have me killed.”

Romulus left Hypha alone to look over the space and gather a list of necessary supplies. When that was done, he dragged the rugs aside and sat down on the bare cloudstone floor. Sunlight poured down on him like ten million tons of earth and stone. He closed his eyes, and he was back in the tunnels of Roseroot. The earth moved. A low rumble filled his ears. Somewhere in the dark, the tunnels were collapsing.

Only one thought could brace him against such a weight. Mother sky. He had to live through this. He thought back to the promise he’d made to Red and Blue. They might be gone, but he could still hold himself accountable. Only by surviving could he ensure Romulus never got his hooves on mother sky.

They wanted a compliant prisoner? Fine. Hypha could pretend. He’d cultivate a garden in the sky. He’d tease out the secrets of mother sky in the fortress of his enemy. Then, when he had what he needed, he’d complete his mission.

And while the sun and mist worked their magic on the mushrooms, Hypha could use the wide open space to practice flying.

Chapter 26

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“If’n! Say If’n!”

Flannel pretended not to hear the voice.

“Hey! C’mon, say If’n!”

The voice came from his coworker at the army staffing office, Thunderhead. Thunderhead and his marefriend, that pretty blonde pegasus who worked as an aide for general Romulus, liked to hang out at the corner cafe across from the office and swill turkeyish coffee. It was an after-work tradition of sorts for them. That, and tormenting him every chance they got.

A wadded up napkin glass flew through the air and hit Flannel squarely in the head. He leapt up in surprise. The decorative cloud shrub he’d spent the last twenty minutes sculpting burst apart.

Flannel took off the special gardening mitts that allowed earth ponies to shape clouds. “Why’d you do that?” he asked Thunderhead.

“Say it,” Thunderhead replied. “Dropsy said she heard you say it yesterday.”

“I didn’t.” Flannel was lying. He’d stood in this exact same spot yesterday, talking to another work colleague, when the countryism had slipped out. He’d heard a laugh and turned around to find Dropsy in the same exact spot she sat now, holding the same exact drink, eyeing him with that same disquieting mixture of flirty and fighty that all pegasi wore as a resting face.

“Yeah you did!” the mare, Dropsy, chimed in. “You said it, and when you did your big buck teeth stuck out.”

Not entirely true. His buck teeth always stuck out no matter what he said. All he had to do was open his mouth, and there they were. Another fine bit of earth pony genealogy biting him in the butt. Or in this case, the lower lip.

“Corny, please, just say it, it’s so funny.”

Corny was a reference to his cutie mark: three smiling ears of corn. All that famous earth pony constitution snapped like a twig underhoof. “My name’s Flannel.”

“It’s just a nickname,” Dropsy said. “It’s cute.”

Cute. Flannel could call a plow cute, but that wouldn’t stop it from chopping a pony in half if they fell under it. He had a nickname for her too, one he dared not speak out loud but relished internally. One day, she’d say something really nasty and he’d snap and say, Dropsy, more like dropped on your head at birth.

“You’re a comedian, Corny,” Thunderhead went on. “Say it. You know it’s hilarious.”

Flannel’s nickname for him was Emptyhead. Just like with Dropsy, he’d never say it out loud, though in Thunderhead’s case it was because he was full of enough piss and lightning to fight Flannel despite the fact the earth pony stood a full head taller than him.

“Hey.” Thunderhead whistled, snapping Flannel’s attention back to him. “Say it.”

If. If. If. Flannel screwed up his face in concentration and said, “If you don’t shut your trap, I’ll shut it for you.”

This time, Thunderhead threw his glass. It hit him Flannel in the flank, bouncing harmlessly and falling through the cloud streets into nothing. “Dirt licker,” Thunderhead said. “Spoilsport.”

Flannel looked at the soft spot in the clouds where the glass had fallen through. It would shatter when it hit the ground, if it didn’t hit anything—or anyone—before then. The shards would sink into the ground and last a long while. Longer than any of them would ever be around. Thunderhead would call him Corny for the last time, and that glass would still be down there somewhere, a hate-marker lodged in some farmer’s field. All fields turned to farms eventually.

All fields turned to farms. The thought took the edge off Flannel’s anger. He stood up straight and was about to laugh the whole thing off when he heard Thunderhead say, “Going back to the farm, Corny?” He peeled his lips back, exposing his front teeth in a twisted smile. “If’n yer momma wants to churn my butter later, she can walk them thick thighs over to—”

Flannel lunged across the street, clearing it in three loping strides. His accent really came out then. “Ah’ll fix ya! Ah’ll set’cha right!”

Then the two collided and tangled up right there on the sidewalk. Flannel didn’t stop swinging until Thunderhead’s nose was broken and the guards came around and pulled the two apart.

There was a simple fact of life that Flannel knew better than most: in Derecho, earth ponies had it worse.

Earth ponies couldn’t fly. They couldn’t even walk on clouds without complex and expensive spells. Their magic was limited to their farming ability, which in a cloud city like Derecho meant nothing, and their strength, which made them ideal candidates for menial labor.

This made it tough to hold down a job. A budding criminal record didn’t help. But Flannel’s mother, Babska, at least understood the cycle was self-sustaining and systematic. So when he arrived back home flanked by guards, she didn’t make any sudden moves and answered their probing questions with one-word answers and a stoic glare that could cut through cloudstone.

When the guards left, she wrapped him up in a crushing hug and dragged him inside.

“I wanna hit you so bad,” Babska fumed in her thick country drawl. She rolled up a towel and slapped it over the countertop. The whole house trembled. “I just, wanna...”

Instead of hitting him, she resumed mashing the potful of potatoes on the stovetop. “Y’all made me leave right when I was... and now they’re all stuck to the bottom... you... y’just...” She trailed off again, lost in labor.

“I gotta find a new job,” Flannel said in a low voice. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“You’re not quittin’.”

“Mom—”

“I didn’t move us all the way up here so you could spit on an honest opportunity.” Her nostrils flared. The masher bent a little. Flannel felt for those poor potatoes.

“Lemme take tomorrow off and see what other jobs I can find in the city.”

“Absolutely not. If you wanna be a big stallion and look for a new job, you’ll do it after your shift.” Babska gave the potatoes one final twist. Then she leveled the masher at him. Bits of starchy gore clung to the end. “Not a moment before.”

Flannel gulped. “Yes, mom.”

Flannel was true to his word and returned to work the next day. It wound up not mattering anyway, for as soon as he walked into the office he was called into the manager’s office and chewed out for nearly half an hour.

“You think you can just bludgeon another worker and get away with it?” the manager screamed.

“Well, technically, it was off company property, so—”

That got him another twenty minutes of shouting. The manager screamed so much Flannel honestly thought the fur on his face would fry.

When the screaming was done, he was unceremoniously fired and escorted out of the building.

Just as the guards were about to kick him to the curb, a breathless Dropsy raced in front of them and halted their progress.

She didn’t look flirty or fighty today. Actually, she looked like she was about to puke.

“I need that one,” she said to the guards, gesturing to Flannel. “General’s orders.”

“Get out of the way.”

“If you value your jobs, you’ll hoof him over.” She produced a scrap of paper with a big wax seal on the bottom. “Romulus requested him personally. So back off.”

The guards snatched the paper from Dropsy’s hooves. With a shrug, they took their hooves off Flannel and left the two ponies alone.

“Dropsy,” Flannel started, “I—”

“Shut up.” She breezed past him with icy smoothness and motioned for him to follow. “Romulus wants you, not me. Now c’mon, or I’ll tell Thunderhead you called me a slut.”

Flannel followed, fuming.

Every staffer in the building, from the lowliest janitor to the subordinate generals, knew that Romulus despised being groveled at. But Romulus was the kind of pony to which groveling was a natural response. Flannel wanted to cower every time he crossed the general’s path.

“You’re the one who does the cloudscaping?” Romulus asked, looking up from the stacks of papers on his desk.

“Yes, sir.”

The general’s eyes returned to his work. “Your team does a nice job.”

“Actually, it’s just me, sir.”

One of his eyebrows went up. “You do the whole building?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Every day.”

“Every day, sir.”

Romulus nodded intently. “You’re not a Derechan native, is that right?”

“Yes, sir. Born and raised in east Griffonia.”

“You’re pretty young.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you must have been there when they ran all the ponies out.”

“Uh. Yes, sir. I was six.”

An awkward silence filled the air. Flannel could tell the general wanted to talk about it. Years of relative peace had muted the terror of those early memories. But it didn’t make it any easier to talk about it. The feathered, beaked, and clawed elephant in the room still lorded over Flannel anytime someone brought up east Griffonia and its takeover.

Romulus asked, “If there were a way to make all the hatred in the world go away, would you do it?”

“Uh.” The question threw Flannel for a loop. “I dunno. Seems silly to think about it, sir.”

“Just go for it. No wrong answers.”

Flannel chewed on his lip. “I would. I guess there’d be consequences, but the consequence of not doing it would be more—” He stopped himself before he could say, more griffons. “More ponies doing bad stuff.”

“Have you ever thought about committing a serious crime? Think, robbery or murder.”

Flannel’s mind instantly went to Thunderhead and Dropsy. “No, sir.”

“Be honest. You aren’t in trouble. This is an interview for a special position. I need you to be candid with me. I need to know who you are.”

A special position? Sweat beaded on the back of his neck. “Well—uh—” He swallowed the lump in the back of his throat. “No. I wouldn’t commit any serious crimes. When I was back in east Griffonia, we had to steal food to survive, and sometimes ponies would try and take what you had, so you had to fight. But that was years ago, and times were hard. I would never do that here.”

Romulus rose from his desk, which given his stature wasn’t saying much. “Flannel, I think you’d be a good fit for a new program I’m starting. It doesn’t officially exist, it pays eight times as much as you’re making now, and if you tell anyone about it I’m going to have you, and whoever you told it to, thrown in prison. Do you understand?”

There was a deadly serious in the general’s voice that made Flannel want to cry and puke at the same time. “Yes sir,” he mumbled. His tongue scraped the top of his dry mouth. “Will I still have to do the clouds outside, too?”

Hypha took one look at Flannel, turned to Romulus, and said, “This is a sacred process. I’m not training a stranger.”

Romulus took a long, steadying breath in and out. “Please think practically. You’ll need help to get this operation running. Flannel is a farmer. He knows everything there is to know about the subject.”

“I don’t doubt his competence. But I don’t even know if they can grow up here.”

“Prairie Sky did it.”

Hypha furrowed his brow. “Prairie Sky wasn’t supposed to do what he did.”

He looked so serious for someone so young, Flannel thought. Must be the prosthetic leg. He’d seen a similar face on ponies back in east Griffonia. Losing parts of yourself made you more aware of just how much could be taken away.

The two ponies engaged in a brief duel of silence. Romulus eventually decided he didn’t want to fight for this particular hill. “Fine,” he said, “if you really don’t need the help—”

“Tubes!” Flannel jumped in. He felt his new raise evaporating right before his very eyes. He had to do something. “Hypha, sir—”

“Don’t call me that,” Hypha hissed.

Great start. Flannel stumbled over another sentence, paused, then started over. “Tubes. This is a hydroponics operation, right? But it’s different from the other city-sponsored ones. We’re growing something that’s watered indirectly.”

The prosthetic leg went, click, click, click, as Hypha leaned against one of the room’s several empty work tables. Flannel waited to be scolded and sent out of the room. When they didn’t, he went on, “We can’t feed the soil with water directly, or we’ll risk washing the plants out. If we get plastic tubes and some little pumps, we can run ‘em to the ceiling and have ‘em mist out at a controllable rate.” He put on what he hoped looked like a sincere smile. “I can do that for you.”

The table squeaked as Hypha stood up. The look on his face had gone from dismissive to merely annoyed. That was a good sign. “This is a big room. We’d need to control temperature as well as humidity.”

“Easy. Seed clouds. Small enough to be controlled by a couple’a big humidifiers. We could suck the moisture out, or keep the room at a full-blown fog all day, if that’s what you wanted.”

“Where can I get seed clouds?”

“We’d have to source ‘em from the local weather department. But don’t trouble yourself, I’ll get those for you, too.”

“These plants need zero contamination from the outside. How would you keep the place sterile?”

“Tarps. Lotsa tarps. The entrance is basically one long hallway, so we could set up cleaning stations for our hooves, then a station for washing, then a station to put on coats if you wanna get that heavy with it. Tarp it all down. If the entry procedure’s good, we won’t have to clutter the room itself. I know where to get good tarps, too.”

His accent slipped out. He said, “I’ll get it,” but it came out sounding like, “Ah’ll git it.” He snapped his mouth shut. This was the part of the conversation where they’d start hurtling humiliating nicknames at him. But much to his surprise, neither seemed to notice.

Hypha said, “If he handles tubes and tarps, I can go down to the ground and find rocks.”

“Rocks?” Romulus shook his head. “We can get you cloudstone from the quarry.”

“It needs to be real rock. The Canary’s Cage operation had a big rock beneath each plot. We can try using cloudstone, but I’ll bet my other legs it won’t work. We need mountain rocks, or at least something from deep underground.”

“I don’t want you leaving the temple.”

The distance between the two shrunk considerably. “I can have this whole thing up and running in three days.”

“You’re not leaving. That’s my decision, and it’s final. Let Flannel get the rocks.”

“He doesn’t know what kind of rocks to look for.”

“Then tell him which ones to get.”

“Uh.” Flannel strained to recall his home-school geology lessons. “I’m pretty good with rocks.”

“See? This is gonna be fine.” Romulus seemed excited now. His small form swayed from side to side ever so slightly. Light danced in his eyes. “You’ll be in charge of materials, Flannel. Can you do it?”

In charge. Flannel had never been in charge of his own life, let alone a function essential to a top secret operation. If getting rocks and tubes and tarps was his ticket out of poverty, he resolved to become the smoothest, slickest materials importer in all of Derecho. Just wrapping his head around it made him giddy.

“If’n I—” His jaw locked shut on instinct. He felt two sets of eyes on him, weighing him down. “I mean. I’ll have it done as soon as possible.”

Chapter 27

View Online

When Hypha entered the terrarium the following morning, he found Flannel asleep beside six rows of authentic eastern floatstone boulders.

Ancient earth pony sensibility compelled Hypha to lick them. He tested each boulder with a soft tap of his hoof, listening for every mineral nook and hollow fissure. They were pockmarked, cracked, and filled with impurities. Perfectly imperfect. Ideal for cultivating mother sky.

All thirty pounds of the general’s mushrooms were stored in a storage closet in the corner. Hypha fished one out of the bag and popped it in his mouth. Then he crawled onto one of the boulders and sank into meditation. The twenty tons of cloudstone insulation made the terrarium the only truly silent place in Derecho.

How long he stayed locked in his lotus pose, he couldn’t say. The sound of a scream pulled him back to reality. He opened his eyes to find Flannel staring at him, his mouth agape. The room was tilted at a strange angle.

“What’s wrong?” Hypha asked.

Flannel replied, “You’re, uh. You’re floating.”

Hypha looked down. Sure enough, he was hovering a few yards above the rock. He’d listed to one side, which explained the tilt of the room.

Coming to his senses cut his buoyancy. A moment later, his rear end reconnected with the rock.

“Are you okay?” Flannel asked.

“Fine, thanks.” Hypha patted the boulder like it was an old friend. “Good job with these rocks. They feel great.”

“Uh. Thanks. Do you do that a lot?”

“Yeah, I meditate every morning. You’re welcome to join me if you’d like.”

“No. The floating thing.”

“Oh.” Hypha closed his eyes and focused his magic. His muscles strained, a familiar motion forgotten and relearned. He lifted off. The flight was short—only a few seconds. When he landed, a headache bloomed painfully in the front of his brain. That was the first time he’d made a conscious effort to fly since he ferried Red into Giesu’s courtyard. He’d lost so much since then. Far more than just a leg.

“That’s...” Flannel worked his jaw, trying to find the right words. “That’s not possible.”

“So is growing mother sky in a cloud city,” Hypha said. “Life has a funny way of throwing impossible situations into our laps.”

“So you’re some kinda earth pony wizard, then?”

“Not a wizard, no.” He was about to say, a monk, but stopped short.

Flannel gave him an expectant look. “Okay, fine. Can you at least tell me about what we’re growing?”

Hypha thought about what Cumulus would say in this situation. How much to give away. He finally settled on a curt, “It’s a sacred mushroom. It gives you insightful visions and enhances earth pony magic.”

“So that’s why Romulus wants them so bad. He wants to fly around like his pegasus friends.”

Hypha couldn’t help but laugh. “Something like that.”

When would he fell Flannel the truth? That he’d sooner let the city crumble and fall to earth like hail than let Romulus get his hooves on the harvest? Flannel wasn’t Derechan—his accent and lack of wings told Hypha that much. But he was loyal to Romulus. There was no way to tell if he could be convinced to take his side when Romulus inevitably came to collect on his investment.

Hypha thought back to elder Cumulus. He would make a gesture. An olive branch. Perhaps that could make the difference in whose side Flannel took.

“I’m sorry if I’m being mean,” Hypha said. “It’s been a stressful few months.”

“It’s okay. I get it. I was a refugee too.”

Hypha nodded to the boulder next to him. “Would you sit with me for a bit?” He waited for Flannel to get comfy. Then he said, “Picture a mountain.”

Some buildings in Derecho were built down instead of up in order to maximize space. Aside from the underground labyrinth of offices and armories and research rooms, Romulus’s estate offered a few small but lavish guest suites. Hypha and Flannel each got their own. Their rooms came with a plush full-sized bed, a dresser, a work desk, and a window looking out on the grasslands below.

The first thing Hypha did was wrap himself up in the comforter and weep. He’d never felt something so soft, so perfect, in his entire life.

When the crying was done, he climbed up to the window and attempted to squeeze out.

As his head crossed the threshold, a familiar buzzing energy filled the air. The outside world bowed out, warping like molten plastic. A static vwoop, vwoop, vwoop filled his ears. He pushed harder.

The magical shield over the window kicked in with a flash and shot him back into the opposite wall. The impact made his ears ring and sent jolts of pain up his spine. The counterweights and gyros in his prosthetic leg whirred madly as they struggled to reorient themselves.

He laid with his head on the floor until the throbbing subsided. Then he crawled back into bed, defeated.

“This dirt’s got too much dirt in it.”

Flannel gave Hypha an exasperated look. “Run that by me again.”

“It’s too clean.” Hypha picked up a hooffull and squeezed it until it crumbled. “It feels too oxygenated.” He put a little on his tongue and smacked his lips together. “The mineral content is all balanced. There’s no impurities.”

Perhaps the peeved look on Flannel’s face was warranted. The poor colt had just spent the last day and a half ferrying sacks of soil up from ground level to the terrarium. He’d been lucky enough to charter private chariot flights on the general’s dime, but because regular ponies weren’t allowed into the estate and Hypha was still too weak from his abuse at the hooves of Giesu, the task of lugging the forty-pound bags of soil three at a time from the front stoops of Romulus’s estate all the way to the terrarium fell squarely on Flannel’s back.

And now, apparently, he’d gotten the wrong kind of dirt. The kind with too much dirt in it.

“This is how dirt’s supposed to be.” Flannel tapped a bag for good measure. “It’s perfect dirt. The king of Griffonia couldn’t backstab his way into dirt this good.”

“Maybe if we brought up some shale, crushed it into powder, and mixed it with the dirt.” He saw Flannel’s face go pale. “Not a lot of shale. Just a few pounds. But we’ll need to get the mixture just right. Maybe some sand too. And we’ll need to spread this soil out under fans to dry it out. And UV lamps to kill the good bacteria.”

Flannel’s face contorted. His farmer’s instinct screamed, Stop him, kill him, feed the dirt his flesh, but instead of murder he settled on a curt, “You can’t kill the good bacteria.”

Hypha sniffed around the pile of supplies Flannel had brought up. He paused in front of a stack of blue-colored bags. His nose wrinkled. “What on earth is this?”

“Nitrogen fertilizer. It's good for growing.”

“If it’s good for growing, I don’t want it anywhere near the grow stones.”

“Y’want me to take it back down? Or should I just throw it off the side of the city instead?”

Hypha stopped short of snapping back. “No. I’m sorry if I was being short with you. Can you move them off to the corner at least? Then we can take a break.”

Flannel sighed. “You’re the boss.”

Before they brought the whole operation to scale, Hypha and Flannel agreed to test various different types of soil, water, and light combinations in order to determine which was best. That way, they could isolate a usable formula without depleting all their resources.

They divided each boulder into a grid, placing soil of various compositions on each square. They sterilized themselves and their working implements so as not to accidentally introduce any other random variables to the mix. Then, they spread the spores out evenly along the grid and set a few UV lights at different heights to simulate variable sun exposure.

Water variability would be important, too. Some squares got only the mist they pumped into the air through the humidifiers and seed clouds. Others got an extra spritzing, and a few got a thin trickle of direct water fed through an additional series of pumps and tubes.

Once they’d recorded their results and washed up, Hypha asked, “What did you used to farm?”

“Oh, just about everything. Corn, wheat, soybeans. Cash crops. But we kept a little sustenance farm too, just for the family.” His eyes lit up. “And back when I was a kid, we had these big mulberry trees growing on the edge of the farm. When they got good and ripe, we’d boil ‘em up into syrup and pour it over ice cream.”

Hypha cocked his head. “What’s ice cream?”

Flannel blinked. “You’re kidding me.”

“Ice cream. So it’s dairy, right?”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I grew up on a mountain. I’ve never even met a cow before.”

Without another word, Flannel grabbed Hypha’s hoof and dragged him out of the terrarium.

The front gate was an ornate masterclass in metallurgy. Curved metal snaked from cloudstone bases into flowering petals of silver and gold. They were open slightly, just enough for two ponies to squeeze through side by side. Two legionaries in black armor with ceremonial red plumage in their helmets stood guard. Their spears seemed almost as tall as the gate they guarded.

“I wish I could paint,” Flannel said loudly. “I wanna capture the look on your face when you taste it.”

Hypha slowed as they approached the gate. Flannel didn’t understand Hypha’s hesitation and grabbed his real arm. “C’mon.”

“I’m not supposed to—”

“Not supposed to enjoy life? C’mon now, you’re not one of those ponies who whip themselves for fun or something, are ya?”

“No, but—”

“I don’t wanna hear it. You deserve this. It’s—”

The guards dropped out of attention. Their spears fell with frightening speed to block their path. Flannel slid to a stop, his chin hovering inches above the dark wood shaft.

“Papers,” one guard said.

“But we’re leaving,” Flannel said. “We don’t have to show our papers if we’re leaving.”

The guard took a step forward. The angle of the spear changed. The cutting edge, which had been facing down at the floor, angled towards Flannel. “Are you gonna be a problem?”

Flannel dug out a piece of paper indicating him as part of the general’s support staff. “We’ll be back in a few minutes. We’re just getting some ice cream.”

The guard glanced at his papers for a moment before lifting his spear. “Have your papers ready when you get back.”

Flannel looked over his shoulder. “See? No problem.”

Hypha hadn’t moved. He sat on his haunches, stone still, a fine sheen of sweat beading on his forehead. His mechanical leg made trembling tick-tick sounds. His eyes followed a decorative red and black scrap of cloth tied around the butt end of the spear.

Flannel reached out to put his hoof on Hypha’s shoulder. Hypha sucked in a breath and took a big step back.

“I don’t need any ice cream,” he said. “I’m gonna go back to the terrarium.”

“What? They’re not gonna hurt you. Just show ‘em your papers and—”

“I don’t have papers.”

“You work for general Romulus. You gotta have papers.”

“I don’t work for him. I was given to him as a gift.”

The full implication of Hypha’s words sank in slowly. Flannel looked down at the ground. Then outside. “Uh. I’ll, um.” Words of consolation danced on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them down before they could come up. He finally said, “I’ll bring you something back,” and slipped out the gates.

While it was true Hypha had never tried ice cream before, he had a fairly concrete idea of what it was. The cups of sweet soup Flannel brought back didn’t strike Hypha as particularly icy. But the way Flannel’s mane was plastered to his face made it clear he’d galloped all the way there and back. It was the thought that counted.

Hypha put the cup to his lips and took a small, experimental sip. Then he tilted the cup to the sky and drank greedily. Thin trickles of the stuff rolled down his chin.

“That doesn’t wash out easy,” Flannel said, giggling.

Hypha licked his lips. “Worth it.”

When they were done, Flannel suggested they take a walk inside the palace to stretch their legs. Hypha agreed, and after walking around aimlessly for a while they found themselves resting in one of the complex’s upper level gardens. Greenery imported from the surface snaked up the walls. The room had no roof and looked up at the white contrail of the jetstream as it rushed past.

If I were a pegasus, Hypha thought, I could fly up there and let that thing take me wherever it wanted. He licked his lips. A hint of sugar remained. Wherever I wanted...

“Y’ever kiss anyone?” Flannel asked.

Hypha blinked. The daydream disappeared. “No,” he said, “I guess I never did.”

“Did you not have special someponies at that monastery you were in?”

“Yeah, we did. But I stayed busy with acolyte stuff. Kissing was less fun than all the other stuff.” He turned his attention to Flannel. “Why do you ask?”

“If you ask someone if you ever kissed anyone, and they did, they’ll tell you a story about how it happened. They’re usually good stories.”

“Ah. Have you ever kissed anyone?”

“Nope.” Flannel broke into a smile. “I found out about kissing too late. I was already in Derecho, and pegasi get weird about canoodlin’ with earth ponies.”

“Earth pony farmers have big families, though. Doesn’t that mean...” Hypha bumped his hooves together a couple times. They went, clop-clop-clop.

“That’s different. There’s a division of labor on the farm that needs to be respected. Little fillies and colts get the easy stuff like pickin’ berries or helping with inside chores or fitting into small spaces when we need it. Smart ponies cook the books. Bigger ponies do the heavy lifting. Ponies who’re good with their hooves handle the machinery. Moms and dads do the procreatin’.”

He laughed again. Hypha imagined the sound going up and up until it hit the jetstream and went for a ride around the world.

Hypha said, “Now that you’re in Derecho, though, you don’t have to worry about farmwork anymore.”

“Yeah right,” he snorted. “There’s more work here than there ever was on the farm. Plus, pegasi don’t treat earth ponies well. That means they’re alway sticking me with crapshoot jobs.” He settled deeper into his cloud seat. “Til this job came around, anyway.”

“If all the pegasi treat you badly, why’d you come to a pegasi city?”

The smile on Flannel’s lips flattened. Anger flashed in his eyes. “You playin’ stupid or something?” He caught himself. “Ah shoot, I’m sorry. You don’t even know about ice cream. You probably don’t know about the wars either.”

“There were wars?”

“Yeah. Big’uns.”

“Did Romulus do those, too?”

“Nah. The griffon kingdom used to be this big patchwork of smaller kingdoms. But three hundred-ish years ago, one of the first Derechan emperors swept in and conquered them. Then he had a bunch of pony settlers come in and start working the land. That was my great great great great great grandparents.”

“What happened?”

“Griffons happened. Ten years ago they overthrew the ruling pony government. They broke the governor’s wings and threw him off a cliff. Anyone who had ties to the old settlers got killed or ran outta town. That meant just about all the ponies.”

“I’m sorry,” Hypha said.

“S’okay.” Flannel fumbled for something on the tip of his tongue. “I kinda get it, y’know? But how long’s a pony gotta live in a place before it’s theirs? I never hated any griffons. I never stole anyone’s land. Why’d they gotta do that to me and my mom? I tried to tell ‘em. I tried, but...” He sighed. “So, that’s why I’m here. It was that or get chucked off a cliff. I’m happier here.”

“How old are you?” Hypha asked.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen?” Flannel let out a big belly laugh. “I’m older than you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I turn eighteen next month.”

“Happy early birthday.”

“Thanks!”

“You don’t look seventeen. You look older.”

“I spend a lot of time in the sun. It’s bad for my fur.” His eyes fell to Hypha’s prosthetic leg. “You’re really sixteen, huh?”

“Yup.” Hypha flexed the leg back and forth. The strut inside let out a happy little whoosh.

Chapter 28

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General Romulus smacked his lips and frowned. “Mayweather?” he called to his attendant. “Did the poison checker check this coffee?”

“Yes, general,” she replied. “And he’s still very much alive. Is everything to your liking?”

He nodded. “It’s fine. Nevermind.” After Mayweather left the room, he turned to Hypha and said, “I’ve brewed coffee out of trench puddle mud, and this is the worst coffee I’ve ever tasted.” He took another sip. “Want some?”

Hypha sat on the other side of the table. Between them was a pegasus breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, cold-smoked fish on wood boards, and a bowl of exotic fruit placed with great intention at the center of the spread. The smell of the fish made Hypha dizzy again. His first experience with cooked meat hadn’t been a fluke after all. He liked the smell, though he had no interest in finding out if he liked the taste.

“No thanks, sir,” Hypha said.

The general took another sip. “If you want something else, I can have Mayweather whip it up for you. Anything you want.”

Images of lentils and bread danced through Hypha’s mind. The thought made him even more nauseous than the hunger did. Pegasus meals were typically served cold because of the difficulty of maintaining fire at this altitude. What he wouldn’t give for something warm.

He settled on asking for tea instead. It came out iced, with an absurd amount of cream and sugar. Hypha bloated like a bubblefish, but the sugar made it easy to put down and the caffeine quieted his stomach.

“So how is our project going?” Romulus asked.

“We’re trying all sorts of moisture and soil combinations, sir. I want to get an optimal ratio before we throw all our eggs into one basket.”

“Prudent. How many pounds of mushrooms have you harvested so far?”

“Zero, sir.”

Romulus made a little hmm sound into his coffee. “Zero.”

“This is a delicate process. We’re seeing mycelial growth in one plot, but it’ll take some time before the mushrooms themselves start to grow. Then another month or so to resow all the rocks and get a full batch.”

“Okay. That’s fine. We’re under no strict timeline.”

A worrying worm of a thought burrowed through Hypha’s mind. “What about...” All the caffeine and sugar in the world couldn’t keep his stomach from flipping now. “The, uh. The senator. He.” Hypha swallowed a lump in his throat. “He, uh—he—”

“It’s okay,” Romulus cut in. “We don’t have to say his name.”

The spring in Hypha’s gut uncoiled. He sank into his chair, feeling more tired than when he’d just crawled out of bed. “Sorry, sir.”

“It’s okay. The anxiety you’re feeling is a natural response to what you’ve gone through. I see it in my troops sometimes. Stay in the present and keep breathing.”

In. Out. Feel it, receive it, let it go. “Is there a cure?”

“Not that I know of.”

Hypha nodded. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why do you work with him? You’re only making him stronger.”

“Not exactly. Right now, he’s the one making me stronger. I have fame and some flashy treasure, but that can only take me so far. He’s on a different level. He’s manipulated the whole governmental structure so it bends around him. Even if he didn’t have a bit to lend, I’d still have to beg for his help.”

The general’s answer was probably meant to mollify, but all it did was stoke Hypha’s indignation. “If you knew what he did to his own daughter, you wouldn’t be begging for his help.”

“Three daughters.”

Hypha paused. “Three?”

“Yes, three. I told him, if he wanted my loyalty, he’d have to prove he was all in.”

“I don’t—what do you mean?”

Something like a smile crossed the general’s face. “It was a bad miscalculation in hindsight. If I had known he’d be so eager to do it, I would have just asked for more gold.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about value. Everything important needs a buy-in. He could throw around bits until his legs fell off, but bits are cheap to him. I told him I need the ears from one daughter, the eyes from another, and the tongue from a third. That’s how I would know he was committed.”

“Are you serious? That’s horrible.”

“My apologies,” the general scoffed, “I didn’t realize you were a scholar of Derechan history. You don’t understand the way of this place. Senators aren’t chosen by merit. The same connections that put them in the senate can be used to skirt mandatory army service. No living senator has served in the army. I’ve been in the legions since I was six. They haven’t seen what I’ve seen. They don’t understand the ramifications of sending ponies off to battle. They don’t know.” Romulus fell silent for a moment. “But I misjudged what he was capable of. He even pulled out her teeth, too. I didn’t tell him to do that.”

“Maybe not directly.”

Suddenly, all the neutrality vanished from Romulus’s face. He pointed to the stump where his ear used to be. “Don’t you lecture me on ethics.” Hypha fell silent. Romulus continued, “You couldn’t possibly understand the situation I’m in. I’m trying to overthrow a corrupt political system with a fetish for bloodsports. What’s more, I’m doing it in the open. Look outside! They’re still throwing parades for me! I’ve rattled the order. That alone is liable to get me killed.”

“I can’t see outside,” Hypha said. “You won’t let me leave.”

The general deflated like an upturned wineskin. He sank into his chair and picked at a little piece of fish still sitting on his plate.

“It’s strange that for all his extramarital affairs, he’s only ever had daughters.” A soft bone snapped between his teeth as he chewed. “Maybe it’s by design. The gods knew he’d kill his male heirs to secure his power, so they gave him only daughters instead.” He shook his head. “What a mess.”

Hypha’s head was still spinning when he returned to the terrarium. He tried to clear his mind by meditating, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get the general’s words out of his head. Somewhere out there were two other Blues, one with no ears and one with no eyes. More victims of circumstance and politics. He shuddered.

Sometime later, Flannel came in. He froze in the doorway, shook his head, and muttered, “Dangit, that ain’t right.”

Hypha opened his eyes to ask what he was talking about and realized the whole room had tilted to one side. He was floating again. As soon as he noticed, he started to sink.

“So what’d the general say?” Flannel asked.

Hypha forced himself to hover above the rock. He counted to ten, then let himself drop the rest of the way. He rested for a moment, then lifted himself back into the air.

“So?” Flannel said again.

“The meeting went okay.”

“What’d he say?” Flannel’s gaze turned to the test grids. “Was he happy?”

Hypha spun around. Of the one forty eight test plots on the rocks, forty seven were bare. One, a corner plot, more of a concession to Hypha’s desire to extremify the soil than an actual serious contender, was covered with a thin patch of mycelium. The white, weblike substance was the telltale giveaway of mushroom growth. With any luck, they’d see caps by the week’s end.

“I didn’t tell him,” Hypha said.

“You didn’t?” Annoyance crept into Flannel’s voice. “Why?”

Without leaving his lotus position, Hypha leaned his body forward and hovered over to the next rock in the line. Then the third.

“Hello? Hypha? Why didn’t you tell him?”

Hypha made it to a fourth rock. Then a fifth. Then a headache bloomed in the base of his brain, and he set himself down. “It’s not ready.”

“Whaddaya mean it’s not ready? I can see it right there.”

“He’d be more upset if we told him we have something and it dies. We have to be patient.”

Flannel let out a snort of disapproval. He picked up a sponge and a bottle of disinfectant spray and busied himself with disinfecting one of the empty patches of rock in preparation for reseeding.

“I don’t understand something,” Hypha said. Despite the pain in his head, he floated over to the empty rock beside the myceliated plot. “Why would mother sky give these to us now?” He drummed the side of his gnarled front hoof against the floor. The cracks were still there, but new keratin growth was starting to come in. In another year, he might be able to gallop on it normally again. Maybe. “Why now?”

“Maybe cuz we earned it.” The spray bottle wheezed. A little cloud of harsh-smelling mist filled the air. Flannel scrubbed harder. “Maybe the universe realized how much it’s been dumpin’ on us and decided to give us a break.”

“These can’t be for the general.” Hypha sank further into thought. “Couldn’t be.”

“I know you think general Romulus is a bastard an’ all, but he’s been pretty good to me. He’s been good to a lot of ponies, for that matter. Campaignin’ is what it is, and I’m sure he’s made tough calls and got ponies . But sometimes bad ponies can do good things. Doesn’t that at least make ‘em half good?”

Good from bad. A path out. Out of— Hypha emerged from his thoughts like a buoy erupting from the surface of the water. “It’s not for him, Flannel. It’s for you!”

All the anger in Flannel’s eyes turned to thinly-veiled panic. “Me? Nope. These ain’t for me. These are for the general.”

Hypha’s hover turned to full-on flight. “Romulus already gave me thirty pounds of the mushrooms he stole from the monasteries. These—” He gestured wildly at the grow plots. “These are for you.”

“That’s stupid. We were explicitly told—”

“No, you’re not listening. He told us to grow them. But mother sky doesn’t just grow for whoever asks. She only gives herself to ponies who deserve it.” Deserve. This was different than Hypha giving out mushrooms. He had accepted the possibility of being wrong when he initiated the others. This was different. This was given directly from the source. The impossible was sprouting from a clod of dirt suspended in a cloud. Life had a funny way of throwing impossible situations into his lap as of late.

“I don’t know about deserve,” Flannel said. “I think it’s growing cuz I’m a good farmer.”

“You’re a great farmer.” It’s never too late. He grabbed Flannel’s hoof. “But you could be so much more. This is a sign.”

Flannel pulled away. “No it’s not. It’s not.”

“Please believe me. You were meant to be here.”

“Stop it. Seriously.” Flannel’s face was red. “I’m here because the general told me to be here. I’m not like you. Not like that.”

Hypha opened his mouth, and when he spoke it was the voice of elder Cumulus. “But you could be.” He looked over his shoulder, and no one was there. The rush intensified. He had to keep going. “You said it yourself. They look down on you. Here’s your chance to rise above it.”

“I’m serious. Stop it.” Flannel looked like he was about to bolt. His eyes darted around Hypha like dragonflies. “I ain’t good for nothing. Find somepony else.”

“There’s nopony else.”

“Then find someone. I’m not—” He wrenched himself away. “I ain’t whatever you think I am. I ain’t nothing.”

Hypha looked him in the eye. He saw fear, a heart struggling to beat against layers of hate built up like plaque. He saw Walik in his cell. Red and Blue in the mist. Himself on the mountain. He was Flannel.

Hypha said, “You could do so much good.” He held out his hoof to Flannel, in which he held a single mother sky mushroom.

Flannel considered the mushroom for a long time. Then he pulled out his sponge and went back to scrubbing.

Chapter 29

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Derecho liked to pretend it was civilized. Its ponies wore fancy cloaks and played politics and cast ballots. They had labor laws. They kept servants, not slaves.

Red knew the truth. Derecho was a starving animal. Every citizen, every piece of cloudstone in every column, was a cell in the beast. Its teeth were sharp. Foam dripped from the corners of its mouth. If it smelled blood, it would turn on you.

Red dragged Blue over shattered cloudstone cobbles. She didn’t know the alleyways in this part of town. She’d already gotten herself turned around twice. She couldn’t afford to get lost a third time.

Pounding hooves harried her every move. Passing nobles and their servants paused to watch her pass. Their eyes looked bloodshot. Hungry.

Red stumbled. Her hoof twisted. Pain bloomed like thorned flowers. She righted herself before Blue could fall off her back and took off at a hobble. She glanced behind her. No guards.

“Stay awake,” she panted, as much to herself as to Blue. “Almost there.”

Blue groaned. Good. She was still breathing. Blue’s dark cloak obscured the amount of blood pouring from the wound. Red felt it soaking into her fur. Her breath caught in her throat and stitched her sides. She couldn’t stop. She’d already lost Hypha. If she lost Blue, she’d be alone again. That thought hurt worse than any twisted ankle. Alone.

She turned a blind corner and ran right into a lone Derechan guard on patrol. Blue tumbled off her back. Blood spilled onto the street.

The guard blurted, “Oh my god, is she okay?” He sounded barely older than Red. He took a step forward. “Did someone rob you? What—”

In one fluid motion, Red reared up and bucked the guard square in the face. His snout bent at an angle it shouldn’t. His legs turned to jelly, and he collapsed in the street. His spear clattered to the ground.

Red scooped up Blue and took off down the street.

Blue didn’t die that first hour. That in itself was a big victory. Most times, if you got shot with an arrow somewhere important, you didn’t linger very long. When Red finally made it back to the hideaway and saw Blue’s chest was still moving, she knew she’d won a great battle in the war of her life.

It certainly didn’t feel like a victory. And there was still so much left to do. Arrow wounds were notoriously tricky to treat, given their barbed shape. If the arrowhead had warped as it traveled through Blue’s body, or had fragmented, there was a real risk of death by infection. And if it had hit bone...

Red pinched the arrow’s shaft and wiggled it a little. The shaft twisted freely. Blue groaned.

That was good news. A little give meant the arrow wasn’t stuck in a bone. What she needed now was a sharp scalpel, thin metal wire, and enough sedatives to immobilize Blue without stopping her heart.

Red sighed. For just a moment, she wished it had been her hit with the arrow. She’d just get to sit here and let Blue fawn over her. That didn’t sound so bad.

Red couldn’t afford to steal anything and risk trouble. Not today. The market run cost half of her savings and nearly an hour of precious time, but she got everything she needed and made it back without arousing any suspicion. If the guards at the market had gotten wind of the assassination attempt, they didn’t show it.

In the time she was gone, Blue took a turn for the worse. Her eyes were half-lidded and listless. She’d lost an astounding amount of blood. Her lips were bright red. For a second, Red thought Blue had been somehow sucking at her wound. She was about to scold her when she realized she was jumping to stupid conclusions. Blue was smarter than that. She was coughing up blood.

To start the removal process, Red soaked a rag with ether and held it up to Blue’s face. “You’re gonna be fine,” she said in a shaky voice. “I got this. I got this.”

Blue went still. Red took a precautionary glance down the alleyway before cutting off Blue’s robe.

The sight of the wound made Red’s stomach flip. Her mind recoiled. She found herself momentarily fixated on the acidity of her own stomach acid. Acid helped disinfect, right? But stomach acid definitely wasn’t an antiseptic. It was a proseptic, if anything.

Focus. She turned away until the urge to vomit passed. Then she picked up the metal wire. It was some kind of copper alloy, gossamer-thin but strong. She bent it into a long “L” shape, then formed a loop at the bottom part of the L.

She grabbed the scalpel. Feel it. Receive it. Let it go. The mantra popped into her head uninvited, but she found it somewhat comforting. She repeated it once more, then dove into her task.

In theory, all she had to do was get the wire loop around the arrowhead and tighten it so it stayed in place. The issue was that, with all the jostling around during their escape attempt, the wound had partially closed itself around the shaft of the arrow.

Using the scalpel, Red reopened the wound. Fresh blood flowed down Blue’s side, matting her fur. Red felt her hooves getting slippery. She paused to wipe them clean, but when she looked down she momentarily forgot that her fur was naturally red. She saw herself covered in red and thought she’d been completely soaked in Blue’s blood.

She bobbled the scalpel. The blade touched her arm. Pain, heavy and real, brought her back to the moment. She took another deep breath. She heard herself say, “Feel it, receive it, let it go.”

Then she went back to cutting.

She cut deeper, finally locating the black sliver of arrowhead embedded in the muscle. Using the scalpel to keep the wound pried open, Red threaded the wire loop over the shaft and lowered it into the wound. The loop was too circular, though. The wound was oval-shaped. It wouldn’t fit all the way.

If she were a unicorn, Red could just pinch it with magic. But both hooves were occupied at the moment. With a grimace, she pulled the wire out and bit down on the metal until it deformed to a more elliptical shape.

The taste was dizzyingly bad, rancid meat and copper coins. She turned her head away again, certain she would puke, but nothing came up. She felt herself start to shiver and tried to will it down. Her hooves were still holding open the wound. She had to keep still or she’d hurt Blue even worse.

That’s what it was, Red realized. Bad meat and metal. That was her lover. Her friend. She was flesh and blood. She was dying.

Red spat until her mouth was dry. Then she went back to work.

This time, the loop fit. Red carefully coaxed the knot of the wire loop tighter until it fit snugly around the arrowhead.

Now for the worst part. With one hoof gripping the scalpel and the other gripping the metal wire, she took hold of the shaft of the arrowhead with her mouth and started to wiggle it loose. Each time the barbs caught on the muscle, Red carefully pushed it down and nudged the tissue out of the way.

A quarter of the way out, the arrow got stuck on something. Then it came out another inch all at once. The barbs dug into the surrounding muscle. Blue’s eyes shot open.

Red was there in an instant with the ether-soaked rag. “Shh,” she pleaded. “Please don’t move. Please don’t move. Please.”

The panic in Blue’s eyes faded to numb apathy. Then she was under again. Red thought, I just killed her, and even though she knew it wasn’t true the tremor returned in all its power.

“Shut up,” she said, and dove back into her work. “Shut up.” Her voice was muffled around the shaft of the arrowhead. “Shuh uh.” The arrow slid out at an agonizing pace. Bits of muscle tore around the barbs. “Shuh uh.” She couldn’t stop the tremble in her hooves now. Each intentional cut yielded another unintentional wound. Fresh blood poured out. “Shuh uh.” She was getting close. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Her eyes stung. Her jaw ached from holding the arrow shaft. So close. Half an inch more. The barbs tore through layers of skin. Blood bubbled up around it, but another good wiggle more and it’d be free. Red bit down hard on the shaft and snarled, “Shuh uh, shuh uh, shuh—”

The arrow came out.

Red spat the arrow out and roared victoriously. Then she was back on top of Blue, slathering ointment on the wound, pressing a bandage as hard as she could into the opening. Blue was awake again, bawling like a foal, a toothless open-mouthed scream.

Red cried too. Happy tears.

Red slept like a rock that night. She woke up feeling numbed by the experience, but otherwise she was in good spirits. Blue woke up too—another victory. The arrow hadn’t left any pieces behind, and the wound hadn’t taken on any suspicious colors or smells.

“Want to keep it?” Red asked, gesturing to the discarded arrow. Blue scowled at her. “Okay. Sorry I asked.”

When Blue wasn’t watching, Red snapped the arrowhead off its shaft and pocketed it for posterity.

Red went into the trash bin where they’d stashed their belongings, searching for something less bloodstained for Blue to wear. While she was looking, she came across the bag of mother sky mushrooms. Guilt spread through her veins like infection.

Ultimately, she took out a robe for Blue and left the mushrooms where they were. One thing at a time, she thought to herself.

Chapter 30

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Day by day, Hypha and Flannel tended to their garden of stones. They washed them, watered them, meditated on them, poured their energy and attention into them. Day by day, the energy grew. Forty seven of the forty eight stones remained obstinately barren, but the one promising plot flourished. The mycelium wove a tapestry over the rock.

Then, overnight, a miracle sprouted. Six little brown buds appeared. Disturbances in soil indicated at least another dozen were about to spring up.

Flannel stomped around the room like a bucking bronco, hooting and hollering. “This calls for more ice cream!” He raced away without so much as a glance back.

The sudden silence drew shut around Hypha like a closing curtain. Even if the worst came to pass and the mushrooms turned out to be duds, this was still an incredible feat. The culmination of so many hard-earned lessons and countless sacrifices.

But something still gnawed at Hypha. By the time Flannel returned with the ice cream, it had bloomed into full-on dread. All that ice cream turned to concrete in his stomach.

Up until now, his goals had seemed so simple. Kill Romulus. Survive. Everything on the other side of that horizon seemed as far away as outer space was from the sky.

Now, seeing those mushrooms clinging to the rock, he wasn’t so sure. If he could grow mother sky here, he could do it anywhere. But what was he supposed to do with this knowledge? The question flooded his mind with possibility and terror, swamping him completely. What did he have? Two MIA monks in Red and Blue, one of which could be dead for all he knew. A conscripted co-conspirator in Flannel. Thirty pounds of sacred mushrooms, with more on the way. Hardly a firm foundation.

He felt panic start to seize hold again. Flannel seemed to sense this and gave Hypha the room. Now alone, he dropped into meditation to clear the haze.

He was floating in the terrarium, focusing his attention on relearning the subtle body rotations necessary in order to maximize pitch and yaw while in flight, when he heard the door swing open. He thought nothing of it. It was probably Flannel coming back to check on him.

He was utterly unprepared for the sound of a smooth, satanic baritone booming out, “Look at this! The little cage bird can fly.”

Hypha went stiff. His whole body rolled upside down, then plummeted back to earth. He fell on his belly directly in front of senator Giesu, landing so hard he bounced off the cloudstone.

“That’s a neat trick,” the senator said. “How does it work?”

Hypha sucked in frantic gasps of air. “Huh, huh, S— S—”

“Shh. I’ll only be a moment.” He stepped over Hypha and examined the line of growing stones, dragging a hoof through the thin dirt. “I’m just here to check in on my investment.”

It took another minute for Hypha’s lungs to finally accept air again. He picked himself up off the floor and staggered over to where Giesu was fiddling with the grow stones. Every aching bone in his body screamed at him to get away, to hide, to find a corner and curl up in it.

“Senator. Please don’t touch those. You’ll contaminate the samples.”

Giesu pulled his hoof away and moved onto the next one. “How soon will they be ready?” he asked.

Hypha didn’t have the nerve to lie. “A few days, senator.”

“What about the rest?” he gestured to the long row of empty grow stones.

“This was only a sample batch.”

“Why are you testing? Just do it the way they did in Canary’s Cage.”

“Those mushrooms and these mushrooms aren’t the same.”

The senator pursed his lips and nodded. “Did you ever meet the director of Canary’s Cage?” Hypha nodded. “Shame what happened to him. The last time I spoke to him, he went on about how much he wanted to see Derecho one day. He would have been thrilled to see your efforts come to fruition.”

The tremor returned. Moving made his ribs ache. He tried to get himself under control, but then the senator turned to face him, and those brown eyes bore through him in the same steely, dispassionate way as when he’d cut Hypha’s arm off. He couldn’t pull himself together. He didn’t stand a chance.

“Will these enhance my strength?” the senator asked.

“No, senator.”

“Liar.”

Hypha opened his mouth, but only a tiny squeak came out.

“When I took them in Canary’s Cage, I didn’t feel stronger. I only saw visions.”

“W-what did you see, senator?”

“Lionhawks picking at carrion. Sometimes hippophants charging foals. Mostly it was snow leopards.” He raised an eyebrow. “Do you know what those visions mean?”

Hypha’s legs went out from under him. He fell on his belly, rattling his already-bruised ribs. “Don’t hurt me,” he wheezed. “Please. Don’t. You’re in charge. You’re in charge.”

Giesu waited patiently until Hypha wore himself out. Then he looped a hoof under Hypha’s armpit and hauled him up to his hooves. He laid Hypha against a rock to keep him steady. The smell of rich, loamy earth choked the air.

“I came here because I’m counting on you,” the senator said. “Do you remember the conversation I had with Romulus at the dinner? The one where I gave you to him.” Hypha nodded. “Romulus wants more campaigns. More treasure. But even with the treasure from the last campaign, I’m bleeding capital faster than I can consolidate it. There can’t be any more campaigns.” He put his head right next to Hypha’s. “You shouldn’t be here. But if you’re going to eat up my funds, you might as well be of some use to me. I need enough mushrooms to supply the legion, and I need them to be ready in a month. I want my own personal supply as well.”

“I can’t promise—”

“You have to.” Giesu put his hoof on Hypha’s good foreleg and squeezed. “You have to be ready. Do you understand?” He started twisting Hypha’s hoof, slowly at first, until the whole thing was bent entirely to one side. Hypha let out a grunt of pain. “You have to deliver, or not even Romulus can protect you. He’s protecting you out of a misguided feeling of earth pony solidarity. He thinks keeping you here like a pet is a mercy. I understand what’s really going on, though. You just want to die, don’t you?”

Hypha let out a terrified squeak.

“When all this is over, I’ll give you what you want. Find me, and I’ll make it stop. I promise. I’ll have your bones taken back to the Stonewood mountains. I’ll put them in Roseroot. That was your monastery, right? Roseroot?”

Hypha nodded. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Giesu gave his arm one final agonizing twist and said, “If you help me, I’ll help you.”

He let go. Hypha collapsed.

As the senator strode out of the room, his cape billowing behind him, Hypha crawled to the nearest grow stone and clung to it for dear life as more tremors overtook him. The stone felt dead when he touched it. Worse than dead. Never alive. By touching it, Giesu had cursed it to never produce life. Hypha felt a horrible dread creeping towards him. The spirits of the earth were reaching into the sky, and when they found him, they were going to choke the life out of him for letting this come to pass.

Sometime later, Flannel came knocking on the door. He carried with him a tub of ice cream wrapped in a cloud and two big spoons he’d pilfered from the kitchen.

“Hypha!” he called out. “I got someone to sell me a snowcloud. It’s not all melted this time!” He looked all around the ceiling of the terrarium. “Hello? Where are you buddy? Hy—”

He tripped over Hypha’s limp body. Cherry chocolate chip ice cream splattered across the floor.

Chapter 31

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While Blue recovered, Red went back to work. Al Bathaa was all too happy to give her stage time. The demand for labor hadn’t declined since their failed assassination attempt. As far as she could tell, news of the plot hadn’t even gotten out to the public.

As she danced, she kept an eye peeled for Serene Dream. No one, not even the notoriously nosy Al Bathaa, knew where she was. Red had seen her walking with Giesu that fateful morning, which means that Blue had attacked her to make sure she stayed out of the way. But that didn’t automatically mean she was dead. She’d seen ponies survive much worse. Heck, she’d just helped Blue survive worse. And Hypha—well, she didn’t know for sure or not if he was dead. She’d watched him go down with that spear through his leg. But it didn’t look like a killing blow.

But she knew better than to hold out hope for hopeless causes. Deep down, she knew he was gone. Giesu wouldn’t let him live. It was as simple as that. Giesu was in control, and he wouldn’t let him live.

“He’s gone,” she snapped to nopony in particular. “It’s over.”

“What was that?” a stallion asked.

Red blinked. A few of the ponies reclining in the nearby baths looked up at her curiously.

She smiled balefully. “Nothing.” Thank goodness the color of her fur hid blushes.

That evening at the hideaway, Blue nosed through Red’s saddlebags while Red changed Blue’s bandages.

“No dinner tonight,” Red said. “Gotta save up for more healing ointment.” Blue understood, but the sunken look in her eyes made Red feel miserable. It had been years since they last had to go to bed for dinner. It was a demolishing feeling.

In a moment of desperation, Red considered eating a hooffull of mushrooms just to have something in her belly. She pushed the thought away and distracted herself by shimmying her bedroll next to Blue’s. “Lemme hold you,” she said. She realized she sounded desperate, but she tried to put it out of her mind. These were desperate times, after all.

A few minutes later they were both snoring quietly.

That night, while the city slept, a detail of city guards gathered for a raid on one of the buildings near Red and Blue’s hideaway. The mares weren’t the target, but that hardly mattered when the familiar cadence of clattering armor and truncheons on flesh echoed through the night. The fear was the same.

“Time to go,” Red said, already out of her bedroll and stuffing her belongings into her saddlebag. Blue followed suit, albeit slower. Red threw her bags over her back and moved to the trash bin. Out came one large saddlebag, two heavy coats, their coin purse, a roll-up bag of knives, two dried fig bars she was saving for Blue’s birthday, and one canvas bag filled to the brim with mother sky mushrooms.

She wasn’t sure how Blue would feel about the mushrooms. But now was not the time to hash it out. She stuffed them in the bottom of the saddlebag and covered them with the rest of her supplies.

She glanced over her shoulder to see if she’d been spotted. In the process of rolling up her bag, Blue had torn part of her wound open. She struggled to tie up her bag with one hoof and her teeth. The other foreleg dangled limply at her side. Dark blood dripped down her fur.

The first thing that came to Red’s mind was relief. Then shame slapped her hard across the face. She ripped a bandage from her pack and set to packing Blue’s wound.

Moving through shadows with a leaky chest wound seemed like a bad idea, so Blue and Red limped their way out the back of the alley instead. The sound of screams rang out behind them.

They found a new place to hide a few blocks down. It was half the size of their last spot and offered no natural light thanks to a precarious balcony overhang above them, but it was safe for the moment, which made it better than most other places in the city.

Neither slept. When it came time for Red to go to work the next day, she bailed and went to the market to pick up more ointment for Blue’s wounds instead. She returned to find Blue had unpacked the travel bag and set up their tarps and tent and bedrolls. She’d also pulled out the bag of mushrooms.

“Rats,” Red muttered under her breath as she squeezed through the entryway. “Hey, do you want some apples? They’re selling them up the street.”

Blue just sat there. Staring.

A bead of sweat rolled down Red’s brow. “Y’know they use mostly earth pony manure for hydroponics up here? It’s cheaper than importing animal manure from the surface, and most of the hydrofarmers are earth ponies. It’s kinda like karma for how they get treated. Making everyone else eat their manure. Heh.”

Blue pointed to the bag of mushrooms.

Red set down her bag with a huff. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let me see your bandages.” Blue pulled away. “I’m serious, I don’t want it getting infected. Lemme see it.”

Blue pointed to the bag.

Red sighed. “I know. I wanna put this ointment on you first though. Then we should eat something. Then we can talk about it. Okay?”

Blue shook her head. Before Red could stop her, she picked up a mushroom and chucked it down the narrow entryway.

Red scrambled to pick it up. “Don’t play with those,” she hissed. “I couldn’t help him. End of story.”

Blue’s look took on a sharp edge, like the point of a spear.

“He was pinned to the ground. What was I supposed to do? I had to get you out. I made a difficult choice, and I don’t regret it.”

Blue scooted away from her.

“Are you mad I saved your life?” Hot blood rushed to her cheeks. “Sorry I chose you over him. No—I chose you over neither of you. Cuz there was no way I could drag both of you out. Do you have any idea how hard it was just getting you out of there?” Her voice cracked. “Do you know how scared I was? We got stopped by guards, and I had to fight them, and then I had to pull that thing out of you, and, and—”

Blue wiped her eyes. Red snapped her mouth shut. Idiot. She feels horrible too. Force of habit urged her to talk her way out of Blue’s crosshairs, but she held herself back. She’d been speaking on Blue’s behalf for so long she’d grown used to dominating conversations. That was just the way it had always been. Which one of them was supposed to apologize here?

Red picked up the bag of mushrooms and gave it a tentative sniff. “He’s... not alive anymore. We have to figure this out ourselves.” She picked up a dried cap and rolled it between her hooves. Hypha said they were both monks. But that was back when he was still around. He was the real monk. Red was an imposter. “He said we could use them.” Blue snorted. “Right. Sorry. Partake.” Red put the mushroom back in the bag. “I don’t know anything about the order other than the meditation stuff and the mushrooms. Do you?”

Blue shook her head.

“Great.” Red sighed. “We could burn them. Or toss them off the edge of the city.” Blue shook her head. She was right—they couldn’t just walk away. But their connection to mother sky had always been facilitated by Hypha. He had all the knowledge. He was the conduit.

Red noticed something buried in all the mushrooms, something inorganic. She reached in and pulled out a slim spiral-bound book with a dark blue cover. Inside were lines of incomprehensible magical theory and detailed drawings of magical runes. She recognized one right away as Hypha’s light spell.

She turned back to the first page. There, written in smudgy pencil, were the words, feel it, receive it, let it go.

All the guilt and catharsis of survival welled up inside Red. They’d all failed in one way or another, slid down an ever-steepening slope until they were moving too fast to arrest their fall. They’d passed the point of no return a long time ago. But how large was the gap between the point of no return and the bottom? If there was no bridge leading back to safety, could she build one?

Red played with the clouds underneath her for a minute, lost in thought. Then she reached into the bag and popped a mushroom into her mouth. Blue followed suit.

The mushrooms brought back a pleasant memory from Red’s childhood. She and Blue had been running with each other for two years, though it hadn’t blossomed into anything more than that just yet.

They were in one of Derecho’s many public parks, enjoying a little open space and sunlight, sitting on a stolen blanket, eating stolen food out of a stolen satchel. Just two lost kids enjoying the nice weather. Unnoticed. Unsupervised. Utterly content.

Red said, “Y’know what would be cool? If today were my birthday.”

Blue shrugged. She picked up a juice box she’d pilfered from the market and pried the top open with her teeth. Bright pink juice dribbled down her chin as she drank.

“Y’know what? Yeah. Today is my birthday.” Red looked around. “What day is it?”

Blue finished the first juice box and reached for a second. It didn’t take words to articulate that she had no interest in finding a calendar.

Red hopped over to the nearest non-threatening looking mare and asked her, “What day is today?”

“Uh,” the mare replied. “Twelfth of April.”

Red smiled and sang a quick thank you and skipped off before the mare could ask her where her parents were. She got that question a lot. It was better to get out of earshot before it could even be asked. Saved everyone a lot of awkwardness and trouble.

When she got back to Blue, she announced in her most official voice, “Today is April twelfth, and it’s my birthday.”

Blue nodded, then went back to gnawing at the top of her juice box.

Red kicked Blue’s hoof playfully. “We have to celebrate.” Blue wormed away from her. “That’s what you’re supposed to do on birthdays. C’mon.”

She pulled Blue to her hooves. Blue wasn’t expecting to be lifted off the ground so quickly and tipped over.

The two went tumbling in the soft clouds. Pink fruit juice flew everywhere. They eventually came to a stop with Red directly on top of Blue. Their noses touched. They were frozen. Something Red had never felt before welled up in her stomach—like nausea, except she didn’t want it to end. She was once again grateful her fur came in a color that covered her blush.

The memory began to dissolve. Outlines of buildings morphed into towering thunderheads. Vulturewolves hovered high above them. Faint growls of some big cat sounded in the distance. Blue wasn’t moving. Her rear end was wedged in the clouds. The harder Red pulled, the more stuck Blue became.

“Stand up!” Red shrieked happily, not seeing the pain in Blue’s eyes. “C’mon! It’s my birthday!”

Bright pink fruit juice bubbled up from the ground. The clouds dissolved into a pink ocean. All the pain and tiredness of the material world flattened out into a singular feeling of warmth. It spread through Red’s whole body until she was floating in it, a tranquil sea of trauma extending beyond every horizon. She watched as Blue disappeared beneath the waves. She wanted to go after her, but it felt so good to just float there.

A bubble broke the surface where Blue had been. Blip. Then a few more. Blip, blip, blip. The noise lulled Red deeper into stasis.

Then the bubbles stopped.

It was the silence that spurred Red to act. She flipped over and dove after Blue, but the water stung her eyes, and Blue was already so far away. The harder she pushed, the more the water solidified around her. Her air ran out. She breathed in and tasted fruit. The light dimmed.

A final bubble drifted up from the darkness. It kissed her snout and rolled softly up her face.

Red awoke to find Blue standing over her. The last bit hadn’t been a hallucination—Blue was wiping tears off Red’s face and planting soft kisses on her cheeks. Red ran a hoof over Blue’s close-cropped mane. Blue batted her hoof away and wrapped her up in a crushing hug.

“I love you,” Red whispered.

Blue nodded back.

So much still needed to be done. But this was a good place to start.

Chapter 32

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“Believe me, I’m just as concerned as you are,” Romulus said, more annoyed this time. He and Flannel double-timed it through the long corridors of the estate. Flannel kept his head down to avoid the stoney looks of the passing guards and dignitaries.

“I know, but, sir, respectfully, however concerned you are now, you should dial it up just a little bit more.” Flannel wanted to rap his hoof on the floor for emphasis, but at this speed he’d probably trip. “Hypha was foaming at the mouth. His eyes were rolled up. It was like he had a seizure or something.” A lump formed in his throat. “I thought the senator killed him. Poisoned him or kicked him to death or something.”

“Okay, I hear you. I’ll see what I can do about distracting the senator should he come around again.”

“Hypha said he’s coming back in a month, and if we don’t have a whole harvest by then he’s gonna do something awful to him. And, uh. Probably me too. I think that bit was implied.”

“He’s not going to hurt you. Either of you. I won’t let him.” The general’s voice was solid as a shield. Flannel desperately wanted to believe it could protect him.

“Sir? What’s gonna happen in a month?”

Romulus’s eyes grew distant. His hoof drew back. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

They found Hypha right where Flannel had left him. The foam was gone from the sides of his mouth. His eyes looked distant but otherwise fine. A deep purple bruise covered his chest.

Romulus knelt beside Hypha. “He’s gone. You’re safe now.” His voice was surprisingly gentle. Fatherly. “He surprised us. I’m sorry.”

Hypha nodded. His lips stayed sealed.

“I’m gonna pick you up and carry you to the infirmary now. Is that okay?”

“No,” Hypha blurted, “I can’t leave. I gotta protect them.”

“He’s not coming back anytime soon.”

Hypha’s hooves dug into Romulus’s fur. “He will.”

Romulus attempted to pick Hypha up, but Hypha wormed his way out of the general’s grasp and fled to the other side of the room. He ducked behind a stone, peering out from it like a child playing hide and seek.

“Fine.” Romulus put up his hooves in surrender. “Stay.” He turned to Flannel. “Come directly to me if he needs help. Don’t talk to aides. Aides talk.” Romulus turned to leave, but stopped short. “Can you show me which of the stones was showing promise?”

Flannel’s eyes flashed to Hypha. Cat’s out of the bag now. He knew this was bound to happen. But it was for the best. This was what needed to happen. Hypha just didn’t get it. This was his chance to be a hero for a change.

He pointed to the last stone in the lineup. “Back there, sir. It’s—”

Flannel froze. The stone was bare. The mushrooms were gone.

Romulus walked over to the stone to examine it more closely. Across the room, Hypha shifted, keeping his rock between himself and Romulus.

“I can’t tell this one apart from the others,” Romulus said. “How do you know this one’s got potential?”

“Uh.” Flannel scrambled for an expedient lie. “It’s the PH of the soil. It’s showing signs of mycelial growth. We can’t see it with our eyes yet, but it’s there.”

Romulus leaned down until his nose almost touched the dirt. “Good.” He stood up abruptly and made for the door. “Keep me updated. Remember, don’t talk about this to anyone. Come directly to me with any updates.”

Flannel nodded. Romulus’s retreating hoofsteps left a vacuous silence in the air. Flannel felt the tension on his chest build bit by bit, until it was all he could do to contain himself. He bit the inside of his cheek hard until the shape of Romulus disappeared behind the layers of plastic tarp.

Flannel whirled around to face Hypha. “Where are they?”

Hypha flinched. He ducked behind the stone.

“Where are they?” Flannel said again. He marched up to Hypha and only barely stopped himself from hitting him. “What did you do with them?”

“They’re safe,” Hypha murmured.

“What’s that mean? Where’d you put ‘em?” Hypha shrank away and curled himself up into a ball. Anger took hold. Flannel stooped over Hypha and shouted in his ear, “It’s not just you that’s gonna get messed up if we fail. I’m out here too.” Hypha didn’t respond. “Hello? Anyone home? Gods in hell, I should just go back to landscaping.”

“Quit then,” Hypha said softly. “See if he’d let you leave.”

“I’m not—” Flannel stomped his hoof on the floor. “That’s the last thing we need.”

“I agree. We need to keep our heads down.”

“No, that’s not—rrrgh. I don’t mean that, either. There’s politickin’ in the air, and we’re liable to get caught in the middle if we don’t play this right. We gotta tell him.”

The anger passed from Flannel without warning, like the sudden end of a strong prairie storm. He took a deep breath in and let it out through his nose. The whole place smelled earthy and garlicky, with just a hint of sulfur on the back end. The ambient hum of the light crystals made his ears twitch.

“I know you’re scared,” Flannel said. “I’m scared too. It feels like back when I was little, and everyone was sayin’ the griffons were about to rebel. No one thought they’d actually do it. But there was this feeling in the air, like... like...” He blinked heavily. “Nevermind. We know how to grow them now. We should get the rest of the stones ready.”

Slowly, wincing, Hypha stood up. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“What do you think they’ll do with us once we’ve shown them how to grow mother sky?”

That made Flannel stop short. “Uh. They’ll have us mass produce them. They need a lot.”

“Do you think they’ll accept that level of liability?”

Flannel snorted and started towards the supply cabinet. There was a great deal of work to be done today, and based on how slowly Hypha was moving, the lion’s share was gonna fall on him. “I’m not a liability,” he muttered.

By evening, all forty eight stones had been prepped and seeded. Flannel fell asleep before his head hit the pillow.

In his dreams, he saw the destruction of his village played out in shadows on the walls of his memory. A pony became a building, then the building burst into flames, then it was a pony again, rolling on the ground as the flames consumed them. He heard the voice of his mother crying out for him.

He jerked awake. It was night outside. He was in his quarters, panting, caked with sweat, but safe. Still, the smell of smoke choked his nostrils, lingering even as the last tendrils of sleep unwove themselves from his body.

“You’re okay,” he whispered to himself. “You’re fine. It’s—” He coughed. “You’re...”

He sniffed the air again and gagged. That smell definitely wasn’t part of the dream. Something was burning. He immediately thought, How does a city made of clouds burn?

Then he realized what fire in a cloud city meant. He bolted out of bed.

Normal nighttime light came through the cloudstone as a dim, star speckled blue. As he raced towards the terrarium, the walls shifted to an angry red. Though he couldn’t hear the telltale crackle and hiss, he saw the light flickering like rattlesnakes spooling up their tails. His heart sank as the colors deepend. For it to come through the walls so vividly, it had to be a doozy of a blaze.

He rounded the final corner, and the heat and sound hit him all at once. It wasn’t one object in the terrarium that was ablaze, but the entire room itself. A singular swath of flame feasted on the piles of curios and priceless artifacts, reaching towards the ceiling, warping the glass roof. One of the panels exploded, sending shards of molten glass raining down to the floor.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow move against the flow of the others. He whirled around and saw Hypha racing out of the reach of the flames. He wore a damp rag over his face.

When he saw Flannel, he pulled the rag down and waved. “Couldn’t sleep?”

The smell, the flames, the nonchalant smile on Hypha’s face—Flannel couldn’t wrap his head around any of it. “What happened?” he shouted over the roar.

Hypha pointed to the conflagration. “There’s a fire.”

“No kidding. Let’s get the guards.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Flannel, I wanted to speak to you about earlier.”

Another glass roof panel shattered. “Does it have to be right this minute?”

“Flannel, I owe you an apology.”

“An apology for what?”

“When we were arguing earlier, I implied you were a liability. But I shouldn’t have said that. You’re not a liability. You’re my friend, and you’re a great farmer. I’m sorry.”

Hypha pressed a drawstring bag into Flannel’s hooves. He looked inside and found the first mushroom harvest from the microplot.

“Those are yours.,” Hypha said. “You grew them. You earned them.”

One of the water barrels bowed outwards and burst like a carcass in the hot summer sun. The flames hissed and reared back where the water gurgled out, then roared back once it evaporated. Flannel flinched. Hypha didn’t seem to notice.

“Okay, sure,” Flannel said, “apology accepted. Now c’mon, we gotta put this out.”

“We can’t. It’s too far gone.”

“Yeah, I can see that. But we gotta do something, otherwise they’ll think we—” Flannel froze as the pieces finally snapped together. “You.”

“Don’t be upset. Please. This is all part of the process.”

“You’re gonna get us killed! This is the general’s estate. This is his stuff.”

“If he read the last report I submitted, he’ll also know the crystal UV lights we’ve been using are showing signs of premature aging. If one of them were to blow out, the whole place could go up.”

The estate rumbled underhoof. Through the glare and the smoke, Flannel caught sight of the cloudstone floor panels disintegrating in the heat. He had no idea cloudstone could do that. He’d never seen a fire of this magnitude in Derecho before.

“Why?” Flannel asked. By now the fire was so loud he had to shout.

“I’m making us indispensable,” Hypha replied.

As Flannel watched in horror, Hypha picked up the bag of mushrooms the general had stolen from out east. A sad smile crossed his face. He heaved them into the fire.

Flannel leapt after them, but he was too slow. The bag went up. Flannel half-expected spirits to burst out, but the bag merely burned like everything else.The mushrooms were reduced to shadows of ash rising into the air.

Another massive cloudstone floor tile disintegrated. Then the one next to it. Then the next six went up in a chain reaction of pops and hisses and groans. The whole estate shook like it was about to explode.

Flannel had barely enough time to grab hypha and gallop out of the terrarium. The room gave one final shudder as the final layer of supporting cloudstone collapsed, and the stones, the workbenches, the cabinets, the molten glass, and the skeletal remains of all their working materials fell through the floor.

The debris fell like a meteor towards the unsuspecting caravan sleeping beneath the city.

Chapter 33

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The runes in the spell book reminded Red of the mandalas in Canary’s cage. The notes were mostly incomprehensible, but she found it fun to copy the diagrams.

She spent whatever time she wasn’t working or tending to Blue drawing circles on the floor of their hideaway and filling them with every combination of rune in the book, until it all became one big incomprehensible blob. When she ran out of space, she started over.

Blue ignored it at first, spending most of her time sleeping and stretching her wounded muscles. But when Red graduated from the floor to one of the walls, Blue finally started paying attention.

Red was mostly through one of these wall runes when she felt Blue’s muzzle brush against her shoulder.

“Hey,” Red murmured, her attention still locked on her half-finished creation. “Need anything?”

Blue shook her head but made no effort to move.

Red gestured to Hypha’s book of rune spells sitting propped against the wall. “See that?”

The book was open to a page entitled, Lightning and its Nonviolent Applications. A dense geometric rune covered the lower half of the page.

“There’s just enough room at the top to add—hang on.” She hopped over to the book and flipped to an earlier page with a much simpler rune, a diamond shape made up of two triangles sharing a long edge in the middle. “If I add it to the middle like I’m supposed to, it looks like chicken scratch.” She pointed to the top of the wall rune. “But if I squeeze it in there...”

She let herself get absorbed back into her work. When her rune was done, she took a step back to admire her work.

“Hypha would hate this,” she said. A faint smile passed over her face. “Wanna help me trash it?”

Blue’s face lit up. They attacked the wall together, dashing the last four hours of effort in a matter of moments.

Feel it. Receive it. Let it go. The mantra lingered in Red’s mind long after the mandala was gone. The words were a blank monolith, a tile of perfectly smooth cloudstone. Somewhere beneath those words was a deeper idea she couldn’t access. She wanted in.

She decided to dedicate the next morning’s meditation to figuring the mantra out. Without Hypha to fly them out, they had to settle for meditating on the edge of the city. The difference was subtle, but noticeable. Red felt the spin as another factor to add into the precise geometry of her movements.

Of course, all her calculations didn’t account for Blue. While Red poured all of her focus into a difficult one-legged flamingo pose, Blue took a deep breath and let out an omnic, “Hmmm.” Smoke curled from her lips. She blew the cloud directly into Red’s face.

“Hey!” Red wobbled in place. The smoke tasted like ozone and crystal batteries. “Quit it.”

Blue smirked at her. A minute later, she blew another puff of smoke in her face. Red unfolded herself from her pose long enough to shove Blue’s face into the clouds before resuming her pose.

Blue wiped the condensation from her face and whispered into her cupped hooves. Glowing fog pooled at her hooves, then spilled out over the clouds. Red felt the cool chill creep over her.

“Quit it,” she said. “I’m trying to be a good monk.”

Blue thought, up a little, just a little, and raised the fog in a neat box around Red, a slow and steady climb up the mare’s legs. She saw goosebumps erupt on Red’s legs.

Red did her best to ignore it. Not like saying stop would work anyway. If Blue was going to tease her, then the only course of action was to ignore it until she got bored. She placed all her weight on one rear leg and lifted the other three off the ground. Then she bent forward until her torso was parallel to the ground.

Blue got impatient. She lifted the smokescreen all at once. Red disappeared in a perfect cube of clouds. The shift in pressure messed up Red’s mane and made her eardrums ache.

But beside the mild pain and the goosebumps and the annoyance, Red felt something else. Something new. The air moved around her, charged with an energy she’d never felt before. Maybe this was some sort of lightning cloud? But this was different than static charge. It didn’t cling to her skin the way static did. It went deeper, way deeper, all the way through her.

Falling out of the pose meant Blue won, but the charge in the air was impossible to ignore. Red thought, Whatever, just reel it in, and drew her forelegs in close to her chest.

Ripples shot through the fog. Invisible lightning danced up Red’s legs. Blue orbs of light coalesced on her hooftips.

Red screamed and pitched forwards.

She landed with her front hooves dangling off the edge of the city. The vast empty space between herself and the ground overwhelmed her. The orbs fizzled and vanished.

Red was back on her hooves in a flash. Blue dropped the smoke and rushed to Red’s side, fully expecting Red to throw her off the city in a fit of rage.

What she wasn’t expecting was to be tackled in a crushing hug.

“I can do magic!” Red cackled with laughter. “I can do magic!”

She peppered Blue up and down with frantic happy kisses. Blue’s face slowly unscrewed itself from the flinch it was frozen in. Maybe she wasn’t mad after all.

“Still gonna kill you,” Red murmured. The kisses moved lower, to Blue’s neck. Then her collarbone. Then the bandages over her heart. Then lower still.

Blue smiled.

Bit by bit, the wound on Blue’s chest scarred over. The mushrooms accelerated the healing process, but the musculature remained damaged. Red noticed Blue wincing when she made sharp turns or stopped short.

At night, they created elaborate race courses over the local rooftops. For Blue, it was a great way to rehabilitate. For Red, the courses served as a way to train her primary gift from mother sky. She could summon orbs and play artist, but at the end of the day she was still just a magically enhanced packmule.

Don’t look a gift-pony in the mouth, she thought to herself. Better than nothing.

That night, their course took them towards the palaces on the north side of the city. Blue took shortcuts through shadows, swimming from rooftop to rooftop. Red simply leapt over the gaps She might not have had Blue’s ability to walk through shadows, but the mushrooms gave her the speed and agility of a superathlete.

They came to a stop at the edge of the neighborhood, where a wide thoroughfare separated the palace borough from the slums. Red paused for a moment to catch her breath. Then she turned around.

“Again,” she said, and ran back the way she came.

They ran the route three more times over the next hour. The jumping was the most difficult part. She could leap higher and farther with the help of the mushrooms, but that meant she had to relearn her limits. An overly enthusiastic leap could result in her overshooting her target and falling all the way down to street level. Mother sky could raise her up, but it wouldn’t do her any good if she fell on her head and split her skull in half. She had to go back to basics.

After the third run, the two mares paused for a breather on a nameless rooftop in the quiet northern estates. Below them, Derecho glittered, a singular pegasi monument of polished stone. The height filled Red with a giddy dizziness, like she was flying. What she wouldn’t give to sprout wings.

She turned to Blue and checked her chest. The wound looked angry, inflamed a moonlit shade of pink. But the edges weren’t bleeding like they had last night. No tearing anywhere.

“Looking good,” she said.

Blue’s lips met hers. Red’s stomach flipped. She hoped the shock of Blue’s kiss never went away. Then Blue took Red’s hoof and pointed towards the palace district of Derecho, and her stomach crashed back down like a flightless pony plunging off a rooftop.

Red’s lips parted, but no sound came out. She shook her head. Maybe she was just misunderstanding. Blue couldln’t possibly want to go back. Not now. Not so soon.

But Blue’s eyes spoke far more eloquently than most ponies could with words. They were unmistakable. And right now, the only thing in her eyes was silver moonlit murder. Giesu.

Red prodded Blue’s wound. It wouldn’t hurt badly, but she hoped the ache would serve as a reminder. It didn’t. Blue pushed her hoof away and pointed at the palace district.

“No.” Blue looked surprised. Red capitalized. “We can’t do it again.”

Blue shook her head.

“Do you wanna die?” The faintest bit of doubt flashed in Blue’s eyes. Red latched onto it. “We tried. We blew it. It’s over.”

Blue shook her head vigorously.

“They know we’re out here. We’d be sticking our hooves in a bear trap. Did you like getting shot? Is that it?” Blue took a step back. Red pressed forward. “We got Hypha killed.” Blue didn’t respond. “We killed him, Blue!”

Blue hit her. Red hit her back. The two locked limbs and tumbled across the rooftop. Moonlight made the sweat on their faces glitter like diamonds. Blue wound up on top, but Red used her size advantage and threw her off. Blue fell into a pool of shadows at the edge of the rooftop.

Red realized her mistake and dove after her. But Blue was a hair faster. Just as Red grabbed Blue’s shoulder, she melted into the shadows. Red’s hooves slammed into the tile, unable to follow.

A scream bubbled up from Red’s throat. She clamped her lips shut and shadow-boxed the air until the rage subsided. Then she started back towards the hideaway at a dead sprint. One more round with the route.

Blue wasn’t at the hideaway when Red got back. Fine. If Blue wanted time to herself, then so be it. With her shadowsteppinng ability back to full form, there wasn’t anything anypony, even Red, could do to find her. Sleep was out of the question, too. Too many thoughts swirling around in her head.

Red attacked the wall instead, scrawling massive incomprehensible rune combinations into the clouds.

How could Blue want to try again? Hypha was the first friend they’d made in years, and they’d left him to die. How did Blue have this much hate inside her? How did she keep rebuilding the bridge between her and her past? Red could barely remember when she was six years old. No one had cut out her tongue and plucked all her teeth. But no one had shown her any particular kindness, either. She was an orphan. Street trash. No one loved her. No one cared. But she got over that. She was fine.

Her hoof slashed the wall viciously, dislodging a whole chunk of cloud. No, she wasn’t fine. She was trapped between Blue’s impossible desires and a shield wall of legionaries. She’d let herself get pushed into place like a pawn, and sooner or later she’d let herself get pushed into a sword. It was just how the world was. Blue was all she had. Where she pointed, Red ran.

Tiredness crept up on her like a bandit, pouncing as she stepped away from her canvas. She left her mandala half-finished and collapsed into her bedroll. Deep, dreamless sleep consumed her.

Too soon, someone shook Red awake.

She swam in the haze of an evaporating dream. Without thinking, she batted the hoof away and went for her knife.

The hoof squeezed her shoulder softly. Blue’s face came into view. She was smiling.

Red paused. Slowly, she gave up digging for the knife. It was near morning. What stars could be seen through the city’s light pollution were going out, one by one.

“Lemme sleep.” Red burrowed into her bedroll, more to keep Blue out than keep the warmth in. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

Blue went for the strap on her bedroll, meaning to dump Red out all at once. But Red knew this trick. She grabbed Blue’s foreleg and squeezed it as hard as she could. She hissed right into Blue’s face, all spit and venom, “You don’t know when to quit, don’t you.”

That finally got Blue’s attention. She let go of the strap and sat down beside Red. There was an expectant look on her face. No violence. No frustration. Just space for Red to speak.

“I can’t do this anymore. We should get outta town. Find someplace quiet and settle down for awhile.” Blue went to hug her. Red put a hoof on her chest. “Wait. Let me finish. I just...” She waved her hooves to summon the right words, to no avail. “We had a chance to kill Giesu. We failed. Now we have a chance to do something else. Something better.”

The no in Blue’s eyes was plainer than speech.

“Yes. I’m serious. We have everything we need to start fresh. We have each other, and the mushrooms, and the book. We could travel the world. Or settle down somewhere. I don’t care.” Her eyes were watering again. “But if we go back to the palace district and look for Giesu, someone’s gonna get killed. I just know it.”

Blue jabbed a hoof at the palace. Red heard, Yeah, him.

“What if it’s us? What if it’s only one of us? Ever think of that? If we both die up there, that’d be horrible, but if you die, and I’m stuck here without you, I have no idea what I’d do. No idea.”

Only once the familiar silence of their camp settled back around them did she realize she was crying. She dug up a hunk of cloud from the ground and blew her nose on it before setting it back into the ground, snot-side down.

Blue put her hoof under Red’s chin and brought their gazes together. Smoke spilled out from between her lips. In a toothless, tongueless, tantalizing voice, she whispered, “Hypha.”

Red and Blue were far from a perfect couple. They’d spent as much time making up as they’d spent falling out. They’d argued, snarled, spat, bit, thrown, and kicked each other halfway across the greater Equestrian subcontinent.

But giving Red hope that Hypha might still be alive—that was a new low.

They took the same route they’d practiced just a few hours before to get to the north side of town. Blue took the lead, pulling her at a breakneck pace over rooftops, past the thoroughfare that marked the turnaround point on their old route, and into the luxurious palace district.

The mansions got larger and larger, until it seemed the city could no longer contain them. Blue halted her on a rooftop ledge overlooking one of these truly gargantuan complexes. Unlike its neighbors, this one flew the red banners of a Derechan general.

Blue pointed to a glinting spot of metal all the way on the other side of the complex. Then she pointed to the complex walls. Two legionaries in black armor shuffled along the palisade. Hints of a hushed conversation carried over the rooftops.

Blue nodded to the roof. Red shook her head. Blue nodded again, a little more intently. Red shook her head harder. Blue whispered, “Hypha,” this time without any of the smoke.

“What do you mean, Hypha? Hypha’s dead.”

Blue jabbed her hoof wildly at the complex. Her eyes implored trust.

A glimmer of light pierced the veil of Red’s mind—not quite hope, but something close. Hypha had to be dead. She saw him go down. She knew who had taken him captive. How he could have wound up the prisoner of a general, much less be alive at all, was beyond her. Blue was wrong. She had to be. If Red unmade her peace, and Blue was wrong, she didn’t know how to remake it again.

But that glimmer of light refused to go away. It lanced her. It made her skin crawl. She had to see.

Blue pulled a knife from out of nowhere.

“What are you doing?” Red hissed. Blue motioned towards the guards. “No, no, it’s too early. I don’t wanna lug around dead guys right now.” A lightbulb went off in her head. “Let me distract them.”

Blue hardly seemed convinced, but she put away the knife. Red planted her hooves on the roof and thought back to her experiments at the city’s edge.

“Give me some smoke.”

Blue whispered words into her cupped hooves. A cloud of fog rolled out of her mouth, consuming both mares. Red thought, Feel it, receive it, let it go, and drew her hooves into her chest.

The smoke trembled and coalesced. An orb of light danced on her hooftips. She forced down a squeal of joy. The rune was next—a circle on the outside, then a diamond made out of two triangles sharing a long edge in the middle.

She stared at the rune for a moment. It lingered in the air, radiating potential energy.

“Oh, right.” Red pressed her hoof into the center of the rune. It gave way, shrinking into a singular ball of light. Red glanced at Blue. Her eyes were wide. A smile graced her lips.

Red located the two guards on the wall. She stood, wound up, and chucked the orb with all her might.

The light whizzed through the air like a baseball, missing the guards by only a few yards. It bounced off the exterior wall and came to rest on the street some distance away.

The guards cried out. Two more appeared a moment later. Then a third pair on the ground. The light made their armor gleam as they approached it, spears at the ready.

Blue shadowstepped over to the complex rooftop and gestured for Red to jump.

For any other earth pony, the leap was suicidally long. Not for Red. Red had mother sky on her side. She sailed across the gap with room to spare.

The shining mass of metal they’d spied from afar was actually a sunroof, a massive checkerboard of glass panels held in place by a lattice framework of metal. The air on the inside was much warmer than the outside. Condensation built up on the inside of the glass, making it difficult to see what was inside.

Red saw dozens of boulders lined up in rows, with a veritable landfill of cabinets and workbenches and random junk surrounding it. She told herself to be patient and kept her eyes peeled on the entryway.

A few minutes later, two shapes came into the room. They were both earth ponies, both roughly similar colors. One of them had a metal leg.

Red put her nose to the glass. “That’s—” The word fogged the window. She turned away to face Blue, who stood a few paces away, keeping an eye out for guards. “That’s not him.”

Blue just shrugged. Red followed the shapes as they moved from stone to stone. They were doing something to each one. Scrubbing them? She couldn’t be sure.

“Those are just regular workers. Hypha would never work for them.”

The two ponies finished their work. One left the way he’d come in. The other, the one with the metal leg, hopped on top of the closest stone and assumed a cross-legged pose.

Red turned away. “I’m telling you, that’s not him. That’s not possible. He’s dead. This is stupid.”

When Red looked again, the earth pony with the metal leg was floating.

Red returned to the hideaway and immediately went to sleep. Her mind raced a million miles a minute. Her dreams manifested as uncertain blobs of color.

She woke to a deep rumble resonating through the ground. She pulled her blanket over her head. “Blue, cut it out.”

Blue yanked the blanket off her. Her eyes screamed danger. Red was on her hooves a moment later, tearing open her bag, ready to pack up her life and flee in ten seconds flat. Blue stopped her and motioned for her to go up to the rooftops.

There, they sat and watched as a jet of flame five stories tall erupted from the palace district.

The city woke up. The air grew thick with the grey shapes of pegasi darting through the air. Most were non-nobles and therefore weren’t allowed in the palace district, so they flocked to the borough border to watch the tragedy unfold. A crowd of the city’s working class earth ponies choked the streets.

The fire burned for perhaps ten minutes. Then the city gave another great rumble. Pegasi displaced, driven into the air. The crowds on the ground murmured uneasily.

The light shifted. The bottom gave way. The flames fell through the city The light shifted, crawling up the walls of nearby buildings. Then there was another great bang somewhere far below them.

The city’s pegasi took flight in droves. The earth ponies shifted direction, moving towards the edge of town. Red and Blue got down from the roof and blended in with the crowd.

At the city’s edge, the source of the fire became clear. Whatever was on fire had burned through the clouds and fell squarely in the middle of the surface caravan. Long shadows of ponies, little more than ants at this height, scrambled at the edge of the fire, darting in and out of the light. Some of the shapes appeared to flicker. Then the smoke shifted, and Red realized some of the little ponies down there on the ground were on fire themselves.

A pony beside the mares muttered, “Are we under attack?”

The thought spread like plague. Within moments the whole crowd started to shuffle closer together. Tails flicked nervously. Ears sprang up. The crowd collectively started to push towards the city’s edge.

Red and Blue slipped away silently.

Back in the coolness of their alley hideaway, they shared a few small mother sky mushrooms and washed it down with water from the nearby fountain. Blue sat still, her eyes cloudy, lost in thought. Red paced the length of the alley with silent steps.

The faint rumble of fire and death lingered well into the morning.

Chapter 34

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Agitants and mourners surged through the streets of Derecho in a violent parody of the last months’ parades.

Once the complex had been declared structurally safe, Romulus made his way to the ruins of the terrarium. Laborers and staff combed through the burned wreckage to salvage what precious little had survived the fire. The floor had been patched to prevent curious commoners from flying beneath the city to get a peek at the damage. Derechans loved destruction as much as they loved the grand idea of Derecho itself. A noble estate letting a fire, of all things, burn out of control and smother so many lives was a perfectly Derechan story. The ponies outside the gates wanted their fill of it.

An aide burst in. “General, sir—senator Giesu is here.”

He’d arrived quicker than Romulus expected. “Let him in.”

“He’s already in, sir. We told him you were in the conference rooms.”

Romulus nodded. “Good work.”

The conference rooms were on the other side of the estate. Romulus guessed he had about fifteen minutes to think of what he was going to tell the senator. He gave the charred remains of a centuries-old ornamental rug a little kick with his hoof before turning to the labor foreman across the room. “I’d like a copy of the salvage list.”

The foreman nodded, his face stern. Romulus realized most of the other ponies in the room wore the same mask. The intensity of their gaze was like those of subordinate commanders after a route.

Romulus retired to his office and nursed a strong mug of coffee until GIesu finally found him. He saw the senator’s hulking shadow through the frosted glass of his office door and felt the beating of his hooves against the cloudstone.

The general’s mind went back to his first campaign, when armies of hooded zebras marched on his outnumbered legions in the open plains of Numba ya Joka. Their war songs were cheery and light. He wished he had that sort of blithe courage.

The door burst open. A stale, sweaty smell filled the air.

“Do you find—” Giesu paused, gasping for breath. “Do you find this amusing?”

Romulus set down the cup of coffee and gestured towards a chair opposite him. “I don’t find death amusing in the slightest.”

Giesu made no move to sit. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about your little dirt munching pets who burned down your estate.”

“We haven’t determined the cause of the fire yet.”

“What else could it be?” Giesu bellowed. “You’ve been babying them for a whole month now, and look what you’ve got to show for it. First they fail to produce anything of value. Now they drop this steaming nightmare into our laps.” Giesu finally surrendered to the whims of his aching hooves and sat down in the chair. “You’re just keeping them around because you feel guilty.”

“You know as well as I do how powerful those mushrooms are. We can use them.”

“Forget the mushrooms. Honestly, what is your obsession with them? I’ve had them a hundred times.”

“You haven’t had the real deal.”

“So I’ve heard. Listen, general, please think about this logically. A minor magic buff in battle just isn’t worth all this bad press. And the damages! We have to seriously consider whether this fire is going to tank public opinion of us.” He balled up a hooffull of his fancy imported robe and used it to mop the sweat from his brow. “It’s time to cut them loose.”

When Giesu looked up, Romulus was holding a machete.

“General.” A note of nervousness wormed its way into Giesu’s voice. “What are you doing with that.”

Romulus held up his other hoof, which cradled a bottle of expensive champagne. “My friend,” he announced, “we’re celebrating.”

Giesu deadpanned. “We’re celebrating?”

“Yes. Don’t you see? We just won.”

In one fluid motion, the machete swiped the cork of the bottle clean off. A merry pop filled the air. A dribble of foam cascaded down the bottle’s neck and onto the general’s desk.

“Is this more soldier humor?” Giesu asked.

“Who said I was joking?”

“Very well then. Enlighten me.”

“There will be no more campaigns. No more incursions. No more carrying dead ponies on shields. No more. Those hundred deaths down there on the ground bought the lives of thousands of Derechans.” Romulus downed his glass in one gulp, then pulled out a large notepad and a pencil. “Allow me to elaborate.”

Giesu’s stomach rumbled. Was he hungry or nauseous? He could never tell the difference. He clutched his glass of champagne, staring into the bubbles like they held some coded message for him and him alone, as Romulus began to unveil his plan.

Flannel had survived being run out of his homeland on the pitchfork tip of an angry mob. He’d been worked over, hosed down with insults, and shoved facefirst into the dirt again and again. He’d kept himself afloat when so many of his friends sank into the deep waters and never resurfaced.

None of those experiences compared to the terror of this moment.

When the terrarium collapsed, they retreated to Flannel’s bedroom. Every sound echoing off the long, lonely corridor made him flinch. All Romulus had to do was walk up here and say the word, and they’d be finished. There was no distance nor locked door that could stand between the general and something he wanted.

Flannel turned around. Hypha was still curled up in the corner. He hadn’t spoken since the terrarium fell out of the sky.

How long had he planned the arson? More importantly, how had he not seen this coming? Fire wasn’t rare in Derecho because wood was expensive. Cloudstone was a clever marketing ploy. Even its name was a lie. As sturdy as it felt underhoof, it was still lighter than air.

Flannel wondered, for the fifth or sixth time today, if he should act on the urge to kill him.

“We’ll need new rocks,” Flannel said coldly. Mass murder or no, he was here to do a job, and he was going to do it. He needed his superiors to know whose side he was on. “Sand, soil, tubing... what else?”

Hypha didn’t reply.

Flannel squatted down so he was right next to Hypha’s ear. “What else, Hypha?”

Hypha’s whole body trembled. “I don’t—I—why would she do that?”

“Maybe you did it.” Flannel stood up. “You used crushed up shale in the soil, right? What kind of shale was it?”

Hypha swallowed a lump in his throat. “Haynesville shale.”

Flannel made a mental note to figure out what Haynesville shale was and where to get it. Sourcing things from the surface was going to be significantly more difficult this time around.

“I’m gonna take my mushrooms to the general,” Flannel said.

That got Hypha’s attention. He leapt to his hooves, using the wall as a crutch. His prosthetic clicked and whirred frantically. “If you do that, all of this will have been for nothing.”

“You’re not thinking with your noggin. We’re the most convenient scapegoats. We’re always the scapegoats. We gotta give him something, or he’s gonna hose us.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“You don’t get how these things go. The ponies on top find a pony on bottom to blame, then that pony gets hogtied and thrown off the side of the city. You killed ponies. Now they want blood.”

“No. It’s not... Not after...” Hypha trailed off. His eyes flickered between Flannel and the basket. “She didn’t do all this just so we could throw it away.”

The urge to get right up in Hypha’s face and scream passed through Flannel’s mind. He’d have plenty to scream about. But instead, he took one big step back, sucked in a slow, deep breath, and walked over to his desk. The process of making lists and preparing for a new job wasn’t particularly difficult, but it required his complete attention. He could lose himself in it, let the monotony dull the edge of his anger.

He felt Hypha behind him, a tumbleweed of uncertainty and fear. Good. A little fear might just set him on the right track. To think he was letting this scared kid lead him... well, safe to say there’d be no more of that. It was straight and narrow from here on out. No more meditating. No more funny mushrooms. No more any of it.

“We have to figure out why this happened,” Hypha said.

Flannell’s face twisted. His calm evaporated like so much cloudstone in a fire. “I’ll tell you why. All those ponies are dead because you forgot cloudstone is made of clouds, and it can evaporate if it’s hot enough. And you thought Romulus cared about you beyond what you could provide for him, which is wrong. And you thought I was gonna go along with your weird little mushroom cult because of a few little flying tricks and a cute little vision quest. But guess what! If I dug through the trash and ate last week’s bean slaw salad, I’d probably see some pretty wild things too. Maybe I’d even see mother sky. Maybe she could tell me why it was actually a good idea to light a cloud city on fire!”

With that, he took out a quill and threw himself into making a list of what they’d lost. He made it two lines before the quill snapped. Flannel snarled and pulled out another one.

“Mom’s gonna kill me,” he muttered.

Mayweather had been general Romulus’s attendant for nearly a decade now. She never accompanied him on campaigns, so the soldierly side of the general remained a mystery to her. But she knew the politician side of Romulus better than anypony else in the entire kingdom.

Right now, she deduced that Romulus was piss-drunk.

“Speech!” Romulus shot down the hall like a volley of arrows. He bellowed down the hall in a voice that sent lesser ponies scurrying. “I need to make a decree! I need...” He peered at the bottle of champagne he clutched in his hoof. “Mayweather!”

Mayweather, who had been trailing behind him the whole time, said, “Yes, sir?”

“I need—”

“To make a decree. Yes, general. Should I inform the press corps?”

“Yes. Let’s do it outside by the gates. I want the public to hear.”

“Right now?” She glanced at his rumpled robes, the patchwork of mysterious stains accenting his outfit. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, sir?”

“Trust me Mayweather.” He hiccuped. “It has to be now.”

Just then, Giesu emerged from around the hall, swaying heavily from one side to another. “You still didn’t—” He paused to huff and puff. “General—you didn’t tell me what—what is the plan? The plan, Romulus!”

He raised one hoof into the air, like an ancient statue of a god racing into battle. Then he threw up. The sound made Romulus throw up, too.

Mayweather rolled her eyes and went to get the cleaning staff.

One power nap, two strong cups of coffee, and three more dry heaves later, Romulus emerged from the gates of his estate looking just as regal and austere as ever. A crowd of journalists and locals had assembled on the street, held back by a ring of pegasus guards in red and black armor.

No nobles decided to attend, though Romulus noted a few aides and advisors clustered near the periphery. Good, he thought. The rats will hear.

“Ponies of Derecho,” Romulus bellowed. “Last night, we suffered a horrible tragedy. A hundred and four ponies, forty six griffons, five diamond dogs, and one yak lost their lives. The terrarium in my estate caught fire. It burned so hot that it melted through the cloudstone foundation, and the debris fell down to earth.”

The crowd let out a murmur. A few looked angry. Some seemed skeptical. Most of them looked hungry.

“After reviewing the evidence, we concluded this was no unfortunate accident. This was nothing short of an attempt on my life!”

Now he had their attention. The hunger ramped up to ravenous impatience. The crowd started to push forward. The guards dug in their hooves.

“And not just my life, either. Senator Giesu of Derecho was set to arrive at my estate the morning the attack took place. We still don’t have all the information. But it seems as though the assassins were hoping to catch the two of us while we had breakfast.”

He slammed his hooves down on his podium. “But those amateurs failed!”

The crowd went wild.

Before the din had fully died down, Romulus went on, “There exists within the Derechan republic a faction of powerful ponies. These ponies have watched me from the shadows, observing my numerous successes in the defense and expansion of the republic. They hate it. They hate me. But most of all, they hate you.” He paused to sweep a hoof over the crowd. They hate you because I am you. They fear a commoner rising through the ranks to achieve greatness. An earth pony, no less. I was born in misery and poverty. I joined the army to elevate my station. And through the merit of my own accomplishments, I did just that. I rose to the rank of general. I led conquests. I brought glory and riches to Derecho!”

Then he jabbed his hoof in the direction of the political forum. “But they don’t care about that. Our prosperity means nothing to them. In fact, they hate our prosperity too!”

The crowd roared in agreement.

“They don’t want Derecho to be rich or powerful. A prosperous and powerful citizenry is a citizenry that thinks for itself. Only the starving and the weak follow blindly. These ponies in power—they want you to be starving and weak so they can control you.”

Then, as the crowd pressed into the line of guards, as the senatorial aides and advisors began to melt away into the shadows, Romulus cried out, “One can only imagine what Derecho could be without them!”

The crowd, jubilant and frothing mad, broke through the line of guards. Romulus greeted them with open arms.

It took all afternoon for the crowd to dissipate. Romulus staggered back into the castle, supported physically by Mayweather. His ceremonial armor was nicked and scratched. Several ponies had torn pieces out of his cape as souvenirs. His guard captain was furious at him for putting himself in such an exposed position.

But he’d won. That speech was a battle, and he’d won.

He found Giesu in the dining room horking down some kind of pasta dish. A servant brought out a plate of steamed fish brushed with oil and spices. Giesu caught a whiff, and his eating slowed.

“That was a good speech,” Giesu said. “If the other senators weren’t plotting to kill us, they will be now.”

Romulus nodded, then went back to his fish.

“I’d like to stay here for the next few days. Given the circumstances, a trip back to my estate could be dangerous.”

“I’ll have a room prepared for you.”

“Good.” Giesu slurped up a long strand of pasta. “I’d also like to make some changes to—”

Romulus tossed his silverware onto his plate with a loud rattle of silver and china. “Stop.”

“You don’t even know—”

“I know exactly what you’re going to propose. The answer is still no.”

“You don’t see the full picture.”

“No, you don’t see the full picture. The mushrooms you took at Canary’s Cage are a shadow on the wall compared to the real ones.”

“The mushrooms will give our army vision that aren’t really there. Don’t you think that would affect their ability to operate in the field?”

“We’d give them a small dose only. Not enough to induce hallucinations, but enough to buff their latent magic.”

“I understand it’s difficult for you to remain objective, but please try to understand it from my perspective.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“This is... what did you call it? An earth pony thing.” Giesu waved a hoof in the air. “These mushrooms have clearly affected you quite profoundly, no doubt because of your genetic predisposition to them, and now you’re unable to view their strategic value objectively.”

“I am objective. You just don’t have all the facts.”

“You’re seeing facts that aren’t there, general.”

They stared at each other across the long table. After a protracted silence, they went back to dinner, marinating in silence and a collective hangover. When Romulus finally spoke again, it was to ask for two mugs of tea.

When they arrived, he lifted his mug and said, “To no more campaigns.”

Giesu raised his in kind. “To no more campaigns.”

After dinner, Giesu and Romulus retired to their respective bedrooms. Before he bedded down for the night, Romulus penned a note to Mayweather. It read:

find hypha and flannel. place them under guard. no one is allowed to see them except me. NO ONE. that means you know who. burn this after reading

Chapter 35

View Online

Giesu woke before dawn with the mother of all hangovers kicking in his head.

Just get it over with, he thought as he lurched out of bed. One miserable day for a lifetime of power. Just do it.

He staggered through the dark estate, his joints sticking like doors with bent hinges. The few guards he passed paused to salute him. He didn’t bother returning the gesture. He needed all four hooves firmly underneath him, or he would fall over for sure.

Outside, he moved silently through the elaborate gardens, to the wall on the outermost edge of the periphery. Derecho glowed beyond the wall, a flame on a million wicks. It would all be his soon.

At the predetermined hour, a mare dressed in black leapt over the wall. A mask concealed her face. Her mane and tail were both completely shaved. Her cutie mark was covered.

“Good morning,” she said.

Giesu took out a rolled-up piece of parchment and stuffed it into her hooves. “I need them all gone by sundown.”

The mare paused. A pair of expressive green eyes flickered from the senator to the list. “There’s forty names on here.”

“Forty two. Can you get it done or not?”

“That wasn’t the agreement.”

“I’ll pay double. Times are changing.”

She paused. “Give me until tomorrow morning.”

“That’s fine. Now go.”

“Senator.” She paused on the verge of speaking.

“What?”

“It’s, uh.” She pointed to her face. “Your nose.”

He touched his face and was surprised to find it wet. A small torrent of blood gushed out. “Oh.” He touched it again and flicked the blood onto the clouds. “That’s nothing.”

The mare in black shrugged. Then she hopped back over the wall.

With one hoof plugging his bleeding nose, Giesu couldn’t keep his balance. He made it about ten wavering steps before falling facefirst into a flowerbed. Perennial sweetness mingled with the smells of copper and pesticides.

If the blood hadn’t already ruined his robe, the dirt definitely did. But that didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered. Plenty more blood would flow today.

On the list he’d given the mare in black were the names of the forty two senators currently serving . In public, he derided these senators as, “menaces to freedom and decent society. In private, he had less restraint. They were dumb dirt-licking impediments to progress, and they had to die.

In his haste, Giesu had to forgo cleaning his face for the moment. He made his way to the upper levels of Romulus’s complex, to a spacious conference hall where his assistant LeBaine was waiting for him.

The last of LeBaine’s mane went grey when he saw Giesu. He leapt out of his seat. “Holy gods, senator—”

“I’m fine, it’s just a nosebleed. Now—”

“Are you sure? That’s so much blood.”

“Are you my doctor?”

LeBaine settled back into his seat. “No, senator.” There was still a look of worry in his eyes, but LeBaine was a smart pony. He knew better than to argue.

“Are you ready?” Giesu asked.

LeBaine pulled out a quill and readied a piece of parchment on the desk. “Ready.”

Their draft of Giesu’s speech, cut in a meager fifteen minutes and sealed to the page in LeBaine’s elegant unicorn script, went something like this:

Citizens of Derecho,

Tragedy paves a path for change. Three days ago, we watched in horror as the flower of Derechan pride and prosperity was scorched by a cowardly attempt on my life. Today, we have a silver lining: a path to justice.

We have received damning new evidence of treachery within the ranks of Derecho’s honored political elite. Facts have come to light incriminating certain elements within the esteemed senatorial ranks. These senators paid a criminal party to start a fire in General Romulus’s terrarium using alchemical magic and lasers, which they shined through the room’s windowed sunroof.

As you are all painfully aware of, the fire and subsequent collapse of the terrarium led to the untimely deaths of over a hundred creatures on the ground, many of whom were Derechan citizens. Their blood is on these senators’ hooves.

I will not stand idly by while my fellow citizens are murdered like animals.

This gross act of deceit was no doubt inspired by the success of Romulus’s armies abroad. Perhaps they grew jealous. Perhaps they were scared. In any case, they acted rashly.

I am here to punish them for those rash actions.

As I am speaking to you know, general Romulus and his loyal legionnaires have secured the capital and arrested those who so ignobly attempted to shirk the powers of justice from you, the citizens of Derecho.

I, and by extension general Romulus, are merely loyal citizens of Derecho performing a necessary pruning of corrupt branches from this tree of liberty. Freedom is blood. It’s sacrifice. It’s the great burden we all must bear.

I assure you that, when the dust settles, this city and its empire will be stronger than it has ever been before. Tragedy paves a path for change. Together with general Romulus, we will navigate Derecho through this difficult period of change.

Never forget our strength. Derecho drinks the blood of those who wish to kill it, and grows stronger.

Martial law will be instituted following the conclusion of this speech. Anypony out of their home past eight PM tonight will be summarily arrested for conspiracy to commit treason.

The sun had just peaked over the horizon when Giesu said his goodbyes to LeBaine and moved downstairs to meet with Romulus’s second in command, a young pegasus general named Sparrowshot.

When Sparrowshot saw him, he drew his sword and asked in a completely sincere voice, “Where’d they come from? Where did they get you?”

Giesu suppressed a bitter laugh. “Nosebleed. It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Worry about your own objectives, general.”

“Of course, senator. My apologies.” Sparrowshot put away his sword and took out a small map of the city. “Are we still on?”

“We are. I need the senatorial forum cleared by 11 for my big speech. Lock it all down.”

“Understood.” Sparrowshot faltered. “Are we...”

“What?”

“Should we expect resistance, senator?”

“Resistance? Of course not.”

Giesu thought of the assassin mare moving among the shadows, delivering poison to cups and knives to throats. The mare didn’t know about Sparrowshot’s plans, nor did Sparrowshot know about her. If they were to somehow meet, things could get hairy.

But he didn’t say that out loud. He repeated, “Of course not,” then said, “This isn’t a warzone. Don’t go picking unnecessary fights.”

“Understood.” Sparrowshot looked visibly relieved. “All glory to the republic. It’s an honor to participate in this operation.”

Giesu paused, momentarily taken aback. Was Sparrowshot mocking him? The headache made it impossible to think clearly. In the end, he waved the words off and dismissed the general.

He wiped the side of his face and felt all the dried blood caking his fur in little red tributaries.

Next stop was the kitchen for a snack, and—sweet relief!—a sink to wash his face in. As the water warmed in the basin, he picked out a particularly large hunk of cheese from the larder and paired it with a generous cut of sourdough from the bread drawer.

Just before he stuck his head underwater, he paused. He chuckled a little to himself. Then he picked up the serrated knife he’d used to cut his bread and chucked it across the kitchen as hard as he could.

The blade thudded into something. A pony cried out in the darkness.

Giesu grabbed another knife. “Show yourself,” he commanded.

He heard the other pony stumble towards the door. A match scratched against stone. Soft candlelight flooded the room.

It was Flannel, Hypha’s mushroom making assistant. His jaw hung open in shock. His eyes were bright pinpricks in the dark. In one hoof, he clutched a cold slice of quiche.

“Uh,” Flannel said. “Senator.”

The quiche fell to the floor with a wet plop. The knife Giesu had thrown, now embedded in the wall next to Flannel, caught the light as it wobbled.

Giesu stared Flannel down. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry.” Flannel dropped into a bow. Bits of the dropped quiche smeared his fur. “No one’s brought us anything to eat since the fire.”

The fire. Flannel had been in the terrarium that night. He knew the truth. If he talked, it could throw everything off track. The calculus was grim, but simple. Flannel had to die. Giesu squeezed the knife in his hoof.

Not here. Not yet. He set the knife down. For the moment, time was on his side. He had complete control of Flannel. When the time was right, he could simply summon Flannel to a private part of the estate, and he’d come running. The thought brought a smile to Giesu’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Giesu said. “I seem to be high-strung as of late.”

“Completely understandable, senator.” Flannel scooped up the destroyed quiche from the floor with a sad sort of resignation on his face. “I’ll clean this up. Sorry.”

Giesu opened up the refrigerator and fished around until he’d found the rest of the quiche. He extended the tin to Flannel, who flashed a look of pure puppy dog gratitude.

“Can you walk and eat?” Giesu asked. “I need you to take me somewhere.”

“Of course, senator. I’ll take you wherever you need to go. Just say the word.”

Giesu smiled. “Take me to Hypha.”

A chunk of quiche shot out Flannel’s nose. The gratitude fled from his face. “Well, um.” He hacked up another piece of crust. “I’m not really sure where he’s at right now. Probably out somewhere.”

“He can’t leave the estate.” Giesu heard the harshness in his own voice and softened it. “Or so I heard. Perhaps that’s changed.”

“Oh. Uh, no it hasn’t. I meant out, but inside.” Flannel’s sheepish smile gave him away. “Yup.”

“Can you take me to the terrarium, then?”

“No. I mean, I can take you, senator. But why would you want to go back there?”

“Curiosity.”

Flannel went pale. “I. Uh.” His quiche-crusted lips started to tremble. “Did you know you’re bleeding?”

“It’s nothing. Now, the terrarium—”

“I gotta tell you senator, he’s probably not even there. If’n we could try the other side of the estate, uh, if, that is—he likes to meditate in the gardens sometimes. Maybe—”

Giesu strode over to the smaller earth pony and put a hoof on his shoulder. Flannel trembled like a leaf in a hurricane. “The terrarium, Flannel. Lead the way.”

Just outside the terrarium entryway, Flannel and Giesu spotted Hypha. He had an empty bucket on his back, presumably to draw water from one of the estate’s central cloud wells.

He froze when he saw Giesu. The bucket dropped from his back.

“Hypha,” Flannel said, “it’s okay. It’s okay buddy. He’s not gonna hurt you. He’s not—”

Hypha took off in the opposite direction. Giesu pushed Flannel aside and trotted after him.

Soot from the fire had stained the terrarium a tornado shade of grey. Bleak light filtered in through the soot-stained cloudstone. What glass was left in the skylight was warped and blackened. Temporary clouds plugged the gaps. Dew dripped off the skeletal metal frame.

Hypha scrambled over loose rigging and rubble, desperate to put distance between himself and Giesu. The senator planted himself firmly in the entryway, sealing off any chance of escape. A momentary standoff ensued.

“Giesu,” came a voice from behind them.

Giesu turned and saw General Romulus stride into the room. Romulus was kitted out in full parade attire, complete with gilded black and red armor polished to a shine and an ornate helmet plumed with red feathers. In one hoof, he cradled a spear.

Giesu turned slowly to face Romulus. “General,” he said with a bow, “I’m honored.”

“The honor is all mine,” Romulus said in a tone that made it clear it wasn’t. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you.” Giesu noticed he had a sword too, a short earth pony model strapped to his shoulder for easy access. “Are you going out for another parade today?”

“Today just felt glorious,” Romulus said. “So I dressed the part.”

“It does feel glorious, doesn’t it?”

The glower on Romulus’s face grew deeper. “You ordered my legionaries to go on alert.”

Anger flashed through Giesu’s mind, but he kept his face impassive. “I don’t order your ponies around. That’s not my place.”

“It most certainly isn’t. Yet my generals are organizing columns in the street and marching towards the senatorial forum. I didn’t order that.”

Giesu couldn’t even find the energy to deny it. He merely smirked. “You said it yourself. Today just feels glorious.”

Romulus brought the spear up, resting it on his shoulder with the point facing away from Giesu. This was another one of the general’s tricks. Giesu had seen it before. The general would walk up to him, appearing to be peaceful, then at the last moment he’d drive the butt end of the spear into his forehead and knock him to the ground. By the time he could recover, Romulus could swing the spear around and get two or three good pokes in—more than enough to do an old pony like himself in.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. It’s happening, he thought. It’s really—

From somewhere behind him came the sharp report of shattering glass. Something whizzed through the air and hit the floor next to Giesu, then skittered off into the shadows.

Before he could get a good glimpse at the object, another flew in. This one hit him in the shoulder and spun him around. He saw a wooden knife hilt protruding just beneath his collarbone.

His legs trembled. He fell softly to his haunches, staring dumbly at the knife. His lips moved, but the air in his lungs vanished like cloudstone in a fire.

Something across the room caught his eye. The shadows languishing in the corners of the burnt-out terrarium coalesced into a blue-coated mare. She moved like a snow leopard, circling, searching for an opening.

Then from above came a familiar war cry. A red mare burst through the shattered remains of the terrarium’s glass roof. Her hooves were wrapped in protective leather up to her knees. Black paint obscured her cutie mark. Fire crackled in her sunken eyes.

She opened her mouth and roared.

Chapter 36

View Online

O’erlander didn’t really like his job. But his job was beating ponies up and taking their stuff, so could anyone really blame him?

He flapped his wings and touched down outside the cloudstone columns of the Inverness III hotel, just outside Derecho’s entertainment district. The place stank. Everything in this city stank. It wasn’t just that he’d lived in earth pony cities most of his life and acquired a nose for their smells. If anything, earth pony cities should smell far worse than pegasus ones. How could a city made of clouds reek this bad?

The sooner he wrapped this job up and go home, the better.

Inside the hotel, a skinny stallion with a brightly-colored sash greeted him at the counter. “Name?”

“O’erlander. Should be under my company, Steadfast Asset Management.”

The stallion gave him a prying glance before uttering a curt, “Yes, you’re here. You’re room twenty eight. All weapons must be checked at the counter.”

O’erlander stacked a small gauntlet shield and a multitool knife on the counter.

The concierge appraised him, one eyebrow cocked. “All of them.”

“That is all of them.”

“Sir, if you don’t surrender your weapons, you won’t be allowed in. We do things differently up here.”

Up here. The words sparked a fire in O’erlander’s chest. “I don’t have any other weapons. Want to search my bag? Here.” He tossed his saddlebag on the counter. “Want to search me, too? Need to see under the robes?”

“That won’t be necessary.” The concierge peeked into his bag. Finding nothing, he hefted the shield and multitool and took them to one of the back rooms. The discontent was plain on his face.

O’erlander called after him, “I want a ticket for those, too.”

After a moment in the back room he returned with a receipt with all the items listed. “We run a fair business,” he said. “Nopony gets put out without good reason.” His eyes narrowed. “Don’t give me a good reason.”

The company O’erlander worked for was based out of the western Isles, four hundred long miles away from Derecho. It was a small company, only forty or so employees, and they had neither the interest nor the capital to expand eastward.

O’erlander was out here in this flat floating hellscape because a certain local couple had racked up too much debt and fled town. Their file included no information on what the debt was for, only that they owed twelve thousand bits and needed to pay it back one way or another. It made no difference to O’erlander.

The file also included a picture of the couple, a short description of their habits--spartan--and a few half-baked bits of information on where in Derecho they could potentially be hiding out.

Paper trails in pegasi cities were notoriously scarce, but a few banking documents and a renter’s agreement--signed in their own hoofwriting with their own names, no less--led him to the seedy middle ring of town, to a block that orbited about half a mile from the business district and occasionally dipped beneath the main strata of the city.

He found a cozy cafe across the street from their apartment and settled in for the stakeout. Concealed from both sides by cloud walls and other customers, he sipped espresso from a tiny cup and monitored the faces of the ponies coming in and out of the building. After a while, he pulled out a book of sudoku puzzles and slipped into silent contemplation.

He saw them right as he was considering a second cup of espresso. The husband, Greenfields, walked with a cane. The mare, Briar, had an extensive lattice of burns covering her face and neck. The gnarled webs of pale hairless skin stuck out against her sunset-red coat.

He could approach them now. But he was on company time, and the coffee was outstanding. Pegasi might not be able to keep their city from smelling like garbage, but when it came to making tasty stimulants, they couldn’t be beat.

So he made note of the time and what they were wearing. Then he flagged the waiter down.

“Another espresso, please,” O’erlander said.

The waiter nodded. A moment later, he returned and exchanged O’erlander’s empty cup for a full one.

“That’ll be six bits.”

O’erlander raised an eyebrow. “But it says four on the menu.”

“We run a locals-only discount. We’re trying to get more ponies from the neighborhood to come here.”

“Is that so?”

Something about the pointed look on the waiter’s face put him on edge. It reminded him of the concierge pony from the hotel. Hatred simmered beneath the outward civility. Faces changed, but hate had a timeless, universal look to it. O’erlander could pick it out from a mile away.

O’erlander pushed six bits across the table. The waiter took the money back to the counter. Four bits went into the cash register. Two went into his pocket.

O’erlander rolled up the sudoku book and squeezed it. Take it easy, he thought to himself. Not your fight.

The next day, there was a different waiter on staff. The price of espresso magically dropped back down to four bits.

He saw Greenfields and Briar come home around the same time as yesterday. He noted it in his notebook and went back to his espresso. No need to rush things. He was working the angles. Determining patterns. All the run-and-gun foolishness that tainted the patience of so many of his younger colleagues didn’t serve a pony like O’erlander. There would be time for a confrontation some other day.

When the cafe closed, O’erlander went down the street to the nearby tavern. The walls were lined with fake columns. The floor looked like cloudstone at first glance, but when O’erlander walked on it he felt a springiness that could only come from raw clouds. A rainbow fountain burbled behind the bar. He doubted its authenticity, but one didn’t just walk into another pony’s bar and ask them if their rainbows were real.

“What brings you to Derecho?” asked the bartender. He poured a glass of ale and set it in front of O’erlander without prompting.

O’erlander frowned, not because of the ale but because he’d been sniffed out so easily. “Business. I’m trying to get in touch with a pony who lives around here.”

“Lotta ponies live around here.”

“His name’s Greenfields.”

The bartender shrugged. “If he lives around here, he’s probably not worth investing in. Just my two bits.”

“Thanks.” O’erlander took a sip of his ale. It tasted watery, the same as every pegasus brew. He took another gulp anyway. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“How could you tell I was from out of town?”

The bartender laughed. “It’s dripping off you, buddy. I could smell it before you walked in.”

“C’mon, humor me.” O’erlander tried to play it cool, but deep down the bartender’s answer left him seething. “Was it the fur? The mane?”

“It’s the way you walk, it’s the way you talk. It’s everything.” The bartender shrugged. “Can I give you some advice?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t go trying to change yourself just to fit in. You’ll never be all Derechan. Just do your own thing.”

“What if I just want to be more pegasus?” O’erlander said.

The comment came out of nowhere. The bartender finally said, “I don’t know, buddy. Holler if you need another beer.”

O’erlander buried his face in his ale to hide the blush forming on his face. When he was done drinking, he dropped his bits on the bartop and left with his tail between his legs. The rainbow fountain, real or not, burbled away in the background.

The third day was hazy. Grim light filled the air. O’erlander arrived at the cafe and took up his usual post at the booth with his usual espresso. But he didn’t pull out his sudoku. Nor did he bother with pastries. He sat with his eyes locked on the front door of the rental building.

At exactly the usual time, Greenfields and Briar emerged from the building.

O’erlander stood up.

He crossed the street fast and approached them with a jovial wave and a smile. “Excuse me! Hello. So sorry to bother you. I’m from the bank. Are you mister Greenfields?”

The two ponies looked at each other. The husband spoke up first. “Yes. Was there an issue with the paperwork? The teller told us we’d been approved for the loan.”

O’erlander cleared his throat. “Not that bank.”

A sudden chill blew from the main strata of the city and settled over the street. The breeze picked up O’erlander’s mane and blew it into his eyes, but he kept his hooves planted on the ground. No sudden movements--that was the name of the game now.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Greenfields said, his face a mask of calm. “Maybe there’s another Greenfields.”

“I don’t think there is.”

“Well, either way, I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong pony.” He straightened up and started walking up the sidewalk towards O’erlander. “We’re going to the market. Please don’t be here when we come back, or I’m calling the guard.”

O’erlander stepped into his way. “I’ve been authorized by the First Westlander Bank to secure the sum of twelve thousand bits, either in cash or assets. That means any titles, properties, liquidities--”

Greenfields struck first. His cane whipped through the air and struck O’erlander in the jaw.

His vision went white. His ears rang. By the time he came to, his shield and multitool were gone. Greenfields was on top of him, holding the multitool, poised to strike.

Reflex kicked in. O’erlander jabbed a hoof into Greenfields’ unprotected belly. The stallion let out a grunt but held on for two more blows before rolling off.

O’erlander got his hooves beneath him only to have the mare, Briar, leap onto his back and rain blows down on the sides of his head. He swore and bucked hard, but Briar held on tight.

Briar roared in his ears, “The legs!”

Out of the corner of his eye, O’erlander saw Greenfields racing towards him, a comically shambling sprint. A pang of fear shot through his aching skull. His knees weren’t what they used to be. They couldn’t handle a hard impact.

He reared up like he was going to buck again, but this time he tipped all the way over, landing on Briar with the full force of his body weight behind it. She let out a whoof of air and struggled to suck in another.

O’erlander rolled off her and sprung back to his hooves. “Stop!” he cried in a wavering voice. “Please, stop.” He looked around for his multitool knife. Greenfields saw an opening and charged.

O’erlander threw a wild punch. it shouldn’t have connected. It was sloppy and rushed, and if Greenfields himself wasn’t tearing towards him he would have been able to block it easily. But he was closing in fast, and the hoof came at just the right angle to catch his jaw.

The momentum of his charge carried Greenfields forward even after his legs gave out. His head buried itself in the raw cloud street and stuck there.

Briar let out a feral growl. She stepped into the street and picked up the multitool off the ground. O’erlander, still reeling from the blows to his head, didn’t realize she had his multitool until she plunged the blade into his leg.

The wound wasn’t deadly, but the pain and anger was enough to send another jolt of adrenaline through his body. O’erlander did something very stupid—ripped the knife out of his leg—and followed it up with something even stupider—stabbed Briar in the ribs.

Briar’s whole body shuddered. All the air slipped out of her. Her diaphragm contracted, but nothing came back in. She stared daggers at him, a horrible agonizing glare made twice as mean by the patchwork of scars on her face.

A steady dribble of blood marked her path as she stumbled back into the apartment.

“I saw the whole thing!”

His ears perked. He all but jumped out of his skin and turned to find the waiter from the coffee stop standing across the street, wings fully outstretched, a horrified smile on his face. “I saw that whole thing,” he said again. He took a step towards him. He noticed his hooves were trembling. “They hit you first. I saw it.”

O’erlander looked at Greendields’ unconscious body. Then back at the waiter. “Yeah,” he said, “they did. Can you get the guard?”

While the waiter flew off to find a patrol, O’erlander knelt down to check on Greenfields. He’d had a seizure when he’d been hit, and he’d urinated all over himself. One of his legs twitched. His breath came in short, wheezing gasps. When O’erlander turned him onto his side, a small puddle of vomit spilled out of his mouth and sank through the clouds like acid through lace.

The guards arrived a few minutes later. They broke down the door to the renter’s flat and found Briar bleeding out on the floor. Attempts to save the mare’s life were fatally delayed when a foal no older than seven or eight leapt out from beneath Briar’s body, brandishing a kitchen knife and screaming hysterically. The guards retreated until they could get a net from the nearby garrison. By the time they dragged the foal out kicking and screaming, Briar was dead.

“I think—” O’erlander squinted at the foal in the net. “I think the foal’s bleeding.”

The guard taking his statement glanced over his shoulder. “Nah, her fur’s just red.”

O’erlander pointed to the trail of red staining the ground where they’d dragged the foal. “Yeah, but that’s definitely blood.”

“She was underneath the mom. It’s probably just the mom’s blood.”

Once the body and the foal were out, O’erlander, sporting a generous bandage on his foreleg, began the tedious task of cataloging the former family’s earthly possessions for liquidation. He took great pains to avoid the bloodsoaked rugs in the living room, but eventually those too needed to be measured and cataloged.

He stooped down and extended his measuring tape. The smell of blood bloomed in his face. He gagged. The measuring tape snapped back and smacked him in the leg.

He whipped it across the room and stormed outside, but the air out here was no better. Everything stank. This whole city stank.

When O’erlander returned home from his trip, he had a no travel clause added to his contract.

Chapter 37

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Red would have landed on Giesu and crushed his skull if it weren’t for the gut instincts of general Romulus. Before he could possibly deduce where she was going to land, he reared up and threw his spear at her. It missed by a hair but came close enough to throw off her trajectory. She overshot Giesu, landing in a heap in the center of the terrarium.

A deadly spray of broken glass fell alongside her. A particularly large piece flew past Hypha’s head and stuck in the ground beside him. Another glanced Flannel’s knee, sending him sprawling.

Romulus dove over the prone form of Giesu, pulling up his cloak to shield himself and the senator from the shower of glass. Blue rammed the general, but she may as well have ran into a cloudstone wall. As she wound up to strike again, Romulus punched her in the nose. She staggered back into the shadows and disappeared.

“To arms!” Romulus cried down the hall. “To arms! To—” He ducked out of the way of a stray piece of glass. Blue’s outline shimmered in a dark corner. Romulus bared his teeth and advanced on her.

Red made a beeline for Hypha and gave him a big kiss on the cheek.

“Hey street trash,” she said with a cavalier smile. Her eyes froze on his prosthetic leg, and the smile twisted into a snarl. She whirled around, her gaze locking onto the cowering form of Flannel.

“It wasn’t him!” Hypha tugged her cloak. “He’s my friend.”

“You got bad taste in friends,” she growled.

To Hypha’s relief, she turned her attention away from Flannel and back to Romulus. The general saw her coming and went for his sword.

A whisper filled the air. A cloud of pale smoke poured from the shadows. The air hummed with magical energy. Visibility shrank to almost nothing.

Light bloomed in the fog. Hypha saw Red pull her forelegs into her chest. Blue orbs of energy coalesced at her hooftips. She drew a circle, then a flawless diamond made of two long triangles. A light orb appeared.

“Woah,” he said.

Red floated the light down the entry hallway. They saw twenty black-clad Derechan legionaries coming their way.

Hypha’s blood ran cold. “Red—”

She was one step ahead of him. She summoned two more lights orbs, then chucked them one after the other into the hallway.

The orbs burst like water balloons, dousing the guards in white-hot magical plasma. Skin seared. Armor blackened. Screams filled the hallway.

“You just gonna stand there?” Red shouted at Hypha. “Do something!”

The sound of his name brought him back to the moment. With his heart still pounding in his ears, he squared himself with the entryway and forced himself into the air.

He hovered at the top of the entryway and tapped the keystone with a hoof. Then the stone to the immediate left and right. Sure enough, the stone was solid, but the mortar holding the joints together was sloppy.

Hypha glanced at his leg and the intricate pieces within. Romulus had told him it wasn’t made for fighting. Hypha hoped he was wrong.

Feel it, receive it, let it go. His whole body hummed with energy. Blue light danced on the tip of his prosthetic hoof. He drew a blank circle in the air, coiled his metal leg, and punched it with all his might.

With no flesh to absorb the sound, the impact rang like a bell. The baseplate of Hypha’s leg jerked back like a recoiling cannon. The hydraulic piston within the leg absorbed the energy.

The walls had no such protection. The keystone splintered into pieces. Stones buckled together and shot out of the wall. Just as another wave of Derechan guards appeared in the hallway, the entrance collapsed, sealing them out.

“This is a city of pegasi,” Romulus called. “They’ll come in through the walls if they have to. Surrender.” He bit down hard on the handle of his sword. “Surrender!”

The shadows beside Romulus warped into a lithe, almost feline shape. He had just enough time to turn and face the anomaly before Blue appeared, careening towards him at full speed.

The steel plates of the general’s armor clattered as the two collided. They hit the ground and rolled.

Blue landed one good uppercut on Romulus’s jaw. The sword, along with one of his teeth, fell to the floor.

With Romulus distracted, Red sprang into action. She ran over to Giesu, who had almost picked himself up off the floor. She clocked him square in the face, knocking him onto his back. Then she grabbed the knife in his shoulder and twisted it.

Blood sprayed out. The old senator bellowed in agony. Red spat in his face and hissed, “We’re just getting started with you.” Then she pulled out a rope and hog-tied his legs together.

Once she secured the knots, she dashed back to Hypha. “Can you fly me out when we’re done?” she asked. Hypha didn’t answer at first. his eyes were locked on Blue and Romulus rolling on the floor, fighting for leverage and the dropped sword. “Hey.” Red forced him to look at her. “Can you fly me out?”

“One of you,” he stammered.

“Blue can get out on her own.”

“I wasn’t talking about Blue.” Hypha pointed at Flannel, who’d dragged himself behind a growing stone to nurse the gash in his knee. “We can’t leave him.”

Romulus punched Blue in the stomach. She made a sound like bagpipes deflating.

“Hang on,” Red said, and darted off to help Blue.

Something large moved in his periphery. He turned and saw Giesu wriggling out of his hastily-tied restraints. One of his limbs was already free.

Giesu paused when he noticed Hypha staring at him. A slow, sickening smile spread across his face. “Help me,” he said, “or I’ll make things even worse for you.”

Fear, cold and unyielding, shot through Hypha’s body. Phantom pain shrieked in his head. Agony and submission. Only a tiny sliver of his rational mind held on. Fear forced him forward. He took a trembling step forward. Then another. Then he was right next to the senator.

Giesu held up his bound hooves. “I own you. Help me, and you’ll be safe.”

Hypha reached for the rope. It hovered a hair’s width away.

Then he reared up and brought his metal leg down on the blade’s hilt.

The old senator wheezed in agony. When he found his breath, he fired off a long string of curses at Hypha. “I’m gonna cut your other legs off and roll you off the edge of the city,” he sneered. “I’m gonna feed you to hyenas tail-first. I’m gonna boil your tongue and force feed it to you. I’m gonna—”

A shout stole Hypha’s attention. He turned just in time to see twenty pegasi of the elite Derechan fifth legion fly up through the floor.

The senator’s bitter laughter echoed in his ears. The sight of the advancing legionnaires left him frozen in stupefied shock. Every muscle in his body screamed, fly! Energy built up beneath him like a spring. Everything inside his head, with the exception of pure preservation instinct, vanished in a puff of pale smoke. He could leapt onto the senator and gain a few precious inches of altitude. He could fly through the hole Red made during her entry. He could leave. He could live.

The afterimage of a memory projected itself onto the moment. Visions of Cumulus and Hirruck danced down the legionnaires' armor. Wrender came into view. He was smiling.

Wrender.

He couldn’t run. Couldn’t fail his friends. Not again. That Hypha had died many times over. No more running. He had to fight.

Hypha launched himself into the air, passing through the ranks of the legionaries as they formed up. They were so shocked by the sight of an earth pony flying towards them that no one raised their weapon against him.

By the time they found their wits, Hypha had made it to the terrarium roof. He flew to a piece of glass three lengths long, drew a rune circle in the air, and kicked the metal skeleton holding the glass in place.

The frame rang like a bell. Whatever glass was left shattered into a thousand pieces and rained down on the ranks of legionnaires. That momentary distraction was just enough time for Hypha to get his hooves around the metal frame and pull up with all his might.

Keeping himself airborne was hard enough. Lifting a multi-ton piece of metal was next to impossible. But he didn’t have to lift it. Only dislodge it.

He jerked his body side to side. The frame groaned, then shifted. Sweat beaded on his forehead. The familiar ache of magical overstress bloomed in his head like a deadly flower. He pushed through it. Pure magic radiated out from him in waves. He felt his grip start to give.

The metal lurched. He grimaced and let our a groan of effort and gave a massive tug upwards, and for a split second he caught a glimpse of the jetstream high above him. His vision narrowed and the pain spread through his spine until every nerve ending in his body screamed in agony. Above all that internal noise and the shouting and the screech of twisting metal, he swore he could hear the whoosh of the air moving miles above him.

This was it. This was the moment. Feel it. Receive it. Let it go.

The skeletal framework came free with a deafening bang. It fell right through the floor, taking all twenty legionaries with it.

Red, Blue, Romulus, and even Giesu, paused in their deadly combat to watch them fall. Then the cloud floor recongealed, and they were gone. Silence fell over the room.

That’s it, Hypha thought. We’re winning.

Romulus snuck in a clever strike on Blue, sending her sprawling. Flannel chose that moment to make a stand and dove on top of Blue. His moment of glory lasted as long as it took Blue to regain her bearings and toss him across the room. He landed on a spray of broken glass and went rigid, like he’d been electrocuted.

Red dug in her hooves and charged Romulus again. But he’d already made his opening. He pulled his sword from its scabbard and swung it at Red in one fluid motion. The first blow came with the pommel, striking Red in the jaw. She stumbled backwards, her mouth ajar.

Romulus swung again, aiming for the same spot. His pommel struck true. Red’s face snapped to one side. Her jaw swung freely, tilting at an impossible angle. She tried to bite down and cried out in pain.

He turned the blade on her. The sharp end flashed. She jerked back in time to avoid being decapitated. But she wasn’t fast enough to avoid being hit entirely. The blade caught Red in the middle of her face, slashing through her cheeks. With nothing to hold her shattered jaw in place, it flopped down to her chest. A piece of her tongue fell out and fell through the cloud floor. The back of her exposed throat glistened in the light.

She leapt back out of striking range, three hooves on the ground, one hoof holding her mangled mouth shut.

For a second, Red just stood there, panting through her nose.Then the blood started pouring from her mouth. She fell to her side, desperately packing the wound with clouds.

Blue descended like a hurricane on Romulus. She slammed into him with a flying shoulder, disappeared into the general’s own shadow, then reappeared behind him.

Romulus rolled and raised his sword only for Blue to melt into the shadows again. She reappeared behind him again and landed two brutal punches to his head before he forced her to retreat.

He learned fast. When she dipped into the shadows to strike a third time, he turned around and swung hard. But this too was a part of Blue’s deception. She leapt from the same shadow she’d disappeared into a moment before, catching Romulus’s exposed side with her front hooves.

He went down hard, dropping the sword. It skittered across the floor, over to Giesu.

Blue got on top of Romulus and squeezed his throat. He let out a choked gasp and reached out to Giesu.

Giesu snatched the sword off the floor and appraised the situation.

"Sword," Romulus wheezed. "Give me the sword."

But Giesu didn't move. His eyes met Blue’s. She leaned into her chokehold, her lips drawn tight together, her nose wrinkled with rage.

A sick, greedy smile spread over Giesu’s face.

He slid the blade back across the floor to Blue.

Picking up the sword meant loosening her grip on Romulus’s throat. He took in a fresh gulp of air and hammered at Blue’s head with his hooves. “No! Giesu—”

Blue raised the sword above her head and plunged it into the general’s open mouth.

A sick crunch filled the air. Blood sprayed across Blue’s face. She opened her mouth and let out a guttural scream. The look of horror and betrayal on Romulus's face faded to a blank, glassy-eyed stare. His body trembled. He slumped to the floor.

Blue left the sword embedded in the general’s head and started towards Giesu.

Hypha froze, transfixed by the violence of that single moment. The crunch of bone. The way the general’s body twitched. The curtain of blood draping one side of his head. He’d been there just a moment ago. Just a moment. That’s all it took.

A gurgle of pain from Red brought him back. He rushed over to her and tried to assess the extent of her injuries through all the blood. Terror flooded her eyes. She tried to spit all the blood out, but the moment she took her hoof away her entire jaw flopped down. Hypha saw her uvula and a few blood stained molars.

More shouting came from below. Blue reached Giesu and reached for the knife in his shoulder. She was so focused on him she didn’t even notice another squad of guards fly up through the floor.

The lead guard inadvertently saved Blue’s life. He swung his spear wildly, catching her in the forehead with the wooden shaft. The blow propelled her across the room. If she hadn’t been as small and light as she was, if the guard had swung even half a second later, if everything hadn’t lined up just so, the rest of the squad would have pinned her down and savaged her with their swords.

The guards formed a protective barrier around Giesu. With a guard supporting each of the senator’s shaky limbs, the rest made a hole in the floor and whisked the senator out of the room. More legionaries flooded in, spears at the ready.

Blue, still dazed from the blow, got Hypha’s attention and pointed to the hole in the ceiling where the sunroof had once been. Out, her eyes implored. Then she dove into a nearby shadow and disappeared.

Red cleared the blood from her mouth in a violent, wracking cough. She nodded in agreement. Her eyes were downcast and unfocused. Blood loss, no doubt. Defeat. Her hoof found Hypha’s. She squeezed it with a tenth of her normal vigor.

“Hypha.”

Another familiar voice made Hypha’s ears perk up. He turned and saw Flannel limping towards him. A lattice of cuts on his underbelly wept blood onto the floor. His leg with the cut knee dangled limply, dragging across the ground.

Clutched between his teeth was a long shard of broken glass.

“C’mere Hypha,” Flannel said.

Red tugged on his mane. More blood spilled from the corners of her mouth. He hefted Red onto his back and tried taking off. A punishing lance of pain from magical overstress forced him down.

Flannel spoke again, “C’mere Hypha.” His eyes were blank. Like the general’s. “C’mere.”

Hypha went airborne again. Pain rolled through him in waves. His vision narrowed. Another moment of indecision and he’d lose control. It was now or never. He put his forelegs around Red and surged towards the ceiling.

A dozen black spears followed him up. A dozen black spears fell back down. The second attempt on senator Giesu’s life ended just as abruptly as it had begun.

Chapter 38

View Online

In order to clear the forum by eleven, general Sparrowshot surmised he’d need to arrive around nine. Senator Giesu said there wouldn’t be any resistance. But senators rarely concerned themselves with the details of their own plans. Giesu had more than likely forgotten about the company of honor guards permanently stationed at the senate building.

Focus, he thought to himself. Speaking out wouldn’t have changed anything, aside from making the senator angry. It was Giesu’s job to look at the big picture, the same way it was Sparrowshot’s job to convince those guards to come to his side, or at least surrender peacefully.

One of his legionaries flicked the release clasp off his scabbard. “No swords,” Sparrowshot said, loud enough for his whole group to hear. “If we do this right, we won’t need them.”

I’m part of a coup, he thought. The legionaries spread out as they ascended the stairs leading to the massive front door. Ten-meter tall columns sprouted from the floor in rows four deep, lining the entirety of the structure’s front side. The legionaries wove through them like ghosts. I’m part of a coup. The thought made his heart race with fear and excitement. He hoped he was on the right side.

A few unlucky aides and random passerby found themselves in the way of the advancing legionaries. They were quickly bound and gagged. Sprarrowshot took a moment to reorganize his troops, then gave the motion to enter.

Through that door, it was a straight shot to the main senatorial chamber. Whatever was going to happen, it would happen in that room.

“There’s supposed to be honor guards at this door,” one of Sparrowshot’s underlings reported. “They must have known we were coming and pulled back.”

Sparrowshot pursed his lips. “Keep a squad out here. Have them prop the door open. If we need to run, we’ll go out the way we came in.”

Inside, they passed through a corridor of high vaulted ceilings flanked by more columns. Torchlight mingled with streams of light pouring from openings in the upper portion of the wall, creating a dizzying double-decker effect of natural and artificial light.

Sparrowshot rubbed his eyes. Still no honor guards. Nopony at all, for that matter. He wished he’d stopped to interrogate the aides they’d found outside. But if he stopped his team now, there was a chance whatever was waiting for them might come out and find them first. Better to be aggressive.

With Sparrowshot leading the way, the group of black-clad legionnaires inched open the doors to the senatorial chambers.

“Shields,” Sparrowshot whispered. They formed up in two rows with their shields facing out. They stepped forward in sync.

Inside was dead silent. Three raised rows of seats formed a horseshoe around a small center forum. Sparrowshot’s eyes darted around, searching for threats. He felt like an invader.

“General,” boomed a voice from the gallery.

Sparrowshot whirled around. Three old senators in brilliant purple robes stood atop the gallery. They gazed down on him with undisguised disdain.

“This chamber is off-limits to you,” one old senator said. “Leave at once.”

Sparrowshot vaguely recognized the senators as members of Giesu’s rival party. He cleared his throat and announced, “The senators of Derecho have been found guilty by third party—”

“I can’t hear you behind your shield,” another old senator droned. “Are you that terrified of a couple old birds?”

Sparrowshot glanced around the room again, then stepped out from the formation. He gestured for his troops to close ranks behind him.

“The senators of Derecho have been found guilty of crimes against the republic. All senators are to be stripped of their titles and privileges, effective immediately. Surrender yourselves, and you will receive all the rights afforded to a prisoner of your former status.”

“Sparrowshot, right?” The oldest of the old senators, an ancient stallion with more skin than muscle, whose front legs were supported by metal braces, stepped forward. “You made notable contributions to general Romulus’s previous two campaigns.”

They knew his name? The general swallowed a lump in his throat. “That’s me, yes.”

“You’re not young, and you’re not stupid. You know what this is.”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“It’s a coup.”

“And whose side are you on?”

A pause. “The right side.”

The old stallion let out a booming baritone laugh. “Perhaps I was too generous in my assessment.”

Something flashed in the corner of the room. Sparrowshot whirled around just as a squad of honor guards rose from their hiding places among the senate benches. Sparrowshot cursed and squeezed back into formation.

He counted twenty honor guards circling around the dome, with another ten circling around the senators. They were decked out in brilliant bronze armor. Their shields were painted with howling wolves and ships battering each other beneath beneath stormy waves.

“Chamber’s off-limits,” the honor guard captain, a massive pegasus with broad sweeping wings and a plumed helmet, announced. “You’re trespassing. Leave now or we’ll take you by force.”

The thought of violence made Sparrowshot’s blood run cold. It couldn’t end that way. He had to keep this peaceable. He had orders.

“We’re all brothers here,” Sparrowshot implored. “No one needs to die.”

“If you would raise your sword against the senate, then you’re no brother of mine.”

One of Sparrowshot’s guards—the one who’d been a little too eager to pull out his sword earlier—undid the catch on his scabbard. Gravity pulled the blade down, just a few inches.

The sound it made echoed through the silent room like nails on cloudstone.

The honor guards descended on Sparrowshot and his troops.

The assassin Giesu hired was named Golf Leaf. Her name came from her summergold mane and tail. She’d never thought of herself as particularly pretty, but when she grew out her mane she noticed more ponies looked at her. The attention felt nice. She liked being noticed.

She brushed the top of her shaved head with a hoof. She couldn’t afford vanity right now. For today at least, she needed to remain unseen.

The old senator Claptrap moved into position directly below her. The old fool had declined an escort. It wouldn’t have mattered in the end, but it made her job that much easier.

Three more steps. Then two. Then one. Gold Leaf leapt from the rafters, hooves together, wings out and perpendicular with the ground to guide her fall without slowing her down. A pegasi-shaped hammer coming down on a weak, rusty nail.

No need for knives here. The impact alone broke the old senator’s spine, paralyzing him instantly. He twitched on the ground, his cloudy eyes flickering back and forth. A feeble flame at the bottom of a burnt wick.

Gold Leaf stretched and checked her list. Eleven more to go. She’d dealt with the younger and more able bodied senators first. These last dozen were all old. Most of them didn’t bother with bodyguards. They saw it as weakness.

Good. This work grew tiresome, and she still had much more ahead of her before the day was out.

As LeBaine floated the cup of tea to his lips, he felt the faint pinch of a headache coming on. It floated around for a moment like a bird looking for a place to land, then settled just behind his eyes and a little way up.

Magical exhaustion, he thought. No time for that.

He picked up a second cup of tea and started off towards the administrative wing of Romulus’s estate. He and his staff had spent the last few days coordinating the herculean administrative task of readying Giesu’s estate to handle the impending transfer of power. The senator had made it clear that, for optics purposes, the seat of the new government had to be Romulus’s estate.

He’d take a long vacation once all this was over. He’d earned it ten times over already.

A commotion ahead of him caught his attention. The senator, along with a dozen armed guards, barreled around the corner. There was blood everywhere—on the senator’s face, on his cloak, on the guards’ swords. The hope of a nice vacation vanished right before his eyes.

LeBaine stepped out of the way. The guards bowled him over anyway. The ceramic mugs—his favorites—shattered. Shockberry tea—also his favorite—splashed all over the floor.

“Wait!” the senator wheezed. He turned around and fixed LeBaine with a mortifying stare. His eyes were shrunken to pinpoints. He looked insane. “I need you.”

LeBaine eyed the blood. “Another nosebleed?”

Giesu let out a laugh. “I need you to run outside and deliver a message to the estate guard commander.”

That sounded serious. LeBaine hopped to his hooves. “What is it?”

“Tell him to ground all non-essential flights for the remainder of the day. Anyone in the air who’s not ours gets an arrow.”

LeBaine’s blood ran cold. No one had ever ordered Derecho’s skies to be cleared before. Pegasi detested grounding as much as they detested being told what to do in general. “Sir, I think I’m misunderstanding you—”

“No you’re not. No one flies but us. Go now.” He started off down the hall, his guard a shadow close behind.

They rounded a corner, and then LeBaine was alone again. He blinked slowly, looking first at the shattered remnants of his favorite ceramic mugs, and the small puddles of tea growing cold on the cloudstone.

He took off down the hall.

By the time LeBaine found the guard commander outside and breathlessly relayed the message, his immaculately coiffed mane had started to peel apart in the middle. The headache doubled in intensity, then doubled again.

“No one? As on, no one?” the guard commander asked. “Are you certain that’s what the senator said?”

“No one but our ponies.” LeBaine pressed his mane to his head and willed it to stick.

The guard commander put a hoof on LeBaine’s shoulder. “Do you know what’s going to happen if we enforce that?” LeBaine nodded. The guard commander’s grip got tighter. “Tell me exactly what you think is going to happen.”

“Err. General hunkering down.”

The guard commander shook his head. “Panic. Ponies are gonna take their families and try to fly down to the ground. Then we’ll have to stop them, because no one is allowed to be in the air but us.”

“Yes, that’s the—”

The grip on LeBaine’s arm tightened like a vice. “We’re not going to ask them politely. We’re going to stop them.” In a deadly serious voice, he said, “Tell me again what the senator said. Relay his orders exactly as you were told.”

For all his education and highborne elbow-rubbing as a senator’s aide, LeBaine was no politician. He saw the fear in the guard commander’s eyes, felt his heart pounding in his chest. He knew there was some message painted in invisible ink beneath the commander’s words. But whether it was ignorance or fear or both, he couldn’t interpret it.

“No one flies but us,” LeBaine stammered. “No one.”

The guard commander stared through him with a gaze that screamed, please. Then the mask dropped, and he resumed a neutral, soldierly pose. The grip on LeBaine’s shoulder relaxed.

“Understood,” he said. “Tell the senator I’ll carry out his orders.” Then he turned, sighed, and started off towards the gate.

Now alone, LeBaine looked up at the tiny shapes of pegasi swirling above the city. The whole place felt ready to explode, like a thunderhead swollen until it could expand no further.

Suddenly, from a few blocks away, a cloud of pegasi rose into the air like panicked birds. Some of them jerked mid-flight and fell like stones. The sound of metal clattering against metal filled the air.

The guard commander unfurled his wings. The brightly-colored plumage quivered, feeling the air.

A tsunami of soldiers surged around the corner. Armor and swords flashed in the sun. Screams echoed down the streets. Blood and feathers and whizzing arrows filled the air.

Run, reform, break. Run, reform, break. Combat felt like dreaming. Sparrowshot moved in slow motion while whirling shapes shot past at lightning speed. He heard the voices of his legionaries, and his own voice, as distant echoes floating up from the ground, passing him by like lost spirits.

The sky cleared for a split second. That was the tell. “Reform!” Sparrowshot called. The survivors turned on their hooves. The front row placed their shields on the ground. The other rows put their shields up, forming a tortoise shell of armor around the ponies.

The next volley of arrows bounced off the shields, sounding like snapping twigs. Before the volley had even finished, Sparrowshot called out, “Break!” and the tortoise shell broke apart into its individual components.

A late arrows whizzed past Sparrowshot and went through the ground. He let out a hiss and cursed himself. It just as easily could have been him or one of his friends catching that arrow. He should have held formation a little longer. Mistakes like that were going to get everyone killed if he wasn’t careful.

“Run!” he shouted. The group picked up their shields and resumed their gallop.

Run. Reform. Break. Run. Reform. Break. His wings twitched. It took all his years of discipline and training not to take off. Up was a hundred senatorial honor guards. Up was death.

They came to a wide open thoroughfare. The lead ponies slowed up, unsure of where to go. A few civilians on the other side of the street froze.

“Right!” Sparrowshot shouted, never once breaking stride. “Go right!”

The group surged forward again. More arrows came down. The civilians screamed and took flight. Sparrowshot didn’t have the energy to stop them. His whole mind was focused on the streets ahead. With the city moving the way it was, it was impossible to tell from street level where exactly he was headed. For all he knew, he was leading his ponies in circles.

But then they rounded a corner and the gleaming cloudstone pillars of Romulus’s estate came into view.

A shot of elation spurred Sparrowshot’s weary legs to move faster. A cheer went up through the beleaguered survivors. The estate was right there. He could see the guards at the gate, their eyes wide with surprise.

The arrows stopped falling. The tell. All the joy turned to ash in Sparrowshot’s mouth.

“Reform!” he called. But barely half the band heard it and turned around in time. The tortoise shell sprung leaks.

This time, it wasn’t arrows that fell on their shields, but a hundred murderous honor guards.

The formation collapsed. Bodies flew everywhere. Something smashed into Sparrowshot’s head, sending him sprawling. He sucked wind for a second, then willed his body to fall into the clouds.

In the haze, the sound from above was muffled. Flashes of light from the honor guards’ brilliant armor diffused away into nothing. A thought flashed into his mind—he could stay down here for a few more minutes. See how things played out above. No one would know.

Sickening shame filled his heart. He couldn’t give up so close to the end. He thought, This is it, I’m going to die, but the thought didn’t bother him the way he thought it would. It was simply one more task to complete. The last task on a long checklist.

He counted to three, picked a bright blob of light hoping it was an honor guard, pumped his wings, and launched himself at it sword-first.

When all was said and done, after the estate garrison swooped in and drove the honor guards off, after the living had been counted, after a detail had been sent down to the ground to find the remains of the ponies who’d died and fallen through the clouds—after all that, only fifteen of Sparrowshot’s original fifty legionaries remained. Despite the certainty of his earlier premonition, Sparrowshot somehow survived.

With the costly knowledge they’d gained from the first failed assault, a second assault was thrown together and sent out. They approached from the air this time, diving through the ceiling just as the honor guards had dove on them an hour prior. They achieved a decisive, though not less costly, success. Sixty legionaries, along with every last honor guard, died. The battle lasted all of ten minutes.

Sparrowshot flew back to Romulus’s estate to give a report on the second battle to his commanding officer, a withered old pegasus stallion named Fleet. Fleet listened dutifully as Sparrowshot relayed the details of the battle.

“Very good,” Fleet said once Sparrowshot was done. “We have something new for you.”

Sparrowshot’s weary heart plummeted. “Sir, my ponies can’t take a second battle.”

“It’s an easy job. No fighting. We need someone to take Giesu to the senate.”

“Oh. Understood. Will we be flying over the city or under it?”

The general pursed his cracked lips. “You’ll be taking the streets.”

“The streets? That’s too dangerous.”

“The senator wants to be seen. He thinks it will be a powerful symbol.”

“He’ll get mauled out there. Is that powerful enough?”

“It’s not your call. Have your ponies be ready to move out in twenty minutes.”

Sparrowshot felt every miniscule bit of wear and tear in his legs like hot needles. His head ached. Everything hurt. Once again, the impulse to sneak off to some quiet corner of the castle and disappear for a few hours reared its ugly head.

“Yes sir,” Sparrowshot said, “I’ll get it done.”

“Oh, one more thing. There’s been some kind of rumor circulating around that general Romulus was assassinated.”

Sparrowshot stopped dead in his tracks. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. “What?”

“Don’t worry, it’s not true. But the fact that such a rumor exists at all is worrying. Try to keep your ponies squared away.”

The odd sinking feeling didn’t go away, despite Fleet’s assuring words. “I’ll do that,” Sparrowshot said. He turned to leave, but paused. “Sir? Who’s second in command after Romulus?”

“General Hightower, from the second legion. I know what you mean, though. If anything were to happen, we’d be taking orders from senator Giesu.”

“Is that... are we okay with that?”

The old general’s glower deepened. “I don’t like what that question implies.”

“Sorry, sir. I don’t mean to imply anything. I’m just anxious.”

“I know. We’re small pieces in a big game. General Romulus is committed to this path. He’s trying to save Derecho, and it’s our job to help him do it. If that means taking orders from senator Giesu here and there, then so be it.” Fleet’s wrinkled face softened. “If senator Giesu tells you to chase your tail and do the splits, what will you say?”

Sparrowshot let out a tired laugh. “Yes, sir.”

Chapter 39

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Hypha had never flown so fast. Trails of mist clung to his legs. He barely felt the weight of Red slung across his back. All he felt was the wind and the cold and the sense of urgency that came with grievous injury.

He caught sight of Blue racing over the rooftops. He followed her into an unassuming neighborhood near the palace district. There Blue found an out of the way alley and motioned for Hypha to land.

The landing was smooth. Together they slid Red off his back and made a makeshift triage bed on the ground. The bleeding had slowed, but with the blood no longer pouring down Red’s face the true extent of her injuries became clear. Romulus had shattered the left side of her jaw, striking it with so much force it had disconnected from the skull and snapped at the chin. It would have stayed more or less in place, if he hadn’t also slashed her face open.

When Red took her hoof away, her jaw flopped uselessly. What was left of her tongue undulated in mute horror. She tried to speak. A groan escaped her lips, something like, “Uh,” like a baby calling for her mom. She went, “Uuh, Uuh, uuuuh—” Then the tears came.

She tried to put her jaw back into place, but her hooves shook so badly she couldn’t hold it up.

Blue motioned to Hypha to hold up her jaw. She rummaged through her saddlebag and withdrew a hoofful of mother sky mushrooms.

Hypha’s breath hitched in his throat. They still had the mushrooms.

It was like watching a friend come back from the dead. Joy and shame and relief all piled up together in an overwhelming rush. His faith in them had evaporated like so much morning fog, yet they kept the vigil.

Hypha watched in stunned silence as Blue squeezed a tuft of cloud over the mushrooms. Clear water ran down her forelegs, washing away the dust from the caps. She rinsed her mouth next. When she was sure both she and the mushrooms were clean, she placed them on her tongue and chewed them up.

She laid Red down on the soft cloud floor. Then she took the mash from her mouth and fed it to her, one tiny piece at a time.

When the ritual was over, Blue motioned for Hypha to get the bandages. When he tried to move, however, he found his legs weren’t working. When he tried to speak, his voice cracked.

Tears sprang to his eyes. He collapsed at Blue’s hooves.

“I’m sorry.” Pain choked his voice. “I’m so sorry. I’ll never doubt you again.”

There was a pause. Then Blue wrapped her forelegs around him. Red dragged herself upright and joined the embrace, one hoof on Hypha’s shoulder, the other keeping her jaw in place. At first, he tried to shirk away. He didn’t deserve this. But his strength gave out, and he slumped into their embrace, and for the first time since that fateful day in Roseroot, Hypha felt safe.

Blue insisted on bandaging Red. She took extra care to lay each bandage just right, cinched the sutures slowly to avoid pinching, stopped to squeeze Red’s hoof when she started shaking. An hour ticked away.

In the meantime, Hypha took to patrolling their hideaway, peeking down the alleyway and over the rooftop. The more he listened, the more it became clear something was wrong.

The realization hit him a minute later. The streets were empty. The skies were clear. The usual city din was reduced to a dull whistle of distant air currents. It was like everypony had simply vanished.

“Blue?” He took a step towards the two mares. “Do you—”

A lone civilian pegasus flew overhead, ripping apart the uneasy stillness. He was followed a moment later by a trio of legionnaires in hot pursuit. Hypha watched the ponies shrink to tiny spots. After a brief chase, the spots converged somewhere over the city center. They fell together and disappeared out of sight.

Hypha heard another sound from the street. A patrol of earth pony legionnaires sauntered lazily down the center of the road, their spears resting on their shoulders. They spoke in low voices, their eyes scanning the rows of buildings for anything out of order.

“Think they’re looking for us?” Hypha asked.

As if to answer his question, the flying patrol from earlier streaked overhead. The wind from their wings nearly ripped the bandages from Blue’s hooves.

Hypha floated up to rooftop level to gauge the group’s pattern. As he peeked his head out from the shadows, a second patrol howled past in the opposite direction. Hypha ducked low and squinted, trying to follow the patrol as they blurred into dots.

The dots seemed to hover in midair for a moment. Then they banked right and turned around.

Hypha floated down. “We have to go.”

Blue hastened to wrap up her bandage job. Together, they hauled Red out to the street and took off towards the edge of the city. If they could just get to where the city was only one layer thick, they could dive right through the clouds and disappear into the plains below.

More legionaries blocked their path ahead, forcing them into the labyrinth of alleys and sidestreets. There were plenty of nooks and crannies to hide in, but they were already occupied by terrified civilians. When Hypha asked why they hadn’t gone home, a pony informed him there was a no-fly order, and anyone caught outside their home was subject to arrest—or worse.

More patrols swooped overhead. The trio pressed on.

They reached an entrance to a main thoroughfare road. Hypha couldn’t see any patrols for the moment. He shifted Red’s weight and stepped into the light. “It’s a straight shot. We should—”

Without any warning, Blue bit down painfully on Hypha’s ear and dragged him backwards. He let out a groan as Red’s dead weight shifted painfully on his back. “Hey—”

A volley of arrows hit the street next to them. They passed right through the clouds with barely a whisper.

A chill raced down Hypha’s back. He looked over his shoulder and saw pegasi with bows in their hooves bearing down on him. Another patrol.

Blue raced down the alley and dipped out of sight. Hypha followed. Walking was difficult enough with a pony balanced on his back. Running was agony. The bare skin on the stump of his leg chafed on the prosthetic pad until it started to bleed.

Blue reappeared beside him without warning, steering him to one side of the alley. Another cluster of arrows flew past him. He stumbled, momentarily dazed. His mind reeled. What did it feel like to get shot with an arrow?

Blue kicked him in the flank. The fear returned. His legs came back to life.

At the mouth of the alley, Hypha slowed up. Blue motioned him forward. Hypha’s breath came in ragged pants. His whole body begged for rest, but he pushed himself out of the alley and onto the empty street beyond.

Wide open. Totally exposed. No cover. Blue must have made a wrong turn. This road was a death trap.

Then he saw Blue phase through the shadows and appear on a nearby rooftop, right on top of the pegasi patrol.

She opened her mouth and let out an ear-splitting scream. The air in front of her rippled with magical energy. The formation scattered. Two of the pegasi pitched down and slammed into the rooftops. The remaining two covered their ears and scattered.

As Blue turned, she caught sight of something deeper in the city that Hypha couldn’t see. She froze, staring out into space, a blank-faced gargoyle.

She tore her eyes away and rejoined Hypha and Red on the street. Whatever she saw from the rooftop lit a fire in her. She quickly started to pull ahead of Hypha and Red.

“Blue—” Hypha groaned as Red shifted on his back. “Blue, we gotta go down. It’ll be safer on the ground. I can fly Red down and you can—” He stopped. She wasn’t listening. Her eyes were focused straight ahead. “Where are you going?” She ran even faster. “Blue!”

Her ears flicked at the mention of her name. But she didn’t slow down. Hypha chased her another three terrifying blocks. Every step, he expected a volley of arrows to rain down on his back. Echoes of Roseroot rang in his ears. The thump of bodies falling, the booming of temple doors, the clatter of swords—

Wait. His ears perked up. Those noises weren’t just his imagination. There was something loud coming his way. Drums.

Without any warning, Blue turned on her hooves and dove into an alley. Hypha didn’t have to worry about slowing down, because a moment later she grabbed his mane and dragged him in after her. Hypha cried out. Blue clamped a hoof over his mouth. Not that it was strictly necessary. The sound of drums drowned everything out.

A parade rounded the corner.

There were about a hundred of them in total, mostly haggard legionnaires marching in rough lines. Their equipment was battered and bloodstained and rattled as they walked. Behind them, A line of drummer colts beat a walking tempo with heavy marching snares and clattering bronze cymbals.

In the center of it all, decked out in a resplendent gold robe, strode senator Giesu.

Hypha’s eyes went wide. His hooves trembled beneath him, forcing him to his haunches. Red slid off his back, barely catching herself before her head could hit the ground.

“Blue...” Hypha gulped. “We—”

There was a lull in the drums. In the split second of silence, Hypha heard faint beating wings behind them. He turned and saw the remains of the legionnaire patrol flying their way. They hadn’t spotted the trio yet, but given their flight path, they’d be on top of them in no more than a minute. The alley was too wide. They had nowhere to hide.

“We have to leave.” He grabbed her arm. “Blue.”

Blue wheeled around. For the first time, Hypha felt the full force of her hate bearing down on him. Her eyes screamed murder. The Blue he thought he knew—the mare who teased Red with kisses and took half portions of dinner when food got scarce—evaporated in a fireball of incandescent rage. She was just gone.

Red saw the shift and placed herself squarely in Blue’s sights. A silent standoff ensued. Blue tried to turn away, but Red grabbed her foreleg and forced her to look at her. Red gestured to Hypha’s metal leg. Then to her own bandages. Fresh blood had already leaked through one side. Red forced Blue to look, really look, at the price they’d already paid.

That was enough to bring Blue back. Like a fire burning through all its fuel, the rage in her eyes subsided. She ran a hoof over Red’s bandage, barely noticing when a fleck of blood got on her fur. She kissed the top part of Red’s nose, the only part of her snout not padded with gauze. Their eyes met. Red nodded slowly.

Blue walked over to Hypha next and motioned for him to lift his prosthetic leg. She touched it gingerly, feeling along the metal exterior where his calf used to be. When she got to the knee joint, she leaned down and kissed the cool metal. The gesture left Hypha dumbfounded and beet-red with embarrassment. Blue, on the other hoof, was as open and serene as the sky. She stared into his eyes and implored him to understand.

One of those lessons is empathy.

Elder Cumulus’s cryptic words finally started to click. Hypha had been wounded spiritually by the battle of Roseroot, wounded by every little clash and compromise since that day. But that wasn’t the root of it. The root of it was hate, spoken into being at just the right time to take hold. It had been there long before Roseroot fell. Before Hirruck led the outsiders and spies into camp to help harvest barley. Before Hypha had even been born. Hate was older and more clever than him. But he could see it for what it was now. And he wouldn’t let it get the better of him again.

Hypha opened his mouth. His throat felt tight, but he powered through. “I trust you.”

A wave of relief passed over Blue’s face. She pointed first to the patrol, then at the ground.

He turned to Red. “Uh. Did you get that?”

Red rolled her eyes. She drew an orb of magic to her hooftips and motioned for Hypha to do the same.

Trust, Hypha thought. In this moment, trust had never been easier to come by.

Following Red’s lead, Hypha summoned an orb of magic, then drew a basic light rune. Red shimmied to one side, using the sound of the incoming patrol to gauge their approximate location. The whisper of wings grew into a steady beat-beat-beat against the air. Hypha’s whole body coiled. His arm loaded back.

The patrol appeared over the rooftop. Hypha and Red let the light orbs fly.

Both orbs found their mark, exploding on impact, throwing white-hot magical plasma into the fliers’ faces. They careened out of control and cartwheeled into the ranks of marching legionaries. Screams echoed down the street. Bodies and gear went flying. The parade drummers faltered.

Blue burst out of the shadows in the middle of the second rank. She opened her mouth and billowed a cloud of magical smoke, choking the street. Before the rank and file could draw their weapons, she let out a sonic shout. Four lines of legionaries tumbled across the street like debris in a hurricane.

Sword. Blue needed a sword. She pinned a nearby legionary beneath her and went for his weapon, but as she drew it another legionnaire regained his bearings and knocked it out of her hooves. She staggered back, out of the reach of his blade, and countered with another magical shout. The legionnaire landed in a heap half a block away.

Thinking fast, she dove for the sword of an unconscious legionnairelying nearby, only to find her scream had knocked it clean out of its scabbard.

By this time, the legionaries had regained their bearings and started to close ranks around Giesu. Her window of opportunity was closing. She had to think of something quick. She couldn’t fail again.

Before the legionaries could react, Blue shot through their ranks. Giesu’s eyes found hers. First surprise, then amusement crossed his face. He opened his mouth to speak.

Before his words could come out, Blue drove a hoof into his gut. He crumpled. She wrapped her hooves around him and let out another shout, this one aimed down at the street. The clouds beneath her disintegrated. Blue and the senator dropped into a freefall.

In the first frantic moment of the fall, Blue lost her bearings. Giesu’s forelegs slipped out of her grasp. He almost immediately started throwing punches. She dodged his blows as they tumbled end over end. Her stomach leapt into her throat, but she kept her eyes focused on his hooves even as the earth and sky spun in the background.

He overextended on a blind haymaker. Blue batted it aside and passed his guard. She clamped onto him, belly to belly, her forelegs wrapped around him as far as they could go, catching his wings just enough to pin them to his sides.

Giesu let out a barking laugh. “You’ve done so much for me. Served so faithfully.” He tried to wriggle out of her grasp. Blue held firm. Her face was buried in his chest. The golden silk of his robe chafed against her fur. She charged up another scream and aimed it up at the sky. Their fall speed doubled.

“Look at everything your sacrifice bought us. They worship us. We’re like gods.” The barest hint of panic crept into his voice. “Let go!” He wrestled a hoof free and took a swing at her, striking a glancing blow off her temple. Skin tore. Blood poured out. Still, she held on.

She let out another scream. Giesu flinched. Blood flowed from his ears. She caught a glimpse of legionnaire guards giving chase, but none of them could keep up.

They fell into the shadow of the city. The ground beneath them darkened.

“Let go!” Giesu roared. “I’ll make you a princess. Don’t throw your life away!” He swung again and caught Blue in the forehead. Her vision flickered. Her legs wobbled. Only adrenaline and the rush of the moment kept her hanging on. He hit her again and again, but she would not be dislodged. Giesu let out a bellowing scream. His pegasi instincts must be screaming, pull up, pull up.

Blue looked out across the ocean of grass and saw Hypha some hundred yards away. He had ripped his old clothes off and formed a makeshift tent barely big enough for one pony. A sliver of darkness peeked out from the entrance. She focused on that tiny sliver, the only chance she had of making it out alive. Of course it would end like this. Her hope had never been anything more than a sliver. But there was a sliver. And that was enough.

Giesu’s voice cracked. “Let go,” he pleaded. “Let go let go let go—”

A mantra sounded in Blue’s mind like a bell. Feel it. Receive it. Let it go.

They hit the ground. Blue phased into the shadow. Giesu did not.

Blue shot out of the tent at terminal velocity. She tumbled end over end, skidding atop the tall grass like a skipping stone before finally coming to a stop some fifty yards away.

Hypha and Red raced to her aid. They found her bruised, dazed, and covered head to hoof in grassy pulp. But she was alive.

She winked to Red as Hypha laid her over his back. Red might have been the perfect color to hide a blush, but she had other tells. Mission accomplished.

They made it a quarter of a mile before low-flying patrols forced them to hunker down. They cocooned themselves in grass, pressing in tight, eyes and ears alert for danger. Swarms of legionaries crisscrossed the skies, searching for traces of them and the senator. Night would ultimately foil their search. Blue wasn’t sure there was much of the senator left to find, anyway.

As night fell, a strange, quiet darkness came over Derecho. The torches on all the main streets remained unlit. The crystal bulbs stayed off. The tips of the city’s many metal spires caught the last of the dying light like lightning bugs before the sun slipped away. The city faded to an ominous black mass floating in the waning purple twilight.

Blue prodded Hypha and Red to get their attention. She gestured at the dark city.

“Creepy,” Hypha said. Blue shook her head and pointed again, more insistently. Hypha blinked. “You can’t be serious.” Blue nodded. “You wanna go back?”

Blue just smiled. She kissed Red on the cheek. Then she slipped away.

Chapter 40

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A contingent of legionaries from the senate-loyal fourth legion holed up in the colosseum to make their final stand. The fighting was desperate and frightening and loud. No matter where in the house Girasole went, she couldn’t escape the sound of clashing swords.

The whole city was cursed. Build a palace to violence, and violence is what you’ll get.

Girasole and Celiah were in the kitchen cooking dinner and trying to appear normal for the girls when they heard hoofsteps on the second floor.

The two mares shared a nervous glance. The girls were all downstairs.

Celiah slowly reached for the knife she kept in her bodice. Girasole picked up the knife she’d been using to chop vegetables. She didn’t know if it was sharp enough to cut a pony, but nonetheless she held it in front of her until her hooves turned white.

The matriarchs watched the stairwell as a single intruder descended. Her fur was a deep shade of blue. Scars like fine lace draped across her flanks. Her once-shaved mane had just started to sprout fuzz. A pearlescent shawl framed her sunken eyes.

The intruder stopped at the edge of the kitchen. Dead silence enveloped the room. Distant sounds of swordfighting rang in the air.

Girasole took a step forward. The blue mare nudged the slip guard from a scabbard on her shoulder and shook her head.

“You can’t intimidate us.” Girasole stepped in front of Celiah. “These ponies are under my protection. Senator Giesu’s protection.”

Celiah whispered, “Wah di rass.” Her face went pale as a shroud. She set the knife down on the kitchen table and started walking towards the intruder.

Girasole blinked. Had Celiah lost her mind?

“You look so much older,” Celiah said. Her hard gaze melted into a soft smile. “I haven’t seen you since... since... wah di rass, since you were half as tall as--.”

Celiah’s knees buckled. The intruder and Girasole rushed to her side at the same time. The standoff disintegrated.

“Bax cova,” Celiah wailed. “All this.. all this...” She wrapped her arms around the intruder and squeezed with all her might. “It’s a miracle. Miracle child, miracle...” Her words disintegrated into sobs.

Girasole pulled back. The gears in her mind spun, connecting the dots, completing the picture. “You’re...”

Blue touched her hoof to Celiah’s lips, imploring her to keep her voice down. Celiah let out a laugh and nudged the hoof away with her nose. “I can’t stay quiet. Look at you.” Her eyes took her in. “You’re so beautiful.”

Blue let Celiah embrace her and cry on her shoulder for a moment longer. Then she helped the older zebra to her hooves. Blue nodded first to Celiah, then to the door.

Celiah understood. She glanced at Girasole. Her face sagged with ten years of undue burdens. “Don’t ask me to do something I can’t, child. I’m an old mare. I’ll slow you down.”

Blue tapped Celiah on the chest, then touched her own. Then she motioned again towards the door. Something changed in Celiah’s eyes. A look Girasole had never seen before spread across the old zebra’s face, a glow that had no start and no end. A glow that came from everywhere all at once.

All at once, Girasole understood what Blue’s gestures meant. “Celiah,” she said in a firm voice, “don’t.”

The zebra went rigid. She looked at Girasole, but didn’t speak.

“You have obligations. And she’s a fugitive. Don’t be hasty.”

All at once, the zebra mare’s eyes ignited. “Don’t be hasty,” she sneered, the long-dead accent slipping into her voice. “Shall I stay forever? Finish dinner? Shall I pirouette?”

Blue stepped between the two mares and slipped her sword out of its sheath. The sight of polished metal made Girasole freeze in her tracks.

Celiah leapt across the kitchen and grabbed a saddlebag. She proceeded to ransack the kitchen, taking everything that could keep without refrigeration spells.

Girasole kept her eyes locked on Blue, doing her best to ignore the glittering sword. “Don’t think this is the first time I’ve had something sharp pointed at me,” she said. “Don’t--”

From downstairs came the sound of young mares giggling. Blue’s eyes flashed to the stairs for a fraction of a second.

Girasole sprang into action. She leapt back to the counter and grabbed her knife. In another instant she had positioned herself between Blue and the stairwell. Her knees ached and her arthritis raged in her joints, but she stood her ground, as fierce and firm as any Derechan legionary. Her eyes were wide. Try, they said.

The standoff lasted all of five seconds. Once it became clear Girasole wouldn’t attack first, Blue sheathed her sword. Together with Celiah, they backed towards the door.

A sudden pang of loneliness pinged through Girasole. She could hear the swords again, the distant wail of metal. “Wait,” she said. “Don’t go.”

Blue stopped.

“I’m sorry,” Girasole said. The knife trembled in her hooves. She gripped it for dear life. Why? What was the point? “I tried to stop him.”

Blue didn’t move. She didn’t even blink.

“He never touched another one of your sisters after you left. I made sure of it.”

Blue nodded slowly. Then she took Celiah’s hoof and left out the front door.

Chapter 41

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Commander Fleet rapped his walking stick on the floor of the grand mausoleum. “You know what this means, right?”

Sparrowshot’s eyes didn’t move from the two caskets laid out in the center of the viewing hall. The left one was draped in a red shroud. The right was draped in purple. “Someone needs to take the reins,” he replied.

“Exactly.”

Sparrowshot gulped. He’d been dreading this moment ever since the rumor of their dual rulers’ deaths had been confirmed. Why was he of all ponies being tapped for leadership? Hadn’t there been enough scheming for one lifetime?

Still, he was no fool. A full quarter of the senate was dead. Hundreds of aides and who-knew how many skilled laborers were dead. The legions had been gutted. His unit alone had lost sixty percent of its ponypower in one day. One day.

He wondered what they’d call this day in the history books.

Fleet passed the walking stick from one hoof to the other. Sparrowshot was starting to get the impression it was some sort of nervous tick. “We all have our own private thoughts about what happened,” Fleet said. “But we have to move forward. It’s what they would have wanted. It’s also what Derecho needs.”

“I agree completely.”

“We’ve held off on sending word of yesterday’s developments to the vassal states. As far as they know, Giesu and Romulus are still firmly in control. For the foreseeable future, I think it should remain as such. Too many changes in leadership might give them the impression that no one’s in charge.”

“But no one is in charge.”

Fleet’s face darkened. “That’s what I was getting to.”

Sparrowshot shivered. Here it comes.

“Sparrowshot, you’ve stayed alive this long because you’re a smart pony. You know when to follow orders and when to go your own way. That sort of thinking is going to be crucial in the coming months.”

“My success stems from the training and dedication of my soldiers—”

“Enough of that. We have plenty of soldiers. What we need in this moment is a leader. Someone who can bridge the gap between what’s left of the old guard and whatever comes next.”

“And what do you think will come next, sir?”

“I don’t know. But there are certain ponies who are better suited to lead us into the unknown than others. Do you catch my drift?”

“Sir... I fear for Derecho. I fear for all of us.”

“Good. Keep that fear close. It’ll keep you safe. More blood will be spilled in the coming months. I need to know that you’re willing to do what it takes to lead Derecho into a new era.”

“Sir—”

“We need you, Sparrowshot. I need you.”

Sparrowshot steadied his nerve. It’s really come to this. Very well.

Both stallions looked at each other and said simultaneously, “If you support my claim—”

They froze.

For a long moment, only the smoke from the incense moved.

Then, slowly, in perfect synchronicity, they both reached for their swords.

After they finished beating him, Flannel was read formal charges of treason and dragged to the former senate chambers, now the dictatorial forum. Flannel’s trial would be the very first one to take place following the name change.

The masons and contractors were still working on converting the former senatorial forum into a suitable throne room. Until a more permanent pedestal could be constructed, they placed the throne on cloudstone cinder blocks.

Flannel strained to open his swollen eyelids and saw the remains of the horseshoe-shaped rows of senatorial benches being stripped and converted into rows of horizontal columns, tapering slightly as they stretched towards the empty spot where the throne would sit.

A thought slipped through his concussed mind. They taper like that to give the illusion of depth.

Then one of the guards kicked him again, and the thought vanished.

Flannel waited on his knees for nearly an hour before a cadre of generals finally strode in. Their red robes was gone, replaced by gold ones with brilliant pearl-white fringes. The bottom edges where the gold met the ground had an unsightly green gradient to them.

“It’s not dirt,” the ranking general muttered to his aide. “What is it? We live on clouds. How do things get dirty if there’s no dirt?”

“It’s oxidation,” Flannel croaked.

The sound of Flannel’s voice drew an exasperated look from the general. “Come again?”

“Oxidation, sir. The cloak must have been dyed with pigments that use—” He coughed up a mouthful of bloody phlegm and spat it onto the floor. “With pigments that use metal powder as an ingredient in the dye.”

“So what?”

“So, you said it yourself. We live on clouds. The moisture interacts with the dye and changes the color.”

The general raised an eyebrow. “Why are you here?”

“My name’s Flannel, sir. I did the cloudscaping for the late—” He paused to wheeze. “Late general Romulus’s complex. Senator Giesu, may he rest in peace, praised my work often.”

“He’s on trial for treason,” a guard announced. “Treason and attempted murder.”

“I tried to protect the senator!” Panic crept into Flannel’s voice. “I—”

“That’s enough.” The general and his cohort settled into their seats. An air of severity settled over his wrinkled features. “I am commander Fleet. This is a wartime court, so spare me the defense. I’m more interested in what you were doing in the late general’s complex on the day he died.”

“I—I’m a cloudscaper. I start work on the east side of the complex so I can watch the sunrise while I work. Then I—”

“Do you really expect me to believe that?” Commander Fleet whipped out a folder and waved it in Flannel’s face. “You’ve been off the payroll for quite some time. A general’s complex isn’t a public park. They don’t just let former employees in.”

Flannel averted his eyes. His manacled hooves trembled. “It was an off the books kinda thing, sir. General Romulus told me not to tell anyone, or he’d put my family in jail.”

“Convenient. Tell me something. You’re from the former griffon kingdoms, correct? A refugee. This would actually be the second change in leadership you’ve been caught up in, isn’t it?”

“Uh. Yes, sir.”

“That much unrest could change a pony. Turn even the mildest farmer into a revolutionary.”

Flannel shook his head. “I would never. What general Romulus did for me merits nothing short of absolute loyalty.”

“General Romulus is dead.” Commander Fleet leaned forward on his throne. “Or did you forget?”

Flannel flinched, unable to meet the commander’s inquisitorial eyes. “I—”

“What role did you play in the deaths of senator Giesu and general Romulus?”

“None, sir, I tried to protect them—”

“ Lying to a general’s face? Do you have no shame?”

“Please.” His voice cracked. “I didn’t do anything.”

Fleet shouted, “Do you even begin to understand the position you’re in? He was our best chance at holding the republic together. I’m going to have every one of general Romulus’s murderers tressed and suspended beneath the city in a steel cage. The birds will eat you before you can die of thirst.”

Icy dread froze Flannel to the spot. His head fell until he was looking directly into the blood he’d spat out a moment ago. He saw the red outline of his own silhouette. A shudder swept up his spine.

“I’ll say whatever you want,” Flannel whimpered. “Please don’t kill me.”

Commander Fleet leaned back in his throne and scratched his chin. “This is as clear-cut a case as it gets. I should have you thrown off the edge of the city. Do you know why you’re here, and not all the way down there?”

Flannel shuddered and shook his head.

“You’re here because of the mushrooms.”

For a long time, Flannel didn’t speak. He didn’t know what to say. He eventually whimpered, “The what?”

“Yes, the mushrooms. We found a few files the late general had so kindly left unguarded. Thank goodness he was never able to bring his plan to fruition. Can you imagine an army under the influence of those things trying to fight?” The other generals erupted into laughter.

“So... so you know about—”

“Yes, we’ve all been to Canary’s Cage. Horrible shame, what happened to Prairie Sky. He was a visionary. But he’s no longer important. We have you.”

Flannel leaned back, dumbfounded. He blinked back tears. “You’re not going to kill me?”

“Well, you’ve put yourself in a position where, legally speaking, I can’t not kill you. In these trying times, we need to set a precedent. But you can help yourself by agreeing to my terms.”

“Okay. I’ll say whatever you want.”

“Now you’re getting it. You’re going to plead guilty to this charge of treason and forfeit your life. I’m going to note in the ledger that you were executed. On paper, you’ll be dead. In reality, I’m going to bring you back to the estate, where you’ll begin the process of rebuilding the mushroom operation. Justice is served. You live to see another day. Everyone’s happy.”

He sucked in another breath. His last, probably. “I’m so sorry... It can’t be done.”

Fleet paused. Flannel could see the cogs turning behind his eyes. “What do you mean?”

He sucked in another breath. His last, probably. “I mean, it’s impossible.”

“Impossible? You had months to develop an effective operation. You grew mushrooms. It’s all in the files.”

“He did. I just did the heavy lifting. All the actual growing was him.”

Commander Fleet considered this for a moment. Then he leaned back in his chair and said, “No, that won’t do.”

One of the black-clad guards strolled over to Flannel, prodded his side until he found the lowest rib bone.

Flannel tried to curl up. “Please—”

The guard stomped on the rib. Flannel felt it crack. All the air left his lungs. He collapsed into the little puddle of his own blood and mucus. He felt it smear his face as he rolled on the floor.

“One more,” Fleet said, his voice cold.

Flannel didn’t have the air to beg for mercy as the guard approached a second time. He tried to crawl away, but the guard pinned him down with the butt end of his spear, then delivered another swift kick to the same spot. The next rib in the row broke.

“I don’t want to underplay how nice it would be to have my little slice of Canary’s Cage back,” commander Fleet said. “I want to help you. But if you want to remain in the new government's good graces, you’ll need to help me in return. You can do that by restarting your growing operation.”

Flannel tried to say yes, but the act of inhaling brought with it a new depth of pain. His eyes rolled up. He thought he was going to pass out. He clenched his jaw and nodded slowly as his vision filled with stars.

“Good. You can have free rein of the terrarium and whatever’s left in it. Make a list of whatever else you need and submit it to my aides. We’ll do the rest.”

“I...” Bit by bit, the air started returning to Flannel’s lungs. “I gotta... start from scratch. Could take months.”

“That’s fine.” Fleet’s wrinkled face softened into a smile. “We have all the time in the world.”

Fleet motioned to the guards. They looped their legs beneath Flannel’s armpits and hoisted him to his hooves.

As they dragged him out of the throne room, Flannel heard commander Fleet say, “I’m glad you made it out, Flannel. Really.”

A month passed. No matter how many resources and beatings Fleet and the cabal of generals poured onto Flannel, the unfortunate fact of the matter was plain to see. Flannel had no idea how to grow mother sky mushrooms.

His broken ribs mended, slowly. But soon a new issue arose in the form of food shortages.

After the parades had ended and the ash from the funeral pyres had drifted away, Derecho was left with a new government on the take and no real link to the ground. The remains of the mobile port, the traders and chariot fliers and manual laborers so crucial to supplying the cloud city with food, had seen the instability in the skies above and left for greener pastures.

Commander Fleet seemed unconcerned.

“It’s your... who, again?”

“My mother, emperor. She’s running out of food.”

“How do you know she’s actually running out of food?” One grey eyebrow rose. “Have you been in touch with her?”

“I haven’t spoken to her, sir. I can’t leave the complex. But I know where she lives, and I hear there’s been a rash of food shortages in certain neighborhoods—”

“Maybe she should find work, then. Please don’t bother me with these things.”

Flannel blurted, “If she can’t eat, then I won’t eat.” Flannel stood his ground, even as his internal voice screamed at him to bury his nose in the clouds and submit. “What good is your chief mushroom grower if he becomes mushroom food?”

Fleet put a hoof under his chin. His eyes moved, performing some kind of unseen calculation. Flannel couldn’t believe it. He had asked the emperor to do something, and he was listening. Perhaps he would leave a parcel of bread left on her doorstep. Or a wedge of cheese on the windowsill. Or—

“Maybe that’s what we’ve been missing from your equation,” Fleet said. “Decay.”

“Uh. Sir, I don’t—”

“At any rate, it’s worth a shot. I’ll supply you with a cadaver by the end of the week. Turn it into fertilizer and report back in a week with your findings.”

“We already got plenty of fertilizer, sir—”

Fleet’s voice rose. “Then why hasn’t anything grown?” He rose to leave. “And don’t bother me with your family affairs ever again.”

Flannel withered. A memory came back to him—Hypha’s face, lit by a fire of his own creation. Do you think they’ll accept that level of liability?

That evening, Flannel snuck into the terrarium. Even if he did know how to grow mother sky, the scars from the fire and the battle would have made growing anything in this room impossible. The hole where the sunroof had once been was sealed. The air was wet and cold. Oddly, no one from Fleet’s staff had bothered to replace the cloudstone floor. It must have been easier to simply leave it as natural clouds.

It was an oversight Flannel could exploit.

He spent all night rigging a goodbye present for whoever went looking for him, which he left in one of the supply cabinets. He penned a quick letter and affixed it to the cabinet handle. Finally, he ran a length of thin string from inside of the cabinet and looped the end through a hole in the paper.

With that out of the way, he set about his escape. He tied one end of a long rope around his midsection, then secured the other end to one of the heavy workbenches. The way the rope groaned terrified him, but he forced himself to focus.

“I’m comin’, ma,” he whispered. Then he leapt into the void.

Babska cracked open the door. “If you bust in, I’ll kill you.”

“Mom, it’s me.”

From the crack in the door came a hoof holding a blade. It slashed at Flannel once, then twice. “I’m old, but I’m quick. You better scram before someone gets hurt.”

“Hell’s bells—mom, it’s Flannel. Your son.”

There was a pause. Then the door flung open and Babska descended on him with a barrage of kisses and a hug that could pop lead balloons.

“I didn’t hear from you for so long,” she said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “They said your name was on the list of traitors that got—but I knew they were wrong. I knew—”

“Mom.” Flannel held his mother at arm’s length. “They were right. Technically speaking, I’m dead.”

“...Oh.” A confused look passed over Babska’s face. “Did I go crazy?”

He chuckled grimly. “No. But they’re gonna come looking for me soon. We have to leave the city.” Flannel hurried his mother into the house and pulled a beat-up pair of saddlebags from the closet. “Pack light. We’re gonna be walking a lot.”

She stared at him for a moment. “Excuse me?”

He went to work packing his own saddlebag. “It’s not safe for us anymore.”

“Not safe?” Her eyes narrowed. “You got into another fight at work, didn’t you.”

“Sort of.” He noticed she hadn’t started packing yet. “Mom, we don’t have much time. There’s not a lot of chariot taxis left. No one’ll take us if we have heavy bags.”

Babska put a hoof on his shoulder. It stopped him cold. “What’s going on, Flannel?”

All the nervous tension holding him up vanished. He sank to his haunches. “The new government’s asking me to do something impossible.”

“Impossible? You’re a cloudscaper. What kinda impossible task are they asking you to do?”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that. When they get sick of me failing, I think they’re gonna replace me.”

A worn look passed across Babska’s face. Every ancient worry she thought she had left behind in her past life came bubbling right back up to the surface. The candlelight flickered, and for a moment the lines on her face vanished, and she was twenty three years old again, a young widowed mother in a dangerous land.

She sat down on the bed and took his hoof in hers. “I never thought I’d have to do this twice.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I just wanted to protect you.”

“You did.”

“No, no, I did it all wrong. Look at us. We’re right back where we started.”

“That’s not true. If you didn’t do what you did, I wouldn’t be here. You got me outta the griffon lands. You raised me.”

She sighed. “When you live so long, you start to believe you’ve seen everything. But then things just keep changing.” She sighed. “You could live a thousand years and never see the end of it.”

Flannel put his arms around her. He was a full head taller than her, but in that moment he felt five years old and tiny again.

“Sorry, mom.”

A thin, raspy laugh escaped her lips. “You’re a good boy.”

“Trouble just follows me around, don’t it.”

“Or maybe you follow it around.”

They sat in silence for another moment. Then Flannel patted her on the shoulder and stood up, an unspoken signal to resume packing.

As they finished up, he asked her, “What did you say to me the night we got out of the griffon lands?”

Babska thought for a moment before replying, “There wasn’t time to make up a story. I just threw you on my back and started running.”

The air grew warmer. The candles kept on burning through the night. It was morning by the time their flames touched the metal wax catch and went out. Flannel and Babska were long gone by then, wisps of smoke disappearing into thin air.

It took two weeks before anyone realized something was wrong. Commander Fleet requested an update from Flannel in the morning. By the time court opened an hour later, he’d forgotten all about it.

That evening, he thought about how nice it would be to wind down with a hooffull of mother sky, and remembered his request from that morning.

“Where is my update from Flannel?” he asked an aide.

The aide turned a paltry shade of white. “We—uh. We couldn’t find him.”

“That seems unlikely. He’s not allowed to leave the complex.”

“Yes, sir. He’s here. We just don’t know where, exactly.”

Fleet frowned. “When were you going to inform me of this?”

“Never, sir, because we were going to find him. There’s a squad of guards and an orderly patrolling the halls as we speak—”

Commander Fleet stood up suddenly and pushed the aide out of the way. He would look for Flannel himself. This was a personal project, anyway. A personal touch was required to keep things on track. When he finally found the stallion, he could instill a proper amount of fear to keep him on track going forward.

Flannel’s personal quarters were empty, though his belongings were still there. That was a good sign. Earth ponies would sooner die than part with their trinkets. Flannel wasn’t in the mess hall, or the baths, or the small administrative library. Every passing moment made the senator’s annoyance tick higher.

By the time he got to the ruins of the terrarium, Fleet had worked himself up into a lather. He strode across the shoddy growstones, kicking at a wayward clod of dirt and watching it scatter everywhere.

A white scrap of paper stood out from the blasted-black cabinets in the corner. Upon closer inspection, Fleet noticed it was written in unmistakably shaky earth pony mouthwriting.

The note read:

You’d do well to remember the griffon kings and all their hopeless wars. Their armies are strong and their warriors are brave. But when it comes to farming? They're hopeless. Griffons revolt because they’re proud. But that pride is also their downfall, because they see farm labor as beneath them. They could have held this belief forever without any consequences—unless of course, they did something crazy like run all the earth ponies out.
All those proud warriors are starving in their fancy suits of armor.
Consider this my resignation.
—Flannel

As Fleet read the note, his aging face started to turn red. His hoof curled around the note, crumpling it. When he arrived at the final line, he let out a loud curse and tore the note off the cabinet handle, unknowingly pulling the string attached to the paper. The string activated a timed fuse that burned down to a homemade detonator fashioned from the guts of a crystal UV lamp, a primer charge, and fifty five pounds of nitrogen fertilizer.

Chapter 42

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Administration was a thankless job. But someone needed to perform the unenviable task of cataloging the bodies before they were burned, hoofing out paychecks and life insurance payouts, and writing delicately-worded letters to vassal states about the new changes in leadership.

LeBaine did this all without complaint. It was his sacred obligation and survival mechanism. Whenever the reins of power fell into new hooves, when a new general barged into the estate demanding the old guard vacate or die, LeBaine could simply point to the mountain of paperwork on his desk and inform them in no uncertain terms that, yes, they could do whatever they wanted with him, as was their right. But he was the sole cypher to this mystifying mountain of paperwork. Derecho only turned so long as the paperwork flowed. And who wanted to go down in history as the ruler who ran Derecho into the ground?

When the smoke cleared, LeBaine found himself back in his same office chair, at his same desk, doing the same thing he’d always done: paperwork.

There was a knock at the door. LeBaine looked up from his work. “Come in.”

Floore nudged open the door. He balanced a tray of tea on his back. “If you’re going to lock yourself in here all night, you might as well have something to drink.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“Are you sure you don’t need anything else? I don’t mind staying.”

“Absolutely. Get some rest. That’s an order.”

Floore set the tea tray down and saluted. “Yes, sir.”

LeBaine cringed. “I’ll make an example out of you if you salute me again.” Ignoring Floore’s chuckling, LeBaine picked up his mug and took a deep breath. Shockberry tea. At last. Jazzmine and citrus and faint ambient ozone. “Where’d you get this?” he asked.

“The late emperor Giesu had some stashed away in his room.” Floore leaned in. “Do you like it?”

LeBaine took a delicate sip. A warm smile bloomed like a floral flavor note. “I love it.”

Derechan tea just couldn’t compare to tea grown on the ground. If the city stood for another five thousand years, they’d still be unable to cultivate a single decent strain among all the city’s vast hydroponic gardens. Never could. Never would.

The first thing the assassin Gold Leaf did with her paycheck was buy a bottle of strong mulled cider and two dozen roses. She carried the gifts home in a little wicker basket, passing like a shadow through the empty market districts and quiet apartment-lined streets. She’d been given a special pass signed by Giesu himself in case anyone stopped her, but she kept a low profile all the same. Between puncture-happy greenhorns and Giesu’s untimely demise, she doubted a hall pass would do her much good.

Her one-room apartment was an odd mix of neglect and priceless antique treasures. She sometimes pocketed things from missions under the pretext that she’d sell it and find a nicer place to live. But when it came time to sell, she could never bring herself to do it.

The real treasure in her flat, at least as far as Gold Leaf was concerned, was her lover, Canto. When Golf Leaf knocked on the door and Canto opened it, Gold Leaf shoved the flowers into Canto’s face, sending the poor mare stumbling backwards.

“What’s wrong with you?” Canto said, murder in her voice. “First you--” Golf Leaf opened her mouth to apologize. “No, shut up. Get those flowers outta my face. First the archaeological society pulls you away for some secret special assignment, then you leave without saying goodbye, and is that blood on your leg?”

Gold Leaf looked down. Her forelegs were matted and smeared with dried blood. Senator DeVrie’s, if she remembered correctly. He’d bled a lot when she killed him.

“I love you,” Gold Leaf said in an even voice. “And I’m sorry.”

Canto just stared at her. Then it looked like she was about to throw a hoof at her. Then she sighed, and the hurt subsided. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Don’t worry about the blood. It looks bad, but it’s just a cut.”

“Did you come straight from the dig site?”

Gold Leaf cringed before the words even left her mouth. “I couldn’t wait to see you again.”

Canto threw her hooves up. “I don’t know. I don’t even know anymore.”

Damn these questions. Canto saw right through her. Gold Leaf had to say something clever, and fast. “I quit the archaeological society.” She took a step forward. “I’m never taking another job with them again. I was thinking about what you said, and you’re right. I wanna move out. I wanna go to the eastern Isles with you. I wanna meet your family.”

Canto’s face went from rage to confusion with the faintest flicker of hope in between. “You’re joking.”

“No. I’m stifling both of us by making us stay here. I want to be free.”

“But... move out? What about your stuff?”

“We’ll leave it. Consider it collateral for the landlord.”

Canto walked over to where a series of ornate faberge eggs sat on a rickety wooden desk. Gold Leaf had taken those from the griffon ambassador she’d strangled four years ago. His children had walked in on her committing the act, and for their curiosity she had to kill them too. Now all that was left of that entire family and all their suffering were a couple pretty little eggs.

Canto fixed Gold Leaf with a look of aching sincerity. “You’re a liar.”

“I would never lie to you.”

“Then what is all this?” Canto pointed at the blood. “You’re lying to my face.” Her hoof hovered over the rickety desk, like she was going to smash the whole thing to pieces. “Say you’re not lying one more time. I dare you.”

Instead of replying, Gold Leaf stepped carefully forward and plucked one of the priceless ornamental eggs off the table. She placed it delicately on the ground. Moonlight traced the fine lattice of gold surrounding the pure opal body of the egg.

Gold Leaf brought her hoof down on it with a satisfying crunch.

“Goldie!”

Gold Leaf took Canto by the arm. “These things mean nothing to me. Smash them. I’ll help. I would break every treasure in this room if it made you feel better.” She drew away. “I mean it. Go ahead.”

Slowly, inch by inch, Canto backed down. “Do you really want to move to the Isles?”

“Yes. Or anywhere. Wherever you want. I just can’t be in this city anymore.”

Canto’s demeanor shifted. Her back straightened. Her eyes sparkled. “Then we should get started as soon as the no-fly order is lifted. We could use your connections within the archaeological society to find buyers for all these--”

“No.” The force behind Gold Leaf’s voice startled her. “We should leave tonight.”

“What? But all this stuff--”

“Forget the stuff. I want it out of my life forever.”

“Goldie, one of these eggs alone could buy a house in the eastern Isles.”

“But I’d know where the money came from. And then the house would never feel right to me.” She moved across the room silently and took Canto’s hooves in hers. “Please. Let’s leave and never come back here.”

Silence reigned in the room. A mote of worry bloomed into full-on panic as Canto struggled to find the words.

Finally, she said, “If that’s what you really want. Then we’ll leave tonight.” Gold Leaf surged forward with a cry of joy, but Canto put a hoof on her chest and stopped her. “Wash up first. I wanna make sure you’re not hurt.”

Gold Leaf didn’t tell her what had happened that night. Canto was smart enough to see right through her lie. But to her credit, once she’d helped Gold Leaf wash it off and made sure there was no risk of infection, Canto promptly dropped the subject and never picked it up again.

The two ponies lived out the rest of their lives on the eastern Isles. Neither of them ever brought up that moonlit night in Derecho again.

Mother sky gave him strength. Mother sky gave him speed. The Derechan legionary in front of him gave elder Cumulus an opening.

He lunged forward and plunged his spear between the breastplate and shoulderguard of the legionary. The ribs in the stallion’s chest cracked. He let out a whoof of air and collapsed on the stairs of the Roseroot temple dias. The blood from him and ten of his friends formed a gory mandala on the stone.

Cumulus let go of the spear and sailed into the air. The stone ceiling of the dias restricted his movement somewhat, but he was still faster and more agile than the pegasi intruders. Four more legionaries advanced from his left. He drew a rune circle and clapped his hooves together. Lightning sprang from his hooves with a deafening clap and leapt onto the backs of the legionaries.

Armor melted, fusing to skin. They cried out as they fell, but he couldn’t hear it. The ringing in his ears drowned it all out.

He saw a group of monks making a dash for the acolyte hovels. He started towards them, but a hail of arrows forced him back beneath the protected dias.

This battle is lost. The thought didn’t fill him with the anguish he expected. Lost or not, he still had a role to play. He had to draw attention away from the acolytes as they made their escape. With any luck, they’d make it to Gleeful and Yangshuah and Shining Rock. Hope wasn’t lost. Not yet.

What he needed to do now was keep enough of the invading force occupied at the temple to cover the retreat of the acolytes. That was his mission. He would see it through.

An arrow whizzed inches over his back. He turned and saw archers forming up at the base of the dias. He dove on them without mercy, crushing one archer to death on impact and beating another to death with his own helmet before the rest scattered.

He breathed deep, even and slow. Keep control. Your death plays a crucial role. Feel it. Receive it.

More guards massed on the other side of the dias. One of them wore a red robe and a large plumed helmet. General Romulus, Cumulus thought. No doubt the general was impatient to get a look inside the temple and plunder what he found inside.

Not if Cumulus could help it. He lunged forward, eyes fixed on the general. The momentum had already swung too strongly in the invaders’ favor to save Roseroot, but if he could get the general now, perhaps the campaign would stall. Other monasteries could be saved. Just a little bit closer, and he’d have him.

At the last moment, something flashed over him. Too late, he realized he’d been baited in. He tried to turn, but not even he was fast enough. A thick rope net closed around him.

Stone weights at the end of the ropes tangled up, sealing him in and dragging him down to the ground. Legionaries with swords closed in.

They should have used spears. When they got within striking range, Cumulus threw his entire weight towards the closest legionary. He couldn’t get himself out of the net, but he could still move his hooves enough to throw short punches and deflect the incoming swords. The unfortunate legionary’s helmet cracked. Blood oozed out. He stumbled backwards and collapsed, staring at the ground and muttering, “Muh, muh, muh.”

One more legionary met the same fate before the others got wise and went for some spears. In the few moments of calm, Cumulus strained against the net with all his might. Just as one section gave way, however, the invaders threw another net over him, cinching him to the stone floor of the temple dias.

He landed in a puddle of someone else’s warm blood. The sensation sent shivers up his spine.

The legionaries acted quickly. Cumulus lost sight of the general in the throng. A dozen of them formed a circle around him. He saw fear in their eyes. They raised their spears. This was it. The end rushed towards him with all-encompassing clarity.

A faint breeze tickled his fur. He smiled.

Let it go.

Chapter 43

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It took Hypha and the gang three days to truly escape Derecho. Legionnaire patrols were incessant, but the real danger came from the civilians. Hundreds of dissidents and refugees fled the violence, spreading out across the plain in every direction. Virtually none of them knew how to disguise their movements. Some couldn’t let go of old grudges and fought with each other. They made easy targets for passing patrols.

The way the flood of fleeing ponies thinned to a trickle gnawed at Hypha. His heart ached to help them. He wanted to throw up a light to guide them away from danger, or a shield to stop the falling arrows—something.

Each time he was about to dash off, Celiah somehow read his mind and held him back. “Take stock of what you have on your back before you go adding more,” she said.

Only once an entire day had passed without a single patrol sighting could Hypha fully relax. When they stopped to make camp that evening, he noticed Celiah was shifting her weight awkwardly from one side to the other. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Celiah chuckled. “As good as an old zebra can be.”

“If you need some help tomorrow—”

“I can pull my weight just fine, thank you very much.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” He slid his saddlebag off his back and plopped down beside her. “If you’d like, we can all partake in a mushroom ritual tomorrow morning. It’ll help with the pain and increase your stamina for the walk.”

Celiah considered his offer. “Depends. Where are you leading us, exactly?”

Her question stopped Hypha short. He didn’t realize he’d been leading them. He thought they were just collectively getting away from Derecho. But now they were away. The future loomed over Hypha’s head, larger and darker than a cloud city.

“I—” He froze. Red and Blue were looking at him, too. He cleared his throat before he spoke again. “I want to go east. Back to the Stonewood mountains.”

“Back to your monastery?” Celiah asked. Hypha nodded. “Is there a chance somepony’s still there?”

“No.” His eyes fell. “No, there’s probably no monks left.”

“Child, that’s an awful long way to walk just to see a cemetery.”

“It’s not just graves.” Renewed energy filled his voice. “I saw all the loot Romulus took from the monasteries. He only got a fraction of what’s really there. There could be scrolls left. Histories. Spellbooks. Precious gems. Mother sky.” He stood up. “We need to chart a new path for the order. It’s our duty as monks.”

“Well, good for you all. But I’m not walking halfway across the world for—”

Celiah stopped short. Hypha stared into her eyes with a near-breathless enthusiasm. She turned around and found Red and Blue boxing her in.

“Celiah,” Hypha breathed.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Celiah, you’re already given time to the order by traveling with us. You helped harvest mother sky, more or less.”

“I did no such thing.”

“You did enough. You partook in a mushroom ritual and interpreted its meaning.”

Celiah scooted back. “We—no, that was just one night. That didn’t mean anything.”

“All that’s left is to swear an oath.”

Celiah looked from Hypha to the two mares. “I’m too old.”

“It’s never too late to join the order.”

“I don’t know anything about your order.”

He motioned to Red and Blue. “Neither did they. We can teach you.”

“I can’t even read. What kind of lessons could you possibly teach an old broken cow like me?”

“One of them is empathy.”

A long, slow frown settled across Celiah’s face. She motioned for Hypha to come closer and leaned in to examine the mushrooms. “If I take them, and say the thing, that’s it? I’m in?”

“Yup.” Hypha smiled and held out a hooffull of caps. “Also, you don’t take them.”

Red and Blue rolled their eyes in unison.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the ancient skeleton of the Stonewood mountains rose from the eastern horizon. The grass and soil grew scant, revealing mineral deposits pressed into solid stone. The path rose sharply. Clouds rolled over their heads, an ancient haze obscuring the full extent of the range from view.

A steep chasm cut through the earth, separating the floating mountains from the rest of the continent. The gang crossed a swaying rope bridge one by one. The three mares tested the ground experimentally, not quite believing what they were feeling.

“It doesn’t move,” Celiah remarked. “Shouldn’t it move?”

“These mountains don’t move,” Hypha replied. “They float.”

As they wound their way deeper into the range, the fog broke. Hypha saw a rise domed with glittering white snow. His breath caught in his throat. He tipped forwards. Every part of him yearned to be closer. He rose nearly a hundred yards in the air before he even noticed he was flying. When he finally realized what was happening, he let out a triumphant holler and surged higher. He looped and spun until he ran out of breath, then went into a freefall. His heart pounded as the ground neared. At the last possible second, he pulled up. His hooves brushed the ground.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, but his muscles felt fresh. The normal headache of magical exertion was nowhere to be found. All the weight in his heart and pain in his hooves disappeared. He could feel magic permeating the air, permeating him. He was flying. He was alive. He was home.

The group soon came across a dried-up riverbed leading deeper into the mountains. It widened into a cart path, then a full fledged road. Several miles in, they saw wisps of smoke rising from beyond a bend.

Tucked away at the base of a mountain overhang, surrounded on all sides by sheer rises, they found a little earth pony mining town. Several dozen squat shale and mortar homes, along with trade shops and a tavern, lined the street.

Hypha made a beeline for the provisions store. As he roamed the aisles of canned goods, the stout mare behind the counter struck up a conversation. “Looking for anything in particular?”

“Nope,” Hypha replied. “Just need enough provisions for about four weeks.”

“That’s doable.” The shopkeep came out from behind the counter to help Hypha. “We haven’t had traders around here for some time.”

Her voice struck a note of familiarity to Hypha. “We’re not really traders,” he said. “Just passing through.”

“Into the mountains?” The shopkeep frowned. “You don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

She eyed him up and down cautiously. “Are you some kind of treasure hunter? Whatever you’re looking for up there is gone.”

“Maybe. But I have to see for myself.”

“I can’t stop you if you intend to go up there. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. There’s an awful lotta ghosts in those mountains.”

Hypha played with a can of lentils as he turned the mare’s face over in his mind. She looked so familiar. Where had he seen her before? “Have you ever been up there?”

“I have, actually. And can I say, I don’t like the idea of outsiders sticking their noses where they don’t belong.” The mare stacked two cans of corn with enough force to make Hypha’s ears ring.

Outsider. The irony brought a sad smile to his face. Even if that word had carried the same weight it used to, Hypha couldn’t disagree with the shopkeep. He was a different pony than the one who’d left Roseroot all those months ago. His past self would throw a fit if he knew what his future self was up to. He wondered if elder Cumulus would even recognize him.

Just then, the pieces clicked together, and Hypha remembered where he’d seen this shopkeep before. “Did you ever visit a monastery named Roseroot?”

A line of confusion creased the mare’s forehead. “Yes. How did you know—”

“You were in the farming detail!” A broad smile bloomed on his face. “How did the barley turn out?”

The mare finally recognized him. Hey eyes went wide. An excited little, “Ooh!” escaped her lips. “You’re that colt! The acola, acoline, uh--”

“Acolyte. You’re Squeeze, right?”

Squeeze ran right through a display of tinned tuna and wrapped Hypha up in a bone-crushing hug. He felt his hooves leave the ground as she spun him around and around.

“It was the leg,” she laughed. “Barely recognized you with that thing on.”

Squeeze insisted Hypha and the gang have dinner with her family. From the outside, the single-room thatched roof bump beside the road that served as their home didn’t look particularly homey. But inside there was a warm fire and a rack full of spices and breads and twelve young fillies and colts who all wanted to meet the strange monk with the metal leg.

After a dinner of vegetable stew and barley bread, Squeeze produced several bottles of imported cider. The kids carefully unwrapped rolls of faded confetti and placed kindling soaked with special oil into the fire. When the kindling lit, it burned with the colors of the rainbow.

Another foal started playing a drum. In no time at all Hypha and Celiah were leading the kids in a dance line around the room. Blue joined in too.

Red took a little persuading. After watching her sulk on the sidelines for the first round of dances, Blue rolled her eyes and dragged Red into the center of the chaos. Red’s scowl intensified, but Blue didn’t relent. She bumped her flank in time with the music, goading Red on. When that didn’t work, she gave Red a kiss on the nose. Then she leaned in and nibbled Red’s ear.

That was enough motivation for Red. She double checked her bandages to make sure they were secure, then started to dance, slowly at first, flowing in a clumsy doubletime take on her meditation dance. Blue joined the fray. The rhythm of the drums sped up. Hypha surrendered to the joy of the moment.

When Hypha paused to take a break and drink some cider, Sifter came up to him and reintroduced himself.

“That’s a Derechan leg, right?” he asked.

“Right now it’s my leg. But it was made in Derecho.”

Sifter chuckled. “Right, sorry. I do all the town’s metallurgy. I recognize the welds.”

“I didn’t know welds had that sort of character to them.”

“You’d be surprised!” His smile radiated excitement. Hypha obliged and held up his leg for him to examine. “Incredible. The hydraulics are so precise. And the gimbal at the baseplate! Genius work.”

“I can’t say the Derechans never did anything for me.”

Sifter laughed. He gestured to one of the blank metal plates on the leg’s exterior. “Have you considered decorating the side plates?”

“I haven’t given it much thought, no.”

“Well, if you’re interested, I’ve done plenty of embossing work in the past. I’ve got my metallurgy shed out back behind the house. I could whip something up in just a few hours.” He set Hypha’s leg back down. “If you wanted to, of course. It’s your leg.”

Hypha considered the offer. “Could you do something traditional?”

Sifter’s eyes lit up. “I know just the thing.”

Hypha woke up the next morning with a splitting headache and only three legs.

Red and Blue were cuddled up beside each other in one corner. Celiah snored softly a few paces away. Squeeze slept on the bed. The kids waterfalled off the mattress and onto a set of cushy floor mats.

A bittersweet memory of late-night acolyte study sessions in Roseroot surfaced in Hypha’s mind. Everyone looked so peaceful.

An intrusive thought flashed through his tired mind. Should he really take Red and Blue and Celiah up to Roseroot? After barely escaping Derecho, was it right to ask them to bear witness to more suffering? The thought of them touching the bones of his elders made his skin crawl.

But the truth was, he needed them up there as much as they needed him. If he shut them out, the already-daunting task before him would become insurmountable. The survival of the order depended on all of them. They may have been made monks under strange circumstances, but they spoke the words, same as him. They fought for mother sky. They sacrificed. They bled. They were linked. They always had been. The bones up in those monasteries were their elders too. Their friends. They needed to see. They needed to learn.

After a quick limp around, he found Sifter, along with the missing leg, in the metallurgy shed out back. A fire crackled away in a modest kiln. The chimney puffed little clouds of grey smoke. The leg sat on a table, partially disassembled.

Sifter stood on his rear two legs beside an anvil. One hoof clutched a pair of long pliers with which he rotated one of the leg’s exterior plates. The other hoof held a fine-pointed chisel. His teeth bit around the grip of a small hammer. He worked at a methodical pace. Appraise the metal. Turn it. Set the chisel. Hammer hammer hammer.

He looked up as Hypha approached and smiled around the hammer.

“Mind if I watch?” Hypha asked.

Sifter nodded, then turned back to his work. “So what are you gonna do up there?” Hammer hammer hammer. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Take care of the remains. Salvage what we can. Seal the temples.”

“Seal them?” Hammer hammer hammer. “Are you calling it quits?”

“No. But there are fourteen monasteries in total. It would be impossible for the four of us to take care of them all. We’re going to seal the temples until there are enough monks to take care of them all.”

“Where are you gonna find that many monks?” Sifter’s eyes flickered to the house, where the mares were sleeping. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna make them.”

Hypha’s face flushed red. “The order has a strong tradition of taking in orphans.”

“Right, right,” Sifter laughed. “I was just teasing.”

When he was done half an hour later, he spat out the hammer and wiped the dust and sweat off his brow.

“Give the plates another hour or so to cool,” he said. “Then I’ll refit them, and you’ll be good to go.”

Arranged next to each other on Sifter’s work bench, Hypha could see Sifter’s elaborate idea play out across the metal. Hundreds of triangular snow leopard teeth intertwined like jagged rocks to form a mountain range that flowed seamlessly from one plate to the next.

“What do you think?” Sifter asked.

Hypha leaned in close. Heat radiated off the metal, kissing his face. “It’s perfect.”

The goodbyes were long and plentiful, and dragged along into another farewell meal. For all the gifts she gave the group, Squeeze seemed genuinely surprised when Hypha slipped his entire coinpurse into her hooves.

“I’m not taking this,” she said bluntly. “No offense. But you need this a lot more than me.”

“It’s Derechan gold,” Hypha replied. “I don’t want to bring it back to Roseroot.”

Squeeze took the coins with a reluctant nod. Without warning, she scooped Hypha up in a crushing hug. “Please come visit us sometime. Anytime. Our door’s always open.”

Hypha hesitated, then finally relaxed into the hug. “I will.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” He squeezed Squeeze back. “Thank you.”

The family followed them as far as the dried-up riverbank, then left the gang to continue on their own.

The longer they walked, the more Hypha got the feeling they were no longer going in the right direction. He wasn’t even certain they were still going up. The riverdeep deepened. The walls grew steeper, until they were nearly vertical. The four were reduced to scrambling over boulders and weaving through ancient rockfalls. Between Red’s wounds, Celiah’s age, and the stuffed packs on their backs, progress was glacial.

Several miles into their trek, they came to a choke point in the riverbed. The steep walls had caved in some time ago, filling in the riverbed with rocks and debris. The hoofholds were few and far between. The rocks were jagged as teeth. A low mist rolled in, coating them and their path in dew.

Celiah made it about five steps before she stopped and announced, “I think it would be best if I flew.”

Hypha nodded. He shrugged off his pack and helped Celiah position herself across his back. The weight would be difficult to balance, but he didn’t need to fly the whole rockfall in one go. He could fly from perch to perch and stop to catch his breath along the way. Easy.

He was just bracing himself for the first flight when he saw something move in the corner of his vision.

He craned his neck to see around Celiah and saw a shape rounding the corner some twenty yards away. It glided along the ground like pre-dawn mist. Two jade-green eyes locked onto his.

Snow leopard.

For a split second, Hypha was frozen. This was the same snow leopard that had almost eaten him that fateful day in the mountains. He had no way of telling for sure. Somehow, he just knew. It had never stopped hunting him. It had lied in wait, nose upturned to catch his scent, belly on the ground, feeling for the familiar rumble of hoofsteps.

Hypha found his voice. “Blue!”

Blue saw the snow leopard and nearly jumped out of her skin. Red’s eyes went wide. Celiah let out an ear-splitting scream and swatted Hypha’s hindquarters. “Fly, idiot! Fly!”

The snow leopard’s ears flicked. Hypha saw each and every scar criss-crossing its face, a lifetime of violence. It took a step towards him.

Then it lunged.

Hypha panicked. He tried to push off the ground, but his legs slipped on the wet stone and went out from under him. Celiah rolled off his back, wailing curses as she went down. Red started hopping through the rockfall. Blue threw herself into a nearby pool of shadows and disappeared.

A thought flashed through Hypha’s mind. He had to distract the animal. If it went after Celiah, she was a goner.

He shot to his hooves and issued a challenging roar. Let it come to him first.

The snow leopard adjusted course and closed on Hypha. All the bravado turned to ash in his mouth. He turned tail and tried to flee, but he only made it about two steps before the snow leopard closed the distance. With a deafening snarl, it leapt onto his back.

The weight of the monster forced Hypha to the ground. Rough stones cut his back. The snow leopard scrambled blindly on top of him. Fur and jagged teeth filled his vision. The smell of death choked his nostrils.

The snow leopard swiped at his head. The claws missed their killing mark by inches, but the padded palm of its paw connected with the side of his head. Stars exploded in his vision. His hind legs turned to jelly.

The snow leopard leaned all its weight onto him and tried to bite his neck. Hypha barely managed to wrench a foreleg free from underneath it and push it away.

Feel it. Receive it. Let it go. He drew magic to his hoof and drew a rune circle on the animal’s exposed chest. As it reared back to strike again, Hypha kicked it with his prosthetic leg. The hydraulics slammed back, absorbing the recoil. A shockwave raced up the riverbed walls, kicking up bits of rock and dust. The snow leopard flew backwards with an ear-splitting howl.

Hypha scrambled to his hooves and raced towards the two mares. Red was already a quarter of the way through the outflow, but Celiah was frozen, unable to make the first long leap between rocks.

Celiah first. Then Red. He scooped Celiah up and took off across the outflow. The magical overstress of carrying twice his normal weight made his muscles burn like signal fires, but he kept his mind focused. He flew from hoofhold to hoofhold, landing for a split second before pushing off to the next one.

He cleared the outflow and landed to catch his breath one final time before flying up the steep walls of the riverbank. There he found Blue waiting for him atop the ledge, a look of helpless worry on her face. He slid Celiah off his back, then immediately turned to find Red.

What he saw made his heart drop. The snow leopard was picking its way over the rocks at a terrifying pace. Red was moving as fast as her legs could carry her, but for every jump she landed, the snow leopard landed two. At this rate, even if she could beat the beast across the rocks, it would make up the time on the flat riverbed. Hypha had to do something, and fast.

He forced himself back into the air. His head exploded in deafening bells of pain, but the fear was louder. After all this, after all the suffering, all the pain, all the victory—he couldn’t lose another monk. Not like this. He angled down. Faster. The rockflow loomed like thousands of sharpened teeth. No time to slow down. No time to think.

Red saw the snow leopard closing in and poured on the speed. It seemed for a second that she might actually beat the beast out of the outflow. But just as she neared the end, her hoof slipped on a wet piece of stone.

It happened in an instant. There was no time for her to react. Her legs went out from underneath her. She tumbled headfirst forward towards the jagged rocks. The snow leopard pounced.

Red never hit the ground.

Magical momentum surged through her body, carrying her forward in a long arc. She cleared the last fifteen yards of the outflow and angled up in a wild, uncontrolled spin. Gravity took hold. She hovered in mid-air for a split second. Then she started to fall.

Hypha was so stunned that he almost forgot to pull up. Jagged rocks cut his hooves and pinged against his metal leg. He turned around and surged through the air to catch up with Red.

Their eyes locked. Her face was pale with shock and fear. She reached out for him.

His hoof found hers. They embraced mid-air. “I got you,” Hypha panted. He grit his teeth and pitched up, rising to the high ground where Blue and Celiah had taken shelter.

His magic gave out just as they cleared the edge. Momentum carried them the last few yards to safety. The two landed in a heap, bruised, terrified, but alive.

The snow leopard looked up at them. Frustration creased its face. Hypha dragged himself to the lip of the ledge and locked eyes with it. He roared with a voice that shook the very mountains to their core.

Not today, he thought.

The snow leopard snorted once through its nose, then turned around and slunk off into the mountains.

He turned around to find Red was already back on her hooves. She barely seemed to notice the bruises and the blood pouring from her skinned knees. In fact, she practically buzzed with elation. Fire blazed behind her eyes.

“Red...” Her fire was infectious. Hypha felt his heart catch. “You just—”

Celiah howled with relief and threw her forelegs around Red. “I saw the whole thing!” she sang, practically crying. “Miracle child, miracle child.”

Though the bandages squished Red’s face into a frown, Hypha could tell that she was beaming. When Celiah finally let go, she looked at Hypha and motioned to the edge of the outcropping.

Hypha understood. He knew the look in Red’s eye. She had to try again. To make sure it was really real.

He took up a perch at the edge of the outcropping, ready to catch Red if she fell. A safety net for his sister.

Red took a running start and leapt into the air. Flight at last embraced her.