As a child, Daphne knew of a world where magic lived, where an immortal princess reigned over a beautiful kingdom, and longed to journey there beside Leit Motif, the filly she'd grown to love in the woods behind her home. But one day, when she needed her most, Leit Motif was gone, and she never came back to show her the way. As she grew, she put aside her childish dreams, and taught herself to believe the lie. When forces beyond her knowing take her sister Amelia, though, she discovers that her childhood fancies were entirely too real, and is thrust into a journey that will take her back to that land she longed for, back to the childhood friend she'd abandoned, and to worlds she'd only dreamed of.
“And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.” Revelations 6:2
Daphne
That had been the worst day of my life.
There had been such high hopes for it, but come mid-afternoon, my plans had been soundly crushed. As I stared out the kitchen window at the falling red and gold leaves of a warm Massachusetts autumn carpeting the street, the confinement of the house closed in. I could easily imagine my friends being driven to the mall, where they would have an absolutely fantastic time without me.
“Did you hear me, young lady?” Father asked in what he clearly believed to be a tone of patient authority. It sounded more peevish and moody to me. I glanced over at him, but he hadn’t bothered to look up from his paper. I chose to interpret the President’s stern face glaring out from the front page at me as my father’s own for the time being.
“Yes, Dad,” I answered. The paper crinkled in what must have been a spasm of irritation.
“What did I say?” he insisted.
Listening to the television with most of my attention made my answer half-hearted. “You want me to do stuff with Amelia today.”
“I don’t just want you to do stuff, Daphne. Your mother and I want you to watch over her tonight.”
Any hope I had for tonight’s plans with my friends to undergo a rebirth and resurrection shriveled up inside me. “For how long?”
“All night.”
I had already imagined my plans as a crumpled list sitting on the table. Now, they had burst into flames, instantly turning to ash. Sucking in a breath through grit teeth, I calmed myself before putting on my best wheedling face. I turned towards the paper, opening my mouth to address my appeal to the President of the United States.
“Don’t bother, I can’t see the puppy dog eyes.” He sighed—the paper shuffling sounded a bit like a sigh, too, for that matter. “Look, it won’t kill you to sit for your baby sister for one day.”
“But Daddy, what if it does?” I tried anyway. You can’t fault a girl for trying.
“It’ll make for interesting funeral conversation.”
“Dad!” The very idea was offensive. I pivoted, however, crossing my arms and countering with, “I should at least get something if I’m going to be stuck here all day. Babysitter rates.”
“If I wanted to pay for a babysitter I’d hire a babysitter. Half.”
“Three-fourths.”
“Half,” he said, with a note of finality. That suited me just fine—he had forgotten to negotiate what the original pay rate actually was, and when he was tired after a long day out with Mother I’d be able to drive a harder bargain. Small comfort for missing the day with my friends; at least I’d have money for tomorrow.
“Deal,” I agreed, perking up with a bright smile. “Now, where is Amelia?”
Almost as if on cue, I heard the front door slam.
“Speak of the devil...” Father said. Small feet pounded along the floor.
I turned in time to catch a muddy bundle composed chiefly of a pair of pink sneakers, a messy blond braid, and soiled clothing as it barreled into me at twice the speed of sound. I yelped at the impact and fell to the floor.
“...And she shall appear,” Mother finished the phrase for him, her own blond hair in disarray as she half-slumped in the doorframe leading to the porch. There were more important things on my mind, though.
“Amy!” I growled from the floor, trying to fend her off. It was like trying to push a friendly squid away, for she seemed to have three-to-four times as many arms as she ought to. “You little rat, you got my new jacket all muddy!”
“You’re a rat, and your jacket is dumb, anyway. It barely covers anything!” She beamed at me with a toothy grin. “We’re going to play today!”
Snarling at her insult to my fashion sense or trying to strangle her would only get me in trouble at this point, so I settled for grabbing her by the shoulders and holding her still while I stood up.
“We are not,” I said, firmly, establishing my ground rules—or to be more accurate, my dominance—before it got any worse, “going to play today. You are going to sit—quietly—or play on your own—quietly—while I do something productive. Like watch TV or call up my friends.”
Amelia’s face changed from beaming to hurt to cross to enraged so quickly I could almost marvel at her changeling-like variability. It was like she had a superpower for gear-shifting emotions. “Daphne!” she protested, stamping a muddy foot. “That’s no fair! Mom promised we’d get to play today!”
“Well, it’s high time you learned that life isn’t fair,” I answered, a bit tartly, but I felt entitled to it. “Besides, Mom and Dad won’t be here, so that means it’s my rules.”
“You and I need to have a talk sometime, young lady,” Father said. I could just make out the top of his black hair from behind the paper.
Mother was more direct, going over to put her hands around her messy younger daughter. “Now, Amelia, don’t you throw a fit or Mommy is going to be very cross,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. My sister stuffed her complaint, pouting with cheeks full. “Daphne?” Mother asked, lifting her own gaze to me. “Please. Play with your sister.”
“But Mom,” I protested. I didn’t bother with the wheedling face; it never worked on her anyway.
“Just take her outside, go on a walk,” she almost pleaded. Mother never really pleaded with her daughters, of course, but it wasn’t a command yet.
“Outside?” I grimaced, looking out at the warm autumn sky. It was so disgustingly wholesome and breezy. I might catch a lethal case of Ralph Waldo Emerson and start waxing poetically about fall colors and still forest pools if I went out there.
“You used to love going outdoors!” Mother complained. “All those nature walks as a girl, the trips with your cousins. I loved reading what you wrote about them.”
My mind flashed involuntarily to my bedroom, to a worn leather satchel in the closet. Buried within it was a girl’s diary, which pulsed like the heart of a vile, nameless god. I shuddered. “That was then, Mom; I was, like, five.”
Father rustled his papers as he turned another page, chuckling. “More like eight or nine. You came home dirty as much as Amelia does. Whatever happened to that messy girl we had?”
“Boys happened,” Mother lamented, sighing. She took Amelia’s backpack from around her shoulders and began to arrange the contents on the kitchen table with a mother’s distracted efficiency, though she knew Amelia would have handled it herself given the time.
“Ugh!” I griped, throwing my hands up. “Ugh!” I added again, for good measure. “Fine, I’ll do it, but only if it gets me out of this conversation!” Before they could thank me—or scold me, or whatever it was they were planning—I marched into the front room and exchanged my fashionable jacket for one that would keep off the weather when it turned cold tonight. I slipped off my platform shoes and put on a pair of sensible tennis shoes. Amelia materialized at my side with a small bag, a magnifying lens and a book of local insects poking out of one end.
“Bye Mom! Bye Dad!” I called, pushing the door open. I pulled my cell phone off of its charger before stepping outside, hoping I would be able to find some coverage out in the park. The phone was placed into my purse along with the utterly vital compact I kept for such emergencies. Wouldn’t do to meet a handsome hiker unprepared.
“Bye, honey!” Mother called, leaning out of the window as we walked by. I began pulling my hair into a ponytail while Amelia practically skipped along behind me. “Have fun!”
“Yeah,” I called back, peering up to see where we were going. Down the hill there was a short road and a stretch of town between us and a forest which had gone largely untouched by humans for over a hundred years, protected from exploitation in the early twentieth century, and nearly unused for millennia before settler and native habitation. Its canopy, bright with the colors of an autumn afternoon, whispered in the wind, as if trying to tell every passerby that, even in the days it had seen human hands, it had remained mysterious for reasons of its rough terrain and fickle weather. How I had loved that enclosed secrecy as a child, flights of fancy taking me to faraway lands filled with strange and colorful things.
“Yeah, right,” I muttered again and trudged on. The sign on the side of the trailhead was largely ignored, save for a quick glance. I had seen it often enough before to know what it said:
EVERFREE STATE PARK
Massachusetts State Parks & Forests
* * *
Clear water hummed and bubbled softly below the footbridge, flowing over the smooth stones of the stream bed to expose the darting shadows of fish. I massaged a sore ankle while lifting my phone up to the light dappling through the tree cover, hoping to catch a stray signal through the holes. No dice. The bars remained firmly buried. With a groan I shoved my phone back into my purse and hitched it up, scanning the nearby trees. Spotting a bright golden head against the carpet of leaves, I started towards Amelia, careful not to slip on the mud from last night’s rain. Amelia’s eyes were focused intently on the brush in front of her, the entomology book open on her crouched knees while she poked at the leaves with a stick in fascination.
I expected more people to be out in a part of the woods so close to the town. The day was beautiful, too, but we were all alone. The holiday sales in town probably had something to do with it—people who weren't me were getting to hang out with their friends and get something done instead of heading out into the middle of nowhere. Evidently, my sister and I were the only ones who just had to enjoy nature today. Trying not to set my teeth too hard, I paused on an incline near her that had a view of an old gazebo, some park tables, and a long stairway up a hill that stood nearby.
An old park bench lay invitingly within reach, as well. Its worn surface was hard, yet inviting after the walk. I sat down and rubbed my ankles. The nearby hill caught my attention, and while considering the relative merits of a nap versus a hike up for a shot at better reception, I noticed Amelia had sprung up at my side. She held her hand up, and I recoiled at once when I saw the caterpillar nestled there. I made a face while the caterpillar lazily devoured the maple leaf it held and ignored us both.
Amelia only beamed harder. “Isn’t it beautiful, Daph?”
Of all the things in the world to have a childish fascination with, why did it have to be bugs? Even when I was her age, I had found them disgusting. They had too many legs, slimy skins, squirmy segments, and oozing ichor and soulless eyes and gross hairs and all the other horrible things bugs had. I had much preferred birds, and I could still pick out a few species among the trees around us. My amateur birding days had come to a right and proper end when I had put away my books and binoculars and other silly things. At the minimum, birds eat insects, which was a point for them in my book.
“I don’t care if it’s going to turn into the most beautiful butterfly on the planet in an hour, you get that thing away from me now,” I growled, pulling my windbreaker’s sleeves up over my hands to cover them and waving at my sister in an attempt to ward off the demon-thing. Maybe the climb up the hill wouldn’t be such a bad choice after all.
Amelia’s face fell; I knew I had disappointed her by yet again failing to enter into her world when invited. It wasn’t like I was blind. She wanted to spend more time with me and hang out with her big sister. I was a kid once, too, and had looked upon my older cousins with envy and had wanted them to acknowledge me. Who seriously wants their baby sister tagging along with them everywhere, though? Didn’t I have my own life to live?
“Fine,” she huffed, bending down to deposit the caterpillar back on the bush. Not that the creature had cared; it had gone on pointedly ignoring both of us to continue concentrating on its meal. Amelia sprang back to her feet, once again flipping emotions like they were lines on a switchboard. “I know! We could go swimming!”
“Em, it’s the middle of autumn; we’d freeze.”
“Make snow men?”
I stared around with exaggerated patience before asking, “With what snow?”
“Mud men, then.”
“No.”
Amelia bounced to my other side as I turned to walk off. “We could play catch!”
I displayed my hands for her. “We didn’t bring gloves or balls, Amy.”
“Catch frogs?”
“No.”
“Climb trees?”
“No.”
“Ugh!” Amelia burst out in disgust, in a surprisingly good imitation of my outburst earlier today. “You never want to do anything, Daphne. You’re so boring!” she shouted, stalking off towards the benches to sulk, her long golden braid lashing behind her like an angry tail.
Letting her run across the footbridge gave me some much appreciated peace and quiet. Starting towards the stairs leading up the hill, I turned and glowered at my sister, who was by then swinging on the worn, painted rails of the gazebo with a despondent air about her. She gave a big, dramatic sigh, probably because she knew I was looking.
I brushed a few stray hairs out of my face and chewed on my lip for a moment. When my sister flopped unmoving on her back, I muttered under my breath. If she thought that pretending to be dead would get my attention, she was crazy. Ten minutes passed before I trod back, placing my hands in my pockets and making it appear as though I was there under protest. “Fine, Em, have it your way. Let’s play something,” I said, poking her limp body with a toe.
“Yay!” Amelia cried and sprang up, revived from death at once by my concession. “Let’s play a game, then! Cowgirls and Indians,” she suggested at once.
“That’s terribly insensitive to Native Americans, Em.”
“Space invaders?”
“Again with the games we can’t play without tools,” I said, leaning against the gazebo’s peeling frame while golden leaves swirled in the breeze around us. “And no, I won’t play it with my imagination,” I added when she opened her mouth.
“Hide-and-seek? Bonnie and Clyde? Harold and Maude?”
“Now you’re just throwing names at me to see if I—” I paused, thinking back over what she had said. I snapped my eyes back down at her. “What was that one you just said?”
“Harold and Maude?”
“No, the other one.”
“Bonnie and Clyde?”
“No,” I snapped, my tone waspish, “the one before that.”
“Oh!” She grinned. “Hide-and-seek! Do you want to play that?”
My own answering grin might have scared her off if she hadn’t been hoping for me to acknowledge her so badly. It was something of a Cheshire smile—toothy, wide, and mildly sadistic. There were beautiful possibilities in this game. “Yes. Yes I do. In fact, I’ll seek and you hide.”
“All right!” she said, putting her hands on her hips and looking me in the eye defiantly. “I’ll bet anything you can’t find me,” she declared—the poor, sweet, adorable thing.
“You’re probably right.”
“I’ll bet you a cookie you can’t!”
“I’ll bet you ten cookies I can’t.”
“Da-aph!” she griped, and rolled her eyes. “You’re supposed to bet if you can. Well, whatever, count to one hundred and let me get started!”
“Okay!” I said, with sweet poison in my tone. Turning to face the gazebo and setting myself, I glanced briefly to make sure she was running.
“No peeking!” she accused, glaring at me until I covered my eyes with an arm.
“All right,” I began, and started counting loudly, with a deliberate pace. “One, two, three…”
Listening to sneakered feet darting across the wood and then over the leaf-strewn earth, I waited until I could no longer hear my sister running. “…thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four…”
I risked a glance, scanning the tree line slowly.
“Thirty-five, thirty-six,” I chanted, and started to creep away in the opposite direction from the one she had run, “thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine.”
I paused. Nothing.
“And forty is good enough,” I said, almost as giddy as she had been, and pumped a fist. “Yes! Freedom!”
So I looked ridiculous, but it wasn’t like anyone was around to spy on me. I had seen to that. Amelia would catch on eventually, of course, but for the next two to three hours I was as good as alone. With a new spring in my step, I started to make my way up the hill, with only a pair of thrushes dancing in the air nearby to keep me company.
Warm afternoon sunlight greeted me as I began my ascent, the wind stirring my hair and the trees around me. Branches swayed and creaked, and the brush shifted with the passage of tiny animals. Without Amelia to distract me, there was nothing now between me and the natural setting I had let myself be lured into, and its rustic allure was trying to grab a hold of me once more. These woods might as well have been my backyard for how familiar they were, both here and in deeper parts where Mother and Father may not have been happy to know I had gone all on my own. It’s why I didn’t really feel as guilty as I should have about being so irresponsible and letting Amelia go unsupervised. After all, I had done that, and I turned out all right, didn’t I?
I had kept turning up at the door skinned, bruised, and covered in sweat and dirt more often than not. Trekking from hill to dale, fording streams, I would sometimes even scream my lungs out at the birds in the sky for the sheer joy of it.
There, on top of that hill, I could almost see myself down by the river now. The old mossy log damming half of the stream below had been sturdier then, and I had walked on it every day to my adventures deeper in the woods, past the worn sign by the horse trail that cheerfully pointed the way to Boston and the crumbling fence. I shook my head, gazing the other way, towards the west, where hardwoods clustered along a rocky ridge. It took little imagination to picture shapes lurking in the brush, darting from tree to tree. Faeries and goblins of an overexcitable little girl’s fancies danced at the edge of my mind, crowding to break back in. It seemed to me that I was forgetting something, and something very important to me at that. I didn’t feel quite like looking at it, though, not directly, so I tried thinking about it obliquely, my eyes sweeping over the park expanse from my new vantage point, ankle pain quite forgotten.
Tension began to worm its way up my spine as, for the first time since arriving, I wasn’t distracted from my own thoughts. I knew then that I probably should have refused to come here with Amelia. There had been chances to divert her. We could have gone to see a movie downtown. When she insisted on staying outdoors, I had thought of going to a horse ranch nearby, where a friend of mine lived.
Instead, I had brought her here.
Without much success, I tried to dismiss the unease I felt. This place was yesterday’s news. It should have been behind me, and its hold over me should have broken already.
If that was true, however, why did I suddenly feel so very small, looking out over the trees and fields I felt were so desperately familiar? It had been nearly ten years since I had last set foot among these hills, and yet it was like opening the first page of a book I had read a thousand times. Well-worn books didn’t make you tense up and dread what you might find when you turned the page, however.
Confidence in my ability to handle what memories this place might throw at me began to crumble steadily. Alarmed, I tried to think of something, anything, to distract me again and stop the train of memories before they could collide with my composure.
As it turned out, I had become so thoroughly lost in my own recollections that my phone had started to ring at least once without my noticing it. With a frenzied rush for my ringing phone, I fumbled for it in my purse and answered the call before I could check the caller display. “Hello?”
“Honey! Finally!” my mother’s voice came to me, jittery with the poor signal. “I’ve been calling for at least twenty minutes now! Where have you been?”
“I’m sorry,” I answered quickly. Unnecessarily, I pulled the phone away to glance at the display, seeing that it was indeed Mother’s phone. “I didn’t have a signal until a minute ago.”
“Of course,” Mother waved it off, metaphorically. “Well, your dad and I are at the theater now; how are you two doing?”
“We’re fine,” I responded in that typically teenage manner guaranteed to raise hackles among most parents.
“Are you playing?” Mother, with her laser-like focus, wasn’t biting.
“Yeah, we’re playing hide-and-seek.” It was technically the truth.
“Are you hiding or seeking?”
“Seeking.” I scuffed idly at a dirt-covered stone buried in the hill with a foot.
“It doesn’t sound like you’re seeking very hard.”
“Oh please, Mom.” Hardly any thought was needed for my answers. “No one knows the woods here better than I do. If she can hide from me, she can hide from anyone.”
“I suppose so.” She laughed. “I guess if you get lost you can always ask Leit Motif for help.”
“Hah!” I responded at once in a forced laugh. It was almost like a grunt of pain rather than any gesture of amusement. I felt as if Mother had jarred my memory with a brick to the head, sending shards of teeth and thought bouncing across the mossy earth. “Leit Motif, right, Mom, funny. Hah. Ha ha hah.”
“I’m almost disappointed that your sister never developed an imaginary friend of her own,” she went on, oblivious to my epiphany. “You were so cute. Always coming home with stories about your little adventures.”
The tiny factoid that had been prying at my brain ever since I came back to these woods had popped out with the rest of the detritus. This allowed me to examine the little sprig of information from all angles. Buried under a knot of disappointment and layers of new memories, it had been unearthed with all its sharp little edges. I was relieved to see that it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. The pain had dulled.
Leaning forward against the railing, I pulled my hair loose to let the wind catch and stir the strands. Taking a look down the hill, the wash where the creek flooded every spring caught my attention. I could almost see again two tracks in the mud, one small and sneaker-clad, the other big and many and round. “I’m glad you thought my being a complete dip was cute; real motherly of you,” I replied at last, my tone a fair bit more bitter than I had intended.
I felt small and oddly tender. It was as if she had just pried open a bandage on a sensitive wound.
“We all have embarrassing little things we don’t like to think about, Daphne,” she said. There was a pause as she lifted the phone from her ear, talking to someone I couldn’t hear clearly—Father or another patron perhaps. “Don’t get so wrapped up in being a teenager that you forget to laugh at yourself.”
“Nah, it’s all right.” I laughed it off. “I just hadn’t thought about it in a long time. I’m o-over it, it’s just weird. Really, I barely even think about it any more. I don’t even like the woods, waste of my time.”
“I understand. Well, your father and I need to take our seats now. Don’t leave Amy alone for too long, all right?” she asked. “You know your sister loves you.”
“Yeah, I do, even if she is a little brat,” I drawled, smirking. “Bye, Mom.”
“Pots and kettles, Daphne. Goodbye,” she said, hanging up.
Giving my phone a glance, I tossed it back into my purse and started down the other side of the hill, wrapped in my thoughts. It had been a long time since I had thought of… her.
I whistled a little ditty with five bars, a rising and falling melody that would have been meaningless to anyone else. To me and my memories, it was a key turning in a latch. Deep within my mind, a vault unlocked, and a breath of air stirred dust off the contents.
Turning, I saw a small, dirty girl in overalls burst from the brush, her blond hair in a ponytail, with a garden trowel in one hand and a pot lid in the other. Little wings had been glued on to her hair band. “Hah!” she cried in triumph. “Behold, foul creature of the woods, I am Daphne, the noble Valkyrie warrior!”
Rising from the muck of the stream, covered in pond slime and gooey mud, a terrible creature opened her mouth and announced in a piping, sweet voice, “Muwahahaha! Foolish human, you have tread too far into my domain, and you shall suffer a thousand stinging deaths!” On all fours she shambled towards the tiny girl who swelled in my imagining, becoming a righteous Norse shield maiden wreathed in power, her trowel now a folded rune-blade and her pot lid a bulwark of steel and hard ebony. The four-legged, shuffling, mud-covered figure began to hum a battle theme, and soon twisted into a slime-covered troll, her forearms lengthened horribly so that she could walk on them as she slavered and snapped her jaws.
As vividly as if I were there in the past, the battle scene unfolded before me. If the details were a little off, I hardly noticed enough to care. Dreams had always been better than the real thing to a girl of that age and temperament. The titanic battle raged across the field, overturning trees and flattening hills, drying rivers and cracking bedrock.
“With my strength I smite at you, vile beast!” the Valkyrie thundered, and skewered the she-troll center mass. In truth, of course, the trowel bounced off a mud-covered flank with little noticeable impact aside from sending crusted gunk flying, but the other girl sold it as if she had received a mortal blow from a mighty blade. She stumbled back on all fours, bellowing in agony, “Oh, argh, blargh!” The girl toppled back and forth, prolonging her death scene. “Woe, I am defeated! Slain by a beautiful warrior, cut down before my time, ripped from the pages of history!”
“Pst,” the little blond girl hissed, “Vikings didn’t have paper then, stupid!”
“Never to be remembered except in infamy in song or story!” the play-troll lamented, slumping against a rock and flopping pitiably. “Oh, for shame, my children will know only of my defeat! Sing them my dirge, noble warrior!” The little would-be Valkyrie rolled her eyes as the other began to improvise death lyrics on the spot, and—deciding to finish the fell beast before she could die of annoyance—tackled her off the rock and into the nearby stream.
Squeals of girlish laughter rang from the trees, startling birds from their nests, as the two struggled in the clear, crisp water. They splashed and dunked one another; they splashed, and they giggled. Drenched, they let themselves flop onto the shore, exhausted and happy in that way playing children are when finally spent. The little blond girl turned to her friend and giggled breathlessly, gasping out, “That was fun!”
“Yeah, but next time, I get to be the Valkyrie warrior,” the other answered, grinning from ear to ear, then declaring, “A mighty pegasus!” With that, she put her legs under herself and rose, bracing with all four hooves to shake her dark blue coat, sending water and bits of river sand flying every which way. Her long mane and tail flopped wetly and shone a shiny black in the sunlight. The little blond girl squealed again and shielded her face from the spray. Giggling, she rose and took the beaten hair band from where it lay, sliding it onto the now-revealed filly’s backside to adorn it with the attached wings.
“Sure, but aren’t you a unicorn?” the human girl probed, reaching out to poke the horn protruding from her friend’s forelock.
Navy blue hooves warded her off. Grinning with her expressive face—its features faintly equine in the way a human’s was faintly ape—she hopped onto the flat-topped rock and lifted a hoof proudly.“Then I’ll have to be a powerful and fabulous alicorn princess!”
Taking a breath, I shut my eyes. When I opened them, I was alone by the stream bed, the rock and shore bare of my imaginings. My heart pounded in my chest, echoing emotions that had come unearthed with the vivid memory. The doctor had said it would all fade with time—would that it could fade a little faster.
I couldn’t think of anything else as I wandered among the trees on the old paths. I certainly didn’t think of Mother or Amelia or other things not in sight. I didn’t think of the latest fashions or which boys at school were cuter than the others. I didn’t think of bands, math homework, shopping, dances, television programs, or any of a hundred normal, expected teenage preoccupations I had piled between myself and the childish things I had left behind. A thousand silly, vapid, distracting ideas served to separate the forest and who I was from who I became. As it turned out, this left me quite vulnerable, because without those distractions, every tree and bush in this land with which I was so intimately familiar became a gateway into a forgotten slice of memory.
Here, a foal and a little girl swung perilously on branches across a stream-cut ravine. There, they paddled in a hand-and-hoof-made canoe down the deepest part of the river towards the lake. They climbed trees over by the wash and they caught frogs in the ponds. The girls had first met in the last snow of winter, over by the lightning-blasted pine—two young, curious creatures keeping their distance and feeling one another out, frightened a little but with that bold spirit of reckless adventure that came to define them both. “What are you?” they had asked in unison, and then screamed at once in fright at seeing the other could talk, both running for cover. The filly had been the first to laugh at her own fear, and the girl had followed suit.
With my head filling up on flashes of recollection and my heart thudding with half-remembered feelings, I paused on a ridge lined with stones, one that had the best view of the sky for miles in any direction. There, on one hot summer night, they pitched a tent and told stories around a lantern to frighten one another. I knelt down to peer inside, my eyes penetrating the cloth effortlessly, when—sleepy and giddy, with their bellies full of s’mores and milkshakes and their heads cottony with a long day’s adventuring—the little girl had leaned across the open survival guide she had pillaged from her uncle’s army duffel bag and thrown her arms about the sturdy neck of her dark-coated friend.
“I love you, Leit,” she whispered, her fingers curled tightly in the long mane.
“I love you, too, Daphne,” Leit Motif had answered, her forelegs nearly as pliable as arms when they closed around the human girl, squeezing her just as tightly.
Daphne—which is to say, I—had pulled away, then, my face wet. “I’m g-going away for a week. M-my family’s going on a vacation,” I had said, stammering over the words. I grit my teeth in the present time—I really had no reason to be crying, I knew I was going to see her again after, but little girls could be so ridiculous sometimes. “Then it’s back to school. I’ll come by after school, I promise, just like before!”
“I start school, like, a few days after that; I’ll have plenty of time,” Leit said. Caught up in the mutual emotion, Leit sniffed and rubbed her nose, her green eyes huge and shining. “Hey, I know!” she suggested, brightening. “Why don’t we go to your place when you get back?”
I had frowned. “I don’t know, my Mom and Dad… I don’t think they like you…” I hemmed, but I could see the appeal. Ever since we met, my mother’s tolerant laughter on being told of Leit Motif had rankled me. The thought of showing up at the door with her in tow to see their faces was priceless.
Leit Motif might as well have been reading my mind, her face splitting in a grin. “Come on, you know it’ll be great!” she encouraged. “I want to see your new sister, too. I’ve never seen a human foal before.”
“Baby,” I had corrected absently, and beamed. “Yeah! That’s perfect. Then I’ll get to visit your folks, right?”
“Sure! We’ll bring everyone together for a big picnic, and it’ll be like everypony is part of a big two-species family, and we’ll be like sisters!”
We hugged and the promises had flown back and forth, before we had curled up next to each other and fallen fast asleep. Mother had scolded me so fierce the next morning for staying out after dark that I couldn’t help but let it slip. I would show her Leit was real.
I closed my eyes, banishing the images again, and settled down on the grass with a heavy sigh. The part that came next was the part I really wished I could forget, a part of my life that was going to keep aching no matter how long I refused to look at it.
Taking in the late afternoon air and the wilting trees of the park, I realized that I had run long enough. I sat absorbing the beauty of a forest that was surrendering to winter’s grasp and realized that if I didn’t—like the trees before me—strip my soul of the dying leaves of the past, I would never overcome the lingering fragments of pain in my heart, circulated with every pump of red sap blood.
Bracing myself, I closed my eyes, gathered my resolve, and peeled off the unseen bandages.
“She is real, she is real!” little Daphne shouted at her mother, screaming now. Her face was filled with tears, and her hands were curled into little fists. My parents kept insisting and insisting that Leit Motif was just a dream, and I was so angry. “I spoke to her, I held her, why can’t you understand?”
“Daphne, please. Just stop,” Mother shouted over me, at her wit’s end. “We are going home right now if you won’t be quiet and listen to me.” She didn’t stay quiet. We did go home. I never did apologize for ruining our vacation, the last we had taken as a family after Amelia had been born—add that to my list of things I need to do to get closure today.
Three days home. Three days staring at the woods, knowing Leit Motif wouldn’t be there, leaning on my windowsill by the shattered remains of my bulky old-school Game Boy, smashed in a fit of quickly regretted pique. After all, I had said I was going to be gone for a whole week; she wouldn’t bother coming back before then. I saw myself walking into class. She was telling everyone about Leit Motif now, and they were all eating out of her hand, the faces of kids eager to hear about her stories.
I stared down at a big wooden desk and a chair with a small, stubborn girl ensconced in it. A patient, kindly face adorned with spectacles sat across from her, his hands folded. She could pick out the typeface on the modest watch his wife had given him as a birthday present, and the round scar in his hand he had received in Vietnam. She came to know him very well over the next few weeks, so I could fill in those sorts of details easily enough. Her big mouth opened on that first day and told him, quite firmly, “Yes, doctor, Leit Motif is a magical unicorn—though she can’t do any magic yet, and she doesn’t have her special talent yet either, so she isn’t sure what sort of magic she can do—and we’re best friends, and I’m going to show everyone.”
She told him as much for two weeks.
Images folded in my mind; a teary, uncertain face walking along the familiar paths. I could peer down the cliff and see myself now, with Mother and the doctor in tow. “Leit!” she called. “Lei-it!”
“Let’s go and see,” he had finally suggested, sensing perhaps that my doubts had reached a turning point. After two weeks of him patiently pointing out the holes in my story of how no one else had ever seen her, in showing me the children’s stories of unicorns and faeries I had grown up devouring to show me the basis of my dreams, of using my own damnably intelligent brain against me to show how easy it was for me to make up perfectly rational stories on the most flimsy bases, he felt I could finally make a breakthrough. “Let’s go and see, and put it to rest.”
“Leit?” I had tried to call one last time, but it came out as a raspy whisper instead. I stared off into the darkening woods.
Put to rest and buried.
I lowered my face into my hands with the wind whistling past my ears and through my hair. All my childish things lay around me, all illusions stripped away. I tried to sever them, to let them join the blue sky at the far western horizon which even now had begun to darken into earliest twilight.
If only burying someone and moving on were quite that easy.
Amelia
I was so bored.
I kicked a small rock, watching it bounce down the trail. Hiding had been fun, but I didn’t see the point any more. The sky was starting to turn red, and Daphne had not yet come crashing through the woods like a big, dumb elephant. For the first hour or two, I had actually believed she was going to go through with it this time.
I guess that made me dumb, too.
My book of insects—“Entomology” was quickly becoming one of my favorite words—lay open on my bag. The thought of going back to hunting was thrown out immediately, as I had already been collecting bugs for the last hour, and it was getting harder to find new ones in this one part of the wood. My journal was full of sketches and notes. There were more than enough to blow my science teacher’s socks off and maybe his shoes as well.
That made for yet another thing I liked that Daphne didn’t care enough to pay attention to—she just didn’t get me.
Leaning against the tree and watching the sky, I chewed my lip thoughtfully. None of my friends had any older siblings, so they weren’t any help. How did you explain what it’s like to be ignored by your big sister to someone who doesn’t even know what it’s like to have a big sister to begin with, let alone what it meant when she ignored you every time you tried to show how much you cared or how much you wanted to spend time with her?
Forget about explaining it to Mom or Dad, either. I scrunched up my face and gave my best nasally impression of Mom, “You just need to try harder, sweetheart; she’ll come around. She’s a big girl, and she wants to do her own thing now and then.” For Dad, I pictured a bullfrog I had seen in a cartoon and puffed out my cheeks, speaking as deeply as I could, “Mom’s right, pumpkin. Daphne’s just trying to be a teenager. There will be a time for you to have fun together.”
“Stupid!” I shouted to the uncaring sky, startling a few birds, letting the world know how I felt about that. “And I’m not a pumpkin, I hate pumpkins! I’d rather be a kumquat!”
That settled it; a girl could only take so much pushing around. I squared my shoulders like a lumberjack getting ready to face off with an Ent and stuffed my textbook into my satchel. Its bookmarks were carefully set in place before my journal went in behind it, tied shut with a big rubber band. Next came my magnifying lens, then my pencils and my crayons, and finally my compass. I snapped the bag’s clasps shut—briefly admiring how it resembled a floppy-eared monster bunny with a squiggly mouth from the front—and hitched it on. “All right,” I informed the beehive I had hoped to surprise Daphne with, “I’m going to find my sister and make her understand!”
When I got back to the place with the benches by the water, I searched around to see if Daphne was just sitting around. It would be just like her to be completely lazy and ignore me by taking a nap or something. Not finding her there, I hiked to the top of the hill, but she wasn’t there either. I did find her shoe print on the flat rock at the top, however, so she probably went up here to get a signal so she could talk to her stupid friends. I hopped up on the stone fence and squinted around under the setting sun, looking for—“Ah hah!”
There she was, her head tucked down and her hands in her pockets. She’d let her hair go, and it was flying all over in the wind, like a yellow flag. I found a nice muddy spot and slid partway down the hill before running the rest of the way, my satchel flopping at my side. “You traitor!” I shouted at her. It was the first word that occurred to me.
Daphne’s head jerked up, and I almost skidded into an uncontrolled slide on the path in surprise. She’d wiped her makeup off, and her face was all puffy, as if she had been crying. Which was impossible, of course, since everyone knew that evil queens had hearts of stone. It was obviously some sort of elaborate ruse, and it wasn’t going to fool me.
Squeezing out my courage, I faced her down, as if there weren’t several heads between us in height. “How dare you leave me out there!”
“I wasn’t—” she began, but I didn’t let her continue. I was half afraid she might say something that would make me less angry at her.
“—wasn’t looking for me at all! You broke your promise, you said you were going to play with me!”
“I didn’t actually promise anything,” she evaded, which was exactly what I had wanted to hear.
“No, you didn’t, and you never do!” I stamped my foot for good measure. “You’re always saying you’re going to do things, and then you dump me with the rest of the junk! I waited for hours because I wanted to spend time with you and you were off talking to your friends and playing with your hair!”
“Amy,” my sister began, “I was going to come looking for you. I was just on my way—”
“Just now?” I interrupted again. It was getting hard to stop talking, like there was this train churning up inside my throat, and I kept on talking, faster and faster. “Just on your way now? Just like always, it’s always on your time or not at all. When do I ever get to decide what to do? How long until you just take me out and leave me on the road somewhere, so I can go off and be raised by wolves like you’ve obviously always wanted?
“If you don’t want me around, why don’t you just go away and stop jerking me along?” I continued with barely a breath to spare, “You’re the stupidest, ugliest, meanest, most hateful sister in the world!”
Daphne’s eyebrows shot up, and I could see her color rising. Good.
“Well you’re the filthiest, brattiest, most selfish little sister the world has ever known!” she shot back. The wind picked up and the leaves began to blow hard across the ground, swirling around us.
I gathered my breath and pronounced the most fatal, most unforgivable curse imaginable. “Well! If that’s the way you feel, then maybe I don’t want a sister!” A branch fell off a ways in the wood, as if to punctuate the severity of those words.
Daphne was taken aback, startled, but it only seemed to redouble her anger. She lowered her face to meet mine, while I rose up to meet her on my tiptoes, nearly nose-to-nose. “Yeah? You wouldn’t last ten minutes without a sister.”
“Oh yeah?” I snarled back, like a mean dog.
“Yeah!” she hissed, like an angry cat.
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
I hitched up my satchel, turned, and ran. I didn’t cry, either. My face just gets wet like that.
* * *
I’m not sure how far I ran. Daphne probably didn’t even care enough to call out to me. Even if she had, I didn’t care. I needed her as much as I needed fire ants in my shoes.
Running up and down the hills sapped my energy quicker than I thought it would. Mom always had us stick to the trails when we came out here together. Sheer temper drove me forward through the backwoods until nightfall, though, and then I understood why some kids are afraid of the dark. Dusk was only about half an hour, but it was surprising how fast it got dark after the sun set.
Somehow, the path had dwindled from a sneaker-trodden dirt road to a dinky little deer trail, ferns and other forest foliage nipping at my shins. It was already so dark, I hadn’t noticed until a branch snagged at my bag. Pencil outlines of trunks stood out from the edge of the path, and even those were beginning to fade into the shadows. The canopy was only visible above because it blocked out the stars. Without the moon being high enough to provide some sort of illumination, every tree and rock was cast in near pitch black; even when I lifted my hand up, I could only tell it was there because it blocked the stars.
The cold had me zipping my jacket all the way up and stuffing my hands into my sleeves. I might have shivered a little, but it had absolutely nothing to do with being scared. Any other girl might have been frightened, lost in the forest and all alone out in the dark, but not me. It was getting really cold, however, and it would get a lot colder soon. On a long night like this, staying up to watch the stars come out, it was nice to have a thick blanket and a cup of hot cocoa. Two things that were desperately lacking.
A little girl, all alone in the woods at night; by all rights, I should have been terrified. Determination and bitter feelings wouldn’t let me be scared, though. I absolutely did not need a useless sister to hold me back, either. It’s not like Daphne knew anything about the forest anyway. All she cared about was her school work and Facebook pages and boring boy bands. She certainly didn’t care about me or anyone real except herself. Jerk.
“I’ll show her,” I muttered. Taking my satchel off, I kneeled and carefully rummaged over its contents, thinking. Mom and Dad weren’t getting home until close to midnight, so they wouldn’t know what had happened unless Daphne had already called them—which she wouldn’t. “I’ll get out of here all by myself, and when I do, I’m going to tell her that I’ll let Mom and Dad know everything if she doesn’t do what I say. I’ll be able to get anything I want, and she won’t be able to say a thing, or she’ll get in huge trouble. Maybe they’ll even send her away somewhere. To prison. A prison on the moon would be nice.” It was a little better to hear my own voice while I worked. Not that I was afraid of being alone or anything like that.
Pushing aside my supply of cool mint gum in my satchel, I fumbled at a dark shape and blew a breath out in relief. With a click, the boxy flashlight taken from the garage came to life, forcing me to glance away to blink out the spots. It wasn’t a good idea to point one of those near your face when it got that dark. I stuck a stick of gum into my mouth and pointed the flashlight back into the bag, seeing if anything else might be helpful. Out came the survival compass, its lanyard tied around my wrist; I didn’t bother checking the temperature meter on the side—I didn’t think I’d want to see exactly how cold it was. There was also the music player Grandmother had given me for Christmas, but if a bear was going to sneak up on me, I at least wanted to hear it coming early enough to scream before it gobbled me up in two bites—which would be really cool at least.
Mom told me not to talk like that in front of other kids, but she can be silly like that. Who doesn’t think bears are cool?
Not seeing anything else of use at the time, I carefully closed my bag up and stood, sweeping the flashlight’s beam around. Two pairs of eyes glowed back at me for a moment, making me jump. At the noise, they became vague, blurring flashes, running away as fast as they could.
“Okay, Amelia,” I whispered, “all you need to do is get unlost and leave the dark, coyote– or bear–filled woods and get back home. Then it’s nothing but ice cream to eat and rubbing it in Daphne’s stupid face for months.” I turned my wrist over and held the compass level. With the flashlight, the compass pointed out which direction north was, which meant I needed to turn around to head west to get to town.
A quick spin on my heels set my heading, an eagerness to strip Daphne of all her dastardly, big-sisterly powers spurring me on. The harsh beam of the flashlight cut through the darkness and starkly outlined the brush and small rocks in hard shadows. It swept a long way among the trees, diffusing into a misty haze in places. When I was younger, I might have filled that low fog up with all sorts of things that might have been perfectly happy to gobble up a little girl who wandered from the path. But I was a big girl, now, and I was going to get out of this mess all by myself.
I hoped.
The wind continued to blow, and the trees kept on rustling in the night, unseen but not unheard, as I began walking. Owls had been calling earlier, but they were quiet now. I began to wish I had taken out my music player because it was starting to become more than a little eerie out here; even a spooky soundtrack might have been better than nothing. There were other sounds, though. Bushes shifted in the dark—likely more rats and other rodents on the forest floor—and my shoes crunched on the fallen leaves and loose soil. Sweeping the light ahead of me every few steps kept me from falling into unseen holes. With the bed of fallen leaves, it was hard to see anything even with the light, but it was certainly better than going without it.
Checking my compass after a while had me biting my lip to keep myself from screaming. I couldn’t have gone very far, but I had already started to drift north, which was exactly where I didn’t want to go because the woods only got denser that way. There would be roads and settlements in almost any direction, but how long would it take to get there? And if I was getting turned around, I wouldn’t get anywhere.
Resetting my course and heading off into the forest again, I wished I had a cell phone of my own. My confidence started to dry up with my throat, and my earlier resolve not to call for help would have vanished instantly if I could have called someone for help, or at least been able to see the time of night or a map. A part of me even wished for Daphne to show up, if only so I could yell at her so I could feel better, and we could be lost together instead of alone.
When I climbed up a small ridge, though, I almost cried out. A light! I could see a light!
It hung like a little sun over a trail, its gentle, yellow glow beckoning to me like a moth to a porch light. Roots tripped me up twice before I remembered to stop running and check where my feet were landing. It would have been really stupid of me to fall and crack my head open at the final stretch, but I was just so excited to see any sign of civilization.
Panting, I slid to a halt, falling over backwards on some loose dirt before the lantern. My braid hung in my face, nearly undone from the poor treatment it had received. The lantern swung slightly in the breeze, its light wavering around me. Looking around, however, I felt a sudden chill. The lantern’s pool of light was an island within a sea of shadow and drifting shapes that I couldn’t really make out. There weren’t any buildings around, judging from the lack of light, not even a little outhouse for park rangers. I forced myself to cheer up, though. A light meant electricity, and it meant people came this way, maybe even at night. Getting lost on a trail would be a lot harder, too.
Oh... right. Getting lost on a trail was how I got into this situation.
It all seemed a little strange, for all that. The lantern, hanging on a curved post, seemed like one of those old-timey pieces they put up in the old colonial part of town. It even flickered like a candle flame instead of a proper electric light, but it could have just been busted. There was more that seemed wrong here than just the light, though. I stared up at the sky, hoping to see the moon or something familiar, but even that seemed wrong. The stars in the sky were no help, either; constellations weren’t hard to spot, but only Orion was visible, and it was in the wrong place entirely for this part of the year. Or I think it was in the wrong place; it seemed a little funny itself, for that matter, with some additional stars in places they shouldn’t be.
But none of that mattered. There was still a light, and it meant that I was in better shape than I had been, smashing through the woods. Turning my compass up, though, I could only stare at the little dial, eyes wide and jaw trembling—the stupid thing said I had been going east! Even as I watched, knuckles white around it, the needle inside wobbled a bit, as if it were unsure whether north was directly ahead or somewhat to the left. It was unbelievable; my trusted navigator, broken! It was like a sister who had turned traitor. I nearly cried right then and there.
Nearly. I’m a big girl, and I don’t cry over stupid things like that, no matter how badly the night was going.
Wiping my face—because it was cold, not because I was crying—I spun around and started down the trail, the cone of my flashlight watching the path ahead. It curved a bit, but the going was a lot faster now without having to worry so much about branches or roots or holes to trip over. There were little horseshoe-shaped indentations in the trail, too, so it was probably a horse trail. The family of one of Daphne’s friends had a horse ranch outside town—hopefully it was one of theirs. Maybe I’d get to ride home on a pony. With any luck, a sign would present itself along the roadside soon.
There was neither a sign nor a pony, however. It certainly wasn’t a ranch, either. I stopped along the trail, staring ahead with a smile creeping across my face. There was light, and not just a single light but what must have been a whole house of light. I would have run if my feet weren’t so tired, but I still nearly skipped for joy, my bag bouncing at my side.
I froze.
The pond and the clearing it was in had no house, and it lacked anything like lamp posts or light fixtures, or even lanterns or candles. Instead, there was a full moon through the trees which I knew was just last week! I had memorized all of the full moons for the next two years in case of werewolf attack. Besides, the moon wasn’t supposed to be quite that big or bright. Either way, it was almost as bright as daylight, or nighttime in a movie.
As I stared, what I thought to have been a very shiny rock... fluttered. The biggest beetle I had ever seen or imagined popped out of the ground, its back a snowy, luminescent white. It trundled along with its spindly, egg-white legs and searched along the ground, prying up little morsels of green. Before anything could be decided about it, however, something else moved.
That something else was so fast that I almost didn’t see it at all before it struck. Long and sleek with smooth black fur, it had the look of a great cat, with alert triangular ears and a swishing, tufted tail. It pounced from the cover of the tall grass and slapped its paws over the great white beetle, pinning it to the ground. The monster’s teeth gleamed with their own unearthly light beneath the moon, and its eyes seemed bright with blue fire. A gasp escaped my lips, and a twig snapped underfoot for good measure. The beast’s head jerked up, but I had already leapt and grabbed a limb of the tree beside me, hauling myself up and on to it before the thing could cross the clearing to look. My flashlight had fallen to the ground, for it was too big to stuff into any of my pockets. In its spotlight, the monster was illumined sharply, a powerful shadow.
The beetle lay forgotten on the mossy clearing while the cat-thing paused, looking up at me as I climbed up another limb to get even further away from it. It lifted a paw and turned my flashlight over. There was a low hiss as the beam caught it nearly full in the face, and it backpedalled, tufts of fur or mane on its back rising and making it look even bigger. I could see that its claws, fully extended, were at least as big as a lion’s, if not more so, and gleamed with the same witch-light its teeth did.
Even as it smoothed its fur and considered me for its next meal, though, I couldn’t help but be fascinated. I had seen lions and cougars and tigers at the zoo before, but they had never seemed so dangerously alive as this one—or as beautiful. It had that same fluid feline grace and predatory posture as it circled below, and I hoped it couldn’t climb trees if it decided to. There was no stopping it if it did.
“Not afraid, bairn?” it asked, and I just about let go out of shock. Its voice was as smooth and deadly and alien as the creature itself was, sounding like fine sand. There was an odd little click with the words, like some insects made, but I wasn’t really thinking about insects any more. “Oh,” it breathed, “you’ll be very surprised if that gets you riled.”
“You can talk!” I realized how stupid it sounded immediately, of course, but sometimes those things just slip out. Despite my fascination, instinct had me wrapping my arms and legs tightly around the branch. Shifting my body around slipped my unkempt braid from my back, however, dangling it low—too low for my liking. The thing might spring up and hook me with its claws that way.
“Always the first thing they say to the Morgwyn. Why not declare more important things, bairn? Might suggest, ‘I am poisonous’ or ‘Are you full?’”
“But I am poisonous!” I said at once, pouncing on the opportunity like it had on the beetle. I opened my mouth and blew a neon green bubble from the gum I had been chewing all night.
The Morgwyn, or whatever it was, danced back another pace, its blue eyes wide and hot as the bubble popped and I sucked it back in again. I didn’t let relief show, keeping my gaze firmly on the creature. It circled back, slowly and more cautiously, the tufts on its back rippling. “Oh, she is crafty,” it hissed. “Did she dose herself or is it natural to her kind? One must find out.” I wasn’t sure if it was speaking to me or if the thing simply wanted me to hear its thoughts, but I didn’t let it unnerve me. Dad’s voice echoed faintly in my head, telling me not to show fear in front of those who wanted to hurt me.
“Yeah, too bad,” I told it. “Why don’t you go eat that pretty beetle instead? I don’t want to get gobbled and you don’t want your belly to melt.”
“By the by,” it disagreed, “the Morgwyn is quite content to interrogate a time yet. None would dare touch its prey before it was done.”
“Well, I’m not alone. I’ve got a big sister coming, and she’s the biggest, meanest, ugliest green ogress you ever did see. She’ll pop your head right off if you don’t leave me alone.” I knew it was a bluff, but there weren’t a lot of choices open to me. The monster was a weird mixture of scary and lovely, pacing down there. It was kind of strange, but I remembered how much I really wanted a cat just then.
“The wee bairn is full of things to say but not so full of things done. You remind one of...” it paused, trailing off. Those fiery eyes looked off into the distance, the Morgwyn seeming to consider something, its hot breath steaming in the night air. “Yes,” it hissed, more excited now, as it rotated back to face me, “you are the girl, the one who walks the woods.”
“Yes,” I answered immediately. It was a very important lesson I had learned from Mom’s favorite movie of all time: Ghostbusters.
“I see now. The yellow hair, the algae green eyes, the earthen smell.”
“I do not smell!” I protested, although the rest of the description was definitely me and couldn’t possibly be anyone else.
“Forgive the Morgwyn its rudeness and threats, bairn,” it said, its tone immediately shifting. Its claws retracted and it sat down, lifting a bare black paw in a gesture of welcome. “You have been expected.”
It wouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that I was suspicious. The spider was always welcoming when it thought the fly would come willingly into its home. Still, it could have attacked me at any time, if it weren’t wary of the “poison” or whatever other surprises I might have. Insects had all sorts of nasty gifts to give to things that tried to eat them. If the Morgwyn was being truthful, maybe I wouldn’t be stuck up here all night... or until it decided I was worth trying anyway.
Besides, there was a girl who looked just like me who was being expected by weird monsters in the woods at night; how could I pass up on that sort of mystery?
“Expected, by who?” I asked, intrigued, “Or what?”
“Why, the Morgwyn, and others as well,” it explained. “A fabulous kingdom awaits you, of song and magic. A land populated by griffons and dragons and unicorns and pegasi and more.”
“Unicorns? Dragons?” I gaped.
“Surely, only a fraction of what awaits.”
Chewing on my lip, I looked down at the Morgwyn, weighing my options. Stay up in a tree until morning and hope the Morgwyn didn’t manage to eat me anyway, then try to find my way home; or risk the jaws of a giant demonic cat now so I could have a chance to visit a magical fairy tale land.
“Sold.”
Daphne
It took me all of about ten minutes to realize what an idiot I had been. Not to mention a jerk, evil sister, or whatever other terms applied right then. Even if she had known her way around, letting a little girl wander around the forest when it was about to get very dark very quickly was about as irresponsible as someone could get.
“Amy!” I shouted, for all that I knew it was pointless. Sulking by the stream had let the dusk go from red to a deep navy blue across half the sky and for a healthy girl to run very far indeed. Twilight stars sparkled in cold mockery of my belated concern.
With visions of a golden-haired figure lying broken and bleeding in a ditch spurring me forward, I ran the way she had gone. All my earlier anger was melting away now. As if the day’s emotional rollercoaster hadn’t been harrowing enough. When I found her I was going to grab her and shout at her and ask her why she had been so stupid, and then I probably wouldn’t wait for her to answer and hug her and take her home and give her all the ice cream she wanted. Or something like that. Her name came out as hurried, panicked gasps, my pace not allowing me to call out to her.
I kept running, and my legs began to burn before long, dashing over the trails headed deeper into the woods. Visibility steadily declined as the shadows of the trees, already merged into one vast swamp of darkness, deepened. Catching my foot on something unseen ended my mad dash, pitching me face first into the earth. Once the dust had settled, I hobbled to my feet, massaging my face and brushing it clear of leaves and dirt. “Ow.”
Panting heavily, I stared around at the dark forest, which refused stubbornly to yield its secrets to me.
“Amy! Amelia!” I shouted, “Em, it’s Daphne!”
My voice echoed over the valleys. I waited.
No response.
There was no point in charging ahead without at least thinking where Amelia might have gone. If she left the trails, it would be very easy for her to get irrevocably lost among the trees. Only the most dedicated hikers and the park managers themselves knew the land better than me, but one of the first things I learned was not to go wandering off in the dark. If Amelia had taken this direction and kept to the trails, it would take her deeper into the woods, and the nearest habitation in that direction wasn’t for miles. It all seemed impossibly bleak.
If there was any hope of finding Amelia, it lay in one place.
As a young girl, every trip out into the woods had a specific meeting spot in mind. That last time, with Mother and my therapist at my side, an hour had come and gone with no sign of my imaginary unicorn friend. The meeting site wasn’t visible from here, not in the dark, but the towering old oak would still be there, unchanged by a mere eight years. There was a good chance Amelia was there. If she had come this way, she would meet up with the river before long, and that would lead her straight to the oak. More importantly, it was the only place with shelter for miles around, and hikers often used it as such. Assuming Amelia had run out of bluster by now, she’d be there.
So resolved, I pulled myself together and began hiking again, picking a steady pace and ignoring my pain and discomfort. The moon was too low, the earth was pitch black, and even with my cell phone lit and pointed toward the ground, the trek wasn’t without its trips, falls, scrapes, and bruises. In spite of that, I was rapidly eating up distance now that there was a destination in mind—the area around here was more familiar that I liked to admit. Occasional glances at my phone’s screen, which had a few new chips and scratches from my many tumbles, failed to change the lack of a signal, as if the whole of Western Civilization had been left behind.
A loon called with its eerie scream as I found myself on that familiar ground again. The grassy knoll, the cavern-like roots. A star-filled sky hanging over a rugged landscape. Even the lights of the surrounding towns could be seen from up here, staining the horizon with their night lives. They spread across so much more of the skyline now. Yet another reminder of how things had changed.
The wind bit at me, stealing away what little warmth my body held from the run up the trail. Rubbing my arms did nothing to stave off the shivering as I looked around. Nearly the entire park lay before me. From here, it might be possible to catch a glimpse of her flashlight if she turned it this way. I scanned the darkness for the faintest pinprick.
There! A flash of blue!
I stared for a minute, conflicted. That was where she had come from. There wasn’t time to allow myself to be distracted by such thoughts, though. Only one thing mattered right now—my little sister.
I ran.
* * *
It was as bad as it could possibly be.
My breathing heaved, and I tried my best to quiet it. A younger Daphne might have been able to deal with this sort of exertion, but a few years of sedentary living could do a number on someone’s energy. By the surrounding scene, however, it seemed that calm and quiet was going to be important. I lifted my head carefully over the log I was hiding behind, and stared down at the grove, which rose on the side of the hill by one of the deepest parts of the river ravine.
Three short men were down there, handheld lanterns arrayed about them. Each was wearing a strange overcoat and had a weird look about them, but I knew thugs when I saw them. All hair and muscle and bad teeth.
Seeing the lantern light had nearly given me a heart attack, and trying to approach through the dense brush on the top of the hill had been liable to kill me as well, but I was glad I had. Sweaty, dirty, bruised, and maybe a little bloody, I crouched down among the leaves and covered my hair with the hood of my jacket to keep anything shiny from showing. It was just like the games I used to play in the woods, only now it was all too real.
One of the brutes was rubbing a long, knotted stick in a nervous fashion, watching the approaches to the grove warily. Another, digging at a tin of something dark and fragrant, grunted, “Morgwyn comin’?”
“Yeup.”
“Sure it got the girl?”
“Same as last six times you asked,” the one with the stick said, his voice even more guttural and unpleasant than the other.
“Only asked four times,” the one with the bean can complained, stuffing a handful into his mouth.
“That’s only ‘cuz you can’t count past the four fingers on your right hand. Ain’t never occurred to you to use t’other one, even though it got five.”
“Shut yer mouth. Just ‘cuz the big guy gave you the shiny stick don’t mean nothin’,” Bean Can growled and glowered at his companion.
“It means there’s one set of brains between us, and I got a full share.”
The one with the bean can frowned at that. The hitherto silent one spoke up, “Wait, don’t that leave us with... wait, no, ya gotta carry the two—”
The stick came down with a snap. I swear there was even a flash of harsh light, like he’d just struck a magnesium rod against the rock, and I had to restrain myself hard from jumping. Now where the hell did that come from...
“Quiet!” he hissed. “The Morgwyn’s comin’—saw its devil blue eyes just now—and if you turn your back on it or make it think ye’re weak, so help me Discord, I won’t lift a bloody finger to save you.”
They all rose up, and the other two even lifted what looked like big, ugly woodsman’s axes. All three stood in tense silence. All three of them seemed to be genuinely wary. Even afraid.
The wind stilled.
If it was hard to keep from crying out before, it became nearly impossible when my sister strolled into the glade. It was even worse when I saw the thing she was walking at the heels of. My eyes grew to saucers as I saw what they meant.
Devil blue eyes, like two bright stars burning in the dark beyond the circle of the lanterns.
I hardly had time to react when the man with the stick lifted it into the air and, at once, lights burst from its tip, filling the air with their magnesium glow and casting a light as bright as day. They hovered and spun like hissing comets.
I knew it!
My heart raced and I felt every tendon in my body tense, as if seized by electricity. I was transfixed by those lights. I knew it!
I knew it was real all along!
Not two hours ago I had told myself that I had buried all of my hopes and dreams and Leit Motif herself, and here were all three being suddenly and violently unearthed. A monster cat and a magic wand, right in front of my eyes.
Weeks of being told I was fooling myself. Months of being told magic isn’t real. Years of saying I didn’t care, that I didn’t want to think about it. Those choices had led me to put away all the childish things in my past, so I could get on with my life.
All of it could go straight to hell.
“I knew it!” I shouted, springing up into the air with all the joy I had bridled deep inside me, hidden away in the dark recesses of my soul so I wouldn’t feel it ever again.
Five sets of eyes turned towards me in the sun-bright clearing.
“Oh damn it.”
No help for it now. I reached down, grabbed the branch I had left for just this purpose, and heaved. My purse, with all of its useful contents emptied into my pockets, came flying out of the dark beside me and, with my scarf unraveling from the tear I had made, showered all three of the ugly men with heavy, fist-sized rocks and a great deal of dry sand from the river bank. The one with the bean can was brained on the side of the head and went down with a bloody stain, catching himself on one hand, while the other two were definitely surprised and blinded.
“Run, Amelia!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, even as I gathered myself. It was totally insane, but I had no other choice now. I had to protect her. I had to. I put my feet on the log and leapt like a lioness at the man holding the magic wand—or at least a very angry house cat.
Even though I had probably half his mass, I collided with him while he was still rubbing sand out of his eyes and with all the force inertia and gravity could lend me. The impact knocked the wind out of us, but I recovered first. He tried to hit me with the knotted stick in apparent instinct, and I grabbed it in both hands. A great gout of white flame shot from the tip, and it grew hot in my hands.
The other two brutes dove for cover as we began to struggle over the wand. He with the greater strength and impaired vision, I with the better vantage on the wand and a fierceness born out of righteous fury. With every twist, the wand shot off again. One beam hit a nearby tree, and it burst apart immediately, logs of sawn lumber raining down like a lumberjack’s ill-timed wish. I heaved, turning the wand again, and it swept sparkling light over a pile of leaves. A great shower of white birds flooded into the air as the pile changed, shrieking and clawing, washing up into the dark like the foamy spray of an ocean wave.
The other two brutes didn’t dare come closer, not with the wand firing off this way and that. I swore I heard an elephant’s trumpet, and one of the rocks that had tumbled by the campsite bucked and leapt like a horse. Pine cones burst into smokeless fire, and the other two brutes yelped and rolled to keep their clothes from alighting. I shrieked and dug my foot into the struggling man’s face, and balls of blue plasma bubbled out of the wand to land around us, swallowing holes in the earth with barely a whisper of effort. The one with the bloodied head shrieked in a high-pitched voice and fell back from one of those globes, losing his heavy leather bag.
Every blast of the wand was like a gunshot going off. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see blisters rising on my palms from the heat if I could see more than faint flashes. The white, magnesium-bright blasts left me nearly blinded with spots, and each burst of sound left my ears ringing. My heart stopped as a flash went off near my face, with each individual spark showering off the tip and leaving a bright trail in my vision. Where it hit I had no idea, so consumed by the struggle and violence of the magic that nothing was distinct any more. With all the pandemonium, I believed for a moment that I might actually get through this in one piece, if I were quick enough. It was like the games Leit and I had made up together, fighting against imaginary thugs of our own making. I wished I could see where my sister or the cat had gone, but I had to keep all my attention focused on the task ahead of me. Maybe if I could get the wand away, I might have a chance. If I could only get my foot under him... I had to...
When my weight shifted, my foot slipped in the mud, throwing me off balance. The wand slackened in my grip, and, for one horrible instant, I knew I had made a terrible mistake.
With a great heave and grunt of effort, the man under me shifted, throwing his weight behind his shove and pushing me back. With the wand in a death grip, it almost came back with me. Instead, its tip pointed directly at my chest.
Alabaster light filled my world. I felt myself drifting back, softly, as if on a bed of clouds, watching the trees float by me through a haze of pearl fog. I was falling, gently now. Down. Down I went.
With nary a splash, I slid into the dark water. The surface closed over my body, and in my mind, a dark river, too, swallowed me whole into its depths.
"I know all the fowls upon the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are in my sight." Psalm 50:11
Daphne
Death could have been better.
Really, there wasn’t too much to complain about. It felt very soft, clean, drifting me along as a mote in a black sea, rolled gently by its invisible currents. Still, everything seemed so terribly unfair for it all to have ended like that. There was no way to know whether or not my sister was safe, to know that my death had meaning, or to see my parents and friends one last time. Even with just a moment or two as a ghost, there could have been a friendly little scare and some goodbyes for closure.
At the very least, it would have been nice if there was something more to this whole “death” thing. It felt all right, but there was nothing to see, nothing to hear. Everything was surprisingly warm, too. My entire body felt suffused with heat, like I had spent all evening in front of a fireplace under a toasty wool blanket instead of slogging through the mud and leaves on a cold night, bloodied, battered, and hurled into an icy river. Among this warmth, an alien sensation, a peculiar tingle mixed with a feeling of displacement, flooded my every sense.
Despite this, my mind was clear. When the discharge from the wand had hit me, my head had felt stuffed full of cotton. Considering that, however, apparently stirred up the aches and pains out from whatever fugue I had been under, my leg joints and muscles complaining at the extreme paces they had been put through.
Vicious, biting cold pierced my sheltering cocoon of warmth, quickly robbing me of what little comfort and security I had left. Immediately, I seized up, but found myself constricted, with clothing and water pressing in from every side. Stark terror took over where contentment laid off, leading me to conclude that flailing wildly with my arms and legs would be the most constructive use of my time.
Spots swam through my eyes, and my body suddenly felt like it was being bent in half. Realization slowly sunk in. Unless death was a freezing river sweeping your battered body through a Massachusetts state park, I was still very much alive. How much longer that would remain the case, however, had yet to be determined. Choking initiated the process that the wand had failed at. I faded. My struggles grew less and less powerful. In a last ditch effort to survive, I drew on every half-remembered swimming lesson I could bring up, relaxed my body, and kicked desperately. Hopefully, towards the surface.
A stunning impact to the side of my head ended that hope. River water flooded in.
Everything went black.
Racking coughs shook my body awake, and forced water up from my lungs. Cold, frigid air bit at my soaked skin in a way the river never could as I laid breathless against the ground, stunned with pain and no small amount of disbelieving relief. In the time that was lost to me, I had managed to wash ashore on one of the many grassy banks that lined the river. Still half submerged, with my legs and most of my lower body tugged on by the gentle current, I remained still for several moments, dribbling river water like an invalid.
Vague, unfocused fears of hypothermia led me to make my first feeble attempts at dragging myself ashore. A sudden lack of energy and my sodden, heavy clothing made for slow going. Every movement, every inch traversed, coerced more water and silt—buckets worth, it seemed to me—from my throat and lungs, my body clenching and shaking. As the fits subsided, my breath returned in ragged, painful bursts.
“N-n-not go-gonna… d-di-die h-here,” I rasped, shivering, before continuing to drag myself further inland, like a worm inching along the ground.
My legs and arms were leaden and useless. Maybe that blow to the back of my head—which now throbbed in exquisite agony—had left me crippled, but head and spinal injuries were a bit outside my high school curriculum. After struggling to a drier spot, I gave my limbs an experimental wriggle and found that they were at least responsive to my will, though they felt tight and restricted. My fingers were completely numb, however, causing a whole new wave of panic. Attempts to move them elicited no more than a weak flopping.
Hypothermia was setting in. The quickest remedy would be to get out of my wet clothes, so I struggled to sit myself upright. A few false starts saw me rolling halfway up before dropping on my side when my arms failed to support me. Dizziness would have kept me down, but I grit my teeth and pushed through it regardless, half-turning again to make another go. As my body craned up, my back gave out, forcing me back down onto my arms.
My shirt fought every inch of the way, and it became another battle just to get it off. Precariously balancing on one arm, I attempted to slip my other numb hand under the hem and was met with little success. All that squirming just tangled me up more tightly.
Something was wrong. All of my clothing was hanging awkwardly, wrapped too tight in some places and too loose in others. The gibbous moon had risen above the treeline, which was a profound relief—though a bittersweet one, for it meant I had been out for what must have been at least a half hour. Light from a moon that bright is surprisingly easy to see by, however. Now that my vision was clear, it appeared that there was a horse trail nearby, faintly visible. As for my own state, it took a moment to process exactly what I was seeing.
My arms pressed into the loamy earth in two stumps. That alone might have been enough to make me scream in panic if I had not been distracted by the sight of my legs, splayed out to either side as I sat. They, too, ended in bare stumps, my shoes and feet apparently long gone. My clothes hung on me in a wet, sodden lump with no respect to proper shape and form.
A reasonable person might have considered the evidence and come to some sort of rational conclusion. She might have examined the situation more closely and thought of some way to deal with it.
I, however, screamed and flung my limbs every which way, losing my balance and falling back with a splash. My stump of an arm got inside my shirt and pulled against it. With a tear, the fabric shredded, freeing me from its grip. Trying to stand upright was a forlorn endeavor which had my back and legs buckling as my balance failed entirely. For a few moments, any night birds that may have been watching were treated to the sight of a strange, stunted creature dancing across the water, before she missed a step and crashed on her back.
With my cries piercing the night and sending animals and birds flying in fright, I flailed all four limbs skyward until I had shouted myself out. I laid there panting, chest heaving, with hair hanging over my eyes. The star-strewn sky turned pitilessly above, indifferent to my terror. It wasn’t until breath and sanity had returned that I could brace myself and look down to take in what I had become.
If there was anything human left on me, it wasn’t visible from where I lay, stretching up to get a look at myself in shock. A smooth, barrel-like body, covered in a very fine—if very sodden—pale coat, had replaced my own. Though there were still only four limbs, they were all legs, and they all ended in solid-looking hooves. There was a flick along the ground, and a wet tail flopped weakly, rendered nearly colorless in the moonlight. It could have been the same blond as my own hair. I craned my eyes up and beheld a whorled horn protruding from my forehead, shadowing my face. It was nearly enough to make me pass out all over again.
There was no mystery as to what I was, of course, now that all of the disparate facts had been put together. My supposedly imaginary unicorn friend had been small, with different proportions, but she had been as much a child as I. Still, I rubbed my new hooves all over myself anyway, discovering that there really was nothing left of the old Daphne. Long ears twitched as I touched them. My face ended in a short, blunt snout. Several years of adolescent development had simply vanished from the rest of me.
With growing panic, I opened my mouth and tried to speak, but only terrified neighing issued forth—
Wait.
I rolled my eyes and smacked a hoof against my forehead. “Ow,” I grunted, carefully rubbing the spot I had struck myself, having discovered how hard a hoof could be. Being stupid and losing my head was going to get me into more trouble. “You know you can speak,” I informed myself disgustedly. “You’ve seen Leit Motif do it often enough, and you just did so yourself a minute ago.”
Tears welled up as the name invoked the emotions and memories I had sought to bury only hours ago. “Leit Motif,” I murmured. Those treacherous thoughts twisted in my guts like a jagged icicle, cold and grating. For eight years I had convinced myself that my best friend in the entire world was nothing more than a silly girl’s imaginings, and now I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had been real.
With all the screaming and flailing about done and over with, I became acutely aware of how cold it was, and dangerously so with me still sopping wet. The shivers kicked in again as I tried to deal with my reawakened pain and present fears. Amelia could be miles away by now—I didn’t even know if she was still alive. It was time to get help, but what would happen to me if I went to the police? Terrifying flashes of movies where the alien or the Other had been hunted down and dissected on an operating table seared its way through my brain. I shut my eyes before the image could conjure itself in stark detail. Sometimes imagination could be a liability.
“Deep, careful breaths, Daphne,” I told myself, trembling. “Just like Mom says, you gotta breathe first and then you can worry about what comes next.”
I considered my next move. Without a doubt, my first priority was finding out if Amelia was all right. Consideration of my sudden equinimity—equinehood? Mareifcation?—could wait for the time being. The first step would be to call the police station, to see if anyone had picked her up. They’d also be able to call the rangers and find out if anyone there had found her. At least I still sounded the same as before. It would have made for an awkward phone call if my voice had come out equinified, as well. Reaching into my pant’s pocket, I pulled out my cell phone.
At least, I tried to. Shoving my big hoof in there just stretched the fabric and failed to go deep enough. Tapping against the case was all I could manage. Trying to dislodge the cell phone by shaking my hips proved a useless effort. It was irritating, but removing myself from the clothing would be the quickest way to get at it.
Shrugging the rest of the way out of my clothes was hard, but it could have been worse. Scrunching myself back as far as possible let me fit my forelegs back through my sleeves, and I simply walked out of the tattered remnants of the shirt. My sodden pants went next by the simple expedient of pinning one pant leg to the earth and pulling the pinned leg free.
Even so, grabbing hold of my discarded pants to dump the contents of its pockets on the ground was like learning to use chopsticks all over again—it took tipping both of my forehooves together to pinch the bottom of the pocket, flipping it over and tilting my butt to get a good angle. Obligingly, the phone slid out, and I pumped a foreleg in triumph.
Clack. My hoof tapped against the screen. Nothing. Gritting my teeth, I pinned it down with one hoof and tried to nudge the tiny start button. After a few false starts it finally clicked. Nothing. When it became apparent the phone wasn't turning on, I snarled at myself, "Idiot! It fell into the river!" In a flash of sudden fury, my left hoof came down hard, cracking the screen and splintering the case.
The sound of snapping plastic jolted the red glare from my eyes. Stunned, I examined the damage. It was fairly excessive—my little hoof straight up ruined that case. It might as well have been a sugar cookie.
Well, it's not like the stupid thing was going to work, anyway.
I braced on all fours and shook like a dog, much as Leit Motif had done time and again. Drier, if not much warmer and certainly no less exasperated, I considered my pants. Leit had been able to pick things up just by touching them with her hooves, but placing my own hoof against the article yielded nothing. Reality refused to accept that logic, despite all my rage and frustration being directed toward the tattered garment. Giving up, I bent my head down and picked the whole thing up in my mouth, slinging it unto my back, where it hung along my flanks and obscured my dripping tail. Hopefully whoever found my soiled shirt and underwear here wouldn’t think some poor girl had been assaulted and left for dead. Though, technically, I had been.
Still unsteady, I started towards the horse trail, chewing on the irony of such a thing as I planned my next move. Becoming more confident in my motions, they turned from a drunken wobble to an awkward walk, and then progressed to a steady trot that felt way, way too weird. The whole thing reminded me uncomfortably of baby horses learning to walk minutes after being born. My gait must have seemed ridiculously coltish, with its too-high, careful steps. The moon rode high in the night sky, but the deep shadows it cast still hid many dangerous secrets. It would just be my luck tonight to land in a pothole and break a leg.
All of this walking was useless if it didn’t take me somewhere, though. If I was going to help Amelia I needed to find help myself, first. Where could a weird alien horse find help at this time of night, though?
A light bulb went off over my head, and I knew exactly where to go. Picking up the pace on a solid, well-used trail, I put on speed and hurried into the night.
* * *
When the warm lights of the Sun River Ranch came into view, surprisingly little time had passed. My pace was eating up ground at an unbelievable rate, with barely any effort on my part. It had been rough going before, sure, but I was walking much farther and much faster on legs that had been complaining at a stiff walk an hour ago. Maybe being turned into a freak wasn’t entirely bad, if it meant finding help before midnight.
Though it certainly had an aspect of commercialized western glamour as a place for modern people—especially horse-obsessed young girls—to get a chance at riding or owning their own horse in a safe and wide-open setting, my friend’s family ranch never felt artificial to me. The land had been a mixture of farm and pasture held by some part of the family for generations and consolidated under one roof, and it was still very much a place where an extended family made their living off the land. The family’s western apple orchards were nearly bare with autumn’s toll, but I looked up hopefully as I passed. My stomach grumbled in a plaintive fashion, empty since lunch, but there wouldn’t be many leftover apples here after the October harvest. Besides, I wasn’t quite sure I could reach one even if there was.
The long fence marking out the property was surprisingly daunting in my current state. Climbing it would have been easy before, but chancing it now seemed reckless. Leit had been able to scramble up trees and rocks just as easily as I could when we were kids, but the thought of getting up off my hooves and trying to scale a fence without proper arms made me dizzy. Setting a hoof against the lower timbers did nothing to bolster my confidence. With a grimace, I decided against it. Instead, a quick trot along the gravel road beside the fence led me towards its gate, the rhythmic crunch of my feet striking the earth disturbing the still night. The latch was dealt with in a fashion few horses on Earth could replicate—rising up on my hind legs, sticking my face over the side, gripping the latch in my teeth, and pulling.
The hinges creaked loudly and the gate swung open—inward instead of outward, as I had thought it would. My weight pushed it open and dragged me along for the ride, my hind legs skidding along the dirt before the gate tossed me inside. I tottered a few steps on my rear legs in an inelegant ballet before toppling unceremoniously in a pile of messy hair and wet pants. When barking erupted from the house, my heart froze.
It started beating again, faster and faster, as I scrambled to all fours, imagining the dogs leaping out of the house and charging across the field to pounce and tear at my unprotected form. They would haul me down by my mane and tail and drag me away to cruel experiments, to put me on display somewhere, to have me pulling carts in gem mines, or some other terrible fate. Breaking into a gallop, I raced away, looking for a place to evade them. Instinct kicked in at the first opportunity, which was probably how I cleared a four-foot hurdle instead of balking at the difficulty.
My landing was spoiled somewhat when I flopped flat on my belly on the other side of the stall door, skidding slightly on the hay, with the barking growing louder by the moment. As my eyes were adjusted to the moonlight outside, it was difficult telling exactly where I had landed. Standing up answered that question, however, when a big mouth nuzzled the back of my neck with a whicker.
“Eeeeee!” I squealed at the top of my lungs and darted forward. Spinning, I gasped for air, eyes wide and my tail held protectively close against my side. “Hector!” I spat, glaring at the big horse in the next stall. Apparently, he had managed to recognize me in my present state, or at least thought it would be fun to surprise me. I had ridden him or seen him ridden often enough to know what a pain he could be. It was still a little hard to make him out in the dim lighting, but it became considerably easier when a flashlight swept over the stable door.
“Crap,” I groused, realizing my girly scream had probably been heard quite clearly in the quiet night. There were voices now; the deep tenor of my friend’s father and the lower still basso of her uncle.
“Figure someone is trying for the horses, Victor?” my friend’s uncle asked.
Her father replied skeptically. “Horse rustlers, in this century? Come on, Mark.”
“That’s why it’s the perfect crime! Nobody ever sees it coming.”
Panicking, I stamped my hooves in a nervous little dance, trying to think of a way out that wouldn’t take me to the dogs or the sight of the approaching men.
“I know I heard something.” That was Mark again, closer this time. “Like someone’s alarm going off.”
“Horses are up. Well, let’s at least have a look. Jim, you take the dogs back, I don’t want them jumping and getting everyone in there all excited.”
“Sure, dad,” a younger man’s voice said. That was good at least—no dogs. They still had the entrance to the stable blocked off, however, but there had to be another way out of this.
The stall latch clicked, and the door creaked open. I froze, just for an instant, eyes wide as the light swung my way. A surprised shout following me as I bolted. If memory served, there was a loose board in the back of the stalls, one that would rattle and shake in a good wind and was always letting rabbits in. Hopefully, Victor hadn’t managed to nail it shut as he always promised he would.
A painful crash had me halfway through that wall. Adrenaline fueled my legs and pushed me the rest of the way through. Turning about outside, I craned my neck back through the opening, snatching up my pants between my teeth mere moments before pounding, booted feet reached the back of the stable. Trying not to trip over the flapping pant legs, I raced for the other side of the house.
Distantly, Jim was calling for his father and asking what was wrong, but, bless him, he didn’t let the dogs’ leashes go, no matter how much they sawed at their leads. Panting with fright, I circled a small part of the yard near the garden. The house itself was a meandering affair, with many wings and additions, but I knew where I was going. Boldly leaping onto a pair of barrels and then over the white picket fence they were lined up against landed me within the house’s garden, which sprawled lazily along one side of the building.
In the house, lights were being turned on, and voices were coming from the kitchen. A woman was almost shrieking, shouting at the men, “Victor! Jim! Mark! What is it, is it a burglar? A killer?”
“God’s teeth, I’ve never seen anything like it!” Mark answered as I panted for breath, creeping along the outer edge. “It had these big bug eyes, and it was all pale and sickly!”
The hair rose on the back of my neck. I know I must have looked like death warmed over, but... pale and sickly? Bug eyes? He was making me out to be some kind of monster.
Fuming, I grit my teeth and kept low. My body was far more flexible than any horse had a right to be, and it was disturbingly good at moving like that. Leit Motif was proving a good role model again. Raising my head up, I prepared to check the room I had originally come to see.
The noises from the kitchen grew more frantic. “It’s an alien, Victor!” Mark insisted.
“Now, brother, I know I saw something weird, but—”
“What if there’s more of them? What if they’ve come for my babies?” Molly, Mark’s wife, demanded in increasingly shrill tones.
“Keith, Frank, get the guns!”
“I’ll call the police!”
My chest became a drum for my heart as I peered over the edge of the window sill, looking past a potted lily to the room within.
It was like a princess’s room. Or, at least, a princess who had every modern amenity a doting father could buy. Many girls who had nothing but brothers and mostly male cousins became aggressive tomboys as a result, but my friend Naomi was about as far from being a tomboy as Pluto was from earth. An extensive Daddy’s Girl program had rendered her utterly and irrevocably girly, but I loved her for it anyway. An explosion of pink, frills, and lace met my eyes, and I scanned the plush-strewn bed for any sign of her. The covers had been pulled down, so I knew she had been in bed and reading one of her favorite sappy romances. A nearby tissue box confirmed that last suspicion.
“No, no, Keith, the bigger ones!” Mark shouted.
“The ones the Feds don’t like, Dad?”
“Daddy?” I could hear Naomi’s voice calling, “What’s going on?”
“Get back to your room, sugarplum, and stay away from the windows,” Victor said adamantly.
“Look! I think I saw one outside, Dad!” Unless Keith had seen an owl, panic and nighttime misidentifications were setting in, which meant they would at least waste time jumping at shadows. Or shooting at shadows.
While I jimmied the frame, trying to pry open the window, bare feet pattered in the hall. Quickly, I ducked my head, so that only my eyes and part of my horn were showing. The door slammed open and a storm of red and pink burst in. If I were to be entirely honest, I would have to say that Naomi is prettier than I am—or prettier than I was, before I became Mr. Ed’s niece.
Flouncing onto her dressing table chair, she smoothed her pink nightgown, grabbed an ivory-backed brush, and pulled it through her hair, pouting ferociously. Naomi had princess-like hair of which she was understandably vain, a great cascade of deep, metallic red curls that spilled all the way down her back. With it framing her heart-shaped face, she looked utterly adorable. If that look had not melted her father’s heart, I must have given him a hell of a scare.
Dipping my head lower, I hissed to carry through the glass, “Naomi!”
I had been counting on a little squeak and wasn’t disappointed. Naomi had always been rather soft spoken. “Daphne?” she called quietly. “Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me, you ninny.” My voice came out as a strained whisper. “Open the window.”
“You sound like you’re in a snit,” she complained, miffed. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you worried about the alien? Wait, what’s that banging?”
I stopped pounding my head against the wall. “I am the alien; please,” I pleaded with her, “open the window and let me in.”
There was a pause from within, and I looked towards the kitchen to see if anyone was looking. There had been no gunshots—yet—but every few minutes one of the boys shouted that they saw something, and it started a new flurry of activity. The barking dogs added to the clamor, which only improved things for me. “If you’re really Daphne, then what’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to her at school?”
Briefly, I considered running right then. Surely there was an unattended phone somewhere—but no, not for a long while. I sucked in a breath.
“When Bianca went through the trash and read my love poem to Henry Barker in the eighth grade.”
“And?”
“I ran upstairs, climbed the ladder to the school tower, and shut myself up there for thirteen hours. The fire department came and had to drag me off.”
“And?” she repeated, expectant.
My teeth grated loudly.
“Dad, there’s an alien here,” she said airily, as if she were practicing.
“On the way down in the fire truck’s bucket, I threw up over the side, right on the police, reporters, and the mayor’s wife.”
The latch clicked and the window began sliding open. Knowing Naomi, the first thing she would do would be to stick her head out. “Naomi, wait!” I said at once to stall her. “Don’t look. Just... step back into the room, and don’t look until I say so.”
“Now you really sound like an alien trying to trick me,” she muttered dubiously.
“For crying out loud, if I were going to hurt you I’d stick a tentacle in and pull you out now. Just turn around and wait; it’s important. If you’re lucky, I’m a sexy alien fugitive shapeshifter who you can comfort.”
“Okay, okay! Sheesh, no alien like that would be this grouchy. You really have a burr in your saddle tonight, Daphne,” she complained, and I could almost hear her pouting as she moved over to another part of the room.
Hauling myself up on the windowsill, I scrambled my rear hooves against the wall for purchase and tumbled in awkwardly, my landing cushioned by a small mountain of plush toys. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be too difficult to clean; I had always liked them as a little girl. For all we bickered, Naomi and I had been nearly as close as two friends could be since we were tiny. Maybe we were close because of all our quarrels, actually.
A slender, pretty thing, she stood with her arms crossed, facing the corner and tapping a bare foot. I glanced about the room. The door latch was in a locked position as I had hoped, and it was harder to hear what was going on in the kitchen from in here, especially once I’d turned and shut the window behind me. Much as I wanted an escape route, I wanted to avoid being heard more. Shelves stocked with light fantasy literature, horse fiction, books on genuine horse care and ranching, and pictures of us growing up together lined the wall with the door. One wall, the one with the window I had come through, was devoted to her own not-unskilled photography. Another had the door to a walk-in closet and a four-poster bed, and the last had her writing desk and her dressing table.
Naomi’s full-length mirror had been brought out to stand in a corner, and, for the first time, I glimpsed my new form. It was something of a miserable sight, possessed of a bedraggled white-brown coat and a head of wild, blond hair that stuck out every which way, while my equally blond tail had twigs and leaves sticking out of it. I was not quite as tall as a modern pony, and there were many differences beside. Like Leit Motif before me, I had big, expressive eyes, and looked soft and pliable compared to any equine bred by humans. It was easy to imagine how she might have developed from a cute little filly to a cute little mare like me. What definition my muscles had was minimal, and, over all, I gave a harmless, sweet appearance that belied the fright Naomi’s family was experiencing—even my horn looked soft-edged and unthreatening. I blew out a frustrated breath in a horse-like nicker.
Startled at that noise, Naomi disobeyed me and turned. For a long moment, she stood transfixed. Stumbling back a half step at her gaze, I became very aware of the fact that I had just sealed off my only escape route. In my imagination, I already vividly saw her screaming and grabbing her chair to fend me off, which is why it caught me completely off guard when she flew through my mental image and tackled me to the wall. She hauled me up off the floor and proceeded to squeeze every last breath out of my body. Wheezing and waving my hooves uselessly, I tried to gasp a response, but she only hugged me tighter.
“Finally!” Naomi cried, “Oh, I’ve been waiting so long for this!”
“Gak!” I gasped eloquently as she began to dance around her small room with me in tow, trying to keep my balance.
“I’ve been wishing and wishing and wishing for this to happen ever since you told me! A unicorn of my very own! My magical pony best friend forever; my very own MPBFF!” she squealed, nuzzling her cheek against my face.
“Naomi—” I choked, trying to get a word in edgewise.
“Oh we’ll have so many wonderful and magical adventures together!” she breathed in wondering awe as she let me flop down on the floor, coming down beside me and smoothing my mane and tail, plucking the twigs and leaves out. “You poor thing, we’ll get you settled down with a nice stall and a bale of hay and some oats, maybe an apple or two, and I’ll wash you and brush your mane and coat and tail and it’ll be so perfect. Just like I always dreamed!”
“Look, Naomi—” I tried again, my throat clearer.
“Eeeheheheehe,” she giggled obscenely, her cherubic face haloed in a cloud of red as she beamed at me. “Ever since you told me about your friend, I’ve been so jealous. I never stopped believing, and I’ve been out in that forest at least once a week since I was seven, trying to find Leit Motif for you. And now you’re a magical pony and we’re going to be bestest best best friends forever!” What, we weren’t already best friends? Was I was the newer, shinier model?
My mouth dropped open, and I couldn’t help but gape in astonishment. I wasn’t sure whether to be touched that she had believed in me when no one else had, or else deeply concerned at the level she was taking this whole thing. At the moment, mostly the latter.
“I think you’re about eight to nine hands tall, which is pretty insignificant for a pony, but your neck goes almost straight up, so that gives you a lot more height at the crown,” she continued, oblivious to my distress, as she poked and prodded me, turning my head this way and that. “Your craniofacial morphology is really developed—the prominent eyes, the shortened snout, the enlarged cranium. You certainly have a brain at least as big as a human’s. The gracile ridges and facial muscles indicate advanced social development.”
This spiel had me too stunned to object as she lifted one of my forelegs, examining the joints and muscles with a horse trader’s professional grip. “Oh neat, you’re way more flexible than any pony I’ve seen. If it weren’t for the hoof, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could grip objects. You even have strong ellipsoid joints where a human’s would be, just tougher to take impacts from walking!”
“How do you know so much—” I started, and then interrupted myself, looking at her shelf again. Riddle solved.
Naomi reached for my tail, starting to lift it just under the dock. “So do you have menstrual or es—”
“Naomi!” I shrieked, skittering away with my tail held protectively behind me, staring at her. “No! No! Bad girl!”
Deciding I needed to settle this at once, I reared up and pressed her back to her bed with my hooves on her shoulders. “Naomi, please, for the love of all that’s sane, listen to me,” I begged her, my voice racing on. “I’m sorry, but I’m not here to be your magical special friend you’ve longed for since girlhood. I was in the forest with Amelia, and some monsters kidnapped her, and then I got hit with a magic wand and c-cursed into this shape.”
My voice throbbed with emotion as I laid out my tale for her, the events of the day compressing themselves into a tight knot in my throat. “I was just out there with her, and w-we had a f-f-fight because I was be-being horrible,” I told her, my eyes starting to swim with tears. “And she r-ran off whe-when it was getting dark and I was such an id-idiot I let her go at first.”
I sucked in a breath as Naomi’s face fell into increasing concern and horror. I told her about the strange men, the encounter in the grove with the cat, and my struggle for the wand. I told her about how I had pulled myself out of the river to discover my transformed state, and how I had nearly drowned or fainted from the cold. How I had run all the way from there to her ranch, and about how I had nearly been caught by her father and uncle and the family dogs.
At some point, I’m not sure when, I had started crying, tears running down my smooth cheeks. Naomi’s arms went about my neck and, this time, she held me to her gently. I felt her warmth against me, her form against mine.
I wept like a child.
This was another reason why Naomi was among my closest friends. Sure, she could be ridiculous and wimpy and fruity and maybe a little scary at times, but, when it was important, she knew how to put all of that aside and be there for me. She was smarter than she seemed and had a deep, kind heart full of laughter and love. I needed her then, and more than just for a phone.
“Shh,” she whispered, stroking my mane as I sniffled. She even got one of her spare brushes from a drawer nearby and began running it through my hair. Half-curled on her lap, my head against her chest, I must have looked an awful mess, pony or no. It was silly, but her ministrations helped spread a sense of calmness and lassitude through me. Funny to say, but we had brushed one another’s hair before, and I always did find it comforting, particularly when I felt lonely or lost. “It’s all right, Daph, I’m here.”
“Oh, Naomi,” I breathed plaintively. “I don’t know if Amelia is all right. I don’t know if I’ll ever be normal again. I don’t know if it’s given me cancer or if I’ll lose my mind or anything.”
“You’ll be okay. It’ll work out. Does Em have a cell?”
“No,” I closed my eyes.
“Let’s call the house, then. If she got away in the fight, she may be home already!” she said with infectious optimism. It didn’t matter whether it was faked or not. I nodded, and she pulled her smartphone out, scrolled through the contacts, and dialed my house, putting it on speakerphone. Just like her, a thoughtful little touch.
The phone rang. It continued to ring on for a time. When it got to the voicemail, she hung up, frowning, and asked, “Shouldn’t your parents have answered?”
I shook my head against her. “Theater. They won’t be home for a while yet.”
“Okay, let’s call the cops,” she said, and I laughed softly. Just like her to guess my thoughts from time to time. She dialed the sheriff’s line. A brief conversation later—a false name given—and she shook her head, hanging up. “They said they haven’t picked up anyone of her description.”
Shakily, I began to rise. “There’s only one thing to it, then,” I murmured, steeling myself. “I need to go to her land. To Equestria.”
The silence was deep. Even the family had calmed down, though I think they were still up, since I could hear dogs barking intermittently, and no one was stopping them. Naomi ran a hand through her hair and stood up.
“Do you know how to get there?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I hesitated, thinking aloud, “I mean, Leit Motif told me a little about how she got here, but, uh... I never really thought it important; it never occurred to me that Equestria was anything but another town at the time. But I know where she came from, and it’s along the line where I met those things.”
“Okay,” she said, and started to peel her nightgown off. I would never admit openly that I envied more than her pretty hair sometimes. Not to mention her total lack of shame.
“Uh, Naomi, what are you doing?” I asked, sitting my rear down again. I felt like a cat doing that, while bracing my upper body against my outstretched forelegs. It was very much not a normal pony thing, but, as Naomi had pointed out, I was definitely no earthly pony.
“Going with you,” she insisted, taking some ties from the dressing table and tying her clouds of flaming hair back into a bushy ponytail.
“Haha, no,” I protested, starting to stand. Wailing sirens rose outside, causing me to pause as my ears perked to the sound. I went to the window and saw a line of sheriff cars charging up the road to the ranch. Naomi’s uncle and cousins would already be scrambling to secrete away the heavier duty firearms, while, I imagined in like fashion, the country sheriffs would be busy tackling me to the ground and hog-tying my legs.
A thudding of feet in the hall alerted us both to trouble, and Naomi hissed, “Daph, back here!” She threw open the door to the walk-in closet, and I darted in without hesitation. It fell dark when she closed the door, but for the thin planes of light let in by the slats in the wood.
The bedroom door swished open, and a figure entered the room; of course he would have a key. I was such an idiot sometimes. Peeking through the slats as best I could, I saw Naomi scuff the twigs and leaves under her bed with a foot. “Daddy! I’m undressed!” she complained.
“Sorry, sugarcube, I need to protect you before your modesty,” Victor apologized as he peeked under the bed.
“Dad, I think I would have noticed an alien in here.”
“Might have come in while you were in the kitchen. Scoot.” He gestured her aside.
I scrambled back, thinking fast. An idea occurred among the faintly perceived shapes around me as I backed up almost to the wall.
When Victor opened the closet door and flooded the little room with light, I had braced myself amongst her backup plushies, including the largest of them—a pair of bears and three horses. I kept my head still, my body frozen, and my eyes wide and staring. It was an incredible effort not to blink or flinch, but I visualized it in my head: I was a unicorn plush, no different from any other, glassy-eyed and adorable for all that I was mussed. I probably looked slightly more stupid than the fluffy dog at my side, one that nearly dwarfed me.
Victor stepped back to let more light flood in. I held my breath. The strain of stillness was cording my neck muscles intensely. At any moment, my mental image might have slipped and with it my will to remain still. I wished I had taken a moment to wipe my coat where it had been wet, and begged the universe not to let him turn the closet light on.
“Daddy,” Naomi growled, taking the universe’s place for the evening. “This is ridiculous. There’s no creepers, killers, or grey men in my closet. I’m also still undressed.”
Embarrassed, the man stepped out, running a hand through his short, reddish hair. “I’m sorry, sugarplum, you know I’m just worried about you.”
“Yes, yes, I know. Out, out!” she demanded, and shoved him to the door. He may have been upwards of two hundred pounds of muscle, but against Naomi he might as well have been twenty. Banishing him beyond the threshold, she slammed the door again.
I gasped a sigh of relief but remained hidden until it seemed certain the danger had passed. I crawled out, looking up at her from the carpet, resigned. My ears drooped, and I shuffled my hooves together awkwardly.
“Settled, then?” she asked, beaming. She was already filling one of her bags, regardless of my answer.
“Settled.” I sighed.
* * *
“Naomi!” I complained, shutting my eyes and trying to cover my face as the jet from the hose smacked me in the nose. “Knock it off!”
“You already tracked mud in my room, and I don’t want you getting parasites,” my friend insisted. I spluttered and glowered when she started to spray the rest of my body, looking not unlike a soggy kitten. She was dressed in her riding leathers, durable and easy to travel in. On a set of saddlebags resting on the stall, a sensible cowboy hat had been slung. It was astonishing how quickly she had packed and dressed. In my experience, it could take her hours to get ready for even the simplest trip. A small electric lantern illuminated the two of us, and a backup oil lamp was attached to a camping backpack.
Groaning, I turned in a little circle, wanting to get it over with as soon as possible. Copious amounts of dust and grime sloshed off me to run along into the stable drain, while horses trying to sleep nickered softly. Somewhere outside, on the other side of the farmhouse, the remaining sheriffs were combing the woods, aside from a pair talking to Victor and his wife, the quiet Tess. Naomi and I had waited until they had checked over the stables and this side of the ranch before making our break, so we weren’t too concerned about being caught.
Completing my turn, I grunted as a wet sponge hit me. “Gneh! We don’t have time for this!”
“Oh relax, I didn’t soap it. I’m just scrubbing the worst of it off. Besides, you shouldn’t complain so much. You’re absolutely gorgeous,” Naomi said breathlessly, and I began to suspect her motives were not entirely altruistic.
“I am not! This is a horrifying, Kafka-esque transformation, I am not—eee!” I squealed and jumped. “Stop nuzzling me at once!”
Naomi giggled wickedly and rinsed off the rest of the gunk, then started to dry me off with a big towel. I pushed her away and grabbed it in my hooves, backing up and using the side of the stable for balance. Though I still had no idea how or if I could pick things up with my hooves, it wasn’t hard to hold a big towel and rub it against myself. Besides, I was becoming intimately aware of the fact that I was stark naked, coat aside, and Naomi wasn’t making things any easier in that respect.
“Can you sing now?”
“What? No, why would you even ask that?”
“Well, you know, magical pony best friends should sing, and you were always awful,” she complained, reaching around behind her.
“Knock it off, and—hey, what’re you doing with that—”
Then came the brush, and fighting her off proved less successful this time. My friend came prepared, armed with her most devastating little girl pout, and I scuffed my hoof on the floor and snorted a reluctant agreement. Now that my hair and tail were reasonably clean and damp, the brush went through them easily.
“Oh it’s a lot more like human hair, too; that’s fascinating. It’s interesting how you don’t have a crest. I wonder why.”
“We can wonder why later. C’mon, Naomi, you’ve brushed me enough, stop it,” I whined, pattering my feet. Twenty strokes on my tail was quite enough, thank you. I gave her my most ferocious glare—which, in my present state, was more likely to be an adorable pout.
Naomi confirmed this by squealing and hugging my head. “Oh you are just so perfect,” she crooned, and lifted a small hand mirror. Having no particular desire to see, I only reluctantly observed my reflection, and grudgingly had to admit that I looked a lot nicer. My hair was much like my own had been, a shiny mop of blond that fell past my chin. A very fine coat of groomed, pale hair covered my body, and my tail was a somewhat bushy golden color. I supposed I would have to admit that I looked a heck of a lot cuter than most horses, too, but I certainly wouldn’t do so in public.
As I looked, Naomi started reaching for a bridle hanging on a hook on the wall.
“Whoa!” I squawked, pinning it there with my foreleg. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Oh!” She paused a beat. “I’m sorry, it was automatic,” she then offered, though her hand remained frozen in place, still reaching for the headgear.
I narrowed my gaze at her. “That didn’t sound entirely sincere.”
“Anyway!” she evaded quickly, finally stepping away from the tackle. “Let’s get going.” She slapped a set of small saddlebags on my back, and I let her cinch them. What was left of the belongings I had rescued were in them, and more room besides.
“Right,” I agreed. For all my complaints about time, there had been perfectly legitimate reasons for us to wait before taking off. The lights of the sheriffs’ wagons were only now beginning to roll out across the night, so it was risky to head out just yet. With a dry coat, I didn’t feel the bite of the night air as I might have, and it was reasonable, if not comfortable, for me to stay out in the chill for a little while.
Hearing shod hooves, I half-turned and blinked at my friend. “Aren’t we taking the truck?” I asked, watching as she smoothly mounted the saddled and bridled Hector. The big, speckled stallion was restless, sensing the excitement of his rider, and chuffed at me. A quick step back prevented a repeat of the nuzzling incident earlier. Naomi stilled Hector with a casual touch and tucked stray flaming hairs out of the way, her hat on her head. It had been a surprise at first when she started wearing entirely practical gear, but Naomi had made it perfectly clear that she thought cowgirl chic was entirely gauche. Besides, when asked, she responded truthfully that she made the frontier ensemble look good.
“Uncle Mark passed out in the back with a bottle of rum and his favorite shotgun,” she informed me, rote, with a mirthless grin. “Unless you have a crane, we’re going by hoof now.”
I arched a brow. “He has a favorite."
Naomi gave a shrug. “He insists he loves them all equally, but everybody knows.”
That change in plans had me biting my lower lip in considerable thought. With my new body, I could eat up a lot of ground, and, having ridden the path before, I knew we could get to my house within half an hour on horseback if we were quick about it. “More importantly, we’ll be able to get through the forest a lot quicker,” I thought aloud.
“Besides, you can’t have an adventure without horses,” Naomi declared vainly, her head held high and a self-assured grin on her lips.
That left about a third of her library unaccounted for. “What about science fiction?”
“Space horses,” she answered gravely, eyes suddenly wide and determined, but her grin had straightened out only a little. Hector whinnied, as if in agreement.
“Fine, I’m not going to argue with both of you. Come on, we’ve got a road to hit,” I announced, and put my hooves where my mouth was, moving into a steady trot towards the gates.
An eager Hector joined me, restrained from his competitive instincts by Naomi’s firm guidance. She had a small camera in hand and was filming me as we went, her knees guiding the big animal. The little coos and awws she made as I picked up the pace from a walk to a trot, or when I agilely dodged road obstacles, were getting very distracting.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying my discomfort.”
“Yeah, it’s like a dream come true!”
There was no expressing in words how grateful I was for modern road lighting systems, and, without having to worry as much about potholes or hidden roots, I devoured distance. Keeping up with the big stallion was proving my most trying experience. Hector clearly wanted to show who was the faster racer, and tiny little me couldn’t possibly have kept up with a hotblooded animal forged by thousands of years of directed breeding. The comparisons to be made between humans and great apes was very starkly evidenced here. I could no more have competed against him in a race than I could have wrestled a gorilla as a human.
On our way, I kept to the far side of the larger animal, away from the street, as we jogged along the horse trail. It wasn’t a perfect cover, but it was unlikely the occasional car speeding along would notice me beside the bigger animal, and the last thing I wanted was for people to start swooping around town with Instagrams of an alien on Twitter and Facebook. When we passed a gas station, the very idea of food had my stomach threatening to revolt, demanding sustenance. Suddenly, that offer of hay and oats didn’t seem quite so out-of-line.
While I started to contemplate whether or not grazing on the grass beside the road was a good idea, Naomi perceived my plight and took pity. Of course, my stomach was growling loud enough that she should have heard it clearly. “Let’s get a bite to eat,” she suggested. We were within the town, now, if on the fringes of it, and we had to watch out to make sure we could pass through unnoticed.
“What sort of places are open this late? I guess we can get some fruit or something from a Seven-Eleven,” I commented. I would have to eat vegetarian, of course. Leit never even liked looking at my hamburgers, though she devoured ice cream, so I supposed I could at least get dairy.
“It’s only twenty to nine. I know a place,” Naomi assured me. I marveled at the time as she turned Hector and started trotting down a tree-lined lane. What had felt like days in my mind had only been three or four hours. The thought unsettled me, and weariness seeped into my bones.
Never one for vegetarian food, I didn’t recognize the diner, and I kept well back from the main road in any case. Concentrating on her goal, Naomi failed to notice my depression, and I preferred it that way. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts just then. Slumping, with my head low and a deep, scowling pout on my lips, I watched the shoppers and diners going about their business. Late as it was, there weren’t many, but there was still a sense of separation between them and me. They were... human. Each and every one of them had a life here. Work, school, families. There was no way I could go back to school like this. There was no telling what Mother and Father would do to me, even if I did manage to find Amelia. There was nothing left of their oldest daughter, of the old Daphne. There wasn’t a place for me here. I couldn’t even drown my sorrows in a stacked quarter-pounder and cheese. No, all I had was a horn sticking out of my forehead, my naked coat, and a too-eager friend who probably wanted me to stay like this for the rest of my life.
Hector pawed at the ground with a hoof where he had been left. My brow furrowed further, tears beading in the corners of my eyes, as I glanced his way. “Yeah, look at you, big guy,” I snarked, pushing back my grief with biting sardonicism. “She steps on your reins, and you stay right where you are. Yeah, you’re a big wuss, aren’t you?”
I sounded pathetic.
Naomi found me curled on the ground, my head between my forelegs and my tail tucked around my side. I looked up, and she bit her lip, apparently trying to keep from bursting into tears at the sight of me right then. She could be such a sap.
Showing surprising tact, she simply laid a steaming bag down beside me and stepped away to munch on her own. In spite of my growing depression, it was impossible to remain entirely upset amid such intoxicating aromas and a growling stomach. Nosing the bag open, I snuffed inside with my big muzzle.
“Processed mushroom burger,” Naomi informed me. “Oats, garlic, onion, parsley, oregano, pickles, all on a wheat bun. I know how much you like cheese, so I had them shred parmesan all over it, even though it’s going to go right to your hips.”
My mouth watered, and I shoved my face in, tore the wrapping away with my teeth, and scarfed up the burger with delight. It was no beef, but, with mayo and dressing and cheese and meaty mushroom and everything else, it was like a chunk of heaven all the same. To a starving mare who had not eaten anything since before noon, it was as if life had begun anew. If not for the bag, I would have been spraying juices across the grass like we were on the set of a horror film. I didn’t even need to ask for more before she put the cheesy fries down next, and I inhaled them in great gulps.
“Oooh,” I moaned. “Salt and grease and cheddar.” It was nearly obscene; I should have been embarrassed to enjoy myself this much in public.
Naomi giggled, pecking at a salad, while Hector tried to steal a bite. She shoved his big head away. “Later, you, I brought plenty of oats.” He settled for nuzzling at her mane of red hair instead. “Are you feeling—omigawd that is so cute!” she squeaked, watching me suck up a milkshake through a straw, my face puckered up.
“You are going to be just impossible, aren’t you?” I asked around the straw, unwilling to stop eating.
“I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the night.” It was difficult to tell if she was being sarcastic or not, fanning herself with a plastic fork in hand. “I’m already melting into a puddle of joy.”
Gagging noises told her what I thought of that.
Naomi gave me a grin. “Aww, don’t ruin it. You’re so much cuter this way. Really, Daphne, you can be a bit of a snit; you should take this chance to look at life from a new perspective.”
“This is plenty perspective enough for me right now, thanks, and I am not that bad.”
“Daph,” Naomi planted her fork-holding hand against her hip as she regarded me, “you’ve been like a bear with a sore paw for a while now. Even before you broke up with Marc, you acted like you barely had time for anyone.”
My first instinct was to snap back at her, rising to do exactly that, but it would have merely proven her point. Falling back to my milkshake, I allowed a moment to pass so I could take stock. “I know, and I’m sorry. I’ve been pretty unfair to people lately.”
“Self-obsessed, perhaps?”
“Don’t push it,” I grumbled. Shaking my head, I huffed a sigh. This was really the first time I had been able to sit and think since the discoveries of tonight, and, since we were here eating anyway, it seemed a waste not to get a load off with my best friend—much as I had been reluctant to, earlier. Who knew when we’d be able to sit down again to talk? “It’s been that way ever since I gave up on Leit Motif. How much do you know of what happened back then? I know I didn’t tell you, well, anything after a certain point.”
Naomi shook her head. “Not much, no. Father told me you were getting help from a therapist, and then you started acting pretty strangely after that. Don’t you remember when I broke into your room to complain about how you weren’t talking to me any more?”
That startled me. I had forgotten about that, but now that she had reminded me, I could remember waking up in the middle of the night to a cloud of red hair and angry, crying eyes. Strange the sorts of things that get lost in the dust of memory. Nodding, I said, “You thought I didn’t like you any more. This may sound funny, but I honestly thought that you hated me.”
“Because of the other kids’ parents? You know my parents aren’t like that, Daphne. They’d never have told me to stay away from you. They knew you, for one, and they thought you were just acting out because you were afraid.” She closed the distance between us, dropping her fork into her tray as she walked, and reached out to stroke her hand along my mane. “Besides, I believed you. Seems that panned out better than any of us expected, too.”
“You’re a sap, and I hope you get carried off by a dragon,” I griped, but gave her hand a quick nuzzle.
“Depending on how cute he is, I might not object too strongly,” she said, giggling.
Stealing some of Naomi’s salad, I washed it down with another gulp of my milkshake. “You may be more right than you think, though,” I admitted at last. “Not about the transformation giving me a new perspective, though, so much as it is the whole thing. I tried to put all of that away because I thought it was hurting me, that it was unreal, and I couldn’t tell the difference.”
“Now you know it’s real,” she said, pushing the rest of her salad my way. “You don’t have to be afraid of being yourself any more, Daph.”
It was gobbled up gratefully, and I finished off my milkshake before pushing all the trash into the burger bag. Wiping my mouth was a challenge, but I managed to hold a pile of napkins between my hooves and used those to mop up my muzzle. “Being myself,” I mumbled. “I’m not sure I know how to do that anymore.”
Her hands lifted my face, and she cleaned off a speck I had missed on my cheek, before sliding her hands down to my hooves and giving them a squeeze. It should have felt belittling, but Naomi had something of a gift when it came to tender devotion. No one else had ever been able to soothe my hurts quite like her, and I never let anyone touch or even hug me quite like she did. It was exactly the sort of affection I needed just then. Closing my eyes, I exhaled, letting a portion of my worries go.
“Let’s get going,” I said, and reached back to nose into my saddlebags. Naomi put a hand to my neck as I pulled out my wallet, give me a gentle push to let me know I didn’t have to pay her back. I reluctantly put it away and snorted, scuffing my hoof on the ground awkwardly. Nothing was said; we both understood. I chucked the diner bag into a public trash can and hurried on. Mounting up on Hector, Naomi turned to follow me as I led the way. Home awaited me.
If I could still call it home.
* * *
Even taking the back ways, it was only another five minutes to my house at our pace. A hill ran along behind the row of homes, and the thick bed of leaves squished under our hooves as we rode up to the backyard. Dodging around toys left there by Amelia, I walked up to the back porch and surmounted the stairs, my ears and eyes swiveling as I searched to be sure no one was watching. Other homes glowed with light, but ours was dark, and no one who wasn’t expressly looking into our backyard would have seen the two horses and young girl approaching.
Leaving Hector at the base of the steps, Naomi joined me and unlatched the gate. My keys were presented to her in my mouth, and she popped open the back door while I judiciously scraped my hooves clean on the rug. So doing, I entered.
Were it not for our lack of supplies, I might have bypassed this trip entirely. While Naomi had been able to take some food for Hector—and me, technically—food for a human was decidedly lacking in a stable, and someone would have noticed her sneaking into and out of the kitchen.
That same overwhelming sadness washed over me again, however, as we entered my home. Pictures of the family stared down from the walls and cabinets, and I didn’t need to stretch my imagination much to imagine them glaring at me in disapproval. Who was I but a weird little interloper, now? I wasn’t even of the same flesh as my kin anymore.
One who had lost her one and only sister.
While Naomi saw her way about the pantry, I went upstairs. The steps weren’t hard to take. My legs were pretty versatile, and most of the night had been spent getting used to them. I nosed open the door to Amelia’s room and padded around in the dark like a fuzzy burglar.
Laying my head on her bed for a moment, I sighed. “I’ll get you back,” I promised the empty room before opening my eyes. Two blue, gleaming eyes stared back at me over a forked tongue, and I jumped back, startled. It became apparent, looking closer, that it was just Amelia’s favorite toy—a white snake plush named Asmodeus, Slayer of Mice. My sister had always been a little weird.
It would be pathetic if I started bawling like a little girl right there. Just started tearing up and sniffling and hugging a toy to my chest and crying my little heart out. I wouldn’t be that pitiable.
Once I was done not being that pitiable, I put Asmodeus into a saddlebag and went back into the upstairs hallway. There were other things we were going to need, so I went into my room next. A flick of my tail clicked the light switch on with its tip—which was pretty fun, actually. A tail could come in handy now and then, it seemed. That was worth a grin at least. Opening the closet, I pushed aside a stack of books and dragged a box out with my mouth. There was a tag on the cardboard slats that read: Sealed Forever.
“Okay, Daphne,” I murmured to encourage myself, putting a hoof on top of it. “It’s just another part of that past you tried so hard to bury. You know, how a therapist and your parents convinced you that you were crazy. The part Naomi said it was okay for you to have now.”
I looked up into the mirrored surface of my closet, at the wide, green eyes of a unicorn. Long seconds passed as I drank in the reality. I shoved the top of the box in and broke the seal with a slice of my hoof, prying the two sides open and freeing the contents within.
Memories poured out, filling the air with dusty reminiscence. A laughing, happy little girl, full of life, bounced on the bed. Action figures, army men, and playsets sprawled across the floor, while she envisioned titanic battles and elaborate romances playing out across time and space, contained in the impossibly vast universe of my bedroom. She hung upside-down and watched Star Wars on the little TV and VHS player until she knew the whole series backwards. I could see every little freckle on her as she put together a model airplane on her desk, a magnifying lens swelling her face into immensity.
“Pandora, eat your heart out,” I mumbled, digging through the box as more memories danced around me. I tried not to focus on the toys, knowing I could be here all night, reliving my childhood, if I let myself. Instead, I fit my hooves in and pulled out a camo-textured case. A solid, sensible survival kit, freshly stocked in anticipation of my next and greatest adventure. “One I’m about to make eight years late.”
“What was that?” Naomi asked from the door, and I jumped, automatically shoving the kit into my empty saddlebag as if I were hiding something shameful. “Oh, hey, is that your Hoth playset? I wondered where that had gone!”
“I just wanted to get some things,” I stammered, busying myself with my saddlebag for a moment. I closed the box, but I wouldn’t have sealed it again even if I had the tape to do it with. I didn’t want to bury my childhood ever again. Still, there was nothing to do but shove it back into the closet with my head for now. It would have to wait until I had finished something far more important.
“Do you think any of these would fit?” Naomi asked, starting to leaf through my clothing with her normal, cavalier manner towards my stuff.
“Well, my panties burst right off, and I don’t know what happened to my earrings.” I snorted and shook my head. “My clothes weren’t fitting right when I got out of the river.”
“That doesn’t mean nothing here will, and what if it’s cold over there? You don’t want to freeze.”
“Is this a thinly veiled excuse to dress me up?” I asked, my eyes narrow as I hopped up on my bed and crossed my forelegs in front of me.
“...no,” she said after half a beat, her expression blank, as she approached me with a hat. “Put this on.”
Reluctantly, I submitted, for her excuse was reasonable. I may have had a warm coat, and running warmed me up pretty well, but I obviously wasn’t immune to cold.
As a pouty pony clothes horse, I was a distressingly marketable little thing, which Naomi’s giggling and carrying on proved. My closet served as a full-length mirror, and I shrugged into various different shirts and jackets and skirts. Nothing in that vein fit, and I rebelled when I saw Naomi’s camera resting on my desk, taking in the whole thing.
Dragged back in by my rear ankles, I groused but let her adorn me with hats and combs. What did end up working was a rain poncho and some of my winter scarves, as well as a small selection of knit caps. It was hard to keep from giggling at the sight myself—if I wasn’t careful, I might start to like looking like this. We packed away the poncho on top of the wrapped up scarves and hats. One saddlebag was nearly full, and so I endeavored to fill the other by heading downstairs and finding where Naomi had laid out the food.
She turned out the lights upstairs and went to root through the rest of the building, in search of anything else useful. Spying some cans and other packages of ready-to-eat food on the kitchen table, I packed my remaining bag by the simple expedient of putting a foreleg on the table and sweeping the lot off the edge, then packing it in.
Safety was soon to die, however, when I heard the crunch of tires on asphalt, and headlights swept over the big kitchen window. I gaped and stared at the digital clock on the microwave. “No, it’s only nine-twenty, what’re you doing home early?” I demanded of the air uselessly.
“Come on, Daph, we’ve got to go!” Naomi barked at me from the stairs.
Much as having to comically flee from well-meaning persecutors for yet another time tonight would have been par for the course, I shook my head. “No, they’ll freak out if they hear someone pounding away, or if they come home and find Em and I aren’t here, we need to... ah.” I hesitated, tossing a trailing end of my dragon-patterned scarf over my neck.
A car door slammed, and I could see bags. That explained the earliness—if Father’s reflux was acting up, he would have just gotten some take out. It might have been a good sign, if he was too annoyed to pay attention to things. Or argue with his daughter and her friend.
I retreated to the family room in the back, Naomi at my heels. “We’re going to have to trick them, or they’ll never sleep right and call the police besides.”
“Oh, a distraction! Fun!” She clapped her hands gleefully and went off to the entryway.
“Naomi!” I hissed, but could only dance on my hooves helplessly as she ran off.
The door opened, and I heard my mother ask, her tone surprised, “Naomi? What are you doing here?”
“Hey, Mrs. O.!” Naomi said brightly. “Nice to see you, too!”
Taking advantage of her distraction, I went out back, picking up my saddlebags and—
My mouth snapped on empty air. Crap. I had left them in the kitchen, and forgotten to take them with me when I ran back here.
“Yes,” Mother responded cautiously, “it’s nice to see you, too. Where is Daphne?” I could hear her jewelry tapping against the stand in the entryway as I darted across the family room to the kitchen, vaulting the coffee table. I had to skid to a halt with all four legs splayed ahead of me when the light there came on, flooding the tiled room with illumination.
“Around, she and I just came by for a couple things.”
“A couple things? Just you two?” Mother asked, her heels clicking on the hardwood. I carefully peeked and saw Father putting boxes in the fridge. My mouth watered involuntarily—I saw a cake among those boxes. A cake neither I nor Amelia would be trying.
“Yeah, Amy and Daph stopped by my place, and Amy was so-o tired she just fell over on my bed and didn’t want to get up,” Naomi lied with the effortless grace only a true daddy’s girl could muster. “I figured they’d stay the weekend. It’s okay with Mom and Dad; we never have enough people around.”
It was no difficulty at all to picture Mother giving Naomi a sour look, her hands on her hips. She would look so elegant in one of her evening gowns, with her blond hair swept up. I ignored the image and crept forward with remarkable stealth for someone with hard hooves, picking the bags up in my mouth.
“Daphne?” Father asked, and I nearly jumped out of my skin right then. I looked, but his face was concealed by the open fridge door.
Shrugging under the strap so that the bags rode on my back, I answered, “Uh, yes, Dad?”
I had to step softly to leave, lest the noise attract his attention, watching the refrigerator as if it contained a slavering ooze monster that was about to burst out and devour me. “You make sure Amelia doesn’t get hurt out there, all right?”
Oh, Father. Of all the things to ask.
“Yes, Daddy,” I promised, my throat tight, and ran as soon as my hooves touched carpet.
Fleeing back over the coffee table, I pushed through the back door and took off across the backyard. I heard Naomi coming after me as I slid down the hill, and, when she leapt onto Hector’s back, we took off at once towards the forest, leaving my home and family behind me.
"A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the fool's back.” Proverbs 26:3
Amelia
I couldn’t bear it any more.
It was awful. Darkness was everywhere. My skin felt covered in pins and needles. Aches shot up my muscles from being held so still. My head throbbed. There was no worse agony than what I was going through right now.
“Can I look now?” I begged, still holding my eyes shut.
“In just a moment more, wee bairn,” the Morgwyn’s sandy voice breathed my way, as patient as the stars. “Keep the eyes shut and abide.”
If there was anything worse in the whole world than having to wait and do nothing, I didn’t want to know about it. Before, I had been certain that waiting for the dentist was the worst torment anyone could come up with, but I had to come down on this new torture now. Waiting for someone to do real magic was way, way harder. Worse, the Morgwyn was right in front of me every time I tried to peek, so there was no relief there.
I twisted and started to hum the theme to my favorite show, hoping that would speed things up as I rocked back and forth on my feet. Little bangs and irritated voices were audible at the edge of my hearing, and I was getting frustrated. I opened my mouth, setting myself. “Okay, I’m going to open my eyes whether you like it or not!”
“Oh? Why did you not do so before, bairn?” it asked in that infuriatingly calm voice. “The Morgwyn only asked it of you. Do you do all that is merely asked of you?”
Stamping my foot, I opened my mouth to give the cat-thing a good tongue lashing. Once my eyes were open, however, whatever bitter comment I had prepared died on my lips as they widened into an astonished and soundless “oh.”
Laying like a glittering river of gold, a path of shiny yellow bricks stretched into the distance. Lamps placed to either side, much like the curved and twisty one back in the woods, curled over the path and lent the whole thing a gentle glow that made it seem so unearthly in the night. Without my realizing it, an entire stagecoach had materialized beside me, as well. It made me jump back in surprise upon discovering it, having nearly bumped my nose into the thing as I turned about, taking in the golden road. The coach had arrived so stealthily that I hadn’t heard its approach, or else it had simply appeared there out of thin air.
There were no horses or engines mounted to the front. One of the strange men from before was sitting anxiously on the driver’s step. I frowned at this, somewhat concerned. He looked different this time, wearing a rich, thick suit of black, embroidered in gold. With his bowler hat, the effect was more charming than his raggedy old garb from before had allowed. Perhaps I had been unfair when I thought he and the others like him looked dangerous—what if they had been protecting me from that strange, screaming creature? Flashes of that barely seen attacker came to mind. Before anything had really happened, the Morgwyn had snatched me up by my satchel’s strap and hauled me away to safety, but the sounds of the fight had been pretty brutal.
With a smile, I looked around, brushing at some fireflies that tried to settle in my hair. “It’s like a page from a storybook.”
“‘Tis your story, lass,” another of the men said, opening the door to the inside of the coach. He had on the same outfit as the other one before him, though his head had a bandage wrapped about it.
“Oh, your poor head!” I exclaimed in mock concern. “Did that horrible monster hurt you badly?” Without giving any warning, I tugged his big head lower and pecked the fresh bandages, giggling. “You must have been very brave getting that wound! You should be proud.”
He blushed, as I knew he would, and doffed his cap to scratch at his mud-colored hair. “Well, er... it was nothin’,” he mumbled. I grinned wider. A little flattery butters any adult up.
Another hand hauled him aside, the third of the large men appearing and giving the injured one a sour look. My eyes were instantly drawn to the length of gnarled wood he had left inside the carriage, leaning against the back wall, but it wasn’t glowing or doing anything special at the moment. It seemed deceptively innocent as it lay there, though I distinctly remembered its owner lighting up the entire woods with it before. After the Morgwyn, it was the first real magic I had seen.
“My lady,” he offered, trying to smooth his rough voice out and touching the tip of a top hat atop his head. “If you will join us, your castle awaits. We can carry you to it forthwith.”
That blanked out everything else, my attention snapping to him. “A castle?” I asked breathlessly. “With murder holes and crenellations and everything? I want to see the murder holes first!”
The man blinked at that, apparently surprised, and pulled his friend aside for a quick, whispered conference. The Morgwyn chortled and stretched its wide shoulders, before reaching up to snap a firefly out of the air with one gleaming claw, snuffing the insect’s light. Each of the three men murmured amongst themselves in hushed tones, the man with the head wound blinking rapidly, the man with the fancy cloak grumbling in a gravelly voice, the man with the wand gesticulating wildly, and each of them glancing at me now and then. “Yes,” the wand-wielder agreed after his discussion, turning to me, “lots of those things. It’s powerful enchanted, too. Loads of magical creatures, proper tidy it is.”
“Is there a magical ice queen who turns people to stone?”
“We got a king,” the man with the head wound informed me proudly, his broad, flat-toothed grin excited. “He’s mighty powerful.” The other man cuffed him, and he yelped, looking miffed.
“Yes, well, you’ll meet him in good time. If’n you play your cards right, y’might get to meet a princess or two,” Wand-wielder informed me, and that was good enough for me. I hopped in and started bouncing on the seats. They were soft leather, but just firm enough to be satisfyingly springy.
The injured one went to stand on the step. The Morgwyn, on its way in, gave him a very sharp looking smile before sitting at my feet, between me and Wand-wielder. He prudently lifted his feet to keep them out of the cat’s way, while I stuck my head out the window like a dog.
As Driver flicked his riding crop, the carriage jolted and moved of its own accord, forcing me to grip the window frame to stay steady. “Doesn’t even pause to admire the scrollwork in here,” Wand-wielder muttered under his breath, low enough that I didn’t think I was supposed to hear, but I ignored him. I was admiring the scenery and trying to find out how the cart worked. There was no engine noise and no clopping of invisible hooves, and it felt as if the wheels were moving of their own accord.
As the carriage began to clatter along the stones, I heard the creaking and groaning of wood and whipped my head to peer the way we had come. Though it was hard to see, I swear the trees along the path were getting up and moving. It was as if they had come apart into blocks, then reassembled to bar the path, forming a thick line of foliage. “Hey, what’s going on back there? Why did they block the path?”
“So the monster can’t find us again,” Wand-wielder assured me, touching the narrow length of wood I had named him after as if for his own peace of mind. He shifted in his seat and leaned against the frame, which was, in fact, inlaid with some pretty intricate scroll work. Pretty carvings weren’t that interesting, though.
“Oh! That makes sense,” I said, and went back to staring out at the path. Fireflies flew up in great clouds of light in our wake and the trees grew closer together, more tightly knit. The coach picked up speed, and I felt the wind of its passage blow my hair back, moving faster and faster. It wasn’t a car ride, certainly, but it was pretty fast.
Back inside, Wand-wielder was watching me with his lidded eyes in a curious gaze. “What’s up?” I asked him, turning back inside the carriage. Smoothing my hair back from my forehead, I tucked it into my hoodie.
He glanced up at the ceiling, answering, “Mahogany, by the look of it.”
That earned him an eyeroll. “No, no, I wanted to know what was on your mind!”
“Seems I recalled human girls being a little more retiring than you, lass.” He frowned at me.
Retiring? I didn’t know whether to be offended or baffled. I settled for distracted instead. “Amelia, not ‘lass.’”
“Err, okay?” That made him lean back, giving me a steady look. Really, you’d think he’d be easier to catch off guard.
Actually, now that I paid attention to him, he seemed to be extremely nervous. Not only was he clutching his wand like it was a live hand grenade, he was also fiddling with his coat in a way that suggested he wasn’t used to the fit. Something that lay ahead was leaving him unsettled.
“So,” I began to ask, plopping back down into my seat, “what do you mean by ‘human’ girl? If you aren’t a human, what are you? Or is it just a funny way of saying you’re a guy and I’m a girl?”
“Why, I’m a goblin, ‘course. Isn’t it obvious?” he exclaimed. The look he gave me was not very flattering.
“Like from The Hobbit?”
“What? What’s a—no, never mind. We’re goblins, us three,” he informed me proudly, thumping his chest. “A proud and noble kind!” He settled back, apparently intending to leave it at that, but I gave him my best wide-eyed look of interest. After a moment, his resistance faltered, and he continued. “We serve the great kings. We’re the best minions anyone could ask for.”
“Great kings?” I asked, wide-eyed.
Wand-wielder coughed, as if he had something in his throat. He banged on the wall behind him, the one with the driver’s seat, and the carriage picked up in speed, rocking hard on the rough road. We took a turn fast enough to smoosh me against the wall, and I could see a river running alongside us. I had to grip the frame hard not to fly forward when the carriage stopped. The door opened, and I sprang out, excited, looking for the castle.
“Hey!” I protested. “What gives?”
The river spread out before us, reflecting the moon’s glow in gleaming silver sparks. There was no castle in sight, the road simply ending at the water. The forest on the other side was different, with leafy fronds and no pines to be seen. Above all, however, there were no castles, kings, nor princesses of any stripe.
“The castle lies just down that road, but you can’t go just yet,” the injured one told me, hopping down off the cab step.
“Why?” I queried, looking down to the river. “It doesn’t look that swift.” I took a step towards it, preparing to make a leap.
The goblin yelped and grabbed my arm, shouting, “No!” He hauled me back a step, panting. “Be more than my head’s worth to let you do that. It looks calm now, but it’ll sweep ya away in an instant if’n you go as you are.”
“As I am?” I asked, miffed. What, was I too dirty? I surreptitiously sniffed at my armpit.
“No son nor daughter of mortal man may cross the threshold of sanctum land,” the Morgwyn purred, slinking up along a fallen log over the river. It trailed a paw in the water, bringing up sparkling droplets. Each looked as though they had a tiny moon contained within them. I reached for the water myself in curiosity, but then stopped, the cryptic warning making me hesitate.
“Whatever that means, how am I supposed to get across to see the castle?” I asked, “and why can’t, uh, humans go across?” Rising, I turned to look at the goblins. The stage coach had been pulled up to the end of the road and all three goblins were together. The tallest, Wand-wielder, held his namesake in hand. The gnarled wood hummed softly.
“Got that covered. Rules laid down in the old times are funny in a way. They don’t brook disagreement, but they’re very particular about wording.” Electric blue fire curled up the wand as he spoke, and, before I could really frame an objection, he had pointed the end at me. That fire filled my vision.
The blast had tossed me aside like a rag doll. Stars danced around me as I came to, trying to pick myself up off the ground, but my legs weren’t working properly. Somehow, I rolled onto my back and managed to sit myself upright, but my struggles were largely useless; it felt as though I was being squeezed, like a bunch of giant rubber bands had been wrapped around me and were pulling in every direction. There was an incredible feeling of heat, a baking sensation that started in my bones and radiated outwards. It felt as though there should have been incredible pain, that my blood should have been sizzling under my skin like a pork sausage.
Pressure built. My head felt swollen, and I flopped my hands at my face, trying to feel what was wrong. I stared in shock, realizing at once why I had had trouble standing up. My fingers weren’t coming apart. They were squished together so tightly they were trembling and white, and I felt them squeezing tighter still, in defiance of biological possibility. The flesh there bulked up, starting to swell alarmingly, red and angry with inflammation. Tiny hairs sprouted rapidly, covering my mutating hands in a soft fuzz that turned a creamy beige. It failed to cover my nails, which were turning a similar shade of beige, as well, and melting together like wax.
There was a twisting in my gut, and I keeled over. My spine buckled, deciding that it didn’t really like sitting up. Bones cracked noisily, sending weirdly painless jolts throughout my body. Sick gurgling noises and an alien sensation of pressure signaled my guts shoving themselves around. An attempt to stand up again on my numb legs was cut short when a totally wicked snap echoed up from my hips, making my legs flop uselessly behind me as I lay on my belly. Shoulders popped and rotated forcibly, pushing my arms under me even as they grew shorter and stubbier. Somewhere at my backside, I could feel a cramping at my rear, followed by what could only be described as a peculiar tingling, itching sensation, like someone was drawing a needle out.
Next came an awful sense of compression. The invisible bands around me tightened and pulled harder, hauling until I felt as though blood should have squirted out over the road, eliciting a plaintive groan that echoed up from my burning lungs. All around me, the world seemed to grow, as if the goblins and the carriage were growing taller rather than me growing shorter. The clothes on my body swallowed me up and tangled my shortened limbs as my neck inched forward, pushing my head out from my body.
Pressure built up around my nose and mouth, changing up the tenor of my whimpers. With my sinuses swollen and impassable, I had to breathe noisily through my mouth, even as it changed. Hot, steamy breath poured out with each uncomfortable gasp. Rolling my eyes down, I found a snout where my mouth should have been, my nostrils pushed to either side as the little hairs grew into a thick coat. My ears twitched of their own accord, and I realized that they had moved without my notice. They flopped this way and that before going uncomfortably erect, straining.
Even as my body cooled and hope rose that it might be the end of the ordeal, there was one final step. It was as if someone had taken a bore to my skull, grinding away skin, muscle, and bone to find the juicy brains beneath. There the sensation settled, swirling around and thickening until it formed a tight knot. That lump then began to grow, pushing out. For once, there was a spike of pain, but not in the same sense that someone might describe a cut or a prick. It was like listening to an audio spike, so loud it stings, a burst of static so powerful you just want to cover your ears and hide. This noiseless not-sound built up around my forehead, rising in pitch until it mercifully passed out of my perception entirely, the throbbing ache fading with it.
When the power that had gripped me faded at last, I lay on my belly and gasped for air for a few moments. There should have been sweat puddling underneath me from all the heat, but the air stirred hair that was cool and dry. The aches went away with the stiffness, the angry swelling fading as if it had never been.
Squirming, I freed myself from my clothing and found my footing. All four legs—yes, four—were as wobbly as a newborn foal’s. My braid hung down one side, riding over my shoulder and dangling to my new knees.
“Whoa,” I breathed, my eyes huge.
With little clopping noises accompanying my new hooves as I turned a circle, I got a good look at myself. Soft, beige hair covered nearly every inch of me, and behind me swished a long, fluffy, blond tail that arched high and then fell to the earth, nearly touching it. Stubby legs ended in hard hooves I could feel tapping against the golden bricks. I peeked up between my bangs to see a short, pale horn sticking through them.
“Now, try not to be angry, we—” Bandages began, raising his hands apologetically.
“Sweet flaming asteroids!
“Uh—”
“This is so cool!” I shouted. I bounded excitedly, hopping along on all fours around the increasingly befuddled goblins. “And Mom told me magic wasn’t real. Eat it, Mom! I told you wishing on stars would work eventually!”
The Morgwyn barked a coughing laugh while the goblins exchanged glances. Wand-wielder jerked his head to the stage coach, and Driver and Bandages returned to their places, with the latter holding the door open. I hopped back in and settled on the seat, laying on it like a cat might, a grin nearly splitting my face. Getting used to four legs wasn’t difficult at all. Outside, spray shot up from the wheels as the coach shot across the river, carrying me forward to whatever may lay beyond.
“So what other things can you do with that wand?” I asked, tucking my tail around me and running a hoof through it, reveling in the sensation of an alien limb. The hairs were soft, but stiffer than my mane, giving them a curiously silky smooth texture. “Can you turn big sisters into bugs? Because I know someone who would be improved immensely by that. I would also accept snakes, crocodiles, or arachnids, but not daddy long legs. That would be weird.”
“Why would—”
“Because it has daddy in the name, duh. Can you do dragons? No, wait, that would be way too cool for her...” I trailed off, trying to think of a good species of serpent.
Trees blurred by in our passage, replaced by views of a dark sky with low, mobile clouds. Far away, catching silvery moonlight, stood the thick, squat towers of a castle keep. We raced towards it, taking a winding road through misty woods.
This, I told myself, is going to be awesome.
* * *
The moon hung fat and yellow behind the castle towers as I strode towards the gates, my head held high and my hooves striking the paving stones proudly. Silhouettes of windmill blades, protruding from the castle turrets and all around us upon towers and rooftops of dimly lit homes, rotated lazily against the night sky. A stone bridge spanned a great canyon, and an enormous water wheel turned at the cliffside where a waterfall washed down into the depths.
A crooked arch held the great gates, and the Morgwyn waited by the ugly, bird-headed gargoyles overlooking the bridge, the cat-monster’s blue eyes gleaming in the dark. Wand-wielder pounded on the door while I looked around curiously. I glanced up when a little dust fell near me, and could have sworn the gargoyles had shifted to stare down at me.
A slot in the gates slammed open, allowing a pair of jaundiced eyes to glare out at my escort. “What?” an older woman’s voice demanded, raspy and annoyed, “Who is it? Fetter, is that you? What hour do you call this?”
“We’re here with the girl, Dooris,” Fetter announced, with a note of pride. It had never occurred to me that Wand-wielder might have had a name, but I supposed if an awesome cat monster had one it only stood to reason. I sat on my haunches and watched this exchange curiously. It was becoming increasingly obvious that something odd was going on, though they all seemed friendly enough.
The eyes swiveled to look at me, and then back to Fetter. “A little late, aren’t we? I seem to recall the King telling you not to come back. Lot of fireworks involved with it.” Her raw voice chuckled.
“Unless I had the girl,” he hissed in return, glancing at me. “You know, the ‘special guest.’”
I beamed back.
“It’s more than my head is worth to let you in here on a false positive, Fetter. That could be any pony foal,” Dooris answered.
“Swear it, she’s a human, fits it to every possible measure.” He gestured my way, sweeping his hand. “Just look at her closely, it all fits!”
The yellow eyes turned towards me again, narrowing slightly. “Well,” the dry voice conceded, grudgingly, “the hair’s the right color. So’s the eyes.”
“Right smell, too.”
“I do not smell!” I objected, stamping a hoof, but they ignored me.
“I don’t know, Fetter. It all looks like her, nice’n’tidy, but it’s been a while. How fast do humans grow?”
“Not sure, honestly,” he admitted, arching a brow. “It hasn’t been all that long.”
“Hey!” I shouted, this time getting their attention as I stood up. “I’ll have you know I have a tenth grade reading level!”
They chewed over that one, pulling back into a huddled conference by the door. I perked one of my ears, listening in as well as I could. “Can you read?” “No.” “...a little, I mean...” “What’s a...?” “...get the foreman...” “...can’t... just do it!”
They turned back towards me, and I feigned innocence, inspecting my forehoof for scratches. A heavy sigh emitted from the door, and Dooris spoke. “All right, all right. Mark me, though, Fetter, this ain’ my fault if it goes pear-shaped.”
“Just tell everyone to get ready,” he hissed at her. The slot slammed shut, and I waited. The night had, so far, been a jerky mixture of surprises and odd, confused pauses. On the one hand—or hoof—it was pretty clear by now that these goblins didn’t entirely have it together. On the other hoof, though, it was still a magical land of wonder. Dad always warned never to let your expectations get in the way of your enjoyment. Still, on yet another hoof, I was getting tired, and it would be nice to take a break and stretch out for a bit.
Shoving a hoof into my mouth to stifle a yawn, I began to lay myself out to take a quick nap, but a loud banging from within the keep startled me. It sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before, so much as every single possible tool being used at once. All banging and saws and odd whirring whizzes.
“This better be good.” I sniffed disdainfully. “You guys have been a little disappointing so far! Except you, Morg. Can I call you Morg?”
“The Morgwyn is what it is, bairn,” it said, dropping down beside me. “No name given by your tongue changes that.”
I closed my mouth, realizing I had been yawning again. I lay my head down between my hooves and curled my tail up beside me, getting comfortable. I was just going to lay down for a little while longer. It had been such a long night. The Morgwyn’s body radiated heat into the night, warming my side.
When my eyes shut, it felt as though the ground fell out beneath me. Sleep waited below.
Daphne
A swollen moon watched the quiet earth as we trotted into the trailhead. The distance was finally starting to catch up to me, but a lot less than I had feared it would. I waved a hoof in the air, slumping on a bench by the trail sign and post board overlooking the western parking lot. My breath steamed in the air, and I was grateful for the scarf and hat keeping at least a little warmth in.
Hector was eager to continue, but Naomi hopped off anyway, clipping lights to his harness and taking another, a heavier floodlight, out for herself. I got up to continue, but she waved me off, chiding, “You rest, for at least a few minutes.”
Acquiescing, I settled back down, letting my breathing ease and shutting my eyes. It would only be for a moment.
The sudden bark of an engine jerked me back awake, though my limbs were sore and slow to respond. Groggily, I realized I had fallen asleep, the cough of a motorcycle rousing me. My ears twitched, and I lifted my head sleepily, glancing about. I frowned and squinted at the light as it approached. Stiff and panicky, I got up quakily to hide and stumbled behind the trail sign.
Peeking under the sign, I drew in a breath with a hiss as recognition flared. “Naomi!” I snapped at her. “What is he doing here?”
“We need help, Daphne!” she implored me, confirming her guilt. “I called him before leaving my place.”
“What did you say? Tell him to go away! I don’t need his help.” My ears lay back.
Naomi shook her head. “We do. He knows how to fight. He can shoot a gun. He likes Em.”
“Which only proves he’s insane!” My hoof stamped the earth. “Your cousins can use guns.”
“None of them are very stable,” Naomi growled. “Look, Daphne, your ex-boyfriend is coming with us whether you like it or not.”
Raising myself up to continue the argument proved fruitless. Naomi ignored me by turning around, smoothing her hair back, and fixing her hat as the young man on the motorcycle came to a stop nearby. I am absolutely not vindictive, which is why it was honest when I thought he looked like an ugly, good-for-nothing, too tall, leather-bound idiot.
“Hey, tall, dark, and handsome.” Naomi smiled winsomely, belying my inner thoughts.
“That’s all right, princess,” he replied as he pulled off his helmet. “You can just call me Marcus.” I narrowed my gaze and glared at him, hoping that I had some sort of unicorn magic that could cook him where he stood. Get a nice bacon scent going, searing him into his stupid black leather jacket. There would be a strong whiff of romano, too, for his damned cheesy lines.
Naomi rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I can only keep up the faux flirting thing for so long.”
“So what’s the emergency?” He tucked his helmet under his arm. “I can count on one hand the number of times a beautiful girl has asked me to come somewhere in the middle of the night with all the guns I could borrow or steal.”
“Oh, really? How many other times?” Naomi tilted her head.
“Once, but it was a misunderstanding.” Marcus walked the bike forward towards the trees.
“It definitely isn’t this time,” she said. “There’s a problem, a big problem.” She put her hands behind her back, rocking a bit on her heels. “We—I need your help.”
“I gathered.” His jaw tensed, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Look, Nay, you’re drawing this out a lot and making me nervous. What’s the big deal?”
“Amelia is in trouble.”
“Lil’ Anteater? What, did she get stuck in a tree chasing a butterfly?” He grinned tightly. Naomi looked at him, silent. He went on, trying to save the stupid joke. “And you need me to... shoot the butterfly?” Oh, I hated him and his stupid, lame jokes! Why did I ever think he was charming? I must have been drugged or ensorcelled.
“No. That was terrible by the way, but no.” Naomi sucked in her breath, bracing. “Em was kidnapped.”
Marcus swore and nearly ran over his own foot with the bike. “Do the police know? What does us being out here have to do with anything? Wait, did Daphne put you up to this? Is she here right now with a camera or something?”
“By monsters.”
“Yeah, okay.” His tone was heated. Shouting, he called into the nearby woods. “Okay, Daphne, you can come out now! I’m not playing along with any sick games, so just give up and show yourself.”
“Well,” I said with an airy tone myself. “Sure. You win.”
I stepped out into the light.
Marcus said nothing. The silence went on. I spread my smile into a slow, smug grin. Maybe this whole transformation thing was worth it to see this. Naomi and Hector began to scuff their feet at the scene.
“Naomi,” Marcus asked, not taking his eyes off of me, “did you slip me some LSD? Is this some sort of contact high?”
“Just say no to drugs,” she sang. Hector nickered in agreement.
“So uh,” Marcus said, “nice horn.”
“Thanks!” I tossed my mane and pointed the tip of the horn at him. “It’s sharper than it looks.”
Marcus quirked a grin. “Always knew you were a bit pent up, but I never knew you were secretly a furry.”
“I will cut you—”
“Guys!” Naomi shouted, cutting into the fight just as it was getting good. “Amelia. Kidnapped by horrible monsters.”
My cheeks reddened—which surprised me; it hadn’t occurred that I was still capable of that—as I scraped the ground hard, staring at Marcus’ shoes. The memory of those strange men flashed into my mind. Each of them was far stronger than I was. Even getting the drop on them, I had been unable to wrest so much as a stick free from them. Then there was that cat. There was no telling what it might have been able to do if it had tried to stop me, as well.
For his part, Marcus was glancing off into the woods. Without a doubt, he was trying to process the giant bomb we had just dropped on him; unless he thought I was wearing a very convincing costume, he knew that his entire world had just been upturned.
“Marcus—”
“Daphne—”
We paused, having spoken over one another. I spoke up again, quickly, to get the first word in. “I know we aren’t going to get along, and I hate to say it, but Naomi is right. These things... we can’t fight them without weapons. The police can’t help us, before you ask again, because I think—I know—that they’ve gone to another world entirely.”
“How do you know that?” Marcus asked. There were many questions in his eyes, but he had to start somewhere.
“Because I think I was in one already. I wasn’t really paying attention at first, but the moon was wrong. It was a full moon, even. There was a creature with them, something that wasn’t natural, with glowing eyes that these men were utterly terrified about. The men...” I licked my dry lips, remembering that it had been a while since my last drink of water. “I don’t think they were human, either. Shorter, thicker, with rough skin. They wore clothing that belonged in the nineteenth century and carried old weapons. They aren’t from Earth.”
I lifted a hoof, looking at it with pursed lips. “Neither are the things... the people that look like me. I met a unicorn, just like I am now, eight years ago.”
“And you never mentioned this fact, why?”
I spoke to my hoof, still unused to the sight. “I did. I landed in therapy because of it. They told me that everything I had thought real was a lie. They did it because they cared about me, and were concerned about me, and I believed them.” The way my voice throbbed left me feeling disturbingly vulnerable.
Leaving that landmine undisturbed, Marcus leaned against his bike. “Okay, so. Assuming this isn’t the best prank ever played in the history of mankind, you want me to go with you into a dark forest in the middle of the night to chase down monsters no one has ever seen before to a world you believe in because you had a friend you were told is imaginary to rescue your kidnapped baby sister?”
“Yes.” My gaze shifted to the ground in front of his feet, my head lowered and ears drooping. “Yes, that is what I am asking.”
Marcus kicked the stand for his bike and paced away. He stared off into the woods, running a hand through his dark hair. I watched, tugging at my scarf for lack of anything better to do. It was hard to fidget without actual hands. I even took a step forward, my hooves clicking on the pavement, but thought better of approaching him.
When he turned back, he fixed me with a finger. “If this is a trick, I am going to skin you and make a horsehide jacket. Do you get me?”
“Yeah, classy like—” I snapped my jaws shut, nearly biting my tongue. After a pause, I went on. “Fine, whatever. Are you helping us or not?”
“I’m doing this because your sister is a great kid. Not because of you,” he insisted.
Lifting my head, I looked right at him. “That’s great. So am I.”
We met gazes for a moment before he turned his face and nodded. “Let me stash my bike somewhere. Meet down the trail?”
“Sure.” I sighed. After a beat, I added, “Thank you.”
“Yeah, well. Thank me when this is over,” he muttered as he fired his bike up again. He turned it and rode back away from the park, calling as he rode off. “And if someone steals my bike, it’s coming out of your hide!”
“I want it to be stated for the record, Naomi; I hate you,” I said, though my tone held no real malice.
“Noted!”
That settled, I turned and walked along the trail. Hector and Naomi followed a moment later, the latter leading the former rather than riding him, to preserve his strength no doubt.
As we waited, my tension had grown to the point where the familiar night cry of a loon nearly made me dive under a park bench. I settled for pacing, trotting in a circle around the gazebo. Naomi watched me for a while before groaning and throwing her hands up in disgust.
When he came, he was easy to spot at least. Though I knew he had been camping, he wasn’t a big outdoor person like Naomi was. A case for a hunting rifle was slung over one shoulder, and he was openly carrying a nine millimeter handgun on one hip. He had another case under one arm, which I assumed was another rifle, a shotgun, ammunition, or a combination thereof. It was a bit of a risk for him to carry all of that in plain view—if a park official saw him, he could be in fantastic trouble.
“I’m here, we can start the party,” he called, not making it any harder for said officials to find him.
“Why am I suddenly hungry for cheese again?” I asked no one in particular, and made a gagging gesture with my hoof in my mouth when Naomi looked my way.
“Let’s get going.” Naomi rolled her eyes. She was going to end up doing a lot of that before this journey was done if that was enough to set her off. “Daphne, you lead. Fill us in on the way, all right? All the details you know and think might be the slightest bit relevant.”
A snort told her what I thought of her attempts, but I obliged. The trip back to the grove was a long way, and talking would help settle my nerves. I began heading west and north, keeping to a walk for now. Without riding a horse, Marcus couldn’t keep up, and it would be petty to leave him behind. Though it was very tempting to make him run.
“There’s not a lot I haven’t already told you,” I grumbled as we crossed the bridge into the woods, my and Hector’s hooves clacking noisily against the wood, “but all right.” For the third time that night, I would have to unbury and relive my past, and it wasn’t getting any easier. “When I was eight, I met a unicorn out here in the park. Her name was Leit Motif...”
* * *
As the trip progressed, the four of us heading deeper into the woods, I told Naomi and Marcus everything—what little I had the presence of mind as a child to inquire about, anyway. There were unicorn and pegasus ponies that lived in the magical land of Equestria. The name made Marcus snicker, which I felt oddly defensive about, as though they were indeed my people and my home. Next came everything I could remember of the conversation between the thugs, and I described that demon cat in detail—something the thugs had called a “Morgwyn.”
Their questions, in return, were not very helpful. “Did they say where they were taking Em?” Naomi asked. Almost directly on top of her, Marcus asked, “What did they say they were going to do to her?” “How far is it to Equestria?” “Can anyone help us over there?” I wracked my brains, but couldn’t think of anything particularly useful to fill in those blanks with. Naomi could sense my frustration, at least, and laid off, letting us continue in silence. So far this little adventuring party was getting off to a great start.
Every so often, I would gaze up to the sky to check our progress. Father and Amelia were more familiar with the stars than I was, but a changed moon was something even I could spot at a glance. It happened, appropriately enough, when I wasn’t paying attention, of course. Taking a low path through a ravine, we had hopped over the stream and started up the other side when Naomi gasped, staring up at the sky. I tilted my head up, and, sure enough, there was a completely full moon, as if we had just jumped half a week back in time.
“Okay, someone explain to me how no one noticed this before in this park,” Marcus demanded, and I was pleased to see that he was looking a little wild-eyed. He looked around as if expecting to see a cat-monster come tearing out of the deep shadows.
“Can’t help you there,” I admitted. “Not many people come this way, however. I mean, you saw how much trouble Hector was having back there.” I nodded towards the racing stallion, who was looking restless at his inability to tear loose and run. He wasn’t built for this rough terrain, but it barely seemed to affect me, hopping from one rock to the next with greater surety than I had ever had as a young woman. Maybe unicorns were part mountain goat.
“It’s still a state park in Massachusetts,” he insisted. “Are you telling me the park rangers never come out this way?”
“Well,” Naomi chimed in, coming to my aid, “sometimes hikers really are the first ones to stumble across places, especially in places with really wild geography. What we’ve seen isn’t really that harsh, no, but there’s always been something kind of weird about this park. There’s old tales about it that the natives used to tell, and the colonials picked up on them.”
“There are?” My eyes widened. “I never knew that!”
“Oh sure.” Naomi nodded. “Crazy things like three-headed monsters or bear-men or strange lights. There’s a whole website devoted to the mysteries of the Everfree Park. Like how it’s really easy to get lost here, even if you have a good map and a compass.”
I glowered at her. “You’re only telling me this now because—?”
“I thought you knew! I mean, it’s the first thing I would have done: looked the place up online.”
Chewing over that, I looked up at the full moon. Speculation wouldn’t bring me any closer to an answer, though. A forest that misled people and held the secret of another world was a mystery I wasn’t going to unravel in a few minutes. How I was able to get through it and why me instead of another were questions for another time. Leit Motif crossed my mind, and an uncomfortable writhing stirred inside my chest.
I touched a hoof there and closed my eyes, whispering, “You always talked about the bonds of friendship, Leit. If there’s any truth to all of this, please, please be there for me, in any small way.”
A delicate hand touched against my back. Looking up to Naomi, I gave her a weak smile. “Almost there,” I promised.
“Who the hell put that there?” Marcus yelled from up ahead. Like always, he had been utterly disinterested in our touching, sentimental moment and had gone off to explore. Rolling my eyes, I joined him, Naomi close behind, and we looked down over the ridge.
I frowned. Off in the distance, there was a light among the trees, casting a warm glow through the night shadows. “Dunno,” I admitted. “I don’t remember seeing this, but keep an eye out and stay quiet. We might be running into trouble.” We fit actions to words and approached the light slowly, picking our way carefully through the thickening woods. The light, I discovered as we drew close, was a wrought-iron lantern hanging from a curved post, swinging softly in the the gentle breeze. I looked back to the others, the sight giving me pause. “I don’t remember going this way. Let’s turn back and keep going the way we were; if we need to, we’ll mark our passage somehow, so we can find this place again if we need to.”
Though curious, we all returned to the ravine and took the other way up, the one I recalled taking originally. The going here was rougher, and Naomi had to watch the ground with her flashlight for potholes while Hector complained. It was easy to mark trunks to keep track of our route by scraping bark away with my hooves. Sure, I knew Naomi had a knife or a hatchet stashed on Hector, and Marcus had probably brought a machete along with him. With everything that had been going on, though, with all the trouble I had caused, I wanted desperately to feel useful. We made good time for all that, regardless. The grove, I knew, lay just ahead.
Naomi wisely shut off her flashlight and Hector’s harness lights as we neared the clearing. The fire from earlier had long since gone out—those thugs from before were long gone, and Amelia along with them. It was quiet, as well, but I still wanted to approach cautiously.
Rather than crawling over the hill that overlooked the grove, I led Naomi and Marcus around it, trying to keep low and out of sight. When we arrived, we crouched in the brush, watching and waiting for a few moments before pressing in.
Close up, the grove looked like a cross between a war zone and a lumber yard. Holes were gouged out of the ground, planks of perfectly sawn timber lay strewn at crazy angles, and the earth was nearly bare anywhere my struggle with the wand-wielding thug had taken place—or anywhere his wand had blasted the earth, transfiguring the fallen leaves littering the ground into a shower of white doves, but I didn’t feel a pressing need to mention that.
“Damn,” Marcus muttered. He had taken out his hunting rifle and held it low. Strangely, I felt as comforted by its presence as he apparently did.
“‘Damn’ is right.” I felt uncertain, standing there among the trees and staring at the blasted earth. “I thought I’d died out there. I hope Amelia ran off, but I don’t honestly know. I didn’t see anything.”
To his credit, Marcus didn’t say anything. He opted instead to look the grove over and, to my astonishment, actually found something that might be of use. Bending down, he picked up a leather bag from near one of the holes. Faintly, I recalled where last I had seen it.
“Hey! That’s the bag one of the thugs had!” I trotted over to the bag and examined it eagerly as he slipped the strap, opening it up. A couple moldy bits of cheese, needle and thread, a rusty knife, and a sheaf of papers exposed themselves to the light. Glancing at one another, we pulled the papers out and examined them with growing anticipation, then mild defeat.
Scrawled by hand, the script was in no language either of us recognized, let alone read. Squiggly lines and pictograms stared up from the page. There were pictures, but I had no real frame of reference to put them in. I kept looking for a theme or a message of some sort, but Naomi’s triumphant cry of “Good news!” caught our attention.
My ears perked up. “You found Amelia?”
“Her feet, anyway. More properly, I found tracks!” She pointed towards the earth with her flashlight, and I glared at the ground, unable to prise loose its secrets. Rolling her eyes—again—Naomi flickered her light around, adding, in a tone that suggested we were both idiots, “The ground’s been swept clean of leaves in lines heading parallel to one another. Duh.” Her flashlight focused on an area near the side, where half a print was visible in the mud. “And unless one of them is a Nike fan with really tiny feet, Em is with them.”
There was a trail leading to Amelia. A bolt of lightning struck my brain.
Tension sawed inside me as I stared at the earth. My inner eye flowed along it in a great rush, to imagine what lay ahead for Amelia at the end of that line. It didn’t bear contemplating. I flinched away from my own inner imaginings. It changed nothing about the danger she was in. Bile rose in my throat and seared only half as badly as the acidic guilt pouring into my veins. I looked at Naomi and Marcus to either side of me. They were just standing there, planning our next move. It was unbelievable. How could they be so calm about it?
“What is wrong with you two?” I stamped my hoof to get their attention, though it seemed my tone had already done that. They both looked at me, wide-eyed, as though my sudden sharpness had caught them off guard. “Somewhere at the end of this, some things are doing horrible… things to my sister, and you two are just sitting here! She could be hurt, or worse!” My voice was raw, as much from the shouting as anything else, but I had to get these idiots moving before things could get any worse.
Naomi spoke slowly. “Daphne, we’re worried, too, but we can’t just—” She was trying to be reasonable, but reason just wasn’t going to cut it.
“Amelia has been kidnapped by monsters!” I snapped, cutting her off. “Blue-eyed, rough-skinned, magic-using monsters!” Each description had me standing a little taller, glaring a little more sharply at Naomi.
She tried to placate me again, but this time I ignored her. With a snarl I lunged for her flashlight, snatching it from her belt with my teeth, and charged off into the night. Both Naomi and Marcus called after me in surprise and confusion as I left them in my dust, but I had the proverbial bit in my teeth now. I was going to take it and run. I was going to find Amelia and save her and be the best sister there ever was forever.
I would correct my mistakes or die trying.
* * *
With adrenaline pumping through my veins, I ran like I never had before. Each stride lifted all four of my hooves found the ground, one after another, before I tensed and almost leapt forward from the last, one bound leading to the other in a powerful expression of equine athleticism. An annoying, whining little voice was telling me that this wasn’t smart, that I was running at a full gallop in the dark with only the moon and a wobbling light to see by. I batted it aside as easily as one might a fly, tucking my head into the cold wind. Every time a worry popped up, it was short-circuited with the memory of Amelia’s face.
The shock of catching my hoof in an unseen hole—my ankle brushing the edge as I rushed past—turned that buzzing little fly into a screaming foghorn. I had nearly stumbled as it was; if that hole had been just another half inch further up the trail, the full weight of my body would have come crashing down on my ankle and likely snapped every bone there like a dry twig. It was a cold dose of reality straight in the face, like a bucket of icy water. I was being an idiot. Even if I did manage to make it through the woods without breaking my neck, charging directly into the unknown would work no better than it had the last time I attempted it.
I tried to stop, desperately fighting against the inertia of my own stupidity. This, too, went horribly awry. My skidding hoof caught on a root, which pitched me forward into the air. There was a brief moment to reflect on how unfair life could be before the ground rose up to meet me, knocking me senseless.
Next thing I knew, I was staring up at the night sky as it spider-webbed through the dark forest canopy. The world was upside down, and I tasted metal on my lips. Immediately, I rolled to the ride, which I regretted instantly as pain lanced through my body. Naomi’s flashlight glared harshly at me. Dazed and definitely bruised, I slumped there for a moment, my forceful charge converted into an equal but opposite defeatism.
Even if I could have, I didn’t want to get up just then. I had very nearly gambled away my one chance to rescue Amelia. If I had broken my neck, I would never have seen her or anyone ever again. If I managed to break something else in the fall, there would be no way for me to continue. Guilt mixed with shame and settled over me, like a smothering blanket, as I struggled to breathe, biting back tears. It would have been so easy just to lay there in self-pity, but I fought myself back enough to try and look at the situation.
Gently, I lifted my head and glanced around. There was a swath of upturned grass, displaced leaves, and mangled bushes about twenty feet long, down the side of a hill behind me. It was all starkly illuminated by Naomi’s flashlight, which was another ten feet down the hill. All but one of my legs were still functional, save the foreleg that had been caught on the root. Its ankle stung and was understandably sore, probably sprained, but I wagered it would still take my weight. I hadn’t gotten off scott free, a fact that was punctuated by a bloodied snout as I rubbed at it with my good foreleg, but it could have been much worse. Escaping complete disaster was a small comfort, though, because I knew it had been dumb luck that had spared me, not any brilliance or quick thinking on my part.
I digested my actions in silence. No one had ever taught me how to deal with situations like this. I didn’t know how to keep a cool head in a crisis. I wasn’t a soldier, nor was I a policewoman, or a firewoman, or a storybook protagonist with a bag full of magical acorns and faerie wishes. All Amelia had to save her was a mixed-up, colorful horse for a sister and her two weird friends. A mixed-up horse who kept getting in over her head and making mistakes that could get herself killed.
If I had been worth a damn, I wouldn’t have let my fears drive me like they had.
Pounding feet alerted me to the return of my friends, and I turned my head to watch them approach. “The hell, Daphne?” Marcus demanded. He was puffing a bit at the hard run to catch up. I couldn’t even take pleasure in that right now.
“Daphne! Are you crazy?” Naomi asked with more concern, keeping a steadier pace and guiding Hector by his lead. “You shouldn’t run in the night like that; you could have been killed!” She embraced my head and then started checking my legs with a horse trainer’s professional eye. It took her no more than a glance to notice that I was favoring one.
“I know.” I let her examine me with little complaint, only wincing as she handled my ankle.
“You’ve sprained it, but it isn’t so bad. There’s no swelling that I can see, and you seem to still have full mobility. Just keep weight off it for a while—we don’t know how well you bounce back from injury, and it could be a big problem if one of us is hurt out there.” She exhaled as she set my leg down, then went about adjusting my scarf and hat with an almost motherly tenderness. For all that she was a year our junior and an aggressive moocher, Naomi could play the big sister pretty well.
I lowered my head again. There was a bitter taste in my mouth. “I know.” I shut my eyes.
“Daphne.”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I felt so weak. Part of me wanted to bury myself in the earth, and the other part of me wanted to set the forest on fire. Amelia needed me, and I was either charging like an idiot or weeping like a useless sod.
“You fall down, you get back up,” Naomi told me, her tone steady, though her eyes were soft. Marcus held back among the trees, watching each way and not interfering. “You fall off the horse, and then you get back on.”
Involuntarily, I barked a laugh. It was stupid, and it wasn’t even a joke, but it hit me in just the right way. “Heh… horse. I fell off the horse.”
“Yeah, you kinda did,” she agreed, laying a hand on my neck. She felt very close right then, and a warm knot formed inside my gut.
With a weird mixture of chuckles and half-sobs, I pulled her closer with one leg and tucked my head over her shoulder. I must have gotten her clothes muddy and her hair messy with tears, but she didn’t care. We just held each other for what seemed like an eternity, then pulled apart. I wiped my face with the back of a hoof, and she helped me to stand. I carefully put weight down on each leg in turn before getting back on all four.
“Promise you won’t do that again?” She smoothed my mane back from my face.
“I won’t do that again,” I promised, glancing towards the ground. “I don’t know if I can promise not to be stupid again, but I can avoid running through the woods for no good reason.” I breathed a sigh. I was not a hero. None of us were. We were all Amelia had, and we weren’t enough. I smiled at her wanly. “I can promise to try.”
We weren’t enough, but we had to try anyway.
“I’ll take it for now.” Naomi pulled away. “Are you ready to go?”
I flexed my sprained hoof to work out a crick before giving myself a little shake to free my coat of leaves. A flick of my tail rid it of a couple twigs. I looked up to the sky through the branches overhead, each of them almost entirely bare of foliage.
“Come on.” Naomi stood herself up and dusted off her jeans. “We’ve still got a good moon, and we’re all eager to get to Equestria.”
“Speak for yourself,” Marcus groused, but he obliged and started walking.
“Yeah.” I glanced back at the path as I trotted gingerly toward my fallen flashlight, picking it up, before following after them.
With our flashlights out and searching, we were able to keep the path in view. The thugs had crashed through the brush with little care for concealment, and their shuffling feet disturbed the leaves on the ground with wild abandon. Even in the light breeze, it would have taken hours to disturb the trail enough for it not to be obvious, and that was assuming Naomi couldn’t still track it with her impressive skill. I felt my heart flutter every time she pointed out the imprint of a small shoe.
“Eek!” Naomi shrieked, flinging herself back from a sapling she had been examining. Both Marcus and I reacted, he lifting his rifle and I bracing bravely—or quaking in my hooves, either way.
“What? Is it a monster? Where?” Marcus shouted, shining his flashlight around. I felt oddly pleased to see that he looked as freaked out as I was, though I probably would have been more comfortable if he had been responding calmly. I was doing a fine job of fulfilling my promise to be steadier in a crisis.
“A sp-spider!” Naomi wibbled from behind Hector, shielding herself from the little tree with the stallion’s bulk.
Marcus and I paused and exchanged glances, our tension dissipating.
“Seriously?” he asked me.
I sighed, nodding.
“What?” Naomi protested. “It was a big one!”
“Don’t you go camping all the time, Nay?” Marcus said. I swept the sapling with my flashlight, held between my teeth, wondering if I could see the thing.
“Yes, and every time I find a stop for the night, I sweep the campsite meticulously for bugs, spiders, snakes, and whatever other creepy crawly wants to make a nest or snack on me!” she answered, shivering all over and hiding her face with her hat. “You ever read about what a tsetse fly can do to you? I don’t want to be an incubator!”
“A what fly?” Marcus blinked. “Forget it. Haven’t you at least camped out here?”
“What part of ‘mysterious part of the forest no one can get to’ confused you, Marcus? Besides, no one stays in these woods long. I told you; people just don’t feel comfortable staying out here long.” Naomi shuddered. “I always got the willies when I stayed longer than a few hours.”
“You get the willies getting out of bed in the morning from the looks of it!”
I spied the spider with a little searching, and while it was somewhat large, it didn’t seem all that terrifying. Turning the flashlight in my mouth over thoughtfully, I snorted. For a moment I had been worried she had seen some sort of actual monster spider.
Even as I thought that, Hector abruptly brought his hoof down with an angry snort of his own, striking the earth hard. Three flashlight beams focused there, and Naomi nearly passed out on the spot, her face turning alabaster. Eight hairy legs splayed out from a smear of arachnid goo. It was hard to tell in the present state it was in, but the spider that left that corpse had to have been as big as a grown man’s spread hand. To think, a few minutes ago I had been contemplating how life didn’t resemble a story, with irony built in.
“Right!” I said, with false brightness. “Monster spiders; check.”
* * *
The rest of the way blessedly passed without incident, though we were all becoming intimately aware of how strange things could turn at a moment’s notice. Paranoia had us sweeping the darkness with our lights more often than we strictly needed to, and the shapes made therein seemed alert with frightful possibility. Every time, though, within a few minutes, we were back to scanning the ground ahead and following the trail.
As the canopy grew thick with tall evergreen pines and trees that yet had many of their leaves, I realized I could no longer hear any footsteps beside my own. Chilled, I slowed and glanced around. My eyes widened. Towering trunks stood all about me, and the moon hung fat and bright overhead, but there wasn’t a sign of any of my three companions. Worried I had been separated, even though we had been fairly close together, I shouted, “Marcus! Naomi!”
“Here!” Marcus called. I hurried my steps, racing back towards them. They were in a copse of short pines clustered around a little spring-fed pond. Hector was taking a drink with obvious relish, and they both frowned at me as I approached.
“Thank goodness. Where did you two go?” I asked.
“We were about to ask you the same thing,” Naomi said to me in turn. “We lost the trail a little bit ago, and when we looked around you weren’t there.”
“I was definitely on the trail.” I shook my head. “We probably got separated somewhere down there. Come on.” Glancing past them, I frowned at Hector, whose eyes were rolling a bit back and forth. He pawed nervously at the ground. “What’s got his goat?”
“I dunno, he’s been spooked for a bit now,” Naomi answered, peering down at me. “Do you sense anything wrong?”
I gave her a sullen look, my eyes narrow and my lips drawn into a thin line.
“It was worth asking!”
Turning, I flicked my tail at her and started back to the trail. “Let’s keep together this time.”
We did exactly that as we proceeded to follow the track. Our bodies were so close that I even brushed against them with my flanks from time to time. Dark clouds gathering on the horizon promised rain before morning. Hopefully we would be in shelter by then—or else on another world entirely. That is, of course, if we weren’t already on some other world.
Up ahead, a stream stretched across the pathway, its waters rippling in the moonlight. Gathering, I charged to a gallop and leapt across it easily. Ten to twelve foot leaps should have been more concerning, but I had become a great deal more confident in my abilities. Turning, I looked to see how Marcus and Naomi were faring and—
“Oh, damn it,” I swore and stamped a hoof in frustration. “You two would get lost in a McDonald’s playpen!” I shouted, and then immediately thought better of it. The woods around me were taller and denser than they had been only a moment before, and there were night birds calling in the distance now. Some of them I could identify. Some.
I took a running leap again and cleared the river easily, tense as I trotted back. My legs were holding up fine so far, but each of those jumps had elicited a little twinge in my twisted ankle. I had no desire to test it more than I had to, and that little pins-and-needles sensation was making me nervous. The sound of approaching hoof steps gave me pause, and Naomi ducked a branch to pull Hector up next to me. The big horse tried to nose at me, and I shoved him away with a hoof.
“What’s the deal?” I demanded. “Where’s Marcus?”
“I don’t know, but you just disappeared!” she answered at once. “I swear, we were right next to you, and then it got all windy and you were gone and the trail was like twenty feet away! Then Hector started tugging at me, so I got on him and he led me right here.”
Chewing on my lower lip, I considered that. “Lead me back to Marcus,” I suggested, a notion niggling at my brain.
When we found him, he was leaning with his back against a maple trunk, pistol in hand. He nodded at us. “You notice something odd, too?”
“Definitely,” I answered. “We were right next to each other. There’s no way you should have gotten lost. You can’t lose someone that badly in two seconds if they’re just walking like that.”
“Maybe… I have an idea.” He pulled a rolled up paper from his jacket pocket, one of those the thugs had been carrying. “Look at the illustration up top.”
Naomi pointed the flashlight at it and we both crowded in for a look. In the light we could see that there was a hand-drawn image of men in funny helmets and crests riding horses. No, on second thought, those weren’t normal horses—the artist wasn’t exactly a life-drawing expert, but the big eyes and short snouts were rather distinctive. Each was saddled and bridled for riding, and the front few men were charging through the water with them.
“It’s thin, but…” I frowned. “Well, it can’t hurt to try. Naomi didn’t see the river until she had come riding, and we were all so close we should have stayed together if this were natural. Okay, so, Naomi, we’ll go across with you on Hector and I’ll take him back and come for Marcus.”
Naomi frowned. “I don’t like the thought of being out here all alone, but okay.” She turned and started to mount, but hesitated. “Wait, you’ll have trouble getting him to cross a river without a rider. He’s not going to do that sort of thing on his own, not if it makes him nervous.”
“I’ll manage.” I waved a hoof dismissively. “Besides, we don’t have much of a choice here. There’s no way that Hector can hold two people.”
“What, really?” Marcus asked. “He’s a big guy, and Naomi is like eighty pounds soaking wet, most of which is hair.”
“Hector is a racing horse,” Naomi told him primly, “and while he may be able to carry two riders in a pinch, I’m not going to risk him hurting himself. Especially if he has to jump; the landing could go bad, and too much weight can hurt him.”
“Fine, fine!” Marcus lifted his hands placatingly. “Here, let’s just try this. You ride Hector and I’ll tie his reins about my wrist.”
Naomi considered that for a moment, and nodded, tossing the reins down to him. When I started ahead again, I was pressed up against Hector’s side, and Marcus was tied securely about his reins on the other side of the horse.
As a unit we traversed the leaf-strewn earth and beheld the sparkling river stretching across our path. It seemed so peaceful here, now that I stopped to think about it. I put a hoof into the water. It felt pleasant, just cool enough to be soothing to my aching legs. “Leit must have loved splashing through this every day,” I mused aloud.
“It does look nice.” Naomi took her reins back from Marcus and let Hector step delicately across the shallow water. With a deep breath, she inhaled. “So, this is another world?”
“Beats me,” I answer, preparing to join Marcus as he confidently put a foot into the water.
I wasn’t certain what it was at first that warned me. My ears were more sensitive than theirs were, so maybe I was just the first to hear the rumbling. Leaping forward, I bit into Marcus’ jacket collar and hauled backwards. With all four hooves digging into the earth, I managed to unbalance him and drag him onto the Earth side of the shore with me just as the gentle river erupted in violence. Frothing white water rushed down the path with the force of a train, and its passage nearly soaked us with churning foam. As Marcus and I tumbled back in relative safety, I couldn’t help but marvel as the raging waters seethed, then calmed as if nothing had happened. The force of that water could have knocked a tank over, let alone a single squishy human.
“Are you two okay?” Naomi’s voice was frantic. Hector danced nervously, giving her some trouble in controlling him, with his hooves churning up the wet earth.
“We’re fine!” Marcus called back, checking his bags.
Rising to meet Naomi when she dashed across the quiescent river with Hector, we settled back from the bank. Looking over the papers, I planted a hoof on an illustration of waves, rushing up to swallow men. “Ah hah!”
“Congratulations, you discovered that we’re all idiots,” Marcus griped. He paused in wiping down his outfit at the sound of a distant howl.
Naomi shook water from her long hair. “Well, there’s no way we’re getting all three of us across like that. I wouldn’t want to risk Hector on the off-chance it decides that two riders aren’t good enough. I don’t know that we have enough time to figure something out, either.”
“Do you have a better idea?” I quirked an eyebrow.
“Well, actually, yes,” she said, and reached into one of Hector’s bags, pulling a set of leather straps out.
Immediately, I backpedaled, crawling my back up a tree with my forehooves out to either side. “Why did you bring that? When did you bring that? Keep that thing away from me!” I stared at the object in her hands with revulsion—the bridle seemed to me to gleam dangerously in the moonlight.
“I just brought it for Hector, in case his broke!” Her tone was too innocent to be anything but false. She held out the bridle towards me. It might as well have been a live snake for all I cared.
“No way! No how!” I shouted. “We’ll figure out how to get across without it!”
“We don’t really have time to think about it.” Naomi shook her head. “Now get over here and put on the bridle. We’ll make a saddle for you out of blankets, and I’ll ride you. It’s just until we get across!”
“Like you haven’t been preparing for this the whole time!” I pointed a hoof at her. “Not gonna happen. Look, I’ll carry you without one if I have to!”
“Naomi’s right.” Marcus came up on my other side. “Besides, the men in the picture had bridled those ponies, too.”
Suspecting his motives were no more wholesome than Naomi’s, I glared at him.
Naomi pulled back as I flailed my hooves defensively, warning her off. Then she and Marcus exchanged a conspiratorial glance while she reached for her rope.
Half a second later, I was ten feet up the tree. I scrambled with my hooves and scaled it faster than I could have imagined, then wrapped all four legs about the trunk.
“How the hell did you climb that with hooves?” Marcus demanded, shining his flashlight up. The light made me squint.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Stay away, you freaks!” I shouted. The tree was wobbling as I shifted here and there. It bowed somewhat under my weight, but held. Then I risked a peek down below and saw Naomi twirling a lasso and groaned. “No way, you can’t be serious. I’ll break my neck if you try to drag me down!”
I, however, was not the target. She swung the line and cinched it hard when it fell above my head—to encircle the upper part of the trunk.
Attaching the other end to Hector, she led him away, and the tree bent inexorably. I saw Marcus laying down his hard case. When he balanced on top of it, he was easily able to get a hold around my middle. I initially refused to let go, but I discovered to my astonishment that ponies were ferociously ticklish—or I still was, at any rate.
“Stop!” I laughed against my will. “You monster, sto-o-op!” There was no help for it. My grip slipped and I tumbled into his arms. Though too heavy to catch, he broke my fall as we toppled and fell to the earth.
“Ow,” Marcus groaned, and struggled under me. Three hundred pounds of alien horse were difficult to dislodge.
“Serves you right,” I muttered, and looked up to find Naomi staring down at me with an unwholesome gleam in her eyes as she held the bridle. “I swear, I will murder both of you in your beds!”
“I know it’s upsetting, Daphne, but we really do need to do this,” she said. “You’re strong enough to carry me, easy, while Hector would get hurt carrying both of us.”
“You should have taken a stronger riding horse, then!”
“If wishes were horses, we’d...” Naomi pursed her lips. “Well, we’d not be in this mess, actually. I took Hector because he’s the fastest we’ve got, and one of the only horses on the ranch who’s been trained around firearms. Any of the others would spook. We really are almost out of moonlight, too, and once it drops below the trees we aren’t going to be able to do any riding, no matter what we want.”
My protests might have continued, but Hector stamped a hoof nervously—one could almost imagine that he was begging us to hurry. Something was spooking the big Arabian, and whether it was being so close to magic, or something else, none of us were in a great hurry to find out. “Fine,” I muttered. “Just... make it quick.”
“Get off.” Marcus groaned. “Your fat rear is crushing my rib cage.”
Glaring at him, I rose and flicked my tail at his face disdainfully. With efficient movements, Naomi fit the bridle around my face, having to cinch it pretty far to get around my nose. A death glare did little to ruffle her.
Naomi was almost beside herself with joy, taking heavy blankets from Hector’s bags and packing them onto my back. I probably could have objected more strongly, but we had to hurry while we still had moonlight. Besides, Hector was still nervous, and something did seem rather threatening about where we were. I didn’t like it, so I could put up with being bridled for a few minutes if it got us all out of here.
I also had no idea how to get the damned thing off on my own. Stupid hooves.
“This is so undignified,” I muttered. I would just have to pay them back later, in spades.
Bracing my hooves, I waited, and my friend settled onto my back as I tensed gingerly. Though I imagined I would have considerable difficulty throwing a skilled rider like Naomi, I knew she wouldn’t stay if I couldn’t bear her weight. Normally, a horse could carry a rider between a fifth and a third of its mass, more if it was particularly stocky or strong, or if the rider was good, but I marveled to see that she might as well have been a child. Evidently, Equestrians had an edge up in raw strength, even if other physical traits were lacking.
“Comfortable?” Naomi pat my neck. She was balanced adroitly, and was careful not to interfere with my poncho.
“No,” I snapped.
She giggled, and detached the reins. As I turned my head questioningly, she gave me a raised eyebrow, answering my unspoken question. “You didn’t seriously think I was going to try and control you, did you? Even if I tried, you could just roll on top of me or smash me into a tree.”
Blushing, I stammered but had no answer. I worried at the ground with a hoof.
“Just do this for me.” She lay across me and tucked her head against my mane, her own hair blowing in the gentle wind.
“Fine,” I whined, “but I still am pissed off.”
“Are you two girls done braiding each other’s hair?” Marcus turned in a circle with Hector. He wasn’t a terribly strong rider, and Hector was rolling his eyes back at him in a manner that suggested the horse was seriously considering ignoring him and racing off. Bucking him off might have been entertaining, but there was no way I was letting Marcus put his legs around me in any sense.
There was a sarcastic remark in there somewhere, but I paused, my ear twitching as I detected a noise. It sounded like a dog. Turning my head, my eyes scanned the trees. Hector, too, looked nervous.
“Did you hear that?” Naomi asked, and I nodded. Marcus was about to ask as well, but the odd barking, baying noise was becoming clearly audible to everyone.
“What is that?” He frowned, listening. “A pack of hyenas?” He reached for his gun, but had to grab the reins with both hands to control Hector, sawing at the horse to turn him.
“Not going to find out. Hold on, Naomi.” I lowered my head and started to canter, leading Hector and Marcus. As the baying grew louder behind us, I followed the trail to the river and picked up speed. With a leap, I soared over the barrier, and Naomi, for all that the night was frightful and the darkness deep, threw back her head and squealed in sheer excitement.
With two bridled mounts and two mounted children of men, we charged over the hill, into a new land, into destiny.
“Are they not indeed the mischief-makers? But they perceive not.” Baqarah 12
Amelia
Soft light and a soft bed greeted me when I came to. Sighing, I smashed my face into the pillow, wishing the dream could have lasted a little longer. My fight with Daphne, the meeting with the Morgwyn, the trip with the goblins, and the feeling of my hooves all threatened to fade away. Disappointment gnawed at me. It was so unfair, having to wake up.
A whiff of cinnamon and apples nearly made my toes curl as I lifted my head. It was so tantalizing I could have floated off the bed and followed the scent all the way downstairs. Eager, I swung my lower body off the bed. The rest of me tumbled to the floor when it turned out I had grossly overestimated how much force I would need to do that, almost as if I were a lot smaller than I should have been.
I thought back to when I had first woken up. Hooves?
Four legs—and four hooves—stretched out above me as I looked up to verify.
“It was real! It was all real!” I twisted and sprang back to my legs. A quick look around told me that I hadn’t woken in my own bed at home, either. Clambering back onto the star-patterned sheets, I stared around, drinking in the details. A round room with hardwood flooring and a pair of open, circular windows, sunlight flooding through, greeted me. The air that streamed in was crisp as a fresh spring morning. Plush ponies peeked out of a chest, and a dresser stood up between the windows.
Through the open door, that cinnamon scent was growing stronger, and I sprang off the bed. In my haste, I tumbled out into the hall and haphazardly navigated a flight of stairs, before spilling out onto a knit rug. It slid freely beneath me across the smooth floor, until I met a pair of pink legs with an audible thump.
“Hi!” The pony attached to them tilted her head down, a grin splitting her muzzle and a warm gleam in her blue eyes. Unlike me, her forehead was bare of a horn, and her hair was an explosive puff of darker pink still. More importantly, she effortlessly balanced a pie on her back, one that was giving off the most mouth-watering aroma of apple and cinnamon I could have imagined.
“You must be Amelia! I’m Pinkie Pie!” She helped me up with a hoof. “That looked fun! Can I take a turn on the rug, next?”
“Uh.” All I could do was stare, but Pinkie didn’t seem to mind.
“Oh, oh! I bet you haven’t tried out the swings yet!” She bounced up and down, grinning like a loon. “Of course you haven’t. You were asleep the whole time! You’ll have to try them out later. We’re going to have so much fun together! I’ll show you all the best places to go swimming and base jumping and where to get the yummiest snacks.”
It was difficult to follow along with the stream of rapid fire words, but I latched on to the one that was most important to me right then. “Did you say snacks?” At the mention of food, I was reminded that I hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday.
“I sure did!” Pinkie Pie positively beamed—and here I thought her grin couldn’t get any bigger—as she backed into a table, letting the pie slide down. “I baked this special welcome pie just for you! Gosh, I figure you must be just so hungry.” She put a thoughtful hoof to her cheek and knit her brow a bit, losing a bit of her excitement but seeming no less friendly. “I know I was always hungry as a li’l filly.”
I let her gab on while I clambered up a stool. Briefly, I considered how to safely cut into the pie with my hooves, but the lack of any visible utensils on the table and the growing rebellion in my stomach drove me to the only logical solution.
“My grandmother said I’d eat her out of house and home, so I did! It wasn’t my fault that her house was made of gingerbread, was it? I mean, you’re kinda asking for it at that point. Don’t you think it would have been impolite not to at least try it?” Pinkie turned from her tangent to find me with my face shoved directly into the center of the pie. It was as delicious as my nose had promised me, and the bits of apple tartness warred with sugary sweetness to conquer my taste buds.
“Oh!” Pinkie giggled. “Good answer.”
When I had polished off the crust, she handed me a cloth, and I wiped my face on it, grinning at her. “So is this part of the castle?” I sat back down. Figuring out how to sit on a stool properly as a pony was a bit of a challenge, considering the way my butt was built. Leaning one foreleg on the table seemed to do the trick, so I continued to pepper the older pony with questions. “Are we eating pie for breakfast every day? Because that would be sweet. Can I ride you? Are there more ponies like us? What’s it like being so pink?”
“It’s not part of the castle,” Pinkie answered my first question, then charged through my others with abandon, adding, “sure you can—it would be sweet—yes, yes, and awesome! Hop on. I’ll show you!”
Pinkie Pie turned, and I hopped onto her back, grabbing her about the middle with all four legs. It was a good thing I did, too, because when she started bouncing out the door I nearly bounced right off her, lulling dangerously in the air for a moment before I tightened my grip. Dazzling sunlight met me as we left the house, the air warm and fresh, and I stared around like a tourist. Rolling, purple hills framed a valley of shocking green you would never see in New England and nestled a small town in their embrace. Brightly colored ponies of every description sauntered and trotted to and fro as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“See? There’s the castle!” Pinkie ceased her bouncing to raise a hoof, and I sighted down it. At the tip of her hoof lay a jewel-like castle, clinging against the side of a great, far-off mountain.
It was so far off I had to squint to get a good look. “Wow, it looks a lot less dirty in this light.”
“Princess Celestia is really excited to meet you, but she’s always super, super busy, so she asked us to look after you for a little bit.” Pinkie waved her hoof around at the town. “She wanted us to show you everything there was to know about Equestria!”
“Us?” Blinking, I arched a brow. “Who is ‘us?’”
“Me and my friends, of course!” Pinkie replied blithely.
“My friends and I,” I corrected.
“Your friends? Oh, your friends are here, too? That’s so cool!” Pinkie hopped about in one place, bouncing off her hooves—and bouncing me along with her—like they were made of rubber. They might as well have been, given the way she moved around. “We’ll have to meet them later,” she decided once she came to a stop again. “My friends are over at Sugar Cube Corner. Hang on!”
There was hardly any chance to look around. It felt like we bounced halfway across town in just a half dozen jumps. Each “step” of her bounding gait ate up a ton of ground and made the town rock and heave at odd angles. It was all I could do just to hang on tight. Off in the distance, I dimly perceived a building that looked as though someone had dropped a cupcake off of a giant’s table. Then I was flying through the air, this time free of Pinkie’s back. Bracing for a hard landing, I pulled in my limbs and squeezed my eyes shut, only to find the ground late in coming.
When I opened them again, there was a haze of red light all around me that made it hard to see. Its touch was like silk, and it gently deposited me back on the ground. An immaculate white hoof offered itself to me. I took it and rose to find an elegant unicorn dusting off my mane.
“Oh, you poor dear,” she doted on me, while chastising my guide. “Pinkie Pie, is this any way to treat a guest?”
For a moment, the sight of her was almost too much to take in. Never had I imagined a creature that looked so flawless, with not a single speck blemishing her alabaster coat, nor was there a single strand of her violet mane out of place, curled elegantly down one side of her face. A delicately whorled horn adorned her and marked her as a unicorn like me. That I was beginning to think of other ponies as “like me” was a topic I could examine another time.
“It sure is a way, Rarity! This is Rarity.” Pinkie gestured to the white unicorn, grinning down at me. “She’s the best dressmaker in Equestria!”
“I hope you didn’t scramble her brains with that wild gallivanting about,” Rarity complained. “The poor dear looks simply flummoxed.” Her horn wrapped itself in ruby-red light, and the stray hairs about my face abruptly pulled themselves back. That light combed my mane into a semblance of order, letting it hang down past one shoulder. “There! Isn’t that better, dear?”
“Ooo, I could go for some scrambled brains right about now!” Pinkie gazed thoughtfully into the distance. At a look from the white mare, she amended, “Or scrambled eggs! Those would be good.”
“How are scrambled brains?” I asked at once, not about to let juicy information like that slide.
“Scrumptious!”
“Pinkie, please,” another feminine voice interrupted from inside the confectionery, “don’t fill her head with rubbish.” This one sounded aristocratic—almost too posh. It was the kind of voice that belonged to snooty librarians. “Why don’t you all come inside so she can meet the rest of us?”
“Sure thing, Princess! Come on inside. We’ve got breakfast and lots more goodies for you!” Pinkie Pie nudged my backside, and I darted in, only to collide with a rock-hard orange chest. A pair of hooves caught me as I rebounded, and a big grin under a cowboy hat greeted me.
“Shucks, she’s a rambunctious one! Just like we were told,” the new mare said as she prodded at me consideringly. She was heavily muscled, with corded limbs taut under her skin. “Of course, that ain’ nothin’ a few days good, honest labor won’t settle.”
“Applejack!” Rarity protested. “Honestly, the poor dear’s eyes are as wide as saucers already. She can’t take many more shocks.”
“Indeed. Clear aside, Applejack,” the aristocratic voice directed.
“Sure thing, Princess.” Applejack turned, but not entirely moving out of my way.
Seated at a table in the middle of the shop was a lavender pegasus with a series of stars on her flank, her wings held lightly to either side. A crown was seated on her head, nestled in her dark blue hair, and the horn rising over it left me a little confused as to what to call her. A unicorn? A pegasus? Both? Unlike the others, she was wearing a fine dress and gold shoes that protected her hooves. Her horn glowed dark red, like wine, and a teacup hovered to let her sip at it delicately.
“Oh hey, you must be the magical princess I was promised!” I bounded up to the table and planted my hooves on it to look up at her. Beside the princess sat another pegasus, her yellow wings tucked up at her sides and her pink hair half-hiding her face, but I ignored her in favor of the princess, my eyes intent.
“I cannot say what you were promised, young Amelia.” The pegasus-unicorn lowered her tea cup. “I am, however, a Princess of this realm, the newly coronated Princess Twilight Sparkle, bearer of the Element of Magic. I—”
“Oh, oh, can you teach me to do magic, then?” I interrupted at once, pushing myself a little further up the table. “I mean, seeing as how you’re the Element of Magic. Is that like being the element of boron, or maybe molybdenum?” My head twisted quizzically. “I kinda figured you’d have to be the element of carbon, but I think on Star Trek there was this monster that was made out of silicon. Is that why ponies seem so strong; are you silicon-based life forms?”
“I prefer to think of us as candy-based,” Pinkie interjected, confidently.
“So how do you do that with the thing with your tea cup, Ms. Twilight?” I demanded. Visions of floating Daphne through town, dangling upside down in her skivvies, floated through my head. “Is it sort of a hrng, pushing out with your brain like a TV psychic, or is it more of an om like a meditating monk?”
“All in good time, young Amelia,” Twilight assured me. “In addition, you must refer to me as Princess Twilight.”
“You may also refer to her as Princess, or Her Highness,” Rarity informed me with a little sweep of her hoof. “Now, where is the final member of our party?”
“Now, I thought we couldn’t find Rainbow Dash?” Applejack asked. The yellow pegasus hadn’t yet introduced herself, but the sweets were far too alluring to ignore any further. “I swear, if I could lay my hooves on that lazy good-for-nothin’…” she muttered, trailing off on a dire note.
“Well, duh.” Pinkie rolled her eyes. “It’s been a long time. I mean, I almost didn’t make it.”
With my face smooshed up against the glass of the display cases, I could almost taste the candy underneath. In the search for the latch, however, a newspaper left on the counter caught my attention—it seemed a little strange for there to be newspapers, but if they could have pies and stairs, why not newspapers, too? Half of it hung off the side, and the print wasn’t in any language I knew.
“No, no, it’s been taken care of,” Princess Twilight reassured the others. “She’s just getting ready now, I’m sure. I saw her on my way in. She looked fantastic.”
It was easier to page through once I’d dropped it on the floor. Most of the pictures were of the ponies in the room with me. There was one of Applejack sleeping on one page, and a picture of Pinkie Pie wearing a lampshade while dancing in a bowl of punch on another. Each page had detailed notes in a scrawling hand, written between the lines or around the photos in red ink. I started to turn another page when a yellow hoof slammed down on the newspaper and yanked it away.
The fifth, as-yet-unnamed mare quickly crumpled the newspaper into a tight ball with her forehooves and tossed it behind the counter. “Don’t take things that don’t belong to you!” It was odd to hear such a sweet tone sound so harsh, but she seemed to undergo a rapid and sudden personality shift right after that, as if her outburst had surprised her, as well. This sudden instability concerned me almost as much as the violent way she had taken away the papers. “Oh gosh, I’m so sorry.” She backed away, tucking her wings in tight. “It was my fault, really. I-I was reading it earlier, and I—”
The mare ducked her head into her voluminous pink hair and seemed to shrink, as if she intended on sinking right into the floor. “Oh, Fluttershy, you have such a temper,” she murmured to herself. There was just no helping it at that point. She just looked and sounded so hurt that it was impossible not to feel immediate pity.
Awkwardly, I patted her on the shoulder. It seemed like the best thing I could do. “There, there,” I said, though I couldn’t bring myself to look at her after that display. “It’s okay.”
Her spirits perked a tiny bit, and a meek little smile beamed up at me from behind her mane—that seemed to have done the trick. “I really should make it up to you. Maybe… maybe I could show you to my animals later!” She stood herself a little taller, her mane falling away a bit to reveal her face again. “I bet you would like a griffon ride. They used to scare me, but that was before Pinkie Pie showed me how to tame them.”
“How do you tame griffons?” Her outburst was quickly forgotten. I was entirely diverted now.
“Well, first you have to show them who’s boss by humiliating them, then you have to—”
“Hey!” a female voice protested from outside, sharp and annoyed. “Watch where you’re pushing. I know where I’m going!”
“Just get in there,” another, more muffled voice grunted. The front door opened, and a sixth and final mare was roughly pushed in, her blue wings flared aggressively.
Grumbling, the new pegasus dusted herself off, straightening her ragged, shoulder-length mane and her straight tail with a negligent sort of ease. For a moment, it was as though nothing else in the room existed. The pony was all sleek blue lines and feathers, covering tight, powerful muscles over a slender frame. None of the other mares had hair even remotely like hers, either, the colors of the rainbow arrayed in a spectral fan. Intense jealousy warred with sudden admiration within me, for she was the most sublime little horse I had ever seen.
“Sheesh, can’t a pony get a little respect around here?” she complained, looking around briefly. Rose eyes flickered through quick states of shock and amused surprise, taking in the scene. It seemed as though she was stunned by the others, her wings fluttering slightly at her sides before she closed them up.
“Consarnit, Rainbow Dash, took ya long enough to get here.” Applejack was the first to voice her complaints. “Where ya been all this time?”
There was an awkward beat. “Oh. I was just on my way back from Cloudsdale,” she answered at last, her tone somewhat stilted. “You know. Important weatherpony business. We can’t—” she paused again, as if having to process something unfamiliar, “—monopolize the world’s weather without good coordination.” Her eyes flickered towards a window. I glanced that way as well, and something quickly darted out of sight, like it knew we’d just caught sight of it.
“Oh! And who is this?” She pointed in my direction. “Is this our special guest? The one we’ve been waiting for?”
Now, I wasn’t stupid. There was a point somewhere along the line in this whole affair where I realized I was being put on in one way or another, even if I couldn’t quite put a hoof on it. Sure, she was the most incredible creature that had ever lived in appearance, but it sounded a whole lot like she was reading lines. Pinkie Pie was wincing noticeably, too, and Applejack looked about ready to strangle her.
Rainbow’s eyes flickered to the window again, my eyes following hers, but there was nothing outside but a tree, waving in the breeze.
“Oh, really?” I drew the word out skeptically. “I’m sure you can just tell me what it is you’ve all been waiting for, then.”
It looked as though the room might explode from tension. Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy exchanged panicked looks. Princess Twilight’s teacup rattled violently on its saucer. Rarity and Applejack looked towards the doors.
Rainbow Dash, for her part, froze completely. I snapped my gaze to the window, but she didn’t even look. Instead, she scuffed a hoof on the floor and laughed. “Aw, ponyfeathers. Alright, kid, you caught me,” she admitted, and trotted over. “I give up. I’ve got no idea what you’re here for, to give it to you straight, but I figure it’s some sort of surprise party.”
While the others gaped, she grinned, and extended a hoof. “Tell you what. Since you figured me out, how about I give you a ride, on the house?”
“Ride?” I inquired, arching a brow, while the tension blew out of the room. “I don’t know, Pinkie Pie gave me a ride here, and I think I lost a tooth.”
“Oh yeah? Guess it’s for the best, then,” she dismissed, flexing her wings. “You probably couldn’t handle it.”
“Nuh uh. I can handle anything you’ve got! You don’t look all that fast.”
Rainbow craned her neck back, narrowing one eye, a playful smirk on her face, as she poked me in the chest. “Fastest pony in Equestria, right here. You think you got what it takes? I’ll wring you like a towel.”
I got up in her face—as much as I could, anyway. “Bring it on!”
At her challenge, she ducked, and I clambered atop her much as I had with Pinkie Pie. Once all four of my feet had clamped down on her flanks, she flexed her wings out to their full extension, making a show of stretching.
There was no way she could fly very fast with wings that size, I thought. They were just too small in proportion to her body. Once we got outside she’d probably need to run halfway down the street to build up enough momentum—
My scream never caught up to us. It was probably still rattling the windows of the bakery by the time I was dangling three hundred feet off the ground, clinging to the pegasus above me for dear life. Rainbow Dash’s powerful body surged as she took me in a widening circle about the town, its roads and buildings stretching out above my head.
Her tail faded into a haze of rainbow light, marking our trail, and her forehooves were thrust forward boldly. The slightest twitch sent her soaring in an entirely different direction, with turns so sharp they left spots in my vision. By now, excitement had replaced shock and fright. Instead of fearful screaming, whoops of joy echoed off the rooftops.
At the peak of her ascent, Rainbow Dash flared her wings and hung suspended in the sky for three long breaths. Then she tilted, and fell, diving through clouds that puffed and exploded in her passage, sending gouts of rain tumbling after her. Flaring her wings one last time, she buffeted them into a fine mist that wrapped us in scintillating rainbow light as her hooves touched the earth.
“Oh my gosh you are the best pony ever!”
“Yeah,” Rainbow agreed, buffing a hoof on her coat. “I kinda am.”
* * *
It wasn’t until lunch before we were all together again. Most of the morning was spent exploring the town with Pinkie Pie, who was only too happy to give me the grand tour. The town was surprisingly tiny for a place run by horses; I would have thought that creatures that ran around on all fours would have preferred something a little more wide open and with fewer floors, but stairs weren’t an obstacle at all. Pinkie Pie instinctively seemed to know when I was losing interest, too, because she’d bring out a new pony to talk to or show me some new vista every time my attention drifted.
On the whole, though, I was starting to get the idea that something was a little strange. It occurred to me as we were all sitting down to eat at an open-air café that there hadn't been a single foal anywhere in Ponyville, aside from me. There had been a few older ponies, and some ponies who seemed to be middle-aged, but not a single one who was anywhere near my size or age.
“Twilight—” I started to ask.
“Princess Twilight, dear,” she corrected, cutting me off.
Rainbow Dash arched a brow and gave her a vacant glance. “What’s that about? Lay off her, Twi. She’s just a kid.”
Twilight glanced back at her. It wasn’t that she looked sour, but she did look a little annoyed, her regal smile narrowing. “Rainbow, I think I really ought to instill proper etiquette. She’s at a very impressionable age, and she shouldn’t be excused from learning her manners.”
A waiter was trying to get Rainbow Dash’s attention, rather forcefully attempting to shove an open menu into her hooves, but she swatted him away with a hoof and went on. “Not every pony grew up in the palace, Twilight, and, if she’s anything like me at that age, you’re just gonna bug her. Give it a rest.”
Twilight glanced around, first at me and then back to Rainbow Dash, then rubbed a hoof along her own foreleg. She sighed, but then smiled gently. “Rainbow…” she began, but her objection died in her throat as she caught Rainbow’s eyes. Twilight furrowed her brow, but her smile only widened as she gradually slumped forward, the tips of her wing reaching around to brush Rainbow’s back. Rainbow cast her gaze between the outstretched wing and Twilight herself, confused, but the other mare was already turning back to me. “I’m very sorry, Amelia. I shall not insist on the title if you do not wish to address me with it.”
“Sure thing, Twi,” I agreed at once, waving it off with a hoof.
Twilight winced but gave Rainbow Dash a tolerant smirk.
“Eh, it’s a lame title, anyway.” Rainbow shrugged, and brushed Twilight’s wing away with her own. “You’re not even the Princess of anything. Why make such a big deal out of it?”
Distracted, I contemplated telling the waiter I wasn’t hungry, but a rebellious rumble from my stomach informed me otherwise. Pinkie Pie giggled, whispering, “It’s the transformation. Eats your energy right up!”
“Short stack of waffles,” I informed the waiter. Promptly, I revised that, grabbing his sleeve. “On second thought, better make it a tall stack; with extra syrup and butter.”
“Don’t be so sour, Dashie,” Twilight chirped. It seemed as if her manner had changed completely, losing much of that uptight facade. She slid her chair over so she could be closer to the other girl, sliding her wing around her and pulling the both of them together. “I’m sorry I was so stuffy. Let’s just move on and have a nice lunch, all right?”
“Uh,” Rainbow Dash answered, tense. She pulled away from Twilight as much as she could on her chair. “Sure. Yeah.”
“Are you two always like this?” I asked, giving them an odd look.
“Oh yes,” Twilight lilted with a polite giggle, folding her wing back against her side. “Rainbow Dash and I are very close friends.”
It wasn’t long before I lost interest and decided to watch Fluttershy carefully rearrange the silverware. They stuck to her hooves as if she had suddenly become magnetic. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?” Fluttershy asked, in her quiet voice, looking to me attentively.
“Pick things up like that,” I clarified, pressing a hoof against a fork and failing to bring it up.
“Like this,” she told me, touching her hoof to her silverware again and carefully picking it up. “You just sort of have to press your hoof and squeeze sort of… it’s hard to explain, but you give it a little pressure.”
“Like suction?”
“A little.” Fluttershy nodded absently. “Give it a try.”
Pressing a hoof against the table, there was a gentle pull, and my hoof came up with the knife. The sensation at the end of my hooves was a little dull, but I could definitely feel it pressed there.
Fluttershy clapped her hooves together approvingly, sharing in my little triumph. “Good job! You picked that right up. Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed. “I almost forgot. If it’s not too much trouble, I wanted to introduce you to my animals later today.”
“Animals?” I asked, curiously, and a niggling thought pricked my brain, making me realize I had half-forgotten something. It was on the tip of my tongue. “What kind of animals?”
“Lots of kinds,” she said, her quiet voice stuck between anxiety and excitement. “I take care of them, you know. The poor dears just wouldn't know what to do without me. I've got cute little bunnies and sweet little birdies and kitties. You know, all sorts of precious little—
I cut her off. “Boring. Do you have any snakes or insects?”
“I—snakes or insects?” Fluttershy asked, looking at me in wide-eyed bewilderment. “Wouldn't you rather see a nice, cuddly otter?”
This pegasus seemed to have entirely the wrong idea. There was a whole world of awesome creatures out there, and yet it seemed everyone thought little girls should only be interested in the cuddly, cute ones. Just to be polite, I chewed it over with my waffles, which were about as fluffy as the bunnies promised to be.
“Nah. While I would like to see an otter crack open an abalone on its tummy, I was wondering if you had something, well, cooler. Don’t you have any neat reptiles or insects?”
“I—reptiles, insects?” she asked me, then looked over to the others. “I, well…”
Bemused, Rainbow Dash supplied, “Didn’t you have a wasp a while ago, and did you ever find a yellow-striped bat?”
“Yellow-striped bat?” I parroted at Fluttershy, wide-eyed. Maybe this pony wasn't so hopeless after all.
“No! I mean—m-maybe!” She giggled nervously. “Why don't you come on by my cottage a bit later while I, uhm, rustle up some critters?”
“Sure, I guess,” I agreed. While the others wrapped up their meals, the niggling thought that had eluded me earlier fell into place. “Oh! Do you know where the Morgwyn went?”
Fluttershy squeaked and dove under the table. “The Morgwyn? Wh-where?” she stammered, tucking her long tail around herself.
“Taking that as a no. Pinkie?”
“Big scary blue cat thing?”
I nodded. “Yeah.” Fluttershy squeaked in agreement.
“Nope! Not a clue.”
“The Morgwyn had a very important task to perform in bringing you here,” Twilight reassured me. “I'm sure it's moved on already, after receiving a suitable reward from Princess Celestia.”
“Pinkie Pie mentioned her before.” I tapped a hoof to my chin for a moment before turning to Twilight. “Who is she? Wouldn't she be the same rank as you, being a princess and all?”
“You're very clever,” she complimented me, in a way that somehow made me feel more patronized than pleased. “Princess Celestia is more than just a Princess. She's been the just and wise ruler of our world for well over a thousand years. She is gracious enough to present me as having equal rank, but who can truly measure up to her?”
“Literally.” Pinkie waved a hoof over her head. “She's, like, six, seven, eight feet tall.”
“Breathes fire,” Fluttershy added.
“And shoots lightning from her eyes!” Pinkie declared. “Zap!”
“I like her,” Applejack announced, finally joining in on the conversation. “Her will has the force of law, and there ain' no pony who can argue with her. T'ain't often you see a pony with that level of gumption.”
Rainbow seemed bothered by this talk, with the way her eyes narrowed and her brow furrowed. She leaned forward, protesting, “Wait just a minute, Princess Celestia isn’t—”
“A complete tyrant, I know,” Rarity interjected. “She’s widely recognized for her generous health care and efficiently run trains.”
“I’m still on probation after killing her pet bird.” Fluttershy shivered, still under the table. She crept out carefully, as if uncertain whether or not Princess Celestia—or the Morgwyn—might be watching. “I should go get those critters,” she announced, darting off with her wings fluttering haphazardly.
Rainbow Dash screwed her face up to object again, but Twilight took her by the foreleg. “I think we should get going, too. You’ve got a lot of work to do on the weather, and I wanted you to, you know… show me some cloud-busting techniques,” she suggested, smiling cheek-to-cheek.
Rarity and Applejack protested business elsewhere, and Pinkie Pie was gorging herself in a bowl of jello, so I was left to decide what to do on my own for the first time since I stalked away from my stupid sister. It was easy to take advantage of my liberty, headed away from the café.
Ponyville was a nice little town, as far as towns went. Sure, it would have been better to have something flashier instead of quaint and country everywhere—maybe some rocket ships or at least a fully-grown dragon or two. Still, the best thing about a town full of ponies was that it was a town full of ponies. They were so much better than regular ponies, too, with their own unique look and coats and manes in any color a person could name. The meaning of the stamps on their rumps escaped me, though. It would be something to ask about.
That had me thinking about the lack of foals again. There hadn’t been any other kids out on the streets, but no one seemed bothered. Briefly, I wondered if they were all in school, which definitely would have tainted the utopia. For that matter, where were the goblins? This town didn’t look anything like the one I had seen before, and that castle was nowhere in sight.
A flash of pink hair caught my attention, and I realized I had inadvertently followed Fluttershy away from the table. She darted down an alley and through a door, slamming it shut behind her. Curious, I started after her, noting in passing that even the alleyways around here looked pleasant and clean. The windowsills even had flowerpots on them.
There was no sign of what purpose the building Fluttershy had gone into served, but it looked like it lay near the edge of town. The door looked pretty old, covered with deep scratches. I lifted a hoof and started to turn the knob, only to stop at a sharp sound from the other side.
“Reptiles? Insects?” Fetter’s harsh voice demanded from inside, clearly confused. “Didn’t we provide enough small, cute things?”
“She’s insisting!” It was Fluttershy, and she didn’t sound terribly pleased, either. “I don’t understand. I’ve never failed to charm a little girl with cute animals before.”
“Times’ve changed,” Fetter said with a grunt. “I don’ think they make wee girls the same way they used to. This one asks all sortsa strange questions.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Fluttershy breathed. “She even wanted to know where the Morgwyn went! I stayed up in the house all night to see if she’d wake up with nightmares from seeing it. That thing scares me.”
“What, were you hopin’ to comfort her or the other way around?”
“Shut it, Fetter!” Fluttershy roared, her tone shifting hard and taking on a peculiar lilt. It was like she was an entirely different pony, bursting up through the shell. “Don’t ya mock me! And if’n I want to go the extra mile and help her feel safe and secure here, there ain’ nothin’ wrong with that. Poor wee thing, with yer lettin’ the Morgwyn get its claws about her. She’s gotta be shakin’ in her hooves just at the thought of it.”
“Fine, fine! Hel’s Teeth, girl, don’ tear my face off.”
“I’m gettin’ tired of the ribbing, Fetter.”
“Hey guys,” Rainbow Dash’s voice came in from another direction inside. “What’s up?”
She was joined by Twilight Sparkle. “Is something wrong here?”
“Nothin’,” Fetter grumbled. “Just roundin’ up some lizards, apparently.”
Pressing one of my long ears to the door, I caught Fluttershy’s question, couched in a fragile tone. “Do y’all think it’s wrong of me to put so much effort into welcomin’ Amelia?”
“Oh, no, no, I think it’s very sweet.” Twilight’s tone suggested she was trying to defuse a bomb. Strange, she had that same lilt as Fluttershy, though she wasn’t mangling words in the same way.
“I just wish I was a right natural like you,” Fluttershy said softly, though it was unclear who she was addressing. “You’re just so professional; it makes me nervous tryin’ to perform near you.”
“Geeze, not you, too. It’s not like I’m doing anything special,” Rainbow Dash muttered.
“Don’t be so modest, it’s the truth!” Twilight breathed. Her tone lowered. “I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a long time, and it’s fascinating to watch. There’s method and then there’s method—I can’t even tell right now; you’re so good.”
“Method?” Rainbow Dash asked. I mouthed the word, trying to figure out what Twilight meant.
I put my hoof to the knob again and focused on getting a grip on it. There had to be more to this. Fluttershy had mentioned performing. Where they all practicing for a show? Fetter was in there, too, and I was determined to get an explanation from him, as well.
Suddenly, Pinkie’s voice was in my ear, whispering, “Wha’cha doin’, Amy?” I sprang a full three feet into the air, every single hair of my coat standing on end.
She giggled and snorted. “The look on your face!” she wheezed between laughs.
“Pinkie…!” I hissed, rolling my eyes at the door. To answer her question, I said, “I thought I heard Fluttershy in here, and I was going in to see her.”
“Oh, you don’t want to go in there.” Pinkie hooked her hoof around me and led me away. “It’s dingy, and not very fun at all.”
“But why were Twilight and Rainbow and Fetter in there? I haven’t seen Fetter at all since I came here!”
“Ol’ Fetty? Oh I’m sure he was just stopping by.” Pinkie Pie dismissed my concerns with a wave of her hoof, before regarding me with a serious frown. “You really shouldn’t be going into strange houses uninvited, though.”
“Don’t tell anyone, Pinkie. I didn’t know it was off-limits. I swear, I won’t do it again.”
“Gosh, Amelia. I really should let the Princess know. We wouldn’t want you getting lost or hurt or scared. What if you got trapped somewhere and we couldn’t find you?”
“Please?” I gave her the puppy dog look that always worked with anyone older than me, all pouting and great, big, gleaming eyes. Even Daphne would have folded. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“Pinkie Promise?”
Blinking, I looked down at my hoof, which was decidedly lacking in any kind of finger, let alone pinkies.
“No, silly.” Pinkie giggled, giving me a nudge. “You do it like this.” She sat down and made a little cross over her heart, chanting, “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!” She concluded it by poking her pink hoof into her eye, though she closed it first.
I watched this dubiously, but sat down. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!” I repeated, carefully maneuvering my hoof to my socket.
“Careful you never mess that up; it’s a powerful magical spell. If you break the promise or perform it wrong, horrible things happen!” Pinkie insisted with a dire tone.
“You’re joking, right?” I asked. “Right?” I asked again, nervously, at her silence.
Pinkie waited until I swallowed, eyes wide, before springing up again. “Great! Let’s go get donuts!” she said, before bouncing off down the street.
Left uncertain about more than just the consequences of Pinkie Promises, I trotted along behind the older mare, my thoughts back on that scratched-up old door.
I had few enough chances over the next few days to do much exploring, though, and it became very easy to forget about little things that should have bothered me. Fetter had promised me that an entire magical land was waiting for me, and, true to his word, I was the center of attention.
Just where I had always wanted to be.
* * *
That first night, I went camping with Fluttershy, who was the most boring pony ever. Leaving aside her occasional bursts of temper, she spent most of the day being afraid of her own shadow.
“Gosh,” Fluttershy murmured as she kneaded the pillow under her hooves, “every week?”
“Yup, as soon as I got home from school on Friday,” I affirmed, scooping another ball of ice cream into her bowl. The fireflies dancing in the lantern made Fluttershy’s wide eyes glitter. She reached for her spoon, intent on me, eating up my story as voraciously as she did the double fudge. As it turned out, she was also extremely easy to gull.
“That’s so horrible.” She dug her spoon into the ice cream, idly picking at it. “I grew up in a dark place, too, but my parents never locked me in a breadbox.”
“I know, right? And forget about ice cream—I was lucky to get stale, old bread to eat!” The little tent felt warm and comfortable, with the stars hanging outside with the moon. The nights here were so bright, unlike back home. Ponyville and all its lights looked warm and inviting off in the distance. Frogs sang from a nearby pond, a bassy accompaniment to the crickets.
Fluttershy sniffled, rubbing at her nose. “I—I had no idea humans could be so harsh. Your parents remind me of my own—” She paused, breaking off. “I mean… I sympathize, I really do. I’m so glad you came here.” She surprised me a bit with her enthusiasm, drawing me into a soft, cuddly hug, with her hair falling over my side. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you any more.”
Ugh, that’s all I needed. A girly, mushy pony getting all gooey on me. I was a big girl and I could take care of myself.
I didn’t need a big sister to hold me and tell me she’d take care of me. Not at all.
“Yeah.” I rubbed at my nose as I laid my head against her chest. “Yeah.”
A long, gentle stillness passed between us, before Fluttershy asked, “Are you sleepy?”
“No way.” I shoved a hoof into my mouth to block a yawn. “Not at all.”
“Oh, so you don’t want me to tuck you into bed?”
“Nuh uh. I can totally stay up all night if I want to.”
“Aren’t you at least going to tell Mr. Komodo Dragon good night? He looks so sleepy.”
“Good night, Mr. Komodo Dragon,” I said over Fluttershy’s shoulder.
The enormous lizard taking up the backside of the tent opened his mouth and hissed before settling his head back between his legs again.
Really, I should have returned to my own sleeping bag, but Fluttershy was so close, and I felt so heavy. Her soft humming caught my ears and I followed the little tune as it blended in with the croaking frogs and singing crickets, drawing me down into sleep.
I took it back then. Fluttershy was a lot of things, and boring was the least important of them.
* * *
The next day was spent in preparation for an impossible task.
“I don’t understand why we keep having to play this game,” Rarity whined beside me.
“Shush!” I shushed her, concentrating on the idea of remaining still. “You’re going to give us away.”
She harrumphed and shifted irritably, trying to avoid rustling the mottled camouflage net stretched over our concealment. “I still don’t see why I needed to be here for this.”
“I needed you to help me set up the net,” I explained, keeping my voice low. “I don’t plan on losing again.”
“You should really just give up at this point. You’re such a persistent little girl.”
“Failure is not an option!”
“Surrender is a perfectly acceptable alternative in extreme circumstances. She might be gracious enough to—”
My ears swiveled as the rattle of cans caught our attention. Rarity quieted in sudden apprehension.
“That’s the north perimeter,” I whispered, turning around slowly to face the trees. Through the netting, lines hung with soup cans were faintly visible, rattling. They subsided after a moment, leaving only the breeze.
Silence reigned in the enclosure.
Rarity breathed a sigh. “I think she must have moved on, she—” Whatever she had to say was lost in a terrified squeal as something fast grabbed her from below, hauling her through the branches.
I immediately sprang out of the camouflaged tree house, running as fast as my little legs could take me and leaving Rarity to her fate. It was too late for her in any case. I wasn’t going to lose, no matter what!
As I ran through the brush, I could hear Rarity’s assailant gaining behind me. It was my doom, slouching towards our fated appointment. It had a distinct, unmistakable sound:
Boing, boing, boing.
Despair wracked me. It was impossible and I knew it. By running I was only delaying the inevitable.
Nobody could beat Pinkie Pie at Hide-and-Seek.
Nobody.
* * *
The day after that, I spent some time talking with Applejack and Twilight.
“You know, I’m not entirely sure you’re putting me on,” Applejack protested. “Who the heck even came up with an idea like that? It’d drive me crazy having to keep track, let alone the cost of giving that many presents.”
“Well, Applejack, if you don’t want to respect my culture that’s perfectly okay with me,” I said, in a tone of understanding. That was very easy to do while sitting on a pile of gift boxes as big as I was. “What if I told you that housewarming gifts had to be made from your own hair? That would be completely unreasonable.”
“I like it,” Twilight said, brightly. “It encourages mathematical reasoning.”
“You would.” Applejack’s glare passed from me to Twilight. “If you make me give you a housewarming gift for every prime numbered day you’ve lived here, I’m going to cave in your skull.”
“Well, think about it,” Twilight pointed out, “they don’t need to be big gifts, and tomorrow is the fourth day, so we don’t need to give her anything at all. Then it’s just the fifth, seventh, eleventh, thirteenth, seventeenth, nineteenth…”
Twilight trailed off, and looked at me suspiciously. Comprehension dawned on her features.
“What?” I asked, feigning innocence. It was probably a little spoiled by my giant grin.
* * *
Not every day was as fun as the others, though. There were a few things in the world that could completely sap a young filly of strength. One of these was a vampire, who could suck her blood out and leave her a dried, broken husk. Another was the soporific droning of a two-hundred-year old English teacher who didn’t understand the budding genius represented in a young girl’s essay about how adding dinosaurs would infinitely improve Congress.
The most powerful, however, would have to be sitting around in the Carousel Boutique while she watched Rarity try and find a dress.
I rolled my eyes—the only part of my body that still functioned well—to look at Pinkie Pie. My hooves dangled lifelessly over the the chair Rarity had me sitting on, while the rest of me was slung over it like melted ice cream. “Kill me.”
Pinkie giggled, nudging me so that I slid off the chair and flopped onto the floor. An increasingly harried-looking Rarity didn’t notice, pins stuck in her hair, which had come awry. When she had invited me in off the street with Pinkie Pie an hour or so before, she had been full of verve and confidence, intent on seeing me in a new dress that would strike me blind with awe—or so she said. Suiting action to words was proving more challenging to her than she had thought.
To be entirely fair, it wasn’t really her fault. I’d sworn a curse upon all dresses several months ago, and Mother had already despaired of trying to put me into one ever again. Becoming a pony wasn’t sufficient to change my mind.
After what must have been the twentieth little filly dress to fail my test floated past me in a red haze, I waved a hoof. “What are you doing with all of these foal dresses?” I asked, confused. No one had yet given me a satisfactory answer to the question of where all the foals were. It seemed ridiculous to suggest that they might still be in school.
Rarity carefully clutched a light blue sundress to herself. “I made them for you.” She brushed her frazzled hair back with a forehoof and opened a large trash bin at the back of the room, her white hooves cringing back from the opening as she floated the dress over towards it in a red aura. “Well,” she went on, “I suppose you can go, then. It was nice having you over, dear.”
Normally, I might have been flippant, carrying on the disdain I had already shown her. It’s how I would have paid back Daphne or Mother after a long day at the mall. Of course, the flaw in that idea was that neither of them had ever made a dress for me with her own hooves—or hands—and certainly had never looked that hurt at my rejection. It sucked the fun right out of defiance.
“Wait!” I lifted my head up off the floor. Rarity froze in the act of rearing up, to more dramatically cast the debased work into the rubbish heap, I suppose. “The dresses aren’t, you know, bad,” I prevaricated, and stretched for a way to salvage the situation. “They just could be…”
“Yes. Yes?” Rarity asked, with vibrant impatience, as she dropped back to all four hooves. Pinkie Pie looked at me curiously, as well, as I stood up. Rarity's tools hovered over her work station, bolts of cloth poised at the ready.
“Cooler.” I waved a hoof expansively as I settled on the most apt descriptor.
“Cooler?” Rarity asked, her and her tools visibly drooping a little.
“Yeah, they need to be… cooler.” There really wasn’t another way to describe what I meant.
It was like watching a grape shrivel up in the sun. My callous dismissal of her entire catalogue had evidently put her in a bad spot. Frantic, she started to push aside the racks of hoof-stitched clothes and threw open a large closet near the back, where mannequins were collecting dust.
“I don’t think mannequin is the right word,” Pinkie Pie contemplated aloud.
“Ponyquin? Horsequin? Gosh-I’m-an-equinequin?” I offered.
“No, no, clotheshorse!” she decided, satisfied.
“Oh, that just won’t do,” Rarity moaned from the back, and I trotted over to see what she was doing. “Ridiculous! Untenable!”
Outfits were being cast out in her rampage, each one progressively worse than the last. The further back she dug, the more amateurish the stitching and color-blind the dresses got. When a loud clanking emanated from the back, however, my ears swiveled forward immediately. “Is that… armor?”
Rarity, her hair in disarray, poked her head out from behind a great stack of boxes. “What, armor?” she demanded.
Digging in, I took hold of a rack in my teeth and pulled it back out into the sewing room. The layers of dust made me sneeze, and I wiped my nose before circling around my find. It was hung with what looked to be pony armor, except it was all fashioned in a way that suggested the armorer had been trying to design them as upper class outfits. One featured a top hat made out of polished steel, and one dress was all in scale armor, with patterns of electroplated copper and silver.
“Oh, no!” Rarity cried, dismayed. She scrambled down off the boxes and skittered across the smooth floor in her haste. It was, if anything, reminiscent of someone who had been caught and wanted desperately to cover everything up again. “Don’t look at that!” she begged, and stammered on, “I-it’s awful, just awful! Early work. How did that even get in there? Hah hah!” Her forced laugh didn’t quite hide the tremor in her voice. She glanced to Pinkie Pie with what almost seemed to be fright, but Pinkie just sat there and grinned, enjoying the show.
With no support forthcoming, Rarity put her head to the side of the rack and started to push it back into the closet. “I’ll… I’ll just… cover this up, and we can all pretend we never saw it. I-it’s just—”
“—awesome!” I interrupted.
That stopped Rarity up short. “Awesome?” she wheezed. Her panting breaths deepened as she caught some air, and she asked again, “What do you mean?”
“You made armor? That is just so cool.” I was surprised she couldn’t see it herself. Going back over to the rack, I lifted one of the skirts, which had brushed steel petals over a chainmail hem—the material was fantastically light and thin, with links so small that it practically shimmered against the sunlight. “This is so light, too! I think someone could actually wear this.”
Rarity was flabbergasted. She lifted a scuffed white hoof, as if to protest, but instead rose up and circled around the rack. “I really shouldn’t,” she demurred, staring at me a moment before looking to Pinkie Pie for answers again. “I’m not supposed to—I mean, I used to work in armor, yes, but—”
“Can you imagine how cool I would look in armor?” I said, hopping up to put my hooves on Rarity’s chest, grinning from ear to ear. “Please, Rarity? You can make a special outfit for me and I’ll pose and everything!”
“I—I don’t know. I, I really shouldn’t.” Rarity bit her lip, but her eyes were softening. It wouldn’t be long before she folded.
“Well,” I wheedled, walking over to one of the outfits Rarity had put together for me earlier, lifting a pile of sewn green silk with a hoof, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for me to try one of these on, too. It would be the least I could do in return.”
“Like a sweet Nightmare Night costume?” Pinkie Pie asked.
“If that means Halloween then sure,” I agreed. “If I'm going to get a special outfit, it ought to be some awesome costume. A super pony of some sort!”
“Yes.” Rarity grew more animated with every word of my encouragement. “Yes, yes I could… a bit of maille there, maybe some jewelry to alleviate… yes, I can see it!” Her mane and tail had recovered their bounce, somehow, and she clapped her hooves on the floor. “Oh, Amelia, my little darling, I will make you positively shine!”
Taking back my thoughts from earlier, I revised my opinion of Rarity’s shop. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a boring place after all. I ran a hoof along the green silk of the gown I had touched thoughtfully, imagining what I might look like in it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
* * *
The following day was largely wasted arguing with Princess Twilight.
“But Twilight,” I whined, beating my hooves impatiently on the hewn floor of the library. Books loomed from every shelf, on every subject imaginable, but only one genre interested me at the moment. Of all of the subjects covered in the library, only one of them was a subject I couldn’t find back home. “You promised you’d teach me magic!”
Well, okay, three if I counted Unicorn Horn Grooming and Care of Magical Creatures. That last one was probably worth checking out, but a girl can only focus on so many awesome things at a time.
“Amelia, sweetheart, while you are proving to be a very precocious little girl, I am afraid it would be entirely irresponsible of me to take you on as my pupil. When I said ‘all in good time’ I meant that you would have to wait a few years until you grew up,” Twilight explained from her wooden throne at the back of the library, its seat piled with cushions and its back rising into a carved owl head. “Also, it is Princess Twi—” She had started to correct me, but then bit her lip to cut herself off, furrowing her brow.
“Hah! See?” I pointed an accusatory hoof in her direction. “You’ll keep your promise to Rainbow Dash, but you try to back out when it comes time to own up to mine!”
“T-that’s not really the same thing!” she asserted, turning her nose up and looking anywhere in the library but at me.
“It totally is.” My hoof came down hard. “You didn’t say anything about waiting for a while; you said you’d teach me later, and what better time is there? I mean, what did you expect me to do with you in the library?” I demanded. “You sit and read on your throne while I sit and read over there?”
Twilight crushed a nearby book to her chest defensively. “Uhm. No. That is not at all what I planned. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“Look at it this way, Twilight.” I started pulling books off the shelves. “This is a library, right? I can check these books out and read them on my own time. I’ve got a nice room with a table and everything.”
“I suppose that’s true,” she admitted, cautiously, setting her book upon the armrest of her throne. “Still, you shouldn’t be practicing dangerous magic in the middle of a flammable library.”
“Where do you practice?”
“Why, I practice—” Twilight paused, and then finished lamely, “…in the library.”
“Ooh, I see. Right here, in the library,” I repeated, grinning broadly as I pranced over to her side.
Twilight rubbed her face with a hoof. For some reason, adults tended to do that a lot around me. “Fine, fine. But I won’t teach you unicorn magic.”
“Aww, c’mon,” I pressed, swishing my tail in agitation.
“No, I can’t,” she affirmed, only to quickly correct herself. “That is, you’re just not old enough—it wouldn’t work. I can teach you some other magic, though. Clever magic.”
Scrunching my face up, I protested, “It’s not, like, stage magic, is it? Not that that can’t be cool, but I can learn that any old place. Come on, Twilight, teach me something awesome.”
The face above mine broke into a grin of her own, and Twilight lifted her wings to block out the windows above the chair, casting us into shadow. “Oh, no, no, my persistent little foal. It’s related to stage magic, but better. It’s a crafty sort of magic that not just anyone can learn. Oh, I know it, of course, but then I’m one of the best,” she said, rising to my challenge with an arrogant flip of her mane.
This intrigued me a great deal. It seemed I had cut through some of Twilight’s outer layers, for starters, as I had never seen her acting quite like this. It was almost as if she were an entirely different pony. For two, this sounded like genuinely interesting magic.
“Why can’t just anyone learn it?” I inquired, tilting my ears forward.
“Can anyone learn to fly through the air or burrow underground? No, you need to have the right qualities, dear. Once upon a time, even Man could do it, but they seem to have lost the way of it.”
“But I can? I was a human—is it because I’m a pony now?”
Twilight laughed mockingly, leaping lightly off the throne and concentrating to shift the heavy table out of the center of the library with a flare of red magic. “I doubt most ponies could do it, either. It requires a serious commitment and a willingness to ignore conventional thinking. Two things, I have noticed, that you possess in abundance.”
“Mom always did say I lived in my own world, does that count?”
“It’s a start!”
Sweeping her hoof in an arc, she threw sparkling powder into the light. To anyone who had studied a bit of stage magic, it was painfully obvious what she was doing, trying to attract audience attention so that whatever she was really doing wouldn’t noticed. In just a moment she would be holding up a hoofful of roses or have produced something with her tail or—
—or maybe she could have vanished entirely. From the middle of a fair-sized, well-lit room, with all available exits in plain view.
“Boo,” Twilight said, right into my ear.
Squealing, I leapt off my chair, hooves flailing in the air.
Twilight’s laugh was genuine, as deep and rich as any I had heard before. It was hard not to laugh with her, but it was just so surprising to hear it. Ever since the first day, she had been so straight-laced and reserved.
“You cheated!” I accused, trying to spot the trick. “You used unicorn magic! I bet you just used the powder to hide the red glow from me!”
“Oh, no, this is unicorn teleportation.” She set herself solidly and closed her eyes. With obvious effort on her part, a red fire built up along her horn. With a burst of sound and light, she vanished and then appeared on the top of the stairs overlooking the main floor. She slumped, drained, with a hoof and tail dangling over the side limply. “See? Not so… easy to hide,” she wheezed. “Can’t imagine doing that spell more than once.”
“So what was that?” I pressed.
“A Vanish.”
“But,” I murmured, and frowned, “that’s the same term used by magicians when they make something disappear, in stage illusions.”
“Illusion, hah!” Twilight scoffed, disdainful. “They wouldn’t know illusion if it bit them in the face.” Rising, she shook herself and returned to the first floor. “As I said, once upon a time, you could call a human a conjurer without laughing, but no more. They use the same names and the same ideas still, but I doubt any of them have an idea of how to really do it. All sleight-of-hand and smoke and mirrors. Those things help, but they aren’t real illusion.”
“You mean sleight-of-hoof, right?”
“Yes, sure, sleight-of-hoof. Meant that.”
“So you’re telling me that you can teach me how to actually do what stage magicians pretend to do?” I asked, my tail nearly wagging behind me.
“A portion of it, perhaps. Of course, I wouldn’t teach just anyone…” Twilight trailed off.
“What? Who would you teach? I thought it was me!” I yelped.
“A magician can’t simply tell her secrets to any silly filly who comes along begging for it,” Twilight insisted, lifting her head and foreleg in a posture of indifference. “No, no, I fear it’s simply impossible.”
That witch. She had me.
Sliding to my rear knees and lifting my hooves imploringly, I begged her, “Please, I’ll do anything!”
“Anything?” she asked slyly. “To become my apprentice and learn my tricks?”
“Anything!”
* * *
“Argh!” I screamed in frustration. “I hate you, Twilight Sparkle!”
“Something wrong, squirt?” Rainbow Dash asked, drifting in above me on a cloud. The mare snickered, trying to keep herself from laughing. “Wow, what happened here?”
With my face smeared in white paint, I glared up at her. Where my hooves weren’t stained with paint, black ink had been rubbed in so deep I couldn’t scrub them out. It’s like Twilight had never even heard of a ballpoint pen.
“I—” Pausing for effect, I drew myself up with an indignant pose “—am painting a fence.”
Rainbow looked around from her vantage point at the paint-stained grass and walkway, the white-coated roots of the tree, the paint-splattered plants in the garden near the library, and my own paint-coated form. Pretty much everything except for the fence that should have been painted.
“You missed a spot,” Rainbow pointed out.
“Ugh,” I spat, and kicked my paint can over. Normally this would have been a terrible idea, but it had already been emptied of its contents.
Rainbow’s chortling wasn’t helping. She was doing everything she could to keep from falling off her cloud. Stamping my hoof and pouting only made her laugh harder.
Wiping her eyes, she grinned down at me. “You look like a filly who really, really needs something better to do.”
“I’m supposed to do chores for Twilight,” I muttered.
“Yeah, you sound real excited about that,” she replied sarcastically.
“She promised to teach me magic!”
Rainbow fluttered down, hovering effortlessly in the air upon her cloud. She tilted up the lid of the paint can, peering in. “Don’t see any magic here.”
“I’m her apprentice,” I countered. “I’m supposed to do chores to earn lessons.”
“Yeah? What kind of things have you been doing for her?” she asked in return, nudging the paint can to send it rolling away.
“Uh,” I considered, lifting a hoof to count off. After realizing that I couldn’t count on fingers I didn’t have, I resorted to tapping on the accursed fence. “I sorted the returned books. I copied her notes for her research. I scrubbed the windows. I swept the floors…”
Rainbow raised a brow. “Sounds more like you’re doing Spike’s work than learning magic.”
“Who’s Spike?” I asked.
Rainbow waved a hoof. “Not important. So, how much magic has she actually taught you?”
“A bit! Watch.” I reached around, grabbing a half-finished apple from my basket. Concentrating, I held it upright on one hoof and sat down to ready the other forehoof. “Okay, now, watch: I’m going to make this apple disappear. One, two, three, Vanish!” I commanded aloud, putting all of my focus into it, and clapped my hooves together.
With a squishy crunch, the apple flattened between my forehooves and dribbled applejuice down over the white paint, further staining my coat.
“Well, the apple is gone,” Rainbow pointed out. She was so full of useful advice today.
“I was able to do it earlier,” I whined with a pout. “I mean, we weren’t able to find the apple again, but I did Vanish it! Twilight said that counted for something.”
“That doesn’t sound like unicorn magic at all to me. Are you sure she isn’t just playing with your head?”
I hung my head. “She said she couldn’t teach me unicorn magic.”
“Really. Huh,” Rainbow said. She scuffed at her cloud awkwardly.
“Something up?” I asked her, uncertainly.
“Nothing much. It’s just, you know, I thought we’d talk a bit.”
“Oh?” That was surprising. Rainbow hadn’t been around all that much so far. “About what?”
Rainbow opened her mouth to speak, but the library door being slammed open caught our attention. Twilight stormed out, her hooves stamping on the earth. “Amelia!”
“Scram, kid!” Rainbow shouted, taking her cloud and racing off.
Heeding her advice, I raced off into town, laughing as Twilight’s angry declarations trailed after me.
* * *
Dusty old books had their own smell. A musty, rich smell. There were hints of things that a girl like me couldn’t even guess at. Each one had pages of faded ink in pony script, with colorful illustrations interspacing them. The images had not merely been inked in, as I discovered when I ran my hoof gently across one of a winged unicorn backed by the sun, they had been painted on.
Pinkie Pie snored enthusiastically on the table by the window, her face plastered onto the cover of the book Unicorn Horn Care. A towel shoved under her mouth kept her drool from ruining the cover. Twilight might have killed both of us if that had happened. These books were pretty old, after all. Propped up pillows and the sun streaming in through the open window made for a perfect reading environment. It was warm and comfortable in the early morning sunlight.
Of course, the contents weren’t nearly as interesting as the question of why these books were so old. It was another puzzle to add to the ones Ponyville had already presented. A whole library run by a bibliophile and all of the contents seemed to be older than dirt.
Wandering eyes told me that I wasn’t going to get any more reading done right then. It wasn’t that pony script was all that hard to read once someone showed you how the little symbols were all sounds, but there was nothing to be done about it once restlessness set in.
I set the book aside and moved quietly, so as not to rouse Pinkie, over to my storage chest, pulling out a length of yarn and a pair of scissors marked with Rarity’s diamonds. The yarn was long and thin and the same color as Rarity’s hair, and the scissors sliced through it easily.
“Now, Twilight did it kinda like…” I put the two ends together, muttering to myself. Covering the two ends with a hoof, I tried to concentrate on the idea that they should be whole again. Restored. “And do it with a flourish.”
Counting in my head, I stuck my tongue out and snapped my hooves against the top of the chest twice, where the table lay, and—
“Hey, kid,” Rainbow Dash announced from the window.
—completely lost my balance, tumbled backwards as I jolted up, and failed to maintain my balance on my rear hooves alone. Rainbow caught me in her strong forelimbs, holding me steady. Pinkie Pie snorted once, then rolled her snout over, mumbling into the towel, “Nah mam, I dun’ want more crickets… ah’m full…”
“Sweet jumping jackalopes, Rainbow, you made me jump out of my coat!” I hissed, if not entirely displeased. Rainbow Dash was one of the best parts about this place.
“Again with the weird sayings, kid. C’mere.” Rainbow grabbed me around my barrel, carting me off like a sack of grain. Stifling a yelp, I tried to hold on to the yarn, only for the spool to slip free and fall as I was lifted. It was impossible to tell if it was my imagination or not, but it seemed as if only one whole thread fell to the floor as we left.
It was always fun to travel this way. Not that walking and running everywhere tirelessly didn’t have its appeal, but there was something about the bird’s eye view that really captured the imagination. Ponyville was so very small from on high, too. Even from as low up in the sky as we were going, it looked like little more than a few thatched roofed cottages and the homes of our friends.
Come to think of it, that seemed a little strange in and of itself. Trying to count as we flew was an exercise in failure, though. It just kept coming up as different numbers every time.
Oddly, I couldn’t recall ever seeing Rainbow Dash’s home. I supposed that I probably couldn’t visit it in any case, seeing as how I didn’t have any wings.
“Say, Rainbow, why do you suppose Twilight keeps skipping out while I do chores to go visit your place?” I asked, hoping that was roundabout enough not to arouse too much suspicion.
“Heck if I know, she’s been weird ever since I got here.”
Maybe that was too roundabout. Changing tact, I asked, “Where are we going, you think? Out to Fluttershy’s?”
“Went there last week,” Rainbow said, distracted.
“Movie theater?”
“Already saw those pictures. Besides, I thought you didn’t really like pony movies?” Rainbow pointed out, and banked to catch an updraft.
“None of them I saw. How about Rarity’s?”
“Ugh.”
“But I wanted to see how my special project was doing!” I protested.
“You can see it later,” she shot back. After an awkward pause, she seemed to realize that might have been a little harsh. “Sorry. Hey, how about Sweet Apple Acres? I am hankering for a bite.”
A little taken aback, I answered a little hesitantly, “Uh, yeah, sure, I guess. I was supposed to go over there later to see Applejack, anyway. Not that I was in a big hurry, her idea of a good time always seems to involve work.”
Winging out over the apple orchards, which started where the town ended, we landed somewhere behind the barn. “So, uhm… Rainbow,” I put forward nervously, scuffing my hoof. It was weird having to talk like this to an adult. “You’ve kinda been a little short with me, lately. Did I do something wrong?”
Before, pony expressions had been clear enough in the broad strokes, if only because their faces were so easy to read. After spending so long with them, though, the more subtle features had started to become clear. The tightness around Rainbow’s eyes deepened slightly. It was a look I probably should have recognized earlier.
“It’s nothing, kid.” Her voice was tense, sharper than usual. “Hold on, let me get some apples,” she announced, and went over to a tree.
“It’s so obviously not nothing!” I objected, trotting over to join her. Expecting her to fly up and fetch some, I watched her scuff her rear hooves against the tree instead. It was as if she was marking a spot.
“Hold on, don’t want to mess this up.” She slowly put her hind leg through the motions of a buck, lining up the strike with her mark. “Won’t be pretty for anyone.”
“Uhm, Rainbow, there are no apples there.” I eyed her curiously. “Are you going to knock down the whole tree? I don’t think Applejack will be very happy about that.”
Instead of responding, Rainbow abruptly reared up on her forelegs and thrust out her lower body. There was a sound thunk as her hooves connected with the trunk, and then a forest of soft thuds as apples bounced off the earth.
“How the heck did you do that?” I asked, at a loss. “Wow, if you can do that, why does Applejack keep hiring people to pick her apples?”
Rainbow shrugged indifferently. “Beats me, I don’t tell her how to run her farm.” She looked down at me. An awkward silence broke out as neither of us said anything.
I was beginning to wonder why Rainbow had picked me up. It was almost as if she didn’t want to hang out at all. Before I could really frame a thought, though, she picked up an apple and tossed it to me.
“Look, kid,” she began, “it’s not like I don’t like hanging out with you. You’re an okay kid, most of the time, but hasn’t this been going on a while now?”
A frown crossed my lips as I crunched the apple between my teeth rather than answer.
My confusion must have spoken louder than words, because she shook her head and snarfed an apple down in a single gulp—there was one way to vanish a stupid apple, all right—and went on, “Sure, a day or two was fun, but how long has it been now?”
“What’re you saying?” I asked, uncertain. This whole conversation was making me think of the last one my sister and I had together, and that was not an entirely comfortable idea.
“Oh, cut it out,” she told me, irritably. “You can’t be that dense.”
“I am not dense!” I shouted back at her. “You’re obtuse! I’m not stupid!”
“Ob-what?” she asked, blinking, but waved it off. “Forget it. Look, I don’t really know what all this is about, but I’m pretty much done with it.”
“Done with what? What are you saying?” I snapped, a lot more fiercely than I intended. “What, are you going to leave me here?”
“I didn’t say that!” Rainbow said, defensively. “I was so not about to say that.”
“Well, what are you saying?” My tail was lashing behind me like a cat’s. It probably would have been a better idea to take my tone down a notch. Every time I started to think about taking a step back, however, something ugly reared up in me.
“I mean more that this is getting a little old,” Rainbow tried to explain, reaching a hoof out to my shoulder.
“Yeah? So you’re finally honest about something, huh?” I almost growled, swatting it away. Before she could parse that, I continued, “You don’t think I’ve noticed weird things going on? How there’s no other foals but me? How about how you guys keep meeting behind my back?”
“Amy, calm down—”
“No!” It was like some beast roaring up from deep inside of me. Rainbow Dash could have been Daphne, with that same distant look my sister had the last time I’d seen her. The same feeling of helpless rage coiling up and charging through me, carrying my words along with it. “You don’t really care about me at all, do you?”
It was Rainbow’s turn to look shocked. Her wings flared up, and she set herself angrily. “Now just hold on a minute, kid—” she started, but that was about as far as she got.
“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight Sparkle shouted, and glided to an awkward landing nearby. She took one look at the two of us and stamped a hoof, demanding, “What is going on here? Why are you two fighting? Why did you steal my apprentice?”
“You know what, forget it,” Rainbow snapped, turning to trot away with a quick, angry gait.
Twilight started after her, quickly. “Wait! Rainbow, what’s wrong?” Twilight softened her tone. “Was it something I said? I’m really sorry about that comment. It was uncalled for, I know.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“We can work it out, whatever it is. Just talk to me, Dashie! Don’t be like this,” Twilight pleaded.
“Hailstones!” Rainbow shouted at the sky. “No, I’m not going to put up with this, either. I don’t know what you’re doing, Twilight, and I don’t care. I’m getting out of here right now!”
Twilight gasped, taken aback, as she held a hoof to her chest—strangely, it seemed more… genuine than last time, back at the café—as Rainbow spread her wings and shot off into the sky. It wasn’t long before she was a tiny, blue speck in the sky, Twilight reaching out plaintively for her. Torn, Twilight hesitated for a moment before she bolted off. “Rainbow, wait!” she called out, throwing herself awkwardly into the air with a desperate sort of energy.
Left baffled and confused, I sat down, trying to digest what had just happened. For maybe the first time in my young life, I really tried to think about my situation. This proved impossible while sitting, so I wandered towards the barn, trying to put two and two together.
From up here in the orchards, the whole town was revealed, nestled between green hills that faded to blue in the distance. What was so odd about a town of colorful ponies that seemed to devote a good part of every day to making sure I was well-cared for and satisfied? After all, they were under orders from their princess, who seemed to think that I was important. While that was a perfectly reasonable conclusion, it did seem odd that she’d just forget about me for so long if I was an important human child who they had been waiting for.
The barn was empty upon first glance as I nosed my way into it, looking for a pile of hay to lay down on. Strands of golden chaff were visible from the loft, however—Applejack had probably had them moved there to make room for the harvest. I scaled the ladder and found a spot among the cushy hay, settling in. As it turned out, it also made a great morning snack.
Munching happily on some of my bedding, I was all ready to put some serious thought in when the barn door slammed fully open. Thinking to surprise Applejack, I got ready to jump down, but froze when I saw a blond pegasus mare propelled in from outside. She fell and scrambled back, away from a shadow looming against the morning sunlight, her hat a great circle of darkness across the barn floor.
“So, thought you’d have a go at me with your chummers, then, eh?” Applejack asked. Her voice was in a strange lilt, just like the others had been in that room.
Rather a lot like Fetter’s, now that I think about it.
“No, no, it ain’ that. We was just, y’know,” the mare stammered, trying to find her feet again, “tryin’ to get a bit of variety. Y’know, for the kid. I thought it’d be cute!”
The trembling mare seemed familiar with her blond hair. Thinking back, I vaguely remembered a mare trying to get my attention by clowning around near one of the stands, juggling apples and letting them bounce off her head.
“Cute? Oh yeah, real cute tryin’ to upstage me,” Applejack growled, striding forward into the barn. Her shadow swallowed the other mare up, and she put a hoof down hard on her flank to keep her from getting up. “You’re a bit player. You’re a part of the background. Me? I’m a flippin’ star, I am, and I’m not going to let a jumped up little understudy like you steal the spotlight.”
“It’ll never happen again, swear it!” the mare wibbled, trying to squirm out from under her.
“Yer damn right it will,” Applejack said, and shoved her nose against the other pony’s, “or I’ll beat you until you really are cross-eyed. We tidy?”
“Tidy, tidy!” she squealed.
Applejack held her there for a moment more before letting her go. The grey pegasus scrambled out of the barn as fast as she could go, half-rising off the ground with her wings flapping desperately. Applejack walked over to the barn entrance and leaned against the frame. With a flourish of her hoof, she produced a cigarette out of thin air, and then a second flourish produced a match with which she lit it.
My heart pounded in my ears. It wasn’t so much adrenaline from watching Applejack play schoolyard bully to some mare. It wasn’t even the revelation that Applejack could perform the same sort of magic Twilight had been teaching me.
It was the icy, damp feeling of having been played for an idiot.
“Stupid, stupid!” I muttered to myself, wanting to bang my head against the loft, though that surely would have attracted Applejack’s attention. The certain knowledge that I had gladly let myself be roped into an obvious play staged for my benefit burned like a bed of hot coals smoldering in my gut. The worst part about it was that it was so obvious. Anyone smart should have figured it out days ago.
“One had wondered how long it would take you to figure it out, bairn,” a voice hissed near my ear.
They often say in stories that you can bite your tongue in trying to be silent. Turns out that it’s not only true, but that it hurts a great deal.
Applejack turned her head and I ducked down, quickly, but she only stamped out her cigarette and walked out into the sunlight. Probably to find me, actually, since I was due to meet her soon.
Craning my neck around, I stared into the darkness around me. Straight above me, up in the rafters, a pair of cold blue fires stared down. “Morg!” I whispered, in case Applejack was still close enough to listen. “Where have you been?”
“Here. There,” the cat-thing said indifferently, falling with ghostly silence to land on the loft’s supporting beams, its tail curling up for balance. “Might wonder how bright the bairn truly is. The Morgwyn had wondered if she would remain ignorant forever.”
“Didn’t you tell me that this was waiting for me? That there was a special place here, just for me?” I accused, remembering that night in the woods when we had first met.
“This one claimed that a fabulous kingdom awaited you, of song and magic. Has the Morgwyn not delivered?”
“Well,” I scowled a bit, “I suppose there have been both songs and magic, and this is a kingdom.”
“Then the Morgwyn has delivered.”
I rose up on my hooves indignantly. “But it’s not real!”
“Real enough. Real magic, no?” it asked, languidly, flexing and sharpening its claws on the wood, leaving great gaps.
“They’re lying, though. To me. This is all just…” I trailed off, frowning and lowering my head slightly. “It’s a show. Like a magic show.”
“One wonders if you plan to torture through this reasoning as slowly as the last.”
“No. Come on.” I rose to my feet. Sliding down the ladder, I crept to the barn door and peered out carefully. Applejack was directing other ponies outside, getting wagons and barrels together in preparation for the harvest. Waiting until they were all suitably occupied, I galloped at full tilt towards the town.
Hopefully no one saw me as I snuck back to my house as stealthily as I could. Crates and stands made the best cover, and it seemed that no one spotted me. Without Pinkie or one of her friends herding me along, I was free to take the shortest path, but it was like walking into a different town entirely.
Doors had been thrown open, and ponies were lounging around tables, playing cards and reading aloud from scripts held awkwardly in their hooves. Ponies I had thought were gardeners were oiling up wagons, while one I had thought was a carpenter was going around pouring coffee into great jugs, which were consumed with obvious relish by bleary-eyed mares and stallions. Everywhere, they were speaking with heavy accents, laughing and joking.
It was rather a lot like being backstage at a play. It felt like betrayal, actually.
Scrunching down on my belly, I skittered across a few yards of open street to get into my house. I bypassed the gifts and games scattered about the first floor. Pinkie Pie had gone, which meant that it was probably only a matter of time before they started looking for me in earnest. Grabbing my bag and slinging it around my shoulder, I turned and started back down the stairs.
“…poor dear must be just brokenhearted,” Fluttershy’s voice drifted up to greet me, and I retreated back upstairs, quickly. “I always thought she was just puttin’ on.”
“We all did,” Rarity agreed. Like Twilight, her accent was very controlled, not as earthy as the others. “It was in the profile that they were together, wasn’t it? All of the times they met in the library. Reading the same books. Or how about that time Dash broke her wing? It’s just blindingly obvious.”
“Aye.” There was a clink of ceramic. “Dash is so—you know. I can kinda see it. Though it’s weird how she never breaks character,” Fluttershy continued, but I had lost interest. They didn’t know I was missing, but they didn’t sound like they were moving any time soon.
Backing away from the stairs, I went to check the windows. Both looked out over inhabited streets, making a clean exit impossible. A glance around showed that the Morgwyn was nowhere to be seen, either, despite my telling it to follow me. Gnawing on my lip for a moment, I looked around the room one last time. “I need a distraction.”
Moving the chest would make it scrape along the floor and that would create all sorts of noise, so that wouldn’t do. My eyes flicked from the chest to the contents within. Grinning, I grabbed Twilight’s library bag and shoveled toys into it.
I grabbed the bag with my teeth and hurled it out the open window. There was a loud clanging and then a chorus of swears. I’d managed to brain one of the ponies setting up shop out front. Fluttershy and Rarity raced out just as I’d hoped, the former pulling the stallion toward the house to check on his head. He had stopped swearing once they arrived on the scene, and didn’t really seem quite as bothered as he had been a moment ago.
I raced down the stairs and made for the door. With only a quick peek before darting outside, I hid behind a nearby sign and started to creep towards Sugarcube Corner and my ultimate destination. It didn’t take me nearly as long as I might have thought, either. My suspicions about the actual size of the town were being confirmed with every step.
Each time one of the girls had taken me around town, it had seemed to take forever. There were always several turns and a fair amount of walking. Now I had some idea of why: one of the houses was half-open. Not merely doors and windows, but the entire facade of it was being disassembled in convenient blocks that could be turned around to make it look subtly different. A store sign was hung out for saddles and reins.
I took it back. It didn’t feel like being backstage at a play. It felt like being a piece in somebody’s model town.
“Amelia!” Pinkie Pie’s voice called, echoing up over the houses. “Amy, Amy, oxen free!”
“Crap.”
“I didn’t even get to count to one hundred! Sneaky, sneaky!” Her voice was already closer. She could have been on the rooftops, or even around the corner.
If there was one thing I had learned here, it was that no one could beat Pinkie Pie at Hide-and-Seek. No pony, either, for that matter.
There was only one way out of this.
Tearing off, I galloped at full speed, deliberately shoulder-checking one of the ladders as I went. The working pony using it to change the facade of the building tumbled, and others rushed to help him while I ran off in the confusion. Someone spotted me, but they were too late to do anything to stop me as I leapt around a corner.
The springy sound of a pony hopping was closing in. With little time to spare, I bounded the rest of the way down the dark alley to the door in the wall at the end of the lane. Panting, I put my hoof to the knob, and hesitated.
One part of me was afraid. Afraid of provoking whatever force had arranged this fake town. Afraid of running into a whole battalion of armed guards.
Maybe even a little afraid of giving up the people I had thought were my friends.
Another part of me, however, was the same part that had looked at a monster in the light of the moon and saw the potential to go where no one had ever gone before. Into places no one had ever dared imagine.
I thrust the door open and tumbled through, into darkness.
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” André Gide
Daphne
There were only so many strange, new things a person could take in one night. I’d wrestled with an alien, been transformed into a figment of my imagination, and fled through the woods from Heaven-only-knew-what, and it had all taken its toll. After coming so far and enduring so much, though, a line had to be drawn.
“No! I won’t accept it!” I declared, stamping my hoof.
Naomi patted the air in front of her. “Daphne, please, be reasonable.” Her braid had been loosed, and Equestria’s vibrant moon cast silver moonbeams through her red curls.
The subtle colors of our campsite could be picked out in that dim moonlight, too, yet it still possessed the same ethereal grace of the moon back on Earth. Imperfections in the surrounding forest were forgiven in the deeper shadows, and a gentle pond glowed silver.
All told, it was a majestic sight all by itself.
All but for one little irritation.
“That is a silver fern!” I declared, pointing an accusing hoof at the offending flora. It spread its leafy, argent fronds near Naomi’s tent. “It’s native to New Zealand and surrounding islands! It doesn’t belong here!”
Marcus paused in the midst of unfolding his pop tent opposite of Naomi’s. The fire would go between them. We had carefully selected a space that was as open as possible, but the trees were so dense that it had been difficult finding a place where a branch wasn’t likely to fall and crush someone.
“It’s a plant,” he pointed out.
“Yes, and it’s wrong!”
“Sweetie,” Naomi stepped delicately between me and the fern, casting a wary gaze my way, “we really don’t want to attract anything that might come looking to see what’s shouting. Besides, is it really that much more unlikely than anything else we’ve seen since coming here?”
“Just because we’re in some magical fairytale land doesn’t mean things shouldn’t make sense,” I protested firmly, my nostrils flaring. Ever since we had stopped running, my breath had been coming in tight, ragged gasps, and my head felt hot and heavy. “It shouldn’t resemble any Earth species except that which blew across the barrier!”
Naomi raised her brow. “What if there’s other entry points?” It was disgusting. She had no right to be that patient and level-headed when everything was so wrong. I hesitated in answering, my scowl deepening. “Daphne, this isn’t really about a plant, is it?”
“Of course it’s about a plant; it’s about a stupid little fern that belongs halfway around the world!” I pawed roughly at the ground as I stared her down. How dare she talk to me like that? Where did she get off telling me what I’m saying is one thing or another?
“Daphne, you’re hyperventilating. Just calm down, we can talk about this.”
"Don't you patronize me!" I snapped, jolting forward. "We're in a mysterious, magical forest where the laws of reality apparently don't apply! Don't you get how twisted and wrong this whole place is? Being a little stressed is a perfectly normal reaction to cause-and-effect taking the day off!"
“Okay, Daphne. You've been through a lot tonight.” A curt note had entered her voice. Taking a tone with me, was she? "I know you’re upset, but didn't we talk about this earlier when you went running off through the—"
“Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I shouted at her, rising up and stamping my forehooves again and again. "You don't know a damn thing! You've never woken up as the wrong species! You haven’t spent your life trying to convince yourself your best friend wasn't real—wondering if you were insane! You've never had your sister taken right from under you! Don't you dare tell me to calm down! You’re just a spoiled, silly little daddy’s girl getting her sick kicks on me being a pony! You don’t even seem to care that we’re in a freakishly unnatural forest that’s probably stuffed to the gills with monsters; it’s all a game to you!”
Naomi rocked back, her eyes wide, her mouth falling open. I felt like I was trying to swallow a brick. My… chest? Sides? The bit where a pony’s ribs are—was vice-tight, and my breaths were coming in shorter and shorter gasps. My whole body was tense, wound like a spring, my tail lashing back and forth.
"You should be ashamed! You…" I gasped, trying to find my breath again.
Okay, maybe “ashamed” was a bit extreme.
"You don't... you don't appreciate how important this is. How…" How something… Where were the words I needed when they had been coming so fast and hard just a few moments ago?
Dead silence. No one spoke. I faced the both of them down, my eyes blazing. Slowly, so very slowly, my raging heart cooled. My mouth felt dry, and my head began to pound. All that righteous fury dripped out with my adrenaline, leaving my tensed muscles feeling cramped.
I regarded Naomi. The pained look in her eyes. The way her shoulders were slumped. She looked hurt, wounded.
"You should... You shouldn't tell me to calm down!" I rasped at her, my throat dry.
"You shouldn't," I said again, my voice dropping a little.
She got it. No need to… rub it in.
Naomi, and Marcus now, too, regarded me, their gazes weighing heavily. It no longer seemed so clear and simple as it had been earlier. I scraped my hoof against the earth, bringing up little stones in the dirt.
“It’s just that… I… I have a lot of reason to be worried.”
Like I had reason to yell at Naomi—she’d belittled me, dismissed me.
Hadn’t she?
“I-I j-just don’t want…” What didn’t I want?
“Naomi, please,” I wheezed, looking to her, only to see she’d turned away. Her arms were clutched across her chest, and her head was tucked in against her shoulder.
Oh no.
My eyes stung as I tried to comprehend the enormity of my own stupidity. I shrank back, unable to even look at Naomi now. More than that, I wished I could have crawled out of my own skin and died, right there. I didn’t want to be on the same planet with someone who had said something that monumentally revolting. It was still a quick jaunt back to Earth. Just leave myself to rot.
Who the hell did I think I was, talking like that?
Who was I, even? Some spoiled, self-obsessed little cretin, crawling along seeking others’ approval before I could so much as choose a pair of shoes in the morning?
If only I could have taken it back. If I could have snatched the words from the air and shoved them back into my stupid mouth, I would have. I scrambled forward a step, stumbling over more of my words, “Naomi, wait, I—”
Naomi turned, and I fell silent. She didn’t have to say anything. Her eyes had gone flat, her lips were a thin crease, and her features were as still as granite as she looked down upon me. Nothing else existed at that moment, just her disapproval and the sick feeling in my gut.
“Sometimes,” her voice was dangerously quiet, “we’re very honest with these outbursts. We say things we meant to keep hidden.”
I wanted to bury my head in the ground. I wanted to run as far away as I could. I wanted to jump into the fire we didn’t have yet. Anything rather than listen to her, each word biting at me. Instead, I stood there, head lowered, bearing it.
“But do you really believe that, Daphne? Do you really think I came out here, stealing from my parents, risking my life—and Hector’s—just so I could have a little play time?”
My knees had begun to shake. I shut my eyes tight and trembled along with them. Her hand brushed my mane, but, instead of a blow, I felt it caress my cheek, sliding down to cup my jaw. The relief I felt at that touch was soothing, better than any balm I could have applied.
It put into context how much I was hurting. My outburst and her touch illuminated how much my identity had been compromised. Sleep-deprivation, physical trauma, and remembered pain blended together into a disastrous recipe that had left me irrational and so wound up I was ready to snap at everyone and everything at the slightest provocation. It was no wonder I didn’t feel like myself any more.
Could I really say that I had been myself for years yet?
Naomi kneeled in front of me, sliding her hands around my neck. “Do you, Daphne?”
“No.” I shook my head frantically. “No, no, no, no. I don’t believe it. Naomi, I—”
“Shush. It’s okay. Just breathe,” she said gently, silencing me with her embrace. Thick red hair fell over me, and I pushed my nose into her awkwardly, nuzzling at her. Would that I had a pair of proper arms to embrace her. Forelimbs would have to do, and I held her tightly.
“It’s going to happen again,” she murmured softly, her voice familiar and honeyed again. “Probably soon. You’re going to have to get through this, Daphne... but I won’t let you do it alone if I can help it.”
There was a leafy rustle and a quiet tearing noise as Marcus bodily hauled the silver fern out of the ground, chucking it down to the stream bed. It lay in the water, rippling the silvery reflections with black swirls. “Problem solved!” he announced brightly. He shrank back at a look from Naomi, his hands up defensively, and went back to pushing the pegs in for his tent.
“Good riddance,” I muttered, trying to laugh, which didn’t work very well. My ribs still felt tight and constricted, and my knees had begun to quake again. Sighing, I rubbed at my sore eyes with a forelimb. When I pulled it away, I was surprised to see the coat there was wet and stained.
Naomi and I stood like that for a while. I didn’t cry anymore. Neither of us spoke. Her presence, though, her closeness, her almost palpable love, seeped into me and filled me with its quiet, gentle strength.
I pulled away once I felt I could speak clearly again. “Naomi, I—”
“Shh,” she whispered, cutting me off, and dabbed at my eyes with a handkerchief. “You’re tired, Daphne, and still hurting. Tell you what, I’ll forgive you for calling me a spoiled little girl if you can forgive me for calling you a shallow, self-obsessed brat.”
I knit my brow, confused. “You didn’t call me anything, though.”
“Just did! Deal?” She stuck her hand out. She giggled as I rolled my eyes and stuck my hoof into her hand, shaking it. “That is so cute, the way you shake.”
That, too, was part of the healing process, I realized. The humor was a signal that things had returned to normal between us. Perhaps more than normal, really. It wasn’t a regular, everyday friend who could take that sort of abuse and then turn it around in a way that helped the person who had tried to hurt them.
“Now, why don’t you get some sleep?” she suggested.
It took some effort to get a hold of my treacherous body. “I’m not that tired,” I lied. Having been up all day and running all night had taken a great deal out of me, but a guilt-ridden conscience wouldn’t let me rest just yet. Emotional fatigue was the least of my worries at that point. “Besides, the tents aren’t up yet. I’ll start a fire,” I announced, resolving to be useful at the very least.
There was a meaningful pause.
“Shut up.” I cast my head down. “I know. No hands. Realized it the moment I said it,” I groused, swishing my tail irritably. It helped me wake up a little bit, at least. “I’ll get firewood, I can do that. No one brought any, right?”
“We didn’t exactly have time to stock up for the winter,” Marcus grumbled. Up until now he had kept pretty silent on his feelings about the new world he had been roped into visiting, but there was a faintly wild look in his eyes. He also stared up at the giant moon a little too frequently for it to be coincidence. Maybe his aggression towards the fern had been more cathartic for him than it had been for me.
“We did the best we could, Marcus,” Naomi said evenly. Then she nodded to me. “All right. I don’t need to tell you not to stray; you probably know what’s out here better than we do. What did Leit Motif say about this place?”
“Not a lot.” I scuffed a hoof on the dirt. “She said she had to pass through what she called the Everfree Forest to get to me, and I always thought she meant the state park. Like she was just in the town across the way.”
It felt more than a little weird hearing Naomi refer to my friend so casually. It was difficult enough just trying to sort through that tangled mass of emotion that was the knotted memories of my and Leit Motif’s time together. Accepting her reality back into my life had given me mixed feelings of elation, relief, and more than a little guilt. Hearing Naomi speak her name in that familiar fashion lit up a peculiar spark of jealousy I didn’t understand, as if I didn’t want to share her.
“Did she describe the way she took at all? Landmarks, dangers, anything?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve gone over it a few times in my head already, trying to remember. She did tell some stories, said that everypony—”
“Everypony?” Naomi asked, grinning.
“Shut up, it’s how she talked!” I shot back, stamping a hoof. Continuing on, I said, “That all of the ponies avoided it, I meant to say. She said that it isn’t natural, but she never mentioned having any problems getting here.”
“I suppose it would make sense that a forest containing a magical barrier that leads you to another world would be unnatural to anypony,” Naomi mused aloud.
“Anypony...? You did that on purpose!”
“Go fetch firewood, honey,” she said airily. “I’ll help Marcus finish setting up here.”
“I won’t go far.” I flicked my tail at her as I went. Damn her, she had to go and make me feel better with all that banter. Didn’t she know when someone was getting a good panic attack going?
Tension melted away from my bones and limbs, leaving exhaustion in its wake as I pawed with my hooves under hollows and brush for dry wood. Removed from the others, the sounds and smells of the Everfree were undimmed, and I searched to the accompaniment of nature’s orchestra. The night air was alive with the cries of insects and birds, and the distant coughs of things unknowable. Great sheets of moss blanketed the earth and the low trunks of trees, and, unlike the cold and temperate Everfree I was familiar with, it was humid enough that I wondered if the Everfree Forest wasn’t, in fact, a swamp.
My hysterical reaction to the silver fern earlier was, I quickly discovered, more than a little premature. Even if I had been a better student of botany, naming all of the different fronds and flora I found would have been near impossible. There were hundreds of different species, growing in clusters and lonely clumps, all within a few dozen yards of our chosen campsite.
A mossy cliff face looked out over a shallow valley. There was a croaking noise that carried on for a while—rather reminiscent of a heron—and I squinted down the scarp, trying in vain to spot the bird. Fireflies danced in great profusion in that misty valley, conducted by little blue fires. Far away, the trees gave way to a rocky ravine, and, for just a moment, I thought a pair of shadowy stalks had risen above the rocks there. I tensed, but they were gone a moment later—either moved away or never there to begin with. In my current state, it was hard to tell.
I rubbed my eyes. Definitely far, far too tired.
Lacking suitable limbs, I made do with grabbing a hold of the branches I had kicked together under my mouth and returned to camp. No one had dug a pit yet, so I put my hooves to work. It was fairly easy to dig out a small rut with my front legs, before putting my back pair to work to widen it into a proper pit. My legs pumped powerfully, still strong despite all that exhaustion and fatigue had taken out of me.
Once we had a small, neat little fire going, I flopped down next to Naomi. With the veggie burger I had scarfed down, the trail bars Naomi and Marcus had eaten during the trip, and an uncertain length of time between now and reaching our destination, cooking was a low priority at the moment. Of course, there were other reasons to have a fire going while in dangerous woods at night. We wouldn’t need to dry off or boil water just yet, but the fire helped keep the insects away, and, if it came to a dangerous predator, very few things were quite so terrifying to an animal as a burning brand thrust at its face.
That, and having an open campfire made us feel a little more at home than the light of an alien moon.
The forest was doing its best to remind us that we weren’t home, however. In the shifting shadows, it seemed as if the trees were recoiling from the flames, their branches held back. With my mind playing such tricks on me, I wondered if it might not be better to curl up and go to sleep. Doing so would have meant going back to being alone with myself, though, and I wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
Naomi sighed. “Wish I’d thought to bring some hot chocolate.” She was wrapped up in a big blanket, and twitched a corner at me. I scooted closer, letting her drape it around my barrel.
“I’m just glad those things stopped chasing us,” Marcus said, pulling his jacket off. “I’m having trouble believing some little horse kid made it all that way without being devoured.” I noted—completely disinterestedly, of course—that he had not slacked off in the least since we broke up. He wasn’t broadly muscled by any stretch, but there was a certain strong ranginess to him.
He still looked totally disreputable, of course.
“I don’t know what path Leit took to get to me. She said it wasn’t very far, and we were planning to go together before—well, my parents interfered.”
“That’s just—” Marcus paused, shaking his head. “I guess they thought they had a good reason, but it’s not right to screw with a kid’s head.”
Now he was trying to ruin my perfectly good image of him.
“And, you know, I suppose this could be worse, all things considered,” he added.
“How could it be worse?” I asked icily. Here it came, the snide comment that would ruin what good will he had built up.
“You’re actually kinda pretty.”
“Well you’re—wait, what?” I lifted my head, my eyes narrowed curiously, one corner of my mouth curled up in incomprehension. He’d caught me up short with that comment, and I wondered if there was some barb in that I wasn’t seeing. It had been months since he’d been this nice.
“I mean, you seem to have it fairly good, as far as it goes. You don’t look like an animal, not really. Sure, it’s kinda weird, but it’s kinda cute. You even sound like yourself—if I couldn’t see you, I could honestly still picture you.”
I stared at him for a moment, totally at a loss. My mouth worked for a moment as I tried—futilely—to process this sudden spate of nice behavior. Part of me felt touched, which might have explained my utterly bewildered response.
“Well, I—I still can't stand your fat ugly face! Made only worse by the fact that it's in front of your defective brain,” I spat at him.
Marcus immediately choked on his water bottle, coughing and sputtering for a moment. He almost looked taken aback, but that was obviously just a ruse. Maybe that hadn’t been the best way to come back at him, but it was hard to believe he meant any of it innocently, or even sincerely. Of course, being as tired as I was may have inhibited my ability to come up with any good insults.
“Oh, and that jacket makes you look like a tool.”
“You sure seemed to like it when we were dating,” Marcus said. That might have been seen as an attempt to head the fight off before we could really get into it. I knew what it was, though: he was trying to make it seem like I had it much better when I was with him.
“Sure, when I was humoring you for being a ten year-old in a teen’s body. A girl would have to be insane to like you.”
“And you almost went to the loony bin,” Marcus braced his elbows on his knees, “so you must have loved me. Not that anyone needed to tell me that you were crazy.”
“I am not crazy,” I growled. “Nothing I ever wanted was unreasonable!”
“Oh, sure. Not unreasonable. You practically redefined ‘demanding,’ Daph.”
Thoughts of knocking him into the river fell away before I could even construct a good mental image of it. It was just too exhausting to fight right now. I gathered a breath to retort, but even that felt draining, so I just sighed and laid my head on my legs. “Yeah. Whatever.”
My defeated tone served to suck the fun right out of the atmosphere. The night air felt, if anything, even more lonely, with a cold distance creeping in. For a time, no one spoke, and Marcus went to inspecting his rifle. Naomi set the blanket over me and went over to check on Hector, who was pawing restlessly. He had not looked secure ever since the transition into the Equestrian side of the Everfree Forest, and she did her best to soothe him.
“I’ll take first watch,” Marcus offered. “I don’t think we want anything sneaking up on us here.”
“Makes sense,” I mumbled, snapping my eyes open. I stretched my arms and legs out in all four directions with a great big yawn. Rising, I glanced around. “Naomi, where’s the third tent?”
“I didn’t bring one,” she answered. “Use my tent.”
“Won’t you be using it?” I asked, suspiciously.
“Daphne, hon, it’s a two person tent. I wasn’t going to snuggle up with Marcus, and you certainly weren’t going to sleep outside.”
“Not that I would object,” Marcus interjected, cheerfully. Sleaze.
“Oh. Obviously,” I muttered. Laying down had apparently been too much for me, and I practically oozed into the tent. Someone could have poured me into a glass and I would have slept right there, taking the shape of my container like any good liquid. “I’ll take the third watch. When I get up,” I called, slurring heavily.
The inside of the tent was dark, and I was comfortable in my blankets. Like a warm little cave. It swallowed me up, and I faded away into nothingness.
* * *
Water closed in.
I couldn’t breathe. The water crushed me, pressing in on all sides.
The moon shone down at me, rippling through the surface of the water and refracting off the bubbles that rose up from my struggling form. I raised a hand, trying to swim back up, but the skin and bones shifted even as I tried. Silvery light played off the tip of my hoof, and down I went.
I struggled and surged upward despite my altered limbs, only to feel bonds tighten around me. Straps of white leather were wrapped around my barrel, each tied to something below—a gnarled wand, which cinched the straps tight. Even as what strength I possessed began to waver, I stretched and strained to try and get a hoof around the wand, but all I could manage was to touch it with my hooftips.
The moon’s light had formed into a ring above, and I twisted my neck to gaze down. Curved walls encircled me, a cup of water that would soon be my grave. A sword, its steel rusted and its leather-bound hilt torn, was embedded in the side of the cup. I tried to reach that, too, kicking with my legs.
I got my forelimbs around the hilt, but my stupid, useless hooves could only fumble with the blade. It tumbled down, down, down, settling far out of reach.
Darkness crept in around my vision, and my lungs felt like they were about to explode.
Sobbing, suffocated, I let go, all four of my legs drifting up and longing for the light.
My eyes shut. My burning lungs cried for air and I prepared to open my mouth and silence them once and for all.
A howl rippled through the water, and I jolted, startled by the sound that had issued forth from my own mouth in spite of the choking water. It sounded so wrong.
Dreaming. I was dreaming!
Kicking, coughing, I fought off my enclosing blankets. My limbs were no longer heavy with asphyxiation but with slumber. Another howl sent my heart racing, and adrenaline propelled me up and out of the tent, eyes wide and ears swiveling.
Our camp was now much darker, for the moon had fallen beneath the level of the trees on the way to its bed. The dim firelight made wavering, flickering shadows out of us and our tents. Everything had an unreal, spectral air that made my hair stand on end.
The yelping and snapping of the things that had chased us earlier were all around us now. Eyes watched us from the wood, reflecting the firelight back in snatches as they circled. It was impossible to count them, for they were less shapes in the woods and more ideas, nascent on the liminal edge of consciousness but threatening at any moment to spring fully into our attention if we slackened.
Naomi held the small pistol Marcus had brought in one hand, her jaw tight and her eyes wild. Her other hand held tight to Hector’s reins, and the big horse was snorting and stamping his hooves threateningly, rolling his eyes and trying to look everywhere at once. Marcus was checking the action on his rifle, making sure he was clear. It seemed as though Marcus, too, had just woken, so the howling had roused him as well.
Feeling utterly useless beside my armed friends, I selected one of the branches of firewood that we had and lifted it in my teeth, setting it against the fire. The dry twigs and leaves still clinging to the branch easily ignited, and I carried it forward to stand beside my friends. I’m sure that I looked stupid, with my unbrushed tail slanted to one side and my hair matted from sleeping. A useless horn and useless hooves rounded out my stupid, useless body.
Glints of teeth and the hungry panting of eager hunters closed in around us. Soft feet padded on the leaves as they circled. My ears swiveled every which way, trying hopelessly to track them.
“They’re coming closer,” Naomi whimpered. “I think they’re coming closer.” She twisted in place, trying to look around as much as her horse did. The pistol was held in a very professional grip, as might have been expected with her family being the way it was, but, if she had ever been menaced by a pack of unspeakable predators before, it wasn’t showing.
Marcus, too, looked nervous, but he was holding together much better than she was. Even though it appeared as if he had been yanked from a deep sleep himself, with his shirt thrown on inside-out, he was alert and intent upon protecting us. He half-lifted the rifle, trying to spot targets among the shifting shadows. For a moment, I felt like cursing Naomi for putting on a poor showing for our gender, and the thought almost made me laugh.
Maybe I was developing an unhealthy response to my situation. Then again, I was getting pretty close to losing it. The beasts started to bark, baying in low, hungry voices.
“We shou’ try t’ scahe t’em ohff,” I muttered around my branch. “If ‘ey get ‘old, wehr skewed.”
“What?” Marcus demanded of me, looking down briefly.
“She said, ‘We should try to scare them off. If they get bold, we’re screwed,’” Naomi supplied.
“Okay,” Marcus muttered. “Okay,” he added, as if the first time wasn’t enough. He lifted the rifle butt to his shoulder. “Fire two shots, no more. We’ll need it if they rush.”
“Fire where?” Naomi asked, squeaking slightly.
A hulking shape presented itself.
“Anywhere!” he growled. “One, two, three!” Quickly, I flattened my ears.
The rifle barked twice, the sound painful from this close. I never heard what happened to the first bullet, but the second hit something hard, off in the darkness. Belatedly, Naomi’s pistol rang out its own song, and an unoffending tree took a round nearby. A lupine yelp signalled that the second round had found at least some portion of our assailants. Hector screamed and reared, but Naomi had him well in hand and tugged hard on his reins, holding him still.
Trees erupted as, for probably the first time in its history, the Everfree Forest was violated by gunfire. Birds squawked and fled in panic, barely visible shadows of wings and feathers taking off in all directions. Around us, the creatures melted away. Some splashed across the stream below, some crashed through brush as they dove off the cliff I had seen, while others simply melted away into darkness. As quickly as it all started, all was silent. It was as if someone had gone and switched off the world’s volume.
The crack of the fire as some of the twigs collapsed jolted us out of our stupor. Marcus turned to Naomi, giving her an annoyed look as he asked, “Why didn’t you fire on three?”
“You never said fire on three. I thought you were going to say ‘Go!’ or something like that,” she protested. She was having her own little panic attack and had put the gun down to stroke Hector’s mane. Seeing as how the horse had already settled, it looked rather as if she was trying to comfort herself instead. Oddly, that made me feel better—seeing her freak out somehow blunted the shame I felt in panicking earlier.
Spitting the branch on to the fire, I paused to consider something. “It’s almost morning. Why didn’t you guys wake me for my shift?”
Naomi ceased her ministrations toward Hector. Marcus looked up from checking his rifle by the light of a tiny flashlight. They both looked to one another.
“Let me guess, you switched off at midnight instead of doing three shifts.” Not waiting for confirmation, I sighed and waved a hoof, continuing, “Forget it. I get it, I can’t defend myself so all I could have done is screamed and cried anyway.”
“No,” Marcus said. I started to cut him off, but he got there first. “Daphne, hold on. You can stop right there. You were barely managing to stay on your feet at all last night and it was already late. We didn’t switch off at midnight because it was midnight. We only had two shifts and we wanted to give you a chance to sleep.”
I shut my mouth quickly. The full moon had been directly overhead. Of course, that could have meant anything on an alien world, but we had been so far relying on that correlation with our world. ”Sorry.” I said tersely, hanging my head. “Don’t tell me to shut up,” I added, half-heartedly. So what if he hadn’t actually said the words? He had meant it.
“Stop being stupid and I won’t have to.”
“You little—!”
“If you two start up again I am going to shoot you,” Naomi said curtly. “Save it.”
I scuffed a hoof. “Fine.” Damn Naomi, stopping us before it could get good. “He started it, though.”
“Who accused who first, again?” asked Marcus.
Naomi picked her pistol up and clicked the safety off. We wisely decided that there were better things to do at that point.
“What time is it?” I asked. Experimentally, I stretched out my legs and was rewarded with pleasant pops. There was soreness there and a potential for cramping, but that would be something to worry about as we went on.
Naomi lit the screen on her sports watch. “Five-twenty-two. Should be seeing the first slivers of twilight soon, if it’s the same as back home.”
“Should we try to get some rest?” Marcus asked, keeping the rifle on his legs. Doubtless, he planned on staying up regardless of what we did.
Naomi shook her head. “I don’t think so. What if those things come back? We do not want to be here.”
Stepping forward, I shook my own head as well, disagreeing. “No. If they come at us while we’re moving, they could be on us before we even knew they were there. We still have the fire while we’re at camp.” I butted my head against Naomi’s side and nudged her towards her tent. “You go get an hour or so of sleep. You were up last.”
Reluctantly, Naomi let me push her back into the tent, and I returned to sit opposite the fire from Marcus with my haunches on the ground. My poncho and scarf were shed and packed away, given the rising warmth and cloudless sky. I considered making breakfast briefly, but decided to wait a while so Naomi could at least nap for part of the morning.
Of course, I hadn’t exactly worked out how I was going to do any cooking in my present state, but I was sure I could figure something out. It couldn’t be disastrously difficult to set up Naomi’s little field stove—I hoped. Worst case scenario, I could prepare the cold food and granola. The fire rose higher as I pushed a heavy branch—a log, really—into the pit and let it catch.
Awkward silence fell over me and my ex-boyfriend, even as the sounds of night in the Everfree returned. For all that the illusion of security had been stripped away by the menacing of our camp, the building up of the fire had banished the eerie shadows and made the center of the cleared area warm and inviting. Even the nightmare seemed distant and unimportant.
Looking down, I lifted a hoof to consider it. Hard, keratinous, and uncaring, it stared back at me. Perhaps the nightmare wasn’t so irrelevant after all. A dream about drowning and fumbling every attempt to save myself because of clumsy, inadequate hooves was about par for the course.
“So,” Marcus broke the silence that lay between us, “you look different now. Don’t tell me, did you do something with your hair?” Cheesy jerk. Never was as funny as he thought he was.
“I cut it, actually, yes,” I answered, not letting him bait me. The last thing we needed was for Naomi to wake up and come murder both of us in a justifiable homicide. I would beg her to kill him first, so I could watch.
Or equi-cide. What does one call a pony murder? Probably a tragedy.
“It is shorter now. I actually kind of liked it long. It looked good on you.” Putting his sidearm pistol aside, he began to field strip his rifle. With no hope of replacing our gear barring a trip back to civilization, prudence in care would go a long way towards keeping alive our one advantage over the monsters.
There he went, trying to emotionally manipulate me again by complimenting me. “Funny, I wasn’t thinking about you at all when I cut it.” Oh well, Naomi would just have to kill us.
“Oh, right, you’re a horse, now, too,” he replied, his tone flat. “How’s that working out for you?”
“Great! It’s not like I’m going to be stuck like this or anything.”
“That’s okay. You’ll be the prettiest girl in the petting zoo.”
I scowled and looked towards the ground. A brass glint caught my eye, and I pushed some grass aside to find a casing from Naomi’s handgun. Experimentally, I tried to pick it up. No dice—it just tapped against the edge of my hoof and stayed right where it was.
“How did it happen again?” he asked after another moment of silence.
“I was wrestling with some ugly guy for a magic wand and it took me right in the chest,” I answered, gritting my teeth in concentration as I pressed at the spent casing, trying to will my hoof to pick it up. This only served to bury it into the soft earth and make my hoof dirty.
“Is that horn supposed to be good for anything?” he asked. Actually, it was rather nice having an opportunity to talk to someone normal about all of this. Naomi was definitely curious, but the hungry light in her eyes could be a little off-putting.
“Yeah, it is. It’s supposed to let me do magic,” I grumbled, giving up on the cartridge. Let it rot there for all time, or be picked up and used as material for a crow’s nest for all I cared. “Damned if I know how I’m supposed to do that, though.”
“Have you tried anything with it?”
“Yeah, setting you on fire.” I tried to keep the tone more joking than spiteful. Maybe just a little spite leaked in; it wouldn’t hurt anything.
Marcus shrugged, and began to reassemble his rifle. “I don’t feel like I’ve been set on fire. Maybe a little warm. You probably ought to review your technique.”
“Hold still a minute and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Yeah? Well, so long as you don’t try singing, I should be fine. Your voice could kill wildlife at twenty paces.” He rose, rifle in hand, going over to the packs. I stuck my tongue out at his back.
I was about to add something curt, but he pulled his shirt off and started searching for another. A turn to see the fresh shirt in the light exposed his bare chest to me, and, somehow, I had lost what I was about to say, my mouth having gone completely dry.
Shaking my head, I snorted noisily. I must have been more tired than I thought. Thankfully, the logistics of a hot breakfast occupied me as I made my way over to the packs myself. Out came the collapsible grill and the pot. Packets of oatmeal, sausages, and other useful goods stayed where they were until I could figure out cooking without hands.
Just as Naomi had surmised, the first edges of twilight were soon staining the horizon, meaning that Equestria matched up with Earth in surprisingly exact ways. The fantastic cover of stars, undimmed by city lights, had not yet surrendered to the dawn. I wished Amelia were here beside me, so she could point out the constellations and brattily assert her astronomical know-how like she always did.
Said wish was accompanied by a heavy heart, and I bit back a pained whimper. With the grill held in my mouth, I roamed back over to the fire and considered how best to approach the problem at hand. Carefully, I unfolded the grill and was relieved to find that it had a high, plastic-coated handle that would allow it to be moved in or out of the fire without risking fingers—or my hairy face. Leaving it there, I went back for the pot.
Briefly, I considered telling Marcus to go fetch water. The thought of sending him on errands greatly appealed to me in general. Maybe he could do it without his shirt on.
All thought was shoved violently out of my brain as I grabbed the pot’s handle in my teeth and trotted down to the stream. Dunking it in like a bucket, I let it sink a bit before pulling it up with only mild strain. It was strange how used I was getting to carrying things like that. The branches had been rough, but they didn’t bother my mouth as much as they would have as a human, and my neck was more than up to the task of carrying a heavy pail of water.
While Marcus kept watch, I gripped the grill with my teeth and put it closer to the fire, then left the pot on top to boil and kill off any alien bacteria. By the time the pot was bubbling I had gotten three bowls on the grass and a packet of oatmeal ready. Very, very carefully, I managed to open the packet and upended it over the pot with my teeth. The now-murky water stopped boiling at once, and I grabbed a long wooden spoon and started to stir.
“That’s actually kind of impressive,” Marcus said. “I’d say I’m shocked that you didn’t manage to seriously burn yourself, but that you did it at all is fairly incredible.”
“Could have lent a hand, you know,” I mumbled around the spoon. Of course, I had very deliberately not asked him for help and would have been grievously offended had he done so, but that was a detail he didn’t need to know.
Instead of retorting, he went and fetched some of the sausages, taking a long fork to put them on the grill beside the pot. They sizzled immediately, and he had to raise them manually to keep them from burning, turning them over each in turn.
A monster could have attacked us right then, and I don’t think we would have cared.
Naomi, surrounded in a halo of red hair that could have been its own sunrise, crawled out of her tent with a wondering expression. “Wow. That smells fantastic. I know that’s hunger talking for the most part, but just wow.”
As dawn’s first light chased the stars away one-by-one, we prepared our first breakfast on an alien world. Naomi had brought along snack-sized juice boxes and set them beside the bowls, along with some trail mix and a small bag of apples. Hector got one of them, the greedy beast, before he contented himself with the nearly virgin grazing. Great clumps of long grass, thick with clover, meant that we wouldn’t need to use up any of the feed Naomi had brought yet.
Of course, it probably wouldn’t be hard to find horse feed where we were going.
“You know, you could join him,” Marcus said, prodding my side, which made me jump slightly. “Probably save us a lot of trail food.”
I glowered at him, and carefully moved the grill back from the fire so as to take the heat off the oatmeal. Looking out at the little clearing, it wasn’t hard to remember a dawn long ago when that very same question had come up.
Conjuring the scene up, I could see a dark-coated unicorn filly sitting beside a makeshift tent that was more bedsheet than anything. She watched a little blond girl beating an egg with a fork in a small bowl, licking her lips hungrily.
“Be patient,” little Daphne told her friend, as Leit Motif tried to push her nose in.
“You burned them last time,” the filly pointed out. “Nearly set the whole forest on fire.”
“I’m going to get it right this time, and we got the fire out!” Daphne groused, elbowing the other girl back. “Besides, can’t you just munch on some grass if you’re hungry?”
Leit narrowed her eyes, snorting. “Oh, yeah? Just graze anywhere, huh?”
“Yeah,” young Daphne said, “we’re surrounded in the stuff. Don’t ponies eat grass?”
“Yeah, sure, on sandwiches, and it’s grass we’ve grown, not picked up off the ground.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
There was a pause. Daphne then boldly picked some grass off the ground and bit into a handful. Leit Motif dug in, too, pulling some up with her teeth. Both started to chew thoughtfully. Daphne’s face slowly started to pale, while Leit’s soured.
“Thif taftes awful,” Daphne whined through grassy mush.
“Yuff,” Leit agreed.
“Daphne?” Naomi called, interrupting my reverie. “Do you want cinnamon and sugar in yours?”
Snapping out of my recollections, I turned to find the bowls already spooned out. She had even gone so far as to cut my apple into slices and stick a straw into my juice box. Both she and Marcus were already digging into their sausages. All around us, birds were greeting the dawn with glorious song, while the penetrating rays of light set the nearby stream to sparkling. The richest green grass I had ever seen warred with clusters of violet and blue flowers, while the beds of red and golden leaves from those trees which had shed their burdens glowed with autumnal radiance.
“Yeah…” I was momentarily transfixed by my first true glimpse of this new world. “Yeah, I would, thanks.”
Settling down, I tucked my legs up against my body and lowered my head down. In full view of the others, I very nearly asked Naomi to help take my bowl out of sight so that they wouldn’t see me reduced to stuffing my face directly into my food. That was a mildly irrational thought—after all, Naomi had seen that last night, and it wasn’t like Marcus couldn’t see for himself that I was practically an invalid. Still, knowing that they knew, and seeing their faces as I ate…
Stalwartly, I dug in anyway. Let them stare if they liked. At the very least, I took the time to carefully slurp up the hot oatmeal rather than shoving my face into the bowl. Naomi’s family only stocked steel-cut Irish oats and, while they weren’t quite as good as when cooked in a crock pot overnight like they did at her place, they were still delicious. The apple slices were crisp and crunched pleasantly between my broad teeth, adding a satisfyingly fruity bite.
It took me longer than either of them to finish, so they set about packing up. By the time I was done, I felt replenished. With most of a night’s sleep and a full belly, it was almost as if I were whole again. That didn’t stop me from licking up every last speck of oatmeal, though, closing both of my forelegs around the bowl to hold it steady. Taking the bowl in my teeth, I ran it through the stream water before returning it to Naomi’s packs, then glanced around for more chores.
With little else to do to help them pack up, I kicked sand over the fire pit and tamped it down with a hoof. “Well, at least we won’t be in trouble with park authorities, whoever or whatever they may be.”
“Oh, can you imagine how cute a pony in a ranger hat would be?” Naomi said as she cinched the straps of Hector’s saddlebags. “Or even better, a Canadian Mountie uniform.” She patted the big Arabian’s flanks, cooing to him softly. “It’s all right, dear. Even though you can’t talk, I still love you.”
Watching her perform dexterous tasks with her hands was giving me a distinct sense of inadequacy again. Like everything else around here, it just served as a reminder of the terrible changes that had been inflicted upon me. Walking around on all fours was humiliating enough without having lost the ability to perform basic tasks. If I’d had shoes I couldn’t have tied them, and the fact that I didn’t need them was just one more sign.
Sitting around and sighing wouldn’t accomplish anything, however.
Actually, thinking about how strange my body was reminded me that I hadn’t really had an opportunity to examine myself. There had certainly been points during the night where I had taken stock, but it had been through a haze of exhaustion and hunger.
The creek afforded me a little distance from the others, so I moved behind some brush along the shore line that was within range of their voices, but would obscure me enough to afford a modicum of privacy. Sitting down, I went about examining myself properly. My forelegs were the natural place to start. Though strong and stocky, they had a peculiar flexibility about them, the joints bending quite easily and offering what seemed to be a full range of motion. Reaching up, I could touch the top of my head and scratch my own back.
This was all done with one forehoof braced against the ground, but it didn’t seem as if that was as necessary as I had thought. I tried to sit upright, craning back little by little as I lifted my other hoof. At first, my spine protested, but the proper angle wasn’t hard to find, with a little experimentation. Gesturing with both hooves to test my balance, I grinned and even folded my arms. It was fun to imagine the look on someone’s face if they came and saw me like this—perhaps a good trick to play on Marcus later.
Just as I was getting cocky, though, I craned a little too far and flopped on my back, hooves splaying in the air. I turned over with a grumble and shook grass and leaves from my coat. I’d already examined my coat, of course—cream hair, very unlike the coats of horses I knew from the farm and definitely unlike Leit Motif’s own navy blue. My tail smarted from where I had landed on it, and I reached back to massage the dock.
A tail, now, was probably one of the strangest parts about this experience, aside from the hooves. Humans hadn’t had tails for ages, barring some congenital abnormalities, and certainly never one like this. It was still mostly clean from the washing Naomi had given it, a sandy blond that was the same color my hair had been before. Getting used to it had been almost automatic after the first few steps—it seemed to have a mind of its own, tilting this way and that to help me keep balance.
Remembering once having turned a light on with it, I found that it could be swished back and forth with a little concentration. It could be flipped up or down, swung in a circle, or even tilted at odd angles. Now that was something Hector might envy.
“Daphne,” Marcus called, making me jolt, “are you done playing with yourself back there or could you answer a few questions?”
“Go to hell.” I swiveled my ears in his direction and rose up on my hind legs to look. He was busy cleaning his rifle again, while Naomi was making a hand-drawn map. “What do you want to know?”
“We fought off hell-only-knows-what last night. Do you have any idea what else might be lurking around the bend to gobble us up?”
“Uh.” A dim memory of seeing tall, dark shapes in the distance last night came to mind. Perhaps that hadn’t been a sleep-addled hallucination. “Yes and no. Oh, hey, I can stand on two hooves like this for a whi—eep!” My balance gave out and dropped me back to the forest floor.
“Well? Which is it?”
Spitting up grass, I walked over to join them. “Leit did tell me a little bit about the forest. She said that most ponies were afraid to go into it, and that all sorts of strange things would come out of it.”
“That stands to reason,” Naomi said, not looking up from her work. “Like the plant from New Zealand we found, there may be other places this forest opens up to. It bodes interesting questions for species migration.”
Marcus knit his brow. “Am I the only one not noticing that if that were true, we’d have monsters coming out in Massachusetts all the damned time?”
“As I said before,” said Naomi with a sigh, “there have been a lot of strange sightings going on for centuries near the park. Don’t ask me why no one’s ever caught a monster, though. Planetary travel is a new one on me.”
“Perhaps the ponies know more than we do?” I glanced up at my horn. “Unicorns do magic, and if that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.”
“You probably don’t.” Pedantry was one of Naomi’s favorite pastimes. “Keep in mind, if you have no idea of what the capabilities of magic are, it’s pointless to speculate about what it may or may not do.”
I poked her with a hoof, grumbling. “Would it kill you to pick a stable identity? One minute you’re a girly-girl, the next you’re a veterinarian, and now you’re a philosopher. Most people pick one and stick with it.”
She smiled beatifically. “Simple categories never capture the whole essence of a person, I say to the unicorn who was an airhead.”
“Hey!”
Marcus snapped his gun together. “So, you were saying about monsters?”
“Oh, right. Well, she thought I was ridiculously brave for coming out into my neck of the woods all the time. She asked me if I’d ever seen, uh...” Concentrating, I stared at a nearby patch of grass, reaching back into memory.
He gave me a steady look. “You’re doing that thing again.”
“What?”
“Ignoring me and spacing out.”
“I’m not ignoring you,” I said, distracted. “Nor spacing out, for that matter.”
“Sure,” he said in a tone that suggested he rather didn’t agree. “How many times did you blow me off like that, exactly? At least once a day?”
Growling, I rose to respond, but Naomi put a hand on the back of my neck and stilled me. I settled back down on my belly, snorting in a particularly horse-like fashion. “It’s not... look, when I was a kid, I read a book about memory techniques. There was a section about what are called memory palaces; they’re used to visualize information so you can remember it better later on.”
“The hell kind of childhood did you have, exactly?” He shook his head. “Running off with unicorns and reading dry textbooks.”
“Oh, shut up.” Settling back to find my thoughts again after the distraction was difficult. Strictly speaking, I had never had much need for an actual mental space to categorize things.
Normally, memories and imaginary images leap forward without much prompting.
For whatever reason, it always helped—and still does help—to think of water. I pictured an island, somewhere subtropical, or maybe Mediterranean, with a calm sea contrasted against a raging waterfall that cascaded down from high cliffs. The river atop those cliffs came from a spring, a fountain lined in marble and protected by columns. Chambers had been cut into the living rock, and from one emerged the thread of the memory I sought.
An image was conjured as I dove into the cave, and little Leit Motif appeared on the grass. She was looking at someone from the eye level of a sitting child. This was an early memory, from when they were still figuring each other out. It was easy to tell—back then, Leit had been a much more timid creature. She seemed to be hunched in on herself in a manner so habitual even she didn’t notice it, her green eyes wary. That brought a bit of a frown.
It had never really occurred before, but had she been running from something when she first found me? She’d had food with her, and it had to have been a pretty long way to walk.
“Daph?” Naomi asked, prodding my side.
“Oh, sorry.” I shook off the memory and turned back to Naomi. “She said there were timberwolves out here, as well as bears, karkinos, cerastes, lindworms, carbuncles—”
“Stop,” Marcus said, lifting his hand. “I don’t even know what most of those are and you’ve barely started.”
“Well—” Naomi began.
“No. I take it back. I’d rather not find out until I have to shoot it in the face. The last thing I want is to be paranoid about what might get me.”
“So,” I said, “you’d rather leave it to your own imagination about what horrible thing is going to leap out and eat you?”
“My imagination is nice and sedate. I’ll stick with bears and wolves, thank you.”
“Have it your way,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders—a motion that felt more awkward as a pony than I thought it would. “Say, are we about ready to go?”
“Yup!” Naomi said, rising as she folded up her new map. Hector, who had been waiting, stamped a hoof and chuffed as she slid up onto his back. “I was just about to ride around a bit and see if I can’t find a good path.”
“Don’t go too far,” Marcus said, slinging his backpack and rifle on.
Standing, I stared off into the distance. Birds were singing, and the wind rustled through the trees. In just a little bit I would be taking my first real steps into a new world. Even with the dire conditions surrounding my entrance here, there was still just a breath of excitement. A whole new horizon waited, just over the hill.
* * *
The wild wood that was the Everfree Forest was not lightly tread by ponies—nor by men.
Where Everfree State Park had been sane and reasonably safe but for the occasional bear and other hazards, the version near Ponyville was an altogether different beast. Even in late autumn, the air here was warmer than in Massachusetts. It was also far wetter. Marshy swamps made travel circuitous and difficult. The land rose and fell at its own whims, and we had to detour several times just to get around a fall that looked too dangerous to attempt.
Where moonlight had lent an ethereal beauty to our travels and made the darkness a terrifying unknown, dawn had brought a fresh new objectivity to the forest. A fog that had risen just after twilight still clung stubbornly to the low areas in a cloying mist, but the searching rays of sunlight revealed much. Patches of brambles warred for space with shrubs and ferns among the trees. Birds, many of them exotic, flitted from place to place, completely unafraid of us.
Attempting to mentally catalogue all the species in sight took up the first hour of the trip, at least. After spotting an honest-to-goodness green-billed toucan sharing a branch with an Egyptian vulture, though, my brain underwent a hard reset. There would be plenty of time to go birding when Amelia was safe.
Instead, I opted to fight with Marcus. He may have started it this time, actually, but it was hard to tell who had begun what once we started bickering. Being the generous and gracious girl—or mare—that I was, I chose to believe he was responsible.
“I really don’t see where you get off saying that my relatives are crazy. You got along fine with Naomi’s and they’re at least ten times crazier.” Marcus carefully strode over a green, moss-covered puddle. He was in the rear of our little party.
“So you admit that yours are at least a tenth as crazy as hers.” I glanced up at the sky and frowned at a potentially ominous cloud front. The last thing we needed was a storm.
“I already told you, that incident with the molasses tank was not their fault.” His face darkened. “And lay off my family. They’re quirky, sure, but they at least care what happens to people.”
“And just what’s that supposed to mean, you—”
“Guys,” Naomi interrupted from the front. “I know you two want to have it out, but please try and keep an eye on the forest.”
“He started it.”
“She started—” The sentence went unfinished. Marcus had stepped a little too close to the edge of the short cliff we had been following, and the loose earth there gave way, looking to take him with it. I turned at the sound, and managed to leap back and bite the front of his jacket before he tumbled into the ravine below. My own strength surprised me again as I reared back. Instead of merely hauling him to stable ground, I yanked him nearly on top of me.
We landed in a pile, him sprawled over me and barely catching the ground with his hands. My hooves were up, tucked close to my body, as our faces nearly touched, eyes staring wide into each other.
“Heh,” he said, after a moment’s silence. “Thanks.”
“Abluh,” I mumbled, incoherent.
“I should get up.”
“Habluh.”
Marcus rolled off, while I remained stunned on the ground for a moment. My increased bulk had brought us uncomfortably close to kissing. Even the thought of actually doing so as a pony was mildly revolting—especially with Marcus. For just a moment, though, I had felt like my old self there. Just a girl with a boy.
Naomi poked me with a long stick she’d picked up off the ground. I twitched.
It was ridiculous, of course.
“Daph.” She leaned over me, hair draping across one side of her face.
There was no reason for it. All we had done since seeing each other was argue and fight.
“Daphne, time to get up.”
“Huh?” I asked, staring up at her. The cool wind pushing ahead of the storm tossed loose autumn leaves through the air around her.
Naomi giggled. “Has your brain reset yet?”
I scowled at her and turned over, standing back up. With a disdainful flick of my tail, I trotted ahead, checking out the path, if it could be called that.
Travel through the Everfree was not as straightforward as I might have hoped. I was fairly sure that Ponyville lay to the west, but traveling as the crow flies had only gotten us into trouble. We had wasted most of the day circumventing a fast-flowing river until it could be safely forded. Now we found ourselves staring at a rock wall that towered no shorter than ten feet, an escarpment that ran north to southwest and cut off any direct passage further west. This, with the sun already partway down. Leit Motif must have known some other way, or she was the most determined little filly who had ever lived to come through all this just to see me.
At the very least, no more monsters had presented themselves—yet. Maybe as a little girl I would have been excited to see monsters, no matter how dangerous they were, or maybe if it hadn’t have been for the danger Amelia was in, but now…
Responsibility is almost as good at killing dreams as my parents, it seemed.
“Come on,” I called. “I think we should head south. The forest’s edge can’t be that much further.”
* * *
The best laid plans oft go astray. In this particular instance, the plan that involved getting to Ponyville in a reasonable timeframe had been sidelined by the reality of Everfree geography and our utter lack of experience at navigating it. The sun rose and set in the proper places, certainly, and the full moon followed its opposite course in the expected manner that night. It was little help when the straight line we had taken crossed the path of so many natural obstacles, from the river to the escarpment, which continued the next day until we hit another river. That one fed into a ravine that forced us to backtrack for several hours before we found a way through.
Without anything like a GPS or range finder it was impossible to tell for sure, but Naomi comfortably reckoned that we had traveled no more than five miles due west. If we could have found a clear view of the eastern horizon, we could have looked upon the area of our first night’s encampment with the naked eye and even made some details out with Naomi’s binoculars.
My watch—which lay now in my pack, staring up at me as I dug through it for a candy bar—had stopped at eight-thirty-four, fairly close to the exact moment of my transformation. It had been well over twenty-four hours since my transformation, and the possibility of catching up to those creatures who had taken Amelia was dwindling. If there was to be any further hope of rescuing her, it lay with the race of creatures Leit Motif belonged to.
The duration of our trip was reason enough to feel depressed. My parents would have called Naomi’s sometime yesterday, or her parents them, and they would have realized that none of their girls were home. Marcus’ family invested a great deal more independence in him, but they, too, would find it strange when he didn’t check in by morning at the very least. Someone would probably find his bike soon, no matter how well it was hidden. Then Naomi’s parents and Marcus’ uncles would notice the firearms, ammunition, and supplies missing. In a few hours, Everfree State Park would be lit up with search teams.
They would find my discarded clothing and smashed cell phone pretty quickly, since they weren’t all that far from Naomi’s place. It would be the first and worst sign.
School would have started by now. I sighed, and pictured it in my mind, though I didn’t distract myself by projecting it onto the environment as I often did with my other daydreams. They would be putting up Halloween decorations now, a couple weeks beforehand. In another few days, parties would be formed and invitations sent about by word of mouth. They were always great parties, too.
After a few more days, there would probably be an announcement. There would be memorials some time after that.
Gloomy and perhaps a little depressed at these thoughts, I wondered if Marcus would be up for another fight. That would cheer me up. Sadly, it seemed he was busy taking up the rear guard.
Maybe I would let Naomi have her way and brush my mane, but that would have to wait until we stopped for a bit. My hooves were—after nearly two days of walking and running—exceptionally sore, and a rest would be appreciated, but determination drove me forward.
Ahead of us lay two different possibilities. In one direction was a rocky wash, which must have been a dry streambed, and in another lay a meadow filled with rich blue bell flowers. Both were heading west, which was the way I figured we had to go.
I took a step towards the meadow. “Let’s go this way, it looks easier.”
“Hold on,” Naomi called over to me. She turned her attention to Hector. The big horse was balking, looking around wildly.
“What is it, boy?” Marcus asked. “Did Timmy fall down the well?”
Droplets of rain misted through the tree cover above. It looked like the front was going to break over us after all.
I groaned, trying to stay under the tree cover while we waited for Naomi to calm her mount. The last thing I wanted was to get soaked with all of my hair. At least this time I wasn’t liable to go into hypothermia. Before I could really start feeling sorry for myself, though, Marcus pulled out my poncho from the packs.
“When did you find time to buy all of this crap, Naomi?” He stepped over to me.
“That I took from Daphne’s house, actually.” She grunted, tugging on Hector’s reins as the horse started to jump a bit, firmly admonishing him. “Honey, stop it.” With a sharp tug, she pulled his head around to her own, looking him right in the eye. Hector snorted once, and pawed at the ground in a manner that was almost sheepish. “What’s got you so unsettled, boy?” She gave Hector a cross look, but unless he had become an Equestrian and gained a couple more pounds of brain matter, it was unlikely he’d respond. It wasn’t the first time he had gotten antsy with nothing to show for it, but Naomi still looked around to see if anything might have spooked him.
“Thanks,” I told Marcus. “I had forgotten about that.” Displaying once again the surprising agility of an Equestrian pony, I craned up on my hind legs and let Marcus help stuff me into the rain coat. It fell across my back, not quite covering my hind legs down to the ankle, but easily keeping most of the rain off. My forelegs stuck out of the sleeves, and I must have looked absolutely ridiculous.
“You look absolutely adorable,” Naomi gushed. “Now pull the hoodie up so your little mane stays dry. Hee!”
“You’re disgusting,” I muttered, doing just that. I was going to murder her one of these days.
Even as we readied to go, though, Hector started whickering in fright again. This time, I noticed something as well. My ears twitched, searching around. There was an odd sound, a slimy rustling in the leaves. It seemed to be coming from all around us.
“Guys, what is—Holy cats!” I screamed as a vine snapped up at me from the leaf-strewn earth. The moment’s warning given to me by the sound let me leap back, just barely in time to avoid being caught. The forest around our feet came alive.
Two muddy vines whipped around one of Marcus’ legs and nearly dragged him down. Squirming and thrashing, roots and ropy tendrils lashed for anything they could hold. Hector stomped furiously, screaming and crushing roots to pulp, while Marc tried to pull himself free.
I leapt, landing hard on the vines holding him and crushing them under my own hooves. They spasmed and released, but more were rising up, and I soon found my own legs held. Crying out, I tried to struggle free, but more and more latched on, and their combined strength exceeded my own.
Marcus was there then, cutting with a heavy survival knife, and together we worked free. Naomi leapt expertly onto Hector’s back and charged by, heading for the wash, which was free of plants of any sort, and we raced after her.
My hooves and Marcus’ knife gave us purchase. We skidded into the now-muddy river bed, hurrying after Naomi, who was ducking to avoid the grabbing arms of the trees that lay on either embankment. Some terrible, verdant laughter chased after us, a chattering of wood and vegetation, and I dared not look back as we ran.
Just as all hope seemed to be lost, just as it seemed we would have no choice but to cower against the onslaught of animated plant life, we broke free. Not only of the suddenly hostile vegetation, but of the forest and even the weather, as well. One moment, we were running under a hail of whipping branches. The next we were clear, running out over the grass of a rich, green plain under direct sunlight.
Stunned, I slowed and stopped. Looking back, I could see that the wash had led us right out of the forest and that the rain stopped mere yards from where I was standing. The wind gusted it against my face occasionally, but it was like someone had gone and drawn a curtain across the field.
All three of us stared around, poleaxed. Fresh air carried by a gentle breeze caressed us, and I exhaled, reluctantly. Tension that had built up in the night and the morning’s chase ebbed out, leaving only a few hard knots—those remnants would probably take weeks of relaxation to smooth out.
Naomi and Hector ranged out ahead, the horse and rider exulting in the land, as Marcus and I caught our breath. It was a far cry from the claustrophobic enclosures of the Everfree—a land of rolling, grassy hills, dotted with trees and run through with clear, sparkling rivers, all framed by gentle, purple mountains. There was no sign of Ponyville, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that we were near.
It just reminded me so much of Leit Motif. Something of sunshine and gentle innocence.
Whatever had been after us in the Everfree didn’t seem able to exert influence over where we were now. The branches of the nearby trees stretched out to us, but their ardor cooled, and they stilled. At least it hadn’t been a dragon or something more tangible. Somehow, I didn’t think a mere biome change would have stopped one of those.
I trotted after Naomi, shuddering at the thought, and was rewarded with the warmth and freedom of the sunlit hills. A trot turned into a canter, then into a gallop, the wind running through my mane. I couldn’t help myself any more—I shed my raincoat, tossing it at Marcus, before giggling like a child and rearing with all hooves flailing. I ran.
I’d run a few times as a pony, but never in broad daylight, and never for the sheer joy of it. Soft earth vanished under my hooves and my mane and tail blew in the breeze behind me. I ran up hills and across grassy fields. I sharpened my hooves on lone boulders and ran through clear puddles. I chased swarms of butterflies and laughed as they tickled my coat.
I had never felt so good just being me.
Surmounting a rise, I caught my first glimpse of pony civilization, and I knew that I had, at last, truly come into Leit Motif’s world. A slow river eased its way across the countryside below the cliff. Beyond that, orchards of apple trees coated the land. They radiated out in waves, a fertile explosion of cultivation that centered on a barn and household that looked tiny in the distance.
Ponies running a farm. That was just weird to think about.
Turning, I hurried to gather the others, taking the time to leap a fallen log just because it was there.
Marcus was sitting on a rock, watching the river go by with an unreadable expression on his face. He had his jacket off against the warmth of the day and was leaning back. I slowed, and then began to creep up on him. With my body low in the tall grass, I stalked him, my tail flicking in eager excitement. Lifting my back, I set my rear legs and leapt.
He cried out in shock as I swept him from the rock and bore him down onto the grass. We rolled together for a time before I landed on top of him, my forelegs draped over him. The look on his face made me burst out laughing. After a moment, he started laughing, too. He rolled and pushed me off, and then pounced while I was on my back. His hands quickly found my sides.
“No, wait!” I cried out, and squealed as he scratched my sensitive sides. “S-stop!”
He grinned villainously. “Don’t think I forgot that you were still ticklish.”
“I’ll k-kill you!” I laughed, flailing my hooves in a futile attempt to stop him.
“Should have thought of that before you decided to pounce me!”
My squeals drew Naomi, who grinned as she saw us down there. “You decided to play ‘tickle the pony’ and didn’t invite me? I am deeply offended.” Hector could be seen near the top of the hill, rolling in the grass with abandon. “And, as I recall, didn’t you two break up?”
Marcus and I paused. Instantly, we darted several yards away from one another. Marcus picked up his jacket, busying himself with it, while I smoothed my sides and mane as best as I could. “I was just... you know, after the Everfree...” I searched for words without much success.
“Just needed to relax a bit,” Marcus explained.
“So I see.” Naomi crossed her arms, her grin growing wider.
“I found Ponyville!” I pointed a hoof the way I had come. “Or at least, part of it. There’s a farm and an orchard over the hill that way.”
A hungry light came on in Naomi’s eyes, and she snapped her head around. Her fingers twitched, but she smoothed her hair to occupy them. “We should... scout ahead,” she said at last.
“That means me.” I took a few steps forward. “Let’s go around the farm, actually. They’re not likely to know where Leit is—well, maybe, but she never mentioned living on a farm, just in town.”
“All right.” Naomi sounded anxious. Eager, even. “Come on, we’ll find a good place to hide.”
After collecting Hector, Naomi met Marcus and me at the ridge, and we started down to circle around the farm and head for Ponyville. The urge to break into a gallop and race all the way there built up inside of me, but I tried to restrain myself.
In a very short while, I was going to discover the fate of my old friend.
“...he had learned to hoard little injustices, wishing they might merge and leave him with one significant wound, for which he could guiltlessly martyr himself forever.” John Irving
Amelia
I’m not sure what I expected. If I had been expecting a room full of guards, a room full of actors, or a room at all, I was disappointed. If I had been expecting any of what I saw to make sense, I was disappointed.
Stairs were quickly becoming my mortal enemy. Even the little half-step down through the doorway sent me into a tumble, head over hooves, spinning and rolling for a while. I came to rest on my back, splayed out on top of rickety wooden slats, just a short way from the door. What lay above was my first true glimpse of the world I had been spirited away to.
There was no open sky above me. At least, not as far as I could tell. I thought I could see a ceiling up through the darkness, but it was lost in shadow. Most of the light poured out from the way I had come. Scaffolding crawled up a patched-together wall in such a haphazard fashion that it was hard to tell which was holding the other up. Flat panels, each painted to look like segments of sky or fluffy clouds, hung over the wall from hooks attached to long cranes. They moved, slowly, even as I watched, the cranes rotating on gears. Above it all, a huge, yellow light cranked along a massive apparatus that arched from one end of the set to the other.
Among those clouds, immobile, was Canterlot. From that angle, it became very clear indeed that it had simply been painted and left in place.
Remember, Twilight Sparkle had told me, that misdirection is the first and most important part of any illusionist’s art. When you trick the audience into thinking they see more than they really do, they end up seeing exactly what you want them to.
One lesson out of dozens that seemed extremely relevant at the moment.
If I had been expecting to be impressed, well, I wasn’t disappointed. The backstage of Ponyville—or, more aptly, Phonyville—was vast, much of it lost in shadow. Even so, I could still make out crazed assemblages of ramps, pulleys, boards, and belts. Cans of paint, and crates overflowing with costumes and props, lay in heaps around me, teetering dangerously. Everywhere was the sound of creaking and groaning and hissing machinery.
Really, had the whole thing not been some giant venus fly trap set just for me, it would have been one of the coolest things ever. As it was, it was only sort of cool. Like a really awesome toy set that had a habit of slamming on your fingers whenever you tried to play with it.
The sound of a springing pony echoing out from the still-open door reminded me that complacency was in short supply. I had been lucky enough to avoid running right into Fetter or some sort of elite squad of burly foal-catchers—or at least foal-catchers who were burly.
I scrambled back to all four of my stubby legs and bolted across the platform. A long table laid with pastries and pots of cold coffee stood unattended by a row of six mirrors, five of which were decorated in various ways. One was hung with balloons, another with a propped open book, a third had a sequined cape draped over its chair, a fourth a garland of flowers, and the fifth had what looked to be a spare hat for Applejack cocked over a hook. The sixth was bare and empty.
A long, narrow board presented itself as I dove between the dressing stands, leading out to the scaffolds across open air. I hesitated. Somewhere behind me, out of sight, four hooves thudded on wood all at once.
Sucking in my breath, I put a foot out and, carefully, started to walk across. Just one hoof in front of the other, that would do it. I didn’t think about long, dangerous falls from extremely high places into who-only-knew-what. I absolutely did not think about going splat at the bottom of whatever alligator-infested, spike-encrusted, fire ant hive rested below.
Actually, it would be pretty neat to see that sort of place, so long as it didn’t involve crashing into it at terminal velocity.
“Amy-pants, I’m coming to get you!” Pinkie Pie called playfully. Right, it was a bad time to get distracted. “I know you’re here, silly filly!”
Halfway across, the board began to sag, and I stifled a whimper. My hooves slid across the plank, inch by inch. Paint cans smacked together and racks of clothing were shuffled aside by my pursuer. Her excited giggling drove me on.
The opposite side came within reach, eventually. I stepped off my little bridge, allowing myself a sigh of relief once all four hooves were on solid ground again. Somehow, that shaky board had managed to hold my weight, in spite of its protests. The scaffolding ahead was nearly as narrow, consisting largely of steel tubing nailed into the back of the Phoneyville stage and creaky wooden boards lain between those to form a sort of walkway. There were ladders here in there, dimly visible in the dark, as well as folded bundles of cloth and coils of rope. I prepared to saunter forward—
“Wait, Amelia, no!” Pinkie Pie cried out, stretching out her hoof from between the dressing stands. She’d found me at last. In a panic, I leapt fully onto the boards, further away from her.
The snap of the slat under my hooves came as too late a warning—later even than Pinkie’s—and I dropped like a stone. Screaming, I plowed through the layer beneath me, and then the one after that. Each one snapped under my weight and momentum like dried twigs, and I flailed uselessly for anything to hold on to. It seemed as if I might plummet into oblivion, but one of the broken planks beneath me caught on something hard at an angle and, this time, held when I landed on it. Even with the semi-elastic give, it still knocked the wind out of me and rattled all of my teeth. Before I could recover, though, both it and I slipped off. Flashes of carved stone jumped out of me as I careened down unknowable depths on my makeshift surfboard.
When my breathe returned, it seemed that I had finally met the light at the end of the tunnel. Instead of dying, however, a great glass window rose up to meet me. Its stained decorations were a terrifying blur, and I lifted my forelegs to cover my face at the imminent prospect of being vivisected by pretty colored glass. Instead of hitting it, however, my sled dropped suddenly, and I plummeted again, banging and skidding off worn stone before sliding to a stop with an unexpected splash.
It was impossible to tell how far I had fallen. The whole trip had taken no more than a few seconds, even if the terror made it feel longer, and I was so dizzy I couldn’t tell how much of it had been down, around, or even up. Bruised and battered, I crawled away from the crash site, flopping through shallow water. I probably should have been surprised that nothing was broken, but my jaw dropped as I took in my new surroundings.
All around me rose the walls of a massive cavern, carved out of natural stone and worn smooth. A stream ran through it, cascading down a huge throne near the back, which had been carved from the same hard granite. The throne had no top, instead forming a pillar that supported the ceiling beside a crevice where the water poured from in a steady, clear flow. A great staff of ash wood—almost a tree trunk in itself—leaned against one arm.
Sections had been carved out and stained glass windows marched down the hall beneath the vaulted ceiling, each depicting a strange person and a number of wooden sticks. Statues of similarly misshapen people stood in rows under them, though many bases were missing their occupants and other statues looked to have been damaged or left incomplete, with their subjects rising out of unworked stone.
A bang of iron on stone rang out from somewhere behind me, and I jumped, all of my considerable hair standing on end. My erstwhile sled was quickly kicked into the water before I searched about for somewhere to hide, desperation making me prance in place. Footsteps thudded with steady purpose as I dove past a pair of unfinished-looking statues and squeezed past a crack in the wall behind them that looked to be in the middle of repairs. There were cans of plaster and sealant left scattered about. The only light came from the crack, and it seemed like I was in a small back passage of some sort. Feeling around with my hooves, I found the rungs of a ladder and, lacking other options, started to climb.
The sight of a filly scaling a ladder with her hooves would probably send anyone who came looking into a fit of laughter, at the very least. Putting my rear hooves on the lower rungs and using my fore-pasterns to climb made for slow, but steady progress. When I reached the top, I bit back complaints and tears at the strain—tough and flexible or not, I don’t think ponies were meant to climb like that.
Back in the throne room I had just vacated, the footsteps had grown louder, with a heavy clop, clop, clop that made me wonder if one of the larger ponies had come looking for me. Once I had scaled the ladder, I was able to climb all the way up to the level of the windows. They each had ledges where I could stand and get a peek back into the throne room. The area was cramped with more scaffolding, too, so it was easy to clamber up. Apparently the entire cave or whatever was under construction, with haphazardly discarded tools and material scattered about.
Growing curious, I took the opportunity to check over the massive sill of each window. It took a while, but I found one that had clear glass and pulled myself up to press my face against that spot.
“...made in readiness, great lord,” Fetter’s voice rose as the figures entered the hall, echoing through the pane. “Yer castle is nearly repaired, and more of us arrive by the day from the Ways. The Well and the Golden Bridle remain as they were, untouched.”
Looking down at the throne room from above, I grumbled, for I couldn’t see the great chair in the back from here and the owner of the hooves had moved on. However, Fetter was there, standing to one side of the stream and looking on, nervously holding his gnarled wand close.
“Fetter,” a voice boomed down the cavernous hall, “in all of your many years of service, I have never questioned your casting calls before.”
The goblin winced and dared open an eye to look.
“And I must admit, the parts were all spot on. Spot on. I just wanted to ask one thing. One, little thing.”
“Ah... y-yes, Yer Majesty?” Fetter asked. “What might I, yer humble servant, eluci... luci... er, clarify for you?”
“Did I see one of the actual, unadulterated, indisputable Elements of Harmony in my castle?” the voice demanded, rising into a bellow that shook dust from the ceiling.
“Haha! Oh, yer Majesty, what a fine sense of humor you have, I—” there was a bang and the terrible sound of cracking stone. “Y’know, there’s a funny story about that,” Fetter changed tack at once.
“Do I seem to be laughing?”
“Not in the least, your Magnificence,” the goblin went on. “It’s all to do with the timing.”
“Timing?” the voice asked, skeptically. “I had best hear some sense before long, Fetter. I can find a new Knight if I must. One who will not bungle quite so dramatically as you seem to have. Timing was never a key part of the Event, so long as it happened in the correct fashion.” Peculiar emphasis had been placed on the word “Event.” My ears cocked forward, trying to catch every little nuance.
“No, no, you see, my lord, in Equestria it has been nearly nine years! Why, we only just barely fixed up your castle, y’should have seen the state of it, it was proper dilapidated it was. All of the foals went and grew into mares, while our Rainbow Dash went missing entirely. I sent messages and flyers out everywhere.”
“Why did you not simply transfigure someone suitable? Did I give you that wand so you could scratch your back with it?”
“It weren’t that simple. It just wouldn’ stick, m’lord. I must’ve gone through half a dozen goblins and all of them turned out completely wrong. Something was hinderin’ the wand’s power from the start—I thought at that point we’d have to kidnap a pony, do the usual, but it would have taken bloody forever. That’s when the opportunity came knockin’ for us.” Fetter stepped forward towards the throne, pulling a rolled scroll out of his coat, going on. “It was one of the messages we sent out. The receiver wrote back.”
“You’re not telling me—”
“Yes, in her very own hand! Er, hoof,” he corrected, and unfurled the scroll. “‘Dear Castin’ Agency guy, I understand you’re lookin’ for somepony to play the part of Rainbow Dash in an upcoming play. Obviously, this was the best idea I had ever heard in my life. Who wouldn't want me in their play? I can’t believe you never wrote me when I’m right here, though, totally available and obviously completely suited to the role. I think it’d be,’” he paused, “Hold on, she scribbled on this part. There’s a drawin’ in the margins of a pegasus in flight with rainbows and stars.”
“Really,” the other voice said, dry.
“Here we go, it goes on to say, ‘totally impossible to find someone who was even half as awesome as me to play as me, so why not try the real thing? Signed, Rainbow Dash. PS: Keep this signature, my autograph is going to be famous! See attached for photos of me posin’ and performin’ stunts, along with a handy illustration of me fightin’ a giant eagle, because I can totally do that if the production calls for it.’”
Silence reigned for a moment as that sank in.
“I am failing to see how this precludes my chucking you off the parapets.”
“Don’cha see, great king? It’s perfect!” Fetter beamed. “She hadn’t the slightest clue, she thought it was just a performance! Oh, she grumbled a few things about gamblin’ and made us pay her an obscene sum to keep on for a few days, but she seemed to enjoy the work. Right tidy job she’s been doin’, too. The girl loves her.” Fat chance she did. Shows what he knew.
“Then we get to the part where she was flying out of the castle. Doesn’t seem quite so ‘tidy’ to me from here.”
“Ah, yes, that.” Fetter chuckled nervously. “Well, yes, I’m right on that, actually! Our Twilight was catchin’ up with her. Fine girl she is, seems to really understand the craft, took right to it. In fact, I’d better go see how she’s doin’!”
“Wait, Fetter,” the voice said, arresting the goblin in his tracks. “It occurs to me that this nearly complete disaster of yours regarding the Element has an unexpected silver lining.”
“Aye, m’lord?” Fetter asked, but I had already heard enough.
Pulling away from the window, I set my jaw and raced along the scaffolds. There had to be an exit in the direction Fetter had started running if Rainbow Dash was leaving. I could potentially reach her before he did, too, if he was being held by his unseen master, unless the way turned in an unexpected manner. Chances were, likely, but I was pretty short on options at the moment.
Maybe I could get a few answers, too.
A run turned into a crawl as I squeezed past a small, rectangular opening. Uncut stone was above me and someone’s roof lay beneath. Patches of canvas were stretched here and there and pipes were left to direct dripping water. From the sounds coming from below—shouts, arguments, snoring, cheers—I was apparently in a crawlspace over a bunch of apartments. Desperation sped me on, and I didn’t care if anyone heard my hooves tapping over them in my headlong rush.
There was a small hatch up ahead, and, behind that, a set of stone doors lay in the room beyond. A pair of short, lumpy statues stood guard, with minuscule braziers full of burning coals casting smoking light across what must be the entrance to the castle. A tiny blue figure hovered impatiently before them, and a small stream hissed on the far side
A hovering blue figure…
I blinked, and looked again, the perspective readjusting as my eyes focused. Rainbow Dash, her multihued mane and tail unmistakable, was her normal size. The two statues I had seen were enormous, however, each towering at least ten or fifteen feet over her head, all hard stone and studded with spikes. What seemed like a small stream was in fact a fair-sized portion of a river, probably the one I had seen outside the castle when I’d first arrived.
As a further shock, the statues moved, and I saw that they weren’t statues at all, but a pair of great ugly goblins as big as houses, their armor made of riveted iron plates. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if I had imagined it, but I was positive they had been stone and stock-still just a moment before. The huge ogrish soldiers looked down at her with puzzled expressions, evidently wondering what this technicolor horse wanted with them. I tried to spot Dooris, but I couldn’t even see the tiny door Fetter had approached that first night, assuming this was even the same side of the castle.
Even as I watched, a dark blur skidded to the floor beside Rainbow Dash in a hard landing, her wings and mane askew. Twilight Sparkle no longer looked quite so much like a princess to my eye. She was a mess, for one, and her stricken face conveyed a wealth of panic that was not at all regal.
“Wait, Rainbow, please!” Twilight Sparkle pleaded, coughing up dust as she scrambled back to her hooves.
“I already told you, I’m leaving, and I’m leaving right now,” Rainbow announced as she flew up to the face of one of the guards. “Open up! I’m getting outta here.”
The giant looked thoughtful, something that it didn’t look like it had to do regularly and which caused it enormous discomfort. “Boss Fetter sez no openin’ the doors.”
“So just open one of ‘em.”
The giant blinked, slowly, and moved to push at a door. His partner reached over and banged on his head, sending up a great gong as gauntlet met iron helm. “Don’ be an idjit. Warn’t that good a trick.”
“Aw, c’mon!” Rainbow protested, before landing in front of the doors. She turned and bucked them with her rear hooves, eliciting no more than a faint thump. “Oww.”
“Please, don’t go,” Twilight said, coming up to Rainbow’s side while the latter nursed her cannons. “I don’t understand what’s gone wrong.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Rainbow demanded. “I mean—okay, so I have no idea what’s going on, except that I’m in a freaky castle filled with freaky people and a bunch of freaky pony actors. Just what kind of production is this, anyway?” She rose up and flared her wings aggressively, advancing on Twilight. “Just what am I looking at here?”
Twilight fell back, her own eyes falling to the floor and her wings drooping. “I-I thought you knew, I-I m-mean, didn’t Fetter explain?”
“Explain? Explain nothing! I get a letter looking for someone who’s supposed to be playing Rainbow Dash, I show up, show off, get the gig, and then, outta nowhere, I find out that I’m supposed to play big sister to some kid who obviously didn’t know the whole thing was staged. For days.And she went and practically bit my nose when I tried to tell her!”
Rainbow’s wings sagged once she’d finished, and she muttered, “Little twerp, I was just trying to help.” The echoes carried the sound my way.
Red filled my vision, making it rather hard to concentrate. If I hadn’t been trying to hide, I might have sprung down and charged her right then.
It was just like with Daphne. Rainbow Dash was just like her. Big sister, indeed.
I knew all about big sisters. They existed for one purpose: to let you down and abandon you when you needed them the most.
Twilight had managed to get a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder, and spoke so softly now it was hard to catch the echoes in the chamber. “It’s all right… sure she… wonderful little filly… cares about you… acted back at the… talk to Fetter… straightened out—explain everything.”
“Look, you.” Rainbow knocked Twilight’s hoof aside and pointed one of her own at the other mare. She flinched back, looking hurt. “I’m not doing anything, except leaving.”
Twilight’s response was inaudible, but she looked to be acquiescing, before another pony sprang into the room, pink legs flailing wildly. “Girls, girls!” Panting, Pinkie Pie slid to a halt beside them, gripping the pair of them in her forelegs. “I just saw Amelia. She fell down the scaffolding!”
“What?” they both demanded at once.
“Stop staring at me like that and come help me look! She could be hurt!”
I didn’t need to hear any more. There was no getting out the front door. Fetter would be here any minute and now they were actively looking for me.
Besides, I didn’t want to spend one more minute looking at that awful blue pegasus.
If a river was flowing through the castle, then that meant there was a way out, and I was going to find it.
* * *
Saying, apparently, was a lot easier than doing around here.
Obviously, dashing across the open entryway would have ensured everyone and everypony would have seen me, so it was back into the crawlspace. The leaky, poorly maintained tunnels had me squirming and shuffling for what felt like miles. I nearly fell into someone’s living room more than once, and almost into someone’s bubbling stewpot on one occasion. As I went, goblins were starting to rouse and collect themselves, heading out to do whatever it is a goblin did with their day.
My break came when I saw where they were getting their water. The main part of the castle was a great empty shell, I noticed from another scaffold, rising up to the Phonyville stage and its artificial sun. Not too far away, a massive vertical conveyor rose towards the ceiling, with enormous buckets full of water on one side and upturned ones on the other. It was emptying itself somewhere above, but what was far more interesting was where the water was coming from—down below.
With a determined grin, I found the nearest point on the bucket elevator, gathered a running start, and leapt clear across the gap to land on the bottom of one of the descending barrels with a hard, painful thud. I glanced around, hoping to see if Rainbow Dash, Twilight, and Fluttershy were in the air looking for me, but none of them were around.
Come to think of it, I had never seen Fluttershy actually fly. Reflecting on the conversation Fetter had held with his unseen master, I began to wonder if I had ever actually met somepony named “Fluttershy” at all, or anypony aside from Rainbow Dash for that matter.
“‘Anypony?’” I mouthed, rolling that over on my tongue. Great, now I was doing it.
At that point, I decided to look down off the side to see where I was going. This proved to be a tremendous mistake, and I spent most of the trip down curled up in a ball at the dead center of my ride. Perhaps leaping off the scaffold like that had not been my brightest idea.
Vertigo subsided as the descent neared its nadir. The bowels of the castle, dug deep into the native rock, were damp, dark, and filled with strange noises that echoed up out of unknown, impossible vastnesses. Dim light filtered down from above, but also from below and along the sides; a faint, eerie luminescence in a white pallor. It seemed to me that I could hear snatches of song drifting out. Perhaps from above, where the goblins were just starting work, or from below and beside. It was impossible to tell.
With axe in hand and stone beneath,
Into the maw below,
For a pauper’s life we can’t abide,
To the tunnels we must go.
We go, we go,
In service to the throne.
The descending bucket drew lower still, and I could dare to look over the edge now. Groaning, I pulled back. A dark pool lay below, glittering in the dim light and rippling from the passage of the conveyor. If there was a river exit there, I had missed it. Leaping from the bucket as it lowered, I spun down the smooth, slimy, moss-covered rock and slid to a halt.
Against heartless beasts below,
Into the deep we march for gold,
They’d eat us, ‘fore we know,
But the riches lie untold.
“The Morgwyn always wonders why the wee bairn takes the long route.”
My head lifted up, and beheld the creature standing on one of the spurs of rock that rose all about. “The short way was straight down.”
So we go, we go,
In service to the throne.
“Indeed. This one noticed,” it agreed, and flicked its tail.
Rising, I shook myself. Maybe this was what keeping a cat was like. They came and went as they pleased and never showed the least bit of interest until you pretended you were poisonous.
We brave the deeps for the King of Wands,
We soldiers down below,
From a thousand worlds, we mine for our Liege,
To the tunnels we must go.
We go, we go,
In service to the throne.
“Do you know the way out?” I asked the Morgwyn, checking to make sure nothing had fallen out of my bag. My floodlight still worked, the beam shuddering on after I pulled it out. Of course, how I would carry it was another matter. If only Twilight had taught me telekinesis.
If she even could teach me telekinesis. Who even knew what she really was, anyway?
“Yes,” the Morgwyn answered, languidly observing me.
The deeps bring death,
The dark eats light,
Stone crushes us below,
But we have no fear, no weakness hear!
No goblin stands alone!
When it neglected to elaborate, I glanced up at it. “Where is it?” I asked again, and then quickly corrected myself in case it decided to be clever with its answers, “I mean—where can I find the way out?”
“The wee bairn asks this one such a thing after it took the time to bring it here? Oh, she is a bold one, like a spark leaping from flame,” the Morgwyn said, by way of answering. Those burning blue eyes were like a pair of bright stars against its black fur, points of purpose in a silhouette.
“I’m not going back up there. Even if they took me, I know they’re faking it now,” I told it seriously.
“The Morgwyn imagined such. Not such a fine job. Sloppy, unrehearsed.”
“So what does it hurt to just tell me the way out, Morg?” I asked, more persistently, shining my beam around. There was an odd smell. Somehow oily, it was a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant; sweet in one breath, and then foul the next.
We come back up into night,
The sky dark as the deep,
As we head back to homes,
To sleep in beds, to rest our heads!
For the tunnels we will go!
Cocking an ear, the Morgwyn lifted its head and stared up at the hole from which I had just come. “To the river. Up, and away. Not the way you came, but another.”
“Can you…” I trailed off, gritting my teeth. “Will you lead me out of the castle, safely?” When I got back home, I would have to apologize for telling my English teacher that her lessons would never save anybody’s life.
“The Morgwyn will see to it that the wee bairn does not... fail,” it answered sardonically, leaping down to pace beside me. In my filly form the Morgwyn was taller than me at full height, though usually it kept its head at the level of its shoulders. I ought to have found it imposingly huge, but I couldn’t help but find that bulk and power oddly comforting.
For just a moment, I felt a brief pang of longing for Asmodeus. Aside from my bag, everything I had on hand was purely practical, and nothing really felt like home. You couldn’t cuddle a flashlight, no matter how dark it got.
Sticking the floodlight’s handle in my mouth, I carried it along as I walked. If Morg was going to keep me from failing, I might as well start trying to get lost. Hopefully that would be a sufficient failure.
The castle’s underbelly was apparently honeycombed with underground galleries and tunnels. Somewhere, goblins were working nearby, so there must have been some way for them to get up and down that didn’t involve riding the big, dangerous water wheel. I didn’t look forward to the thought of wandering the tunnels randomly and hoping that the echoes weren’t entirely misleading.
Stupid Daphne. Stupid Rainbow Dash.
As we started into one of the entrances close to ground level, I perceived at least part of the source of the smell I had detected earlier. Warm, hot air, much warmer than that around me, flowed out before being met by an inhalation of cold that swept my mane back, as if the cavern were breathing. The warm air was rank with oil and grease and made my nose twitch. Even Morg looked briefly annoyed.
We’ll go, we’ll go,
In service to the throne.
The singing was definitely louder there. Hopefully that meant it was also the right way to go.
The ceiling of this cavern was riddled with great pipes that had been drilled through the rock, cast out of iron or wood in a hodgepodge of styles. Some looked positively ancient, covered in rust and rot, while others were shiny and brand new. All of them dripped unmentionable, unwholesome stuff down into a huge pool that lay at the bottom. The pool itself was ringed with stairs that rose up in interlocking pyramids, and judging from the blackened lines on the walls, the pool had settled at different heights throughout the ages.
It also stank like the river downstream from the industrial park, where even the bravest kids refused to swim—all oil, rotting plastic, and things you’d need a degree in Chemistry just to appreciate how foul the thing you had just stepped in was. The Morgwyn gave me an absolutely withering look as I lingered to peek down, but I didn’t need its encouragement to keep going.
Just as we were starting to circle the sewage pit, though, it surged. The churning fluids reacted with one another to form a filthy sort of phosphorescence as a great bulge rose and swelled. At first I thought that some disgusting bubble was rising to burst, but then a huge, warty, frog-like head slipped out of the murk and turned its foul gaze on me. Dark green and tough, it opened its mouth to reveal a number of blunt, cracked teeth and a huge purple tongue.
“What’ve we here, then, eh?” it asked. Stinking webbed hands rose up on either side to brace itself in the pit, while it licked at one tooth to suck thoughtfully.
As far as little girls went, I knew that I was considered strange compared to others my age. I couldn’t help it if most girls didn’t see the value of memorizing the periodic table and the complete works of Jules Verne, if they thought preparing for werewolf and vampire attacks was paranoid, if they didn’t understand how completely awesome insects and reptiles were in all of their alien beauty, variety, and dangers, or if they thought collections of animal skulls were too morbid. Even I had to draw the line somewhere, though, and this frog-trash-compactor was definitely not cool.
Come to think of it, the principal didn’t think much of my skull collection, either. Guess that goes to show that you can’t really trust authority figures with anything.
“Nobody,” I said, putting my flashlight down to speak and glance around. No way was I going to get past this thing if it didn’t want to let me. Retreat might be necessary.
The great frog-thing craned up, breathing foul breath heavily on the pair of us.. “Don’cha mean no pony?” it asked. “Why be in such a hurry to go? Pull up a rock. Stay a tidy spell. Stay for lunch, even.”
“You see a lot of ponies down here, then?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder. I debated whether I could run or not. Of course, if I waited any longer, it might pull itself higher and get a better vantage. Then again, if I was too obvious he might spring now and catch me. “We haven’t seen any. Also, it’s totally dinner time.”
“We who, wee pony?” he asked. “It’s just you’n’me. Nice little dinner party.”
Blinking, I stared around again. For a moment, I thought he was right and that the Morgwyn had abandoned me, but then I spotted a shift in the shadows nearby, a faint flash of witch-light. Damn it. Was Morg hiding from the creature and leaving me to fend for myself?
“Wotcher, wee morsel?” the frog asked, with a hungry light burning in his eyes.
“I don’t know what that means! But, really,” I started to back slowly, “I’m kind of small, aren’t I? A wee morsel. Hardly even a nibble, not worth the trouble.”
“Oh, no, no trouble at all.” The great frog or goblin or whatever it was put its huge feet higher, and it now loomed well into the cavern. The filthy goo was churned up into a bright, sickly green radiance that filled the cavern with its shifting shadows.
I picked my flashlight up, readying it in one hoof. Really, I should have been terrified, but I just felt wired. This thing was about to try and catch me like a fly with its big, ugly tongue and gobble me up as a snack, and I was almost ready to start laughing. It was a ridiculous and probably not a very healthy reaction, but there it was nonetheless.
“Yeah? Well, I think you’ll find me more trouble than you might believe.” I lifted my floodlight into my mouth and flicked the switch to flash it directly into the frog-thing’s eye as he came closer. Hurriedly, I started to turn around, prepared to run for cover.
The strength of his reaction caught me off guard, however. He flinched, all right, but then he fell back with a terrified shriek, almost falling back into the pit entirely. “Take it away, take it away!” he begged, his voice trembling, its very echoes pathetic. “Mercy, pony! Don’ let it take me!”
I spat my floodlight into my hoof and stared at it uncomprehendingly. Was the frog monster that sensitive to a sudden bright light? At the sound of heavy breathing, however, I turned and saw the Morgwyn standing beside me now. Its eyes were open wide, the blue light in them flaring, while its mouth was open wide with all of its glowing teeth revealed and dripping. The frills along its back were fully extended, and more light issued forth from it, as if the tendrils were white hot. Then heat did roll from it, the air around it shimmering. Steam rose from where its paws touched the damp earth, and it advanced a single step, claws out.
The frog monster wibbled. That was really the only way to describe its sudden attack of blubbering squeaks. Far from hiding from the monster, it seemed as if the Morgwyn was more than capable of frightening the creature, despite their incredible disparity in size and apparent strength.
And it was on my side. Sort of. Oh, this was going to be just awesome. I was so going to abuse this.
“So,” I stepped forward boldly, “my friend here is very angry. It told me once that no one would interfere with its prey. The goblins called it theMorgwyn.” I drew the name out, enjoying the way the frog-thing shuddered and covered its eyes, trying to sink further back into the viscous puddle. “I can’t really be held responsible for what happens if it stays here,” I mused aloud, rubbing my chin. “Maybe if we just knew the way out of this pit and back up to the surface, by the river, I could convince it to leave.”
Smiling down at the monster with a grin full of teeth, I asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
“Yes, yes, anything, just take that bloody monster away!”
“Just as well,” Morg hissed, cooling slowly as it relaxed, “the Morgwyn would not have cared to taste such a revolting creature.” It sniffed disdainfully, and settled back to preen at its own frills.
* * *
The tunnels underneath the goblin castle were long, more by virtue of being twisty and redundant than by real extent. Mines, the frog monster had called them. It seemed like a really silly idea to dig a big hole mine right under where your castle was, but then I wasn’t a goblin, and I didn’t really know much about engineering. At the least, I didn’t need my flashlight here. There were shafts cut into the rock above and steady light flooded down from them, along with fresh, cool air. and they lent the tunnels a radiance about them as the minerals that were left behind sparkled and gleamed.
Were it not for the instructions given I might have been lost completely, and, as it was, I was already lost since the frog monster’s instructions hadn’t been all that good to begin with. Of course, the Morgwyn had promised to keep me from failing, but that didn’t seem to prevent it from letting me accidentally take a wrong turn and having to backtrack. Indeed, my friendly cat monster seemed enormously amused whenever I did, its tail flicking up in a way that suggested merriment.
This, however, was getting to be the last straw. I had just passed through the turn the frog creature had wanted me to take, but it just looped back on itself and put me back at the turning junction. Briefly, I wondered if the creature had lied and whether or not it may be a good idea to go back there and see if the Morgwyn might reconsider eating him. Just a bite, really, I didn’t want to see the thing killed.
Taking a deep breath, I exhaled, and started back the way I had come, wondering if I had just missed a turn earlier and wound up in a dead end.
From a thousand worlds, we mine for out liege.
I jumped as the lyrics reached me. It sounded so close that I might have been in the same room as the singers. With a swivel of my ears, I tried to follow the source of the singing as it rose and fell, and found it led right back into the looping dead end. I launched off at once, charging down the tunnel.
This time, something was different. Among all of the rocks that had been discarded by the goblins in their quest for whatever it was they were mining, one of them had moved, and it wasn’t a rock any more. Instead, a beefy goblin stood leaning against a cave mouth, from which light and verse were issuing in equal measure.
Like most goblins I had seen, he had rough features, with big, floppy ears, thick skin, and was dressed like he was late for a party in the wrong century, with a big canvas sea coat. He took one look at my coming and yelped in shock, then stepped into the hole, tucked his arms, heads, and legs against himself, and turned to stone. His rough skin and his worn coat both took on the texture of the rock around him, such that he seemed a completely natural part of the setting and blocked off the portal.
Even if your illusion is perfect, Twilight Sparkle’s voice floated up in my mind again, it can do you no good at all if you botch the delivery so badly everypony knows it’s there.
Stepping forward lightly, I tapped a hoof against the rock, hearing a satisfying clop. “Excuse me, Mister Goblin?” Might as well be polite before I tried anything drastic.
Silence was his response. I narrowed my eyes, and tapped again, more firmly. “Mister Goblin, I saw you transform. You clearly saw me see you.”
“No you didn’,” the goblin-turned-rock muttered back at me. “Go ‘way.”
My jaw worked a few times in bewilderment. “You really intend to go through with this, even after I have already seen you?”
“Don’ know what ye’re talkin’ about. Just a rock here. Go play somewhere else, lass. Git.”
“Mister Goblin,” I said, tapping on him again, “rocks don’t talk back to people, whether to tell them to leave or not.”
There was a momentary silence, then it muttered, “...’course they do. Just told you to git, and I’m a rock, I am. But I don’ like you so I’ll shut up, now. It’s proper stoic it is, tidy-like.”
“If you’re a rock, and rocks can talk, these other rocks should talk as well, right?” I asked. The goblin-turned-rubble didn’t answer, so I went over to one of the bigger stones nearby, tapping.
“Excuse me, Mister Boulder—” I started.
“Ahem!” Only to interrupt myself, pitching my voice as deep as I could. “Mister Boulder is my father, kid. People I know call me Rocky. Youse better wise up. Fillies like you better not stick dere hooves into other people’s faces all the time like dat.”
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry, Rocky,” I apologized to the rock, reverting to my normal tone of voice. The goblin had not yet responded. Thinking back, I reflected on what I had overheard behind the door that led to the backstage of Phonyville, nearly a week ago, and grinned. “I just thought I’d ask you about my friend over here.”
“Dat guy?” I said in my Rocky voice, really getting into it now. “He’s a schmuck. Ain’t got the slightest clue how to be a rock.” The goblin-rock shifted slightly. “Not method enough.”
The goblin’s head snapped up, as the impression faded, texture returning to his own rough features. “What didja say, y’barmy stone you?” he demanded, scrambling to his feet, “Well? Say that to my face!”
I looked between him and the rock I had been speaking to. “See? He’s ignoring you to show how much more of a rock he is.”
“I’ll show him what a rock is, you just wait right there!” he growled, heading into the light. “Where’s my rock hammer? I’ll pulverize the cheeky git into gravel!”
Giggling with excitement, I scampered into the hole after him, pleased with my success over the guardian, however dimwitted he was. I even started prancing like a pony at show.
Really, though, I probably should have known better than to get cocky.
A goblin’s leg was surprisingly unyielding for something made of flesh and bone, and I smacked into one hard enough to send stars through my vision. I reeled, and my bag overbalanced me and made me fall flat on my back. My heart curdled in my chest as I stared up, directly into the face of another goblin.
As far as goblins went, he was very different—at least among those I had met up until now. Unlike any of the ones I had seen so far, he wasn’t particularly malformed aside from the green spots decorating the back of his arms and near his hairline. His face was, actually, very smooth and kind of handsome. Not that I cared about such things, boys being stupid and all. A cloak, of all things, covered his head and back. It had been pulled back enough to reveal that his ears were slightly furred and triangular, however, like a cat, even though little else of him was.
Regardless of what he looked like, though, I was toast. Other goblins, shorter and uglier than he, were gathering around to look down at me. Barring the Morgwyn swooping in and hauling me away to safety, my chances of keeping them from dragging me back to the others was pretty much nil.
“Well, you’re new,” Cat-ears said. He had the same funny accent as all the rest, though not as thickly—rather like Twilight. Hands grasped me and hauled me upright, the goblins dusting me off. “What’s your story, little one?”
I stared around blankly, momentarily at a loss. Up above, a square mine shaft had been dug into a natural cavern. It had obviously been expanded, leaving behind columns of native stone supporting a ceiling carved with vaulting braces, much like the throne room. Goblins by the score toiled with hammer, pickaxe, and more, while conveyors rattled and clanked along as they hauled rubble down belts into huge rollers that crushed them into powder. All throughout it, the goblins were singing their strange work song, in voices throaty, unharmonized, and untrained.
It seemed the Morgwyn had abandoned me again, but it sidled up to join me, apparently having been just behind me. Evidently, the goblins had more than a little reason to take me seriously, though none of them seem to recognize the cat-creature.
“Uh.” I blinked up at him and the others looking down at me. “I’ve come to look at your... fine operation, here!” In a long history of lying to adults and authority figures, I had developed a keen sense for when a lie was solid and believably delivered. This was neither.
“You seem a little small for the king’s inspector,” Cat-ears said skeptically. “Place is dangerous for kids, you know.”
I braced for the cry of recognition, the realization that I was lying, the hands dragging me into a bag or clamping me in irons or—wait a second, what? I stared around at them. The goblins all looked at me in an uncertain fashion, but none of them had taken the step of fingering me as a liar yet. This was almost disappointing.
“Fetter sent me, because he couldn’t come himself.” My future depended on being able to carry this off convincingly, so I drew on all the little details I could remember. “I was just up in the throne room a little bit ago, and the king was grilling him something fierce over the big project going on at the top of the castle—you know, with the big stage and the ponies?”
The light of understanding dawned in several faces, though Cat-ears still gave me a doubting frown. I smiled up at him and buffed a hoof against my coat. “You know how the Great King can get. His hooves were pounding so hard the granite in his throne room cracked, and he brandished that big ash staff of his like he was about to turn Fetter into a whole mess of frogs. I’m really just hoping to deliver some good news so he calms down and doesn’t blow us all up. Why don’t we just get this inspection over with and I’ll tell Fetter what a good job you’re doing. Tidy?”
One day, I really needed to ask what that word meant. Well, I knew what it meant, but not the way the goblins used it. Ideally, it wouldn’t be while I was rotting in a dungeon cell.
Cat-ears chuckled, and I suppressed a whoop. “I thought I heard the King bellowing. That’s a goblin’s lot in life, innit?”
“Come scurrying when they yell, bow and scrape to appease them, and then get back to doing the real work around here?” I suggested, going out on a limb. Gambling was going to get me in trouble someday.
The other goblins laughed. “I’ll drink to that,” one voice called. Even Cat-ears looked amused at it and cuffed me.
“All right, little one. We’re tidy, then. Let me show you around. Fetter’ll be proper impressed.”
Apparently, that day wasn’t going to be today.
* * *
The goblins were in another repetition of the song I had heard, but I didn’t pay attention this time. The more full-throated goblins used the echoes of the cavern to their advantage, with one group singing a verse and then another joining it with the next. No wonder I heard it all the way over in the well.
“Oh, wow, so you produce all of the metal used in the goblin city?” I asked, feigning awe as I trotted alongside Cat-ears—or Cord, as he named himself—as he led me around, showing off the operations with a distinct sense of pride. I always liked it when people were receptive to flattery.
There was something very confusing about the way goblins worked, but they seemed to do so enthusiastically. They were heedless of danger, often swinging massive hammers quite close to one another’s heads, or dropping heavy bags of rocks over the edges of walkways and only belatedly warning those below. Despite that, the brutish creatures laughed off minor injuries and accidents with a sort of cheerful grace. Even as I watched, a fight broke out over who had the right to control the speed of a conveyor belt, and Cord watched as the machine nearly flew out of control without batting an eye.
The two belligerents traded blows until their fellows parted them. Almost immediately, they started laughing and working to fix the damage, picking up loose gears and refitting the belt. The two who had attacked one another worked side-by-side as if nothing had happened. Harmony and barbarism hand-in-hand.
“More than just that,” Cord picked up where we had left off, “we’ve expanded to smelting and forging it right here.” He indicated a line of enormous brick kilns, lining one upper-floor gallery near a shaft that drew the smoke outside. Goblins in cloth masks hopped up and down on the bellows. Rhythmic clanging and flashes of light—all in time to the music—issued forth from half-seen smithies, while big goblins carried bars of solid steel to and fro.
“Ooo,” I cooed appreciatively, poking my nose over the edge to see where they were dumping the waste from the smelters. Practically on top of the heads of other goblins working to free veins from the rock, as it turned out.
“Of course, that’s hardly the extent of production. Why, aside from providing all the high-quality stone and metal for the king, we also provide the weather,” Cord went on, leading me across a rope bridge that crossed a chasm. Goblins hung on lines down below, digging at glittering gems in the walls.
My cover was nearly blown right then, though by all rights it probably should have been lost earlier. I mouthed it to myself instead. “Weather?”
“It’s the damned pegasi, of course,” he explained anyway, to my relief. “This end of the Everfree brushes up against their control. It’s bad enough we have to deal with the crossworld weather patterns the Everfree already has, but bumping up against controlled airspace? It’s just chaos here, I tell you.”
The rangy goblin kicked a door open, leading me into a division of the cavern where an enormous cauldron was embedded into the rock, steel bolted into the striated red stone. It bubbled merrily with a multi-hued fluid, stirred easily at the behest of a huge mechanical spoon mounted on a gear shaft that was being turned by goblins hitched to a wheel. Each of them was hooved and quadrupedal, and, indeed, they looked a lot like ponies, though their coats were coarse and tufted. Some of them had feathered crests, while one had scales running up his legs. They all argued in rough voices, and I caught snatches of it: they were discussing mares, their kids, and something called “hoofball.”
“Finest rainbows you’ll find outside of Cloudsdale, they are,” Cord said, sweeping a hand, drawing his attention to a set of goblin ponies with leathery wings. They were working a skein and pouring the rainbow mixture directly onto it. Beside them, another humanoid goblin was pouring a bag of rough, red gemstones into a cylinder, then sand and some sort of viscous liquid, before closing it and turning it with a crank. “We grind together seven colors of gemstones and bind the mixture with rare manticore oils. Don’t ask where the oil comes from. It ain’t a pretty answer.”
Cord seemed to notice my intent stare at the strange ponies, and chuckled. “Don’t happen to have a relative in there, do you? I don’t think we have anyone that scrawny working down here.”
“Ah, no, my parents work on the set,” I said distantly.
“Proper actors, eh? I wish I could get into that.” He rubbed his chin. “Used to be in the circuit back in Niflheim, but, well, you know how that went I suspect. Transformations were never my strong suit.”
Having absolutely no idea what he meant, I made a noncommittal noise, which seemed to satisfy him. I knew that transformations were a subset of illusion when it came to stage magic, of course, but he could have meant with a wand, like Fetter’s, or some trick Twilight never got to show me. As for Niflheim… that tickled something familiar, but I would have to dig up Dad’s comic book collection to find where I last saw it—and that wasn’t going to be happening anytime soon.
“What about clouds?” I asked, hoping to divert the topic.
“Glad you asked!” he said, taking me over into another chamber. Huge fans were being cranked by sweating goblins, blowing droplets of water from pipes above into a fine mist that spun in a little tornado around a central pole. Another goblin in a white robe, heavy gloves, and goggles was pouring some bluish-black powder into the tornado, and great fluffy clouds puffed up. It was like a giant cotton candy machine, with the results being funneled into pipes leading who only knew where.
“Neat,” I said, only half-lying this time, and prepared to move on, suddenly hungry for cotton candy. There was a crack of thunder, and I jumped, coat standing on end. “Holy cats!” I yelped, glancing around. Looking up, I saw a number of jars wired together and bolted into the ceiling, with arcs of blue electricity jumping between them.
Cord laughed, waving to another of the winged goblins who was checking each of the jars, her hair standing on end. He made a catching gesture, and what looked awfully like a flint handaxe was tossed down to him. It was presented to me, Cord grinning broadly. “Thunderstone, see?” he said. I touched it, gently, and felt a subtle thrum pulse through my hooves. Then he abruptly tossed it to me, barking, “Careful you don’t drop it, now!”
With a yelp, I caught it in my teeth, and got a jolt that numbed my tongue for my troubles. A few nearby workers guffawed, but I put it in my pack thoughtfully and offered a grin back up to him. Taking a prank with good nature was a good way to ingratiate yourself with some folks, I found. The female not-a-pegasus dropped to a clumsy landing nearby, giving me an uneasy smile as she scuffed a hoof across the ground. To my surprise, she was at best only a couple years older than I was, if ponies had the same age progression humans did. Awkward, leggy, and coltish—or filly-ish, however it went—very much like a teenager.
“And this here is the vascular system of our little marvel.” Cord demanded my attention again, bringing me around to the mineshaft. An enormous multi-lift elevator ran up and out of sight in a tangle of ropes, pulleys, wood, steel, bracings, and platforms. Great counterweights, over a dozen huge stones, rose and fell in graceful mechanical majesty on either side. “Got a throughput of well over a hundred tons an hour on the good days, and it replaced the workload of well over a hundred goblins, too, with a water wheel near the surface as big as several houses.”
“Impressive,” I said. That was probably the water wheel I had seen outside when Fetter first brought me to the castle, which meant that this had been exactly where I wanted to go. I squinted up at the device. “What are they doing?” I pointed a hoof up at goblins in tight black clothing climbing around the elevator, scaling its ropes and framework.
“Oh, they’re the mechanics,” Cord elaborated. “They keep the gears lubricated and check the stress on the system. Without them, the elevator might fly to pieces under its own force.”
“How many of them are there?”
He chewed on that one for a moment, running numbers in his head. “Maybe eighty, ninety?”
“To replace a hundred goblins?”
Cord positively beamed. “Ain’t progress grand?”
“Ain’t it,” I agreed tightly, suppressing an eye roll. Starting towards one of the smaller elevators, barely big enough for a few people to stand on, I was surprised to see the goblin filly who had been tending the lightning jars already there. Her face was buried in a paper bag that apparently contained her lunch, with her wild, frizzy white mane falling over one side and her leathery wings tucked up.
“Going up?” I asked her cheerfully.
She jerked, pulling her face out of the bag, her muzzle stained. “Oh, uhm, yes.”
“No, she isn’t,” Cord said, looking annoyed as he stomped over. “Didn’t I tell you that you had another shift today, Wire?”
“I-I cleared a schedule change with th-the sh-shift manager, sir,” she stammered, ducking her head and folding her ears back.
“Well, I’m unclearing it, and I’ll be having a talk with your manager, too. We’ve got big business afoot. The King’s prophecies are coming around, and we can’t have anyone slacking, even if they’re young. Speaking of,” he directed his attention to me, “we’ve still got part of the caverns to look over. I don’t want Fetter stomping down here with a big magnifying glass looking for problems because of a scanty report.”
That put me in a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand—hoof—Cord seemed to have bought my story, hook, line, and sinker. On the other hoof, the alarm had certainly been raised in the castle and they would definitely be looking for me, and it didn’t seem likely that they’d just forget to look down in the caves. On a third hoof, I was getting seriously bored of the place.
Running out of options and hooves alike, I examined the ropes and pulleys around me, and then gestured to the Morgwyn. “Cut that line.” I pointed at a rope that led from the release catch by the platform.
Wire caught on a moment before Cord did, already in the process of wiping her face and stepping off as her boss had instructed. Her pale blue eyes turned to mine in shock, and she tried to leap off, only to connect with Cord, who had been too surprised to move out of the way. She rebounded and fell back against me as the Morgwyn reached out with one glowing claw and snipped the thick rope effortlessly.
Somewhere above, a stone began to fall, and we rose with it. It fell faster, and our elevator platform shot up the shaft, picking up incredible speed. Sunlight, blessed sunlight, poured in blindingly as we rose to meet the top of the shaft.
The shaft let out into a chamber that was alive with the sound of shouting goblins. Groans, creaks, and a horrible rattling filled my ears with the forces unleashed. The roar of the river that ran through the canyon outside the goblin city added to the cacophony, and a portion of it ran through the chamber, between a pair of decorative columns of floppy-eared goblins fashioned to look as though they were holding the ceiling up.
When the platform hit the top of its measure, the three of us flew off, and I landed hard on the stone, the wind knocked out of me. The Morgwyn barely seemed to notice as it landed on its feet, and it snarled with such ferocity that goblins nearby scrambled away at once. Struggling to get back to my hooves, I made to leap into the channel, but something heavy made me fall flat on my jaw again.
Turning my dazed head, I saw Wire holding on to me, the teenage goblin gibbering with panic from the rapid ascent. “Leggo!” I protested, and strained for the channel, while Wire continued to cling in a death grip. I tried to appeal to the Morgwyn, but goblins in spiked armor and a forest of long weaponry were pouring in, and it had turned to fend them off.
“Don’t hurt her!” I heard a familiar voice cry, and saw the white coat of Rarity standing out against the stairs that led out. “Amelia, darling, please stop this!”
The thought that I might be captured at any moment sent fire to my veins. My forehooves strained, and I dragged myself bodily to the edge of the channel. Unable to free my hind legs, I summoned all of my meager strength and twisted. Charged with desperate adrenaline, I hauled Wire along with me, and we both tumbled into the fast-rushing water.
Rarity’s scream and the splash of the Morgwyn hitting the water followed me, before I was swept out of the castle and into the river, heading for the woods. Wire clung to me with strength surpassing her meager frame as we traveled, and how either of us kept from drowning in the current was a mystery, but travel we did. Hopefully, it would take us far away from that stupid castle filled with stupid goblins and stupid, fake ponies.
I didn’t even get to see any murder holes. What a rip off.
“And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” Luke 15:20
Daphne
The land surrounding Ponyville was sprawling and free, much like the town itself from the look of it. We picked as our hiding place a peaceful grove of trees not far from the large farm, in sight of a number of cottages and smaller farms. A few of them jutted right up against the edge of the Everfree Forest. There was a large pond with a swing nailed to a tree branch not far off, but it was unlikely anyone—nor anypony—would see Marcus, Hector, and Naomi from there.
It must have been past harvest, because it seemed as though there wasn’t much in the ground. I didn’t know if they had snow in Equestria, but winter was pretty close back home. No ponies were in sight, at least not yet.
“If this place were any more cute, I would be vomiting.” Marcus glanced up as he settled down in a tree hollow. Despite what I thought were reasonable concerns of security given the monsters barely a mile back, even Marcus had elected to pack away his rifle. He was right, though—it was hard to think of this place as dangerous in any way.
“I could stand it to be a little cuter,” Naomi said. She had settled on her belly with a pair of binoculars. “Hee, one of them has a little basket; she’s carrying it in her mouth! She’s got a pale blue coat and lilac mane.”
Marcus thumbed at Naomi. “Well, she doesn’t need any entertainment. Why didn’t we bring something to read?”
I looked up from rummaging in our packs. “Because we had no idea how long it would take to get here, so we packed only what we needed.”
“I know, but still.” He grumbled, stretched, and lay back. “I’ll catch some shut eye, then keep watch. Oh, and, Daph?” I paused in the middle of my search to regard him. “Good luck. I, ah... hope the meeting goes well,” Marcus said, pointedly looking at the branches over my head.
I was left momentarily at a loss how to respond, rubbing one leg against the other. “Thank you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Bring me back a souvenir,” Naomi called as I stepped out of the grove, walking towards town.
It felt weird to be doing that while stark naked, my clothes discarded in favor of the rising warmth, but I reasoned that Leit Motif’s chronic lack of clothing and Naomi not noting any on the mare she had seen meant that it was reasonably likely for that not to be a problem. If it wasn’t, well, getting booked for public nudity was a bad way to start a trip, but I could think of worse. At the very least, my mane had been smoothed out by Naomi’s patient hand, and my tail fell neatly behind me.
She really did like brushing me far too much.
The road beneath my hooves was easy to walk on, and even an easy trot was eating ground up. The anticipation of meeting others of my new kind was becoming overpowering. I’d only met one pony in my life and that one a child as strange as myself, so there could have been any number of cultural barriers or deadly faux pas that were waiting for me to run headfirst into them.
Starting to regulate my breathing, I prepared for the inevitable introduction. I would approach a pony, introduce myself, and, calmly—
“Hello!” a voice called, cheerfully.
“Agh!” I screamed, springing up and spinning to face the owner of the voice. A unicorn, who stepped back a pace and stared at me, her golden eyes wide.
“Uh,” she waved a mint-green leg in front of my face, “are you okay? Because, if you’re not, I should warn you that I am extremely not qualified to perform any medical aid.”
I exhaled, slowly, putting a hoof to my chest. This was the first real, live pony I’d seen in eight years, so I looked her up and down as surreptitiously as I could. Her pale, almost white mane was cut short, like mine, though it ran a little long in the back. Also like mine, her tail hung long and had a bold arc that fell nearly to the earth, though with a little wave near the bottom mine did not have. She wore no clothing aside from a pair of saddlebags in white-and-gold lyre buckles.
“I… ah…” I murmured. “I’m sorry. Uh, hi.”
“Hi.” She sounded rather more uncertain now—though for someone who was probably half-convinced that I was crazy, she still wore a bemused grin. “Look, if you need a doctor I can—whoa, where’d your cutie mark go?” she asked, tilting her head.
“Hu-what?” I asked, and turned my head to follow her gaze. Her eyes were on my haunches, and I looked back at the same spot on her. A golden lyre was picked out against her coat, as if the hairs there had all been carefully and individually dyed.
“Cutie mark.” She repeated the phrase as if it explained everything. My blank expression must have told her I was still having trouble, so she said again, more slowly, “Cu-tie mar-kuh—or, mark, whatever. You know. The thing on your butt that isn’t your tail. Talent indicator. Tail accessorizer. Impending puberty warning sticker. Integrated conversation starter.”
Apparently my first cultural barrier had something to do with a butt stamp. Grand.
“Oh, of course,” I said, my brain on autopilot. “It was a prank, my friends picked up a spell and this was their idea of a ‘good luck on your trip’ gift. Haven’t figured out how to undo it yet.”
“Huh! That sounds kind of hilarious, actually. I should try that one sometime. I’m Lyra, by the way, nice to meet you! Where are you visiting from?”
Crap.
I searched my memory, trying to recall any place other than Ponyville. Concentrating on part of the area off the road, I conjured up another recollection. I blinked, and there they were, as if they really stood there.
Little Daphne walked with her arms out for balance, dirty bare feet on a log. “—so that’s my dream house,” she said, looking towards Leit Motif, the filly laying with her hooves crossed.
“One question: what’s a spaceship?” Leit asked, lifting her ears in puzzlement.
“It’s a ship.” Little Daphne swooped her hand upwards. “That goes into space.”
Leit tilted her head, trying to parse that one for a minute before giving up. “Well, I would want to live in Canterlot. I’d live in my own castle right next to the Princess! It would have dragon guards, its own zoo—”
The image unraveled as I jerked my head back to Lyra, answering, “Canterlot.”
“Oh, neat! I’m from Canterlot, too! Well, I got my degree there! Or, well, I attended Celestia’s magic school there. Applied.” She paused. “And crashed in the dorm. But, you know, Princess Celestia graduated me anyway. Where in Canterlot are you from?”
Double crap.
“Oh, I’m from near the school,” I said, rather than trying to rely on memory again. Somehow, I didn’t think a little filly’s fantasy dream house would be all that informative.
“Whoa. And you’re traveling like… this?” She motioned to my saddlebags. From the sounds of it, her estimation of me had either gone up a hair or dropped considerably.
“Yeah,” I said carelessly. “My folks get really overprotective. Always want me to travel around with bags full of junk and not embarrass them.”
Lyra sympathized. “Sounds like my roommate.” I quietly exulted at being so on target as Lyra perked up suddenly. “Hey, maybe I could give a crack at that spell on your butt. I’m not the greatest at that sort of magic, but I did graduate and all.”
I arched a brow. “The circumstances surrounding that graduation sounded a little fishy.”
“Nonsense! I received my diploma from Celestia’s own hoof—she recognized me purely on my academic antics. Merits. Academic merits.”
“Well, okay!” I managed to keep my smile from turning sickly by sheer force of will. In being as helpful as possible, this mare kept finding ways to make my life more difficult. While I was curious to see unicorn magic in operation after Leit Motif’s stories, I also didn’t know what it might reveal—or if Lyra might turn me into a toad by accident.
To be entirely fair, I had no idea whether the truth of the matter would hurt or not—that I had no “cutie mark,” whatever that was, or that I wasn’t even a pony. It was a gamble, but more information was generally better than less. Besides, if I had gone haring off into a city back on Earth, it would have been suicidally optimistic to expect such a warm welcome.
Lyra focused her attention, and, to my amazement, her horn lit up. It was nothing at all like the magnesium flare of the wand I had seen in the woods, but a gentle, golden glow that encased the entire length of her spiraled alicorn. A similar aura touched my haunches, and I jumped a little at a tickling sensation that ran up my spine.
There was a hiss and a gentle pop, but all my coat did was bleach slightly for a moment before darkening again.
“Well, so much for that idea. I was hoping they’d just recolored your coat, which is exactly what I would have done and have done in the past.” Lyra pouted, but then she brightened. “You know who can help you, though? I’ll bet anything Twilight Sparkle over in the library would know how. I don’t think there’s a single spell she hasn’t been intimate with in the past.”
I opened my mouth, but she waved a hoof, interrupting me. “Yeah, I know, she’s a Princess now and all, but she’s not going to turn anypony aside or stand on ceremony or whatever. If she’ll see me for random ‘hellos,’ she’ll see you for a spell, no problem.”
“Thanks!” I said quickly, starting to turn back to the road. “I’ll go do that right away, Lyra. You’ve been a big help!” I started to trot, hoping to get away before she could ask any more inconvenient questions.
“No problem!” She waved. “Oh, hey, I didn’t catch your name. Admittedly, you didn’t throw it, so I don’t think that’s really my fault, but I’d still like to hear it.”
All right, so that wasn’t a question, but it certainly was inconvenient.
It could have been answered with a made-up pony name, of course. Chances are, Lyra wouldn’t have batted an eye at whatever mish-mash of terms I could have thrown at her—though I was displaying a disturbing talent of coming up with things she knew more about than I did. However, I already felt pretty bad for lying to her after she had been so nice to me.
Besides, my name is actually a thing.
“Daphne,” I told her, giving her a friendly smile.
Okay, so “daphnes” are a kind of shrub, which is hardly the most glamorous of things, but whatever.
“Nice meeting you, Daphne! Good luck!” She waved her hoof even more enthusiastically. It seemed not everything had to go wrong for me.
With a new spring in my hooves, I headed towards town, though not before adjusting my borrowed saddlebags so they covered my rump. No sense inviting more scrutiny than I would doubtless already accrue. Determination and a sense of adventure set in, each carrying my steps to Ponyville.
* * *
It might be said that the most remarkable thing about Ponyville was how unremarkable it was. It was a perfectly normal town. Oh, certainly, its streets meandered along in the way one would expect an Old World village or ancient city-heart in Europe to, allergic to straight lines and relentlessly quaint, but that’s what someone would expect from a country town in a place like this. It sprawled pretty far, but ponies were obviously used to walking long distances. They used the empty spaces creatively, filling them with gardens and trees. Indeed, the town had such a rural feel to it that I wondered if parts of it weren’t more meadow than town. The occasional windmill or colorful tent was balanced by cheerful houses of thatched roofs and solid, sensible plaster.
I paused on a small footbridge, taking the sight in. The river under me ran right through the town, and I watched a boat pass underneath with a couple snuggled in the bow. Their little canoe passed by a pier, where a bulky pony in a shirt and straw hat fished with a line in the water.
Really, if it weren’t for the cornucopia of colorful horses running the place, I might have thought that I had taken a sudden trip to a particularly rustic section of Germany.
If anything, the greatest shock was when I saw a trio of mares talking on the side of the road with a stallion. He was clearly distinguished from the female of the species by his slightly greater height and blockier appearance rather than his charcoal coat and white mohawk of a mane. Even this small sample of the population was more vibrantly colored than I had imagined, even after seeing Lyra, who was day to Leit Motif’s night hues. The riot of colors was astounding.
When the stallion suddenly spread a pair of dark-feathered wings from his side, however, I stopped and stared. He gave them a beat and launched effortlessly into the air as easily as a pony might run across the road, and my jaw fell to the road. I had to pick it up with my hoof and reinsert it—twice—before I could get it to stop falling open. Within moments he was a dark speck, and he wasn’t alone in the sky, either. Other winged ponies swooped and dived under the clouds as though they were born to the air. Perhaps they were, for that matter.
Leit Motif had mentioned pegasi, of course. I had remembered that as early as yesterday afternoon. Knowing on some level that they existed was one thing. Seeing one soar through the air as easily as he pleased was another entirely.
Some of those girls he had been carousing with had neither wings nor horns, but the matter of pony breeds would be a question for another time.
There were enough identity issues on my plate already.
My hooves met dirt, packed smooth and hard by generations of ponies before me, and landed with satisfying clops. Hooves, both shod and unshod, clattered all around me. My ears were filled with the music of Equestria at work as I meandered through town—sometimes literally. At one cross avenue, a pair of ponies sang to one another as they painted a house, a mare’s rich contralto danced around by a stallion’s high tenor.
Unless there were a lot of pony songs about house painting, it was likely they were improvising the lyrics on the spot, too. Perhaps they were just talented. Regardless, I was glad of the decision not to bring Marcus and Naomi along. It wasn’t so much that I was worried about how the ponies would react to them, though I still wanted to put feelers out and meet Leit without them being around.
No, after seeing this with my own eyes, I didn’t think Naomi could have handled the raw cuteness that seeped from every corner without blowing her top.
Eventually, though, it became clear that I wasn’t going to find Leit Motif wandering around at random. Even if I did go to every part of town, which could take me all day if not much, much longer, there must have been thousands of ponies here, each with his or her own distinct mix of colors and an identifying mark on their rears which seemed to indicate something of note. Only some of the few foals I saw seemed to lack one. The chances of running into one particular pony out of so many were astronomical.
Just as I was considering the problem, one of those innumerable ponies noticed me. “Hey there!”
The voice from heaven nearly made me jump out of my skin. Panting, I glanced up to find the dark stallion from earlier looking right down at me. His wings beat a steady rhythm as he hovered effortlessly overhead, and I found myself staring yet again. A horse that must have weighed well over three hundred pounds was suspended directly overhead on wings that had a span of eight feet, if that. They were impressive on their own, certainly, but hardly enough to lift a creature that size.
Apparently he’d taken my gawking for interest, and soon alighted on the earth next to me. He stood himself to his full height, and I got to confirm first hand my observations. He had nearly half a foot of height on me, and his body was noticeably bulkier in most respects. Everything about him, from his shoulders, to his head, to his legs, was heavier, and that seemed to hold true with the other ponies passing in the street. Evidently, Equestrian mares and stallions had more sexual dimorphism going for them than the horses back home.
The stallion grinned as the silence dragged on. “You get the sun in your eyes or was that just me?”
Oh, great. I’d somehow run into Marcus’ missing twin. To be fair, I had been sizing the stallion up like a piece of meat.
“I’m sorry.” I half-lifted a hoof towards him apologetically. “I’m new in town, I, uh…” Well, I certainly had no intention of explaining to him that I had never seen an Equestrian stallion in my life before. “Hi.” Well, it worked for Lyra.
“Hey. So, new-in-town,” he tapped his chest, “pleasure to meet you. I’m Thunderlane. I’m kind of the top weatherpony around here. See that beautiful sky? Yours truly.”
“Daphne.” I glanced upwards, frowning. It seemed like a normal, everyday sky to me—a nice blue with a few puffy white clouds here and there. My mind flashed back to the seemingly solid line of storm clouds outside the Everfree, wondering at the term “weatherpony” and what it entailed. It could have been some metaphorical way to say he was a forecaster, but that didn’t seem to fit.
Glancing back at Thunderlane, I could see that he had a lot more going for him in the way of muscles than most of the other ponies around. They stood out under his charcoal coat and bunched powerfully at the joints of his second set of shoulders. If he was a weather magician of some sort, he sure worked out a lot on top of that.
“It’s nice.”
“Nice?” He glanced up as well, frowning. “Well, I’ll admit it’s no Rainbow Dash job, but still.” He grinned back down at me. “I see you’re a tough one to impress, though. I might have to really pull the stops out tomorrow—can’t let you think we’re slackers here in Ponyville.”
I quirked a brow at him. “You don’t happen to own a black jacket, do you?”
“Uh?” He rubbed his chin. “Well, not right now, but with Winterfall this close I could see myself getting one. Yeah, that could be pretty cool.” He ruffled his feathers, lifting his chin.
It was only at that point that I realized he had been flirting with me the entire time. My eyes opened wider, and I took in his stance—leaning a little forward, his eyes intent on mine, face open and inviting. He was definitely making moves on the new girl in town. The notion that the local stallions may be interested in me had never once occurred before that point, and it was difficult to put a hoof down on how I felt about it. Perhaps if I spent enough time as a mare I might come to appreciate my new species, but that was a thought which was alarming on many levels.
Before I could really process an appropriate way to shoot him down, though, another figure swooped in. Like Thunderlane, she was a pegasus, but her coat was a dull lavender, and her mane was an upward shock of platinum white that flowed wildly down the back of her neck. “Thunderlane! What’re you doing slacking off down here?” she demanded as she thrust herself up at him. She had that same lithe, muscled grace about her that seemed to indicate powerful athleticism.
“Cloudchaser!” Thunderlane backed away a step as his face reddened. He lifted a hoof defensively. “Now, now, I can explain! I was just welcoming, uhm… Daphne here to Ponyville!”
“You can flirt with cute blondes on your own time.” She poked his chest, glaring him down. It wasn’t hard for her—she was nearly his own height, if much more slender, and there was an air of ferocity about her. “We’ve got to pick up Rainbow Dash’s slack.”
Thunderlane grumbled. “I don’t see why. It’s not my fault she’s flown the coop.”
“And it will be your fault if we aren’t ready in time for Winterfall!” She flared her periwinkle wings at him. “Now, get your butt back into the air.”
Thunderlane continued to grumble as he leapt upwards, letting his wings carry him back into the sky. Cloudchaser turned toward me. “Sorry about that. He’s a good guy, if a little cocky.”
“It’s okay. I know someone a lot like him.” I rolled my eyes back towards the forest. I couldn’t help adding, “I love your mane, by the way.”
Cloudchaser grinned and tidied herself. “Hey, what can I say? Somepony’s gotta be cool. Might as well be me.” She turned and twitched her tail, gathering her legs to jump. “Enjoy the town, Daphne.”
Her own rise made Thunderlane’s seem clumsy—the difference between a powerful boxer and a martial artist. She swept her wings below her and glided into the air, flying with a swimmer’s grace, all smooth lines.
Once I had finished admiring her flight, I kicked myself. “Damn it, Daphne. You forgot to ask them if they knew Leit Motif.”
I would just have to keep looking.
* * *
Continuing down the street, my eyes wandered from the ponies I passed to the houses and stores. They were becoming denser as I meandered towards what seemed to be the center of town. Storefronts and quaint little alleyways were becoming the norm. One place had a wide set of double doors marked with enormous hoofprints—glancing inside, I could see a thriving restaurant, where the wait staff moved between tables with trays balanced on their backs.
It was as if I had stumbled into some bizarre Animal Farm reality where ponies had risen up and conquered man. “Four legs good, two legs bad,” I muttered under my breath. Of course, the horse didn’t exactly have a happy ending in that story, so that probably wasn’t the direction I wanted to start thinking.
There was enough different about Ponyville that it seemed unlikely—the width of stairs, the shape of doorknobs, and more—but there was an alarming concurrence to the architecture and lifestyles of these people that I was hard-pressed to find an explanation. After all, even on Earth, there were hundreds of cultures with wildly different styles of dress and building. Why should Equestria resemble a sort of European-pastiche?
I frowned, pausing by a fruit stand. Our worlds were synced up in some fashion. It was clear from those ancient scribbles we’d found on those thugs that humans and ponies did have some shared history. The possibility existed that western civilization had borrowed from the ponies rather than the other way around, or that there had been some sort of exchange.
“Excuse me, miss?”
I glanced up from my musings to see a couple looking at me. It may have been my reading too much into things, but it seemed to me that this pair were older than me by a fair margin—ten to twenty years, at least. There was a certain maturity to their features I had not seen on the other ponies I’d met.
The mare, a green pony with neither horn nor wings, smiled slightly. “Are you quite all right?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” I offered her a smile in turn, glancing between her and the stallion. I did a double-take, staring at the prominent mustache and beard he wore on his solid, blocky face.
“Sure you’re all right, miss?” he asked in an accent with more than a little twang. I was forced to amend my earlier thought—Equestria was not only synced with Europe, but with the American Southwest, as well. “You look a sight, you do.”
I craned my neck around. It was still weird doing that—so much of my height was neck it was a little alarming at times. There wasn’t really any need to examine myself. I was still exactly as trailworn as I had been upon meeting Lyra—no new bruises or cuts anywhere. “I just had a bad run is all. Got scratched up in the woods.”
The stallion stared at me. “Celestia’s teeth! You weren’t in the Everfree, were you?”
“Look at her ankles.” The mare pointed a hoof at my legs. “She looks like she’s run for days! I think you sprained that rear one, too, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but it was really minor—”
“Nonsense.” The stallion shook his head. They closed in on either side of me. “Come on, little miss. We oughta get you to the hospital right away. You don’t want that gettin’ worse on you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “There’s a hospital here?”
“Sure enough,” the stallion said. “Ponyville General, serves the whole region, it does. You must be new in town, right enough.” The mare moved to support my sprained leg while the stallion half-hauled me.
“Gah!” I squirmed out of their grasp, turning to look at them with some surprise. “Grabby, much?”
“Aw, shucks, miss.” The stallion stepped forward. “We don’t mean nothin’ by it. I can’t very well stand the sight of an injured pony.”
“You absolutely must get proper care!” the mare agreed. Her eyes watched me uncertainly, as if I might fall over at any minute.
“I’m okay! Seriously! I had a field dressing and, uh, I’m going to see someone who knows medicine.” Thinking quickly, I added, “I don’t suppose you know her, actually? Leit Motif? She’s a mare my age, with a black mane and navy blue coat.”
“No… can’t say that I do.” The mare frowned at her companion.
The stallion rubbed at his chin. “What’s her cutie mark like?”
“Uh…”
“Well, it’s all right. I’m sure you can find her. You just scooch on over to Sugar Cube Corner, miss. They’ll set you straight, there.”
“Sugar Cube Corner! Yes, of course.” I gave them both a strained smile, nodding. “Uh… where can I find that?”
“Just take the tunnel here and head for the market.” He gestured to his left, where a stairway descended through a tunnel under one of the larger buildings.
I nodded again, bidding the pair a “goodbye” before trotting through, my hooves echoing around me. These ponies were proving almost aggressively helpful—even a police officer back home wouldn’t have batted an eye at someone with such minor battering. Actually, in all likelihood, they would have watched me more closely under suspicion of being a vagrant.
The tunnel exited into a wide, cobbled area, and I meandered among the shops and stalls. That I should have asked what “Sugar Cube Corner” was became increasingly evident. The fact that I couldn’t read the signs left me with little recourse but to ask someone for directions, something I was feeling decidedly self-conscious about. It was getting to be a little oppressive in a way I had not anticipated—the ponies were nothing if not friendly, but my headlong rush for Leit Motif had stalled and left me rudderless.
Ponies wandered from stall to stall as the ponies inside them barked their wares, all in the growing shadow of a massive, circular building with a balcony on its second story. Turning to the stands, I considered a few of the options before stepping up to one that seemed particularly likely, joining its queue. Each of the ponies ahead of me dumped small, silvery coins onto the counter and came away with bulging bags. I stepped aside for an older stallion behind me and then took my turn at the front, hoping the proprietor wouldn’t be too annoyed with a request for information without purchase.
“Shucks, sugarcube, you sure look as you could use a pick-me-up,” the mare on the other side said, resting her forehooves against the stall’s countertop and offering me a giant grin on her freckled orange face.
“Is it that bad?” I asked, pretending to be browsing the selection. I let another pony go ahead of me in line to make up for it. The variety of the dishes arrayed at the apple cart were mildly astounding, featuring not only raw apples, but racks of various apple-based pastries that were doing a number on my nose. My sweet tooth moaned and cursed my lack of local currency. It seemed a safe bet that this cart came from the orchard I had seen in my first glimpses of Ponyville.
“If’n you call lookin’ like you just went through Apple Buckin’ season without a wink ‘bad,’ well, I’d be inclined to call it that,” she agreed, tapping her hat higher over her blond bangs. “Custom’s appreciated,” she asided to a pair of middle-aged mares who made away with a stack of apple tarts.
“So what can I do ya for?” she directed at me. “You look like a pony in need of somethin’ special. Wait, lemme guess—fresh, hot apple cinnamon pie?”
My stomach growled, and I had to wipe my mouth with a foreleg to keep the drool from showing. “Ah-ah... while that sounds utterly fantastic, I was actually hoping if you could help me figure out how to find someone. Somepony, I mean. A friend of mine. I’m in town visiting.”
“I thought you might’ve been new to town. You got that travelin’ look about you,” she said, and seemed genuinely excited to hear it, for all that I also admitted I wasn’t a customer. The fact that I was letting other ponies through probably helped, but it was still oddly welcoming. “Wouldn’t be no skin off my back to point you in the right direction. Who’re you after then, sugarcube?”
“A unicorn, Leit Motif. Dark coat and mane, sort of a dark blue and black respectively,” I answered.
“Can’t say as I’ve met her, though I’m sure I remember a unicorn of that description,” the mare said apologetically. Even as I started to deflate, however, she boldly tapped me on the chin with a hoof and grinned again. “But there’s a pony in town who abso-posi-lutely has. You just scoot yourself on over to the building yonder that looks like a frosted cake and ask for Pinkie Pie. She knows everypony in town. ‘Course, you stick around long enough, she’s liable to find you anyway and throw you a party, so it’s probably best you just go to her and get it over with nice and quick.”
Turning my head, I saw what she meant immediately. At the far end of the market stood a confection disguising itself as a building—or perhaps the other way around, it was hard to be sure. I would have to see if anypony was nibbling on it. Turning back to thank the helpful mare, I found myself confronted with a steaming slice of pie. Gooey, baked apple oozed languidly out of a crisp crust onto a paper plate, and the smell of it nearly made me melt on the spot.
“Now don’t you go thinkin’ this is gonna be the norm. Pony like you looks like you deserve a break, and you can call it your official Applejack welcome-to-town-on-the-house slice. Further slices are, of course, available at a reasonable-like price,” she said, beaming.
I stammered, unable to express my gratitude as she set it down. It was hard to resist simply devouring the slice on the spot—so I simply abandoned restraint and snarfed it right off the plate.
Wretched mare. She was a cocaine pusher. Now that I had been hooked on a free sample she could charge me whatever she damned well pleased, and I would come running for my fix.
“Whoo-ie!” she whooped and laughed, and several other ponies around me joined in as well.
I flushed, embarrassed, and then burped. “Pardon.”
“And ye’re welcome,” she answered with a nod. “Healthy appetite, all right. You skedaddle on, now. Find your friend.”
“I will, thank you,” I said, and practically pranced across the cobbles of the market. Ponyville wasn’t perfect—that probably would have required cell phone towers, a space elevator, or an armed regiment ready to help me take Amelia back—but it was definitely turning out to be a pleasant stop.
As I approached the giant cake-house, though, I had to abruptly skid to a stop, my hooves splayed. A mare had stopped dead in the middle of the street ahead of me, and I had very nearly ploughed full on into her, distracted as I was.
“Oh my gosh, hi!” she turned and greeted me, as though she couldn’t be happier by our meeting. We could have been old friends reunited for the first time in years, as far as she was concerned.
“H-hi,” I said, unable to match that level of enthusiasm even if I tried. It was enough of a shift from my meeting with Lyra and the stall owner—Applejack?—that it left me grinding a bit on the gears. Absorbing her presence was almost as difficult as Lyra’s had been, and that had been my first time meeting another Equestrian in eight years. “Explosively pink” was probably the operating phrase. “Are you… Pinkie Pie?” I managed to ask after a moment.
“Sure am!” She threw her forelegs wide. “And you’re new in town! I know, because I know everypony in town, so if there’s somepony in town I haven’t met before then that means it’s somepony new, otherwise I already would know them because anypony else in town is somepony I already know, seeing as how I know everypony.”
“Pony.” My eyes were crossing in the attempt to follow the line of conversation. When I shook my head, I could swear I heard something rattling in my skull.
“Exactly! So since we’ve established that I’ve never seen you before and that you’re new in town, that means you’ve just made a brand new friend.”
“I have?” I asked, startled. “Who?”
“Me, silly!” She giggled. “So what kind of party would you like? I’m totally getting into theme parties after my hit alicorn party last summer, you know, so I figured that’d be a sweet way to spice up my game! And everypony just loves my sweet and spicy lemon twists, so I always end up bringing those, too.”
“Uh,” I stammered, “Ha-Halloween’s coming up, right? How’s that for a theme?”
“Hollow Spleen, huh?” She looked puzzled, but quickly brightened. “I don’t have any idea what that is, but I bet I can work with it! What do you do with a hollow spleen, and when does it come up?”
Smacking my face with a hoof, I cursed myself for letting her knock me so off-balance. To be entirely fair, though, she was liable to tilt the planet’s axis if she tried hard enough. “I mean—costumes, candy. It’s a tradition where I’m from, and—”
“Oh, Nightmare Night! You must come from a really cool place for it to be called Hollow Spleen—or really gross. Or really cool and gross. Kind of like a glazed cake you find forgotten in the back of the fridge and it’s turned into a solid block of rock made of sugar.”
It was hard not to be caught up in Pinkie’s enthusiasm, and I found myself smiling almost against my will. “How about a Nightmare Night party, then?” I suggested, and she beamed right back at me.
“Done and done! So what’s your name, newpony?” she asked, inspecting me with casual indifference to personal space.
“I’m Daphne.” I kept my saddlebags planted firmly on my flanks in case she decided to peek. “I was actually hoping you could point me to someone I knew in town.”
“Oh! You know someone in town? That’s so neat. I bet you two must be great friends for you to walk all that way and end up with all those scrapes and bruises.” Well, no wonder Applejack had singled me out as particularly trail-beat.
“Y-yeah. We are. I haven’t seen her in a long time and, I…” I trailed off, realizing the other pony had started to draw me out. There was such a shine of innocence and such unconditional love and joy about her that I had felt comforted the moment I saw her. This was a pain that was very private, though, and this sweet mare would have to wait before I spilled any part of that on her shoulders. “I’m sorry. Her name is Leit Motif, and I’ve been looking for her for most of my life.”
To her enormous credit, Pinkie Pie didn’t press for more details. “Oh, that’s easy. She’s just ten houses down that way on the left.” She pointed down one of the cozy side streets leading off the market. “You should probably go see her. I’ll bet you two have loads of catching up to do if it’s been that long.”
“Thank you,” I murmured in her general direction, already distracted. I paused to shake her hoof in gratitude, before turning and marching the way she’d indicated.
If anything, my steps were growing more tepid as my trepidation built. Eight years of separation, months of therapy, and years of burying myself in a safe, constructed world of conformity lay between us, all contained within a mere hundred or so yards of space. Each step failed to move me past any of that. In fact, it pushed it together more tightly, compressing that time and those feelings into a tight block of fear, pain, and regret. The block did not merely settle in my stomach. It took up shop and started to export itself to all parts of my body.
My legs felt numb, awkward and unfeeling, as they left the ground and returned to packed earth. My mouth dried, leaving me unable to ask anypony I saw for further direction. My ears flattened, dimming all sound. My eyes stung, and I had to rely on increasingly narrow tunnel vision as I studiously counted houses. If anypony stopped to ask if I needed help, I neither saw nor heard them, and, at that particular point in time, I certainly didn’t care.
I must have walked in front of her house and her door six times before I was satisfied that I was at the right one. Counting nine houses and then ten, I then counted eleven to make sure that Pinkie had been inclusive with her count and not exclusive. It took three tries to confirm that building number eleven on the left was a store with a quill and a sofa on the sign.
Several minutes were needed to prevent myself from hyperventilating. Breathing in and out, I studied the thatch-roofed house, with a heart-shaped window cut into the front door and shrubs growing against the first floor walls. There was no way of knowing what I might find inside. Perhaps Leit Motif still lived with her parents—she was near the same age as me, after all, and ponies didn’t age any faster or slower, as far as I knew. Maybe they married earlier, though, and she had a husband and little foals running around.
When I faced the door again and put into mind all of the memories I had of our time together, though, I felt something sharp and hot melt away the ice that had been flowing through my veins. It filled my limbs with strength again and lent me new sight. The susurrations of doubt burned up in the fire of my resolve.
I could have spent all day worrying and moaning and practicing greetings, but I wasn’t going to let one more second get between me and Leit Motif if I could help it.
I reached out with one hoof and knocked on her door.
Leit Motif
It was late.
Once again, I had slept in. An imprint of my pen remained against the side of my face, along with a fair portion of the words that had been inked. I lifted scroll and pen groggily to examine both critically.
One good vellum scroll, written upon which was a claim summarizing the damage done to Town Hall by a rampaging cave eel. It was mostly salvageable. Spilled ink blotted out most of the page and made the words worthless, but the material could be washed and saved.
One rare, griffon-constructed fountain pen, engraved with the maker’s signature. Treacherous, but unharmed.
Finally, one mahogany writing desk, expertly crafted by local artisans. The finish would need to be stripped and reapplied, though the stop at the bottom had both prevented the ink from dripping onto the floor whilst simultaneously digging painfully into my neck. While massaging the soreness with a hoof, I discovered the final damage—myself. My hoof came back damp, and I sighed as my already inky-black mane drooped sadly, heavy and wet.
I went to all fours and lifted my horn. Magic shut the windows that had been left open overnight and stilled the wind that had been blowing the curtains. A cloth unfolded itself and mopped up the spill, then wrapped around my mane to keep it from dripping further. The pen’s decorative holder was straightened. My forehoof tapped out a slow, steady beat on the hardwood as last night’s open scrolls were carefully refurled and slotted.
The last thing my magic brought to me was a little, leather-bound journal, which I opened to a fresh page, noted the date with a flourish, and wrote, Woke at around 1:20 in the afternoon, yet again failing to set alarm. Have to start last part of previous night’s work again, but after I clean up the mess and bathe.Miss Rainbow Dash’s latest foray into the field of being an act of nature will just have to wait. It’s not as though she’s around to answer for any of the damages this time, anyway.
Sadly, though, there was no writing somepony else up for my own mistakes. A mare just had to own up and do what had to be done. I dotted the last sentence particularly hard and set the diary aside before starting downstairs. Shelves lined with glass glowed in the subdued light that filtered in through the curtains. Resin, button, and painted eyes watched me as I worked my way down. I smiled and reached out a hoof to buff the head of the porcelain tiger guarding my tea set before opening the door to my bathroom.
A thought occurred as I scrubbed my face and mane out under the sink, and I stared at the big tub in the corner. To be able to soak all day instead of working would be very fine indeed. Just let the cramps and tension flow out into hot, sudsy water.
It couldn’t hurt, really—not if it was just for a bit. My work wasn’t going anywhere, and no pony had yet come running for an adjustment so far. Would one day out of the week really kill productivity that much? My hoof tapped at the sink.
In the end, the decision had not been all that difficult.
As the tub swelled with bubbles and steaming water, my anticipation grew. A tiny little spark of excitement dared to light. It was perhaps a little strange to feel a daring thrill at the thought of a day off, but I took what I could get. Not that it was ever that easy. There would be a fire tomorrow, or Rainbow Dash would finally return with her entire extended family in tow and destroy the town. The office in Canterlot would find me dead, drowned in my own paperwork.
The weathermare was probably outside the window right now, waiting for me to lower my guard, so she could demolish all of Ponyville in some fantastic stunt. Just watching. All I had to do was put my little hooves into the tub, and I could kiss the town goodbye.
Then again, if Ponyville found itself carried off into the sky, it seemed doubtful anypony would be around to file a report for it. No more claims for disasters, be they natural, unnatural, or caused by mangy, colorful pegasi—the most unnatural of all.
One, two, three, and finally four hooves slid into the water, and I began to melt.
Just as a knock came at the front door.
“Dang it, dang it, dang it,” I muttered, banging my head against the side of the tub a few times. For a moment, I considered the merits of simply ignoring the door and hoping whoever it was would just go away. Let them pound at my door. This was also the only chance I would have for weeks to relax.
Perhaps it was good news, though. Perhaps somepony had found a baby dragon and needed me to take care of it for a little while until they could find a good adoptive parent. It would be nice to have someone sweet to dote on for a bit. I could scrub his little scales and tuck him in at night—until he got greedy, stole my figurines, ate my gems, and tore down my house in a horrific rampage that ended in the town being burned to the ground.
The knock came again, and I shouted, “Coming!” The hot soak, like the daydream about the dragon, had soured, no longer offering the comfort I had sought. Untempered joy had led to heartache, just as it always has.
Wrapped in a fluffy, blue robe, my mane dripping along my side and my tail dragging on the floor, I crossed the front room. Ideally, the interloper would see the state I was in and realize they’d inconvenienced me—a speckle of guilt never hurt anypony.
My hoof lay on the handle, and I eased the crankiness out of my features. The handle creaked, and I pulled the door in.
Standing on my front steps was a unicorn mare of my own age who looked rather the worse for wear. With untrimmed hooves and hair, red bruises under her tan coat, and the occasional freshly-healed cut, she looked as though she’d picked a fight with a bear and then spent a couple weeks recuperating in its cave. I actually felt a little petty, seeing how much she had evidently gone through to get here and finding me presented as I was.
The girl’s green eyes widened, and she examined me as intently as I examined her. She ducked her head and rubbed her golden blond mane awkwardly, but when she brought herself up again her eyes had lit up. I was force to take back my assessment of her, seeing her in this new light. Joy turned her from weary and bedraggled to something beautiful, accented by the mess.
It was all so strangely familiar.
“H-hi,” she said, swallowing slightly. The mare swayed a moment, seeming to be trying to gather herself up. “Hi, Leit Motif,” she started again, and my brows knit slightly. There was something important I was missing here.
Something…
“It… It’s me… Daphne.”
I slammed the door in her face.
* * *
That should have been the end of it. Naturally, given the course of my life, it was not.
It was proving increasingly difficult to block out her insistent pounding at my door. The mare—that vile, evil mare—was stronger than she looked, and her hooves rattled the door in its frame. As I lay across my sofa, staring at that door with stinging, bloodshot eyes, my forehoof tapped a sharp, staccato rhythm against the sofa’s arm.
“...makes no sense,” I muttered. “Was it Arregio? Cousin Bass? They always did think they were funny.”
“H-hello? Leit Motif? It’s me, Daphne. I need to talk to you!” she called through the door. Her horn became visible in one of the windows, and I slammed the curtains shut with a flash of magic.
“...told them not to come around. They aren’t welcome anymore,” I continued under my breath. Her hooves tapped against the window. I winced, and my hoof beat faster against the sofa, trying to figure out which member of my family had decided to play such a cruel and insidious prank. Charitably, they may have just been upset at my not returning their letters. I just needed to remain calm and not let them get a rise out of me.
My hoof tapped faster.
“Leit, please, tell me what’s wrong!” her voice begged from outside. The mare’s face stuck into another window, and I slammed that one shut, as well.
Then again, informing my parents in no uncertain terms never to darken my doorstep ever again may have triggered some resentment.
They might have simply told somepony else. Somepony simple and innocent, who would have no idea how much pain she was causing me with her prank. “Lyra!” I shouted. My voice cracked, painfully, but it got the message out. “If you’re out there and you put her up to this, you had better come clean and apologize, or, so help me, I’ll tell everypony who knocked down the south tower at school! I swear!”
The pony on the other side of the door hissed, and something hard slammed into the door. It sounded rather like her head, actually. “I could have asked Lyra where to find you? Damn it!”
That was a little off-putting. Her... her... vituperation continued sulphurously for a few more moments, too. That was language that just wasn’t used by civilized ponies, especially in public. I did not want to listen to her, regardless of whether she was cursing or singing, so I blocked it out.
The invader’s damnable knocking didn’t stop there, however. Pity, it would have been convenient if she had split her head—well, horrifying, actually. That’s an awful thing to wish on anypony, even somepony so hurtful. There was no way I was going to try and confront her, not without somepony much bigger to help. Besides, the last thing I wanted was for somepony to see me upset at this—or worse, learn it had even happened. With her hammering and shouting, the latter was becoming nearly impossible, but acknowledging it would make it exquisitely worse.
Rising from the couch, my hooves beat out a frustrated pattern on the flooring as I paced it. No pony had a right to violate my house like this, no pony but me had a right to be in it at all if I didn’t want them to be. In a house I had built, filled with the things that I loved and that I had collected personally. How dare some wretched mare come and claim to be a part of my life, a life I had built for myself, free of anypony I didn’t want in it. Least of all some mare who was probably put up to it by an embittered relative.
Her prattling and knocking about outside continued, growing more tenacious, and I started to look for something—anything—that could distract me until she gave up. My attention was taken up examining the parts of my collection I had on display in the living room. Though tempted, I left the minotaur swords where they hung against the wall and studied the craftsponyship of the zebra masks.
It was a little world of fascinating things that had been carefully constructed and assembled to please and amaze, each piece either unique or emblematic. So what if few ponies ever saw it except those rare friends and interested collectors I let in, past the inconspicuously blank exterior walls of my house? That made it all the more special. It was my world, filled with my things, and no pony should be allowed to intrude upon that.
“Look, I just want a minute!” she called, beating at the walls and my skull at the same time.
My eye twitched. I longed for something to put my hooves on, to busy myself with. My eye fell to the sofa’s end table, where an exquisite little penguin and an artful purple glass pony—wearing a replica of Princess Twilight Sparkle’s gala dress—lay, and I gently picked them up and handled them a bit.
A thought wriggled in through the barrier erected in my mind, the notion of playing a cute little scene out with the pair of them. A crystal Princess Twilight and her battle against the villainous Emperor Penguin, fought out over the enchanted pomegranates of—
No, I told myself. That’s the sort of games foals would play. I am no longer a foal, and I haven’t been since…
Since she failed to see me that day. Since she broke her promise and left me on the river bank. Left me wanting until darkness fell, and I had to crawl back across the Everfree alone.
She broke my heart, like it was so much fine porcelain.
Whoever this witch was, alarming persistence appeared to be a key personality trait of hers. “Please, Leit,” she begged through one of the covered windows, her voice thick with emotion. “You have to believe it’s me. I’m really here. I-I’m supposed to be a human, and I came through the Everfree Forest looking for you!”
“Anypony could have told you that!” I snapped, and heard a clink as my hooves shook. I gasped and looked down with horror, checking over the figurines for damage. The penguin had a tiny little scratch on his beak from where I had tapped it against the glass fruit. Damn it, these aren’t toys, I reminded myself. It had taken this mare all of five minutes to prove my incaution disastrous.
Now I was swearing, too. Fantastic. Just one more crack. Gently, I put the figurines back on the tablecloth, resolving to get my poor little bird re-painted as soon as possible. It was almost too much. Somehow, that monstrous creature outside had violated my home—had violated me—without so much as stepping inside.
With the curtains shut and the afternoon sun banished, my living room was suddenly a very dark and foreboding place. It was no longer the safe haven it once was, penetrated by that… that thing’s shrieks.
Would that the tigers and dragons scattered about could come to life and defend my little home, but they were no more match for her than I. My home was supposed to be a safe place. It was supposed to be somewhere to take shelter from my life’s tribulations, be they natural or pony-made. My hoof tapped hard against the floor as I stared blankly at the cabinets and walls surrounding me.
She pounded again.
“Just go away!” I shouted aimlessly. “I don’t care who put you up to it, just… just go away, and leave me alone!” Another moment and I would be sobbing, so I ran for the stairwell, my hooves hammering along with my heart. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing me break down.
“Wait, I can prove it! Don’t go!”
As I reached the stairs, a new sound reached me, one that cut through my panic like a knife. I stopped, and my ears swiveled towards the door.
Five bars. The mare on the other side was vocalizing; she was both terribly out of key and yet quite distinct.
Impossible, I thought, my heart catching in my throat.No pony knows that melody.
It could have been a magic spell, considering the effect it had upon me. My legs were paralyzed. My eyes opened as wide as they could. The only thing that moved was a forehoof, tapping a beat faster and faster on the step.
Five bars again. The same ones, unmistakably. It was as though a key had turned in a latch. A vault opened in my mind, stirring ancient dust.
Our melody.
On and on it went. She would hum the tune, stop, and then hum those bars again. It kept up for what felt like an eternity, but could only have been a few seconds at best.
It could have been a trick. Somepony had done the impossible and read my mind—except I had deliberately not thought about it for years. Some mad fool had leapt back through time—but to spy upon two little girls playing in a forest? It could have been a changeling, except there was simply no chance a changeling could have happened on such a thing, and would not one simply have taken her shape, instead of this bastardization?
There she went again, humming the same bars over and over again… Her voice squeaked painfully on the latest repetition. She was atrocious at singing.
Just like…
There were little sobbing noises interspersed with the bars now, rendering them incomprehensible, but she kept trying anyway. It sounded like a heart breaking into little pieces.
Shattering like porcelain.
Somehow, the door was in front of me. A trembling hoof worked the handle. Just a peek wouldn’t hurt.
She was sitting on my doorstep, her tears streaming openly down her face as she cried, eyes shut tightly, her head hung low. The sounds were no longer coherent through her wails. It was so raw that ponies all along the street were trying not to look, unable to even gaze upon such unfiltered suffering.
I could, though. I couldn’t not.
My upraised forehoof, which had been tremblingly pattering out a rhythm on the wood of my door, felt still and silent. The stilling of that rhythm broke what little protection my thoughts had left. It no longer worked. I could no longer keep myself from hearing the similarities in her voice, from recognizing the color of her hair, from comprehending the unblemished longing on her face. No matter how hard I tried not to look, there she was.
Daphne.
Daphne.
“Daphne,” I croaked.
She choked down her sobs. “Leit, I’m sorry.”
My hooves went forward. They felt at her face, neck, chest, and barrel, making sure that she was real, that she was there. My magic flared, but no changeling was revealed under that skin. Daphne—her, it was really her—submitted to my examination. She practically slumped into a puddle right there, her forelegs heaving under her own weight.
“We were going to meet each other’s families, remember?” she said, breathless. Her eyes pried themselves open, just a touch, and she looked at me. “We were going to be sisters together. I-I’ve come so far. Th-they made me leave, th-they... I-I’m so s-sorry for scaring you. I can’t… I don’t know what you’ve been through. Oh, Leit, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Her own trembling hooves found me. It was like she didn’t even know how to grip with them, the hard surfaces of her feet shaking as they awkwardly slid around me. Her saddlebags slid to the ground, and I found that her haunches were unmarked, like a foal who had grown into a mare without ever discovering her talent.
Unbidden and unstoppable, memories tore their way into the front of my mind. A little girl whose endless worlds of wonder had sucked me in day after day. A river bank where she spun tales and adventures with word and gesture. By some impossible happenstance she had been deposited here on my doorstep, beaten by things I knew not what, to come find me.
So many times before, Daphne had welcomed me into her worlds of imagination. It was only fair to take her into my world, to shelter her from the prying eyes outside. The door shut behind us with a flare of my horn, and, with a gentle click, the lock snapped shut.
“Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.” Lao Tzu
Leit Motif
The ticking of my clock became increasingly profound. There was a reason for it, why an innocuous noise could become so apparent while waiting, but psychology had never been of particular interest to me. The hour changed, and my clock signaled it with a resounding tock.
“Inattentional blindness, that was it,” I said aloud, only to be reminded that—for once—I wasn’t alone.
“S-sorry?” Daphne said with a sniffle, wiping her face with a kerchief I had supplied. She was laying across my sofa, still recovering from her episode outside. There were many things she desperately needed at the moment—a bath, a trim, a full meal, a doctor, a hug—but all I could offer was a ticking clock as I wrapped my mind around the impossibility of… her.
“N… nothing,” I said, crossing my forelimbs in front of me upon my seat. The urge to get up and give her that hug was powerful, but I suppressed it for the time being. There were so many things to consider, so many questions to ask, that I wasn’t sure where to begin, let alone what I should do.
Daphne, I thought. What am I supposed to do with you now, after all this time?
Logic and rationality would have me punt her out the front door, calling her a fraud, a witch, or any number of other unflattering things. There was no evidence, of course, that the pony seated upon my sofa was her. All she had was her word, and her voice. That had been enough. What had seemed a heinous prank at first now appeared to be the genuine article. It was Daphne—of that I was convinced, for whatever good or ill that posed.
Which left the question of how—how she could have come to be a pony, that is—and, more importantly, the why. Why had she come back into my life?
A cold knot formed in my stomach. My brow furrowed. She wants something from me, naturally, I thought, scraping my forehooves against one another and chewing at my lower lip. It would be typical for one of the best memories of my life to be soured by something so simple as an ulterior motive.
It was entirely rational, of course. Eight years was a terribly long time for somepony to buck up and visit somepony on her own terms. Perhaps something had transformed her, and all she wanted was somepony to help, having nopony to turn to besides me. She didn’t care about me in the slightest.
That last thought had come unbidden, and my eyes shot open as I regarded my house guest. My hooves stilled. Oh, Celestia, I couldn’t bear to contemplate it, but it had been years, nearly a decade, and she had never once tried to make contact. I turned my head, looking away as my hooves began to tap out a simple rhythm once more, in strict opposition to my ticking clock. That couldn’t be. The Daphne I knew would never falter. In my memory of her, she loved passionately, instantly, and lastingly.
Except, in spite of my knowing that it was Daphne, it was impossible to know whether or not she remained the same Daphne. It was more difficult still to know where to begin asking questions, in large part because those questions could very well have affirmed the very thing I had hoped to avoid.
A few deep breaths stilled my heart. Fretting over what was or what could be wasn’t going to answer any of those questions. I rose from my seat and made a slow circuit of the room, trying not to pace.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked awkwardly. Splendid way to start things off. Surely that was what she had crossed the Everfree for after eight years—a glass of water—but there was no way to prepare or rehearse. It was all I could do just to barter for time. Not that any hemming on my part made it easier to talk to her. It was Daphne, living and breathing and sitting on my couch. A tax audit, an ex-coltfriend, or a visit from the Princess herself couldn’t have been more compromising.
“W-water?” she asked. “Yeah. I’m pretty parched.” She had trouble looking in my direction, her eyes half-lidded and puffy, and her lips a thin, tight line. After a public breakdown of that magnitude, she likely felt more than a little ashamed.
It was a touch alarming. I made my way toward the kitchen, collecting a glass and setting it to fill in the sink. The Daphne I had known had been just short of fearless. A sunkissed, irrepressible little Everfree monster who ruled the river valley like she was its tiny queen. The creature laying on my couch, with her face held low against her forelegs, looked exhausted and dejected. Everything seemed to shrink, and she grew to occupy my attention; I felt my gaze drawn to her haunches.
The sight caused me to shudder involuntarily. Bare as a newborn foal. It was terrifying to even consider a pony growing to adulthood without ever discovering her talent. Was it a condition of her transformation, or symbolic of something deeper? Having never discovered her destiny, her true self, it was as though she were incomplete.
Not that having a cutie mark couldn’t be a mixed blessing. Perhaps it was better not to have a talent than to have a talent you no longer loved.
The glass had overrun during my considerations. I poured a bit out and dried the outside with a towel before levitating it out to her. She lifted both forelegs to take it, pawing awkwardly at it between her hooves until it was secure by virtue of friction and pressure alone, and tilted it back into her mouth. Apparently, it didn’t even occur to her to use her horn to lay the glass on my end table, either, for she nearly toppled it. The glass was enveloped in my green aura as I steadied it, and she gave me a sheepish look.
Silence built between us, accompanied once again by the clicking of my clock. When I could stand it no more, I asked, “What happened?” Now that the metaphorical dam had cracked, the questions began to pour out of me. “How did you get here? Why are you a pony?” My tone grew more insistent and the pace of my questions more rapid. “Why didn’t you come sooner, Daphne? How come you weren’t there? Don’t you know what it did to me? What you did to me?”
I slammed my mouth shut, stemming my babbling before it could accuse her further. If my tongue had been that loose in my parents’ house, I would have been lucky to see dinner for the next week, but her eyes—those pained, haunted green eyes—cut straight through my inhibitions.
She withdrew once again, turning away from me. The shame and loss in those eyes told me my words had cut deeper than I had perhaps intended. It hurt for me, as well, her expression contrasting painfully with my memories of that bright and beautiful creature.
“There’s…” she hesitated, idly pawing at my sofa, “There’s so much to tell you. I… I just…”
Part of me wanted to start shouting at her—an ugly little part which resembled a hurt filly sitting in the dark and rain of the Everfree Forest at night. “Take your time,” the rest of me said, albeit with strained effort.
“No, I have t-to say this, at least. I never wanted to leave you.” Her own words were forced out with a great deal of willpower. She clenched her jaw and shut her eyes, sniffling as she pressed a hoof hard against her forehead. “M-my parents… they didn’t believe in you. They never did. It’s not—it’s n-n-not…” she stuttered and trailed off, unable to continue.
“But you said that wasn’t going to stop you,” I shot back, the words slipping free as I advanced on her. It felt like she was abandoning me all over again, the same gaping pit opening up beneath me.
“It wasn’t!” she cried, her voice almost breaking. It was difficult to tell whether she was pleading with me, or with herself. Honestly, it sounded like both. She shook her head, lowering her hoof. “I-I don’t even remember how it started, exactly, but mom was so angry. I had told them about you before, but they were always treating it like it was just something cute I had dreamed up.”
She paused to catch her breath before continuing, timidly glancing my way. “It was… on the trip to the mountains. I was upset because I missed you. Mom kept asking me if you were there, and I kept telling her that you weren’t invisible. Then I lost my cool and yelled at her when she slipped and said you weren’t real. I was so stupid; if I had just kept my mouth shut, none of this would have happened.”
That felt uncomfortably familiar, and I said as much. “At first, Mom and Dad thought I had just made you up, as well.” I pushed a hoof through my mane and forced myself to remember. “I had lied about where I was going every day. They didn’t believe me until… Well, after you didn’t show up, I kept coming back and staying out late. They caught me eventually, and I admitted I was going into the Everfree.”
“It just kept getting worse from there,” Daphne muttered, taking a shuddering breath. “I-I—” she broke off, stamping her forehoof into my sofa’s cushion. It took several false starts before she was able to continue. “Mom was… upset, and dad was pissed. It was supposed to be a vacation—our last one for a while—and I had just ruined it for them, you know?”
The clock ticked.
“I really don’t, no,” I answered. She flinched, and I looked away. Either I hadn’t been expected to answer, or that hadn’t been what she wanted to hear. This wasn’t coming together at all like it ought to have. “I’m sorry,” I said with a sigh, turning back to face her. “It’s just, I don’t understand. How does this lead to them not believing you?”
She shook her head. “It didn’t.” The way she shifted on the sofa and struggled to answer sawed at my heart. Seeing this much pain in anypony, let alone Daphne, was difficult to bear. “Th-that is... well. Th-they—” she stammered, and swallowed past a lump in her throat, trying a different tack. “Father told me you we-weren’t r-real, and I sc-screamed at him. I tr-tried to sh-show them some of your h-hairs that were on my coat, but Mother just told me to stop being childish. Oh, Leit, the way they looked at me…”
It wasn’t the least bit difficult to remember my own father’s stern face, like a statue carved in blue ice, as he flared his wings and hauled me home over the rooftops. Something about Daphne’s story struck me as odd, however. “My parents believed me, though, eventually. Why didn’t yours?” Perhaps my tone was a touch more fierce than I had intended. “Everypony—I mean, everyone—knows that there’s all sorts of strange creatures in the Everfree forest.”
"It's not like that, Leit. We don’t have ponies like you where I come from, and we certainly don’t have…" Daphne trailed off as she wriggled in her seat. She swallowed with some effort, then continued. "Our Everfree has a lot of rumors, but nothing's ever come of it. Not as far as I know. I don't… well, until I saw magic—real magic—I thought I had… that I…"
"…imagined me," I finished for her. "That I'd never existed in the first place, that I didn't matter, because I wasn't real."
My words may as well have been shouted at full volume, the way Daphne recoiled, her expression tightening. I fell back on my haunches, stunned.
At myself.
At her.
I clenched my jaw, dipping my head down.
It would be typical of my life. Daphne, the last creature—not even another pony—that could have given my life some validation, had just admitted that she regarded our time together as little more than a daydream. This was exactly why no pony, no one, was permitted within my home any more. It hurt too much. It hurt to invite someone into my home, into my life again, just for things to turn awkward and quiet as some old grievance was uncovered, just as they were between Daphne and I.
Her eyes grew wide as she regarded me, her breath coming too fast for her to speak. It was tempting to send her away, to give in to the spite and bitter feelings our reunion had evoked within me, but I would never forgive myself for being that petty. The situation remained the same. If Daphne truly had come seeking some form of help, it would be selfish to turn her away due to battered feelings. Chances were all she would require would be to be pointed in the right direction, at which point she could be on her way.
Out of my home, and out of my life.
At least it would be peaceful again.
I busied myself refilling her glass, needing a moment to properly mask my agitation. My forehoof began a rapid beat against the kitchen floor, likely sullying the attempt. It took effort to still, using it to push my still-damp mane behind my ear as I returned to the living room.
Setting the glass before her, I urged her on. “Go on.”
Instead of answering, she had looked away, unable to even meet my gaze.
“Your stories were full of strange things and magic,” I said, trying to prod her along. The contradiction had to be addressed. “You described creatures to me that I had never even heard of. Giants of your kind, whole new categories of dragon, mummies, demons… I sincerely believed you came from an incredibly dangerous place, especially since half of your stories involved killing them.”
“That’s just i-it.” Her voice was barely a rasp. “They w-were just stories to me. N-no one be-believes in that sort of thing any more. They aren’t supposed to be real.”
“Just like me. Another entertaining story.”
She flinched, as though physically struck by the words. It was clear that shouldn’t have been spoken aloud. Her own words seemed stuck in her throat, Daphne heaving as she struggled to speak, and she reached out for the glass of water, only to awkwardly knock it over. Water spilled out over the couch and began to leak onto the floor.
An exasperated sigh escaped my lips, which I imagine only made matters worse. It had been a simple accident and, in the grand scheme of things, had done no real harm, but Daphne’s face contorted and tears welled in her eyes. It was a pleading expression, desperate, as though she feared immediate banishment from my home for such a simple mistake.
It was heart wrenching even to look at her, and not simply for sympathy’s sake. Even allowing for whatever emotional fraying she must have undergone, it had become painfully obvious that something was terrifying Daphne.
Me.
The thought seemed ridiculous, like so many other events that afternoon. Barring my earlier episode upon Daphne’s first arriving, I had kept myself calm and collected throughout our entire meeting. Professional, one might even say.
What could possibly be so frightening about me? I wondered, gazing into my own reflection upon one of my display cabinets. I’m just… a washed-up recluse. An insurance adjuster.
A stern-faced mare, wearing a mask of uncompromising rectitude, gazed back from the spotless glass, the image clear in the light of a single gas lamp. As it had been uncomfortably described to me by Lyra and Raindrops, it was my “work face”—the face I wore when I was forced to ask a claimant precisely what species of giant chicken had demolished his business.
That face was cracked by a sudden frown, and I tried to smooth my features, patting my hoof against them. A disturbing question had occurred. Surely I didn’t wear that expression anywhere other than work, but little recollections sprung to mind. Every so often, a conversation would end abruptly, the other pony suddenly looking uncomfortable and claiming a prior engagement. I never thought anything of it.
Pinkie Pie, in one of our sparse meetings, had once asked if I had lost somepony important. Evidently I had. Indeed, there was somepony very important who I had lost.
Right then, that very pony was acting as though she would be thrown out on her rear if she displeased me and had so far received no indication that such a thing would not occur. The whole conversation had started with her having to beg her way into my home. Reflecting back on the rest of it, it must have seemed to Daphne as if she were being interrogated by some cruel, inscrutable hostess, one wearing the face of somepony she cared about.
Tears streamed down her face. My heart raced.
Coming around to her side of the table, I stood there, both awkward and useless. There must have been a way to comfort her, but all past experience said that I would only make it worse. My hoof lifted, trembling, but it would have been easier to push through a solid brick wall than to touch the half-curled mare before me, brokenly spilling her heart out.
Bile rose in my throat, while my guts were wrung dry by a sick, twisting guilt. I turned, and started for the bathroom. It should have been the easiest thing in the world, turning away from her—turning away from the pain and the realization that I and the way I acted was somehow lacking. The floor seemed to pitch and roll beneath my unsteady hooves as I walked, however, dumping me against the side of the couch. My barrel heaved, and my pulse pounded in my ears, punctuated by the awkward silence between us. It hurt worse to leave Daphne in such a state, as though she’d caught me by the heartstrings with her tears.
Assuming I even had any heartstrings left to tug.
Damn it, that’s the kind of thinking that got me into this in the first place! I screamed inside my own head. I did have a heart, and I wasn’t going to abandon it.
Turning back towards her proved as difficult as having allowed her into my home in the first place, but I resisted the temptation to flee upstairs. Instead, I reached out and, and with considerable trepidation, touched her shoulder. Daphne jumped as though my hoof held a charge, and her gaze met with mine. Tears still dampened her eyes, and her lower jaw trembled. At the behest of my own tremulous smile, she reached out and encircled my neck, and I let myself be drawn in against her.
We were so awkward. I had no idea what to expect as we held one another, my own leg embracing her as she squeezed me, and, if anything, the tension in the air only grew. At first, it seemed as though it might have been a terrible idea, but closeness and contact gradually did its work. Like a breath of fresh air in a dark cave. Daphne’s breathing began to even out, and my own rampaging heart grew calm. She sniffled loudly, throwing her other foreleg about my neck to pull me in even more tightly.
Gently, I touched her cheek in a nuzzle, daring to revel in the sensation of intimacy, of closeness. The act had calmed my heart, but it still ached terribly. It had been years since another pony had held me like this, not since before I had chucked my family to the wayside, and I had willingly shouldered the burden with each passing day. Even Lyra, who was without a doubt the closest pony I knew, was kept at a leg’s length. I’d grown numb, but now Daphne had come back into my life and, with a simple and awkward hug, reminded me just how badly it hurt.
“Don’t cry,” Daphne whispered and pulled me tighter still, her wet cheeks spreading with a small smile. “It’s okay.”
“Don’t cry?” I asked, startled. Tears leaked out as I blinked furiously, and my eyes felt like sandpaper. “No, n-no, it’s fine,” I told her. “I don’t cry.”
“You don’t cry?” she asked, her tone bewildered. Her ears pricked up, and she shifted on the couch to look at me better, hooves resting on my shoulders.
With a shake of my head, I denied her accusation even as my voice started to waver. “N-never! I don’t cry. I don’t. I don’t, I don’t.” I repeated the phrase again and again, trying to stem the tide. “I am most certainly not crying because I do not cry.”
I was crying.
Daphne cocked her head to side and frowned. “Everyone cries, Leit.”
“I-it’s not fair. N-no pony c-cares. Ev-everypony ju-just goes away. I’m n-not supposed to ca-care any more. I g-gave up on that in school!” My voice had risen to fill the room, but Daphne was unfazed. “Th-then you walk back into my life, and now everything has been tu-turned upside-down… E-even you, y-you just thought I was a dream, a f-fi-figment! A—”
Biting my tongue, I managed to stop myself, yet it was too late to take back any of it back. My gaze lowered. The tears kept flowing, unabated by my evasion, but the last thing I wanted to see was her expression, her pity, at watching me crumble.
Pity was just a step away from contempt.
Without a word, her legs drew me against her once more. Her now silent tears joined my own open bawling. The sobs dug deep inside me, shaking my entire body with quaking gasps.
We cried, for a good while. I simpered, and I wailed, and she held me, legs around my neck as I emptied out eight years of loneliness and sorrow. She sniffled, and she hiccuped, and I held her in return as she allowed the pain of those same intervening years to trickle down and muss my coat. Eventually, we both cried ourselves out. I felt emptied, drained of so much, and it was an alarming sensation, for it left me utterly exposed.
“I-I… I should…” I meekly tried to excuse myself so that I might regain my composure, but I found my legs would no longer support me.
Daphne took my face into her hooves, however, turning my head to look into her eyes. My hooves pulled at hers feebly, trying to no avail to free myself. I whimpered, slamming my eyes shut. I couldn’t look at her, not after such a pathetic display on my part. A single glance could steal away all that was left of my dignity.
“Leit.” There was neither condemnation nor pitying platitudes within her ragged voice, however. It was quiet, barely audible even in the near silence. “I… never stopped believing in you.”
My eyes shot open. “B-but—”
Her hoof on my mouth silenced me. “I-I know what I said, Leit. Please, let me explain. I’ll tell you everything,” she said, lowering her forelegs as she took a deep breath.
“My parents, th-they…” she trailed off and glanced away, shaking slightly. Then she gathered herself and went on in a rush. “They took me away after that and brought me to someone who had worked with children like me before, and the three of them tried to take you away from me entirely, to make me believe that you had just been a dream of mine.”
My breath caught. That sounded… abhorrent.
She continued. “I-I d-didn’t want to believe them. I wanted to go find you and show them that they were wrong, but they wouldn’t let me. They caught me trying to sneak out of the house and brought me back to him, the therapist, every day from then on.” Now that she had started, the rest of it was coming more smoothly, and her voice evened out. It didn’t make listening to it any easier, and it was doubtful she found it all that easy to relate to me, either. “They—” she nearly spat the word, “—said I was having trouble distinguishing dreams from reality. He said I was acting out because I was lonely and nobody understood me. He made it all seem so rational, like I was special because I was so imaginative, and I just longed for special things to do and special people to know. Coming back with my parents wasn’t any better, because they weren’t tolerating any of it. For a while, it was like any fooling around was supposed to be a prelude to my acting up.
“I took everything that reminded me of how I had been and sealed it up. I buried myself in being normal because I thought that’s what I had to do to survive.” Daphne swallowed, her lips tight, and she steeled herself. “Part of me never stopped wanting to believe, though. I kept that box of all my things, even if I did put it away.” She turned her gaze to me and held it steady, riveting my eyes to hers. “When I went back to the forest, when I opened that box again, it was like I was me again for the first time in years. It was as if I had been just a shell, and now I had my soul back. I loved you, Leit, and that never went away. You meant—mean—so much to me.”
“B-but—” I stammered. Such a declaration seemed impulsive. After all, we had only known each other for a few months. It had been eight years before we were reunited. We each had our own lives and problems now.
Except, here I was, rendered speechless by her candid words. A few bars hummed from her lips had been enough to paralyze me completely. Her touch had been able to make me cry for the first time in years. Now her selfless declaration had left me transfixed. Her forelegs had become entwined with mine, and her grin made it very clear that she wasn’t letting go.
“Leit?” Daphne asked. She looked concerned as she searched my features.
Daphne well and truly cared. She had fought her way through every obstacle placed in her path to this moment, myself included, and practically beat down my door so that she could thrust herself back into my life.
“You… still want to be my friend?” I asked her in turn, my voice quavering. It made me feel so vulnerable.
“Yes,” she said simply, her smile growing.
“Even after everything I put you through just now, and after all the time since we last met?”
“Yes, yes, yes.” She laughed. “As far as I’m concerned, we never stopped.” Considering how wet her cheeks already were, it was hard to believe that she could be crying again, yet new tears swelled in her eyes.
I didn’t know what to say and merely stammered uselessly. “I’ll just… it’ll just… we…”
“Leit… I know it’s not going to be as easy as all that.” She patted the back of my hoof with one of her own. “We’re going to have to figure each other out all over again. Both of us are older, and we’ve been through some serious problems.”
“I haven’t—” I started, but she put that same hoof to my mouth to silence me.
“Leit, you told me you didn’t cry, you’ve been freaking out ever since I got here, and,” she paused, glancing around the room, “your house kind of makes me think of a horror film. Seriously, this is the darkest and creepiest place I’ve been since I got lost in this one guy’s haunted corn maze when I was, like, nine. Those masks look like they’re about to kill me with voodoo magic.”
“What?” I spluttered, outraged. “My house looks great,” I said, glancing around with her until my eyes fell upon said masks, “and those are authentic zebra Masks of Welcome! You… you…” Her laughing was making it difficult to continue. I tossed my mane and gave a pronounced “Hrmph!” but she only laughed harder.
Okay, so I was being a little ridiculous. Sheepishly, I began to laugh with her; it was a weak, pitiful thing. It felt just a little too disturbing to be entirely comfortable. Daphne’s return had exposed more than just my insecurities around other ponies, it seemed.
“I’m willing to give it a try if you will,” she said, after her laughter had subsided. Daphne held up a hoof to me.
Brushing back my inky mane, I considered the offering for a moment. I sighed and smiled wanly. “Okay.”
With a soft tap, our hooves met, and her face lit up like the sun.
Scrubbing at my eyes with my forelegs, I made another small laugh, stronger this time. Cramps in my legs and back made themselves apparent as I stood up, and a good stretch elicited several pops. “Would you… like something to eat?” I asked, offering her a nervous smile. “We can talk.”
More than anything else, it was an offer to give us both a moment to recover, perhaps back out if one of us felt uncomfortable upon reflection.
“I’d love to,” she answered. “I just had a slice of the most ridiculously amazing apple pie of my life, but that’s about it since this morning. Care for some help?”
When we went into the kitchen together, I was smiling broadly, but for the life of me I could not tell why.
* * *
Though it was just putting sandwiches together, preparing a meal gave me a chance to work with my hooves and magic a bit. Daphne told me she was incapable of the latter, but she did have her mouth, and she could still perform less delicate tasks with her hooves. Manipulating things as a pony, particularly as a unicorn, would apparently require some instruction.
The kitchen was likely the cheeriest room in my home. A little too cheery, honestly, with sunlight streaming in through between unshuttered windows, making the white cabinetry and tile countertops gleam. It was the only room in the house that hadn’t seen remodeling since my moving in. The previous owner had had a thing for floral decals. Terrible.
We washed our faces and hooves in the sink, and it felt like I was a new pony again. Daphne seemed to relish it especially, sighing and moaning appreciatively as she massaged her pasterns beneath the hot stream. It occurred that she had probably not had a proper bath in some time. That would certainly explain the rather pungent aroma of grass, pine, and sweat. Daphne had yet to volunteer the details of her journey or her transformation, but it felt rude to pry. More than likely, she was mentally exhausted from the ordeal of our reunion.
Celestia knew I certainly was.
A couple glasses of orange juice were poured and the pitcher placed back in the fridge, Daphne marveling as she laid a hoof against its door. “You know, strangely, I always thought you ponies didn’t have anything like electricity, let alone refrigeration.”
“Why not? I was never bewildered by your flashlight. We’re not exactly primitives here.” I dusted clover leaves between sliced tomatoes and lettuce. A knife was swept up in my green aura, smearing on generous helpings of mayo and mustard before it started to slice the sandwiches into diagonal pairs.
“Fair enough,” she said, chuckling. “Forgive me for thinking you were a mystical faerie kingdom run entirely on gas lamps and magic.” At the mention of magic, she gave a pointed glance to the knife. My kitchen table proved to be another physical obstacle for her as she adjusted herself awkwardly upon a chair. “Unf, stupid butt. So, when do your folks come around? Are they out at work or something?”
There was a resounding crack, the ceramic plate I had been using now sporting a significant fracture. The knife had snapped near the tip, as well.
Daphne jerked her head around to look at me, her ears erect. “Uh. Is everything okay?”
Throwing the broken knife and plate in the trash, I retrieved fresh ones and continued chopping. One of my forehooves tapped out an agitated little beat on the floor. “My parents don’t live here.”
“They don’t?” Her eyes widened slightly as she looked around the house, and her face fell a bit. “Oh, I’m sorry. They’re not...?”
“They’re alive. They live on the other side of town.”
“Either home prices in Ponyville are spectacularly affordable or you’re doing very well for yourself. Congratulations in either case,” she said, though she eyed me warily.
“It’s a bit of a mixture. I started work fairly early, and the pay is good, so I can afford a nice place all to myself with enough room to display my collection. Living here is much easier than Canterlot, too.”
“Where the Princess lives?” Daphne asked as I plated her sandwich for her. “And there’s a magic school there, too, right?” She frowned and turned a touch to regard the space beside the table for a moment, seeming to study the empty air itself. “Is that unusual for unicorns to go to?”
Biting into my sandwich, I gave her a wry look. Once I had swallowed, I said, “Yes, Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. I don’t recall ever telling you about the magic school, though. Unless... you said you’d met Lyra?”
“I’d heard about the school on my way here. I have to hear all about that; a magic school for unicorns sounds fantastic.”
“Yes, well,” I hedged, taking another bite of my sandwich to give myself time to think of a suitable response. My hoof started tapping against the table leg again, and I stilled it. A quick change of subject was in order. The last thing I wanted was for her to get into the topic of school—or worse, my parents. “It’s a long story.”
Great diversion, I thought sarcastically. She’ll never know that you’re trying to hide something.
Before she could press that line of thought, however, I asked, “I’m unclear on something, though. Why didn’t you just tell your parents and this therapist to come out and meet me? That would have settled everything.”
Even better, I could go back to accusing her. Brilliant. I waved my hooves quickly to ward off any quick response. “I-I mean, I’d like to know the rest of your story. That all sounded unfairly harsh… I would like to know what you went through.”
Daphne’s face fell a touch, and she stared at her sandwich a moment before resolutely taking a bite, chewing thoughtfully. “I did. They ignored me. I tried to sneak out a couple times, but my folks caught me and made it very clear they were upset with me. I’m not sure you know what that’s like, Leit…” She shook her head, and I bit my lip to keep from responding. “To see the looks on their faces, to know that you were hurting them and wondering why they just won’t understand.”
My lip ached as my teeth bit harder still. To know what it was like to stand in your living room and to beg and plead with authorities that refused to bend. There was a torment I had hoped never to relive. I spoke up at last, my voice low. “You probably worried that they didn’t love you anymore. They didn’t know if they could trust you again. Maybe they never did trust you again.”
Daphne’s head jerked up, and she looked at me.
“Did you ever go back to the forest?” I asked her, steering the topic back around again.
“Around two weeks after I came back,” she answered, and tilted her head. “It wasn’t until the therapist brought up the idea himself that my parents paid attention, and we all went out together. No, a little less than a week and a half. I think that’s closer.” She frowned more.
“Oh, Celestia.” My own gaze fell this time. “We couldn’t have missed each other by more than two days. I was out there from morning till night, but then school started, and my parents went looking.”
Daphne dropped her eyes and exhaled heavily. “After no one answered my calls, it was just so much… easier for me to go along with what they told me. I felt so scared and lonely, like I had been cut off.”
A terrible thought churned in my mind: the sick possibility that I had been the one to fail her by not evading my parents, by not—no, I couldn’t allow myself to think like that. Not now.
“I buried myself, Leit,” Daphne continued, sighing as her ears drooped. “I pretended, at first, that I was just putting all of my stuff away. For a long time, I was just trying to fit in so that my parents wouldn’t be worried about me and wouldn’t have to send me away. It didn’t take long for me to start getting angry at myself, though. It made it a lot easier just to try and forget, to talk myself into thinking that I had just been a stupid kid. Everything that was associated with that—my toys, my games, my writings, everything—pissed me off so much that I couldn’t even look at them any more. It wasn’t until I took my sister, Amelia, back to the forest a few days ago that I felt it again. I tried to bury it there, but I couldn’t. Part of me still ached to see you again.”
“You were just… telling them that you would do as they said.” My voice sounded dull, even to me. “So your parents wouldn’t worry, and they would trust you again. Did they, eventually?”
Daphne nodded. “Can’t remember when, honestly. It’s not like I polled them every day to see how they felt. I just know that at some point they were talking about normal things and treating me like a normal girl. The whole episode was just kid stuff to them after I had grown up.” She blew her cheeks out. “I wasn’t even relieved; it just felt like the way things should be by then.”
A righteous fire rose in me. “So, that was it? Your parents browbeat you mercilessly until you no longer knew who you were, and things were ‘the way they should be?’” Daphne leaned away, taken aback, as I got up and began to pace, one hoof beating out a staccato rhythm. A number of thoughts spun around in my mind—my mother’s disapproving eyes, my father’s stony gaze, the confused looks of other fillies my age. Even at their worst, however, my parents had never tried to convince me that Daphne didn’t exist. “They threatened to institutionalize you.” I spoke as though she didn’t understand what such a thing meant. “That… that’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Sort of.” She rubbed at the back of her neck, grimacing a bit. “They never talked about hospitals or anything like that, though. I mean... there were times when I was little that I wondered if maybe I was crazy. I saw that therapist a lot over the years, too. It was easy to think that I really did need help, especially since I was kind of a hyperactive kid.”
My hoof wouldn’t stop tapping. Frustrated, I growled and slammed it against the floor, rattling the table. “That’s just it! Your parents took you, a child, and made you think that something real was just a part of your imagination! They took you to a stallion who, however well-meaning he was—”
“Man,” Daphne corrected.
“Whichever. He made you out to be someone who wasn’t right in the head! They all frightened you to the point that you were willing to doubt your own ability to make rational distinctions between fact and fiction!”
Daphne’s shoulders slumped, and she turned away from me. “When the whole world tells you you’re wrong, it’s hard to hold on to the feeling that you’re right,” she muttered.
“So why are you forgiving them?” I demanded. I violently swept my leg in front of me. “They broke you, hurt you, damaged you. How can you not be angry at them?”
Her eyes shot back toward me, suddenly wide and focused. “Of course I’m angry!” Daphne snapped, finding her voice again. “Obviously, I never wanted to be called crazy,” she continued, her tone ameliorating. “If they hadn’t of insisted on the therapist, I probably would have seen you in time, and then we could have proven everything to them.”
“So it’s their fault!” I exclaimed, desperate for someone, anyone, to blame.
Daphne shook her head, and I wanted to wring her neck. “It’s not that simple. It’s like I was saying earlier. Where I come from, things like magic and unicorns just don’t happen. Knowing what I know now, I’m pretty sure that there must have been magical creatures, including ponies like you, on Earth, but, if there are even any left, they’re completely unheard of.”
“Just because it’s reasonable for them to think that I was fake is not sufficient reason to leap to the assumption that you were nuts. I knew you, Daphne,” I said, stalking out toward the living room again. “You could be so imaginative and make it all seem so real.” It seemed hard to believe that she could be so willing to just let everything stand. The thought set my blood boiling in my veins, and my hoof tapping frantically again. “I loved that about you! It was as though I was right there with you, seeing everything as you saw it. You made my dreams come to life and took me into yours.”
“That was part of the problem, really,” she muttered. “It’s really easy for me to get lost in my own imagination, sometimes. I mean, I guess I never really did have trouble distinguishing what I was imagining from what was real—not since I discovered magic was real and inferred that I hadn’t been crazy after all. When you hear people telling you about how you might have a problem, though…”
“Then someone needs to go and revoke this man’s degree,” I said, beginning to pace back toward the kitchen, “or his license, or whatever they give out to therapists where you come from. You were never that disconnected, even in our craziest games.” It was almost surprising how quickly the memories were coming back.
I honestly believed I had forgotten everything that had happened that summer, but now that Daphne had opened the vault, the memories were just sitting there. It was similar to perusing my collection, only inside my own mind. Every little day had its own unique quality to it, and just thinking about our melody brought them each to my hooftips. Gently, I hummed a little dirge, and found myself smiling. “I seem to recall you correcting me once. Something about Vikings and how they didn’t have paper.”
Daphne blinked. Then she laughed. “You know, it’s crazy, but I was just thinking about that one a few days ago. Wow, we were ridiculous.”
“Weren’t we, though?” I laughed as well, and I couldn’t believe how good it felt to do so. It was soured, though, as I remembered what our conversation had been. “But, Daphne,” I said, getting her attention as she stopped giggling, “I mean it, I really do. How can you just forgive them like that?”
Instead of answering immediately, Daphne looked at the table for a long while. Lowering her face, she ate up the last of her sandwich, and then washed it down with a big glass of orange juice held in both hooves. The delay sapped only a tiny bit of the tension out of the air, but it had given her a chance to collect herself.
“I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “It’s all so confusing, Leit. Just a few days ago, I hadn’t even realized how much it still mattered to me.”
“Me neither,” I murmured, and she gave me a smile. I returned it, however wanly.
“I’m not sure I do forgive them,” she said, “now that I’ve really thought about it. It’s really more that I don’t think they understood the gravity of what went on—not about you, not about what was going on in my head, not anything. Someone can be well-meaning and do really horrible things without being aware of the consequences at all. Honestly, I don’t think I can judge them, not with what they knew at the time and still don’t know. I don’t believe they actually realized how much it had hurt me; by the time I was older, they had treated the whole thing like a minor incident, and I’m not sure they noticed how much I had really changed.”
Tapping at the empty glass thoughtfully, she finished. “After this is all over, I’m going to tell them everything. This time, I’m going to have proof with me. Maybe, well, I might even have the best kind of proof,” she said, with a meaningful glance at me.
“I’d love to help you there,” I said, though, as far as I was concerned, it would have been better if she had condemned her parents; what they had done should be unforgivable, no matter their excuses. Still, it wasn’t really my decision to make, as far as Daphne’s feelings were concerned. Satisfied, I lifted my own glass to my lips.
Daphne’s eyes watched the progress of the glass, and she folded her forelegs on the tabletop. “So now we get to the point where you tell me what has you so agitated about me asking questions about you.”
Though distorted by the bottom of the glass, her face nevertheless had an unmistakable air of concern. Lowering the glass back to the table, I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” All four of my legs were now crossed, to keep any one of them from tapping nervously.
She tilted her head at me, wearing a straight frown. “You told me you don’t cry, Leit. When the subject of school and your folks came up, you changed the subject so fast I got whiplash. What’s the matter?”
“It’s not all that important,” I lied, “some minor tensions is all, really.” Sweeping up the empty plates in my magic, I went to start washing them. “I’ll tell you all about it, sometime, after we sort out whatever your mess is.” The earlier reluctance to bring the topic up vanished in the face of her line of questioning. Sweat had broken out on my forehead. In spite of the lack of heat in her words, it felt as though the room had become a sauna. “You came to my doorstep completely ragged. I didn’t want to ask, not while we were in the middle of… all that… but I don’t think whatever turned you into a unicorn could have been all that minor.”
“No, not really,” she shook her head. Her eyes looked distant for a moment, and she didn’t immediately say anything.
Relieved, I went on to fill the silence. “It must be some spectacularly powerful magic. I’ve never even heard of a complete transformation spell that had such a level of depth and endurance. The closest thing I can think of is an age spell, and—”
A heavy knock on the door cut me off. We perked our ears, waiting a moment to see if it would come again. It did, and then another set came right on its heels. It sounded like whoever was at the other side had decided to use the door as a drum, which narrowed the possibilities considerably.
With a sigh, I dropped the rag I had been drying the plates with and trotted over to the door. Well, at least it meant the end of Daphne’s questioning for now.
Daphne
To say that the meeting had not gone exactly as intended would be a fantastic understatement.
Even then, it all seemed unbelievable. There was an uncertain, dream-like quality to the encounter. That was probably as much exhaustion and the smoldering craters of emotional eruptions as anything, to be fair. The door slamming in my face had at first confused me, and then panic had settled in to stay. Another few moments and I might have broken through her window to try and get her attention, which would have been a fine way to restart our relationship.
Yet here I was, drinking orange juice and eating a sandwich in her kitchen. The clover had gone down particularly well, too. It was just the right crunchy texture and sharp, springy flavor to go with the mayo and mustard spread. Eating it off the plate with my face was a little awkward, but aside from that it was just so... normal.
Wood-silled windows let in such bright sunlight that it could have been summer instead of autumn. For all that the counters and tables were too short for an average human to live comfortably, it could have belonged to any country home. After the dark cave of her living room, it was like another house entirely.
The contradictions didn’t end with Leit Motif’s house, though. Fear, stern coldness, giddy excitement, seething anger, dry exasperation—all were emotions her dark blue face had flickered between without much warning at all. It had not been much of an exaggeration when I had said that we would need to figure each other out again. If she had not responded to her name or resembled my memories so strongly, she would have been barely recognizable as the filly I remembered.
Not to mention she was a wretched liar, and it seemed very likely that the source of her off-kilter mood and the things she concealed were one and the same.
As Leit rose to answer the door, a surge of anger pulsed through me and made me press the table so hard the wood creaked. The thought of someone hurting her burned painfully, not least because I was almost certainly responsible for how her life had gone. If only I could have kept my stupid mouth shut.
Recriminations had already gotten me nowhere, though, and guilt could wait. It wasn’t lost on me that neither my transformation nor Amelia had come up directly during our conversation. Many considerations had been put off with the understanding that delays could be detrimental to finding my sister, but now I had spent what must have been well over an hour in the house of my only real contact and no progress had been made.
Getting up from the table, I started back into the living room. There may not have been any progress, but Leit Motif and I needed to sort each other out if we were going to get anywhere. This was a pony that I would have to rely on to help me, but it was so much more than that, too. She was a piece of myself that had been taken from me, and, like Amelia herself, I had to get her back.
Like me, she had been damaged, and helping her would heal my wounds, as well. Neither of us were any good to anyone if we were broken.
The sight of her living room had nearly knocked me clean over before. Leit Motif had seemed a crouching, sinister thing amid its shadows and haunting decor. Her dark coat had blended in well with the gloom, her piercing, green, agate-hard eyes leering as she slouched like a beast in the chair opposite me, or stalked along the floor with hooves that clicked like a predator’s claws.
Now, however, the curtains and shutters had been thrown back. With the shadows chased away and the liminal space made real, the shelves, cabinets, and cases all gleamed with the glow of lovingly polished wood. It was a dark wood, certainly, but in the light it had an air of stately, prideful elegance. Every available surface that wasn’t the floor or a sitting area held objects that had intrinsic value, artistic beauty, or both. In some ways, it felt wrong to be there, amid her many trinkets and memorabilia, like intruding on the inner sanctum of a temple. The space felt sacred in the original meaning of the word: a thing set aside with intent to be inviolate, devoted to and revered. It seemed incredible that one pony could have put all of this together at such a young age.
I had, it seemed, very much thrust myself upon her and invaded what was an intensely private space. It felt like breaking and entering.
Leit Motif stood at the door, leaning up against it with her forehooves to look through the small, heart-shaped window. Her navy coat was still a little tense, with the muscles of her neck outlined against the hair, but her manner towards me was so much more welcoming than it had been. She had invited me into this sacred place. Something I had done had acted as the key; perhaps it had been the leitmotif, or maybe it had been my story, but it was an invitation she had meant sincerely.
Speaking of ponies barging into sacred places without a great deal of notice, the door opened just a hair. Leit’s face set in a rather unwelcoming form of exasperation again, but it deterred not at all the mint-coated unicorn who pushed the door fully open with a hoof and waltzed right in, as if it were nothing at all.
“Lyra, do you mind?” Leit asked, glowering at the other mare. It was a wonder Lyra could still stand; Leit had developed a withering glare. “I’m in the middle of something right now, and it’s very private.”
“Nah, I don’t mind at all,” Lyra said, her steps ringing a cheerful patter on the hardwood. Her seafoam green coat and hair stood out vividly against a room cast in such dark colors. “I just got back from Carrot Top’s. She had these great cakes that I thought you might like—lemon carrot tortes, I think she called them.” She slid her saddlebags to the floor and hopped onto the sofa, leaning her back against it rather than laying along her belly, one hoof on the rest, as her horn flared. Golden light flipped her bags open and levitated out a basket. “I also had the weirdest encounter on my way over here. Gotta tell you all about it.”
Leit trotted over to the couch, slapping the basket down with a hoof when Lyra made to open it. “Thank you for your consideration, Lyra, but I assure you I am quite busy. And must I remind you never to eat in my living room? Again?”
“I promised I’d clean up any mess I made.” Lyra gazed mournfully at the basket. “These are really delicious, you know.” She turned a smile up. “Come on, Leit; whatever it is can be put off for a little bit. You need to live a little, get out more, meet more ponies. You sit around this place all day with no pony to talk to but your toys and you’ll go starkers.”
“They are not toys!” Leit said, turning up her nose. “And you never clean up! Nor will I go crazy! Are your eyes even open? I, have, company!” She primly pointed a foreleg my direction. “Very important company, thank you. I’m really not in the mood for games today!”
“Hah!” Lyra laughed, crossing her hooves over her barrel as she leaned back. “Here I thought your sense of humor had died back in school. You don’t seriously think I’m going to buy that you have somepony here?”
“Hi,” I said, tapping a hoof against the wooden floor to make myself known.
Lyra’s spine went rigid. Slowly, she craned her neck around to look at me, golden eyes wide.
“I’m kind of surprised you didn’t notice me earlier, actually,” I said as I moved to stand beside Leit. She looked quite pleased with herself, a broad grin splitting her features as she contemplated Lyra.
“Y’know, my eyes slid right past you,” Lyra muttered. “What do they call that again?”
“Inattentional blindness,” Leit Motif supplied, a touch of venom in her tone.
“Oh, right, and… Hey, wait a minute!” Lyra snapped back my way for a second take. She pointed me out with a hoof, exclaiming, “The blank flank from earlier! Daphne!” Then she tilted her head. “Why didn’t you just ask me where to find Leit Motif? I’d have pointed you right to her.”
Sighing, I rubbed my face with a hoof.
“So, whoa.” Lyra kicked back in her seat—which was yet another strange thing to see from a pony, but after enough shocks a girl just had to roll with the weirdness of the world around her. “If you’re from Canterlot, that would make you an old friend of Leit’s.” She tapped at her chin with her hoof. “You must have an incredible tolerance for punishment.”
“Hey!” Leit Motif protested. “I’m not that bad!”
“When Leit walks into the market, ponies cower indoors,” Lyra confided to me in a stage whisper. “They’re afraid she’s going to hex them.”
Leit stamped her little hoof again, though her fury was more of an exasperated pout than anything like real anger. “T-they do not! Stop it!” Lyra started to laugh,
“You’re way too easy, Leit. Of course, you probably know all about that, Daphne.”
“Ah.” I glanced at Leit and frowned a bit. She rubbed her hoof on the floor, not meeting my gaze, letting her inky hair fall to cover her face.
As though she were oblivious to the awkwardness hanging all about, Lyra reached into her basket with her golden magic and popped out a moist, orange cake, which she promptly shoveled into her mouth. “So,” she said, as she chewed, spilling crumbs, “come on!” Swallowing, she beamed up at me, eyes wide with interest. “What’s the story here?”
Leit didn’t seem inclined to give in, however, as she stepped to the sofa. “Look, Lyra, I’ll explain later.”
“Aww, Leit, you can’t leave me hanging like that,” Lyra protested. “All those times I go back to Canterlot and you never ask me to look anypony up. I thought I knew everypony you knew there, too.”
“You do—I mean, you knew everyone at school. There’s no pony there I want to check up on.”
“Yeah, well, you did burn your bridges pretty spectacularly,” Lyra said with a flick of her hoof. “I would have been happy to take a letter or catch her up on news, though. All you had to do was ask.”
“The postal service works just fine, and I would never ask you to butt into my affairs,” Leit answered, and her face hardened. “For that matter, I don’t seem to recall asking you to come over, either.”
That was definitely not the tone I had been expecting. Actually, if one of my friends had said something like that to me, in that icy manner, I might well have punted her out the nearest window. Lyra, for her part, seemed to brush it off like it was nothing—no flicker of irritation or hurt crossed her gaze, and she waved it off with another flick of her hoof. “Like I said, I thought you’d like these cakes, and I felt like talking to you.”
“Everypony, however, loves cake,” Lyra countered, her grin wide as she levitated one of the cakes in front of Leit’s glowering visage. The way Lyra deflected Leit’s anger with harmless, simple little twists, one might have thought of her as some kind of emotional martial artist. “You know you want to try one,” she wheedled, “with that mouth-watering creamy goodness.”
Leit continued to try and glare at her guest, but Lyra proved indomitable. Finally, with an exasperated huff, Leit caught the proffered cake in her own green aura. “Thank you,” she said, barely a murmur. “That’s… quite thoughtful of you.” Instead of nibbling, though, she put it on the table and gently pushed the basket away from the couch. “Really, though, I’d like to spend some time with my friend.” Leit’s tone still held an edge of ice, but it seemed much more tolerant now. “You can come back a little later, all right?”
Lyra met her gaze for a while, and then huffed a small sigh. “Well, can’t say I didn’t try, at least,” she said, and slid off the couch. “Nice meeting you again, Daphne.” With that, she started towards the door.
The safe option would have been to keep my nose out of their business. There was no telling what sort of landmines might be waiting in their mutual history for an unsuspecting interloper to blunder into. In her own way, it almost seemed as if Lyra was beating at Leit’s door, trying to wedge a hoof in.
Rather like me, actually.
I settled a hoof on Lyra’s pale shoulder. “Wait, ah…” I hesitated, looking between her and Leit Motif for a moment. Offering a smile, I spoke to Leit. “It’s okay. I don’t mind. Actually, I’m kind of interested in meeting your friends here.”
Boom. There went a landmine. Leit Motif suddenly became very interested in the objects arrayed on the sofa’s end table, avoiding my gaze. Lyra gave me a sympathetic look—a grateful smile.
“You… are friends, right?” I asked after a moment. There were far too many awkward silences today.
“We’re acquaintances from school,” Lyra clarified. “I was her roommate.”
“More like a freeloader,” Leit muttered.
“I’m paying you back, as I promised! Besides, I did the chores.”
Leit tossed her mane. “You also made all of the messes.”
“Valiant messes.” Lyra knit her brow, her tone grave. “I slaved over a hot stove to provide you meals, and this is the gratitude you show?”
Leit shot her an exasperated glare. “You begged me to let you stay, and half of the need for cleaning came from your ill-fated attempts at cooking.”
A rather splendid opportunity had presented itself. Leit Motif had been clamming up about her history rather suspiciously, and all of the hints dropped so far had been rather concerning. Lyra, on the other hoof, was a third party—at the very least, she might help keep Leit honest.
“Do you mind if I have that one?” I pointed a hoof at the torte on the table.
Lyra waved. “Be my guest. Just don’t get crumbs on anything or Leit Motif will have you stuffed for her collection.”
“I don’t do taxidermy, thank you,” Leit said indignantly.
Careful to keep from spilling, I nibbled at the treat while Leit gathered herself. It had a pleasantly airy texture—fresh out of the oven. “So, I’m confused,” I said, lifting my head and gesturing to the two of them. “When I met Lyra earlier, she made it sound as if she wasn’t even enrolled at the school when she graduated. How does that work, exactly?”
“She wasn’t.” Leit looked at the other unicorn, shaking her head. “Actually, I’m not sure about some of the details, come to think of it. Why didn’t you apply?”
Lyra shrugged. “I did. They didn’t even let me take the entrance exams. My grades were terrible, and when I asked for a reference, my magic teacher laughed so hard he fell off his chair and got a concussion.”
“Can’t imagine that sat well with you.” Leit chuckled. “You’ve never taken ‘no’ for an answer in your entire life.”
“Darned right it didn’t. My folks were talking about local schooling, or maybe an apprenticeship, but I already knew where I wanted to go. A bunch of moldy, creaky-limbed old unicorns weren’t going to tell me that I couldn’t attend Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns, so I took destiny into my own hooves.” Lyra grinned, making a gesture like holding something in front of her. “It only took a little extra work on my part. Most of the unicorns that go there are either upper crust types, the ones who can afford the tutors and are in it for the prestige, or crazy eggheads like Leit—”
“Hey!”
“—so the teachers tended to assume that if you were in class you belonged there. Fooling the administration was a little trickier, but nothing a little creativity didn’t solve.”
“If by creativity you mean forging records.”
Lyra sniffed, lifting a hoof in disdain. “I did not forge records. That would have been low, despicable, and, more importantly, required skills I didn’t have! It was actually pretty easy when you get right down to it; I just made hell for a clerk at the administrative office. Made a stink about her ‘losing’ my file and name-dropping important ponies. Said I was in a hurry and I’d cut her some slack and ignore the whole thing if she’d make a temporary file so we could sort it out later.”
Going to sit on one of Leit’s chairs, I asked, “So where does Leit come into this?”
“About there,” Leit said, “she needed somewhere to stay and knew me from Ponyville. I had a dorm room all to myself.”
Lyra grinned and crossed her forelegs. “Charmed my way right through the door!”
“Came on her knees and begged. I might have put her out, actually.”
Lyra coughed, rubbing the back of her head. “Yeah, well… I probably would have deserved it, honestly.”
Frowning, I looked to them, my ears lifting quizzically.
“It’s a little stupid.” Lyra blushed. “When we were fillies, I kind of blew her off a lot. You know how it is—she wanted to hang out with the older unicorns, while we wanted nothing to do with her. Always came pestering me to help her with her magic, so I’d show her a few things to try and brush her off.”
My gaze bounced between the two of them again. If there was a difference in their ages, it wasn’t readily apparent. Admittedly, I didn’t know much about pony aging. Perhaps Lyra looked a little more mature, but she wasn’t as thin as Leit, either. For all I knew, they could be a full ten years apart.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Leit shook her head. “I was pestering you, and we were just fillies anyway. You have a good four years on me; that’s forever for foals.”
Four years, ten years. Big difference.
“Yeah, but you needed a friend,” Lyra said as she unseated herself and went over to Leit’s side. “I wasn’t blind. All of those kids bullying you and I just ignored it. You still need friends.”
“I’m fine on my own!” Leit snapped. She caught herself with a glance to me before anger really took hold. “And I do have a friend.”
“I didn’t see her around when we were at school,” Lyra pressed. “No offense,” she added to me, “don’t know your story and all.”
“It’s okay,” I said. Leit was starting to look put upon, however. Her hoof was tapping against the floor in what I had come to recognize as a gesture of agitation. Lyra was noticing it, too, and her face became drawn, as if she had been through this before. Deciding to let things cool a bit, I motioned Lyra on. “What happened, then? I understand the Princess graduated you anyway. How did that work?”
“Heh, well.” Lyra flopped onto the sofa again, laying her belly across it. “Couldn’t keep it a secret forever. Once my coursework was completed, they brought up my files. There was no hiding it then—it was plain as day that I wasn’t a student. No one on the faculty could remember giving me my nonexistent entrance exam, and then they found their copy of the rejection notice. My parents—who had been reluctantly supporting me—lodged a protest, but the dean was all for having my grades stricken from the record and turfing me out onto the street.”
“But the Princess stepped in?”
“No,” Leit said, and actually smiled a little. “I did. Lyra was, well, crying her eyes out—”
“Stoically facing my fate,” Lyra said in a strident tone. No one paid her any heed.
“The other students and I met with her teachers,” Leit went on. “Whatever her grades had been with her teacher back in Ponyville, she had more than made up for them at the magic school. The professors were a lot harsher than a primary school teacher, too, so she definitely earned them.” She glanced at Lyra with a puzzled frown. “Honestly, I don’t know how you pulled it off. There weren’t enough hours in the day for you to keep up with all the coursework and the projects, and I could swear I saw you working jobs most of the day.”
“There weren’t,” Lyra said, collapsing dramatically. “I was lucky if I got to sleep every third day. After you passed out from studying I’d borrow your books and read until my eyes bled.”
Leit tilted her chin upwards. “I never passed out studying!”
“Yeah? Tell that to the drool on the pages.” Lyra scoffed and stuffed her face with another confection.
“Ahem!” Leit pointedly ignored her. “They—that is to say, the professors—all vouched for her, but the dean still didn’t budge. She hadn’t paid the entrance fees, and the dean wasn’t inclined to let her since she thought it was disgraceful that somepony would violate the ethics code to that degree, but…”
“That’s when Princess Celestia intervened,” Lyra said. Her face practically lit up at the memory. “I’ll always remember what she told me.”
“‘No pony should ever be ashamed of hard work, determination, and a willingness to believe in herself, especially in the face of adversity and hardship. If any unicorn can be said to be gifted, it’s you, Lyra. It is with great pride and no small satisfaction that I give you your diploma,’” Leit finished. There was a shared look between them, and for a moment it seemed as if the room was aglow with warmth. “Was bursting into song really necessary?”
“Yes, yes it was,” Lyra said airily, giving her rear a shake, emphasizing the golden harp. That might have been to hide the sudden tightness in her throat though. “Besides, it got me meeting Princess Cadance, so I dare say it was a great career move.”
“Okay, I admit, I don’t get it,” I said, as their story wound down. “There’s this touching narrative of how Leit came through to help Lyra, and you two graduated together with the Princess’s blessing. Now you’re both back here in Ponyville, pursuing whatever careers, and you seem to work pretty well together. Where’s the disconnect?”
“Ah. Well.” Lyra tapped her front hooves together. Leit jerked up, and the warmth was instantly sucked out of the room. “You’re a little off. You see… Leit didn’t graduate. You didn’t know?”
Leit stiffly walked back a step. “I’d really rather not talk about this.”
Lyra blinked and then looked at Leit Motif. “She really doesn’t know? I thought you two were friends.”
“No! I mean, yes, she’s my friend, but she didn’t know!” Leit rapped her hoof against the floor in another staccato rhythm. It was a habit she had never displayed as a child, and it was a little off-putting—rather like watching someone mutter to themselves. “You don’t need to tell her, either. It’s not important.”
“Not important? Criminy, Leit!” Lyra half-stood from the couch, then waved her hooves as Leit took another step back towards the stairs. “I know, I know! I said it was okay that we didn’t have to talk about it, but are you hiding things from your friends now? That’s not cool.”
Taking another few steps back towards the stairs, Leit leaned back from the pair of us. I rose to my feet, stepped between them, and laid a hoof on Leit’s back. “Look, it’s all right. You’ve had a really hard time today, Leit. So have I, for that matter, and all this is getting pretty heavy.” Turning to Lyra, I said, “It’s fine. She doesn’t have to talk about it if she doesn’t want to.”
“Oh, well. All right.” Lyra took hold of the torte I had been eating and bounced it on her hoof, narrowing her eyes at the dessert. Then she chucked it towards me. “Here. Catch.”
With a yelp, I reached out and tried to catch it. Naturally, it only bounced off my hooves, careening towards a table. Leit snapped to attention and enveloped it in green magic, stopping it just short of splattering all over her collection.
“Speaking of hiding things from friends…” Lyra tapped a hoof against the hardwood floor. “Your new friend Daphne’s from Canterlot, but she doesn’t have an accent. Obviously knew nothing about the school. Didn’t know anything about your spectacular public breakdown—”
I gawked at Leit. “Breakdown?”
“—and she hasn’t got a cutie mark. She stuffed her face instead of picking her food up or using magic. I’ll bet she doesn’t even know how to pick things up.” Walking up to the two of us, she weighed me mentally. “Wait, I think I know what this is.”
That put me back a step. I raised a hoof defensively and looked to Leit, who gazed back with an equally slack expression.
Lyra jabbed her hoof at me. “You’re a vile shapeshifter, here on behalf of Discord to sow Chaos among innocent Ponyvilleans! Well, you may have sucked Leit’s brain out and turned her into a listless zombie, but you’ll find me to be made of sterner stuff!” Lyra’s horn lit up and intricate panels of golden light fashioned themselves into a shining suit of pony armor about her.
“Who the hell is Discord?” I stared back, giving her a flat expression. Really, I probably should have expected this to take a turn for the ridiculous at some point. I really wanted to examine that magic, too, but now didn’t really seem to be a good time.
Gaping back at me, Lyra had to take a moment. “You don’t... know who Discord is?”
“No.”
“Big dragon slash pony slash lion slash whatever thing?” Lyra tilted her head. “Engulfed Equestria in a storm of chaos? Only defeated by the Elements of Harmony? Lives out on Fernfallow Way back in Canterlot?” The armor fell away into mist as Lyra’s concentration faded.
“The Elements of what?” I asked, and moved past her and took a bite out of the hovering torte. “Yeah, I could pretend I know, but it’s kind of past the point now.” Stuffing it in, the rest was devoured in just a couple swallows to give my sandwich company. It was a reminder that breakfast had been at the crack of dawn.
“Lyra.” Leit stepped forward, putting a hoof to her other friend’s side. “I’m sorry. I was going to… well, all right, I probably wasn’t going to tell you until I knew more about what was happening. This all came as a shock to me, as well.” She paused for a minute, and then jabbed her in the ribs. “Also, what precisely led you to think I was a listless zombie?”
“Ow.” Lyra rubbed her side. Her gaze was fixed on me, though she glanced at Leit out of the corner of her eye. “What exactly is going on here? Who—or what—is Daphne?”
Leit opened her mouth a few times. “She’s my oldest friend,” she finally managed. “She came out of the blue and back into my life, a piece of me I’d forgotten about. Someone who meant more to me than anything in the world.”
A flicker of uncertainty passed over Lyra’s eyes. She glanced between me and Leit Motif. It was a little embarrassing to be referred to so, particularly in front of another person, but, when my gaze met Leit’s, it found a steadiness there that had been missing earlier.
It was strange, in a way, how anticlimactic this moment felt. In a large sense, this was the point to which this entire day was building—to ask Leit Motif to help. After everything else we had been through that day, however, it felt exhausting, like we had just climbed and descended a mountain, only to be faced with a petty hill before we could really get home. I offered her a small smile. “I think I owe you an explanation then.”
Leit Motif turned to Lyra, who put up a hoof before the other could speak. “Leit, if you think I’m leaving you alone right now, you’re crazy. I’ve never seen you act like this, and I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s going on. I’m your friend, too.” Lyra looked to me, her face firm. Leit’s jaw worked without a word, her eyes soft and vulnerable.
That gave me a moment’s hesitation. It had been the plan to speak to Leit Motif alone and let her decide where to take it, since she knew her own world and who to trust in it. Still, sending Lyra away would only increase her suspicion. Coupled with her concern for Leit, that may have created exactly the sort of problem I had been hoping to avoid.
I stepped over to them, shaking my head. “No. It’s all right with me if Lyra hears it, too.”
“Great! Storytime.” Lyra flopped back into the couch and leaned back, her forelegs up on the back of the sofa. For all that it was an exaggerated pose of ease—if a peculiar one for a pony—her eyes never left me nor lost their golden intensity.
I took a deep breath, muttering, “Never thought I’d get an audience for this. From the top, then. Lyra, you’re partly right—I’m not a pony. Not normally, at any rate. It wasn’t by choice, but I am now.”
Lyra’s hoof twitched, but she didn’t interject. She ran it through her mane before returning to her original posture.
“Leit Motif and I met as children, around eight years old. I had taken to playing in the forest near my house and, one day, I found her by an old tree. We spent the whole summer together, with her journeying out from her home in Ponyville into what you know as the Everfree Forest to visit me every day. Eventually, though, my parents stopped me from coming and, well… it’s a long story, but the short of it is that I no longer believed that Leit Motif nor Equestria were real.” The image of Leit on that first day, looking tired and dirty, resurfaced, and I turned to regard her. “You never did tell me why you were so far out there.”
Rather than answer me directly, Leit scuffed her hoof along the floor.
“You went off into the Everfree on your own?” Lyra asked. “Both of you? As kids?”
“Well, on my side, it isn’t really all that dangerous.” Putting a hoof up, I flicked my tail towards her when she shifted her weight in the couch and opened her mouth to speak. “I’ll explain the sides thing in a minute. Anyway, back there I wasn’t a pony. I’m what’s called a human.” I paused for effect there.
There wasn’t even a flicker of comprehension. “Sort of a bipedal, mostly hairless creature?” I offered.
“What, like a minotaur?” Lyra glanced towards the swords hanging on Leit’s wall.
“Not really.” Leit Motif shook her head. “Sort of a strange mishmash of different creatures. They’ve got long manes, no tails, hands, skinny limbs, and long feet.”
Lyra grimaced. “Sounds like a demented rabbit. Are you sure you’re not some sort of horrible monster come to devour us?”
“Pretty sure, thanks.” I rolled my eyes.
Lyra leaned forward, interest lighting up in her eyes. “How did you get this way, though? Jump ahead to that part.”
Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself. “Yesterday, my little sister and I were out in the woods. We had a, a f-fight and got separated. I followed after her, and found that some monsters had ki-kidnapped her.” It was harder to say than it should have been. It was hard to look at Leit Motif’s face, to see her growing shock and dismay as her face fell. “I fought with them, but they shot me with a wand thing and turned me into… well, this.” My hoof gestured over myself vaguely.
Heaving a sigh, I looked up to the two of them. “That’s why I’m here. Her kidnapping proved to me that you all existed, and I need help. I’m sorry, Leit, I…” I cast her a plaintive look. “I really do care about you, and I want to reconnect with you so things can be like before, but I have to save my sister before I can get my life back on track. I got turned into a pony, and I came from another world to save my sister.”
Head bowed, legs set, my ears low, I waited. Leit Motif looked—well, not hurt exactly, but there was a definite uncertainty in her. She was shuffling her hooves and rubbing her leg, trying not to look at me directly. Small surprise, really, considering that I pretty much admitted that she wasn’t my first priority.
Lyra came up to me and caught my gaze with her own. “That’s some heady stuff. It’s kind of crazy in a way—weird creatures from another world? A magic wand that turns them into ponies? You sound plenty sincere, though.”
“I believe her,” Leit murmured. She joined us and leaned into me, slightly. “I’m… I’m really sorry to hear about your sister. I understand. You must be out of your mind with grief, and I put you through all that…”
I pressed back at her side and smiled. “It’s okay. I would have been pretty freaked out if you showed up at my doorstep, too.”
Lyra rubbed at her neck. “Well, I certainly wasn’t going to turn my back on her either, particularly not without hearing her out first. All right, say I believe you, too—I guess I should start by asking you for a few more details.” She examined me a little more closely and prodded my side experimentally, making me wince as she touched a bruise. “Actually, we should probably find out if you’re all right. Heck, you were pretty much trying to shovel that cake in; are you hungry? You sure look beat all to Tartarus and back. Maybe we should get her to a doctor?”
“Uh, well, I did have time to collect some supplies. I didn’t know how far away Ponyville was, let alone if we could have found it at all. I don’t think I’m sick, and nothing is broken.” I waved Lyra’s hoof away as she started to poke at me again. My stomach gave a little growl of rebellion. “Though I haven’t eaten since breakfast this morning and it’s only—whoa, past five already? Nice clock by the way.”
“Oh! Do you like it?” Leit beamed, “I picked it up when I visited Hollow Shades. It performs a clever little play with clockwork at noon, but I can trigger it if you’d like to see—”
“Later!” Lyra stepped up, pushing Leit towards the door. “We’re going out now.”
“Ou-out?” Leit gasped, so surprised she let Lyra shove her right to the entryway.
Lyra twitched her tail, gesturing me after her as she pushed the door open. “Yeah, Daphne is hungry, isn’t she?”
“There’s plenty of food here!” Leit protested, pulling back.
Lyra gave Leit a steady look. “I’ve seen the sorts of food you stock here. I know what kind of food you prepare.”
“What?” Leit’s eyebrows shot up. “My food is perfectly serviceable.”
“Therein lies the problem.” Lyra shook her head. “You’ve mistaken serviceable for good. If all I wanted was bargain bread, watery tomatoes, and cheap clover, I’d put myself in the hospital. Speaking of, do you still prepare the exact same sandwich for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?”
Leit Motif tried not to look directly at either of us, staring into the middle distance. “I happen to like routine.”
“Well, guess what? Your friend from a million years ago popped in and wrecked any hope of you having a safe, predictable day.” Lyra put her head to Leit’s side and pushed her outdoors.
Trotting after them, I watched their little scene with an amused shake of my head. “I’m perfectly okay with eating in. Actually, I’d kind of prefer it. It’s going to be hard enough explaining things without worrying about other people listening in. I’m kind of in a hurry, too.”
“See? Even she wants to go back in!” Leit darted for the door, only for a golden flash of magic to slam it shut in front of her.
“I wasn’t exactly thinking about going to a restaurant.” Lyra bounced Leit’s glare off with her usual oblivion. “More along the lines of picking something up and going to talk to somepony who might be able to shed some light on what’s going on. I’ve certainly never heard of magic that could totally alter someone in a deep and permanent fashion like this before. Kidnapping is also something that would call for intervention.”
“It’s definitely beyond my expertise.” Leit rubbed her face and glanced once more at the treacherous door before nodding. “I’m sorry, Daphne, but Lyra is right. We want to help, but we’d need to research your condition. Likely your assailants, too—if they weren’t ponies or something common like diamond dogs, then I probably don’t know them.”
I shook my head. “Uh, they definitely didn’t look like dogs. Three of them looked like lumpy humans, and one of them was this sort of strange panther-thing with glowing blue eyes.” My hoof rubbed the spot where the wand had scored its fateful hit. It didn’t really feel like anything, but just the memory of being shot was enough to bring back some unpleasant associations. “They called it a Morgwyn.”
The two other mares exchanged glances and then shook their head in unison. “No,” Leit said. “I definitely would have noticed creatures that looked especially human during my studies, and I’ve never heard of anything like that before. There’s one pony who might. We need to take you to see her as soon as possible.”
“‘Her’ who?” My ears pricked forward.
“Our local Princess,” Leit said. “We went to school with her, and she makes both of us look like amateurs when it comes to magic.”
“Not that she really cares to be called Princess.” Lyra grinned. “We just call her Twilight Sparkle.”
“I place my faith in fools; self-confidence, my friends call it.” Edgar Allen Poe
Leit Motif
“What part of ‘as soon as possible’ does this qualify as?” I growled.
Lyra rubbed her chin as she considered the menu posted over the counter of the pizzeria she had dragged us into. Ponies ran back and forth between large ovens, while a stallion with a spectacular mustache was flipping dough into a round pie overhead with the benefit of a glowing horn. “The part where it is absolutely impossible for me to take you two to see Twilight until I have a few slices of pineapple and garlic pizza,” she said, attention still rapt upon the pizzeria’s selection.
Steam filled my head. “Lyra, I’m—!” Ponies turned to look at the shout. I winced and lowered my voice to a more acceptable tone. “I thought we were simply going to pick something up on the way.”
Lyra turned and gestured outside. “This is on the way! It’s between your house and the library.” Her eyes were far too wide and innocent for her actions to have been anything other than deliberate. After using the same excuse an untold number of times to get me out of our dorm, one would think that I’d be wise to it.
I pointed to the ovens. “But this has to be cooked. We could have grabbed fruit, or a sandwich, or something.”
My ear twitched, and Daphne stared at me out of the corner of my eye. The server behind the counter—a scrawny, orange-maned teenager in a paper hat that was stamped with the proprietor's pizza cutie mark—cleared his throat, making her jump. “Welcome to Linguini’s, home of Linguini’s famous pies. Could I take your order?” he asked in a nasally voice.
Daphne blushed and worried at her mane, her jaw tight. “Oh, right, thanks.” She turned her gaze up to look at the menu. It was doubtful she was aware of it, but her awkward side-to-side shuffling suggested a foal waiting at the doctor’s office. Other ponies waiting behind us were starting to grow impatient, with one blue mare trying to bore into the back of Daphne’s head with her eyes.
Can’t these ponies see that she’s been through Tartarus and back? I thought, narrowing my eyes at the offending mare. She quickly found something else to occupy her attention.
Lyra giggled. I rounded on her, asking with a snort, “What?”
She covered her mouth, though she failed to hide her tremendous grin. “Nothing.” She pointed her raised hoof toward Daphne and her anxious ministrations. “It’s just that dance she’s doing is kinda adorable.”
I set myself before Lyra, my voice a scathing hiss as I chastised her. “She scarcely knows how to use her legs! I can’t imagine what you were thinking, taking her out in public—” I pointedly glanced around, “—when she hardly knows the first thing about our world.”
My glare had been much more effective on the mare behind us than it had been on Lyra. She simply turned her head and continued to study Daphne. “I don’t know about that. She knew about Canterlot when we met. Not enough about it for it to be believable, but you know what they say about hindsight.”
I stamped my hoof. “That is not what I meant, and you know it! We should be taking her to Twilight as soon as possible!”
“We’re just a pizza away, now.” Lyra tilted her head. “So, do you think humans ever get cutie marks, or is it like how mules are blank for life?”
My teeth ground against one another. “Often times I can’t tell if your head is empty, or if you’re deliberately ignoring me.”
“Never attribute to malice what can be better explained by stupidity.” She quirked a smile, still looking at Daphne rather than me. “Also, you’re terrifying the locals.”
My cheeks darkened as I glanced around. Ponies were staring at the two of us, muttering among themselves and trying to hide the fact that they were pointing my way. It was enough to kill my momentum dead.
It was impossible to argue with Lyra. She got her way far too often—certainly, her success at school had been hard-won, but such an endeavor required more than just a little luck and charisma. A pretty face, a quick song here and there, and a somewhat oblivious nature had opened every door for her while I had been forced to scrape and claw for every possible advantage.
Worst of all, I couldn’t muster any honest hate for her.
“We still ought to get moving,” I said, though with little heat remaining. “Her sister is in danger.”
Daphne had apparently overheard us at that point and took a step toward the two of us. “Look, it’s okay, you two. The trail is pretty cold, and I could use a breather anyway.”
“See? Daph agrees! I can call you Daph, right?” Lyra trotted forward to the counter without waiting for a response. “I’ll take a medium pizza. Make half pineapple, garlic, and sprinkle on some of that really sharp cheddar. Leit, what do you want on your half? I’m buying for you and Daph after all.”
“H-half?” I spluttered. “No, look, I’ll…” I examined the counter and pointed at a glass case. “Just reheat one of those cheese slices over there.”
“Make her half spinach and artichoke, she loves that,” Lyra told the colt. “Throw in two big drinks.” Turning to Daphne, she asked, “What’ll you have, Daphne?”
“Oh, uh…” She took another quick glance at the menu. “Tomato, extra cheese.”
“Small tomato with extra cheese then!” Lyra informed the clerk before levitating out a stack of silver bits, flicking one into the tip jar by the register before joining us.
“That wasn’t actual silver, was it?” Daphne asked as she watched an earth pony reach into her saddlebags and toss her coins with her teeth.
That had been a curious remark. I could swear that Daphne had mentioned gold and silver in our little games as children. I realized then that I hadn’t paid even a single thought to what her world was like since she had returned. Questions formulated in my mind, and I carefully considered what I might ask her. It would have to be well-phrased, of course—I was making first contact with an unknown civilization and I wanted to cover as many contingencies as possible. Some delicate precision would be required so that she would feel comfortable answering them.
Lyra, of course, simply barged in. “Sure it was! Now, sit your butt down and tell me all about yourself.” She put her head to Daphne’s side and pushed her into a booth.
I sighed. Might as well resign myself to the present reality, rather than the one in my head. Sliding in next to Daphne, I folded my hooves under my belly and looked at my old friend with a shrug.
She frowned. “Uh…” As predicted, Daphne didn’t exactly look pleased, given the way she scrunched her face up. Still, her features smoothed after a moment. “I’m going to school right now, though I’ll be missing a few days at least while this is going on.”
Lyra watched intently as she started in on her soda, popping a straw through the top. “You’re probably going to some sort of human magic school huh?”
Daphne winced and glanced around, but it didn’t seem as if the other ponies nearby were paying us any heed. Lyra had chosen a booth that was fairly lonely—normally a difficult task, but, as it was mid-afternoon, it fell squarely between the lunch and dinner rushes. “Not really. We don’t have magic, let alone schools for it.”
Lyra sputtered. “No magic?” she asked. “How does that… no… what? You need magic!”
“Well, that’s not true,” I said. “There’s plenty of people—that aren’t ponies—who don’t use magic, right here in Equestria.”
“Sure, but even griffins and earth ponies and minotaurs have some kind of magic. They have magic lying around if nothing else.” She shook her head, putting her hooves on the table and squinting at Daphne. “So, that spike on your head; you don't even know how to use it, huh?”
“I thought you deduced that with your little test,” I muttered. “Risking my collection in the process, I might add.”
“Hush, you.”
Daphne blushed and glanced between us. This seemed like it could be a potentially touchy subject. I tried to shake my head to warn Lyra off, but Daphne spoke up on her own behalf. “Before yesterday, I didn't even really believe in magic anymore. I no more know how to use my horn than I do... well, anything, actually.” She nudged the cup Lyra had bought her. Presently unfilled, it tipped over easily.
With a casual touch, Lyra righted the cup again. Daphne paid intense attention to the act, as if she expected to find a cleverly concealed electromagnet within Lyra’s single hoof. I tried not to look pitying, but I don’t believe I succeeded based upon Daphne’s deepening blush, and she had begun to worry at her mane again.
I can’t even imagine what you must be going through, Daphne, I wanted to say, but the words caught in my throat. Her discomfort didn’t appear to stem from our current surroundings, at the very least. In fact, Daphne had seemed oddly comfortable placing an order, only to slip back into her previous anxieties. Perhaps there were pizzerias where she came from, or something remarkably similar. What that meant for our two disparate worlds, our two disparate species, and us two disparate children, however, was beyond my reckoning.
Of course, I could have simply asked Daphne about it, but I was having difficulty finding my voice, watching Daphne fret as she did.
The silence was deepened by the arrival of our food, the orange-maned teen from before depositing the plates on our table before hurrying back towards the kitchens. Daphne stared down at her slices—which were heaped with far more molten cheese than I felt anypony could eat alone—with trepidation, and I slapped a hoof to my temple.
“Maybe they can cut the cheese out of my hair. Wouldn’t that be grand?” Daphne muttered to herself.
I kicked myself metaphorically. She had come here for my help and I wasn’t going to let her down. Especially on something so simple.
With a nudge at her shoulder with my hoof, she turned to look at me. I gave her a smile and gestured down to the plate. “It's not difficult. Just like this.” I reached down to my own plate and picked up a spinach-covered slice. I sat up and took a bite before looking to her expectantly. That should be easy enough to follow; even a recently restored paraplegic could manage that much.
Carefully, Daphne set her hoof against the fluffy crust.
No dice.
She mustered her willpower, but it left no impact aside from an impression in the cheese. I frowned.
While she licked the sauce from her hoof, Lyra stared at her. “You can't even—?”
“Voice down!” I hissed. My ears were alert as I checked the nearby tables. That orange-maned busboy was giving us a funny look. He fled at once at my glare.
Lyra coughed and lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “You can't even use your hooves?”
“Rub it in, why don't you?” Daphne muttered. “Besides, didn’t you notice it back at the house? You threw a cake at me.”
“But… you just pick things up,” Lyra said in a tone of wonderment, her eyes wide.
Daphne’s face scrunched up. “Don't you think I've tried that? Though, I'm not really sure what you mean. I've tried everything I can think of!”
“It's just... basic, really. You pick things up with your hooves; that's all you need to do.” Lyra teleported a bit to the table with a flash of golden magic and then pulled it up with a hoof. She held it out for Daphne to see.
The awe on Daphne’s face was palpable. The coin could have been a bar of gold. She reached out and felt around Lyra’s hoof. It looked as though Daphne was trying to take the coin, but all she could manage was to push it around the surface of Lyra’s hoof with the tip of her own.
Lyra squirmed and jerked her hoof back. “He-e-ey! That tickles!”
Quite without warning, Daphne slammed her forelegs into the table. That did manage to attract attention, and several heads turned our way. Her face turned stricken with the sort of pallor that could only come from immediate post-fact regret.
My heart went out to her—I wanted nothing more than to show her how to use her hooves, to fit in and feel comfortable in her new body. Perhaps I could teach her magic, too, and then she’d get her cutie mark once she figured out what her special talent was meant to be. She would need a place to stay, too, of course. I would be more than happy to fix her up a room. Knowing her, she’d insist on paying back rent once she got a job, and we’d be able to live together as we’d always dreamed.
Of course, it wouldn’t be in a palace in Canterlot with a rocketship or whatever that was, but at least we would be together again.
“I'm sorry.” She rubbed her head and sat up. “It's been a really rough time and this grabby hooves thing is killing me.” While glaring morosely at a spot above Lyra’s head, she reached down, picked up a slice with a hoof, and stuffed her face as if she had been doing it all her life.
“I think I met somepony named Grabby Hooves in Canterlot. He wasn't a nice fellow. In fact, he would get on the commuter trains to—wait a tick.” Lyra blinked. “What are you doing?”
“Whuf?” Daphne blinked in turn at her. She swallowed. “I mean… I’m giving up. Maybe I’m a defective unicorn anyway; no horn, no hooves. I can swish my tail and walk and that’s about all. Though this pizza is great, let me tell you. Just the right amount of garlic.”
I coughed. “Daphne…” I pointed to the half-eaten slice.
Her gaze followed mine, and she looked at the slice in her hoof as though she had never seen such a thing before, or it were somepony else’s beige hoof holding it up to her. She began to choke and beat upon her chest until her throat cleared.
Just then, however, a screaming voice echoed in from the street. “Ogre!”
The pizza slid off Daphne’s hoof and landed, face down, with a sad splattering noise. Daphne’s ears drooped, but Lyra’s perked up as she pushed open the window at the end of the booth to listen.
A dark-coated pegasus stallion skid into the square outside the pizzeria, bouncing a little from the rough landing. “There’s a red ogre attacking the town; it’s going to eat some foals!” His eyes were wide as he stared around frantically, muscles tensed and ready to fly again.
There was a beat as everypony stared at him blankly. Then the screaming started. Ponies ran every which way, fleeing for cover.
Listening to the thunder of hooves pounding outside, Daphne sighed and covered her face. “Wrap mine to go. I’ve got to go save my friends.”
* * *
To say that the streets of Ponyville were in full panic would have been unfair. We had responded to enough monster attacks in recent years that the news of an ogre attacking wasn’t something that could stir the entire town into shock like a bunny stampede might have in quieter years. This side of town, however, was convinced that it was about to be under imminent threat, so ponies were rushing to and fro to reach their homes or the nearest shelter and rounding up frightened foals.
Lyra, nonchalant with a pair of pizza boxes on her back, trotted along behind us, speaking to Daphne as she made for the south edge of town. “So, you’re friends with an ogre? That’s pretty cool. Does she normally attack rural towns, or does she think you’re in danger or something? Or was the ogre chasing you, and your friends are now in danger because they’re foals?”
“There is no ogre,” Daphne said as she pushed a blonde mare—Lily—aside. Lily was screaming her head off, but,she was always an excitable sort. “Probably. And Naomi would never attack the town.” She paused to think that one over more carefully. “Probably.”
Only one thought worked its way through my mind as we ran. She brought a friend along?
This day was putting me out of sorts in so many ways.
With my attention wavering, I only barely noticed a cart careening towards us as the driver slipped in a muddy puddle. I leapt clear and shoved Daphne with me. The cart crashed into the wall next to us thunderously and sent boxes flying.
“You crazy jerk, watch where you’re going!” I shouted as I stood back up. The stallion who had lost control of the cart squeaked like a little filly and galloped away.
Daphne crawled back to her hooves and stared around wildly. “Lyra? Lyra!” Daphne shouted. “I… oh, Leit, I think she got hit! She was right behind us!”
The wagon was quickly snared in my magic, and I shuddered as it began to lift, produce being shaken off.
Just as I was about to fling the wagon aside, there was a flash, and a ball of golden light appeared between us, a silhouette of a pony contained within. The light winked away, and Lyra craned her neck around to check on the pizza boxes. “Hah! Didn’t lose anything important that time.”
Daphne gaped.
“What?” Lyra said with a grin. “You’re acting like you’ve never seen somepony teleport out of danger before. Come on, let’s go! I’m really excited now.” She turned and prodded me in the side. “Hey, Leit, bet I can teleport us the rest of the way.”
I glowered at her. “Don’t you even think about thinking of trying. I remember how long it took Amethyst Star to regrow her tail.”
“Yeah, she did look pretty hilarious like that.” Lyra laughed and then started galloping down the street, which had finally cleared itself of frantic pedestrians.
“Everything she does is charmed,” I muttered under my breath.
Daphne gave me a look but said nothing as we raced along after her.
The houses melted away to reveal the small farms and cottages that lay between town and the Everfree forest. A pang of nostalgia swept over me. It was on this very road that I would strike out once a day to go meet Daphne. It had been summer then, with a bright, hot sun and damp meadows full of insects. The land had a different character in autumn, with once-ripe fields of hay and vegetables swept clean from the final harvest of the year.
We passed by one cottage up on a hill, leaping over the back fence and dodging the chickens in the yard before racing on. Daphne put on a burst of speed and darted ahead of us as we came into sight of a large swimming hole, but she was forced to skid to a halt when a grizzled, older pegasus landed in front of her and spread his wings.
“Hold on!” he barked. “There’s a dangerous monster up ahead. She’s holding some foals hostage and looks mighty fierce. Her whole head was on fire!”
“Look, this is all just a misunderstanding—” Daphne tried to explain as Lyra and I drew near.
“I know, right?” The pegasus laughed. “You’d think monsters would have gotten the message not to mess with us here in Ponyville! Me and some of the boys are getting together to rush her position and take the foals back by force. Hopefully not too many of us will die horribly in the process.”
I blinked at him. “You sound unreasonably cheerful about that prospect.”
“Well, sure. I’m not too worried. Insurance will cover my injuries—”
By the manner in which he began to backpedal, I deduced that I had donned my “work face” as I said, “You’re aware that not all coverage includes willful exposure to injury.” It was not the sort of habit I wanted to get into, though it would be nice if Lyra reacted in like fashion, if only just once.
“Well, I… haven’t really examined my contract all that closely…” he said uneasily, continuing to back up until he nearly fell into the watering hole.
The three of us bypassed him, circling around the pond until we came to the line of ponies watching the thicket beyond. Daphne, clearly itching to get to her friends, made to shove past them, but I lay a hoof on her shoulder. She gave me a quick look and nodded for the two of us to lead the way.
“What’s going on here, Ambrosia?” I asked one of the mares talking quietly with the others, a comely earth pony with a creme mane.
Ambrosia turned to look at me with some surprise. “Hello! Uh… Leit Motif, right? Yes! I remember when you came by after the whole Mare Do Well thing last year? Thank you so much, by the way.” She grabbed my hoof in two of hers, shaking me hard enough to wobble me. “You may have saved my whole business.”
I pried my hoof free with some effort, shrinking back from her honest enthusiasm. She beamed expectantly, which had me backing up a half a step. “Uhm… y-you’re welcome. I… well, I try to look out for my clients…”
“We’re just trying to figure out what to do about this whole ‘ogre’ problem. Normally, I’d try to flag Rainbow Dash down, but no pony has seen her for a few days now. Can you believe that?” Ambrosia shook her head. “Fluttershy just barricaded herself in her house back there, and I think Applejack and Big Macintosh must be in town because no pony at Sweet Apple answered except Granny Smith.” She brightened again, ears pricking up. “But, hey, what are heroes for if not to set an example? So I figured we’d come up with a plan that doesn’t involve all of us being… horribly injured.”
“I’m glad to see you’ve got a little more sense than some ponies around here,” I muttered, glancing back at the pegasus stallion from before. “You don’t need to worry, though. I’m going to go in there and talk to her.”
Ambrosia stared at me. “You?”
A little taken aback, I blinked at her.
“Well, I mean… I haven’t really seen you out and about since, well, ever. Why are you suddenly throwing yourself into danger for no reason?” She gave a little gasp, and quickly covered her mouth. “Oh! Not that I, uh, meant to imply anything. Gosh, Leit Motif, that sounded awful. I’m sorry.”
Unsure of how to respond to that, I motioned a hoof for her to step aside. “Well, I’ll just get going then.”
Ambrosia frowned. “While that is a really sweet sentiment, I’m not sure. They said she was at least seven feet tall and covered in black hair like a panther. I know you were at Canterlot, but this might be a bit much for just a couple ponies to handle. Somepony—I think he was a guardspony—already went ahead, and we haven’t heard from him. I’d really rather something awful didn’t happen to you.”
Lyra stepped forward, directing her attention to a handsome, young pegasus with a spiky red mane and white coat who was loitering with the crowd. “Hey, cutie. Think you can hold on to my pizzas for a while?”
The stallion turned and met the full force of Lyra’s most appealing smile. For a moment, I wondered if she had overdone it—the poor fellow seized up so hard it seemed as if he had gone catatonic. Then he nodded vigorously and moved his side to hers for her to slide the boxes onto his back.
“Great! Thanks.” She waved in passing as she trotted forward. I joined her and Daphne with an exasperated sigh while the other ponies who had been listening cleared a space to let us pass. They were all looking at the three of us as though they were sizing up our coffins, which did little to settle my nerves.
“Just what kind of friends did you bring, Daphne?” I asked her, wondering what sort of creature involved being as tall as Princess Celestia and wreathed in fire to boot.
“Normal friends. They’re exaggerating.” She flicked her tail, then called ahead. “Hey, guys? It’s me, Daphne. I’m coming through with some friends—don’t panic.”
A young, male voice answered. “Gee, am I ever glad to hear you have full confidence in our ability to keep things under control, Daph.” That gave me some pause. I squinted through the leaves of the thicket—that could have been the voice of any young stallion our age, but, even tinged with sarcasm, it had a sort of confident strength to it which was uncommon in anypony so young.
It was possible Daphne had found another pony along the way who was helping her, as well. Were that the case, he should have simply come out into the open and cleared everything up.
“Yeah, Marcus.” Daphne rolled her eyes. Her tone shifted to nearly match his in biting sarcasm. “You have this so under control. All of those ponies staring this way are absolutely part of your plan.”
Lyra bounced on her heels with eagerness as we came around the thicket. “I can’t wait! My first glimpse of demented rabbit-people and… they…”
To say that the sight was a peculiar one would have been a grotesque understatement. There, in a cleared space, sat a circle of foals around a peculiar—yet familiar—creature. From the explosive red curls of sun-touched hair cascading to the earth around her, I could only assume that this was the “red ogre” everypony had been shouting about. There was nothing about her that was all that spectacular. She had soft, nearly hairless skin and a slender build that didn’t suggest anything dangerous. In her arms, she held a filly so tenderly it could have been her own baby. Even that foal didn’t seem terrified—indeed, she was curled up rather comfortably.
I remembered what Daphne had looked like as a child, but this was my first glimpse of an adult human. Their manes were certainly a lot more impressive than I had originally given credit for, certainly, though they were scrawnier than I had hoped. Daphne had always painted a mental picture of towering, imposing beings.
The guardspony—or whoever he was, he certainly looked tough, with hard muscles over his bulky frame—sat with the foals, looking bewildered at the Everfree monster, as if he didn’t quite know how he had ended up there. There was a cup of tea in one of his hooves.
“So what happened to the princess then, Miss Naomi?” one of the fillies asked, her eyes bright.
“Well, she left the prison cell to find that the evil stormtroopers had them all blocked in! Bolts of fire exploded all around them, but she wasn’t afraid. She said ‘Someone needs to find us a way out of this!’ and grabbed the wand from Luke and used it to blow a hatch to smithereens so they could—Oh, hey Daphne!” The young woman half-rose, smiling towards us. “I’d wave, but my arms are full now. This poor little thing is still trembling from her ordeal.”
“I thought I might drown,” the filly in her arms said, her eyes wide. Her bright green-and-red tail was dripping onto the young woman’s clothing, but she—Naomi—paid it no heed.
“It’s all right. There’s no way I could stand by while something like that happened.” Naomi cooed, beaming down at the foal. “Can you believe it, Daphne? Equestrian foals are just the perfect size for cuddling!”
It was hard not to look away; she was as radiant as the sun when she smiled like that.
“Just when I thought you couldn’t get more sappy, Naomi,” the man from before said, so close behind me that I froze, “you find some way to shatter my expectations.” It wasn’t that he was moving all that quietly so much as I had been too focused on the girl. “So. Might as well give us a round of introductions, Daphne. I’m getting my fill of pretty pastel ponies already.”
Feeling my ears burn, I rounded to find the source of the voice. I had to assume that he was a male from the voice, though it was hard to tell from appearance alone. Certainly, he was taller than the girl and had a certain broadness about his shoulders that suggested masculinity to me, but for all I knew this was a deep-voiced young lady. There was a certain cast about his face that was different from Naomi’s was and Daphne’s had been, too—something I don’t believe I would have picked up on were it not for my time spent with Daphne as children. The faintest fold about the eyes, the way the bones of his face stood in contrast—perhaps this was another type of human? I had always suspected that Daphne was the rough equivalent of an earth pony for her kind; perhaps he was like a pegasus or a unicorn. Magicless, mind. He wore a black jacket made of some sort of hide, and a black, polished tool made of some unidentified material hung over one shoulder.
“Well!” Naomi said, nodding to each foal in turn. “This is Red June, Archer, Sunny Daze, Cotton Cloudy, Rainy Feather, Apple Mint, Shady Daze, Chowder, Rumble, and, of course, Patch!” She tickled the filly in her arms, who squealed enthusiastically. “Oh, and Mister Blue Skies. He came to rescue the foals, and we had a nice chat.”
The man—Marcus?—groaned. “I meant… nevermind.” He glanced down at me and thumbed at Naomi. “There’s no stopping her when she’s like this. She’s going to be uncontrollable the whole time we’re here.”
I reddened, taking a cautious step back. I came up to his chest and probably weighed twice what he did, but he was still awfully forward.
Daphne strode into their midst. For once, her smile was unforced as she swept a hoof around. “These are my friends from Earth. The pretty one squealing over the foals is Naomi. She’s one of my dearest friends. This is Marcus, he’s a pain—” she caught herself as her tone began to turn bitter, ameliorating it. “He’s a friend of ours, who came when he heard my kid sister was in danger.”
Her words echoed in my head. One of her dearest friends? I looked more closely at Naomi, and my eyes narrowed. If this woman was one of Daphne’s dearest friends, then she had much to answer for. Certainly, she had crossed entire worlds to help her friend, but here she was making trouble for Daphne. Admittedly, that was to help a drowning foal, but surely she could have defused the situation better.
It was more than that, though. Where was she when Daphne’s parents tore her life apart? Just what kind of friend allows that sort of thing to happen?
“Guys, this…” Daphne came up to me, drawing my attention again. She slid her hooves around my neck, holding me close. My vision swam. “This is Leit Motif. We’ve been apart so long, it’s almost hard to believe we’re here, together.” I couldn’t answer but to slide my own hoof around her and squeeze her back. My cheeks flamed with the knowledge that others were privy to her display of affection, but I couldn’t have protested even if I wanted to.
“And I’m a third wheel!” Lyra announced, waving.
Marcus gave her a flat look. “Please don’t tell me your name is Third Wheel.”
“Nah, it’s Lyra.” She shook her haunch at him, displaying the golden harp. “I’m Leit Motif’s caretaker.”
“You are not…!” I snapped at her, or tried to. I was feeling a little choked up. In an effort to conceal my swelling emotions, I idly scuffed a hoof.
“Why is that pony shaking her butt at me?” Marcus demanded.
Lyra grinned and looked between Marcus and Naomi, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully. She flicked her tail a few times. “Still, I’m unimpressed. These are your mysterious monster friends from across the Everfree? Sure, one of them is wearing the skin of a dead animal, but I was expecting something a little more, I dunno… spectacular.”
“Oh, that’s hardly fair.” Marcus leaned the strange tool against a tree and crossed his arms. “You’ve barely gotten to know us.”
Lyra smirked at him. “A minotaur is twice as tall as I am and can throw a fully-grown pony across a field. What can you do, breathe fire?”
He glanced at the tool and gave a slight smirk. “When properly motivated.”
Daphne pulled away, and I rubbed surreptitiously at my face. “Knock it off, Marcus,” she said and poked him in the side. “I’m not letting you start a diplomatic incident.” He swatted at her hoof and they glared at one another for a moment. I swear I could feel the sparks shooting between them.
“So, uh,” I interrupted. “We should probably let the gawkers know that everypony is okay.”
Daphne jerked away from her friends, looking at me. “Oh, right. Well… everyone up, I guess. Time to face the new world.” She glanced around. “Where’s Hector, anyway?”
“Oh, I tied him up a little deeper in,” Naomi said as she stood up. Patch remained precisely where she was. “Marcus, could you fetch him? My arms are a little occupied.”
“You tied one of your friends up?” I frowned at Daphne. Lyra walked over to the foals, chivvying them into a rough semblance of order and herding them back towards open ground.
“Ah… well…” Daphne coughed. “I’m not sure I’d call Hector a friend, precisely.”
The excited foals raced ahead and danced around the relieved adults. More ponies had arrived, all of them watching the thicket, eagerly jockeying for position. When Naomi stepped into the open, there was an excited gasp—from both sides. If anything, Naomi looked happier than ever.
“Everypony!” Lyra stood up on her back hooves and spread her forelegs. “Have no fear! The terrible fire-ogress comes not to destroy and terrorize, but to make friends! Behold, for she has saved this tiny filly from drowning! Welcome her not with violence, but with your love and fellowship!”
“Why me?” I begged the sky and planted a hoof into my face.
The crowd didn’t see it the same way I did, however. Instead, they stamped their hooves and cheered before rushing forward to greet the “terrible fire-ogress.”
Daphne watched this display with an expression that sat somewhere between relief and wry amusement. “You stamp your hooves to clap? That’s really kind of adorable.”
I chuckled. “Welcome to Ponyville, Daphne. It can be a little silly, but it’s a nice enough town, I suppose.”
Lyra trotted back over to us, grinning. “Well, not a bad introduction if I… don’t… say so…” Her grin slid off her face as she stared past the two of us.
Turning, I saw the largest pony I had ever seen in my life. No, not a pony, but a horse, tall and proud and powerful. With his head held high, he strode towards us, hoofs beating the ground. A saddle graced his back, and he wore a bridle. Marcus dropped his reins and went ahead to pry Naomi off Ambrosia’s neck.
“Is… is that a Saddle Arabian?” Lyra hissed to the two of us. “Oh, Daphne. I take it back. You have all the right sorts of friends, all right.”
I frowned. He did indeed look like a Saddle Arabian, if a little large. He was the right height and build, but there was something about him that seemed off. Even in my own travels, I had only seen a few of that kind, and only at a distance, but he still struck me as a little strange. “He’s not wearing traditional Saddle Arabian garb.”
“Who cares?” Lyra scoffed and smoothed her mane back. “Look at him, he’s gorgeous! Hector, right? I’m going to say ‘hi!’”
Daphne muttered under her breath. “Saddle Arabia? Seriously?”
“Yes, it’s a country far away, occupied by horses.”
For some reason, Daphne seemed to find that idea alarming, if her widened eyes were any indication. Her ears pricked up suddenly and she whipped her head around to Lyra. “Uh, wait…”
Lyra sauntered up to the horse, who was standing beside the watering hole and watching the ponies with what seemed a dubious glance. “Hello there, Hector,” she greeted him in a low voice. “Welcome to Ponyville. You must have come a very long way indeed to help your friend Daphne.”
Hector turned to regard her, tilting his head slightly. He said nothing.
“That’s really noble of you. But, of course, a Saddle Arabian stallion must know all about honor. I’ve always… oh!” She jumped as Hector bent down to sniff at her. He whickered, sniffing down her back and nosing at her saddlebags. “Sir!” She giggled. “You are very—uh—forward!”
I glanced at Daphne. She shook her head, a mortified grin crossing her lips.
“Uh, Lyra,” I called. “Could I talk to you? Now?”
“Oh! Excuse me, sir.” Lyra backed up, extracting herself from Hector. “We’ll have to talk another time. It was very nice meeting you!” She trotted back towards us and flicked her tail at him. “Wow. He’s… something,” she said as she approached and ran her hoof through her mane again. “Silent type, huh? I can work with that.”
“I see your tastes haven’t changed much, but, uh, Lyra…” I glanced over her shoulder to where Hector was browsing at the grass. “Out of curiosity, what do you have in your saddlebags?”
“Well, my harp case, some snack flowers, my money, and those cakes.”
“Sugary sweets? Oh, boy.” Daphne rubbed her nose. “Lyra, I have something to tell you about Hector…”
“No, no, I’d rather figure it out from him. Is he a warrior with an oath of silence? Oh! Maybe he’s an exiled prince?” She bounced on the spot. “Hee! I can’t wait to find out! Let’s get going to Twilight’s already! Come on!”
As she trotted off to extract Marcus and Naomi from the curious gaggle of ponies, I looked towards Daphne and asked, “So, uh… tell me, on your world, you don’t really have sapient animals, do you?”
She shook her head. “Not really, no. Dubiously sapient, maybe.”
I glanced towards Hector. “And horses and ponies where you’re from, they’re in the same boat?”
“That’s right. I know that probably sounds a little, uh… disturbing.”
I frowned. “It brings up a lot of questions. I… I would really like a chance to talk to you privately, soon.”
“Me too.” She grinned at me. “So—want to see how long it takes the ponies here to figure it out on their own?”
It was a thought that wouldn’t have occurred to me alone. Mischief was Lyra’s schtick, not mine. Still, as I glanced at Lyra bouncing away, I felt a smirk creeping up on me. Turning to look back at Daphne, I saw in her face the little girl who had lit up my world. “Absolutely. Ready to go?”
“Yeah. Let’s go see your princess.”
Daphne
If Ponyville was an interesting experience for someone traveling alone, arriving with a trio of strange creatures in tow made it almost harrowing. Where ponies weren’t crowding in the street to watch, they were hanging out of windows or hovering overhead. Marcus and I gaped as we saw a pair of pegasi laying on a low-hanging cloud.
“Leit,” Marcus said, turning to look at Leit Motif, “how the heck are they doing that?”
Leit, however, didn’t look like she was in a mood to answer anything. She had her head ducked low and was staring firmly at the road in front of her. I frowned and nudged up against her with my shoulder, but she shivered and shied away.
“Are you okay?” Marcus asked, stealing the words right out of my mouth.
“I’m fine,” she muttered, but, when she glanced up and spotted the ponies staring at her, she shuddered again. Her eyes returned to the ground and she trotted along behind us.
“What, you’ve never seen birds perch on a cloud before?” Lyra asked as she pulled away from admiring Hector’s side. He was drawing as many—if not more—eyes as Naomi.
Marcus gave her a vexed look. “Uh. That would be a no.”
“Really?” Lyra tilted her head. “Huh, weird.”
“Clouds are insubstantial mist. Nothing can stand on them.”
“Well, yeah.” Lyra shrugged. “That’s what cloudwalking spells are for. Most winged creatures just natively produce a similar effect.”
“Didn’t Daphne explain the whole no magic thing to you?” He scowled at the pegasi overhead, who pointed at him and whispered among themselves. “This place is already starting to get on my nerves, and they aren’t as nice as advertised, either.” He turned back to Leit, frowning. “Can’t they find something else to stare at?”
Lyra laughed. It didn’t seem as if she noticed Leit Motif’s distress—of course, Leit was trying to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible. “Sorry, you’re the coolest thing we’ve seen all week. Do you think we could walk through one of your towns without drawing eyes?”
I grimaced, remembering my terrified imaginings back in my own hometown. “No.”
“Give it a couple days, though, and it’ll be like you’ve always lived here,” Lyra said. “Once ponies understand that you’re just like us in all the most important ways, they’ll accept you.”
Marcus snorted. “All right, but if I start saying ‘anypony,’ I’m going to drown myself.”
As we continued north through town, I kept close to Leit Motif with the hope my presence would lend her some comfort. My attention, however, was settled on Naomi. Her eyes had a glint in them that worried me, and I wondered if I might have to keep an eye on her during our stay. The last thing I wanted to hear about would be her kidnapping and brainwashing any of the locals. At first, the way she was cradling Patch concerned me greatly, but, as we went along, I started to have trouble telling who was manipulating whom. Whenever Naomi set her down, Patch became suspiciously miserable, staring up at her new ride with wide eyes and a pouty lower lip until she was picked up again.
Even as I watched, Patch pointed a yellow hoof at an ice cream stand. “Miss Naomi? Would it be too much trouble to ask if you could get me some of that? I wouldn’t ask, but… I-I haven’t had butter pecan in so long, and I-I was worried I’d never get to taste it again…”
“Seriously?” I asked, nonplussed, and raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, you poor thing!” Naomi smiled winsomely at Lyra. “Could I bum a few coins off you? I’ll find a way to pay it off.”
“Ice cream? Yes, please!” Lyra strode over to the vendor and came back hovering a pair of cones. Patch took one and cradled it between her forehooves, which was so saccharine I had to look away.
Marcus stared at the cone still hovering in front of Lyra as they walked. She was licking it casually—unlike Leit Motif, she seemed to bloom rather than wilt under the stares we were getting. “Okay,” he said, pointing at the glow. “That’s kind of awesome. You got any more tricks like that, little horse?”
“More than you’d know what to do with, rabbit. I’m a top graduate of a magic school. For magic. Top.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re ‘top’ something, all right.”
As the buildings thinned out, forming little clusters in the grassy fields, we came upon a great tree, easily forty meters across at the base and with branches that must have shaded an acre or two. A balcony jutted out near the top of the trunk and airy windows dotted its side. It was hard to tell if it had been grown first and then carved to become a house, or patiently molded through its life into the form that it was in now.
Lyra paused in front of a sign near the door that displayed an open book and turned back to the crowd. “All right, everypony. Thanks for coming—show’s over now.”
There was a general grumble of disappointment, and one colt shouted, “Aww, come on! At least breathe fire or something!”
Lyra’s horn flared and she spat a gout of flame from her mouth that curled and smoked in the afternoon air.
“Well.” The boy considered that for a moment. “Fair enough.”
There was scattered laughter and most of the crowd dispersed, leaving only a few onlookers.
“So…” I stepped forward to peer curiously at the front door. “What’s the proper protocol for meeting a princess?” If I hadn’t known it was a royal residence, I might have mistaken it for a bookshop or public library. What I could see of the interior from outside showed packed shelves crawling up the interior walls.
Lyra gestured to the door. “I normally just barge in and say ‘hello,’ but I figure we can be reasonably polite and knock.”
Naomi’s head jerked up. “Whoa. Whoa. No pony said anything about meeting a pony princess.” Her eyes might as well have been blue fire for all the intensity they gave the door.
“Eh, I wouldn’t get your expectations up, kid. Twilight is pretty much the same pony who I went to school with.” Lyra tilted her head. “Okay, to be fair, she’ll actually give you the time of day instead of absent-mindedly blowing you off like you don’t even exist or—” She grated her teeth. “Ahem, sorry. She’s pretty nice, really; humble even. Somepony who’s saved the world a few times could probably stand to gloat a little more, but I wonder if she even notices the sort of attention she gets these days.”
“Saved the world?” Marcus’ brows shot up.
“Oh, yeah. Few times. Kind of makes us fellow alumni look underaccomplished.”
Spotting Leit Motif leaning against the sign, I went over to her side and gently touched her shoulder. She shied away again. “Leit, it’s okay. It’s just me.” I flicked my tail in helpless agitation as I watched her shrink in on herself. Leit had seemed to be in high spirits as we entered town, but it was as if all those eyes had battered her down again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Carefully, she leaned into my touch.
Not for the first time, I wondered if I had made a mistake drawing Leit Motif out of the safety of her house. The story I had pulled out of her and Lyra seemed to confirm that some awful things had happened to her in the past. Compounding her trauma with my own problems may have been not only a terrible idea, but a selfish one, as well. I shook my head, dismissing the thought—I had to believe that my friend had the capacity to pull through.
“Hey, kid. You plan on going home any time soon?” I heard Marcus ask.
“I’m good,” Patch answered. “Could you shift your arms a bit, miss? My neck’s getting a little cramped.”
Naomi giggled. “Of course.”
I gave Leit a nervous smile while my hoof gently rubbed her back. “You know, there’s something I’ve never told anybody. For a long time after we were separated, I, well… sometimes I’d get really anxious.” She looked up at me, her eyes mossy pools. “Sometimes I’d be surrounded by people, sometimes I’d be on my own, and I just… couldn’t deal with life. My breath would cut short, I’d feel closed in, trapped…”
“H-how… how did you cope?” Leit asked.
“Often? I didn’t. I just tried to avoid thinking about things that bothered me.” I shook my head. “It wasn’t healthy. I kept things bottled up…” I trailed off and glanced at Marcus briefly. “Exploded a few times I didn’t mean to. Sometimes I’d just ignore people. The only thing that really helped was breathing exercises and curling up with something I cared about.”
“Breathing exercises?”
“I don’t know how well it would work for a pony, but… breathe with your stomach in a measured count. Inhale slowly with your stomach for five seconds—good, like that—then hold it for two seconds, then slowly exhale for five seconds. Keep doing that twice more.” I smiled, continuing to rub her back as she did just that. “Great. Now breathe normally, in and out, until you’ve exhaled five times.”
Leit’s trembling eased under my hoof. We kept that up for a few cycles until Leit eased herself up off the sign and gave me a wan smile. Her breathing had steadied, and some of the color had returned to the skin under her coat. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Are you ready?”
Leit nodded. “As I’ll ever be.” We joined the others. Hector had been tied up to a low-hanging branch that was as thick as a leg, and Lyra had stepped up to the door. Her hoof tapped out a staccato rhythm, and we waited.
“Library’s open!” a boy’s voice called. “Sheesh. What part of ‘public’ is so confusing?”
“Why do I even bother?” Lyra asked the air.
Leit gave her a scowl. “I know that was directed at me. Don’t even pretend you didn’t mean it that way.”
Marcus gestured between them as Lyra shoved the door open, striding into the library as if she owned the place. “Is this a thing? Was that a thing that I just witnessed?”
Leit Motif grimaced and trotted in after her. “Lyra’s treatment of private space can be a little… cavalier. We’ve skirmished over that in the past.”
Stepping inside the library was a bit like walking into a dream. In place of the rustic charm that seemed to pervade the rest of Ponyville was an almost fairy tale simplicity. Shelves, tables, stairs, and passages were arrayed with organic grace, making the space feel not so much like a library as it did a bower. It wasn’t hard at all to picture my younger self curling up in one of those window spaces to read away a lazy afternoon. It must have been fine competition for the miles of park space that filled the town. I wondered how much ponies read—whether there was a grand passion for it, or if ponies took their libraries for granted as much as mankind did.
If the wisteria unicorn mare seated on a plush cushion near the back was any indication, the former was more likely. She had a stack of thick, wood-bound tomes taller than she was on either side of her, with her nose buried in another.
“Is that you, Lyra?” she called in a distant tone, so engrossed in her reading that she didn’t bother to turn around or even so much as lift her head at our entrance. “You’re not here to check out more books again, are you? I told you, you need to return the books you’ve already borrowed before you can check out anything else. This is a library. That’s kind of how they work.”
“Twilight Sparkle!” Lyra trotted around the table in the center, a stock of wood that extended straight out of the floor. “Is that any way to greet a pair of old school friends? We hardly even see each other!”
“You were here just yesterday,” Twilight said, her tone acerbic, but she quickly ameliorated. “I said I was sorry for being so distant back in Canterlot, and—” She paused in the midst of turning a page to look up at Lyra. “Wait, pair? Is Amethyst Star with you?”
“Nope.”
“Did Moondancer come down from Canterlot?”
“Also nope.”
Twilight tapped her hoof on the floor.
Lyra gestured behind her. “You know, you can just turn around.”
“Oh…! Oh, right.” Twilight chuckled uneasily as she rose, and I blinked as a pair of wings that had been tucked up against her sides gently unfurled.
There was an air of precision about her—her indigo, rose-striped mane and tail looked as though they had been trimmed with a paper cutter, and her wings had been impeccably groomed to remove even the slightest crooked feather. It wasn’t the sort of precision that spoke of fashion so much as a keen sense of fastidiousness, a desire to control her personal environment.
Evidently, it also came with a fair-sized dollop of absent-mindedness. She turned to view her guests and focused first on Leit. “Oh! Leit Motif! It’s been… wow, months now! How have you been?” She peered more closely at her. “You know ink isn’t really a recommended mane conditioner, right?”
Leit lifted a hoof, waggling it uncertainly. “Uh. I’m not… bad. And yes I… nevermind, these, uhm…” She glanced over towards myself and my human friends. “I’ve, uh… brought some people who want to see you.”
“I’m terribly sorry. I’m usually better at this, but I’ve just received a shipment of fascinating books on griffin history, and I’ve been so focused I’ve… just…” Twilight Sparkle’s eyes widened as she at last regarded the remaining visitors to her library.
Marcus waved. “Greetings, pony-ling. Take us to your leader.” He contained a yelp when I stamped my rear hoof on his foot.
I stepped forward and extended a leg. “Hello, Twilight Sparkle. My name is Daphne, and I’m told you can help me and my friends.”
Twilight took my leg. To her credit, she was recovering from the intrusion rather quickly. I could almost see the surprise turning to interest in her eyes as she looked more closely at myself and my friends. “You must have come a long way.”
“Further than I really know how to express.” I laughed nervously. “These are my friends, Marcus and Naomi. They’re humans, and so was I until a few days ago. We come from a world we call Earth and we’ve traveled to Equestria in order to rescue my little sister, Amelia. She was kidnapped, and we don’t know how to find her in your world.”
Turning, I gestured to encompass Leit Motif and Lyra. “Leit and Lyra have been helping us since we arrived in Ponyville. Leit Motif is actually a very old friend of mine, but… well, we can explain the details later. In any case, they said that you, of all the ponies in town, could help us save my sister.”
Looking Twilight Sparkle in the eyes, I lifted my leg again, this time imploringly. “Please. I am scared sick and don’t know what else to do. If you can do anything, even just pointing us in the way we need to go, I would be grateful.”
Twilight glanced among us, her feathers ruffling slightly. She gave me a warm smile and lowered her head in a compassionate nod. “Of course. You don’t even need to ask. If I can help you at all, I will.”
* * *
We soon found ourselves sitting in a loose circle of cushions, all facing Twilight Sparkle. She sat up attentively, while myself and Leit Motif lay across one large cushion together. Marcus and Naomi sat together, cross legged, while Patch sat on Naomi’s lap and submitted to the ministrations of her brush. Lyra completed the circle, and she laid out the pizza boxes.
Lyra floated a slice Twilight’s way, who shook her head. “You want some of this?”
Marcus raised his hand. “I’ll take some.”
“Hold on!” the male voice from earlier called. I glanced towards one of the smaller doors to see an upright, purple-and-green scaled reptile that I could only surmise was a very tiny—and somewhat cherubic—dragon. “You’re not going to eat that over the floor, are you?”
“Well…” Lyra looked thoughtfully at her piece. A globule of cheese dribbled into the box and I felt my mouth watering. I reached out and hoofed my box closer. Let people stare at me if they liked; I didn’t care at that point.
“Ugh. Hold on. At least let me get some plates and napkins, okay?” He waddled away, grumbling.
Twilight smiled and waved a hoof. “Don’t mind Spike. He’s a bit of a grouch, but a very efficient assistant. Please, go ahead with your story.”
“I suppose that’s me, then,” I said and sat up. “So, I’ll try to be brief, but I think you should hear all of it. Some of you here have only gotten part of the story anyway, so now is as good a time as any to get it all out.”
My hoof ran through my mane in an effort to settle my nerves, and I took a deep breath. “It all started eight years ago. I was the sort of child who ran wild in the woods behind my house—back then I was a little too energetic for my own good, I guess.”
Marcus sneaked a glance my way as he listened and ate. Not that surprising—he didn’t know me until we were both teens. As far as he was concerned, I could have been talking about someone else entirely.
“I didn’t have anyone else to play with at first. I never thought about it, honestly. I’ve always had a pretty good imagination, so I made up whole worlds to play in. It was…” I glanced into the distance. “It was almost as if I were seeing different places, far away. Peoples and things that were just over the horizon. When I met Leit Motif for the first time, I thought she was one of those imaginings, but she didn’t react the same way—dreams can do unexpected things, but they’re a lot easier to bring to heel than living, breathing little girls.”
“What were you even doing out there?” Lyra asked as she peered Leit Motif’s way. Leit scrunched her face up, and Lyra narrowed her eyes thoughtfully as she turned back to me. “Eight years ago, you say? When, exactly?”
“We met in the summer.” I tilted my head, digging into my memory. “I don’t know if you guys have a similar calendar to ours…”
Lyra tilted her head. “Twelve months in a year, begins on the winter solstice, months are about thirty days give or take a couple?”
I nodded. “All right. Pretty close; not exactly, but close enough.” The calendar from that day appeared before me, conjured up from the depths of my memories. A vista from a sunny Hawai’ian beach was folded over the month of June. “The fourteenth day of the sixth month.”
Lyra stared at me. “Well, I can’t say I was expecting a precise day, but, okay, I can work with that. I seem to recall something strange happening one summer eight years ago. Heck, most of Equestria saw it.”
Twilight’s eyes widened.
Beside me, Leit kneaded the pillow with her hooves. I was about to speak up to spare her, but she spoke anyway. “A flash of rainbow light across the sky. It swept over Ponyville and into the Everfree.”
“Everypony everywhere has a special magical connection with her friends, maybe even before she's met them,” Twilight murmured distantly. It didn’t sound as if she intended others to hear, but she didn’t seem to notice when she spoke too loudly.
Leit Motif was staring at the floor, and I let it pass. Alone of the others, Lyra was looking at Leit Motif with concern, but no one needed to know that Leit had been packed heavily enough to survive a month or more on her own.
“After that, we were together every day,” I said. “For a month, I led her up and down my part of the woods—which are a fair bit safer than yours, by the way. I can’t say I’ve ever had a tree attempt to murder me before coming here.” I grimaced. “That’s when my parents took me away from there. They stuck me in therapy, and… well, I suppose you’d say I shut down. I couldn’t bear to be imaginative anymore.”
I, too, glanced towards the floor at this point. Pity was not an emotion I really wanted to see just then. The pain was too raw and personal to share with anyone except Leit Motif. “Flash forward eight years later… I, well… I’d mostly forgotten about everything.”
Marcus leaned back and scowled. He’d gone ahead and eaten his pizza without benefit of a plate—which didn’t bother me. It was on his head if that dragon set him on fire. “I didn’t think you forgot much of anything.”
“Ah… no.” I shook my head. “I do forget some things, especially things I am not really paying attention to, or that I just didn’t care enough to really dwell on. I’m sure at least some of my details are off, too. You might say that I didn’t forget Leit Motif so much as I had become conditioned not to think of her.” I laid a hoof on her back, and she tensed briefly before relaxing again.
“It’s all right,” Leit said quietly. “I tried to push you out of my mind, too.”
I continued. “Going back there exposed me to all of that again. It came back, hard, and I neglected my sister, whom I had brought with me. I kept blowing her off, and eventually she got so mad she stormed off and… and I let her.” Personal recrimination would not hold me back, and I forced myself to face my audience again. “I chased after her, as best I could. I found her with a group of strange men and one really strange cat.”
“From the sounds of it,” Twilight said, “you won’t have any trouble describing her kidnappers.”
I smiled wanly. “No. I could paint you a picture, if I knew how to paint.”
She gestured with a hoof towards me. “You can show me.”
“Show… you?” I frowned. It clicked even as I asked. “Oh! With… magic?” I reached up to gently touch my horn. “I’m sorry, I haven’t any idea how this thing is supposed to work.”
Twilight had the grace to look embarrassed, nodding. “Oh, no, there’s no need to apologize. I shouldn’t have presumed. Please, go on.”
“All right.” I concentrated on the space just before Twilight, pulling up the images of the three men. “They’re about as tall as you are standing. They resemble humans, but they’re a lot heavier than Marcus. Sort of grayish-green skin. They’ve got a lumpy, misshapen appearance.”
Marcus tapped a boot against the floor. “You know, don’t we have some of their writing, too?”
“Oh, hey! We do.”
Twilight perked at once, her tail straightening and her ears cupping forward. “Writing?”
I nodded. “Just a few pages that looked like they were torn out of an old book. They helped us get across into Equestria, which was, uh… harder than I had imagined. Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself… anyway, the leader of the three men had this big, gnarly wand, and I saw him perform… I suppose the only word for it is magic, though it looked nothing like the sort of magic you unicorns do.”
That put a thoughtful frown on the faces of all three of those unicorns. None of them interrupted, however, as they stared at me intently.
“Whenever he used it, there would be a white flash so bright it was almost blinding. I tried to fight him for it, and wherever it shot, things… changed. It was so hectic I barely remember what happened, but I do recall a hit turning the leaves on the ground into a flock of birds, and then there were logs bouncing around us… that’s when he shot me.” I rubbed at the spot on my chest where the beam had struck. There was nothing there, as far as I could tell, but the scene had been seared into my memory rather strongly, such that it felt as if I had been branded. Little wonder there’d be some psychosomatic relic.
“I fell into a nearby river and must have passed out. I can kind of remember changing, but I honestly thought I was dead until I washed up on a shore.”
“Complete transmogrification,” Twilight said in a breath. “I’ve performed transformation spells, but… either this man with the wand was very gifted, or he has some radically different powers than I’m familiar with.”
“Can you do anything about it?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.” She shook her head lightly. “We’ll definitely see about trying, though it’s not something I want to delve into lightly. I’ve barely graduated from turning fruit into other kinds of fruit. Restructuring mineral and crystalline objects is hard enough, but organic material? Let alone living creatures?”
Spike grumbled as he returned, shoving plates and cups in front of each of us. “Mixed results there, let me tell you.” He paused in front of Marcus and narrowed his gaze to slits, then threw a pile of napkins down and went to sit on the stairs to listen.
Twilight gave Spike a cross look before coughing and ruffling her feathers. “Yes, well, even if I can’t do anything, I’m sure we can ask Princess Celestia or Princess Luna. Maybe the Elements could help, if it’s some form of dark magic.”
I filed those names away and decided not to ask about them just yet, electing instead to continue. “After that, I went to Naomi for help and worked my way around town, careful to avoid eyes. I didn’t want to know what would happen if people saw me—we’re, uh… not used to species other than our own.”
“You’re the only sapient race on your world?” Twilight asked.
“As far as I know.” I glanced down at Leit Motif. “I’m starting to question that. Your Everfree Forest… it seems to have more than one way to go. The way to get into Equestria is guarded, though.”
Leit lifted her head, frowning. “Guarded? I’ve been back and forth through there dozens of times.”
“Do you remember a narrow river that seems to sparkle with silver?”
She nodded. “I just waded through it.”
“Well, when a human tries to pass, it pretty much instantly tries to kill them.” I shuddered. “The entire river surges violently, like it’s possessed.”
Marcus lifted his hand. “Would-be river victim, right here.”
“How did you get around it?” Lyra asked.
I reddened and gestured towards Naomi and Marcus. “We found a bag one of the men had left behind. It had some, ah… curious images on it.”
Naomi nodded her head towards Marcus. “They’re tucked between the pages of my sketchbook for safekeeping.”
He glowered at her. “Why can’t you get them?”
“My hands are busy!” she protested. Patch squirmed and flicked her tail, laying it over Naomi’s leg. Naomi giggled, obligingly brushing it out.
Marcus sighed. “You see what I have to deal with?” Muttering to himself, he dug through Naomi’s shoulderbag until he found a plain book, then carefully extracted the yellowed pages of text we’d found.
Spike took them and delivered them over to Twilight to view. Her face almost immediately turned sour. “They’re riding ponies?” she asked as she glanced up at me.
My ears flattened against my head. “As near as we can tell. We made kind of a stupid gamble and supposed that if Naomi was riding me while, uh, bridled, we’d get across. It worked.”
Lyra peered over Twilight’s shoulder. “That’s kind of a pathetic security system.”
“I know.” I furrowed my brows. “The people on it look like ancient Greeks, from over two thousand years ago. Back then, horses on earth were largely comparable in size to you Equestrians, if longer—”
Twilight raised a hoof. “Wait. I thought you said you didn’t have any other sapient species.”
“Ah… I almost hate to say it, but a ‘pony’ where we’re from is basically just an animal. We, uh… breed and ride them as beasts of burden.” Their eyes widened and they shot alarmed looks at Marcus and Naomi. I nodded. “Yeah. I know, it’s a little weird for me, too. That’s kind of a funny thing, though, because unicorns have been mentioned as far back as… well, the Greeks, and earlier, I think.”
“The Indus Valley civilization also mentioned unicorns,” Naomi said brightly, not bothering to look up from her ministrations.
“It’s pretty much universally agreed that they were all magically powerful and intelligent,” I said as I glanced around. “There’s also mention of pegasi—well, a pegasus. The Pegasus.”
“There are winged horses in Hindu and Norse Mythology as well,” Naomi piped in.
I gave her a flat look. “Who’s telling this story?”
She giggled. “Somepony who isn’t telling it very well.”
Twilight tapped her hoof on the floor. “I’m sorry. This is all rather sudden. You’ve presented a lot of things I’ve never even heard of before.” A beat passed, and Twilight’s eyes darted to the right. “Well, maybe.”
Lyra scuffed her hoof on the floor thoughtfully. “There’s something to this… I don’t know what books you read in Canterlot, Twilight, but I’ve studied compositions from around the world. There are epic poems from the griffins that remember a race of upright peoples clad in armor who fought with them. Minotaurs all claim a common heritage from a bull and some upright, tool-using progenitor.”
“We have legends of both of those,” I said. “Again, from the Greek narratives.”
Marcus leaned forward. “Twilight’s right—this is getting a little complicated.” He glanced around us as we looked towards him. “I mean… think about it. In just a few minutes here, we’ve pretty definitively established that your world and our world were and are connected in some really significant ways. Even I can tell you that the implications for human history are huge.”
“For pony history as well,” Leit Motif said. “There’s so much of the pre-Classical era that was lost after the collapse of the three tribes, the Discordian years, and more.” She sat up, much of the malaise that had overcome her seeming to fall away, and she shook her inky mane out of her face. “Marcus is right, though. Right now, we should stay focused on the task at hand. Whatever time we waste is more time for something bad to happen to Daphne’s sister.”
Twilight nodded. “Agreed. While I’m fascinated to learn more about the implications, they can wait.”
“All right,” I said. “Well. That is kind of the end. Naomi bridled me and we rode across without a complaint.”
“That is still a ridiculous loophole,” Lyra groused. “It’s so easy.”
I shrugged. “It took us a couple more days to get from there to Ponyville—actually.” I frowned at Leit Motif. “I wanted to ask about that. How did you get to me so fast every day?”
She tilted her head. “You didn’t take a straight east-to-west route, did you?”
I shuffled my hooves.
“It’s quite easy. You just circle south for a bit, following the trail around the swamp, and it takes you right to the river. If you went straight as the crow flies, there are two massive ravines that force you to detour.”
Marcus turned a glare towards Naomi.
Naomi shrugged. “Hey, I just told you guys which way west was. It’s not my fault it took us two days to go a couple miles.”
I tapped a hoof to draw attention again. “And that’s how we ended up in Ponyville. I came to find Leit Motif—” I glanced to her and Lyra “—retrieved my friends, and came here.”
Twilight rocked back. “That’s… quite a story. Of course, I’ll help as much as I can, though it does sound like it might be difficult to find any relevant information on these attackers. There’s always the Royal Library at Canterlot, though! And who knows what other libraries might have. Oh, this is so exciting!” She smiled. “Don’t worry, Daphne. Even if you hadn’t of brought me one of the most seminal finds in history, I wouldn’t let the kidnapping of a foal stand.”
I gave her a grateful smile in return. “Thank you. That’s all… no, that’s more than I could ask. I’ve already imposed on your people so much.”
She waved a hoof. “Think nothing of it.” She then lit up as her eyes swept across the shelves. “Spike! We have a research project!”
“I’m on it,” he said, going to collect the pages from her. He examined them thoughtfully. “I’m thinking ancient history.”
Twilight ticked off ideas. “Everfree Forest. Species of Equestria.”
Lyra got to her hooves. “Legends, folktales, and songs.”
Leit rose as well, her eyes brightening. “There’s books on foreign magic, isn’t there? I’ll see if I can’t rummage anything up.”
Marcus pulled one of the pizza boxes closer. “I’m going to eat dinner.”
The rest of us gave him steady looks.
“What? We may speak the same language, but I had a look at those signs on the way here. The three of us are more likely to get in the way.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Go do unicorn things for a while. Unicorn it up.”
“I’d like to learn,” Naomi said.
I nodded with her. “Me too. I hate to it admit it, though, but Marcus is right.”
Already, Spike, Twilight, and Lyra were moving into action, pulling books from shelves with magic and claw. Leit Motif smiled at me. “It’s all right. I’ll teach you as we go.”
I returned her smile. “Thanks.” Taking in the library, a spark of hope wormed its way back into my chest. The flame that caught from it was small, but it would grow with time.
* * *
Pizza and books were devoured with equal measure. Lyra and Twilight Sparkle were plowing through tomes and volumes like there was no tomorrow, with the latter of them flipping through three books at once and the former skimming and chucking volumes carelessly aside. Spike had his arms full pretty much continuously, racing up and downstairs to dig up new stacks.
“So that’s a ‘th’ sound?” I asked Leit as I pointed at an odd collection of bars and lines. It was less out of need for a reminder than it was for a confirmation.
She nodded, her horn turning green again as she highlighted a sentence. “Yes. Try it out.”
“‘In this way the zebra people have thoroughly exploited their environment, from the tops of the acacia tree to the deepest roots of the sorghum grasses,’” I read aloud.
“That’s… a little incredible.” Leit considered the page for a moment before examining me more closely. “Are you sure you’ve never read Equestrian before? I always assumed you knew it, since you speak it, but…”
I turned that over in my head as I looked at the page. “No. I think it’s just a memory and imagination thing. Once you told me what a letter meant I could attach it to a sound. I can look at that anytime I want for a reference from that point.”
“What about a whole page? Can you remember that exactly?”
I shook my head. “No. I mean… I have before, but that’s a lot harder. If I want to memorize a lot of information, like a whole text, I have to go through it slowly and carefully to make sure I’m getting all of it down. Otherwise, I only remember the meaning and context, and maybe a few phrases that stood out to me.”
“So when you really want to remember something, you make a little symbol for it in your mind?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s like I said; I think of a place and I assign a location to everything. If I want to look at memories of you and me together, I know right where to go every time. I was able to follow that back to find the memory of the calendar on the day we first met, too.”
Leit Motif snorted. “That’s far more efficient than my method. I just read things until they burn themselves in.”
I laughed. “Don’t be too jealous. Frankly, I wish I could turn it off sometimes. Makes it hard to forget embarrassing myself.”
“So that one time you fell on an anthill and cried like a baby—”
“Hey!”
“—or how you had to ask Naomi for help eating your pizza and she fed you like a baby—”
I swatted her with a hoof. “Shut u-u-up! Once I work out my hooves, I swear I’m going to hog tie you and give you to her as a present.”
Leit Motif shot an alarmed glance towards Naomi. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.” I giggled.
Leit gave a little chuckle and looked thoughtfully down at the book. “I wonder if you might be able to pick magic up as well.”
My ears pricked forward. This was a possibility that had, of course, occurred to me, but I didn’t have the faintest idea of how to start it. It probably should have been obvious that I could ask a roomful of unicorns. “Do you think I can?”
“You’re a unicorn. You were born to magic—” She coughed. “Ah. Well. You’re still a unicorn.” She gave me a considering look. “You didn’t grow up trying to use magic, though. There’s a lot of youthful growth and experimentation that is important for development.”
“Oh.” I sighed. “I haven’t had anything since I changed, either. Not so much as a little spark.”
“I’m sorry. I may be getting your hopes up for nothing.” Leit rubbed my shoulder. “It may not hurt to try, though. If we can’t turn you back, knowing a few basic spells could be useful while we’re rescuing your sister.”
“I would like to.” I glanced up between my bangs. The horn jutting out of my head felt like little more than a useless lump. It was always there at the top of my vision—a continuous reminder that I wasn’t myself. I reached up to touch it gently. There was a tingle as my hoof ran down the length of it, a pressure that would have been difficult at best to describe to someone without one. Like an antenna, really—you wave an aerial and it thrums as it picks up the radio.
Leit Motif winced. “Could you please not do that? A good hit on your horn stings.”
“Oh!” I snatched my hoof back. “Sorry.”
“All right. Exercises.” She glanced down at the book between her hooves. “Lyra might be someone to talk to, actually. She had remedial tutoring as a filly. I’m just trying to think of how a unicorn foal first starts… normally, your first magic is when you’re a baby, and it’s uncontrolled and powerful. Later, well—every unicorn foal tries to do magic as early as she can. It’s one of those things where everypony wants to run as soon as she can walk. It’s something that takes years to build up, normally, but since you’re already almost an adult… well, none of your muscles have atrophied, so maybe you’ve been given an adult’s strength in magic, too?”
“I’ve smashed my face into the ground enough lately trying to walk. It’s like I have four left hooves.”
Leit giggled. “Well, if you’re going to try magic, you might have to smash your face a few more times. Considering some unknown magic turned you into a unicorn in the first place, I can’t even guess at what’s required.” She tilted her head, then lifted one of the last slices of my extra-cheese pizza onto the table nearby. “While I’m reading, try this: close your eyes and think about wanting the pizza. Don’t think about how to get it—that’s trying too hard. Just hold it in your mind and want it.”
I gave her a strained smile. “Leit, hon, I’m not a bottomless pit. I’m stuffed.”
“I don’t know. You’ve eaten nearly three full meals since I’ve seen you again.” She wiggled the slice at me. “Surely you can find room in there for one more slice?”
Rolling my eyes, I turned to regard the pizza for a moment. Once I had it fixed firmly in mind, I shut my eyes.
I’ve often wondered what it’s like to be someone who doesn’t have an imagination as vivid as I do. Ironically, that’s something that’s nearly impossible to visualize. When I close my eyes and picture a scene, the only difference is that there’s a lot less distracting me. In other people’s imaginings, do dimensions change? Colors? Can whole events be swapped around without the person viewing knowing?
Ultimately, such questions didn’t matter. I closed my eyes and saw the same scene I had when they were open. That’s just how these things work.
Leit Motif hadn’t been entirely wrong. I had been pushing myself rather hard and building up a fierce hunger, and staring at a slice heaped with mouth-wateringly good mozzarella was starting to make me a little antsy. Temptation abounded, too—it would be very easy indeed to imagine a glowing aura of my own surrounding it and lifting it towards my waiting mouth. Leit had said not to do any such thing, though.
Time ticked by. I pictured a clock like Leit’s on the wall, and then dismissed it.
This was something I’d never read about in an adventure story: someone staring at pizza until their mind shrieks with boredom.
“Hey, guys?” Lyra called. I snapped my eyes open and looked towards her, grateful for the interruption.
She was peering down at a book. It had the look of a journal—the writing was sloppy and there was a clasp on the cover. The others crowded around. Even Patch climbed up on Lyra’s back to peer down at it.
“So,” Marcus said as he leaned over Leit Motif, “what are we looking for?”
Lyra rolled her eyes and pointed to a passage, reading aloud. “‘The goblins came again to the farm. They had a new wagon this time, and new passengers as well. Granny said not to stray too close to their wagons without Ma or Pa with me, but I couldn’t help myself. The others had looked so ugly, upright and coarse, like someone had shaped them out of dough.’” Those words hung in the air for a moment, a bit of extra emphasis behind them. “‘This new one was bright and colorful, though, and she walked on all four legs, not just two. Her name was Cascade and she had feathers like a pegasus that shimmered in the sunlight like kingfisher feathers, all along her back. She told me a secret—that she had been a pony once, just like me, until she got lost and they found her. She called me a very special little filly and asked if I wanted to know how they made such wonderful tools, like the ever-sharp knife Granny had bought last time, or the rope that always stayed dry. She said I was to come back at night, before they left, and she’d tell me everything. I drew a picture of her; she was so lovely.’”
The page was turned to reveal a reasonably detailed sketch of a creature that looked an awful lot like a pony. Feathers covered her back in a long crest that ran from her mane down her tail, which was long and prehensile. There did not seem to be any further entries. Small wonder.
“Who did this belong to, Lyra?” Twilight asked.
“Name at the front page says ‘Marble Stone.’” Lyra flipped a couple pages to a bookmark she’d left. “She was only seven by the time of the final entry, and it’s dated a little over ten years back. It was down in the archives.”
“Could we trace it back to the family?”
Lyra shook her head. “I know the area she’s talking about. It’s right up against the Everfree, near Fluttershy’s cottage, and that area has grown wild since I was a filly. Her family must have packed up and left. We could try questioning the neighbors, but…”
Leit Motif shook her head. “No, keep looking. We can try tomorrow if we don’t find anything, but if there’s one mention, there must be more. We even have a name now: goblins.”
“A creature who was once a pony…” Lyra murmured. “Could have been lying. Poor kid.” She caught herself and jerked her gaze up to me, stricken. “I’m sorry, Daphne, I wasn’t thinking… your sister…”
I shook my head. “Let’s focus on this right now,” I said, tapping the journal. “Don’t worry about me.”
As it turned out, there were other mentions of goblins. Digging through again, the three unicorns found spotty mention of them throughout Ponyville’s history. Strangers of myriad shape, who all identified by one common term. There were traveling performers who stopped by to display their skill. There were wandering smiths who made crafts that wowed and amazed the locals. Not all of the contact had been peaceful, however.
“Big surprise.” Marcus shook his head. “Not if they’re foal-stealers.”
Lyra pointed at a particularly old book. “They were the aggressors, too. A giant ‘goblin’ attacked the town back near its founding and ate an entire grain silo before being driven off. It said ‘the Sword King will make ye all pay,’ and fled with its back stuck with spears. Cool.”
“All very fascinating, but what does that tell us?” I asked, my tail twitching in agitation. “That they’re creatures who come from—or maybe through—the Everfree and steal children? We already knew that much.”
Naomi reached over and stroked my mane back. I sighed, leaning into her hand.
“I think we can work with this,” Twilight said, giving me a sympathetic smile. “I… think we’ve nearly exhausted our resources here, though. I know there was one book we had with Goblin in the name—Ghosts, Goblins, and Ghoulish Figures—but the girls never returned it. Technically it’s loaned out to Scootaloo, but she and the girls are out camping last I heard.” She glanced around. Most of the books that weren’t about wildly inappropriate topics had been arrayed in enormous piles all around the main floor. “I can send to Canterlot for more. I’m positive that they’ll have a lot more information than we do.”
“How long will that take?” I asked.
“Only a day… or two.”
I nodded, sighing heavily. “All right. Again, thank you, Twilight. What about Scootaloo and that other book?”
“We can look for her.” Twilight nodded. “Maybe she left it at her house. We can go there right now and talk to her parents.”
“What about that cat you mentioned?” Marcus asked. “What did you call it, a Mog?”
“No. Morgwyn,” I said. “It looked like a panther, but different in a lot of ways, bulkier.” I stared to Twilight’s left, concentrating.
Bringing forth the image of the thing called “the Morgwyn” was strangely difficult, especially after the ease I’d had earlier. My own thoughts on how other people must see their memories came floating back. The creature resolved in my imagination like a cloud of smoke, melding into a vaguely feline shape with curious ridges along its back. It seemed to ripple, as if it wasn’t entirely under my control, the muscles shifting as it tried to get a look at me.
“It had claws. They were white, and glowed faintly on their own.”
I got to the face, and its blue eyes looked back into mine. They shone like bright stars, twinkling with some terrible purpose. It made eye contact with me and smiled with bright, shining teeth. I felt suddenly hot, and shut the creature out of my mind.
“‘Devil’s blue eyes,’ they called it,” I said in a strained tone. “Seems very appropriate.”
Twilight Sparkle frowned, looking to Spike. “I seem to remember seeing something when I was digging through Creatures of Myth and Folklore, but I don’t recall where I put the book down.”
“On it.” With a grin, he dove into one of the piles and popped out a moment later with a book in claw. Twilight swept it towards her with her magic and flipped through it. “M… M… oh, right, this one isn’t alphabetized… and it’s also not mentioned by name, but…” She read the text. “‘...the ancient earth ponies described it as a harbinger, a black omen of plague and misfortune. In folklore passed down through generations, long before written records were kept, it was said that it came from a time when the world was new. It spoke to some, to say that it had seen the mountains rise and would see them torn asunder in an age that is to come. It said that it would be there to guide that end, and would set a flame that would consume all worlds.’”
Twilight floated the book in front of us. All eyes fixed on the illustration. It was clear it had been by description only, but that was enough. The artist, in his or her fevered imagination, had depicted it as a smoky cat heaped atop a pile of bones as ravens circled overhead. Its claws shone with moonlight, and its eyes were twin pits of azure flame.
"Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only. It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence." Adam Smith.
Amelia
Up until that point, I had always wanted to try white water rafting. It was one item on a fairly exhaustive list kept in a drawer back in the house. Sadly, like so many things in life, being roped to a screaming baby sapped all of the enjoyment that might have been derived from the experience.
“We’re going to die!” Wire screamed. Her hooves scrambled for purchase on me in an effort to stay afloat in the raging water—a task she was failing at badly.
Moments before we would have careened into a sizable rock, I managed to push away from it after prying one of Wire’s hooves off. I got a lungful of water and a hoof to the face for my trouble, which caused me to gasp and sputter. Another rock slammed into Wire’s back, and she yelped and screamed some more.
“Help! Plea—!” The river dragged her under, and she dragged me along with her, so we tumbled together beneath the white wash, narrowly avoiding another pair of rocks. I fought to keep my head above water, which was becoming ever more of a challenge, until the river mercifully calmed from a raging torrent to merely a brisk flow.
We clung to one another, each of us gasping for air, as something buoyed us from below. I felt at it with my hind legs, wondering what could be holding us up, but my ears perked as a distant roaring became audible.
I grimaced. “Uhm. Wasn’t there a waterfall near the castle?”
Wire shook her white mane out of her face and tried to catch her breath as she spoke. “Y-yes, there’s one right down…” Her eyes widened. “Right down the river.”
The nearby canyon walls were honeycombed with pipes and sluices from the goblin city, pouring water into the river, but the edges looked calm. “We have to get to the si—Hey! Whoa!” I yelped as Wire desperately tried to flap her wings and escape. The two of us were too weighed down, however, and she only succeeded in splashing around and losing buoyancy in the process. We tilted over the waterfall and out over empty space, and both of us screamed.
Wire’s panicked flapping slowed us enough that, when the river rose up to meet us again, the resulting slap of water only left us bruised and battered instead of broken. With stars in my eyes and increasingly waterlogged lungs, I clung to my bag and discovered that it had somehow become a flotation device. This came as a bit of a shock, considering I expected it to be a burden on the river.
Falling off a waterfall had not been part of the plan, but it could have ended much worse if Wire hadn’t been with me. Even if I had successfully managed to escape into the city, it would have left me very near to the Wand King’s goons, which would have probably resulted in me pitching myself over the waterfall and meeting a very messy end, either way. For an accidental hostage and generally being dead weight, Wire had proven herself unexpectedly useful. We were already quite a ways from the castle. The river split once, then twice, carrying us down a tributary.
Thanks to Wire, we had survived getting thoroughly lost.
She was also nowhere to be found.
I searched around frantically before looking down, where Wire floated limply just beneath the surface of the river, one hoof caught in my bag’s shoulder strap. Shocked, I took a breath and dunked my head under water, biting her mane and pulling her up. The blow from hitting the river must have knocked her senseless, for her head lolled uselessly as I hauled her on top of my bag. A very real panic began to seep in—even with her nose and mouth clear, she wasn’t breathing.
Wire had never hurt me. She had just tried to get clear. All she wanted to do was go on a nice lunch break where she could eat in peace for a few minutes before being forced back to work in a dreary mine, making thunderstones.
“Come on!” I shouted at her, giving her withers a solid smack. “Breathe!”
Wire began to heave, coughing weakly. I almost sobbed in relief, and held her tight in case her grip weakened.
The river turned, and the Morgwyn pulled itself out of the water ahead of us. It didn’t shake itself dry, but then it didn’t need to—steam was already rising from its fur as it trotted out to plant itself on a rock and clean its paws. I paddled to the river bank, hooking Wire with a foreleg and hauling her up with me while I pulled the bag with my teeth.
Inelegantly, Wire spat up water and immediately began to hyperventilate. She tried to speak, to sit up, to move her wings, but all she succeeded in doing was drive herself into a greater panic. Finally, she passed out in a lump, her eyes rolling back. I poked her once with my hoof and she stirred fitfully.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked. Pulling one of her eyelids up proved that she was in Neverland—hopefully she had just fainted. Not that I knew anything about medicine or fainting or how bad that might be in context, but it certainly was better than dying.
The Morgwyn stretched languidly, its blue eyes fixing on me. “The little goblin is quite tried by her ordeal. It seems to the Morgwyn that this is an acceptable result—when you leave here, she will not see your passing, and she will not be able to tell the wee bairn’s pursuers how best to find her.”
I frowned at that, staring up at the sky and then back at the river. Goblins like Wire could fly, so it stood to reason that, if there could be aerial goblins, there might be aquatic goblins, as well. For now, everything seemed clear, but staying here was not a long term option. Not if I wanted to remain free.
My bag still lay at my feet, the water sliding from it as readily as from a duck’s feathers. Indeed, rather than soak in, the water beaded upon the surface of the fabric. I picked the floppy-eared backpack up and inspected it closer. The once-tattered article had been completely restitched, and it didn’t take much imagination to guess who was responsible.
“Rarity,” I said in a breath.
For a moment, that left me feeling conflicted. On the one hoof, the bag was better than new, had quite possibly saved me from drowning, and held all of my meager supplies. On the other hoof, it had been made by a pony—goblin, whatever—who had tried to trick me into being a pawn in some evil king’s chess game. I hated pawns even more than I hated kings—give me a decent queen or bishop any day.With a look upriver, I scowled as I remembered how Rarity had called out to me before Wire and I plunged into the drink, her eyes holding unfeigned worry.
The pack was slid over my head and under one foreleg, its strap cinched up tight so the bag rested over my back, as I started toward the trees. My resolute pace slowed as I turned to look at Wire. “No,” I said. “I want to make sure she’s okay.”
The Morgwyn flicked its tail in a slow pattern as it watched her. “This goblin is not your friend, wee bairn. She is kin to those who trapped you in the castle.”
“Maybe not, but I’m…” I licked my lips. “I’m responsible for getting her into this mess.” Wire began to stir as I considered her limp form, and my eyes narrowed. “Besides,” I said to the Morgwyn, “I have an idea. If I just leave her here, she might show the other goblins where she woke up. They’d be able to narrow their search, and then I’d be in big trouble.”
“She will only burden you.”
“We’ll see.” I trotted back to Wire’s side and helped her up. “Hey, hey, can you hear me?” I waved a hoof in front of her face. “How many fingers do you see?”
Wire blinked at it blearily. “None…?” she slurred.
“Good! Come on, we’ve got to get going.”
“G-going?” She wobbled on all four hooves as she glanced around. Her bushy white tail was already beginning to puff as it dried, but mud matted down the soft, downy feathers on her chest. “Wh-where are… we…” Her eyes grew wide as she turned a slow circle, nearly falling over herself as she took in our surroundings. Her pupils shrank, and her legs grew stock still as she stared around. “Th-th-the Ev-Everfree F-f-f-f-f-orest? Oh, no, oh no, oh no.”
“Yup,” I agreed without the faintest idea of what she was talking about, unable to understand what was so terrifying about a state park. It wasn’t like a bear was going to steal her picnic basket. “The Everfree Forest, which means we need to get a move on.” I reached for her, taking her hoof.
“N-no!” She leapt back from my touch. “I… I’ve gotta get back! Th-they’re… You’re a wanted filly!” She pointed a leg at me. “Th-they’re going to th-think I had so-somethin’ to do with it! I’ve gotta go back, I-I—”
I narrowed my gaze at her and stepped forward, Wire shying from my every step until she backed into a tree. Even then she tried to press herself back further as if I were a snake, and, when I pushed my nose up at her, she flinched. “Yeah? What makes you think you’re not already an accomplice?”
“Wh-what?” she asked as her eyes widened further—which was pretty neat. I didn’t know they could still do that.
I gave her a spot of relief, pulling back and shaking my head. “Look, I know you had nothing to do with it; I understand that you were just yanked into this unwillingly… but let’s take a glance at this from their perspective.” I scraped a line in the mud for each item as I spoke. “First, you’re seen on the elevator with me when I make my escape from the mines—I wouldn’t be surprised if they assumed that the timing was pre-planned. Then, when the guards surround us, you’re seen covering me in what could really be seen as a protective way. Not only that, but anyone looking out their window twenty minutes ago saw you trying to carry me off of that waterfall.”
Wire looked down at the three lines, her face growing red, then white, under her coat. “I… I didn’…”
“I’ll try to explain things if I’m caught. Really, I will.” I probably would have, too, but she didn’t need to know that I was telling the truth. “But… I think you can see what I mean when I say that, from their perspective, you’re already my partner in crime.” I fixed her with a steady look. “Do you honestly think they’re going to believe either of us when we say you weren’t instrumental to my escape?”
That apparently was too much for her. Wire’s eyes watered and she covered her face. She didn’t cry out loud, but it was such a raw expression of terror that I very nearly took it all back.
To let her go would have been tantamount to delivering myself right back into the waiting hooves of the Phony Villains, though. Somehow, I didn’t think it would be ice cream and pleasant picnics by the pond the second time around.
I reached up, putting my hoof on her side. “Come on, Wire. They’ll be looking for us.” She flinched back, but I kept at it. “I’m sorry for getting you into this. It was an accident. We can get out of it together, though.”
“I’ll ne-never see my folks a-again,” she whimpered. “I-I’m be ju-just like Flash—a disgrace.”
“Don’t be like that. Your parents love you.” Well, hopefully goblins loved their kids. If not, she was crying over nothing anyway. “You definitely won’t get to see them again or not be a disgrace if you’re shoved into a jail cell with me.” I shot another glance up at the sky to check for goblins and gave her a little nudge with my head. “Please, Wire? I don’t want you to get caught, either.”
Wire lowered her hooves, looking down at me with her bloodshot, pale blue eyes.
“It’s more than that. I’m lost here—I don’t know how to get around, and I can’t fly up to get a better look like you can.” I stepped back, looking forlornly off into the green-canopied caverns of the wood beyond. “Please. I’m not a bad pony… they stole me away from home, and I need to find my way back. I need your help.”
That did it. Wire swallowed and nodded her head once. “All… all right. I mean, I don’t really know how much help I can be, but… okay.”
“Thank you.” I gave her a smile. “Now, let’s go! They could be on us any moment now!”
By that time, the Morgwyn had gone again, leaving only a wet patch on the rock it had reclined upon. I chose to ignore it—like a real cat, the Morgwyn came and went as it wished. If I had need of it, I knew it would appear.
“Wouldn’t it be better to, uhm, continue down the river?” Wire asked as she looked into the woods ahead and shivered.
I walked into the woods without a second thought. “Sure would! We’d also be in plain sight for anyone watching from above.”
Wire gave one last look over her shoulder towards the river before following. We were two unfortunate, dripping-wet creatures diving into a dark and terrible forest neither of us understood.
* * *
“Uhm, Miss Runaway?” Wire asked sometime later. “Can we not stop to stare at every bug on the way?”
Her hair was standing on end—well, more than it usually did—as she backed away from a fallen, rotting log which served as a nest to quite a few many-legged specimens. Its dark, rich, interior shadows were an ideal home for mushrooms and insects alike. The soil under it would be positively alive, and in a few years it would decay and give way to new plant life that would rise in its place. Nature’s beautiful cycle.
“I am not stopping to stare at them,” I scoffed as I lifted my head to glower at her. “I just saw some I didn’t recognize is all.” Still, I hopped over the log and continued west, keeping a healthy distance between myself and them. Some of those critters had most definitely been poisonous, and I had no real urge to find out how poisonous the others were just then. “Kinda wish I had my entomology book with me, though. I’m positive there were some insects that aren’t in there.”
Wire gagged and took flight, rather higher than strictly necessary to avoid the log. “I’d rather not recognize them at all. I don’t even like seeing them squished by boots or cooked by my lightning jars.” She landed beside me, her ears swiveling at every noise. The canopy captured her attention so entirely it was a wonder she didn’t trip and break her nose.
I gave her a sideways glance as we walked on. For all that she was a few years older, she certainly didn’t act like it. It seemed incredible that someone could be so sheltered, living among the other rough-and-tumble goblins as she did.
The forest, for its part, certainly bore little, if any, resemblance to the park behind the house. Class nature walks and camping trips had embedded in me a fairly good picture of what that place looked like, and this certainly wasn’t it. Everything from the moss to the wildlife was subtly or blatantly different. There were no pines to be seen, and, though I was far from a bird expert, I was pretty sure there weren’t very many toucans in New England.
It all boded fairly poorly for a return trip home. None of this looked familiar from the trip Fetter had taken me on in the stagecoach, and I was pretty sure Wire and I would have had to double back to come anywhere near it. That was unlikely to end well. Already, the two of us had spotted formations of small, black shapes in the sky through gaps in the trees several times over the course of the journey.
Eventually, it got to the point where I couldn’t ignore the burning in my hooves any longer, nor the rumbling in my stomach. The slices of Pinkie Pie’s cakes that I’d swiped hadn’t exactly made for great marathon chow, so Wire and I found a hollow and settled down to share a meal of the seasoned hay packed away in my bag. I didn’t really pay it much mind—food was just something that got in the way of an adventure, and my adventure had just gotten started.
Of course, there was the tiny little problem of having not the faintest clue where to go from there. This Everfree Forest was completely overgrown, without a trail in sight. The only thing that kept us moving in a consistent direction was the sun.
Wire shifted away from a line of ants, holding her wing tight against her body.
“Oh, stop cringing,” I said, rolling my eyes. “They won’t hurt you. Haven’t you ever been camping before?”
As though she’d been hit, Wire flinched and shrank away from me. “N-no.” She bit her lip, ears lowered, and I stared at her for a moment. That downcast expression, the way she held herself delicately—all of a sudden I was put in mind of the girls who got picked on at school by the older, prettier, more popular ones. The clique girls were never very fond of me, either, but I at least knew how to bite back.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to snap or anything.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. Never did understand that—why do people apologize for things that they didn’t do? There was a disturbing quality about it. I could almost see a scenario playing out in my head—two beefy goblin women pressing down on Wire as she tried to eat in peace, making her apologize for troubling them. It was just a fancy, but it made the damp hollow feel a lot more clammy and a lot less comforting.
I shook my head. “No big deal. How, uhm… how are you holding up?”
She scrunched down even further, forming a tight, mustard yellow ball with a tuft of white mane sticking out the top.
“Oh.” I blushed and rubbed the back of my head. “Guess you’re kinda freaking out over the whole ‘I’m now a criminal on the run from my own kind’ thing.”
Wire whimpered softly. “I wish my Ma were here.”
This only made things feel even more uncomfortable. It wasn’t really my fault, though—I had to protect myself, and, after all, I could have been right about them assuming she was associated with me. That’s what villains did all the time in cartoons and movies.
“I’m sure they’re missing you, too,” I said.
“No. They probably aren’t,” Wire said with a tinge of bitterness. “It’s just like when Flash scarpered off. At first they were worried, on account of her not leavin’ anyone a note or a ‘how do you do,’ but then when she refused the call they threw her stuff out and that was that.” Wire sniffled. “Th-then Ma cried all week. She still cries. If Pa even hears the word ‘Flash,’ he breaks whatever he was holdin’. S’why we got the unbreakable plates.”
She rambled, and I frowned as a thought niggled the back of my mind. The capture of it sent a bolt of lightning through me—I had gone quite a long time without so much as a single thought paid to my own parents. They’d probably be home by now, of course, along with Daphne. After that first night, they definitely would have called the police. No, probably within the first hour that they discovered I hadn’t come home with Daphne.
I stared at the ground for a while, wondering if Mom was at work, or if she’d be sitting at the table, waiting for me to come back through the door. It was all so strangely detached—like the sadness and longing I should have felt belonged to someone else entirely. After all, I was coming back. Sure, I had a new set of hooves, but we could work with that.
At least Daphne was probably being punished. That thought cheered me right up. Perhaps they’d start by hanging her by her ankles and progress up from there.
More sniffling drew my attention back to Wire. “Not like I really cared. She doesn’t want to say ‘goodbye’ to me, goin’ to go on a big adventure without me? Well, that’s tidy for her.” She rubbed at her face, smearing her tears. “I didn’ need her. So what if I can’t act? I’ve got plenty goin’ for me.”
“Who’s this ‘Flash’ you keep talking about?” I asked. “Is she your sister or something?”
Wire nodded. “Aye. She was our big sister, me and the others.” She stared ahead at a tree root, heedless of the ants crawling up her leg. “I n-never really c-cared for her. You know how it is. Apple of Da’s eye, Ma’s favorite. Proper goblin hero she was supposed to be.”
My ears pricked forward. “A hero? How do you mean?”
“It was stupid,” Wire spat. She brushed at her leg absently and fished around for more of the hay to chew. “Fetter chose her, one out of a thousand auditions, for some big, stupid role. She never had time for any of us after that.” She stared down at the hay. “I was only like three or four anyway, just a wee nip. Hardly noticed her.”
“What role was that?” I asked.
“Oh. It was some big production—the Wand King himself commissioned it, see.” Wire looked back at me. “There was a whole cast of extras, and she was gonna work with five costars. They didn’t start it though, not for a while, so she went to trainin’ for a few years. Perfectin’ the art of transformation and illusion.”
“Not for a while? When did…” I paused and my brows creased.
Wire went on regardless. “Oh, aye. They finally kicked it off just a week or so ago. Had us work overtime to pull the big stage outta storage.” She beamed. “I even got to help hook up the fake sun. It was a beaut, lemme tell you—biggest light I ever did work with. Proper tidy it was.” Then her face fell. “Not that Flash ever saw it. She left a bit over a year ago. If she had, she woulda seen. But, no, I guess the part of Rainbow Dash was just too small for her.”
There was something that wasn’t adding up. This entire operation had become enormously fishy. Fetter had indicated they had been waiting for me for a long time, but if they started when Wire was nearly a toddler, then it would have been years in advance. Cord had mentioned something about the Wand King having a prophecy, and this certainly fit the part about Fetter needing to find a replacement for Rainbow Dash and finding the “real” one instead.
This opened up all sorts of strange possibilities. After all, if there was a real Rainbow Dash to blunder into her own role, did that mean there was a real Twilight Sparkle, a real Rarity, and the rest? Maybe there was even a real Ponyville out there, and I had been suckered into some strange pod pony world.
Maybe Wire knew more.
Distracted by my thoughts, though, I wasn’t really paying much attention to what I was saying. “She used to look out for you, didn’t she?” I blurted out.
Wire looked at me, stricken. “H-how…?”
I decided to keep rolling with it. It was hard to tell what I might dig up. “Wire, you’re the most timid goblin I’ve ever met. If you went to my school, I’d have told you to get a grip on yourself already.” I pointed back the way we had come. “Are you telling me that those goblins, people who happily fight over the silliest thing and then go on like nothing happened, didn’t have something to do with that?”
Wire wibbled. That’s really the best word for it. She mumbled something incoherent and held her tail close to her, stroking it.
“Hey.” I put my hoof on my shoulder. “You don’t need to put up with that kinda junk. You don’t need Flash, either—you can’t rely on big sisters. Even if they don’t leave you stuck in a forest alone, they’re just going to leave some day to do what they want. You’ve gotta look out for yourself.” Wire looked up to me, her already watery blue eyes still wet from tears. I gave her a smile. “And, you know, I’ll look out for you while we’re out here, I—oof!”
Wire wrapped her legs and wings about me, latching on like a hungry jellyfish—or at least I assume that’s what jellyfish do. If anything, she snuffled louder than before. “Th-thank you. Sorry for being a right bag of nerves; you’re tidy, you.” She squeezed more tightly still, and I made a noise not unlike a squeaky toy.
“Duhmension it,” I rasped. I managed to wriggle free when her grip slackened, and straightened my coat. “We’d better get going. Lots of daylight left and all.”
“Oh, right.” Wire ran a hoof through her mane, though she only managed to make it pop more as she loosened tangles in it. “I’ll go scout up, okay?” She spread her wings and launched up into the air.
“Now, why couldn’t I have become a pegasus?” I muttered, watching her flight. “If only this silly horn worked,” I continued to myself, my eyes crossing at the spire above them, “then maybe being a unicorn would be super cool.” I reached into my pack while waiting for Wire’s return and pulled out a set of steel rings.
So what if everyone thinks you’re only good for one thing? Twilight’s voice bubbled up, another one of her lessons. I’ve seen actors complain about being typecast, but a clever actor knows this can be an incomparable advantage, if she can turn it into one. People will expect you to play that role, so when you break type it stuns them into insensibility.
“Great advice, Twi. Real helpful right now, thanks,” I grumbled. “You would think I’d remember your lessons when they were actually, I dunno, relevant.” I tugged at the rings, testing their strength. Unlike a magician’s rings back on earth, these had no trick—all of them were completely solid. Indeed, despite their lightness, they were almost completely unbendable. Evidently, Rarity had made this set especially for me, and I could see a maker’s mark on each. I felt a pit settle in my gut, staring at the symbol. Unlike her cutie mark, it was a set of rings arranged in a sheet, like chainmail. I kept staring at it for a while, with my eyes tensing.
With a cry, I pulled.
Wire yelped, dodging the center ring before it could clip her, then darted back for it and caught it in her hoof. She landed next to me, blinking as she examined the rings in my possession and the one in her own grip. “Did you just perform a Penetration with a scream of frustration?”
“Kinda, yeah,” I said as I took it back. I tapped the rings against one another. It took a couple tries, but eventually I was able to coax them back together, the steel passing seamlessly through its counterpart.
Wire watched, tilting her head. “You’re not bad at that. Did you have a teacher?”
“Yeah.” I packed the rings away and stood, starting west again. We pushed our way through the brush at first, but Wire pointed out a clearer path that might have been a deer trail or some other form of game animal. Maybe the deer were smart in this world, too.
“I wish I could find a master.” Wire huffed a sigh. “The really good ones are always in demand, you know? And then they make you go through hoops to learn the simplest trick.”
I gave her a narrow look. “Like having to paint their fences.”
“Exactly!” She stamped a hoof. “Oh, sure, I can pick up cheap tricks from any random goblin, but if I want to learn the real stuff, it’s like I have to go and become their personal slave, beholden to their every whim. You wanna be all there in the magician gig, you gotta do it, though.”
“Sure,” I said noncommittally, gazing off into the woods. My attention was elsewhere—back in a staged town under a false sun, sitting at a cafe.
Had it all really been for my benefit?
“They played me,” I muttered.
“Sorry?” Wire asked, glancing my way.
I shook my head. “Nothing. It’s not important. I’m over it.” I looked at her. “Say, were there any murder holes in the castle?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“Oh.” Wire tucked her wings up at her side, continuing in silence for a while. “Say, I never did get your name.”
Smiling, I offered my hoof. “Amelia.”
Taking it, she gave me a small smile in turn. “Wire.” She blushed. “Well, you already know that.”
“You goblins don’t have, like, last names or clan names or anything like that, do you?” I asked.
She flicked an ear. “Well, I’m Wire of the Wand, if you want to get technical about it.”
“Of the Wand—?” A branch snapped and I dove to the ground at once. Wire flopped beside me, covering her eyes with her hooves and quivering like a block of jelly.
Ahead, something large moved through the trees. It was tall—tall enough that leaves from the higher trees rustled in its passage. There was a suggestion of scaly black skin, a long, whipping tail, and a shiny crest of feathers. Very carefully, I began to crawl forward. A hoof on my shin stopped me, and Wire shook her head violently, pointing a trembling leg ahead.
There, I saw a pair of jay birds—or what had been jays at one point. Instead of flesh, I saw flaky, greenish soapstone that appeared as if it had been worked into the shape of feathers. She silently mouthed, “Basilisk!”
Petrification? That was just ridiculous, everyone knew basilisks killed with a glance. What was the use of a magical faerie kingdom that couldn’t get its mythology right?
This blatant offense to all things accurate, however, both had the power to turn us to stone and weighed many times more than us, so still we remained until its heavy footsteps took it elsewhere. Wire uncovered her eyes, glanced around quickly, and then buried her eyes in her hooves again. After this, she leapt to her feet and galloped across the open clearing it had occupied. I joined her, though only after picking up the jays and tucking them into my bags.
With Wire as badly shaken up as she was, it was a fair amount of time before I could talk to her again. She broached a subject first, while we were hopping over a small stream. “Say, Amelia—why do you carry a bag?”
“Huh?” I glanced back at her from my perch on a river stone.
Wire fluttered her wings a bit and pawed at the ground. “Well, I thought the first thing real magicians did was Vanish all of their possessions for travel so they can Produce them when needed.”
“Oh. I haven’t really gotten the trick down, yet.” I frowned. “Honestly, I only had a few days’ worth of practice. Can a magician really do that?”
“Oh, sure, though not all do, to be fair.” Wire giggled. “I suppose it wouldn’t be very tidy at all if they forgot they’d put something away. Actually, I know a fair few keep bags on hand anyway, so they can put the item ‘in’ the bag and make it easier to pull it out later.”
I hopped across to the shore to join her. “Kind of Mary Poppins, huh? Just put a whole coatrack in there.”
“Who?”
“No one. This bag is magic, actually.” I patted it. “It saved our lives back at the river.”
“Oh.” She rubbed her chin. “You mean crafted.”
“Huh?” I blinked at her. “Well, I’d imagine it was machine-stitched originally, but one of the goblins I knew at the castle fixed it up.”
“I’m sorry, I suppose you don’t know, then?” She pointed a hoof at it. “That’s goblin-crafted it is. Well, faecrafted. It’s an ancient art, older than even the courts. We’ve preserved it since the original folks as used it are long gone.” She fished around her tool belt and pulled a set of pliers from a pouch. On one side, it bore the same mark as my rings. “See? I noticed you had some work done from Maille. I was lucky to get this as a gift from the master electrician at the castle; you don’t find a goblin as skilled as her any day.”
“Maille?” I repeated, frowning. “So, uh… Maille’s a smith of some sort? Is she also an actress?”
“Aye, both.” Wire nodded. “She and Flash were chosen at around the same time. She went to apprentice with one of the great faecrafters in Mag Mell before comin’ back here.”
Mulling over that information for a moment, I asked, “What about the others? There’s four other actresses who worked with her, right?”
“Well, sure.” She ticked off by scraping her hoof on the ground. “Maille plays Rarity, of course, and then there’s Pinion—she’s a distant cousin of mine, actually, bit of an odd duck—who plays Pinkie Pie. Dunno how she stands not having wings.”
I blanched. “Holy cats, she has wings, too?” Immediately, I checked the surroundings. My nightmares for the next few days were set.
Wire nodded and grinned. “Oh, aye. Not the greatest flier, but she gets by. Where was—ah yes! And then there’s Rose, she’s a right sweetheart. Rather prickly, though.”
“Fluttershy, I’m guessing,” I said. It was hard to forget her outbursts, Fluttershy—Rose—had quite a set of lungs.
“Then there’s Maille—no, wait, already mentioned her. Who was… right, right.” Wire rubbed her chin, and then punched the air. “Oh! And there’s Applejack’s actress—Kiln.” She narrowed her eyes. “Never did like her, actually. She was one of Fetter’s underlings before he got himself banished, and she led one of the scouting gangs. Real rough bunch, they were. I dunno, I always thought she was overcompensating for not being born a goblin.”
“Wait, she wasn’t born a goblin? Applejack—err, I mean, Kiln—wasn’t always a goblin?”
“Well, sure. She was young, just a filly, when they brought her in. Took right to it, though.” Wire waved her hoof back and forth. “Once she goblinized, it was like she was a whole new girl. When folk hit her, she hit back.”
“What’s Twilight’s real name, then?”
“Twig. One of the best young magicians we’ve had in awhile.” Wire beamed. “I met her, once. She’s the Queen’s favorite, she is, though I haven’t seen the Queen in a goodly while.”
“Twilight and her friends… who are these mares?” I asked, knitting my brows. “Who are they playing?”
Wire blinked at me a few times. “Why… I don’t rightly know. I figured they were just made up stories to terrify goblins. You know, like ’watch out, or Celestia will fry you with her breath of fire!’ Or, ‘you better eat up all your grubs and porridge or the Elements will snatch you away and make you their slave! See if I care!’” She shivered and shook her head. “Always hated that one. Fie, last thing I want to do is cross paths with one of them Elements of Harmony.”
A nervous laugh escaped me at that as I remembered how the Wand King had reacted to Rainbow Dash’s presence. I chewed my cheek for a time. Now there were names for the Phony Villains. Even Flash deserved some degree of ire for abandoning Wire. There must have been some sort of sense to it all, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure it out. I perked my ears and turned back towards Wire. “Say, reminds me. I wanted to ask you a few questions about—”
The trees across the stream exploded as a hulking, black reptile with burning green eyes burst from cover. It screamed a high, piercing cry and flared red plumage before charging across the stream at us. Wire’s scream was even higher, a shriek that presaged her leaping several yards into the air and refusing to stop. Immediately, I averted my eyes and ran, but the thing was fast. Its leg clipped me, and even that glancing blow was enough to send me rolling across the ground.
I tried to get back to my feet, but the blow had left me dazed. The beast’s head lowered toward mine. I yelped and tried to squirm away only to find my back against a tree. Those horrible green eyes swept down towards my own, and I slammed my eyelids shut. There was a drawn out hiss and a wretched gurgling, and I could only imagine the basilisk’s jaws slowly craning open, rows of vicious white teeth presenting themselves to me, dripping venom or saliva or some other disgusting substance.
I wished very desperately to be somewhere else.
Gnashing teeth and splintering wood shot my eyes open again, and I stared, dumbfounded, as a very confused lizard monster chomped down into the tree I had just been pressed against. I turned and ran, trying to scramble for safety within the underbrush as the basilisk roared and charged after me. Its huge legs covered ground far faster than my own little ones could gallop.
The Morgwyn intervened at that point.
It could have been hiding in the brush, or maybe it simply came as soon as I was in trouble. Either way, just as the basilisk began to snap its jaws over my back, a black blur smashed into it and sent both flying. Though the basilisk was larger by far, the Morgwyn moved as if it were made of black smoke, twisting and writhing with incredible speed. Each of its gleaming white claws left deep rents in the beast’s scales, as if they were made of butter. The basilisk snarled in pain and twisted its head completely around, locking its gaze with that of the Morgwyn. I averted my eyes and ran. I couldn’t bear to watch my protector turned into a statue.
Coarse, barking laughter made me stop and turn my head. Rather than being turned to stone, the Morgwyn lifted a paw and swiped contemptuously. The basilisk’s shriek nearly deafened me, and I slammed my ears over my skull with my hooves while birds fled the nearby trees. The Morgwyn was thrown free before its quarry ran off into the trees, whooping and stumbling as it covered half of its face with a claw.
The Morgwyn looked down at its own paw. I couldn’t see it, but Morg gave a scornful flick of its wrist and something wet splashed into the stream, sinking in short order. Galloping back, I skidded to a halt and grinned. “Morg! You’re back!”
“This one is never far, wee bairn,” it said, turning its smoldering gaze on me. “The child must learn to be wary. You make too much noise, and leave too much scent. The Morgwyn cannot always spare you misfortune if you blunder so willingly into its lair.” It chuckled, the crest on its back rustling. “As you are so wont to do.”
“I’m wont to hug you; that was awesome!” I bounded around in mime of the scene. “That basilisk was like, ‘rowr!’ And you were like, ‘have at thee, foul beast!’”
“Quite.”
Grass crunched underfoot as I bounced around the Morgwyn, giggling. “So, hey, can you tell me how to get out of this stupid forest? I swear, I’ve been walking east, I mean, west, forever, and there’s still no sight of anything interesting.” I tilted my head. “Well, unless you count a basilisk, but you don’t because you smacked it around like it was nothing! Did I mention that was hella sweet?”
“Once or twice.”
Wire drifted down from above in an awkward spiral, clinging to a high branch and staring down at the two of us with huge eyes.
I waved a hoof up at her. “Come on, you big chicken! The monster’s gone!”
“I-I-I’m not s-so sure about th-that,” Wire answered as she covered her eyes with her hooves.
“Morg? Don’t be a scaredy cat. The Morg’s on our side.” I grinned and glanced back at my savior, who was nonchalantly licking its paw of glistening blood.
Wire only paled further, shaking her head.
Well, that wouldn’t do at all. “The searchers are gonna search you if you stay up there.”
“Let them search me, then!” She tightened her legs about the branch. “I mean, find!”
“Come on, Wire,” I said. “I still need your help, and you need to stay away from the other goblins for now.” I gave her a weighing look as I stepped over towards the Morgwyn, placing a hoof against it. Its fur was thick and bristly and radiated so much heat it was a wonder that the grass wasn’t smoldering around it.
A moment passed, and Wire at last dared to peek between her hooves. Slowly, reluctantly, she unlatched herself from the cypress and flapped down to settle on the ground nearly ten yards away. The Morgwyn gave a disdainful twitch of its barbed tail.
“One suggests the wee bairn and its hanger-on be on their way,” it said as it rose. “The skies fill with watchers.”
“Right, time to go! Thanks again, Morg,” I said and went to give Wire a push with my head.
When I glanced back, the Morgwyn had gone again, just as swiftly and silently as it had appeared. My mysterious protector surely waited somewhere nearby, however. Monsters beware.
* * *
It was hard to say how far we had gone by the time the sun began to set. My emergency rations kept either of us from feeling particularly hungry, though thirst was settling in rapidly. Neither of us found the streams particularly trustworthy—they were all slow and a little brackish in this part of the woods, as if the source originated from the ocean rather than a mountain.
The character of the forest changed again as we descended into lower elevations. Even in the cool evening light, the lowlands were hot and humid. Insects rose in swarms to harass us, getting into our hair and clinging to our sides—my tail got a real workout swatting them all aside. Wire eventually gave up and reached into one of her bags for a thunderstone, running it through her coat so that it puffed with static. Little hissing pops signaled the untimely demise of several mosquitoes, each falling limply from her side as she gave a little shake. After a quick treatment to my own coat—during which time I strongly resembled a cotton ball—we pressed on.
Massive trees gloomed the space even further as the sun sank in its bed. Heavy-bottomed baldcypress trees swarmed with fireflies, and frogs belched out beneath the shade of drooping willows. Wire once again saved the day, twining a filament around her thunderstone and creating a dim light bulb to light our way. We navigated around pitfalls and oozing puddles of muck until, quite unexpectedly, we face-planted right on a loose packed dirt path.
I grabbed the light from Wire and held it up in my teeth to look. Several sets of hooves had pressed into the dirt recently, and I stared at Wire for a moment. “Ponies?” I asked past gritted teeth.
“Looks like it,” she said and gave a shudder. “Let’s hide somewhere else. I don’t want to get caught.” Her wide eyes scanned around the darkening swamp, as if expecting to see something in the murk. “I hear there’s an awful witch ’round here. She boils people for stew.”
“That’s stup—” I said, forgetting I had the line to the bulb in my mouth. I snatched it up before it hit the ground, but my tongue touched the thunderstone. I suppressed a yelp, numbness spreading through as I let the bulb hang by its line again. “Abluh. I mean—we shou’b go inbestigabe.”
Rolling her eyes, Wire snatched the contraption back and hooked it to her harness, affixing it so that the light shone forward and down. “I don’ think this is a good idea, Amelia.”
I grinned. “Have I led you wrong yet?”
“Yes.”
Each direction held my consideration as I tapped my chin. The southerly direction led further into the swamp, while the north curved west and towards what seemed to be higher ground. I bent down and nearly pressed my eye into the dirt. There was a set of smaller feet that looked to be bearing horseshoes which seemed deeper and more recent than the others. They were headed south into the swamp. “All right. This way,” I said, putting a measure of confidence into the pronouncement—more than I felt.
But there were a lot of things Wire didn't need to know.
After a few minutes of walking, voices began to drift over the swamp, along with the shuffling of dirt. Immediately, Wire and I dove behind the huge roots of a baldcypress. We peeked out carefully to track the source of the sound.
A little ways off the path, one light bobbed while another stood stationary. Wire repacked her light, and the two of us crept closer towards what appeared to be a pair of lanterns.
“There,” a girl’s voice said. It was coarse and graveled, but still obviously young. “Ugh. Six feet even, and this spot isn’t filling with water. Finally.”
“All right,” another said, her voice deeper, but still young, and containing more than a hint of twang. “Help me push it in.”
“I swear,” the first girl spoke up again, “if we get our cutie marks from this, I’m going to tattoo over it. I’ll tell everypony it’s an ink blot.”
“Come on, girls, hurry!” a third, lighter, higher-pitched voice said. The lantern bobbed fitfully, like a firefly hopped up on caffeine. “Don't you realize how late it is?”
“One, two…” The other two voices grunted, and something shuffled and plopped heavily. Once again, the sound of dirt shuffling filled the air.
Wire and I peeked over a fungus-ridden log and beheld a trio of fillies on a dry stretch of land, elevated over the swamp we'd just crossed. It was the first time seeing proper ponies my age before, and it was pretty much what I expected to see. They were all in different colors—an orange pegasus with a fuchsia mane, a red-headed earth pony with a yellow coat, and a white unicorn with a two-toned pink and lavender mane. The unicorn was dancing on all fours, holding a lantern filled with fireflies in her mouth while another rested on a tree branch nearby, its lights dim compared to the other. Both the earth pony and the pegasus filly were digging into a pile of dirt with their shovels, moving it into a large hole.
“Okay,” Wire whispered, “they look really busy, so I think we can go around them and—”
“Hey!” I hopped over the log and waved a hoof. “Whatcha girls doin’?”
All three of them screamed and scrambled. “Plan G! Plan G!” the redhead shouted, dropping her shovel to kick bottles of clear fluid into the pit.
The white unicorn lit a match and chucked it in. “Sweetie Belle, wait! Not yet!” the redhead said, but it was too late. An impressive conflagration belched out of the ground, tickled the tree tops, and kept going. Immediately, the young pegasus bodily shoved the remaining dirt in and snuffed the fire. All three singed fillies leapt onto the top of the mound and stomped it flat before collapsing into a heaving pile.
“Check… my flank…” the redhead panted.
The unicorn—Sweetie Belle—turned her head and checked her friend’s yellow side. “Bare.”
“Oh, thank Celestia. I don’ even wanna think about what sorta cutie mark that would'a netted me.”
I blinked. “Uh.”
There had been very few expectations for the eventual meeting with actual members of ponykind, and all of them had been thoroughly detonated. These three children were proving every bit as odd as any of the goblins in the castle had been. At least the language was the same—the archaic books in my bag were almost illegible with how tortured the wording could be.
The twangy redhead got up to her feet, dusting her singed coat. Like mine, her mane fell long across her back. A pink ribbon holding it into a ponytail still smoldered. She rounded on me, and a thin trail of smoke followed her head.
“Just what do you think y'er doin’, pouncin’ on unsuspectin’ ponies like that?” she demanded, poking me in the chest.
Sweetie Belle climbed to her feet as well, swishing her curly tail. “We thought you were an ad—uhm…”
“A monster!” the pegasus supplied as she joined her friends—just a little too loudly.
“Yeah, yeah! A monster, from the Everfree Forest! Which we’re in!” Sweetie Belle went along with it. “Not an adult or officer of the peace or anything like that.”
I lifted a hoof, waving it in a placating fashion between us. “I’m just passing through. Honest; nothing to do with… whatever it is you were doing. I’ve been lost in the woods for a long time now. Do you guys know which way it is to the river?”
“River?” Sweetie Belle asked. “You mean, like… the river through Ponyville?”
My ears twitched at the name. That certainly settled the earlier question about whether or not it existed. “I don’t know, it’s through the Everfree Forest somewhere. It’s very sparkly.”
Sweetie Belle frowned and looked at the redhead. “Do you remember any other rivers, Apple Bloom?”
“Uh.” Apple Bloom rubbed her chin. “I seem to remember Cheerilee naming a bunch on a map of Equestria. I think I was dozin’ off again, though. Scootaloo?”
Scootaloo—now there’s a name for the ages—grinned. “Sure, I studied that thing backwards and upside-down when I was planning our balloon trip. No thanks to Fire Belle over here.”
“It was an accident!” Sweetie Bell groused, her voice peaking. “How was I suppose to know that paint fumes were flammable?”
“So as I was saying,” Scootaloo said as she turned to look at me. “There’s a river running into Ghastly Gorge around here, and another that leads all the way to Dodge City, but neither of those are really all that sparkly.”
Apple Bloom tilted her head, the smoldering trail of smoke following it. “Where are you from, anyway?” she asked of me.
“Uh…” I considered the names of places in the books I had read. The name of the capital would do in a pinch. “Cantyr Lotte.”
“Canterlot?” Apple Bloom gaped. “Gosh, you’ve sure come a long way. That's like... a whole day away by train. What’re you doin’ all the way out here?”
“Getting lost, apparently,” I muttered.
“Well!” Scootaloo hopped forward. “Maybe we can help, huh? We’re kind of local celebrities.”
Sweetie Belle nodded. “Yeah, all of the emergency responders in the area know us by name.”
There wasn't a hint of sarcasm in Sweetie Belle's voice. In fact, she seemed rather... proud of it.
“We’re great at finding lost things, including ponies.” Scootaloo beamed, bouncing on her hooves as her wings fluttered frantically. “You just wait, we’ll hook you back up with your folks in no time! We might even get our cutie marks for it.”
“Wait.” I held up a hoof. “You can get cutie marks for helping people find things? Why would you even want that?”
The three of them exchanged glances, then turned towards me with bright eyes. “Kinda surprised you haven’t heard of us,” Scootaloo said. “We’re already kinda huge in Manehattan.”
“Even if you haven’t, you ought to!” Sweetie Belle said. “A pony your age, you’ve probably heard all of the jokes already. Well, we have, too, and we’re tired of being just regular old blank flanks!” She reached into a set of saddlebags and tossed a set of capes into the air. As one, the three fillies leapt up and donned them. The hems flared dramatically in the firefly light as they landed with hooves outspread.
“Because we are the Cutie Mark Crusaders!” Apple Bloom announced. “And we'll never stop our journey, not until we have our cutie marks. We’ll go to the ends of Equestria and beyond!”
“Wow,” I said, “is this how adults usually find their special talent?”
“Well, no,” Apple Bloom said, lowering her hooves, “but we’re gonna find ’em anyway.”
Scootaloo nodded. “We basically spend all day, every day, finding cool new ideas to try. One of them will have to work eventually, and—” Her eyes widened as she shot a look over my shoulder.
Wire stepped out onto the open clearing, covering her light with a hoof. “Uhm… we really should…”
“Monster!” all three girls shouted at once. “Cutie Mark Crusader Creature Catchers! Go!”
I dove to the earth as the girls sprang over my head, pouncing on poor Wire as she stepped out from behind the brush, tumbling her across the dark earth. Wire whimpered as they pinned her down, immediately going limp. Before I could intervene, Apple Bloom peered more closely at their captive and groaned. “Nevermind, everypony.”
“You three are insane,” I said breathlessly. A beat passed, and I added, “I love it! Though you should really let up on Wire there.”
“We’re sorry,” Sweetie Belle said as she helped the older girl up. She dusted twigs and leaves out of Wire’s frizzy hair. “It’s just, you know, we’ve been staying at Zecora’s, and you have to be alert. I don’t want to run into a cockatrice more than once in my life.”
“Which is why you immediately chose to charge?” I asked.
“Hey.” Scootaloo stamped the earth. “They can’t turn you to stone if you clobber them first!” She glanced between the two of us. “So, hey, who are you two, anyway?”
“Uhm… I-I…” Wire shrank back from their sudden interest. It sounded like she was trying to force words out. “W-we sh-should…” Never in my life had I ever met anyone who wibbled half as much as she did.
Figuring I might as well cover for her, I stepped forward. “Oh, that’s my friend… Live Wire. She’s great with electrical stuff. And I'm—”
It never occurred to me for a second to tell the girls my real name. “Amelia” was just not a pony name, and I had no intention of revealing my full backstory to them from the very start. After all, that would lead to a lot of uncomfortable questions about how I’d managed to get tricked into Phonyville. Moreover, if some goblins in disguise asked them where someone named “Amelia” had gone, they weren’t likely to peg me.
Well, they might find out anyway if they asked where someone named “Wire” had gone, but the goblins had been pretty dumb so far.
For some reason, my thoughts drifted back to Twilight Sparkle—or Twig as she was more properly known—and her lessons.
Your greatest tool is knowledge. Magic and illusion does you a lot less good if people know the trick—they know where to look. Oh, you can still pull it off, if you’re good, but why hand people more ammunition than they need. Twig had smiled then—she was probably reflecting on the fact that she had me fooled pretty well. If you control information, if you let other people reveal things before you do, you’ll always have the advantage.
All in all, it took me only a moment to decide what my name should be. “—Moonlight Glimmer.”
Wire stared at me. I gave her a grin.
Apple Bloom took my hoof and shook it. “Pleasure to meetcha! Say, you should come join our club!”
“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle said. “Neither of you have your cutie marks yet, either! It would be great to have a Canterlot branch.”
Before I could ask what in the heck that might entail, Wire found her voice. “We should go, now!”
The four of us blinked at her as Wire stood panting. Her pupils had shrunk. “What? Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Th-th-that fuh-fire,” she stammered, pointing at the disturbed earth. “Th-they cuh-could probably see it for m-miles.”
My mouth went dry, and I looked up at the sky. By now, I could see stars, but, if anything stalked us in the dark, it was invisible to my eyes. I turned to look at the confused fillies. “Yeah, we have to go. All of us.”
“Huh?” Scootaloo tilted her head. “What’s up?”
“There’s no time to explain, we—” All our ears perked as a strange, warbling cry touched the air.
“Too late,” Wire moaned. “Oh, thunderbolts. Run!”
Even as the two of us bolted for the trees, the branches all around us came alive with thrashing, winged, armored figures. Large and powerful, they swooped in through the night like fierce owls with long, taloned feet snatching every which way. Our only saving grace in that first attack was that they clearly couldn’t see us well enough to pick us out, and the Crusaders’ equipment was the first victim. A rolled-up tent and heavy backpack atop a red wagon were snatched up as the girls wildly swung their lanterns. Their screams—my screams—filled the air and teemed with the flapping, snarling shadows of goblins.
I dove to avoid a talon and sprang for the side of the rise towards the swamp, preparing to roll off to safety, when Sweetie Belle’s truly piercing shrieks cut into me. I turned. Sweetie Belle was being hauled into the air, her tenuous grip on a bush failing her as her captor flapped his powerful wings.
She was just a pale, vulnerable figure in the grip of some monstrous, unknowable shape.
To leap to safety would have taken less than a second. The Crusaders had unwittingly bought me time to escape from the situation they themselves had put me in. A quick jump and it would all be over.
“Hey, birdbrain!” I snatched the thunderstone out of my bag—the one Cord had given me—the quick bite tingling my lips. With a snap of my head, I sent it sailing towards the goblin, who turned his kettlepot helmet my way.
The little arrowhead stone missed his nose, but when it struck against the side of his helmet there was a sharp crack. Incandescence filled the air like the flash of a bulb. Several of the goblins shrieked, disoriented enough in flight to smack their heads and limbs against nearby trunks and branches. The one who I had struck fell like a stone, twitching, and a terrified Sweetie Belle ran to join me. Together, we skidded down the side of the rise, but one of the more coordinated goblins veered after us and held his talons out.
A strange, buzzing noise was all the warning he had before a heavy scooter flew out of the dark and clipped his wing. There was a snap of delicate cartilage, and the goblin howled, falling in a tumble of feathers and clank of heavy iron. Scootaloo, her wings humming like an engine, landed beside us. Apple Bloom ran up, a red wagon at her heels with a cowering Wire stuffed into it.
“Wire!” I shouted. “Thunderstones!”
The crack of my voice snapped Wire up, her ears trembling. Like a puppet on strings, she shakily extracted arrowheads from her belt and cast them around. While we could turn our eyes away, the poor goblins had too little warning. The resulting chain of explosive pops left sparks in our vision but probably half-blinded them.
“Everyone in!” Scootaloo shouted as she hooked her scooter up to the back of the wagon.
“You can’t possibly carry all of us,” I said, staring at her, but then yelped as Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle yanked me up by the tail and stuffed me in next to them.
“Just you watch, Moonlight. Yeehaw!” Apple Bloom shouted.
Scootaloo’s wings beat a furious rhythm, and we shot off at incredible speed. I shrieked and covered my eyes as we careened towards a trunk, but felt myself flung to the side as Scootaloo turned sharply. Despite the fact that we were speeding through the woods in the dark of night, our driver seemed to have an almost preternatural gift for coming within a hair’s breadth of disaster only to make a startling recovery, using only the bare light of one of the firefly lanterns to guide her.
Wire, naturally, went back to whimpering and covering her face.
Our pursuers, however, were not deterred for long. Under the light of the half-moon on the horizon, the goblins chased us. Their armor gleamed dully as they maneuvered to position themselves along our path. Scootaloo did everything she could. She dove through a huge fallen log, forcing us all to duck our heads, only for them to zero in on us shortly after. She veered through dense trees, only to find the goblins patient enough to wait for us to expose ourselves again. I grabbed one of Wire’s thunderstones, but, outside of a confined area, the snap and pop was little more than a curious light show.
I held no fear, though. I had one more card up my sleeve.
“Morgwyn! Help!”
We may have been dogged by shadows, but a deeper darkness stalked the night. One bold goblin spread his wings and swooped across our path—and a flicker of black and white snatched him from sight in an instant. The crunch of metal echoed behind us.
The cart slowed. “Go, go!” I shouted at Scootaloo as she hesitated, and she beat her wings harder. The goblins swooped again, two at once, but a twisting shadow hauled one from the sky to slam it into a stream. The other gaped, turning its head to look, and met the darkness itself when it swarmed up and took it.
Now in disarray, the shrieking goblin pursuers scattered. All but one. This one had a different shape, long and equine instead of bulky and manlike, and its armor was bright enough that it seemed to shine all on its own. It darted among the moonbeams like quicksilver, keeping on our tail. When the shadow leapt from the darkness, it dove and spun—the Morgwyn’s claws shot sparks off the maille on its chest.
“Nya nya! Nice try, kitty cat!” the silver pursuer taunted. She righted herself with the elegant flap of a feathery wing. “You gotta get up way early in the mornin’ to catch this birdy, and it don’t count if’n it’s before midnight!”
“Oh no,” I moaned. The voice was different—deeper, with a thick accent—but it was still unmistakable. Pinkie Pie, or rather, “Pinion.”
“What in the hay is going on?” Apple Bloom demanded. She pulled a heavy pot off her bag and chucked it when Pinion flew closer, only for the goblin to turn sharply to the side and dodge. She flew alongside us, a dart of red and silver, thin stalks of bamboo flashing between our separate courses. Her face, partly obscured by a gleaming helmet, split in a wide grin. The helm she wore was plumed with her vivid, electric blue mane, laced with pink highlights, and her passage was marked by the contrail of her matching tail.
“This is great!” Pinion said. “Like a real adventure! We really should get back home now, though! Everyone’s super worried for you.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you!” I shouted back. As she reached for me with her hooves, I called, “Scootaloo, hard left!”
We spun about and shot under thick brambles. For a moment, it seemed as if Pinion might fail to pull up in time, but she was simply too fast. She snapped up at incredible speed and soared over the sharp thorns. With a snap of her red-tinged wings, she raced ahead and flicked her hooves, casting a glittering net in front of us.
To Scootaloo’s credit, she managed to dodge the net herself with a great show of agility by ducking so low she almost touched the ground. Nonetheless, when the rope became tangled in the wheels of the wagon, the whole lot of us ground to a halt. Scootaloo squeaked as the scooter yawed to the side abruptly, clinging for dear life as we skidded along gravel.
I tried to leap clear, but the net coiled about me. Its cords weren’t sharp, but they were far stronger than I was and had an almost uncanny ability to snare about my limbs. I had gone no more than three feet before I collapsed in a hopeless tangle. It had somehow come off the wheels, too, seeking me with keen interest while the three fillies sprawled, dazed, where they had fallen.
“Morgwyn,” I said, trying to shout, though my muzzle had been clamped down in my struggles.
Pinion alighted upon the ground beside me. “Shh, shh, everything’s tidy,” she whispered, patting my mane. “The big mean kitty ain’ gonna get between you and us ever again.” She bent down and took the trailing ends of her net in her mouth. With a few flaps, she carried me up into the air.
I tried to squirm a hoof free. When that failed, I shut my eyes and willed myself to pass through the netting, just as I had made the rings pass through one another.
Nothing.
It was so unfair. Here I was, trussed up like a Christmas turkey, ready to be delivered back into the hooves of my captors, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
“Hey!”
Below, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle stood with Scootaloo between them. “Let her go!” Scootaloo shouted, and then the two flung their pegasus friend. Scootaloo’s wings buzzed, and she shot like a bullet up at the two of us.
Pinion, being impressively swift, simply flapped her wings and darted to the side in a blur of red motion. “Hah! Cute, kids, but—oops.”
Of course, to say that, she had to let the net go.
I screamed and hit the earth with a thud and a grunt. Before Pinion could dive down and retrieve me, a heavy paw settled on my side. The Morgwyn glared up at my captor balefully, its tail flicking like a whip as it watched her.
Circling for a bit, Pinion scowled down at me. After a moment’s hesitation, she beat her wings and shot off over the trees.
The Morgwyn freed me from my confinement with a few quick snips of its claws. Tossing the snarled remains of the net on the ground, I rose to all fours and grinned. “Wow, nice moves, guys. How’d you know she’d let me go?” I rubbed my shoulder where I had landed, nursing the bruise.
Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle exchanged glances. “Uh…” Apple Bloom said. “Yeah! Exactly as planned. What in the hay is goin’ on, anyway, Moonlight?”
“It’s a long story that involves me being chased by horrible monsters who want to steal me away. Oh, this is the Morgwyn,” I said as I pointed at the cat creature. “It’s my awesome protector.”
Sweetie Belle looked at the Morgwyn apprehensively. “Are you sure he’s friendly…?”
“Morg saved us!” I frowned, glancing around. “We’d probably better get going, though. Those monsters are going to be after us again.”
“I dunno, seems you’re pretty well covered from here,” Apple Bloom murmured, eying the Morgwyn as well.
The Morgwyn examined its claw, seemingly indifferent to the surrounds. “The wee bairn best not take chances. They will come again, more prepared this time.” Its voice was, as ever, unhurried and unconcerned.
Apple Bloom perked. “I know! You can come to Ponyville! My big sister and her friends can protect you, no problem.”
“Yeah! They’re great at fighting monsters,” Sweetie Belle said, bouncing in place. “They do it nearly every week!”
Ponyville. Now there was a name I hadn’t expected to hear again so soon. The fear the goblins expressed towards the pony race left me a little wary—if those freaks were frightened of Princess Celestia and her gang, there had to be some truth to it. Still, as far as they knew, I was a pony myself.
“Sure.” I glanced into the trees. “We should probably fish Scootaloo out so we can get going. Wire, you okay?”
Wire curled herself into a tight ball and sobbed. “Go ’way.”
“Great! Don’t go anywhere.”
After a quick scour of the nearby terrain, we pried Scootaloo out of the stump she had been wedged in and trotted back. Scootaloo, though her eyes were slightly glazed under the lid of her helmet, reattached her scooter and set herself atop it, with her hooves on the handles. The Morgwyn, of course, was nowhere to be found when we returned.
“Monsters?” she slurred. “Okay. Cutie Mark Crusader Getaway Vehicle is a go. Just, uh… one teensy little problem.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
Scootaloo glanced up at the dark trees, casting her gaze around. She finally threw her hooves up. “Where in the hay are we?”
* * *
“For the fifth time, Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo growled, “I said I’m sorry.” The three of us walked alongside her as she gently buzzed her wings, hauling the nearly catatonic Wire along in the wagon behind us. “It got really confusing, and I had to dodge all of those owl… thingies!”
Sweetie Belle hopped forward and put her lantern down. “Look! We don’t even have that much light left!” She tapped the glass with a hoof. The fireflies inside stirred and brightened, but moved sluggishly. “They’re getting tired, and so are we! And we’re lost in the—” Sweetie flattened her ears to her skull and stared around at the looming trees. “—the Ev-Everfree F-Forest.” The hoot of an owl sent a shiver up her back.
“We’re fine.” Scootaloo waved it off. “Look at me! I got head trauma and I’m still moving.” She gestured a hoof to the slow-moving river beside us. “As long as we keep following the river, we’ve got to end up somewhere.”
Apple Bloom rolled her eyes. “That’s because there ain’t nothin’ in your head except rocks, Scoot.” She nudged me as we walked along. “So what were those creatures anyhow, Moonlight?”
“Well, uh…” I flicked my eyes to Wire. None of the girls had noticed anything odd about her appearance thus far, even though her wings were certainly unlike any pegasus I had ever seen. Admittedly, all the pegasi I had ever seen were goblins pretending to be ones, aside from Rainbow Dash, and now Scootaloo. “They’re called goblins.”
“Goblins? I’ve heard of those,” Scootaloo said. “We had a book about them!”
“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle said. “They cheat and steal everything that isn’t nailed down, including furniture. Apparently.”
Wire twitched from the wagon.
“Sure.” Apple Bloom nodded. “According to the book, they have tar for blood and live in holes in the ground.”
“That all seems rather unlikely,” I said, quirking my brow at them.
“Hey, it was in a book, so it’s gotta be true,” Scootaloo said.
I shook my head. “I’m not really sure what their deal is, honestly, but they took me from my home and brought me to their castle. It was huge and full of awful machines of death and chaos and stuff, but Wire and I escaped together and flushed out into the forest.”
“Castle?” Scootaloo asked. “I don’t think there are any castles out here, are there? I mean, pegasi have flown over the Everfree before, and castles are kind of easy to spot.”
“Ponies don’t know about it because it’s hidden with special magic.” I didn’t actually know that for certain, but it seemed a reasonable enough assumption. “I had a teacher there who taught me a little bit of it. Want to see?”
Sweetie Belle’s eyes widened. “You can do magic, already? No fair!” She stamped a hoof, and sparks shot from her horn. She flushed and glanced away. “Ah, heh, sorry.”
“Not that kinda magic. I don’t know the first thing about unicorn stuff.” I glanced around and picked up a nice round pebble. “I’ll make this rock disappear! One, two…” I slapped my other hoof down on it. “Three-ow!” I yelped as my hoof bounced off the stone harmlessly.
I was really starting to hate that trick.
The three fillies exchanged glances. “Aww, come on,” Scootaloo said. “That’s just stage magic stuff. We tried that out, it, uh…”
Sweetie Belle rubbed her chin. “Well, Twilight said it was… unique.”
Apple Bloom kicked the fallen pebble into the grass. “Well, her feathers grew back, so it can’t have been that bad, right?”
“I swear, it’s more than that,” I protested. “My teacher, Twig, could walk through a solid door and hide in… plain… sight…” I glanced around suspiciously at the dark boughs around us. Catching my manner, the other girls glanced around as well. Grinning, I picked a branch up and tapped Sweetie Belle’s rump with it.
Proving her namesake, she squealed like a siren and leapt into the wagon, squirming herself under one of the remaining blankets with Wire and becoming a shivering lump.
“Hey, that wasn’t nice,” Apple Bloom said, poking my ribs.
Scootaloo sniggered. “I thought it was kinda hilarious, actually.” She recoiled from Apple Bloom’s withering glare and coughed. “Well, uh,” she said insincerely, “yeah, bad on you, Moonlight, after we helped you out and everything.”
“It’s okay, I’ll apologize.” I stepped over to the wagon, poking the smaller bump. “Sweetie Belle? I’m sorry. I just wanted to give you a little scare is all.”
Sweetie Belle poked her head out, looking at me with the largest eyes I had ever seen.
“Besides, you’re a lot braver than Wire here,” I poked the larger ball of blankets. “She’s kind of a wuss.”
“I am not,” came the muffled reply. Wire poked her own head out, giving me a sullen look. Her already sallow complexion had been further mottled by her embarrassed flush. Red skin and pale yellow hair were not a good combination. “I’m… I just don’t want to be turned to stone or dragged back in chains or anything like that.” She fixed her eyes on me. “You could be more grateful. I did help.”
That had me shrinking back a bit, and I frowned. Wire had indeed defended us, but only at my spurring. I opened my mouth to protest that very fact, then closed it. Technically, I was responsible for getting her into the mess we were in, dragging her away from everything she knew and loved.
Did I really have a choice, though? She grabbed on to me. I had to escape that castle, no matter what the consequences were. What was I supposed to do, peel her off and let the goblins catch me while I tried?
The fact remained, though, that it was a long way home for both of us.
“I’m sorry, Wire,” I said at last. “You did good, really.”
Wire blushed more brightly, if anything, and ducked her head back down to hide it under her wing.
“Hey, guys, I think I see something ahead.” Scootaloo said. She had gone a bit further to get a better look. The light provided by a half moon wasn’t even close to that provided by a full one, but some shapes could be discerned. “Looks kinda like a little house.”
“Nope, I think I see wheels,” Apple Bloom said. “Maybe one of those covered wagon-type things? It’s got a lantern hanging off one side.”
Wire pulled her head out again, blinking. “Can I have a look?” She hopped off the little red wagon and went over to join them, and was followed shortly thereafter by myself and Sweetie Belle. Together, we peered out into the darkness until our eyes adjusted.
The tall, boxy wagon stood on the bank of the stream, which, along with the light it carried, was likely the only reason we had noticed it at all. Four giant wheels jutted from either side, and elaborately carved cornices encircled the top. A lantern and a sign hung from the back in the same script the goblins had used. I frowned, figuring it must be more of our enemy, but Wire’s eyes brightened.
“What is it?” I asked. My voice stayed low, so as not to alert anyone who might be listening.
“It’s a peddler,” she whispered. “They’re not affiliated with any of the courts, usually—wanderin’ salesgoblins. I ain’t heard of any comin’ to Equestria in years, not since the Wand King ordered the Ways cleared. They’re always trying to smuggle across borders like that, though—big profits in that line of work.”
“So he travels the Forest? He might even know how to get me back?” I whispered back. The Crusaders were looking at the two of us curiously.
Wire nodded. “Probably! He won’t want to send us away, either, because we might run and tell the Court he’s here.”
“Uh, not to interrupt your conversation,” Apple Bloom said, doing exactly that, “but isn’t it a little convenient that we just happened to run into this after fleeing from those things back there?” She nodding her head back the way we had come.
“I don’t think so.” Wire shook her head. “This is the only obvious source of freshwater, and we’ve been walkin’ for like two hours. Look at the lantern, too—it’s shaded from above, so searchers in the sky wouldn’t notice the glow.” She pointed around. “If they wanted to ambush us, I bet they’d just set watchers along the river and pounce on us when we’re least expectin’ it, all tidy like.”
“Like when we’re investigating a supposed peddler’s wagon?” Scootaloo pointed out.
Wire’s ears dropped. “Aye, suppose it might.” She turned to regard the wagon, and then squared her shoulders. “I’ll check it out, then.”
“Whoa,” I said, grabbing her leg. “Are you sure? I mean… we can just go around.”
Wire fixed me with a vexed expression, her brow knit and her lips pressed into a thin line. “I… I can do stuff myself, you know… Besides, we’re low on food, and your folks are probably worried close to dyin’ for your safety. We need to do something.”
I bit my lip, objecting no further as she trotted off towards the wagon. The four of us huddled together behind the brush as she went up to the wagon and called, “Eye-ah, there!”
From inside came a rattling, and a furry figure poked out of the back near the steps. It was a chubby raccoon with lidded yellow eyes. He wore a bright blue cap that clashed horribly with his orange vest, and he squinted down at Wire sharply. “What? Who’s a callin’?” he asked in a scratchy voice.
“Just a weary traveler lookin’ for a place to settle her sore wings for a spell. You a peddler, then, eh?”
“Aye, might be as I am. Howbe?”
“I just came off a shandivang up at the Wand Keep earlier, thought I’d hitch a ride out before things got hot.” Wire took a few steps up to the wagon, kicking its tires thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t be happenin’ to be headin’ into ponylands, would you?”
“What the hay is a shandivang?” Scootaloo whispered.
I shrugged. “Heck if I know.”
“Bone and blood, it’s more than my skin is worth to take you that way.” The peddler growled. “The Wand King’s folk are as thick as stoneflies on a rotten steak. I’ve burnt out five different enchantments just getting back this far.” He eyed the young mare suspiciously. “You want to be gettin’ out of here, you best go the same way. Mag Mell, mark me.”
“Tidy. Don’t suppose you can guide me on the right way, can you?”
The peddler crouched on the edge of the step. “Seems as I don’t know why I would, seein’ as how you’re Wand.”
“You sound like you’ve got a bit of the old world in you yourself,” Wire countered.
The peddler scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Well, me grandmother was a Wand. One of the Queen’s picked few.”
“See? That makes us near kin,” Wire said with a grin, cupping her ears forward. She rummaged about in her pouches. “Besides, I’ve got trade. Fully charged thunderstones, good copper wire, insulation, tools…”
The peddler waved her down. “Fine, fine. Let’s make it two charged thunderstones and hustle it up. I’ve got to get going before midnight anyhow.”
“Deal.” Wire lifted her head, calling to us, “Girls! Let’s go!”
The peddler whipped his head about. “Whoa, you didn’t say nothin’ about no others!”
“You didn’t ask, didja?” Wire giggled. The Crusaders darted forward, probably more than a little curious to see what this was all about, while I hung back for a moment.
It was all just a little too convenient. Running into the “Cutie Mark Crusaders” when we had was a stroke of luck by itself, but finding a peddler who just happened to be able to smuggle us across a watched border? That was bordering on conspiracy.
On a sudden thought, I glanced around and fixed on a pair of blue specks in the darkness. A grin spread across my face.
“The wee bairn has become perceptive. One is not sure this is a good thing,” the Morgwyn said. Like the Cheshire Cat, the rest of its body resolved out of the darkness as it shifted to let the moonlight touch it.
“Fool me twice,” I piped, sitting on my haunches to take in the sight. The Crusaders darted about the wagon, poking their heads inside, while Wire chatted up the befuddled peddler. “This whole journey has gotten strange, though. It’s so hard to see where I’m going, Morg.”
“It began strange, bairn.”
I frowned at the Morgwyn. “I have to ask something, though. Why were you helping me? You were the one who brought me to Fetter, and yet you also helped me escape.”
“Tsk.” The Morgwyn flicked its tail disdainfully. “You already ruin your progress by making false assumptions. Fetter sought the Morgwyn’s aid when he was banished, and the Morgwyn provided, but you were the one who opted to leave. The Morgwyn simply did not permit harm to befall you.”
“So,” I said slowly, “it’s my choice, but you’ll enable that choice?”
“Is it not the way of mortals to seek freedom?”
“I guess.” I watched as the raccoon went berserk after Scootaloo accidentally pried off a bronze hubcap.
The Morgwyn bent close, whispering into my ear. “Beware, my little spark. This one may be here to protect you, but you already know that you must be willing to fight for yourself. Keep your wits and cunning about you, and remember…” I turned my head, but, like a ghost, it had already gone. Its last words hung in the air. “Trust only yourself.”
* * *
The night air hung thick with mist as the wagon rattled north. Sweetie Belle and Wire huddled together as wolves howled in the dark, while Scootaloo and Apple Bloom hung off the front, staring at the wagon’s passage.
“Where’s the engine on this thing?” Apple Bloom asked, waving a hoof in front of the wagon. She glanced back at the rest of us.
The raccoon peddler reached down and yanked the two of them back further into the wagon. “The last thing I want is to scrape guts out of the axles, watch it.”
“It’s enchanted,” Wire said from where she and Sweetie Belle were tucked under the peddler’s quilted bed, built into one side.
Scootaloo flopped back next to where I was examining bins of the peddler’s wares. “You’ve got unicorns out there, huh?”
“What? Blood and bone, no!” He snorted. “Only place to buy decent unicorn goods is Equestria, everygob knows that. Nah, these are yaksha made. Had it done the last time I was in Cup lands. They charge a heckuva lot less than the skinflint sorcerers in Mag Mell.”
“What’s this Mag Mell place like, anyway?” Apple Bloom asked.
“Oh, now, if’n you haven’t seen it, I daren’t ruin the surprise,” the peddler said. His voice turned wistful as he turned a bronze tiller to guide the wagon, turning it aside from a tree before we could crash into it, his tail swaying. “Always takes me breath away, with the mists blowin’ in from Niflheim every evenin’ only to be burned off when the firestar crests the boughs.”
Apple Bloom tilted her head. “I thought you said you weren’t gonna spoil it.”
I stepped to the front to get a better look, wobbling on all fours. Ahead, a wide silvery river sliced across an open field. Campfires burned on either side, heavy-set figures clustered about them. None of them looked up at our approach, and indeed didn’t seem to notice the rapidly approaching vehicle at all. The peddler stuck out his tongue and turned the wagon in a hard right, sending us flashing past tents bearing banners with staves picked out in dark green against blue backgrounds. A rope snapped under a wheel, and a goblin voice cursed the wind.
When we hit the water, the wheels kicked up great sprays of white water, only for the mist to cover them with a hazy image of calm.
“Wooee! Old Veil ain’ what it used to be, huh?” The peddler slapped me on the back. “The spell’s holdin’!”
“You didn’t know if we could make it?” Wire demanded in a voice that rose into a squeak as high as Sweetie Belle’s.
“Can’t win profit without a little risk, kid!” He laughed and tapped the driver’s board again. We exploded out of the water on the other side, clearing a group of sentries even as the mist fell away. They ran after us a short distance, cursing and spitting, but followed no further as the wagon sped down a long road.
We moved from the river plain to a light forest, where sinkholes gaped to reveal limestone caverns beneath the sod. The girls and I dozed off for a time in a fluffy pile before a bump roused us. Groggily, we clustered at the front of the wagon.
Though it was now little more than packed earth, there were ancient, overgrown stones embedded into the topsoil, with moss-covered statues of horses and men littering the hills. The moonlight had more than quadrupled, and I peeked up to see the same great full moon I had witnessed over a week ago. I frowned. “Shouldn’t that, be, like, a totally different moon phase by now?”
“Eh? Why? We ain’ in Equestria no more, kid.” The peddler stroked the board a few times and the wagon slowed to a less frenetic pace. “We’re almost right in time to see the winds coming off Niflheim trunkward, and if you look heavenway you’ll see the Great Tree’s branches.”
I frowned more deeply, but Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle were climbing up the wagon to get a better look. After a moment, I joined them, flopping next to Apple Bloom after she pulled me the rest of the way up.
Spread out before us were rolling hills scattered with trees. The impossibly bright moon lit an enormous front of clouds coming from ahead with starlight as it swept towards the lights of a city. A white stone statue of a tall and proud man bearing a round shield in hand, standing as high as a skyscraper, towered beside another that had tumbled, a broken sword lying on its own set of mossy hills. Together, they flanked a worn gate and a great plaza, from which radiated out a dozen more roads, just like the one we were on.
I squinted at the sky and gaped. Now that I was looking more closely, I could see that the stars were clustered into gnarled rivers across the sky. It was as if there were a half-dozen milky ways, all of them crowned with a jewel-like star so bright that they had to be planets.
“Welcome to Mag Mell, the Gate of Midgard, and the hub of three worlds,” the peddler announced. The wagon rattled on, carrying us to the great goblin city.
"Think where Man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." Yeats.
Daphne
“Are you sure we can’t offer you any more cakes, Princess?” the matron of the house, a stout, roan mare, asked. She puttered after Twilight Sparkle solicitously as the two of us retreated for the door. Three tiny green foals followed us, carousing about Twilight’s legs and nearly tripping her when one of them got in the way.
Twilight waved a hoof and both wings, as if trying to buffet the farmer away. “No, no! I’m quite full, I assure you, and Spike will just love—”
“Goodness! I forgot all about your royal assistant!” The mare spun about and pointed a hoof at the kitchen. “Tell your father to bake three dozen more cakes at once!”
“Run,” Twilight hissed, and threw the door open with a flash of magic. I bolted after her.
“I won’t have a member of Equestria’s royalty starving in my—hey, where did they go?”
Cream cakes bounced out of Twilight’s saddlebags as we galloped off of the farm and into the hills surrounding it. Ponyville came into view just as we crested a rise, as well as the other small cottages and steadings between here and the Everfree Forest. Far above, the sky was being cleared of clouds—if I just squinted, I could make out the tiny, colorful forms of pegasi. The thought that they could actually influence the weather was incredible.
It probably wasn’t entirely kosher to be envious, but seeing ponies fly so adroitly did make me a little green.
“Does that happen a lot?” I asked as we slowed to a canter.
Twilight groaned. “More than I’d like—which would be never.” She glanced back at the rapidly retreating farmhouse, as if expecting to see the matron chasing after us. I pictured the mother in the back of a dog sled, her beleaguered, orange husband and three children as the propulsion, and grinned. “It’s not really that bad in Ponyville proper, but I never really got to know a lot of these farmers before I became a Princess.”
I tilted my head. “So, what, like, you were elected princess? There are a few examples of royalty being elected on Earth like that.”
“Uh, not exactly.” She shook her head. “More like… selected? Appointed? No, exploded. Definitely exploded.”
I blinked.
“Long story.” She giggled, before giving me a thoughtful look. “Do you really call it Earth, where you come from?”
“Yeah. I mean, we never had much of a reason to call it anything else.” I glanced up at the sky. “I guess other words might be ‘Tellus’ or ‘Gaia,’ but those mean the same thing, really. What do you call your world?”
“Earth.”
“Oh, well.” I grinned at her. “I can see how that would be confusing.”
Twilight laughed again and jerked her head back at the farmhouse. “We didn’t find anything there, but I’m sure somepony around here remembers the Stone family. I mean, it’s only been ten years, how hard can it be?”
“Hopefully not too much harder,” I said quietly. The thought of Amelia and what might be happening to her crept into my mind as I glanced at the nearby woods. Such fancies could only be worse than the reality, however, so I shied away with a grimace. Still, my sister had to be terrified out of her wits, I thought to myself, lonely and frightened. Not to mention worried sick about me. The last she would have seen of me was when those brutes shot me in the chest.
After nearly a week, she’d probably given up all hope.
We crossed a bridge, under which a family of otters splashed and played in a calm stream. The cottage before us was positively littered with birdhouses, while nearly a dozen rabbits, heedless of our passing hoofsteps, grazed enthusiastically on grass and clover. Some of the varieties of bird were setting my head to spinning, and I wondered again at the strange interrelationships between our two worlds. There were more than a few New England birds, but the vast majority seemed to come from every region at once. I boggled at a keel-billed toucan, which stared right back at me, until I bumped against something big, heavy, furry, and incredibly muscular.
“Oh, excuse me,” I said, backing up to look at the person I had knocked into, only to come face-to-face with a bear.
I screamed at the top of my lungs and leapt from the cottage hill, landing in the stream with a splash.
Twilight Sparkle teleported to the opposite side of the stream with a flash of purple light. She peered down at me as I flailed in the shallow water. “You okay?”
I leapt out and dove behind a tree, staring back up at the bear, which had returned to napping in front of the cottage’s door. “Bear!”
Silence held for a few beats as Twilight looked between the bear and me. She arched a brow. “Yeah. That’s a bear alright.”
“Hello?” a soft voice called from one of the upper windows. “Is somepony shouting for me?” Hooves pushed open a pair of shutters to reveal a creamy, pink-maned pony. “Oh. Hello Twilight,” she called, “I didn’t know you were visiting today.”
“Just stopping by, Fluttershy,” Twilight Sparkle replied. “I was hoping to ask you a few questions, actually.”
The other mare—Fluttershy—smiled, gesturing to Twilight with a hoof. “Of course; come in.”
She nodded. “Sure. Could you ask your bear friend to scoot a little? He’s blocking the door.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry. I gave him some medicine earlier, and I think he’s still sleeping it off.” She stepped out of the window, spreading her wings to glide gently to the earth. I watched in amazement as she set her hooves to the bear’s shoulders and gave him a shake, utterly fearless. “Now, Mister Bear, I know you’re very sleepy right now, but I need my front door. You wouldn’t want me to have to make a new one, would you?”
The bear yawned, exposing all of his many, powerful teeth. Her only reaction was to tap the ground a few times. “Now don’t be like that. I have guests—you know how important it is to show proper hospitality, don’t you?”
The bear chuffed and reluctantly clambered to all fours.
“There’s a dear.” She kissed the bear on his cheek. “Go on. There’s a nice, soft patch of moss over by the log. I’ll bring you some berries later.”
My skin crawled as the bear ambled down the pathway, and I froze as he passed within mere meters of Twilight and I. “She… she wasn’t actually talking to that bear, was she? I mean, he wasn’t talking back, right?”
“Hmm?” Twilight glanced back at me. “Well, of course he was, Daphne. It would be pretty impolite if he just ignored Fluttershy completely. I don’t speak bear, but Fluttershy does.” She started towards the door. “Coming?”
“R-right,” I said, joining her after a moment. My gaze remained fixed on the bear as he settled down beside the stream. A bear that was demonstrably sapient, at least to the limited exposure I had. I started looking at the other animals clustered about the cottage with new eyes. They looked much like the creatures familiar to me from home, but now, as I saw myself reflected in them, it seemed to me that they were considering me just as curiously as I was considering them. Perhaps that was merely imagination, but, as I watched their heads turn to follow us, I somehow doubted it.
Fluttershy opened the door and stepped inside; her tail slid along the floor, and I wondered if ponies ever had trouble keeping clean. Leit Motif and I had washed our hooves, but while I always seemed to run around with them caked in dirt, everypony else looked nearly spotless. Perhaps it was some consequence of their ability to pick things up. “I hope you like chamomile, Twilight. I’m all out of the mint—I’m really sorry, I just haven’t had time to go into town, what with the medicine and the… the ogre earlier.”
“No, that’s all right,” Twilight said, waving her hoof. “No need to start anything. Daphne and I just had some questions before we had to move on.”
“Daphne…?” She glanced at me. “Oh, A guest! And—goodness, you’re all soaked!” She threw a cabinet open, and a fluffy towel stitched with seals flopped on to my back. “How did this happen?”
“Bear,” Twilight said sardonically, covering a smirk.
I gave her a sour glance. “Har.” Toweling off, I smiled at Fluttershy. “Thank you. It was nothing, really, I just kind of fell into your stream here.”
“Oh. Well.” Fluttershy blinked. “I can’t really recommend that. It’s not really the right depth for diving.” She went over to a table stacked with a couple newspapers where a family of docile mice carefully shredded them and folded them with straw to make nest material. “So, what can I help you with?”
“Well, we’re trying to figure something out,” Twilight said as she joined her. “It might have been before your time here in Ponyville, but did you know a Stone family that farmed in this area?”
“Stone?” Fluttershy tilted her head. “Well, there’s the Stiles, and then Rock Slide and Pleasant Valley live over on Blackberry Lane.”
“I don’t think they’ve been here for a few years, actually,” Twilight amended.
I nodded. “Yeah, Lyra said the area had grown wild.” I looked out the window. A chicken coop and fence stood not far from the border of the woods. They seemed deceptively benign from Fluttershy’s cottage—perhaps not all of the Everfree was monster-infested, if all of these relatively normal animals congregated so freely.
“Oh, dear.” Fluttershy frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anypony who tended old plots. All of the plots around here have been tilled since before I came to stay in Ponyville.” She fiddled nervously with a bucket of brine left on the edge of the table. “They’ve changed hooves a few times, though. Have you tried asking Applejack? If anypony knows who the old families are, she would.”
“No, but I suppose I was going that way anyway. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo checked a book out that we need to find.” Twilight furrowed her brow as she glanced out the window. “Have they checked in with you? Zecora hasn’t visited recently, so I haven’t asked, but…”
Fluttershy shook her head. “Not since they asked for an ice pick and a big bag of salt, no.” She glanced outside with a nervous twist of her mouth. “Is that ogre still out there? Whatever happened with that?”
“Ah. That’s my cue.” I stepped forward toward the table. “There was no ogre. That was actually a friend of mine, Naomi. I’m Daphne, by the way. Sorry for not introducing myself.”
“Nice to meet you,” Fluttershy said, offering me a smile. “Are you from out of town, then?”
“Way, way out of town.”
“Daphne and her friends are here looking for her sister,” Twilight said. “It’s a bit distressing, actually. She was kidnapped by some creatures called ‘goblins.’ Do you know anything about them?”
Fluttershy’s eyes widened. “Kidnapped? Oh, that’s terrible.” She gave me a hug at once. I might have protested, but something in the look she had—the downward curl of her lips, the slight crease to her eyes, the sheer sincerity about her—popped a seam somewhere inside me, and I had to take a moment to keep my emotions down. For some reason, her words and her demeanor had reminded me very strongly of the fact that I might very well never see my little sister again, or, worse, that she’d been changed more completely than I had been.
“I’m really very sorry. I’ve never even heard of goblins before. They sound awful.” She set her hooves on my shoulders as she pulled away. “Is there anything I can get you? I wish I could do something more. Maybe I can ask my animal friends to help look for her?”
“I… no.” I shook my head. “I mean—if you think it might help, yes, but, I don’t need anything right now. I just need to find my sister and get her home safe again.”
“Maybe I can fix you some tea, I—” Fluttershy spun around, her rump hitting the bucket on the table. It sailed up and turned in midair. I barely had time to sigh before cold brine and potatoes dumped all over me.
* * *
“Would you please stop giggling?” I asked Twilight sullenly as we walked away. I glared at her, then up at my mane. It was dry again, but the strands stuck together with whatever salt we hadn’t been able to remove in Fluttershy’s sink.
“I’m sorry,” Twilight said in a tone that didn’t sound very apologetic at all. She tried to hide another grin with little success. “Does this happen to you often?”
“Terrifically bad luck?” I tilted my head. “Yes.” I growled, stomping my hooves into the ground in a childish display of frustration as we walked. After a while, I cooled off and asked, “Fluttershy’s going to be okay, right? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone apologize so much before.”
“She’s all right. Just a little, you know, delicate.” Twilight chuckled. “You know, it kind of reminds me of when I first came to Ponyville. Rainbow Dash was one of the first of my friends that I met, and the very first thing she did was crash into me and plow me into a puddle of mud. Getting clean again was almost an adventure in itself.”
“Considering that the last time I was in water I almost drowned, I don’t really see the humor,” I said bitterly. At Twilight’s stricken look, I winced. “Sorry. You didn’t know about that.” I paused. “Even if you did, that was really uncalled for.”
Twilight waved it off with a wing. “If I started judging people for getting stressed out, the first pony would be standing in the mirror.”
I flushed, watching the ground as we walked. “I really can’t thank you enough for this, though, Twilight. I mean, I know you probably want to be back in your house instead of out on a late autumn afternoon tracking down rumors.”
“Lyra and Leit can carry on without me just fine,” she said as we trotted on. After a pause, she added, “Besides, I do like helping ponies—err, people. Even if nothing was on the line, I’d still like to figure this out. The whole question of parallel worlds and strange creatures traveling them… I want to see it play out for myself.”
“Well,” I gave her a small smile, “thank you, anyway.”
The hills gave way to open fields and copses of trees, dotting the land around us. Young foals played in little groups, running freely through the grass in a way a lot of kids back home would have envied; their sturdy young legs seemed possessed of boundless energy. At that moment, I wished strongly that Leit could have been there to look with me. A younger Daphne certainly would have loved to run with them.
Apple trees popped up along the roadside. Our feet carried us on to my original glimpse of pony civilization: the apple farm. With the sun hanging near the horizon, it was getting late in the day, but someone was still working. I stared as an entire tree shook so violently the apples seemed to detach themselves obligingly. The most enormous pony stallion I had ever seen trotted towards the barn with an even dozen carts stacked high with fruit behind him. They might as well have been filled with feathers for all the trouble they gave him.
“Hello, Big McIntosh!” Twilight called. “Is Applejack in?”
The crimson stallion slowed, lifting a hoof to lazily wave. His shaggy fetlocks exposed orange-walled hooves. “Eeyup,” he answered with an obvious twang. “Just set yourselves up inside, I’ll send her along.”
“Wow,” I muttered, following Twilight toward the barn-shaped farmhouse. “I think he could almost look Hector in the eye.” If I had thought Ponyville was rustic, it was nothing on the exterior of this house. I could have taken a dive into a genre picture and wouldn’t have known the difference. “And how many apples was he carrying? That looked to be at least a ton.”
“About that many. Maybe twice that. It is the last harvest of the year, after all, so he and Applejack need to work extra hard.” Twilight knocked on the doorframe, peeking in. “Granny Smith?” she called quietly.
A snore answered her. An ancient mare dozed in a large, comfy chair by the fireplace. Twilight put a hoof to her lips and tiptoed into the kitchen. She closed the door behind us after I joined her, and then lowered her horn towards it. Purple light swirled for a moment. “There we go,” she said in a more normal tone.
I quietly watched the light leave her horn. Twilight, walking over to the side door, failing to notice my interest, and opened it to greet a familiar orange mare, whose powerfully built frame glistened. “Hey, hon. Hope you don’t mind if I refrain from greetin’ you proper. I’m drenched with sweat. We’ve got a fine crop comin’ in, if I don’t say so myself.”
Unlike so many others today, she saw me at once and grinned. “Shucks, if it ain’t the hungry traveler. Why didn’t you say you were a friend of Twi’s?”
“Oh, we’re just acquaintainces. She’s a friend of my friend Leit Motif—”
“Sort of,” Twilight corrected.
“—and she’s helping me out.” I smiled at Applejack brightly. “Thank you for that pie, by the way. It was fantastic. Best I’ve ever had.”
“Darned straight it is.” Applejack went to her fridge and poured herself a large glass of milk. “Can I help you two to anything?”
“No, thank you,” Twilight said, stepping forward. “Actually, I’d hoped to ask you a few questions. Do you know anything about a Stone family that farmed near Fluttershy’s cottage back, oh, ten years ago?”
“Stone? I knew a Big Stone and his wife, Quicklime,” Applejack said thoughtfully as she settled against her counter. “They had a little filly I played with sometimes, Marble Stone.” A dark frown crossed her expression. “I think something happened to her, now that I think about it. There was an… an accident? They moved away after that.”
We brightened and cupped our ears forward. I had to resist the urge to tackle the other mare into the ground. “Have you ever heard of goblins?” I asked. “Did Marble Stone ever mention anything about strange visitors from the Everfree?”
“Goblins?” Applejack deepened her scowl, swirling the dregs of her drink around. “Can’t say as I… well.” She peered at the door leading back into the living room. “Granny Smith says that when she was young, this strange fella would come to town on two legs, could barely speak a word of Equestrian, but he made some mighty fine tools. We had an axe that finally broke after some sixty-odd years when I was young. We gave the blade away to some family in Appleloosa a bit ago—it was still good.”
“I can hardly believe it,” Twilight said. “We’ve been in contact the entire time and it’s been right under our noses…”
My expression darkened. “Yeah, but… you don’t know what happened to Marble Stone, exactly?”
“No.” Applejack shook her head. “Shucks. Now that you’ve reminded me, I remember being terrible upset. My da, bless his heart, said she’d gone on. I cried for a week, must have been.” She stared out the window, her grimace seeming etched on her face. “You ever have the feeling you’ve forgotten about somepony you cared deeply about?”
I scuffed the floor with a hoof, my reply a whisper. “Yeah.”
“What’s this all about, then?” Applejack asked as she turned to wash her glass in the sink. “I don’t think you came all this way just to ask about one of my fillyhood friends.”
Twilight shook her head. “Yes and no. Actually… well, it’s a bit of a long story now, but we have good reason to believe that your friend Marble Stone was foalnapped. The same thing happened to Daphne here—her little sister was taken a little under a week ago by what we believe to be the same creatures.”
Applejack turned her head to stare at us, leaving the water running. The sink slowly filled, and her trailing blond mane soaked in it, but she paid it no heed.
“They are monsters called goblins,” I explained quietly. “They look like ponies sometimes, or bipeds, and maybe other things. They took my baby sister and I don’t know what they’re going to do with her. I need to get her back.”
“Well.” Applejack settled her hooves on the floor. She cracked her neck. “Point me to ’em. I’ll break ’em in half if I have to.”
“That’s the problem,” Twilight griped. “We can’t seem to find out where they are. We found Marble Stone’s journal, but it didn’t give any hints. They’re somewhere in the Everfree Forest, but we have no idea where.”
“Harvest is just about over,” Applejack said in a growl. “Big Mac can finish up. I’ll tear the place apart—that’s sick, what they’ve done, taking defenseless foals.”
Twilight raised a hoof placatingly. “Whoa there, cowgirl.” She gave Applejack a gentle nudge. “The minute we find something, we’ll let you know, all right? We won’t get anywhere just leaping off without a plan.”
Applejack snorted, but allowed the tension to drain out of her. I watched as the corded muscles under her skin relaxed—after seeing what her brother could do, and what my own sissy legs had been able to bear, I didn’t want to imagine what she could do to a goblin given the chance. She tossed her head and her mane flopped wetly on her side. “Well, you be sure of that. If there’s anything I can do to help…”
“You’ll be the first to know,” Twilight said, nodding. “Why don’t you come by the library in a couple days? I’m expecting some more books from Canterlot soon—we should be able to get something from them.”
“Sure.” Applejack nodded. “I need to unload our stock before winter anyway, so I’ll be in town.”
“Thanks again,” I said, and paced closer. I stared at the ground and scuffed my hoof. “Uhm… I’m really sorry about your friend, Marble. I… I know what that’s like, losing someone close to you.”
Applejack smiled awkwardly and chuffed me with a hoof. “Thanks. You take care—shucks, if I’d known you were in such trouble I’d have taken care of you myself. Don’t be so shy in askin’ for help when you need it. Daphne, right?”
I nodded.
“I’ll bring one of my apple pies over tomorrow mornin’.” She glanced at Twilight. “You two got time to stick around, actually? I could have you over for dinner.”
Twilight ruffled her feathers thoughtfully, but shook her head. “We should get back. Daphne has friends waiting for her, and they might have dug up something new by now.” Her head perked. “Oh! I almost forgot—did Apple Bloom or the other girls leave a library book here?”
Applejack shook her head. “I didn’t see any new books when I dusted her room up this mornin’. They stayed the night at Rarity’s before takin’ off, though.” She frowned. “And they took two of my good shovels, come to think of it.”
“Those girls. They’re always up to something, aren’t they?” Twilight laughed. “Well, see you tomorrow, AJ.”
“You, too, Twi,” Applejack said, seeing us out and waving as we retreated down the way.
Something tangled about my feet, and I yelped, tumbling. Twilight watched me fall, then helped me up. I felt around at my heels, and a garden hose revealed itself from the lengthening shadows cast by the setting sun.
Twilight giggled as she pulled the hose away with a swirl of magic. “I’m starting to think you’re less unlucky than you are a terrific klutz.”
“Oh, hush. I’ve had these hooves for all of like five days.” I turned a baleful glare on the hose and felt heat rising in me. It seemed to build somewhere in my skull and settle there with a throbbing pain behind my horn. I winced, covering my face.
Twilight’s giggles faded. “Are you all right?”she asked.
I shook my head. “Yeah, just a headache.” Resolutely, I started back towards Ponyville.
We met the road I’d originally taken into town, and crossed the very same bridge. This time, Twilight led the way through the streets, keeping near the stream. Ponies gathered on park benches to enjoy the cool evening air, watching fireflies rise up along the river.
It put me in mind of one of the first dates Marcus and I had, actually. My steps slowed as I took in the fresh autumn air. It would be getting a little late in the year for fireflies back home, but when we had been going out in September they had positively teemed. A burgundy pegasus stallion and a pretty unicorn with a long blond mane nuzzled one another by the river bank, and I tried not to stare.
Just a few tweaks here and there. I shortened the mare’s mane to shoulder length in my imagination, lightened her coat, then adjusted the stallion’s hairstyle and lengthened it a bit—there, Pony Marcus and Daphne. They were enjoying a nice evening together before everything went to hell.
Yeah, okay, that had gotten creepy fast. I dismissed the image and hurried to catch up with Twilight.
We arrived at a curious building. If architecture could ever be described as “frilly,” this might be it. Ponies did love their odd design choices, it seemed. Warm golden light poured out into the dusk, and within I could see racks of clothes and pony mannequins.
“A clothing store?” I peered at it more closely. It reminded me of some of the designer shops I had frequented with my more shallow friends. “No, more like a boutique.” I could almost imagine Father starting up in fright, clutching at the credit cards, unaware of why his heart had started to beat rapidly.
Chalk another insensitive thought up. Father had probably been at his wit’s end regarding his daughters’ fates, and there I was making mental cracks about money.
“Yes!” Twilight nodded. “This is my friend Rarity’s place of business. And home. Home-business.”
“Don’t you also live in your place of business?”
“Well, yes, but… I don’t… work…” Twilight gave me a wry look and pushed the door open. “Anyway, come on. Her little sister is Sweetie Belle, one of the girls I mentioned. It’s a long shot, but they might have left the Goblins book here.”
Stepping in, we found ourselves overwhelmed in purple, highlighted in plum and orchid. The floor swirled with ivory and silver, and the metalwork was all polished brass. “Wow, that’s… something. This is something.” I did take an opportunity to marvel at some of the fabrics. At best, I’m an amateur at fashion, but even I could see the care taken. “I’ve never seen colors quite this vibrant before. That dark fuschia would go great with one of my dresses back home—”
“That,” an imperious woman’s voice interrupted, “is fandango. Very few ponies indeed have seen a color quite like this before.” Delicate hooves clipped their way around the fabric rack. “Of course, not everypony has my esteemed eye for color, but that is why it is so fortunate that you’ve stepped in, and—oh, hello, Twilight!”
Where I had observed that Twilight had an air of perfection because of her attention to detail and precision, this mare was perfect simply because perfect is what she was. An impeccably groomed coat of flawless alabaster contrasted with a delicately curled amethyst mane. The three gems on her sides could have been actual jewels for all I could tell.
“Hey, Rarity. How’s business?” Twilight said, waving a hoof.
“Dreadful.” The other unicorn shivered. “My fall fashion line has plummeted in popularity. The prices are falling like the leaves off the trees, and my wares gather dust on the ground with them.”
Twilight stared at her for a few moments. “Rarity. Autumn’s done. Winter is literally right around the corner.”
“I know. Isn’t it simply tragic?” Rarity sighed heavily. “I become so mournful at the turning of the seasons. I must discard with tremulous heart my labors to the bargain bin, where they will languish in undeserved ignominy.”
Twilight rubbed the side of her face. “I seem to remember you being ridiculously excited to start new lines after Summer Wrap-Up, though. And after Spring Cleaning. And Winter Wrap-up.”
“Well, of course, dear. Once I’ve cleared away the detritus of old, the slate is clean. An entire new world of fashion awaits, ready for my artist’s touch.”
“That…” Twilight stood flummoxed. “You just completely contradicted…”
Rarity patted her friend’s side. “It’s quite all right, Twilight. Not everypony can understand the intricate life of a fashionista.”
Either Rarity had just teased Twilight Sparkle into insensibility, or she was utterly mad. Possibly both.
“Now, Twilight, who is your—oh my stars!” Rarity gaped at me in horror. “Whatever happened to you? You poor dear, you look like you’ve been tumbling about in the Everfree Forest!”
“Err…” I prevaricated, “maybe.”
“Your hooves, your coat, your hair!” She gave Twilight a glare. “You haven’t been telling this poor mare to condition her hair with salt, have you? I cannot imagine what horrifying beauty tips you might dredge up from your musty books.”
Twilight winced. “That was an accident—”
“It’s a crime!” Rarity put her head to my side and shoved. “Come along. We are going to repair this at once.”
“Uh.” I looked to Twilight Sparkle as I slid across the floor. “Help?”
“Who, me? You’re on your own.” She watched my progress pitilessly. “You know, that is kind of funny when you’re not the one being subjected to it.”
* * *
“Did Naomi put you up to this?” I asked bemusedly. “This seems like the sort of thing she would enjoy putting me through. Then again, I don’t see her peeking in any of the windows.”
Below me, Rarity scraped a file along my hooves with her magic while Twilight watched. “Naomi?” Rarity asked. “I can’t say I’ve had the pleasure. Is she foreign?”
“You might say that.” I squirmed a little. It wasn’t too unlike a manicure, but it was different enough that I really didn’t know how to sit. Having four extremely large nails at the end of every limb was more than a curious sensation—it was downright eerie.
“They’re people from another world, Rarity,” Twilight said. “It’s really quite fascinating. They’re upright bipeds, like minotaurs, but they’re smaller and have a very different society.”
Rarity glanced at me with a curious tilt of her head. “Another world? How curious. Do they have ponies there as well?”
“Not really,” I said. “It’s a bit of a long story.”
“Well, I’m sure I’ll be happy to hear all about it.” Rarity lifted the file and turned my hoof this way and that. She polished it with a cloth and wheeled a stand mirror over. “There! Now, have a look.”
Reluctant to face myself, I got to my feet slowly. When I turned and confronted the mirror, however, I found myself staring openly.
The last time I’d looked into the mirror like this, it had been to behold a bedraggled creature in Naomi’s bedroom. Rarity’s ministrations had pulled the snarls from my mane and tail, brushed out the burrs and twigs in my coat, scrubbed away the dark stains of mud and worse, and even covered up most of the bruises. Once chipped and damaged hooves gleamed. My hair, unmanageable beast that it was, puffed out a bit, but the brushing had brought some of its natural golden shine back.
Like it or not, I was a pretty little unicorn.
“Now that’s much better, darling,” Rarity said, coming to stand beside me.
I didn’t know how to answer at first. It wasn’t a priority, it didn’t bring me any closer to finding Amelia, and the very last thing I wanted to be right then was a unicorn. Still, it’s the little things in life that help you cope, rather like a hospital patient getting her first real shower and brush for days.
“Thank you,” I said, smiling.
“Anytime.”
Twilight rose to her hooves. “Well, I took the liberty of searching while you two were busy, but didn’t find it. Rarity, did Sweetie Belle leave a book here, by any chance?”
“Sweetie?” Rarity lifted her ears, turning to Twilight. “Goodness, no—she barely had presence of mind to say goodbye before leaving for her little camping trip, though she did borrow needle and thread.” She gestured vaguely into the distance. “Have you tried her room at our parents’ house? I’d imagine she left it with her school books, if anything.”
“Indeed. Speaking of, have you considered updating your winter wardrobe? You could always—” Rarity made a disgusted face “—delve into last year’s line, if you were utterly devoid of passion and sense.”
“Your last year’s winter line was great, Rarity!” Twilight protested.
Rarity turned her nose up. “Past, dear, is prologue at best.” She glanced to me thoughtfully. “Actually, have you any warm clothes? As Twilight so callously pointed out, Winterfall is nearly upon us.”
“We brought some things, but I certainly hope I’m not here long enough for the snow to fall,” I muttered. “No offense, but I’m in something of a rush.”
Rarity frowned. “This all does sound rather dreadful.” She glanced to Twilight. “Is it anything we can help with?”
“I’m trying my best already. I don’t know if Daphne wants me spreading it around...”
“My baby sister was kidnapped,” I said shortly. “I’m trying to find her.”
Rarity gasped, her eyes widening. “My stars! And here I am, wasting your time.” She shot a withering look at Twilight. “You let me make a fool of myself, an absolute fool! Shame on you, Twilight.”
Twilight blinked. “What, me?”
“If it were my sister lost and frightened and alone out there, I would be mad with grief,” she told me. “Would that I had something, anything to give you to help—if there is anything at all I can do…”
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “I wish I had as many close friends I could rely on as you guys.”
Twilight stepped forward, beaming. “I don’t know about that. There’s Marcus, Naomi, Lyra, Leit Motif, Hector… and, even if you don’t exactly consider me a friend, I’ll do what I can.”
I coughed past a lump in my throat, blushing.
“I wish you all the luck, dears.” Rarity shivered. “For some reason, I can’t help but think that Sweetie Belle is in danger now. Just nerves, I suspect.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. The girls never get into that much trouble,” Twilight said. At Rarity’s disbelieving look, she scuffed a hoof and amended, “Well, nothing very serious. Except that one time they were nearly turned to stone by a cockatrice. Or foalnapped by Queen Chrysalis. Or—” Rarity's gaze intensified “—Right, heading home now.”
“Do.”
Taking our leave, we strode across the lamp-lit streets back towards Twilight’s library. With the sun finally set, familiar stars twinkled down at us from the firmament. I frowned, slowing as we crossed the field near the library. We’d never had a clear view of the horizon for most of the journey, and, in defiance of all astronomical logic, the half moon had risen opposite the sun.
“Uh, Twilight?” I asked. “Am I going crazy?”
“Not as far as I can tell without some form of empirical psychological exam. Why?” She glanced in the same direction I was, but seemed to notice nothing strange.
“The moon is opposite the sun, but it’s only a half moon.”
Twilight tilted her head, quirking an ear at me. “Yes. It is.”
“Isn’t that a little unusual?”
“No, not particularly. Why?”
That took me aback. I chewed my lip as I regarded the offending moon. “If the moon is opposite the sun, it should be fully illuminated—or eclipsed, if it falls directly within Earth’s shadow.”
“Illuminated by what?”
“The sun, of course,” I pointed a hoof at the moon. “But… look! Only half the sun’s light is reaching it!”
Twilight laughed. “I’m not sure Luna would appreciate that implication. What makes you think the moon needs to reflect the sun’s light? It’s perfectly luminous on its own.”
I gaped at her.
She turned and strode towards the waiting library. “Well, we’re almost home. You’ll probably want some dinner and rest—or maybe just rest. You must have stuffed yourself on that pizza earlier.”
Shaking my head, I followed after her, muttering, “It’s a madhouse, I tell you. A madhouse.”
“Huh. Must be later than I thought,” she said as we approached. “The lights are out.” We looked up at the darkened windows for a moment before she put a hoof to the door and pushed it open. Our hoofsteps echoed hollowly on the wooden floor.
“I see Spike didn’t bother to clean up,” Twilight hissed sardonically, taking in the books stacked in great piles all across the floor, leaving the shelves nearly bare. “It’s going to take all week to—”
“Surprise!”
Leaping from the concealment of the book stacks came dozens of nightmarish figures just as the lights were turned on, blinding the two of us. A pink dragon loomed through the spots in my eyes. “Happy early Nightmare Nigh—eee!”
The heat building behind my horn finally pushed itself out in a shower of incandescent green sparks, lighting fires wherever they went. A crushing weight descended on me as all of my energy sapped at once, and darkness rolled in.
* * *
Six colored lights circled me; purple, red, blue, pink, orange, and violet. Round and round they went, their light growing brighter, filling my vision.
“...is she…”
The lights danced around the bowl of a wooden cup. They threaded a ring of silver and brass.
“...just exhausted… magic took a lot out of her…”
The lights gleamed off a wooden staff and an iron sword, wending between them.
The hazy, dreamlike images slowly faded. The voices became clearer. “Hey, I think she’s coming around,” Lyra’s voice filtered in.
“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. I’ve never scared anypony so badly she lit me on fire before!” a familiar mare’s voice—Pinkie Pie?—said.
“You and half the library,” Lyra said dryly. “Good thing I was here to put it out!” she added, brightly.
“Oh, shush. You barely did anything,” Leit Motif growled. “You protected, at most, one stack of books.”
“They were way important books.”
I groaned and craned my eyes open, only to find Naomi and a half dozen mares crowded around me. Patch poked my side thoughtfully. “Yup, no serious injuries. I didn’t earn that first aid badge for nothing, see?”
“You’re a real physician, kid,” Marcus said from a seat a little further away. “Come on, ladies, give her some air at least.”
“I’m okay,” I grunted. Pulling myself back up was far harder than it should have been. It was as if someone had gone and sucked out all of my blood sugar and a good portion of my blood with it. Spots swarmed in my vision like black-winged flies.
Leit Motif helped me to stand, practically dancing on her hooves. “I can’t believe it, your first magic! It was almost exactly like a baby foal’s discharges, too.” This was probably about as excited as I’d ever seen her. Even her normally morose eyes were bright with interest.
Marcus groaned. “Oh, great, so she’s like a toddler with superpowers. None of us are safe.”
“Bite me, Marc,” I said, not feeling up to witty repartee.
“Is she really going to be okay?” Naomi asked as she laid a hand against my forehead. “She feels warm.” Pinkie Pie bounced nervously beside her, giving me enormous puppy dog eyes.
Twilight waved a hoof. “It’s all right. Actually, this may be the trigger event she needs to start controlling it. Besides, it’s expert advice she needs, and we have two—”
“Three,” Lyra interrupted.
“—three very experienced unicorns to call upon.” She glanced around. “Though you two really ought to get home soon.”
“I’m staying wherever Daphne is,” Leit Motif said firmly.
“I, uh… well, my roommate is probably wondering if I’m still alive,” Lyra admitted. “Besides, I think this place is going to be pretty crowded, what with a baby dragon, three mares and two weird rabbit-monkeys.” Her eyes tracked to the window, looking out towards where Hector had been parked. “Though, it does have its appeal…”
“Out,” Twilight said. As an afterthought, she levitated Patch and plopped her onto Lyra’s back. “And take this with you on your way out.”
Patch pouted. “Aww. Can I come see you tomorrow, Miss Ogre?”
Naomi beamed. “Of course you can, dear, if your mother doesn’t object. And if you aren’t missing school.”
Leit Motif snorted. “She will be.”
“I’ll come after! Bye!” Patch waved her hoof as Lyra started towards the door.
“See you lot tomorrow,” Lyra called.
Pinkie Pie wriggled up into my view, a singed hair dangling into her face. “I’m really, super sorry. I wanted to throw you an awesome Nightmare Night party like you wanted, but then you were all ‘eek!’ and ‘whoosh! fire everywhere!’ and it was still kinda amazing, but the kind of amazing that Fire Marshall chews you out for, not the amazing party I wanted to give you.”
I waved her down groggily. “It’s okay. Thank you, really. I, uhm… I’m really sorry for setting your library on fire, Twilight. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Don’t worry, there was no serious damage done. We got on it pretty much instantly,” Twilight reassured. “Pinkie, why don’t you come on by later? We can welcome Daphne with less pyrotechnics.”
“Oh.” Pinkie Pie’s enthusiasm deflated. “I guess that firework display will have to go, then.”
Twilight grimaced. “Yes. A shame.”
“Do you really think I can learn magic?” I asked Leit Motif and Twilight as the room cleared.
At a guess, it seemed to be another part of the library, with a balcony on one side and an alcove above, where another bed sat beside a large window. A very fine brass telescope sat outside, pointed towards the night sky. It was a little strange, looking out a window at a town and only seeing the faintest amount of light—it was like camping far away from civilization, where the stars came out to play in great droves.
“I know you can,” Leit gushed. “You’re a bright girl, Daphne, and as far as I’m concerned, you worked magic every day when we were foals.” She seemed to think better of all that as she blushed and turned away from me and the others. Marcus gave her a curious look, but said nothing.
Twilight was a bit more skeptical. “Well, it takes years of practice to understand the theory behind most spellcasting, and most unicorns start learning as foals or yearlings. I suppose it might be like an adult practicing any new skill—you’ll pick up what you’re good at learning and need a bit more effort with the rest.” She trotted over to one of the library shelves, perusing books there. “Still, I see no reason why you can’t get started. At the least, it’ll help you regulate the outbursts and give you something to do.”
“I’ll help,” Leit said, practically leaping in front of my answer. “I’m very good at the drills. My mother put me through them every day after school.”
Twilight came back, a book floating next to her. She blinked at Leit Motif. “Which drills? Not the Clockwork Tower.”
“Well, yes.” Leit Motif nodded. “They are the most rigorous.”
Twilight deposited the book on the bed next to us, suppressing a shiver. “Sure, if you like torture. I did those in Magic Kindergarten. Honestly, I learned better with this—” she pointed at the volume “—than anything they taught me there.”
I had a look. Sounding out the title revealed that it was “The Young Unicorn’s Guide to Invocation.”
Leit Motif rubbed her chin. “My mother always said that was going soft.”
“Not everypony learns information by repeatedly slamming it into their skull,” Twilight said acerbically, and then lowered her ears and lifted her hoof. “Oh. I’m sorry, that was seriously insensitive of me.”
“Forget it,” Leit snapped. She rapped her hoof on the floor in a staccato pattern. She didn’t even seem to notice that she was doing it, but the others in the room did. Marcus looked up from where he was peeking at a picture book, and Naomi glanced over. Twilight frowned.
“Look, I’m just saying that it was a little harsh of her to—”
“I said, forget it!” Leit shouted. Her eyes smoldered as she glared at Twilight. The room went completely silent.
Far from being intimidated, Twilight simply shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry, Leit.”
Deprived of a good target for her frustrations, Leit glared around the room for a moment before snorting angrily and trotting downstairs. Immediately, I started after her, but Twilight barred my way with a hoof and shook her head.
“Give her a minute,” she said quietly. “Also, you should take it easy, yourself. You don’t want to get dizzy and fall down the stairs.”
“Fair enough,” I murmured, glancing towards the stairwell sunk into the tree trunk. “Twilight… what happened to Leit Motif after we met?”
“I don’t really know. I grew up in Canterlot,” Twilight said, shaking her head, “and I probably wouldn’t have known her anyway. I was, uh, a little focused on study myself. From what I remember of her in school, she was very intense. I mean, I know I had my nose stuck in a book, but I enjoyed it. With her, it always seemed like she was… beating herself up.”
Marcus paused in his leafing again, frowning up at us. “You sure she’s going to be all right?”
“Oh, like you care,” I muttered, but without force. He let it slide without comment.
“I’ve only met her a few times in Ponyville, and she’s always been a little… hard to approach,” Twilight said. “She’ll be fine. More importantly, she has a close friend here.” She gave me a considering look and a slight smile. “I don’t think I’d be all that different from her if it weren’t for my own friends.”
I laid my head down on the pillow. “Mmph.” I was so articulate. The bed was so soft and my body so heavy that I sank at once. Despite all of my best efforts to stay awake, sleep swallowed me whole.
* * *
Under better circumstances, spending a day in Ponyville may have been one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. A whole town full of warm, friendly people, few of whom had any idea that I was different from they were. Indeed, the unicorn thing might have been fascinating to experience without all of the attendant pressures. I could spend my time reconnecting with Leit Motif and immersing myself into a different world, like some sort of strange cultural exchange program.
Like so much of growing up, though, reality took beautiful things and smashed them into powder. The Everfree Forest loomed in the distance as I sat upon Twilight’s balcony. In my mind spun images of my parents’ house, the joy ripped from their lives as they tried to deal with the fact that their daughters were missing for days on end. Naomi’s mother and father wouldn’t be in a much better state. Marcus might well be a wanted criminal by now, and even I didn’t want to see him get blamed for the disappearance and probable deaths of three girls.
In retrospect, we really hadn’t thought this all through when we first set out on our journey.
But all the while, Amelia languished in whatever dank, stinking prison her captors had set her in. I could see her then, sniffling in the dark, rats nibbling at the edges of her clothes, as cruel-eyed creatures plotted and laughed.
Of course, to say my attitude was not universal would have been a terrific understatement.
“Daphne,” Naomi called. I didn’t turn. A hand touched my back as she kneeled beside me, the morning breeze catching her hair and billowing it out like a banner. “Aren’t you coming down to eat?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Leit and the others are getting worried about you.”
“I’m fine.” I shook my back to remove her hand. “You probably want to spend the day around Ponyville, anyway. Don’t let me stop you.”
“I do, and you won’t,” Naomi said, brushing her hair back from her face. “Moping won’t fix things, though. It won’t get Amelia back, nor will it make things better for any of us.”
That could have been met with a snappish response or something equally childish. Instead, I simply sighed. “Yeah. I know. It’s just that… you know, this is the first time in our trip I haven’t had a real goal, something to keep me moving forward. I feel stuck in the mud.”
“Well, if you don’t mind me contradicting your obvious logical flaws, you do have a few things you can do,” Naomi pointed out. “There’s figuring out how to get back to normal, for one. If you can’t do that, there’s a book of magic waiting for you and three unicorns downstairs willing to give you pointers.”
“Meh.”
“Don’t you ‘meh’ me.” She swatted my rear with a sharp slap and I jumped with a squeak.
“Hey!” I glared at her, rubbing my behind. “That’s sensitive!”
Naomi grinned. “You’re sensitive, all right. Come on. Don’t tell me you want to miss watching Marcus complain at how disgustingly wholesome everything is.”
I tilted my head. “Well. Okay. I will join you in the name of watching Marc suffer.”
“Great!”
Together, the two of us made our way into Twilight’s kitchen to find it grossly over-crowded. Besides myself, Marcus, Naomi, and Leit Motif, Lyra and Applejack had joined Twilight Sparkle and Spike at the dining table. The little dragon wandered around on top of the table, passing out biscuits and placing a giant pitcher of apple juice in the center.
Leit Motif, returning from the washroom, looked at where I sat with Naomi and wormed in between me and Lyra on my other side. If I hadn’t of known better, I might have thought she was jealous of Naomi’s closeness to my side from the way she shot a frustrated look at the redheaded girl.
“So what’s on the agenda today for everypony?” Twilight asked as she levitated the pitcher over to pour herself a glass.
“Not everypony keeps an itemized schedule of events, Twi,” Applejack muttered, chopping apple chunks into her oatmeal.
Naomi crossed her legs under the table. “Pinkie Pie promised to take me out to meet some of the locals.” The rising color in her face said louder than words that she was working herself up again—poor Ponyville. It would probably never recover from the rampage of the Red Ogress.
I gazed down at my oatmeal starkly. Another reason I had been reluctant to come down was the humiliation of having to try eating again in front of other ponies. I’d already been subjected to that torture plenty.
Leit Motif tugged at my elbow. “It’s all right, Daphne. You’ve done it before.”
The shiny spoon stared back at me with my own upside down face.
“What about you, Marcus?” Lyra asked, pouring dark chocolate chips and grated cheese into hers.
He eyed her bowl disgustedly for a moment. “Hell if I know.”
“Oh, please. You’re not just going to sit around in a library staring at the books and playing with your toes all day, are you? You and your icky rabbit feet.”
Marcus rolled his eyes. “Have you even seen a rabbit’s feet? It’s not even close.”
“I dunno; it’s long, hairy, and ends in gross toes.” Lyra pointed her golden-magic-wrapped spoon at him. “Ergo, gross rabbit feet.”
He looked around at the others. “Can I strangle her?”
Leit Motif snorted. “Be my guest. Give us some peace for a while, anyway.” She turned towards me. “Really, give it a try. Just… try not to think about it too much?”
“What am I supposed to think about?” I muttered.
She shook her head. “I think you’ve been overthinking the whole process. I mean, I don’t really think about grabbing things, I just do it. There’s no process.”
“Okay.” I bit my lip and lowered my hoof towards the spoon.
Everyone’s eyes fixed on me. My hoof shook.
Leit glowered at each and every breakfast guest until they turned away and studiously ignored me. Even so, I could feel their attention on me as I put my hoof against the spoon.
“Just push it all away,” she whispered. “Like we’re back on the river together, just you and me.”
Drawing a shuddering breath, I laboriously constructed an image in my mind, one element at a time. The walls of the room fell away, and then the people in it. The floor vanished, to be replaced by clear waves. Above, a tropical sky stared down at Leit and I as we sat together on a table-turned-raft. With one final thought, the sounds were pushed away, to be replaced by sea air. All this I whispered to Leit Motif, and she closed her eyes, nodding along.
Now it was just us, the spoon, and the oatmeal, drifting alone together.
The tension, flowing out with each exhalation, faded in stages with my breath. Gently, I touched the bottom of my hoof to the handle, and lifted.
The spoon remained stubbornly on the table.
I growled, but Leit’s hoof stilled me before I could slam the table. Taking a deep breath, I tried again, focusing on the rumbling in my stomach instead of the spoon. A strange tugging sensation met me, and, as easily as ever, the spoon rose.
Stomping hooves and Naomi’s clapping hands met me as the table applauded. Naturally, I dropped the spoon at once.
Lyra grinned. “Aww. And you were so close.”
I rolled my eyes, placing my hoof on the spoon’s handle again. Thinking back, I retrieved the sensation of picking it up and replicated it on the spot. Then, just for show, I twirled the spoon around and tossed it into the air to catch with my left.
Spike grumbled as he stalked the tabletop. “If you keep showing off and make a mess, you’re cleaning it up.”
Leit Motif gave me a quick hug. “I knew you could do it.”
“Got it,” I said. My face was split in one of its first true grins in a long time. I hoofed the cheese from Lyra and poured it into my bowl, swirling it around until it created a delicious, savory dish.
“Fine,” Marcus told Lyra. “If it gets me away from these saps, I’ll go chill somewhere else in town. What’s there to do around here, anyway?”
Lyra waved her hooves. “Oh, tons of stuff.”
“Can always watch the Runnin’ of the Leaves,” Applejack said. “Now that harvest is done, we need to get those darned things on the ground.”
“Is it that time already?” Leit Motif frowned. “I guess Nightmare Night and Winterfall are right around the corner.”
Twilight pointed her spoon at Leit. “You know, I was telling Rarity the exact same thing.”
Lyra pointed at me. “Hey, I know! You two should go run it together!”
“Uh.” I flicked my ear. “What’s the Running of the Leaves?”
Leit’s explaination was rather matter-of-fact. “It’s an annual event where ponies run through the nearby woods and help the leaves fall so they can fertilize the earth for the next planting,” She scowled. “Though, there’s been a lot of silliness about races and other commercial nonsense in recent years.”
“What?” Lyra protested. “I like that stuff. Besides, it’s fun.”
Leit Motif narrowed her eyes at Lyra. “It dilutes the meaning of an important tradition.”
“Tradition whatever. You two should totally run it.”
Leit turned her head up. “Out of the question.”
“You won’t turn to ash from prolonged exposure to the sun, Leit,” Lyra said, prodding her side.
Waving her hoof away, Leit grumbled. “I don’t like running all that much.”
“Actually, I’m kind of intrigued,” I said, looking up from stuffing my face. “I’m stuck here anyway, and it sounds like something nice we could do together.”
That took the wind right out of Leit’s sails. She sighed and acquiesced with a nod. Lyra grinned triumphantly.
“Well,” Leit muttered, “all right. We should get going, then, so we can meet the start line.”
“I’ll join you,” Applejack said. “I’m gonna be stir-crazy during the winter, anyhow.”
After finishing off breakfast, the three of us waved our goodbyes. We left the library and trotted out under the autumn sun, letting our legs carry us towards the woods north of town. I was quite pleased to see that we weren’t going to be running anywhere near the Everfree Forest—apparently, they excluded the Everfree entirely in this process. Leit Motif’s mood rebounded, and we chatted in low tones. She pointed out landmarks and named ponies around town as we went, and I squinted towards the distant castle of Canterlot and smiled. It really did feel like a magical land, if a subdued one.
I turned my head to Leit Motif, who had gone silent. “What’s up?”
“Oh… nothing,” she murmured, turning her gaze away. “Just wondering what it’ll be like when this is all over. You’ll have to go take your sister home, after all.”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “That doesn’t really mean we’ll be apart, though, will it? You can certainly come back with me, and I know how to find this place now. You can even show me your secret route so I don’t get lost like a twit again.”
Leit lowered her gaze even further, a blush darkening her cheeks to purple. “I’d like that.”
“Great.” I grinned and bumped against her side. “Race you to the starting line!” I took off at a full gallop, all four legs stretching and flying.
“Hey!” Leit gasped. She took off after me, and the wind caught our manes and tails, streaming them behind us. The earth vanished under our feet, and I laughed.
* * *
“You can stop giggling anytime, now,” I muttered. My eyes remained firmly affixed on the toy gears I was levitating in front of me. The tremulous green aura wrapped around them greatly resembled Leit Motif’s in hue. Another droplet of water fell past my vision to stain the grass below us.
Leit covered her mouth. “No, no. I think I shall continue giggling.”
“I can’t believe you two didn’t even place,” Lyra said from the park bench where she played a golden lyre that matched her cutie mark. “Tighten up a little there, Daphne.”
The wooden gears flew closer together, but their teeth slipped.
“It was muddy,” I growled. “I fell. None of you would be laughing if I’d hit my head on a river rock or something.”
“You didn’t, though,” Marcus pointed out as he lay back on the grass, watching the pegasi above. “So we are.”
A curly-maned earth pony sitting next to Lyra giggled. She’d followed us back from the race after Leit introduced her as Lyra’s roommate. “Wasn’t that pegasus who pulled you out cute, though? You should count yourself lucky. I need to fall into rivers more often if it gets that sort of treatment.”
“Thunderlane.” I grated my teeth. “I remember him from yesterday. What was he doing watching anyway?”
The damnable gears slipped the other way, and I tried to clear the frustration from my mind. A gust of wind chilled my wet coat, stealing that possibility away.
“Gently, Daphne,” Leit cautioned. “Telekinesis can be finicky.”
I tossed my mane, sending droplets over Marcus. “I should be able to visualize this.” My concentration settled on the gears, and I pictured them merrily turning, but the reality kept diverging in subtle ways until the whole thing fell apart.
“It’s not really that simple. You have to feel it and keep it in mind, yes, but there’s a lot of variables you need to account for.” Leit’s horn lit up and tiny gears poured out of the toybox, arranging themselves into an intricate, virtual clocktower, complete with a face. Each gear aligned itself precisely, then began to turn.
Lyra shuddered and glanced away.
“Is it really that hard?” Lyra’s roommate asked, frowning. “Admittedly, it looks pretty complex.”
“It’s vile, Bon Bon. Look, even the unicorns just glancing this way are wincing.” Lyra strummed her hoof, plucking strings to make a jaunty counterpoint like the ringing of a bell. Her magic kept the harp levitated and simultaneously altered the tension in the strings, making for some deliciously complicated melodies.
“It guarantees quick learning of the basics,” Leit grated.
“Maybe for eggheads like you and Twilight. Even she agreed it was a little excessive.”
I shook my head. “I don’t exactly have a lot of practice time available to me. I’m surprised I managed to pick this up as fast as I did, honestly.”
“Once you get the strength, it’s really easy to push things around or apply energy here and there,” Lyra said. “Heck, what I’m doing with my lyre here is really just a sophisticated application of the same idea.” The strings thrummed as she added a second thread to her melody, as if two ponies were playing the instrument instead of just one, the second thread ringing out mocking minor keys. “It’s spell work that gets really counterintuitive.”
Leit shifted, putting the gears back into the toybox. “Well, I—”
“I’m sure your argument is fascinating,” Marcus interrupted, “but it’s not really helping Daphne concentrate on her work.”
The comment earned him a glare from Leit Motif, but I found myself smiling gratefully in spite of myself. I hadn’t wanted to say anything to offend my teachers, but they did tend to ramble on.
“What’s Naomi up to, anyway?” he asked. “I haven’t seen her in a few hours, so I’m afraid she’s erected some sort of dungeon.”
Lyra shrugged. “Out with Pinkie Pie somewhere. I think she said she ‘wanted to meet everypony in Ponyville’ and then kind of giggled madly for a while.”
Marcus sat up, rubbing his face. “She’s going to be revolting for days. No, years.”
Elsewhere in the park, ponies went alone or gathered in little groups, walking about their business or simply enjoying a lunch under the shade. Most of the leaves had gone—and let me say, they can really denude a forest when they want to—but the conifers still offered good cover.
“I’m surrounded by pretty ponies, and it’s driving me crazy.” He cocked his head. “Though that kung fu dojo was kind of cool. What are the odds you’d have one of those?”
“I dunno, how can you possibly do kung fu with arms?” Lyra said as she shook her head disdainfully.
He watched a line of young mares, chattering amongst themselves, step out of a nearby spa. “I don’t know, this whole thing is just eerie. I mean, no offense, but I’m having trouble seeing how all of this developed so cleanly together. Our worlds are different, sure, but where are all these similarities coming from?” He frowned at the group, then glanced down at me. He glanced at Lyra, Leit Motif, and Bon Bon, then back at the mares. “I mean, you think about it. I know what Daphne looks like. It’s not hard to imagine the rest of you… as…”
Quite suddenly, his face turned bright red and he tensed.
“What?” I asked, finally managing to slip a gear into another and turn it against its partner. So far, two was my maximum, but it still felt nice.
“N-nothing.” He rose to his feet quickly. “Just need some bleach.”
Leit Motif frowned, glancing up at him. “Is something wrong? I have some bleach at my place. It’s not far.”
“Not… literally! I mean… I… well…” He stared at Leit Motif for a while, and then took off at a run.
“The heck was all that about?” Leit Motif muttered. She checked her mane, sniffing it.
“Hey guys!” Naomi called, walking over. Patch had found her way back into Naomi’s arms, and a gaggle of foals fresh out of school trailed in her wake—which, I’m sure, had nothing at all to do with the enormous bag of candy at her side. “Do you have any idea why Marcus ran by muttering, ‘No clothes’?”
The gears fell as I collapsed into laughter. My magic sputtered out.
“What’s so funny?” Lyra asked, tilting her ears forward. “Am I missing something hilarious?”
“Oh, nothing.” I giggled, wiping my eyes. “Marcus just realized he had a template for converting young mares into young human women, and all of you wander around without any clothes on.”
“Well.” Lyra chewed that over. “Yes. And…?”
“Nothing, nothing. His imagination is going to be his own worst enemy from now on, though!” I sniggered, watching his progress. “Oh, this place is wonderful.”
Naomi sighed contentedly and scratched Patch’s belly. “I know.”
* * *
Reading by the light of your own horn has a certain satisfaction to it. As a little girl, I had enjoyed reading in the dark with a flashlight or other contrivance, and the fact that the light now came from me lent it a personal air I definitely appreciated. My horn had, over the course of the day, transformed from a source of irritation into an object of fascination. It was a shame I would probably never be able to cast spells with it—not without months of study, anyway—but the basic tasks of light and telekinesis were at least within my grasp. I still used my hoof to turn the page, not daring my awkward, untested strength on one of Twilight’s books.
Soft hoofsteps approached, and Leit Motif wormed up on the other side of Twilight’s guest bed. Twilight had apologized for only having the one, but had none-too-subtly suggested that if Rarity and Applejack had been able to stand sharing it, Leit Motif and I should be just fine while she was staying with me. I turned to greet her and giggled as my light fell over her. “Really? Jammies?”
Leit blushed and squirmed in her thick flannel pajamas. “What? I don’t like being cold when I get up in the night.”
“Really? I’d think having a coat would solve those problems.” I covered my mouth to hide a grin. “You’d just better not let Naomi see you wearing that.”
She shuddered. “Your friend scares me sometimes.” Her eyes slid towards me as she fluffed the pillow. “She and Marcus bother me, a little.”
“I wouldn’t have made it here if not for them. Not intact, anyway.” I closed the book and—exercising extreme care—levitated it to the floor beside the bed. Then I turned over to sit up next to her. Thanks to figuring out the whole “grabby hooves” thing earlier, my feet weren’t caked in rubbish, and so I didn’t leave a mess. The sick thing about it was that it didn’t even really take conscious thought. “This is just like old times, isn’t it? You and me, sharing the same tent—bed, whatever.”
“I remember you used to brush out my mane and tail before we went to bed,” Leit said quietly. “I liked that. And the stories you used to tell.”
I glanced up at the alcove where Twilight would be going to bed once she retired. Smiling, I took the cover and pulled it over the two of us.
“Ar-aren’t we a little old for this?” Leit Motif asked, her own horn lighting up. The shades of our magic mingled indistinguishably, two green beacons of identical color and intensity.
“Who’s here to judge us? Your folks aren’t here.”
“B-but…” She kneaded the mattress with her hooves for a moment before nodding her head. “All… all right.”
“Now… hmm… what story can I tell…” I let my mind drift for a bit. “Ah! I know.”
We passed the night like that, me spinning tales from pure imagination while Leit listened, enraptured. Eventually, yawning too much to concentrate, we slid back under the blankets. For the first time in weeks, I slept in peace.
"We are rarely proud when we are alone." Voltaire.
Leit Motif
It had been quite some time since I had last written in my journal. It’s day 3 of Daphne’s arrival, I scribbled into it before I glanced across the breakfast table at the mare—the woman—in question. She was trying one of the “Stars and Comets” drills, keeping aloft balls of different shapes, sizes, and masses while orbiting them around one another in a colorful display.
I returned to my journal, trying to organize my thoughts by putting quill to page. It helped to settle me. I had barely remembered to file the paperwork for a leave of absence before bed last night. My quill danced as I wrote, Going to be a job in itself explaining the tardiness of my work. It wasn’t much consolation that Twilight Sparkle herself had said she would vouch for me. I didn’t like having to rely on somepony else’s word. I’ve never needed anypony before, but, for Daphne’s sake—
“Whatcha writing there, Leit?” Lyra asked as she tried to push her head over my shoulder.
I half-closed the journal and nudged her away, saying, “Private, thank you very much.”
“He-ey. Did somepony steal all of the maple syrup?” Twilight asked from the counter—a reminder that I was composing rather private thoughts in a not-so-private area.
Marcus lifted a couple lids in the center of the table, his fingers quick. “The jar’s on the table, Twilight.”
“Oh, my bad.”
Marcus and Naomi… I continued writing once Lyra became bored and wandered off to find more pancakes. The next sentence had to be rewritten a few times, the originals scratched and scribbled clear but still leaving indelible marks. I couldn’t believe I’d nearly said that about Daphne’s friends, even in my journal. They were her friends, after all, but I had to wonder whether or not they had ever questioned what her parents were doing to her. My thoughts on the female, Naomi, began to consume space on the page. Naomi claims she believed Daphne from the start, but what does that even mean? She’s a bit of a nut regardless, so perhaps it doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps she just wanted me to herself, so she never bothered to try and talk Daphne out of it. She does seem to have an… unhealthy obsession with us all.
I glanced crossly in Marcus’s direction. He studiously refused to look closely at any of us mares, his smooth cheeks tinged with red.
This Marcus guy, though, my thoughts continued on the page, I really don’t trust him, either. I can tell he hurt Daphne. Badly. They fight and hiss at each other with just the slightest provocation. What’s really driving him into this trip, anyway?
“Hey, Daph,” he said, “pass the salt over.”
Daphne concentrated, setting her hooves on the table. Green light wrapped around her horn, and then the salt shaker, and the latter rose uneasily into the air. My heart swelled with pride. She was managing this while maintaining the “Stars and Comets” drill. When he reached for it, though, she yanked it up and grinned. He made another grab with his hand and she darted it lower.
“Don’t think I won’t get you for this,” he growled. “No jury in the world would convict me.”
“If they even have juries,” Daphne reminded him, before continuing in a sing-song tone. “Come on, Marc, get the salt.”
Twilight sat at her customary seat. “Well, we do have trials by peers in addition to arbitration by—”
Lyra groaned. “Already, I can feel my brains leaking out. Spare us.”
Daphne giggled as Marcus nearly fell forward trying to grab for the salt, and she squealed as he advanced around the table towards her. Soon, the two were chasing each other to the laughter of the table while her practice balls bounced off every surface. Everypony chortled—except me, that is—when Daphne simply chucked the salt into his face. Marcus returned the favor by splashing her with his glass of water. Daphne laughed then, too, and even Marcus smiled.
Or do they really hate each other so much? my pen committed to paper as I returned to my journal. I’m starting to doubt that considerably. I shall have to observe him closely. I watched him for a moment as he found his seat again. I do wonder what he might have looked like if he had been transformed along with Daphne. It’s only fair; I’m certain he’s imagined me as a human. A pegasus, I would wager, with that flippant attitude—assuming of course that whatever magic changed Daphne isn’t somehow constructed to only produce unicorns. I wonder if he’s considered good looking by human standards, I wrote, my thoughts beginning to wander. Daphne certainly seems to think so.So long as he doesn’t hurt her, I don’t suppose I rightly care.
I looked up at Daphne. She caught my notice and smiled. I returned it and continued writing.
She really does belong here. I hope she stays.
“Twilight!” Spike called as he burst into the room. All I could see of him from this angle was a bouncing package making its way across the floor. “Look! The books arrived!”
Twilight gawked as she relieved her assistant of his burden. “Wow, already? The archivist must have stayed up all night.”
Daphne’s gaze fixed itself on the box, as well. I rose, closing my journal and carrying it along as I circled around to join Twilight. “I can start reading through them now, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, sure,” Twilight said, shifting her telekinetic grip into mine. “I’ll be along in just a minute. Are you sure you don’t want to finish breakfast?”
“I’m not very hungry,” I lied, stealing a sideways glance toward Daphne. Her grateful look was all the boost I needed, and I trotted into the main part of the library to continue researching.
Thanks to Spike taking most of last night to clean up, the floor was clear, so I pulled up a cushion and opened the box. A puff of some other unicorn’s magic greeted me as I did. It was somewhat startling to see that a number of the “books” sent from the Royal Canterlot Archive were, in fact, scrolls. They were aged and yellow, delicate enough that I didn’t even dare handle them without layering on a preservative spell of my own on top of the one they came in. The books were equally archaic, and the languages dated back to the founding of Equestria, or earlier.
Almost in spite of myself, I found my interest piqued. Daphne was the sole reason I had undertaken this task, of course, but there was a puzzle that was fascinating in and of itself. These “goblins” had some connection to ancient Equestria history that evidently stretched back thousands of years, one intertwined fully with the connection between humans and ponies, no doubt. Daphne and I were, in some way, a continuation of that ancient history.
At the very least, those archaeology lectures from school would finally prove useful.
The first scroll unfurled, and I settled into reading. The pictograms therein, used by ancient pegasi by the looks of it, were very blocky and rigid, lacking any sort of punctuation, capitalization, or diacritical marks to indicate exact pronunciation, so the process began slow and remained something of a slog. Most of the first scroll proved to be tallies of tribute from lesser pegasus nations and some earth pony and unicorn settlements.
“What were these guys, sky pirates?” I muttered. “Might not be far from the case, actually… here we are; goblin-crafted arms… taken from earth pony villages near…” My magic reached out for an atlas among the library’s shelves and propped it open before me. “That’d be the Everfree Forest.” I skimmed the scroll again, biting at my lip as my brow furrowed. “What, that’s all?”
Needless to say, it would be a very slow day.
The others joined me in time, and the box was passed around. Marcus and Naomi, who had not managed to pick up even modern Equestrian, took their leave.
Twilight and I kept meticulous track of even the slightest mention of goblins, trying to form some consistent profile. They were certainly more active in the days before the Princesses Celestia and Luna came to rule the tribes, but they were fantastically good at hiding their origins and places of operation. Daphne became more and more despondent, even though it had only been perhaps an hour, and so much more material waited to be read.
I got up to go to the washroom and passed by Lyra as she worked, only to have her wave me down. “Hey, Leit, hold up.” She pointed down at the book she had before her. Illustrations of boxy, elaborately designed wagons decorated full pages. The inhabitants were distinctly animals, yet they walked upright and wore clothing.
“I don’t know if this is the same thing,” Lyra said, “but doesn’t this remind you of the other stuff? Those wagons are just like the ones that Marble Stone described.”
I nodded as I turned to Lyra. “Yes. Does the book say these are goblins?”
“It said ‘goblin enchantments’ earlier, so I’m guessing so.”
My head tilted, and my gaze fell upon the illustrations again. “Well, keep looking, we might… find…”
“What’s up?” Lyra glanced my way, then down to where I was looking.
I lifted the book, squinting at one of the illustrations. It depicted wares laid out on the side of the wagon, along with a tall rabbit showing them off. “I’ve… seen some of these before.”
“Some of what?” Lyra asked, poking her head over my shoulder. This time I allowed it and pointed my hoof at the page. Among the wares sat a shield decorated with curious runes and a number of strange coins in various different shapes.
“What? How, and when?”
“That trip I took after leaving school,” I said, scrunching my muzzle as I thought back.
Lyra was skeptical. “You don’t mean you saw these exact things. This illustration is like seven hundred years old.”
“No.” I shook my head. “But while I was collecting things, a dealer pointed me to a mare in Los Pegasus who had some things she’d never seen before. Coins, like these ones. They aren’t and never have been minted by anypony in Equestria, the three tribes, or any race we know about. And on that shield; a lot of the things she possessed had that exact same style of writing.”
“I don’t remember seeing anything like those,” Lyra said as she stepped back. “Do you have any of them at your place?”
Once again, I shook my head, lowing the book to look at her. “No. She wouldn’t part with any of the good stuff. She sold me a couple trinkets I didn’t really care for and we parted on good terms. She got quite touchy where those artifacts were concerned.”
Lyra rubbed her chin and arched a brow. “That’s kind of a thin lead.”
“I don’t think so.” I floated over a few of the books I had been studying. “I feel like an idiot, honestly—several of these accounts say that the goblins often carried tools inscribed with ‘curiously angular marks that cannot be deciphered.’ Look at the other recurring themes, too—Wands, Swords.”
“What’s going on?” Twilight asked as she stepped over.
“Leit thinks she’s found something,” Lyra said and nodded her head at me.
“There’s a mare I met who had a very large collection of goblin things,” I said, dredging the memory up. “Something akin to a whole chest full of knickknacks and tools, including weapons, and bits of armor.”
Twilight lifted her ears. “You don’t think it was just coincidence?”
“No.” The memory was definitely coming back. “She definitely had an idea of what they were and what they could be worth, but she seemed unduly attached to them.” I tilted my head. “Well, no, she was willing to part with some of the things in there, but she was asking some obscene prices. There was this beautiful lens she absolutely refused to sell.”
“Do you think you could find her again?” Twilight asked.
“If she hasn’t moved?” I nodded. “Yes. She lived in Los Pegasus last we met.”
“What’s her name?”
“Lightning Dust.”
Twilight stared, wide eyed, her lips a thin line.
Lyra and I blinked at her. “What?”
She shook the expression from her face. “Sorry, did you just say ‘Lightning Dust’?”
“That’s right.” I glanced over at Daphne as she trotted closer.
“Hey, girls.” Daphne came to a halt, looking between the three of us. “Did you find something?”
“Yeah, but it’s a bit of a trip,” I said with a slight frown. “As in, two days just to get there by train, and even more to find her.”
“Heh, that’s not all.” Twilight rubbed the back of her neck. “My friends and I have some awkward history with the mare in question. She and my friend, Rainbow Dash, were in a Wonderbolts training program together, and they didn’t exactly get along. She eventually got herself kicked out when she nearly caught us all in a tornado—I think she still blames Rainbow for that.” She glanced over at Daphne and caught an uncomprehending expression. “Oh. The Wonderbolts are an elite military group of pegasus fliers. They said Lightning Dust could return next season, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she held a bit of a grudge.”
Lyra grumbled. “I take it a royal command is out of the question, then?”
“I don’t know if we want to send a letter anyway,” I said. “She was already rather cagey. Besides, it’s a little difficult to convince somepony to take a cross-country trip, no matter who is saying so. If she knows something about goblins, it’d be better to find out from her directly.”
Daphne’s ears fell along with the rest of her. “But… that’s like a five day round trip.”
“Well, I think I can cut that down considerably, actually,” Twilight said, posing with an upraised hoof. “Am I a princess or aren’t I?”
Lyra tilted her head. “Well, I dunno, aren’t you?”
“Shush,” Twilight said, waving her hoof at Lyra. “Anyway! I can charter a flight with a fast airship. I’m sure one won’t object to changing schedule if I ask.”
Lyra tapped her chin thoughtfully. “That would cut the travel time in about half, if it was fast enough. Not to mention skipping the step of having to take transit up to the cloud level.”
But Daphne shook her head. “So three days, maybe a little less. I can’t be away from Ponyville for that long. What if Amelia were to come out of the Everfree, or news were to come about these goblins…? All for a few trinkets…”
“I can do it,” I blurted out. Everypony turned to look at me, making me flinch back and scuff a hoof on the floor. “W-well, I mean… I’m not really doing anything, and it would help Daphne out.”
Daphne immediately threw her hooves about my neck. "Oh, thank you, Leit! You really are a great friend."
“It’s a strong lead,” I said woodenly. My cheeks burned under Lyra’s and Twilight’s twin grins. “She had a whole chest full of goblin articles and obviously knew what they were.” My face purpled further as they grinned more. “It’s a solid, rational idea. Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Lyra said airily. She turned towards Twilight. “How soon can you get that ship here?”
Twilight glanced thoughtfully out the window. “Depends how close one is. I’ll flag a mail carrier down—Cloudsdale is still pretty close, and Canterlot usually has traffic of some sort. I think we can say one, maybe two hours, tops.”
It meant being separated from Daphne again, but it was something that could be borne in the cause of helping her. Just seeing her face light up at my offer to help had already made it worth it. I sighed, looking towards the door. “I suppose I’d better go get packed up. Twilight, could you come around to pick my mail up while I’m out?”
Twilight nodded. “Of course. Do you have any pets? Spike is great with pets.”
“No, but thank you.” I shook my head and turned towards Daphne. I reached a hoof up to her, but found no words. There were a thousand and one things I wanted to say to her, and all of them died in my throat.
Daphne gave me a curious look and tilted her head. “Is something the matter?”
“No.” I wrapped my leg around her and pulled her close for a moment. “I should get going.”
“All right,” she murmured into my ear, giving me another appreciative squeeze. “Thanks, again.”
* * *
Old maps and brochures from a half-dozen towns and cities piled up behind me as I tossed them aside. More junk added itself to the pile as I dug through my closet. “Where the heck are my good saddlebags…?” I growled as my magic threw aside dusty coats and a box containing a graduation dress that had never been opened. The pair I used for grocery shopping sat on the bed, the frayed edges giving them a forlorn appearance. They smelled of cabbages and old tomatoes, making them vividly unsuitable for the task.
Some part of me began to wonder why I was going through so much effort. Already, I had put my life on hold for several days, and this trip promised to add several more. Of course, there was always the possibility that this lead would prove fruitful and some actual progress would be made, thus demanding even more of my time.
But I couldn’t just abandon Daphne. Not again. Not now.
My hooves found something stiff, and I tugged, pulling free a teal cloth bundle. This set, unlike normal saddlebags, used a thick, padded brace that would distribute load more evenly across the back than straps. Perfect for long trips and carrying heavy things. With a quick spell, I dusted the pack and threw it across my back.
Before leaving my bedroom, I pulled an older journal from the nightstand and checked inside. Sure enough, it catalogued my trip to Los Pegasus—most importantly the street address and work contact information of one Lightning Dust. I searched through my travel supplies and carefully packed away whatever seemed as if it might come in handy. Then I went around the house, checking windows, doors, and cabinets to make sure everything was secured and in place. With luck, no rampaging monsters would come tearing through while I was gone.
I paused at the front door, gave a groan, and walked back upstairs. A mess of a bedroom closet greeted me as I returned to my bedroom. Perhaps it was a little silly, but it was something that would bother me the entire trip. I hadn’t even made it out the front door, so up went the the boxes, the coats, the spare sheets, and the craft supplies. One horse shoe box fell off the top and fell open beside me. Several papers slipped out, sliding across the floor.
It was sheet music, written in a filly’s imprecise notation and awkward phrasing. I picked one up for a closer look, reading over the lyrics.
Take me down to the river, where the sweet waters flow so pure.
Sail me out to the ocean, there’s whole worlds waiting for sure.
I just want to go there again, to take you where I’ve been.
My eyes searched down the page, fixing on the last part. Five notes…
Together, always.
The sheet went gently back into its box, and the whole thing carefully floated up to the top shelf. I rubbed my face fiercely and sniffed loudly. “Everything is right where it needs to be,” I said with a small smile, and, with that, turned and made to leave.
* * *
The tracks outside Ponyville ran across an open field until they vanished into the hills in either direction. A quietness pervaded the lonely station that I had always found appealing in some intangible, indescribable sense. The pensive sensation of waiting for something to take you away filled such places. It was likely why they featured so prominently in literature as a place between life and death.
My whole life had been spent in that liminal space, it seemed—crossing the threshold of two worlds.
Whatever it was, the mood suited me just fine. Even though I was waiting for an airship to land in the field beyond the tracks rather than for a train to come into the station, it still presented an excellent opportunity to recollect. My journal detailing my trip to Los Pegasus hovered open before me, and I flipped through it lazily. The excited impressions of a filly out on her own for the first time dotted the pages along with clipped in photos, each displaying a different dizzying vista of orange trees and ocean surf from far up in the sky.
How quickly that ecstasy had faded.
The next few days would offer a strange opportunity to relive those sensations, however, and with a new purpose besides. There would be time to plan for the future and settle my thoughts. This time, it was a mature, settled mare who would be experiencing the world.
As it turned out, though, my peace and quiet was doomed from the beginning.
“You know, I wasn’t sure I believed that you guys had trains,” Marcus said as he rounded the corner. “Yet, here I am.”
Lyra’s voice joined him as she trotted up the stairs to the platform. “You know, I’ve always preferred flying by chariot to airship, but, then, it’s a little far for that.”
“Is that pulled by pegasi or something?”
“Sure is!”
Marcus gave her a wry look. “I’ll bet you just like the thought of a pair of sweaty stallions hauling you around the country.”
Lyra smirked. “Hey, don’t judge a girl for her needs.”
“Oh, no.” I groaned, planting a hoof over my face. “Not you two. Anything but you two.”
“Hi, Leit!” Lyra called. “I told Marcus and Naomi all about the trip you’re taking, and Marc here decided to come!”
Marcus shifted the strap holding that weapon of his on his shoulder and shrugged. “Ponyville is kind of wearing thin. I’m going stir crazy—just one more cutesy song out of Pinkie Pie and I’ll go insane.”
Lyra tilted her head, asking, “The good kind of insane where you’re wacky and entertaining or the bad kind where you put on a cape and try to conquer Equestria?”
Marcus opened his mouth, and then closed it. He shook his head. “Right, well, yeah. Uh, Lyra thought you could use some help if there’s trouble, and—I admit—I’m actually kind of curious to see what this Los Pegasus place is like. It sounds like a bad joke, but still.”
“Naomi isn’t coming, is she?” I asked Lyra with just a hint of terror. “I know you implied she wasn’t, but—”
Lyra waved her hoof. “No, no, she’s staying with Daphne.”
“She’s not yet completed her quest to brainwash the town’s foals,” Marcus said sardonically.
“Don’t be silly, Marc,” Lyra said. “That family invited her into their home of their own free will.”
“Sure, that’s just what she wants you to think.” Marcus pointed at his head and spun his finger. “Once Naomi gets into your head, you do what she wants you to do. It’s a thing. She has every adult at school wrapped around her little finger, and that’s only the beginning of her twisted empire.”
I watched them go back and forth with a flat expression. “You two are going to be like this the whole way, aren’t you?”
“Either way,” Lyra said as she grinned at me, “you won’t be alone on this trip! We’re going to have tons of fun.”
I was not above begging at this point. “Could I pay you to stay and just say you went with me? Is that a thing I can do?”
Lyra’s grin turned wicked. “Oh, trust me, you couldn’t pay me nearly enough.”
I snorted and flicked my tail at her.
Marcus put his hands in his pockets and watched the sky. While Lyra went inside the station, I pulled out my journal and returned to the last page.
He’s been staring up a lot, I penned. Ever since he and Naomi first settled in town, he’s been like that. While she goes around and meets everypony she can in a sort of psychotic haze, he just sits around and watches the sky. What is he thinking about?
He glanced towards me, his face still directed toward the sky. “You know, I can tell you’re writing about me.”
Uh oh. He’s on to me.
I glanced past him towards the sky, as well. “No, I’m not. I’m just putting some thoughts down.”
“Do you usually stare directly at someone while chewing your lip and tapping your feet when you put random thoughts down?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Ones totally unrelated to the person you’re staring so intently at?”
“Uh.” I ran my tongue across my teeth. “Yes.”
“Right. Well.” He shrugged, returning his hands to his pockets. “If by some chance you do have questions, just ask. I don’t bite.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “From what I’ve seen, you’ve been biting Daphne’s head off pretty much every day on the hour.”
“That’s just—” He shot me an irritated look and paused to collect himself. “Forget it. Honestly, it’ll be good for me to get away.”
He persists in argumentative behavior even when questioned in a perfectly reasonable and noninvasive fashion, I wrote, punctuating ferociously. Further experimentation required. Perhaps he will respond positively to his clothes being turned a hideous shade of yellow.
At that point, Lyra came back out of the station with a smoothie and a bag of candy bars.
“That’s your travel food?” I asked skeptically.
“What?” She glanced down at her stuff. “No way. This is my ‘waiting at the station’ chow.” She levitated out a chocolate bar. “Care for any?”
Marcus frowned. “Isn’t chocolate toxic for horses or something? I seem to recall Naomi telling me it was a neurotoxin for them.”
“If it were toxic, would we sell it in train stations?” I scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous; we aren’t just simple animals who eat whatever we find.”
“I dunno,” Lyra said as she peeled away the wrapper. “I might risk it anyway. Chocolate is awesome.”
“Except Lyra.”
He held a hand out. “Well, I dunno about you, but I’ve got a hankering. Toss one over.”
I rolled my eyes and planted myself as far away from them as I could while remaining on the platform. A few minutes later, the buzzing of propellers broke the stillness of the air, and a dark shadow had formed against the sun. Hoofsteps drew my attention away, and I found Twilight and Daphne walking up to join us.
“Hey!” Daphne said as she came up to my side. “Thought we’d come send you guys off.”
“Aww, you shouldn’t have, honey,” Marcus said with a roll of his eyes.
“I hope you fall to your death,” Daphne said in a cheerful tone. She turned to me with a grin. “No, seriously, it’s okay if you push him off.”
I shot Marcus a narrow-eyed look. “I might.”
Daphne put her foreleg around my neck and I slid in against her, burying my face in her mane. “Good luck, okay? I’ll keep up my magic practice with Twilight, and I’ll make sure your house stays clean, and… just be careful. I couldn’t bear to lose you a second time.”
“It’ll be okay,” I managed to say through a tight throat. “It’s an easy trip. Ponies do it all the time.”
“Are all journeys so dangerous where you come from?” Twilight asked thoughtfully.
Daphne laughed and wiped at her eyes. “Ah, no, I’m just being a sap. On that note, I got you something.”
“M-me? B-but—” I stammered, only to stop when she put a hoof to my mouth.
“Not taking no for an answer.” Daphne concentrated, and her horn lit up. With awkward strength, she pulled a thick woolen scarf out of her saddlebags and draped it around my shoulders, tucking my long mane up. “There,” she said with a smile. “I bet it’s pretty cold up there, and I know you barely pay attention to the weather as it is, so… I asked Rarity if she had anything, and she said she’d sew something up at once. I offered to pay, but she waved it off and… yeah.”
I glanced down at the dangling strands. The scarf was a deep vermillion, with teal notes—the same color as my cutie mark—picked out along it. I even recognized the melody portrayed as a portion from one of my favorite songs. Lyra’s too-innocent grin at my realization told me she had been in on this, as well. I worked my mouth for a moment, trying to frame a response.
Daphne blushed and ducked her head. “It’s just a scarf.”
I put my legs around her and squeezed her tightly. “It was very thoughtful. Thank you.”
Marcus looked away and scuffed his shoes, and neither he nor Lyra said anything as they hitched up their stuff for the boarding. Twilight, for her part, didn’t seem to have noticed anything at all as she waved. “Have a nice trip! Bring back pictures!”
“Whoa,” Marcus said, breathless, watching as pegasus sailors steadied the great craft before us with long guide ropes.
It was certainly one of the largest airships I had ever seen—it must have been fresh off the docks at Canterlot. Nearly fifty yards of steel-reinforced wood, with an envelope that had to be two or three times longer, it gleamed in the morning sunlight, its wood protected by a vibrant finish. A half dozen propellers in the rear and two more attached to the envelope bespoke a genuine beast of the air.
I turned and gaped at Twilight, who blushed. “What?” she said. “I asked for the fastest ship they could get on short notice.”
“How much is this going to cost?”
“Well.” She scuffed her hoof on the boards. “They kind of sort of refused payment.”
I spluttered, but Lyra picked me up with her magic and dragged me off before I could protest further. My green aura mingled within Lyra’s golden one as I pulled out my journal, lacking any other outlet. Great, I wrote, not paying for passage on the nicest ride I’ve ever been on. I’m going to feel like a complete jerk. A jerk stuck with a pair of jerks for company.
The crew opened the side of the craft, dropping out a stairway. Their attention, however, was clearly on Marcus as he followed Lyra and me inside. He smirked and saluted them, eliciting a wooden return salute before they shook themselves free of their shock.
Back outside, a grizzled cerulean pegasus in a cap bowed before Twilight. “Princess! We were under the impression that you were urgently in need of transport.”
“Oh,” she reddened. “I can see how you might have gotten that impression, from the letter saying I needed urgent transport and everything…”
A sailor diverted my attention by asking for my bags. I waved him off. “Just the saddlebags, thank you,” I told her, “and I’d like to keep my things close. Can we go up on deck?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The mare nodded and gestured with a wing down the hall. “Just keep yourselves off the cockpit in front and don’t get in anypony’s way and you’re good.”
I nodded my thanks to her and made my way up the stair—or ladder in naval parlance. My journal came out again. Do airships use nautical terminology? Must remember to surreptitiously query one of the sailors later, I wrote as I came to a stop by the rail. An earth pony engineer passed me on his way to look at the engine, and I narrowed my eyes as Marcus crouched to get a better look at the machinery, as well.
“That’s an interesting design, there. You use electric engines?” he asked of the engineer, peering into the recesses of the exposed mount. His intent eyes seemed to parse the components in a familiar fashion. It had never occurred to me to wonder if he had any hobbies.
“Sure do,” the lean stallion answered as he visually inspected the rotor.
“What do you use for power?”
“Ship’s main power is a special order thundercloud generator, and a couple alternators under Come to Life spells provide steady power. You new to Equestria, uhm…” He glanced up and down Marcus’s form before hazarding a guess. “Sir?” Well, wouldn’t be the first pony to have to guess at gender.
Marcus nodded. “I’ve done a bit of work with engines back home, though. My father helped put my bike together.”
“Really? Huh.” The stallion shook his head. “I’m surprised, I thought foreigners weren’t all that mechanically sophisticated.”
“We’re full of surprises.” Marcus smirked. “Am I bothering you? I’m curious about the sort of rig you guys are running.”
The mechanic pulled his head out and glanced at Marcus. “Why don’t you bug me when my shift’s over in a few hours? I’ll be down in the mess. Wouldn’t mind a chance to talk with somepony who has half a mind about what he’s talking about.”
“Can do,” Marcus said before rising and dusting his pants. He stood looking over the town for a while, and then went to another part of the deck. There were a few other passengers who had caught wind of the impromptu landing and managed to board as well before the ramp was pulled up. The ship’s engines hummed gently before they began to growl viciously, and, with inexorable force, we overcame the pull of gravity and began to rise.
A shout of “Hey, wait!” caught my ears, and I turned to see a pegasus struggling to haul a unicorn up. With a few more powerful wing bursts she managed to catch up and, with a heave, tossed her burden onto the deck, who landed with a shriek and a thud. The pegasus joined him a moment later and flopped down in a pile of speckled feathers. Her bay coat—with the dark spots along her back and speckling her wings—pegged her for an out-of-towner, but something seemed oddly familiar about the unicorn.
The captain trotted over and gazed narrowly at the two.
“Wait, wait! We have money!” the mare panted and fumbled about in her saddlebags. She produced a substantial bag of brass bits.
The captain’s look softened—not much, but just enough—and he hoofed the bag casually. “You should know we’re on special assignment. Direct flight to Los Pegasus.”
“That’s fine,” the dark-coated stallion said in a low, deep voice. “Anywhere but here.” He used a bit of dark green magic to straighten his mane into an elegant coif.
“You two ain’t in some sort of trouble, are you?” the captain asked.
“Only with our families,” the mare said. “We’re eloping!” She was almost beside herself with glee as she pulled up her new soon-to-be-husband and squeezed him tightly. When her long blond mane shifted to reveal his face, I froze as recognition struck me.
His eyes, a dark, mossy green, widened as they caught sight of mine, then shrank almost to points.
“Uhm. Bright Skies, honey,” he squeaked. “Maybe we should find another flight.”
Bright Skies giggled. “There aren’t going to be any other flights, my tasty morsel. Ponyville isn’t exactly a major stopping point.”
“Train. Wagon. Anything.”
“What’s the matter, love?” She turned her head and blinked at me. “Whoa. Turn that glare down, sister. You’re liable to burn something.”
“Hello, Legato,” I said.
Sweat broke out along Legato’s brow. “Leit. Hi.”
“Hey, whoa,” Bright Skies said as she stepped between us, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t like it. Sweetheart, who is this mare and why is she trying to murder you with her eyes?”
“That mare—” Legato sighed, “—is my dear, sweet sister, love.”
Bright Skies glanced between us. “You weren’t kidding about your family being judgemental, were you, hon?”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” I said with acid sweetness. “So, eloping, huh? How is it Father isn’t swooping down on us out of the sky right now?”
“Don’t even joke about that,” he hissed and glanced towards the town as it fell away, then up towards the clouds. “You have no idea what I went through to get away.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m honestly not that interested.” I flicked my tail and turned aside.
“Leit, don’t be like that,” Legato complained, taking a few steps in my direction. “I’m trying to start a new life. We don’t need to drag the past into this.”
His hoof settled against my shoulder and I shrugged it off. “It’s a little late for sympathy, Leg. I don’t remember seeing you around when Mother and Father were riding me.”
“I don’t think the Canterlot Symphony Orchestra was going to be very sympathetic to a first year violinist taking a leave of absence,” he grumbled.
I glanced over my shoulder, eyes narrowed. “Not even a letter. You never once visited while I was at school. In Canterlot. Speaking of, aren’t you back on tour, soon?”
Bright Skies fluttered her wings, giggling as she nuzzled the side of her husband-to-be’s face. “Well, he should be practicing, but we’ve had something of a… shall we say… whirlwind romance?” The look she gave me was icy, however, transitioning instantly between warmth and frost. Fair enough. She didn’t know our history.
Legato laughed, but it had an awkward tinge to it. “Well, yes. I brought Bright Skies home to introduce her to Mother and Father.”
“Which was… interesting,” Bright Skies said, her eyes flashing. “I didn’t know one could serve tea in a condescending way.”
“Mother manages, somehow.” I glanced back at Legato. He scuffed his hoof on the deck in an utterly transparent fashion, giving me a sheepish look. I rolled my eyes and took the bait. “You’re not too happy about having to elope, are you?”
“It’s not really proper now, is it?” He jerked his head over the side.
“Oh, honey,” Bright Skies said warmly. “You know I don’t mind.”
“I do. I shouldn’t have to fight my family just to live the life I want to live, or marry whomever I choose.” He rubbed his cheek against hers. “And I wanted to give you a proper, romantic engagement…”
She giggled. “No, no, it’s totally cool. I love wild escapes on airships.”
I watched the two of them snuggle in their own warm little bubble while tapping my hoof pensively against the deck. When Legato turned back to look at me, his mossy eyes challenging, I refused to meet them. I stared down at the vanishing town instead.
“I’m going to see if the captain will let us hold a private ceremony,” Legato said. “Would you, ah…” He looked at me for a long moment before shaking his head and walking away towards the rear deck. My soon-to-be sister-in-law gave me a frosty look before joining him. All that was left for me was the slowly disappearing landscape, with Ponyville a collection of dollhouses spread around a glittering river.
“I can’t imagine family like that.”
Marcus’s unexpected interjection was enough to make me jump, clutching a hoof to my chest. It was easy to forget that I wasn’t entirely alone, though I might have wished I had been. Refusing to acknowledge him to spare myself the embarrassment of one of Daphne’s human friends seeing me in such a compromising situation didn’t work out quite as well as I might have hoped, either.
“Lyra mentioned you’d had some trouble with them,” he added.
“It’s not really any of your business,” I said curtly. My first impulse was to run off and hide in my cabin, but—in addition to the fact that I had no idea if we had separate cabins or not—retreating felt wrong just then. I didn’t want to cede anything to him—some shaved, half-minotaur creature. This expedition fell under my leadership, and I couldn’t let anypony nor anyone run me off. Thus resolved, I put my legs up on the rail to watch the ground beneath, letting the wind catch my mane and billow it about. The crisp air felt nice against my face, and concentrating on landmarks far below helped to steady my nerves.
“It’s not that bad, anyway,” I said after a moment. “They’re just very concerned about their children’s success in life.”
“So I’ve been hinted,” he said as he glanced down at me. “They made you do stupidly rigorous tests, had you apply for a really prestigious school at a young age, and then when you get there you drove yourself up a wall.”
“I didn’t drive myself up a wall!” I snapped at him. He remained unbowed in the face of my fury. Blushing, I turned my face aside. “I just needed time to myself is all.”
He leaned back against the engine housing. “Well, I’m not going to judge your folks. It’s just hard for me to imagine is all—my folks were all about giving me space and letting me figure myself out. I don’t know. Maybe I’d be doing better in school and stuff if they pushed me harder, but whatever.”
“That must be nice,” I said icily, “getting to do whatever you want, with no fear of consequences.”
Marcus laughed. “Never said that. I can’t imagine the sort of Cain my folks are raising after they found the guns missing, then there’s the whole ‘running off with three young girls’ thing.” He grimaced. “That, or they think I’m somehow responsible for all of that. I may have a lot of explaining to the police to do when I get back.”
I looked at him for a while. His thoughts were elsewhere—his eyes seemed to stare right through the strap he was fiddling with. “I’m sorry. This is hard on all of you. I don’t want to imagine what your family is going through.”
“We’re strong, we’ll get through it. If I bring home a herd of unicorn mares, I’m sure I can wring some forgiveness out.” He grinned. “Grandmother has been bothering me about bringing home some pretty girls after I broke up with Daphne. It’s not my fault if she didn’t specify the species, and you certainly fit the bill.”
“I guess it wouldn’t be too much trouble of me, after everything you’re doing for Daphne, and… wait, the bill of… what?” I blinked. “Being… pretty?” My cheeks rosied and I gave him a sour look. “Hey.”
“I think you’d like to meet them. They’re nice, if a little weird,” he said with that stupid grin still plastered on his face. “I’m sure they won’t judge you for being a horse.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, tossing my head back in disgust. “Even if you were a stallion, you absolutely aren’t my type.”
He arched a brow. “Yeah? What type is that?”
I snorted. “The exact opposite of you. Studious, noble, honorable, polite, and well-mannered!”
“In other words, boring.” He crossed his arms. “Did your parents pick that out, too?”
My mouth opened but quickly shut before I managed to say, “No. Shut up.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It seems to me that you and your brother both are letting them cast their shadows over you, no matter how you remove yourselves from them. What, you live in a cave and growl at everyone coming close, while he feels it’s better to run away than confront them over the woman he loves?”
I glowered at him. “I’m an independent mare. I have my own place and I set my own rules.”
“If you say so,” he said with a shrug. “I’m hungry; think I’ll go hit up the mess. You coming?”
“I want to stay here a bit,” I said quietly. “Thank you.”
Marcus stepped forward from the engine housing and started back towards the ladder. All around me, sailors scurried across the deck as they prepared to catch the ship in the high speed currents over the cloud layer. I ran a hoof through my mane and sighed—it was going to be a long trip.
* * *
My eventual retreat below decks came when the air turned far too cold to bear any longer. With Daphne’s scarf tucked tight around me, I slid down the ladder and scurried along the corridor seeking warmth. There was a common room, a sort of ship’s library with chairs and sofas bolted to the floor and glass cabinets filled with books, that I quickly piled into. It suited me right down to the core, my eyes drawn from the books to the paneled ceiling to the glass doors at the back, leading to other passenger areas.
Some ponies were clustered around one of the doors in the hall out that way, with one young mare passing out flowers that the others put in their manes. At first, this puzzled me, but, after a moment’s reflection, the most likely explanation floated to the top: Legato and Bright Skies’s little ceremony.
“You going back there?” Marcus asked, startling me. I turned and found him lounging in one of the large, scooped chairs, leafing through a picture book. It was remarkable how little presence he had when he didn’t feel like being seen—for all his pomposity, Marcus knew a thing or two about subtlety, it seemed.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted quietly. My eyes followed the impromptu party as they wandered inside. It would be just like Legato to insist on gathering at least a few witnesses, so he could prove his feelings in a public fashion. “Having to settle like this must be killing him.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s theatrical,” I said bitingly. “Well… that and he would hate the idea that he can’t give Bright Skies a wedding that he thinks she deserves. Legato was always dramatic with a purpose.” A faint smile touched my lips. “After Daphne disappeared from my life, I was pretty much inconsolable. Still, he tried to cheer me up by getting my ‘school friends’ to sing a ‘get better’ song outside my window one night.”
“That sounds rather sweet.”
“I hated those kids.”
Marcus glanced up at me with a silent frown.
I rubbed my leg awkwardly. “They teased me a lot… I was an egghead, awful at sports, blank flank. I never… really had any friends until Daphne.” I shot him a challenging look. “She treated me like I was the greatest thing in the world, like I was a princess instead of an awkward, gangly little filly.”
“Things didn’t improve after that?” he asked. “I mean, no one was really sympathetic towards you after you’d gone through a traumatic experience and all?” That surprised me—he had to have known that my statement was a shot at him about the way he treated her, yet he didn’t rise to the bait.
Which was unfortunate. I could have used a good fight right then.
My eyes slid to the side again. “No. I mean… maybe they could have, but my parents… well. I didn’t have a lot of time on my own after that. After school I went to magic practice.”
“So… putting it together, your folks saw you running off into the forest and decided you’d already had a little too much freedom?”
A nod. I sank down into a chair.
“Sounds like Legato cared, though.”
“Sure sounds like it.” I shook my head. “You heard us back there, though. Do you know what he did when I went to him for help? He put me off. He didn’t want to ‘rock the boat.’ Had his own career to think about. After a year, he was gone anyway—off to a music academy in Fillydelphia. That was the last I saw of him, aside from a brief visit in Canterlot when he got a job there.”
“Ah.” Marcus glanced back at the vanishing wedding party and then back at me. “All right, I understand.” With that, he went back to looking at the pictures in the book.
I couldn't believe that was it—that he had just dropped the subject and given me my space.
After a lifetime of dealing with Lyra and other ponies who kept trying to shove their noses into my business, that was strangely comforting. I peeked at him, wondering if he was going to start in again, but he seemed content to allow me my privacy. He didn’t so much as glance my way.
There was no pressure, just the two of us sitting around with me not explaining at all how I felt about personal matters to someone who was, quite frankly, a perfect stranger. He left me in peace, just the way I liked.
I kneaded the sofa cushion with a hoof.
“So, uhm… Marcus. What does family mean to you?”
His head turned with a surprised little tilt. It took a fair amount of effort not to stammer an apology for interrupting him, hide my face, and pretend I had never asked anything at all. He had been perfectly willing to leave me be and would continue to do so if I had given him the opportunity. All that would have accomplished, however, was leaving me with a lump in my throat and a gaping uncertainty I’d have to bear alone.
For once in my life, I wanted to say something about how I felt to another living being.
“Family?” Marcus mulled that over, closing his book and setting it across his lap. It was as if he were testing an unfamiliar morsel. “That’s a pretty complicated question.” He sat up and turned his chair around to face me, crossing his legs. “I’ve got kind of a big family. I don’t really know how it is among ponies—I know you and Twilight Sparkle live on your own, while that Applejack mare lives with her grandmother—but we’re kind of unusual in that we have our grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins under one roof. We’re even bigger than Naomi’s family by a fair margin.
“That comes with a lot of problems, of course.” He smirked. “‘Privacy’ is kind of a joke when you have a handful of siblings and cousins all sharing the same few rooms. Sometimes, it’s a huge challenge to make yourself stand out. Everyone develops his or her own special ‘look at me’ personality traits. All that said, though, there’s a lot of warmth in that house. You always know that you had a half-dozen people who would back you up in any situation. If someone needed a little love and affection, there was always someone on hand to provide it. An uncle tutored me in math because I was struggling in school. One of my grandfathers taught me everything I know about engines and machines, and the other taught me about the outdoors and how to love nature.”
I slid Daphne’s scarf off as I listened and combed my mane out with a hoof, trying to relax on the sofa. My eyes settled somewhere around his shoes.
“So…” He spread his hands out over the chair’s arms. “What does family mean to me? A lot of things, I guess. It means unconditional love, respect for history… it means always having someone there for you.” He ran a hand through his hair and watched me in silence for a few moments. “What does family mean to you, Leit Motif?”
“Family is…” I took a breath and continued. “Family is knowing you won’t always be alone.” I stared at the floor without quite seeing it. Memories of a warm quilt around me as I sat tucked against my mother’s bulk in front of the fire one Hearth’s Warming Eve, too sick to go to any of the celebrations. “It’s respect. It’s people who will trust you to make your own decisions and help you live with them, not judge you before you even start.” I saw my father pinning up my acceptance letter on the refrigerator. Mother sobbing as I was dragged back home from the fringe of the Everfree between Father’s legs. Legato hiding in his room while they shouted at one another.
Memories churned inside me with the taste of sour milk.
“Your parents didn’t do any of that, did they?”
“All they ever wanted was to protect me,” I mumbled. When Marcus said nothing, I went on. “At first, it was great. I needed them. But… especially after they caught me running away… they… they just…”
“They didn’t trust you any more,” Marcus said gently.
I nodded, rubbing my face. “After that, it was like there wasn’t an escape any more. If I asked them to let me do things on my own, not to interfere, they just took that as a cry to help—the thought that I could handle my own problems was just ridiculous. And it was even worse if I felt I needed them, if I actually asked for help… for them it was confirming that I needed looking after, that I couldn’t handle problems at all. It was as though I was saying, ‘I’m running my life wrong, please correct me.’” A lump sat up at the top of my throat, making it hard to speak clearly. Another mare might have described it as being on the verge of tears. “I just wanted them to be proud of me,” I mumbled.
Silence fell again. Eventually, I lifted my head and looked at Marcus. “Well?” I asked. “What do you think?”
Admittedly, that wasn’t very charitable of me. I put him on the spot, asked him to confront grief he potentially wasn’t prepared to deal with and, frankly, had never asked to receive.
He sat back and watched me for a bit. “I think,” he said slowly, “that you already have a good idea of what family should be. There’s really no one out there but you who can answer the question of what you want or what you need.” He turned his head to look down the corridor at the open door. “Don’t let anyone pressure you into conforming to a standard you don’t feel fits you.”
I ducked my head, letting my mane fall between him and me so he wouldn’t see me wipe my eyes. “Yeah… yeah. Thank you.”
“Do you think you’re going to the party? If you want some company, I could go with.” He smirked. “I’d say ask Lyra, but she turned greener than usual when we took off and I haven’t seen her since.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, “but no.” I gave him a small smile. “Maybe one day Legato and I can talk, but… not today.”
“Got it.”
An awkward pause followed. We coughed and glanced away. “So, uh,” I said airily, “wonder what’s good around here.”
“Don’t ask me. I can’t read a damned thing.”
I wrapped a green aura around one of the cabinets and pulled a couple books to my side. Neither of us said anything more for the rest of the day.
* * *
Dinner aboard the vessel came after the sun set. After travel chow in my earlier journeys, the meal pleasantly surprised me. The kitchen brought up many autumn favorites like pumpkin pie, spiced apple cider, eggplant parmesan, apple dumplings, and heaps of freshly harvested salad.
Marcus, for his part, looked to be pining for any sort of meat. He slathered almost everything in copious amounts of gravy, doubtless to satisfy his sick, carnivorous cravings. “You going to finish that?” he asked as he pointed at my chocolate pudding.
“Yes.” I hoofed it closer.
“Too bad, that’s good stuff. Hard to believe the trip is almost over, actually.” He glanced out the window at clouds turned golden with the low sun. “Not a bad trip.”
“Yeah, I enjoyed it. I really like to travel.” I glanced Lyra’s way. She looked positively ill, chewing despondently on a sprig of celery. “Unlike some ponies, apparently. Why did you even come along if you get airsick?”
“I didn’t know!” she groaned. “I’ve never been up in an airship before. Ugh. Marcus, can you tilt the room back to normal?”
“Hold still,” I said and reached out to steady her with a hoof. With a bit of concentration, I shot a narrow green beam at her ear. After a few seconds, I lit the other one up as well, and Lyra leaned back on her cushion with a relieved sigh as her stomach settled.
“What was that?” Marcus asked. “Is that at all like how you helped Daphne’s leg?”
“No. That was easing the swelling in a sprain,” I said. “This was me making a slight adjustment to Lyra’s inner ears.”
“I never could get the hang of healing,” Lyra grumbled. She grabbed a big bowl of hummus and began demolishing it at once.
“Wow, like, healing magic?” Marcus waved his spoon at me. “You have a ton of great talents.”
“Yeah, well.” I reddened. “I’m not really that good at healing. I never got beyond the first aid level of study.”
“Word around town is you and Lyra are probably two of the most skilled unicorns around, aside from some of the other graduates like Twilight.”
I flattened my ears and turned away.
“Wish you’d done that earlier,” Lyra grumbled. “I bet your brother would have paid a mint for me to perform at his ceremony. Did either of you make it?”
My response was curt. “No, and, honestly, I’d rather focus on what we need to do. We’re going to be landing soon.” Putting a point to my words, I pushed away from the mess table and rose. “Don’t bother retrieving your things—Twilight already saw to it that the ship won’t leave until we’re ready.”
Together, we made our way to the deck, where Marcus paused at the top of the ladder to stare openly. Directly ahead of the prow sat a great city, sun-kissed clouds gathered into a sprawling, chaotic landscape. Palm trees waved in the breeze in long avenues while fountains of liquid rainbow cascaded from well-tended homes overlooking the glittering ocean.
“Ah, Los Pegasus. I always wanted to perform here, you know?” Lyra said as she stretched her legs. “You can only follow so many dreams at a time, though. So, are we going to search now? I mean, it’s a little late, isn’t it?”
“I don’t care if it’s three in the morning,” I said grimly. “Daphne is waiting on us. We’ll just have to wake her if she’s gone to bed early.”
“Is there seriously a giant letter sign that says ‘Applewood’ in the hills down there?” Marcus asked as he peered over the side of the airship. “That is absolutely disgusting and makes no sense, you know that?”
“No,” Lyra said. She lit her horn, a golden light touching her hooves briefly, and walked back to the ladder. “I’m going down to the departure ramp, meet me there?”
“Right,” I said with a nod, before turning to Marcus. “Now, Marcus, I’m going to put a Cloudwalk spell on you. You’ll be able to walk on cloud vapor, but be careful—pegasus cities aren’t really designed for visitors.”
“Sure,” he said with a nervous glance towards the city. “H-how long does the spell last, anyway? I don’t want to be caught with my pants down at the wrong moment.”
“It’s a pretty simple spell, and I’ve gotten some decent practice at it. I can manage well over six hours, so we’ll be fine,” I promised as I lit my horn. “If anything goes wrong, just shout for help, or step on some cloudstone. That should support your weight even if the spell fails.” Carefully, I wove the spell about his legs.
“Cloudstone,” he muttered as he watched the green glow envelop his limbs. “Great. I’m in pony California and already I’m as high as a kite.”
By the time I finished weaving the spell around the both of us, pegasi at the airship dock had already tied the ship to heavy cloudstone pillars jutting out from the dock. We pulled up against a bank of fog like two explorers ready to disembark onto an undiscovered shore. Below, Lyra stepped out from the vessel and began to chat up one of the young stallions standing near a ticket booth. As I began towards the ladder, Marcus contemplated the rail.
“You said this spell would hold me on vapor, right?” he asked as he rubbed his chin.
“Ah… yes?”
With a grin, he hitched his rifle higher and took a running leap off the side. I shrieked and tried to snag him with my magic, but missed as he careened away. Running to the rail, I saw him land and bounce off the cloud substance with a high whoop before skidding to a halt near the arrivals and departures board. My legs couldn’t carry me fast enough down the ladder and out the gangplank. I skidded to a halt before him, a cascade of puffy white mist erupting around me, as he rose to his feet.
“You—!” I growled, stalking this way and that around him. “You crazy imb—! You could have fallen!”
Marcus only laughed and dusted himself off. “It’s a big dock. There’s no way I would have missed it.” He bounced up and down on his heels a bit. “This stuff is great. It’s like that rubber stuff at Disney World, only even more springy.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying scaring the living daylights out of me!”
He gave me a sheepish grin. “I suppose I did kind of freak you out there. Sorry.”
I looked up at his face. It was just like Lyra—it was so open and disarmingly full of raw joy that there was absolutely nothing I could do to put a dent in it. “Ugh.” I snorted. “Ugh!” I turned and flicked my tail right at his face.
No wonder Daphne dumped him. If I had dated a stallion half as infuriating as Marcus, I might have sworn off colts entirely.
Legato and Bright Skies stepped off the ship, a wreath of flowers gracing the latter’s blond locks. They would have to find lodging for the night and would probably be gone in the morning, Legato out of my life once again. There was a certain irony in the fact that I gave up a portion of my life to search for someone else’s sister while my own brother slipped me by. He and I locked gazes, our movement stilled for a time, before Bright Skies tugged him along. They wandered off the dock and into the remaining daylight, lost to me amid a sea of clouds.
“Hey,” Marcus said, “you okay?”
“What?” I jerked my head up. “Yeah, I’m fine.” I gave him an uncertain look. “Don’t worry so much about me.”
He shrugged. “I’m not. You just… looked kind of miserable is all.”
“I do not,” I growled. At the same time, though, I wondered. I rubbed my face surreptitiously and hoped that emotions weren’t treacherously playing themselves out without my knowing again.
He gave a sideways nod. “Well, all right. If you ever want to talk about that ‘nothing wrong’ again, just… let me know. We’re in this together. I can’t spend all day staring at flying horses like an awestruck idiot.” He walked off and perused the pamphlets by the information desk, where the Captain was speaking with the dockmaster, likely over the possibility of cargo. I reached into my saddlebags for my journal—
Nothing. Quickly, I emptied them and checked the contents, but found no sign of the tome. With an irritated sigh, I trotted back onto the airship, darting past a pair of pegasus aircrew and sliding my cabin door open. The journal stared back at me from the bed covers where it had been left, and I fancied it sitting there rather guiltily in the wan light from the hallway. As I picked it up, though, flipping to the most recent page and taking out my pen, I found the nib unwilling to move. Less because of any failure on its part, and more because I simply had nothing to say. For once, I didn’t really feel the need.
After a moment’s thought, I lowered it back to the bed and hurried back out. Marcus was long gone by then, and I wondered where Lyra had vanished to. Of course, the moment I thought of her, she appeared in front of me as though summoned.
“So!” She grinned. “How are we going to go about this? Are we going to break in and kidnap her in a daring raid, or is this going to be more of a cat burglar affair? I’ve got some great sound-cancelling spells.”
“Lyra!” I gasped. “Knock that off! What if somepony overhears?” A quick glance confirmed that no pony stood in easy hearing distance, but my heart needed a moment even still.
“I’ll explain that I’m just working on ideas for a play.”
“That’s a stupid excuse, and we’re not doing anything illegal. I never gave any impression I intended to do something illegal!” I stamped a hoof. “Besides, all we need to do is go to her place and talk to her. It’s not as though it’s some big production or anything.”
Lyra pouted. “Darn. So where does she live, anyway?”
“Just south of the race track.”
“Hey, ladies?” Marcus called. “I’ve hired a flying cab—or chariot, or whatever. Well, by ‘hired’ I mean ‘asked them to stand by while you two pay for them.’”
“Oh, thank Celestia. Someone who has a lick of sense,” I said loudly to the air. Lyra stuck her tongue at me and we trotted after the human. Outside, a pair of beefy pegasus stallions hitched themselves to a simple wooden chariot, big enough for a small family of visiting ground-dwellers. It wasn’t strictly necessary—unlike some districts of Cloudsdale, Los Pegasus saw enough need for ground traffic that it had been laid out in tree-lined rows, with long boulevards of cloudstone spreading across the city like a net. Still, it meant a quicker journey by far than walking.
Lyra eyed the pair up and down with a slow, appreciative look. “Never mind. This trip is already shaping up well.”
“Oh, knock it off,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Let’s get going.”
“Where to, ladies?” the yellow one on the left asked, flexing his wings when he noticed Lyra's gaze lingering longer than strictly necessary. I fixed him with a stare, and he blanched, facing forward.
I rubbed at one of my temples with hoof, climbing into the back of the chariot. “Just head for the tracks.”
Once all three of us were settled, the stallions took off into the sky and soared over the puffy cloud city. Marcus’s eyes lit with interest as he watched the carefully sculpted towers and parks glide by. Entire sections of land, unmoored from the earth and suspended on gossamer strands of cloudstone, teemed with families and couples enjoying the sunset. I set my chin down on the side of the chariot next to him and gazed down to see the lights along the streets below being lit in neat rows of dim stars.
The stadium came into view not long after that. Over four miles of twisting, curving track tangled amongst themselves, with showers of rainbow and rumbling, dark storm clouds corralled into hazards. Even from our elevated vantage, it looked trashed, with flyers and confetti and busy custodians everywhere. Pegasi streamed out of the exits or just flew right out of the top. “Lightning Dust is probably going to be exhausted when we see her. She competes there professionally, and, from the looks of it, they’re ending for the night,” I said, my breath frosting in the air. I cinched my scarf tighter against the chill high-altitude air.
“Figured. Athlete and all,” Lyra said, tearing her gaze away from the bearers. “How good is she, anyway? Like, on a scale of one to Rainbow Dash.”
I chose to ignore the scale remark. “When I met her? Very good. I don’t think she’d ever lost a single race.” I pricked my ears. “There!” I shouted, fixing a hoof on a dense neighborhood of cloud houses moored together behind a line of businesses near the track. “Take us down there.”
The chariot descended from the thin air back down to the city level and came to a rolling stop. There was no street access—considering pegasus athletes lived here and could detach their homes at any time from the rest, it was doubtful the thought ever occurred to them. The chariot rocked on the narrow strip of cloud and I slipped with a little gasp. Marcus caught me about the shoulders, keeping me from a humiliating faceplant into the cloud below.
“Thanks,” I said, quickly finding my footing.
“No problem.” Marcus looked around appreciatively. He took special note of the columns and silvery tracery that was so popular among the locals. “I like the style here. A lot classier than Ponyville—no offense.”
I shrugged. “None taken. Honestly, I prefer something a little less folksy, myself.” I glanced over at the taxi. “Wait up, we won’t be long,” I told the stallions.
Lyra frowned as she glanced around. “Leit, you said Lightning Dust is really successful, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“If so, why is she still living in a…” she cleared her throat, “...low rent area?”
“The rents here aren’t that low.” I glanced back at an overflowing trash can with a bird sleeping on it like a big, feathered cat. It squawked at me angrily and flapped its wings. “Besides, she probably just wants to stay close to the tracks.”
“I’m not sure if you two were paying attention, but there were some really nice ranch-style houses north of the tracks. The winds here blow southerly, carrying the stench, so everypony who’s anypony takes up territory to the north.”
I sniffed the air. There was certainly a bit of a stale odor coming off the tracks. I gave her a sour look. “Weren’t you staring at our drivers the entire time?”
Lyra smirked and buffed a hoof against her coat. “Yes.”
“Uh…” Marcus looked between us. “Can’t you guys just build the city three-dimensionally? I mean, that would remove problems like that, wouldn’t it?”
“What, and have the ponies overhead dumping their trash and blocking the sun?” Lyra scoffed. “There’s a reason the airbound Ponyville pegasi don’t live directly overhead. Ugh. Imagine getting Rainbow Dash’s kitchen leavings all over your house.”
“Who is this Rainbow Dash, anyway?” he asked. “I keep hearing about her, but I’ve never seen her around.”
“She’s just the best flyer in Equestria, or near abouts,” Lyra said, waving a hoof at the sky. “You remember that sonic rainboom thing? That’s how she completely impossibly defied all sense of rational physics and—”
“Well!” I interrupted, “if our quarry has moved on, we’ll find out soon enough.” Taking the lead, I started into the neighborhood, hopping from cloud to cloud until I stopped in front of a familiar facade. It had been a couple years, but little about it seemed to have changed, with the same ice blue columns and lightning motif about the doorframe. The mailbox was stuffed to the point of bursting, bulging at the welds with bills and offers.
Marcus boldly picked up a fallen letter and checked the address. With a scowl, he must have remembered belatedly that he couldn’t read Equestrian and sheepishly presented it to me. Sure enough, it listed “Lightning Dust” as the addressee.
Lyra tilted her head, looking at the house. “Maybe she’s not—” Golden light poured out of the windows on the ground floor. “Oh, nevermind.”
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered and stepped up to the door. My hoof rapped three times on the door. The scrollwork chipped, and I grimaced. It flaked off and fluttered to the cloud below before evaporating. The place definitely could have been kept up better.
“Get lost!” a mare’s voice reverberated back. “No solicitors!”
“Lightning Dust?” I called. “I’d like to talk to you.”
“If you’re a fan, that counts double!” she shouted. “Scram, before I autograph your forehead with my hoof.”
Lyra, Marcus, and I exchanged a glance, and I swept a hoof at Marcus. “No, it’s Leit Motif. We met a few years ago, to talk about selling some of your things?”
He scowled but took my hint, edging to the side, out of easy view of any of the windows. No sense frightening her with an alien if she turned out to be skittish. Not immediately, anyway.
“Leit Motif…” Lightning Dust said thoughtfully. “Teenager, kind of nerdy and gloomy?” An eggshell blue face peeked out through one of the small windows by the door. “Yeah, hey, I remember you,” she said in a more casual tone. “You’re looking a lot better—things with your folks work out?”
My expression fell. “Not really, but I moved on.” I scuffed the doorway with a hoof. “I wanted to talk to you about that collection.”
The door opened a crack. “Yeah, sure, whatever. I wasn’t doing anything tonight, anyway.”
I shot Lyra an apprehensive look before pushing the door the rest of the way open, walking inside. The place had definitely gone downhill—downwind?—since the last time I’d been there. Newspapers were piled in the corners, dishes were stacked high in the sink, and cans of cold food gathered dust on the shelves. Lightning Dust herself didn’t look all that much better. She was still impossibly fit, her lithe muscles standing tautly against her pale blue hair, but her eyes were bleary, and her swept-back dark blond mane looked like it was in dire need of a brushing. There was just a hint of salt about her breath—and what seemed a touch of alcohol, too. She joined me in the living room, which had gone from a neat little living space to a den of old magazines and litter. The trophies she’d once proudly displayed on her mantle were no where to be seen.
For a minute, I’d wondered if there’d been an accident—some sort of crippling wing injury which had killed her dreams. The pegasus I had met before had been cocksure and almost unbearably arrogant, associations I found mirrored almost perfectly in the Scourge of Ponyville, Rainbow Dash. There was no indication she had gone to seed in anything but mind, however, not from my cursory glance, yet she looked beat for all of her apparent physical perfection, like the sun might never shine again.
When her gaze fell on my friends, though, a frantic light returned to her instantly. Lyra she dismissed out of hoof, passing over her without interest, but when she saw Marcus her eyes grew wide as saucers, and she pulled herself up very straight indeed.
“So!” she said after a moment in too bright a tone, fluttering her wings and shoving a box off her sofa. It had the distinct air of somepony trying very hard to pretend she hadn’t noticed anything. “What can I do you for?”
“I wanted to talk about that collection of strange artifacts you showed me last time I visited,” I said. “Oh, this is Lyra and Marcus. They’re just visiting town with me.” I declined the seat with a wave of my hoof, though Marcus and Lyra took it, the former stretching out his long legs, and the latter sitting in the upright pose she used for performances. “I’ve built up a fair bit of savings, and wanted to see if you’d be willing to part with any of your other artifacts.”
“Nope!” she said. “Sold it all. Got rid of the rest. The parts of it I didn’t sell.” She smiled and gestured towards the door with a wing. “Well, gosh, sorry you wasted your time. It was nice seeing you again, though!”
“I can see one of the pieces right there.” I pointed a hoof at a corner, where a sharp knife had viciously pinned a set of overdue electric bills to the wall.
Lightning Dust’s eyes flicked over to the dagger with a flash of irritation. “Except that.”
“The chest you stored the others in is right there.” I pointed to a heavy, iron-bound box in front of a puffy chair. “You’ve been using it as an ottoman.”
Her cheeks heated. Lyra exchanged a look with Marcus, but said nothing.
My eyes hardened. Even if my job didn’t demand that I be alert to shams, scams, and concealment, this was just insultingly obvious. Frankly, though, I didn’t care at this point, not with Daphne waiting. Smoothing my features, I stepped up to her. “Look, Dust… I can see you’ve fallen on hard times. I heard about how the Wonderbolts rejected you.” She spluttered, but I pushed on regardless, speaking over her and fixing my eyes to hers. “It’s fine. I know how important pride is—you don’t need to make excuses. Tell you what… I’ll pay three times your asking price from before, no bargaining.”
Lightning Dust’s face twisted, but she couldn’t hold my gaze. “Fine… just… let’s hurry up.”
She went over to the chest and spun the lock. With a sound click, it popped, and she opened the lid. Marcus and Lyra leaned forward to get a better look. Within were stacked the strange and unusual bits and ends that had brought us here, and Lightning Dust went about arraying the items along a table. There were pieces of armor, strange mechanical devices, utensils, and more. Each one harkened back in some way to the research done at Twilight’s library. Pulling a shield closer, I stared down at the angular script adorning it. It seemed like chicken scratches, or perhaps the suggestion of pine needles.
“Aren’t those runes?” Marcus asked.
Lightning Dust’s head snapped up and she stared at him for a moment before shaking herself. I frowned and watched her carefully.
Lyra floated a goblet into the air. “So, where did these come from, anyway? I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”
“I don’t know,” Lightning Dust said quickly. “My parents passed it on to me.”
“Where are your folks from?” Lyra pressed.
“Here. Los Pegasus.”
I frowned at Lightning Dust, saying, “Well, they must have told you something.”
“No, nothing at all. They didn’t tell me anything at all.” She shook her head firmly, her ears twitching and swiveling around. “Look, what does it matter where they’re from?”
“We want to find more like it,” I said. “I’m rather curious about their origins.”
“You won’t find anything more like it,” she said in a hush.
Lyra tilted her head. “How do you know that?”
“I…” Lightning Dust bit her lip and ruffled her wings. “They’re old, from like my grandparents.”
Lyra held out an overturned hoof. “You mean your parents?”
“Yeah, I mean, my parents got them from their parents, who got them from their parents. And stuff.” Sweat broke out along Lightning’s brow. She glanced out the window. “Do you guys mind if I use the bathroom?”
“No.” Lyra shrugged and squinted at the cup in her telekinetic grip. “Go right ahead.”
Lightning Dust darted off into a neighboring door. At once, Marcus got to his feet and met my gaze.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.
I nodded. “She’s madly suspicious, obviously knows something, and is about to run away. Circle around and catch her before she flees through the window?”
“Already on it,” Lyra said before a golden sphere enveloped her with a flash of light. When it faded, she was gone. Marcus rushed for the front door, and I went to the bathroom to knock.
“Lightning Dust?” I called.
The rattling of a window met me. I summoned forth my own magic and fired a bolt at the door. It occurred that we probably should have pinned her down or cornered her before letting her wander, but this at least removed any shadow of a doubt. The door blasted open, a smoldering, whisping hole where its handle and lock had been previous, and I found Lightning Dust struggling with the window, which was held in place with a golden glow. I tried to catch her in a net of green light, but she demonstrated her obvious strength and simply smashed the window open with a hoof, diving through and whipping up into the air as fast as her namesake. Outside, Lyra was breathing out balls of flame that she shaped in midair. Within moments, she’d turned them into a phalanx of golden pegasi that leapt and snatched at Lightning Dust.
There was a spell I’d never seen before. For the life of me, I had no idea where she could have developed such a thing. On another target, it might have completely wiped the floor with the opposition.
Once again, though, Lightning Dust’s incredible physical prowess and sheer ferocity caught us off-guard. She spun in mid-air and bucked a simulacrum into oblivion before instantly snapping her wings, launching high into the sky. She darted through the gauntlet as they raced to meet her. Her tail became a trail of zig-zagging yellow light as she picked up speed.
My horn hummed as I wove a complex spell to paralyze her in place, but Lightning was already moving beyond my effective range. Just as it seemed as if she might get away, a pair of thunderous cracks rang out across the sky. Lightning Dust pitched and slowed, glancing back with surprise that matched my own. Marcus was crouched on one knee with his weapon stock pressed against his shoulder, the end of the weapon’s barrel still smoking. My recovery was quicker than Lightning’s, though, and I sent a wave of green energy through the air.
Only the trailing edge of the spell caught her as Lightning juked suddenly, but veridian lightning cascaded across her back and wings just the same. She yelped and seized in midair. Her descent was more controlled than I might have liked, however, and, instead of plummeting nearby, she managed to dive forward.
“Gragh! Dang it!” I swore, stomping the clouds beneath me. “Now we’ll never catch her! She’ll go to ground and be miles away!”
“No, it’s fine,” Lyra called out, coming up beside the broken window while watching the direction Lightning had retreated. “That spell is going to ruin her wings for a while; there’s no way she can risk leaving the city. We can still get her so long as we find her before she recovers. I’ll go on ahead; catch up when you can!” With a golden flash, she teleported again and again, hopping across the buildings.
“Ugh. Show off.” I blew the window off its hinges with a burst of magic and climbed out gingerly. Marcus trotted up to my side. “You didn’t shoot her, did you?” I asked nervously as I stared around at the darkening houses.
“No.” He shook his head. “I aimed way over her—just wanted to startle her. How are we going to catch up?” he asked with a frown, regarding the line of buildings ahead. “Can you do that teleport thingie like she did?”
“Yes. Sort of. I’m not as good at it. Just… hold still for a moment.”
Marcus looked at me in alarm. “What? You aren’t going to scatter my atoms if I move or something, will you?”
“I might if you don’t shut up!” I growled. Shutting my eyes, I concentrated on the feelings within my horn. Bright light shot out and then swallowed the two of us up. It felt not unlike being compressed, heated, then stretched and frozen all in rapid succession. It left me a little dazed, two of everything swam in my vision for a bit. Teleporting never had been my strong suit.
Marcus swayed and caught himself on my back. He dusted scorch marks off his side before we straightened and came to our senses.
My aim wasn’t ideal—we’d wound up in a dark alley between two businesses, rather than on the far street. “Just as planned,” I lied. Marcus didn’t need to know the whole truth.
“Let’s get going, then,” he said and began jogging out to meet the lights of the city. It was still early evening, and many pegasi were out and about, enjoying the last few autumn evenings much as the ponies of Ponyville would.
“Excuse me!” I interrupted a pair of young mares. “Have you seen an eggshell blue pegasus with a blond mane, or maybe a mint green unicorn rush past here?”
The smaller one spoke into the ear of her companion, who pointed a hoof down the street to the right. “We saw a unicorn galloping past just a few seconds ago.”
“Great! Thanks,” I called, already starting to run in that direction. Marcus, in spite of his longer legs, fell behind and did not catch up until I slowed again, nearing a park. Lyra waved us down, and I hurried to join her on the grass. “Where is she?”
“I’m not sure. I saw her and then she was just gone,” Lyra said, her face cross. It was one of the rare times I had ever seen her look utterly serious. “I’ve asked everypony I could find, too, but no one saw Lightning Dust come this way. I must have lost her on the way.”
I steadied myself to catch my breath, heaving a few chests of air. Marcus jogged up to join us, a frown on his face. “Hey,” he said, “didn’t you say Rainbow Dash hasn’t been seen around Ponyville in a while?”
Lyra gave him an uncomprehending look, and he thumbed over at a trio of stallions chatting near a fountain. We perked our ears to listen.
The first, a heavy-set brown one, gushed, “I swear, it was her. That ragged rainbow mane and tail, those perfect legs, that tight—”
“Luna’s flank, you’re always going on about her,” the tallest of the lot said with a roll of his eyes. “Getting kind of creepy.”
“I totally saw her, too,” the third, with a trio of hoofballs on his haunch, said.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure that I had heard right. Of all the ridiculous places Rainbow Dash could have wound up in, Los Pegasus was one of the last I could have imagined. It seemed like a pointless distraction, though, and I opened my mouth to say so.
“I asked her for her autograph, but she just glared and blew me off,” the brown one continued.
My mouth froze in place and I stared first at them, then at Lyra. “Since when has Rainbow Dash ever turned a fan down?”
“Rainbow Dash has never turned down a fan,” Lyra said as she trotted towards the trio. “Hey, boys,” she said with a smile and singsong tone. “I’m sorry, did I hear you say Rainbow Dash came this way?”
“Yeah,” the brown stallion answered with a crooked grin. “Isn’t she amazing?”
“She sure is. Tell me, did she hold her wings awkwardly? Maybe walk with a limp?”
“Yeah,” the hoofball player said with a nod. “Had them stretched out really tight.”
“And where’d she go?”
He pointed down the road, where an entrance to the race track gaped open. “She ran off there, to the arena.”
“Great! Thanks,” she said, and started running.
I groaned and raced after her. “Slow… down!” I gasped. My earlier sprint had taken a fair bit out of me, it seemed.
“What’s going on?” Marcus asked as he caught up, only a touch out of breath—it was terribly unfair that he’d be so fit while I struggled and huffed. “Why are we chasing Rainbow Dash?”
“That’s not Rainbow Dash,” Lyra said firmly, having slowed to allow us to keep up. “I don’t know how or why, but Lightning Dust disguised herself.”
We cantered through the entryway with cartons of food and crumpled up flyers crunching underfoot. Giant posters and banners of famous racers and Wonderbolts loomed down at us from all angles. While I heaved like a bellows, Lyra questioned a janitor.
He pointed down one of the side hallways. “Yeah. She asked where the ground lift was.”
Lyra raced off at once with a shouted, “Thank you!” I sucked up my breath and joined her, ignoring the burn that was growing in my lungs and legs. Together, the three of us flew across the corridors. Lyra yelped as she found an unexpectedly steep ramp, and, one after the other, Marcus and I slid after her into a pile on the floor near a great crane that dangled over the open air. Pallets held crates and barrels for delivery to and from the ground station.
“Aw, come on!” a high, somewhat raspy, feminine voice cried out from the control booth. Sure enough, a cyan mare with a vibrant, multihued tail and mane stood here, her wings held stiff and unresponsive at her sides. She watched the slowly winching cable, its length wrapped around a cylinder as big as a farm house, before turning her gaze on us. Her eyes narrowed and hardened.
“Crap!” I shouted, and Lyra struggled back to her feet. In the two breaths it took for Lyra to stand, ready herself, and start casting a spell, Rainbow Dash raced across nearly fifty feet of cloud and struck Lyra across the horn. She followed up with a spinning kick that sent Lyra flying across the floor into a pile of barrels. They split open on impact and gushed amber liquid over the floor.
Marcus leapt to his feet, raising his firearm, but Rainbow Dash simply stepped inside the length of his weapon and shoved it to the side. It went off harmlessly, all sound and thunder, and she twisted him over her shoulder, flinging him away. He dropped his weapon in his flight.
Desperately, I stood and lit my horn up to start a spell, but Rainbow’s rear hoof cracked me in the ribs and knocked the wind out of me. Just as she wheeled to deliver a blow to my head, a golden bolt clipped her, knocking her back a pace. Lyra, her eyes ablaze and blood trickling down her face, pushed her way out of the barrels and lit the room up with hissing, smoking bolts of fire.
Rainbow dodged and spun, but before she could advance and deal with Lyra, Marcus recovered and leapt on her back, throwing a rope from a pallet over her mouth like a crude bridle. Maddened, she bucked and screamed with fury, but she wasn’t the only enraged pony here. Just as she tossed Marcus across the room into Lyra, I acted.
I pushed myself up and shoved all of the pain, exhaustion, and frustration this trip had given me into my horn and pushed. A silent, billowing curtain of jade fire rushed across the cargo bay and caught Rainbow Dash up, sending her spinning in a flash of eldritch flames and embers. The sound caught up a moment later, reverberating like a lion’s roar.
Bruised and battered, with trails of steam rising off of her, a pony who was neither Rainbow Dash nor Lightning Dust crashed into the floor. The three of us limped up to surround her, looking down in amazement.
“Sweet cupcakes, she’s a goblin!” Lyra declared.
It was hard to disagree. The mustard-colored coat and shock white mane and tail were common enough, but her chest, belly, and back were covered with amber fish scales. With her leathery wings, I might have mistaken her for a bat pony, but none of them had prominent talons on the ends of their wings like she did.
“Well, I presumed she had something to hide, but this…” I gaped at her for a while, remembering the familiar face of Rainbow Dash set into such a terrible expression. “I think this little adventure just became much more important than we thought it would be.”
“What if there’s goblins everywhere?” Lyra asked, wide-eyed, her face a red horror with the cut gushing onto her scalp. “There could be goblins in every facet of Equestrian society! Goblins could even now be crashing our stock markets, derailing our trains, and spoiling our milk!”
“Spoiling our… oh for the love of Luna.” I grabbed her and lit up her head. “You’ve got a head injury. Don’t go bananas on me, now.” The green light focused on the cut, telekinetically pulling it closed and staunching the flow. “There’s some needle and thread in the first aid kit in my saddlebags, Marcus, can you…?”
“Got it,” he said, coming over to my side and reaching into one of my bags.
Lightning Dust—or whoever she was—groaned on the floor.
“Oh, shut up,” I told her harshly. “We’ll deal with you in a minute.”
“And I have just the idea—Ouch!” Lyra winced as I patched her up.
“Why didn’t you use your armor spell? That would have protected your stupid, thick skull.”
Lyra squirmed and whimpered under the needle. “Oh, hush up and finish already!”
After I finished with Lyra, she levitated one of the damaged barrels over and drained the remaining drink from it before firmly binding Lightning Dust with rope and stuffing her in. As a final measure, she grabbed a sock from her saddlebag and shoved it into Lightning’s mouth.
I arched a brow and curled my lips. “You packed socks?”
“A girl never knows!” she replied glibly, completely unfazed.
She would be the type. No matter.
“How are we going to get out with that…?” Marcus asked with an uncertain frown. He picked up his firearm and gave it a cursory inspection.
“Don’t worry about it. You two just walk out,” Lyra said confidently.
“All right,” I said. “Meet back at her place?”
Lyra nodded, then vanished in a flash of golden magic.
“So how come she can jump all over the place like that, while it knocks you out to do it once?” Marcus asked as we started back.
“Everypony has different talents and areas of expertise,” I said distractedly. It came off a little more dismissively than I intended, but Marcus didn’t seem offended as we walked back. After a moment’s silence, I added, “Lyra and I are different kinds of musicians, and that has an impact on our magic. She’s a performer and I’m a composer. I can perform, but I’m really more into composition and crafting, while she prefers tackling a problem head-on and seeing what works for her.”
“I’m not sure I see the correlation between that and teleportation, but I think I get the general idea.”
The janitor from before gave us an uncertain look, but said nothing. I groaned as I considered my now-tangled mane and tail. “I look like a complete mess.”
“Adorably disheveled,” Marcus corrected with a broad smile.
I gave him a sour look. “Just be glad you aren’t a stallion, or I might have had to deck you.”
Still, part of me smiled.
* * *
“Honestly, aside from getting beaten up by an adorable little horse, tonight went pretty awesomely,” Marcus said as he helped steady the barrel through Lightning Dust’s entryway.
“Unless the police come knocking on the door!” Lyra added brightly.
I shook my head. “Let’s just focus on the task at hoof. We have an interrogation to complete.” I focused my attention on the struggling mare-thing before me as my barbaric compatriots dumped her unto the floor, wrapping her in a web of my magic. “All right. There’s two very skilled magic users here to hold you down. You may be fast enough and tough enough to push one of us off, but the other is just going to slap you back down.” With that, I plucked Lyra’s sock from her mouth with my telekinesis, allowing Lightning Dust to speak.
She slumped immediately, as if I’d pulled a plug and let all the fight drain out of her. “Yeah… fine. I shoulda run from the very start. Really, I shoulda run the minute you left the first time.”
I blinked at her.
“Ain’ this just tidy. Once I saw that human I shoulda bucked him right in the face.” She groaned. “Well? Get it over with. We gonna do the execution here, or are you haulin’ me all the way back first?”
Lightning Dust’s mouth snapped shut. Her eyes widened. “You mean you ain’t…?” Her eyes flicked to all three of us. “Oh, bollocks.”
“I can see how that might have been an embarrassing mistake,” Lyra said with a nod.
My mouth hung open. I shut it with a hoof and regarded my captive for a long moment. She didn’t much resemble the creature Marble Stone had sketched, yet neither did Daphne currently resemble a human. “You… don’t sound very happy about the prospect of running into others of your kind,” I said at last.
Lightning Dust glanced away.
“Did you steal from them?” I kicked the chest with a rear hoof. “Is that what this all is, stolen goods?”
“No,” she bit off, then started to sweat. “Well… n-not all of it. Just let me go, please. You can have the junk, I just… I’ve been meaning to leave anyway. I won’t make trouble, swear it.”
I shook my head. “No, I think you’re going to have to start at the beginning. We’ll decide what to do with you after we’ve heard the whole story. Like how you can change forms, and why.”
Marcus sat on the puffy chair and propped his feet up on the chest. Lyra sat beside him, but kept her eyes firmly on our captive. Lightning Dust craned her neck around and sighed heavily. “All right. Bloody hell… can I at least sit down?”
My magic plopped her on her backside on the couch facing us, but held her firmly immobile from the chest down. She squirmed as best she could and stared firmly at the floor. “Aye. I’m a goblin, sure enough.” With a gentle tremble, she changed before our very eyes, so fast and smooth that my mind needed a moment to process what my eyes had just witnessed. It was like an octopus changing colors, but not only did her mane gain color and turn a golden amber, not only did her coat go from a dark mustard yellow to a pale eggshell blue, but feathers sprouted along her wings and her fish scales vanished entirely. She changed back just as easily.
“My name’s Flash, and I ran away from home years ago with whatever I could carry on my back.”
“Home where?” I asked after licking my lips. They felt suddenly dry. Reading about this sort of thing in a library was one thing, experiencing it was quite another.
Flash’s eyes, slit and pale blue, lifted to mine. “A goblin town hidden in the Everfree Forest.”
“I see…” I shook my head. “All right, go on. Just tell us everything. Why did you leave?”
“That’s a long story—” My eyes hardened and she swallowed. “—which I shall tell you about, in detail.” She shifted again and I slackened up, letting Lyra’s rope hold her while I changed to simple telekinetics. With a relieved sigh, she sank into the cushions. “I was chosen, one of six out of who knows how many hundreds of young goblins, for a special mission. After it didn’t materialize, well—frankly, I wasn’t going to wait around to see what happened.”
“What sort of mission?”
“We were to impersonate a set of six ponies here from Equestria,” she shook her head. “I didn’t much care for that, honest. I was given a character who was supposed to be this awesome speedster—she was meant to be the best of the best, the absolute pinnacle of what it meant to be a great pegasus.” Her eyes flashed. “Sure, that’s great and all, but what does it mean for me? A whole life of sittin’ around in somepony’s shadow, that’s what!”
It took no further prompting—now that she had the bit in her teeth she didn’t seem inclined to give it up.
Flash gesticulated with a forehoof angrily. “I mean, what kind of life is that? Some cythraul of a human girl fails to show up and I’m told I’ve got to keep it up until she gets off her behind and comes on her own good time? I don’t think so.” She grinned. “So, while the others were mopin’ around, I came up with a great idea.”
With another effortless shimmer, she shook herself, turning her mane blond and her coat blue again, banishing all those alien features. “I’d make my own character up! Lightning Dust! I wanted to go to Equestria and be a real athlete, and become a Wonderbolt!” she declared. “I’d be ten times the pony Rainbow Dash is!” Her face fell as her tone turned bitter. “Well. That was the plan, anyway. I guess after the whole thing with the Wonderbolts where it got out of hand and they kicked me out… I just… I just felt like I was faking it, you know? I don’t know what I was thinking, coming up with my own original character and trying to compete against… uh, are you guys still listening?”
Lyra and I stared blankly at Flash. Marcus gave the two of us an uncertain look. “So, wait,” I said, “what does Rainbow Dash have to do with anything?”
Flash paused and turned quizzical. “Didn’t I mention? I impersonated Rainbow Dash as a filly. Each of us was taught to mimic one of the Elements of Harmony.”
The stunned silence that followed caught even Flash off guard. She looked between us with a puzzled expression. “This happened… when you were a filly? How long ago was this?”
“Like, uh…” Flash tapped her chin. “Maybe seven or eight years now, wow. That’s getting on to be half my life.”
“You knew who the Elements of Harmony would be years before Nightmare Moon’s return?” Lyra asked, leaning forward intently now. “How? And why?”
“Yeah,” Flash said with a shrug. With another causal shimmer, she changed again—her coat and feathers darkened to a deeper blue and her mane elongated, with every shade of the rainbow popping into being along its length. “I’m kind of surprised no pony noticed that our bodies are, like, exactly the same,” she said in Rainbow Dash’s scratchy voice.
It felt like leaping into a pool, only to discover too late that somepony had forgotten to fill it. What should have been a simple questioning of a random, uninterested party had become something far more. Flash sat there on her haunches, apparently completely unaware of the fact that she had dropped a metaphorical bombshell that left Lyra and myself reeling at the implications.
“You mentioned a little girl,” I said numbly. “Who was she?”
Flash shrugged as she changed back into her Lightning Dust guise. “I don’t really know. She was supposed to show up eight years ago, but never did. We were supposed to take her to a copy of Ponyville and be her friend.”
“What for?”
Flash scratched her chin. “Something about taking her to a special place so she can do… something.”
“What, weren’t you paying attention?” I growled.
“What? I was eight years old, how much do you think they were going to tell me?”
“They who?” Lyra asked.
“The Wand King,” she said. At our blank looks, she elaborated. “Or the King of Wands, I guess you’d say. He’s the master of the Wand Court of goblins.”
Marcus sat forward. “Whoa, hold on here… so if I’m getting this straight, eight years ago these Wand goblin guys got some kids to play the Elements of Harmony—Twilight and her friends—before they even knew who they were, all so they could kidnap Daphne and do… something? Now they’ve kidnapped her little sister instead, though they’re down one of their fake Elements, and are carrying out their eight-year-old plan?”
“That about sums it up,” Lyra said sardonically.
“Great. What does it all mean though?”
“It means,” I said grimly, “that we need to take Miss Flash here home with us.”
Flash groaned and slumped. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
I bit my lip and regarded her for a moment. “Look… I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on here, nor the implications thereof. It doesn’t sound like you’ve broken any laws that I’m aware of, and I certainly can’t characterize anything you’ve told me as wrong.” I rested a hoof on her shoulder. “If you tell our friends everything that’s happened and where to find the person we’re looking for, I’m sure this can be smoothed over. We’ll let you go on your way, maybe even pay you nicely.”
Flash perked her ears up, but then she shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re asking. The Wand King is already going to be pissed at me enough. You want me to lead you right to him?”
I met her gaze steadily. “Whoever this ‘Wand King’ is, he’ll have a lot to answer for.”
Flash grimaced and sighed heavily. “Can I at least go on my own power?”
“No way,” Lyra said. “You’re a flight risk, missy.”
I nodded. “Sorry, but Lyra’s right. This is way too important. Gag her—we need to leave now.”
“Hey, wai—mph!” Flash gasped as a golden light appeared around her jaw and snapped it shut. Looking around thoughtfully, Lyra improvised a bag from Flash’s sheets and then stuffed our captive in, while Marcus put the goblin artifacts back in the chest to carry.
I gave one last look around at Flash’s trashed house and sighed. “How did I become a criminal? I used to be such a nice mare.”
Lyra beamed as she hauled her sack out. “By the power of friendship!”
Gritting my teeth, I followed my partners in crime outside and shut the door behind me. Whatever else happened, I was committed, now and forever.
“The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth." Alfred Adler.
Amelia
Atop a tawdry peddler’s wagon, I entered the great goblin city of Mag Mell.
Its wheels found the paved stones of the road approaching a plaza, and the ride smoothed out at once, making our passage through the gates considerably easier than the country roads that came before. Huge blocks of solid, golden granite arched effortlessly overhead. Though we were one of perhaps a hundred early morning travelers entering or leaving the city, we found our way crowded not at all. Over a hundred yards deep the walls stretched, its gateway a solidly vaulted ceiling. Even here, at the edge of their civilization, goblins clustered; some slept underneath decorative molding with their wings tucked tightly about them, while others set up shop in tunnels racing away under the bulk of the walls. A group of equine foals watched us with bright yellow eyes from between the legs of a woman’s statue, her face marred by scratches and her outstretched hand missing. Electric lights guttered from where they had been crudely embedded into the gatehouse interior.
Wherever they could find space, vendors and merchants set up shop. The glow of an impromptu firepit and a cluster of hungry patrons indicated a hastily erected restaurant. Another vendor slept on a stairway surrounded by his wares, which a pair of foals were gleefully picking over and trying not to wake the owner. Any place a blanket was spread, either goods or a game of chance came with it, and their sharp-eyed proprietors hawked and barked even at this early hour.
“Is this a market?” I called down to the raccoon peddler.
He laughed. “A market? You ain’t seen anythin’ yet if’n you think that’s a market, filly.” The wagon continued forward rather than stop here, our driver shouting deprecations at incautious pedestrians who inattentively or foolishly tread into his path.
Edifices old and new jockeyed for space beyond the gate. A small plaza radiated streets in six directions, and every available space was packed. Eaves hung out over the streets and bridges crisscrossed madly, while dozens of windmills turned briskly in the stiff wind coming from the far side of the city. Drunken goblins spilled out the windows and doors of what had to have been a bar, while other places had been shuttered firmly against the night traffic. In the center of the plaza, a fountain rose high into the air, with dozens of goblin figures holding wands not unlike the one Fetter bore.
“W-we ca-can’t stay here,” Wire stuttered. It seemed that the courage she’d mustered to convince the peddler to take us this far had evaporated overnight. “Th-this is fi-fi-fir-fi—the Wand part of town. Th-they’ll be looking for a wagon. Why’d we come through that gate?”
The raccoon shot her a lidded look. “Oh, hush up. I know well enough. Would have looked odd if we’d gone all the way around the city wall, anyway.” He tapped the driver’s board and the wagon picked up speed again. “You leave the hard work to the professional.”
We rattled across the street, with the slats of lantern light flickering past us. The Crusaders and I clung to the wagon’s cornices. The other girls were enamoured with the surrounding buildings, but my eyes fixed on the starry sky above and searched for trouble—occasionally, shapes moved across the stars, but, if they were looking for me, they weren’t going to have much luck. I’d gone from being a needle in plain sight to one in a haystack—or rather, from a haystack to a stack of other needles.
Dawn chased away the darkness just as we came into view of the city at large, and I wasn’t alone in gasping. Great spires, their towers topped in flame, rose as high as any modern downtown construction. The sun rose from a glittering sea that washed up against the shore, which rose in hills to a great flat-topped rise that overlooked the shimmering blue expanse. At its edge, the statues of four people watched over the city, each carrying a different object. One man held a chalice in both hands, a hooded person held a sword point down, another man held forth a circular pendant. The last, a woman with flowing hair, held something that seemed passingly familiar to me—a sturdy staff. It looked not dissimilar to the ash staff I had seen in the Wand King’s throne room.
Scootaloo craned her neck around. “Sweetie Belle, remember how excited we were to go to the Crystal Empire, even though we were there for like two minutes?” Scootaloo asked. “This is so much more awesome.”
“I don’t know,” Sweetie Belle said, her ears flat against her skull as she watched the goblin city stir around us, awakened from its slumber. “This place seems kind of… dangerous.”
“Exactly. Awesome.”
We transitioned away from the windmills, heavy stone, and raucousness of what apparently stood for the “Wand” part of town as we drew closer to the sea, and found ourselves among narrow, twisty streets between plastered buildings and narrow, paneless windows. At last, the peddler pulled to a halt underneath a covered footbridge. A low buzz filled the air, a hum of distant conversation pierced through now and again by a particularly shrill cry.
“All right,” the peddler said, “that’s as far as she goes. Everyone who is a little pony better get herself off my cart. I’ve got a long day ahead and no time to waste it on the likes of you.”
“Thanks, much,” Wire said as she hopped off. The Crusaders and I slid down the side, one by one, and came to join her. Sweetie Belle walked with her tail so low it was almost between her legs, but both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo practically quivered with the desire to go out and explore.
“Yeah, yeah.” The raccoon waved a paw dismissively. “You weren’t a huge burden, so whatever. Just keep it quiet and we’ll call it tidy. I’m already gonna have to call this trip a loss without pony goods.”
“Well, hope you have better luck in the future,” I told him with a bright smile. He rubbed at an ear and grunted, before going back into his wagon.
Scootaloo unhooked her own little red wagon from the side of the cart. “Where is here, anyway?”
Apple Bloom turned to look at Wire and myself. “Moonlight, you and… uh…” Her eyes widened as she looked more closely at Wire. Belatedly, I realized that she’d never gotten a very good look at our goblin friend—the dark of the Everfree Forest was quite a bit more pronounced than a morning street in Mag Mell.
Wire squirmed and looked down at the bronze-colored fish scales climbing up her belly. “Oh, uhm.”
Apple Bloom looked between us and stamped a hoof. “You ain’ ponies at all, are you?”
“Well, I’m kind of one, and Am—”
I cut her off at once. “Wire’s a goblin, and I’m a pony. From Canterlot, like I said before. I’ve never been out here, either, but it’s like I said—we’re on the run from other goblins who kidnapped me.” My eyes drifted to the ground as I put on a show of malaise. “My parents are probably really worried about me by now. I really just want to get back to them.”
Apple Bloom’s ears fell and she scuffed her hoof. “My family’s probably sick with worry, now that I think about it.”
“Mine, too,” Sweetie Belle added with a further droop of her ears.
Scootaloo grinned. “Don’t worry, Moonlight. We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders!” She tapped her chest proudly. “We never let anypony down.”
“Really?” Sweetie Belle asked. “I didn’t think that was part of our motto.”
Scootaloo shooed that thought away with a wave of her hoof. “Pft. Words.” She turned back to me. “So what’s the plan, then? We find somepony—err, somegob who can take us back to Equestria?”
“I think that’s the idea.” I nodded. “Though, really? I want to find out what they’re up to. I got some hints that they have plans for Equestria. They kept mentioning the, uhm…” I considered my responses for a moment.
Any illusion is only as good as its weakest point. Maintain consistency in any deception or risk it falling down around your ears. Not that I really needed that advice from Twilight—Twig—but it did come at a good time.
“The Elements of Harmony,” I said, “like Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle.”
The three girls gasped. “My sister, Applejack, is one of the Element bearers!” Apple Bloom said. “And so is Sweetie Belle’s sister, Rarity!”
My eyes widened slightly. I looked at the two of them more closely. Now that I had a moment to look at them in a proper light, there was a definite resemblance to the two older mares, especially around the snouts and eyes. It was a fantastic sort of coincidence to run into these two so accidentally, but then I didn’t really know the circumstances.
“And I’m Rainbow Dash’s honorary little sister!” Scootaloo announced as she pushed in between the two. She puffed her chest out and spread her tiny wings. “It’s all right, you don’t need to be jealous.” She blinked as she caught my eyes. “Uh, are you okay?”
“Me? Oh, yeah.” I glanced away, realizing belatedly that my eyes had hardened at the mention of the name. If Scootaloo wanted a big sister, she could have picked someone a little more constant. “I’m just really worried.”
“What if those goblins who kidnapped you are plannin’ somethin’ awful for Equestria?” Apple Bloom said, half to me and half to her friends.
“Well, their leader, the Wand King, sounded really mad,” I said, “and they really didn’t like Celestia or the Bearers…” I glanced at Wire, who was looking at the girls with a new form of trepidation. She had, after all, just heard that they were related to three of the most feared mares she knew of. “I think they had some sort of plan involving them.”
Sweetie Belle’s eyes widened. “Rarity and Twilight and the others might be in danger!”
Scootaloo snorted. “Rainbow Dash is totally not in danger.”
“If she is, that means you can help her out,” Apple Bloom pointed out.
“Oh, hey. That’s true!” Scootaloo grinned broadly as the realization hit her. “Okay, we need to help, then!”
“Yeah,” Apple Bloom agreed with a nod. “If there’s somethin’ we can do to help them, why, we’re obliged to!” She turned to face Wire with the others flanking her. “Live Wire, do you think we can find out more about what’s goin’ on?”
“Uh.” Wire’s wide eyes looked between the three little girls. She might as well have been confronted with three trolls from the look on her face. “I-I-I g-guess you c-could…” She swallowed. “I mean… what the Wand King does is important. If he’s doin’ somethin’ big, t-then there will be goblins out there who know about it, especially the other Courts.”
“What Courts?” I asked intently. I reached forward and tugged the girls back to give Wire some space—the poor thing was starting to hyperventilate.
“Well,” Wire began, breathing more easily, “there’s four of them, see? I’m from the Wand Court. You’ve seen a bunch of us. We’re defined that way because we follow the Wand. The other three Courts are the Cup, Sword, and Ring.”
“What is the Wand?”
“It’s a powerful thing of magic called an Arcana, from ancient times. Long before we goblins came around—it’s a bit like the craft, you know?” She glanced up towards the distant statues on the hill. “We picked it up when the people who started it died out or went away. They’re more than just magic sticks, though. They’re a representation of certain… I dunno, I guess you’d say ideals. Wand represents the power of change, and bridgin’ the gap between different peoples. It’s all about reachin’ out and findin’ things. The King is the one who holds the first one, and there’s three others. One for a Queen, who is supposed to be like a check on the King—though, for the life of me, I ain’ got the foggiest idea where Queen Stylus has gone off to. There’s one for a Knight—that’s Fetter, you’ve met him, Moonlight—who is supposed to go where the King can’t, who quests for the sake of the Court. And there’s one for the Page, who has no role except that she’s supposed to be able to speak freely and act as she chooses, so that she can act like a sort of conscience.”
“Who is your Page?” Apple Bloom asked, her eyes alight as she followed this new information.
“Well, he was Rail, but he had a bad accident a few years ago. No one’s come forward to take his place—or, well, his Wand hasn’t chosen anyone yet, I guess.” She fluttered her wings and looked around, as if sure someone would find her for speaking out. “Last few years or so, we’ve had a big plan in the works that we’re supposed to keep secret from everygob. I know the Elements of Harmony are involved in some way, but I don’t know how. Everythin’s on a need-to-know basis, and I never needed to know.”
“So…” Scootaloo said carefully. “Your awful Wand King has made two of the other people in the government disappear and he’s got some plan he wants kept secret from all the other goblin countries?”
Wire squeaked. “I don’t know if I’d say he made them disappear. I mean, I know there’s rumors, but no goblin would say such a thing where others could hear. I mean, it’s just not done. You don’t…” She looked at us with wide eyes, finishing in a whimper. “He probably did do that, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, we definitely need to do somethin’ about this,” Apple Bloom declared, standing tall. She looked to her two friends, and they nodded their heads firmly. “You in on this, Moonlight?”
It took me a moment to remember that was supposed to be my name here, so I said nothing at first. The one part of this that confused me the most was my role in these proceedings. It seemed ridiculous, and I wondered what possible use could a little girl be—even if she did happen to be me.
Scootaloo coughed delicately. “Moonlight Glimmer? You’re spacing out on us.”
“Oh, sorry. Yeah, I’m in,” I said. “I want to find out what this is all about, too.”
“Great!” Apple Bloom said, and they turned as one to Wire. “Where do we start?”
“Well,” Wire paused to consider that a moment, “the Great Market is over there. You can find just about anything from anywhere there, including information.” She rubbed her stomach. “Especially food.”
“What’re we going to pay with, though?” Sweetie Belle asked with a little frown. “We have some bits; do they accept those?”
Wire nodded. “There’s moneychangers.”
“How about barter?” Apple Bloom kicked their wagon, rattling the supplies they’d brought. “That raccoon said pony stuff was valuable, didn’t he?”
“Sure did,” Scootaloo said.
“I have a few things, too,” I said, patting my shoulder bag. It was a shame Rarity—Maille—had not altered it into a saddlebag. I wondered if that, too, had a special meaning.
“Great! Cutie Mark Crusader, uh…” Apple Bloom paused, rubbing her chin. “Merchants?”
“Let’s just go already, ugh,” Scootaloo said, planting her scooter on the ground and starting around the street corner with the wagon of goods in tow. “Merchants? Seriously? Gag me with a spoon.” The others hurried after her, with Wire taking up the rear, while I paused to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.
It occurred to me, again, that I didn’t really feel all that troubled at the prospect of not seeing my parents for some time. Never had I been away from them for more than a day, and here I was a week and more gone. The part of me that felt homesick was small and not very vocal, while the part eager to see a magical city was about ready to burst.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love my parents. I did. I mean, I do. I still do… anyway.
A pair of glowing blue eyes met mine under the wagon as I stood to get up. I stood stock still, then breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh. Hey.”
“The wee bairn is free of the Wand King, yet still she ties herself down,” the Morgwyn’s sibilant voice whispered from the darkness. “One wonders what for. Surely she has better things to be doing.”
“I want to find out what the Wand King is up to,” I said quietly as I adjusted the strap on my bag, cinching it high enough to be reasonably comfortable. “Besides, they’re my friends.”
The Morgwyn choked a laugh. “Friends? You have one ill-fated chase through the woods and now you are bosom companions?” The bulk of the creature slid out from under the wagon, looking down at me with its bright teeth spread wide. “As you lie to them, hour by hour?”
“It’s not that bad. I’m just…” I looked away. “I don’t want to have to explain that I’m a human. They probably don’t even know what a human is, so there’d be no point.”
“You had friends who lied to you before, didn’t you?” it whispered into my ear. “Six mares. They loved you, but they lied.”
“I’m not like them,” I said hotly. “This is different!”
“Different like… a certain sister, perhaps?”
“What?” I snapped, rounding on the Morgwyn. “Daphne didn’t lie… much! I mean, little things, yes, but she’s just a jerk, not a liar.”
“Mm. So naive you are, wee spark.” The Morgwyn scratched thin marks into the side of the peddler’s wagon with a negligent gesture. “After all, she never told you about the unicorn, did she?”
I froze with my mouth open in aborted protest. My heart pounded as my eyes opened wide. I searched the Morgwyn’s face for any hint of deception—not that I knew what that would look like in such alien features. Its smile widened further still as it regarded me.
“What unicorn?” I asked at last.
“When your sister was a wee bairn herself, she walked the woods as you did. Instead of finding me, however, she found a wee unicorn. A filly, run away from home.” The Morgwyn flicked its barbed tail. “Oh, your sister loved her dearly. The two of them were as sisters. Inseparable.” As if it were savoring its words, it drew the last few out slowly. “It was as if they were meant to be together.”
Each word landed on my head like a bomb, bursting with thunderous impact. Spots appeared in my eyes.
“Indeed,” the Morgwyn went on, “it seems that your sister went into the other world at roughly the same time you did.”
“Wait, what?” My eyes widened further. If Daphne had come into the Everfree Forest, that might mean that she had come after me. It could even be that she was the one who tried to take down Fetter in the woods that night. “But… that would…”
“She went straight into Ponyville, the true Ponyville,” the Morgwyn said, effortlessly cutting through my stammered response. “The last I saw, she was with her dear old friend once again. What’s more, she hasn’t left Ponyville since arriving—rather as if she intends to simply move in and live with the ponies.”
“So… so that’s it?” I asked dully. “She just… I go missing and she just… goes to a happy little village of unicorns and pegasi and regular ponies who love her and that’s it?” My shoulders ached as I shook. “Entered at the same time—I’ll bet that’s what she did after I left. She didn’t even care. She just went off into the woods on her secret little path to go to her secret little friend in Equestria!”
“Does it really matter?” the Morgwyn said indifferently. “She is there. You are here. Free. Liberated. You have the run of an ancient city, full of mystery and power.”
“Yeah,” I said harshly. I pulled myself up straight. “If she can go gallivanting around, so can I.” My eyes blurred. I didn’t want to say anything else and held my jaw firmly shut. I knew if I opened it again I’d say something I’d rather not.
Wherever the Morgwyn went after that, I couldn’t have said. I was pretty sure that, at some point, Wire and the others had started calling my name. I never saw nor heard either. Tears streamed down my face, while my jaw was held so tight it ached.
“Moonlight?” Apple Bloom asked. She eased up in front of me, looking at me uncertainly. “Are you okay?”
Sweetie Belle put a hoof around my shoulders. “Don’t cry. It’s all right, we’ll get you back home.”
“I-I’m all right.” I coughed and rubbed at my face. “It’s just… it’s nothing, I’m… I’m okay. Ho-how about that market?” I put a note of false enthusiasm into my voice.
“It’s amazing!” Scootaloo said. “You have got to come check it out!”
“R-right!” I said, gaining a little more control.
As the five of us walked back towards the noise in the distance, I found my pace again. Screw Daphne and everything she stood for. I didn’t need her. I had friends who I would tell everything just as soon as it was convenient. I had a whole world of adventure ahead of me.
“So, uh,” I asked in the hopes of distracting them from my distress, “what did you guys bring that we might be able to hawk, anyway?”
Apple Bloom tilted her head up, inventorying, “Camping gear. Spare horseshoes. A couple books—”
“Which you should not read because they are terrible,” Sweetie Belle added quickly. “Really, really, terrible.”
“—And, uhm, some stuff we picked up at the old Royal Pony Sisters’ castle…”
Sweetie Belle glanced to the side. “Which aren’t related at all to the books.”
They were very odd fillies. “Just what were you three burying back in the Everfree, exactly?” I asked.
Apple Bloom shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Don’t want to talk about it,” Scootaloo muttered.
“Definitely nothing unwholesome nor against the laws of nature,” Sweetie Belle concluded.
Wire and I exchanged a glance. “Right,” I said. “Sure. So… hey.” I grinned and started rooting through the backpack. “Everypony, gather ’round. I have a plan.”
* * *
“Hear ye, hear ye!” Sweetie Belle cried from atop her barrel. Her voice cut through the thick market din with razor-edged clarity. “Come one, come all! Come own a piece of history! Personal artifacts of the legendary Elements of Harmony available for a limited time only!”
Much as I would have hated to admit it then, there were many lessons that the mares of shadow Ponyville had taught me. Among them was one of Maille’s: presentation is everything.
The Great Market of Mag Mell stretched across dozens of criss-crossing streets, incorporating three stories of shops overlooked by another layer or two of apartments, with rickety bridges made of wood, stone, metal—whatever the goblins had at hand, more than like—built up over what must have been millenia of labor. Every available space was crammed with every manner of hastily erected vending tents, wooden stalls, linens covered in odds and ends, street performers, and food carts. Three times as much traffic crowded the galleries and bridges of the upper levels as they did the lower.
Anyone with half a brain would have quickly realized that there would be no way for a newbie to gain a real toehold in such a cacophony. Merchants elbowed one another out of the way with fierce, even violent, force, and I had no doubt we’d be fleeced out of our skins by experienced, hawk-eyed traders if we tried to sell even one penny of our goods to one of the existing vendors.
Where one greenhorn can fail, though, five clever young girls can—by working together—exploit their strengths in remarkable ways.
“Are these not a little small for a full-grown mare?” a reptilian goblin asked dubiously as he held up one of Apple Bloom’s horseshoes. His accent was vividly different from Wire’s, which didn’t surprise me—most of the goblins here didn’t even seem to speak English, and all around us sung strains of Arabic, French, Mandarin, and other languages I couldn’t even begin to place.
“Well, duh,” I said with a roll of my eyes.”Do you think we could just pry the horseshoes off the Element of Honesty’s feet? We got her childhood horseshoes—the ones she used to crush a whole army of goblins.” The overturned wagon proved a very striking seat. On it, I sat like a human might, with my hind legs down and forehooves free. A canvas robe covered me, and a blue turban, hung with little glass beads and stars, completed the ensemble.
Wire, who “happened” to be walking by, stopped and took a look at the horseshoe as if she were seeing it for the first time. “Wow, look—it even has her actual cutie mark on it. How much?”
“Thirty quarins,” I said, referring to the small stack of shiny, ovoid coins by my side. Not a single goblin currency was a plain circle, I’d noticed.
“That’s a steal,” Wire said, pondering over the set with a thoughtful expression. “Would look proper tidy on me own hooves…”
If your act is a little weak, Twig had said once, don’t be above putting a shill in the audience. Other people around them will fall over themselves to agree so they don’t feel stupid.
Seeing opportunity slip him by was apparently too much for the lizard goblin. He snatched the shoe from Wire and announced, “I’ll take the lot!”
I pushed the box his way and held out my hooves. Glittering coins rained down into them as I watched. “Pleasure doing business with you!” I chirped.
While waiting for another customer, I admired the performing troupe across the bridge from us. They were mostly young girls, humanoid, albeit with the fur or feathers or other strange additions all goblins seemed to have in some measure or another. One cat-like girl swayed acrobatically on her hands while a regal, older girl with lovely dark hair levitated colorful balls that another tried to catch to no avail. I was pretty sure that she was using real levitation magic like Twig had shown me—the one that had nothing to do with unicorn horns—and wished I had opportunity to go over and strike up a conversation.
A high buzz foretold Scootaloo’s return, and I turned to find her riding the rail overhead. Apple Bloom, clinging hard to her back, squeaked as they jumped and landed beside us. A heavy bag clattered behind her. I gestured to Wire, and she pulled the curtain around our vending tent with a tug of her teeth.
“All right, what’s the haul looking like now?” I asked as Apple Bloom emptied the contents.
“I think we’ve made back twice as much as we’ve got,” she said, revealing a mixed pile of coins in numerous denominations and styles, as well as some odds and ends. “Your idea about Scoot and I goin’ around is workin’ great. We’re findin’ the best deals and hearin’ all the best stuff.”
“It would take a normal merchant months to make a circuit,” I gloated, rubbing my hooves together. “The two of you do it in minutes.”
Wire picked through the stock until she found a bundle of black, flint-like thunderstones. “I should get to charging these. You know she’s offering two free ones with every purchase?” She pulled a device out of her bags with a pedal and a set of wires, attached the wires to the stones, and started working the pedal with her hoof.
“Maybe you’ll get your cutie mark in bargaining, Moonlight,” Scootaloo said with a laugh and flexed her wings.
“I think I might want one in hawking,” Sweetie Belle said as she picked through the goods. “This is fun!”
“Careful,” Apple Bloom said, nudging Sweetie Belle’s hoof back from a set of odd fruit tied together, “we’re gonna resell some of this. I heard a vendor near the water say he needed peppers somethin’ awful.”
“What’s this?” Sweetie Belle asked, picking up a belt.
“That belt makes you really alluring, but only under moonlight.”
Sweetie Belle pouted. “That’s not very useful for sneaking around. Don’t we need stuff to find out more about what those Wand guys are up to?”
“I’ll probably trade it up. This is pretty cool, though,” Apple Bloom said, holding up a piercework metal ball with a wind-up key at one end. She turned the key a few times then watched us with a huge grin.
After a minute or two of waiting, I got bored and opened my mouth to ask her what it was supposed to do. My jaw flapped uselessly, making no noise. The sound of Wire’s pedal had stopped. I tapped Scootaloo’s wagon and heard nothing, no ring of hoof against metal. Sounds from outside our immediate vicinity came in loud and clear, but nothing we did inside it made a single note. When the key stopped turning, Apple Bloom spoke. “Now, how’s that for useful?”
“Not bad,” Wire said. She rooted through the goods with her free hoof. “Nothing for me to identify here. You girls have a tidy eye for value.”
A stiff, cold wind shot through the market, shaking our enclosure and even knocking some tents over. It cut through the stifling heat of my costume and brought a welcome breath of cool air, but I could see others looking back towards the source with trepidation before being jostled back into motion in the crowd.
“What’s going on, Live Wire?” Sweetie Belle asked, unfluffing her coat with a hoof. “Everygob looks so, uh…”
“Winter’s coming,” she said. “It’s always a bit of a, uhm… exciting time to be in Mag Mell, so I hear.”
“Hah!” an upright rabbit protested, pushing through to our spot, evidently taking the blown-open curtain as an invitation. He pulled his paws from his vest and began to poke around our wares. His English—or whatever they called it here—was heavily accented with what sounded like Japanese or a similar East Asian flair. “That’s one way to put it. Me, I plan on getting out of here before then, and you will, too.”
“Why?” Scootaloo asked. “What happens on Winterfall?”
“Winterfall?” He shuddered. “More like winter war. Trust me, you don’t want any part of that, not when the jotnar come stomping over the branch from Niflheim—you ever see an angry frost giant on the war path? Don’t. Especially not with the way Wand is slacking off on their part of the town defense this year. The streets are going to be hip deep in hoarfrost spirits and sea trolls before we’ll be able to beat them back.”
I gave the brown rabbit a closer look. There were numerous metal rings sewn onto his vest, and one of his ears was pierced with more. “Well, we all know the Ring court won’t fail in protecting the city. That’s your thing, isn’t it?” I knew literally none of these things, but a lack of knowledge had never stopped me before.
His ears twitched and he grinned back at me with a mouth full of bright teeth. “Of course. We will not shirk our duty.”
Just like always. Butter someone up enough and they’ll do anything for you.
Wire muttered under her breath. “Maybe your special talent is in lying.”
I shot her a narrow look and returned my attention to the rabbit. “So what’s Wand been up to if they aren’t playing their part in the town’s defense against winter?”
He scratched at his chin thoughtfully. “I know there’s been some tension lately. Some of my friends have been called up to military service. There’s a man I know who works as an assistant to an apprentice of one of the great armorers of the city—Amata Toshiro—who says that one of the master’s former apprentices is returning to speak with him. She’s going to be shuffled right through the appointment schedule.”
My ears perked and I looked at him intently. “Was her name Maille, by any chance?”
“That’s the one.”
“Is she still there?”
The rabbit shrugged. “I can’t say. Perhaps. It was only announced this morning.”
“Great!” I hopped down from my wagon-throne. “Pack it up, girls. We’re leaving.”
“Hey—!” the rabbit protested as Apple Bloom scooped the goods up and dumped them into her—noticeably heavier—camping bag. Scootaloo overturned the wagon and I ditched my disguise in it. Like ghosts, we left no trace of our being there as we took off through the market.
“Almost a shame,” Wire sighed. “We made my entire wages for a month in just a few hours.”
“Was about time to move on, anyway,” I said, squeezed in next to her as Scootaloo navigated the dense streets. She ramped us high and we landed on the residential level, zipping past startled goblins. “I don’t think my act would have held together much longer. We can always set up somewhere else if we need it.”
“Food here is awful, though,” Apple Bloom griped. “Dried produce, all the food is deep fried and covered in grease. Dis-gustin’.”
“I dunno, I kinda liked it,” Scootaloo called back. “So, where are we heading?”
“The greatest forges are all along the waterfront,” Wire said. “They’re big, bulky buildings near the shipyards. You can’t miss them.”
The thought of ships turned my head towards the sky again. Now that it was broad daylight, it was clear that air traffic was a bit of an issue here. Ignoring the minority of flying goblins, there were blimps of all sizes tethered here and there in the city. Rarely, a propeller plane would buzz past one, like insects tormenting a big dog. “You know, if we have to escape the city, we should totally take one of those,” I said. “That would be so cool.”
Wire blanched, which was not a good look with her base color. “Oh. Grand.”
* * *
Even Scootaloo tired out by the time we reached the water, and she dozed in the wagon with her feet hanging in all directions while Apple Bloom took her place in the scooter. The rest of us walked. The docks were quieter than the market, if not by much. Most of the waterfront was taken up by either large, mostly silent warehouses, counting houses, and other sedate businesses, or by noisy taprooms for sailors and disused shanties. It didn’t feel like a terribly safe place to be, to be honest, but we were largely ignored as we walked along. For the time being.
As if to puncture a hole in my security, Sweetie Belle pointed a hoof down one of the larger docks, big enough to have its own shacks. “What’s going on over there?”
We all turned to look. A cage dangled over the water, and a vaguely female creature with a long fishtail pressed herself sadly against the bars, her kelp-like hair damp and dripping. The goblin at the foot of the crane called out numbers, pointing to smartly-dressed goblins in a small crowd. It looked rather distressingly like pictures I’d seen in Daphne’s American History textbook.
I put my head to Sweetie Belle’s behind, grimacing as I pushed her along. “Just keep going.”
Well, Mag Mell couldn’t be completely awesome. Perfection is never to be had.
At last, we came to a long line of enormous structures arrayed in the shadow of the Trunkward wall, as the locals called it, which overlooked the approach to Niflheim. The shapes of gun barrels poked over the enormous stone curtain, and I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. “Wire, why do they call it Trunkward, anyway?”
“Because that’s the way to the trunk,” she said, as though it were obvious.
“Don’t follow.”
Wire tilted her head. “What’s not to follow?”
Wary now of being spotted by one of the Wand King’s goons, I gestured Apple Bloom to follow us around the narrower streets behind the row. Smoke belched out of the black forges, rising high into the air before being pushed by the breeze coming from over the walls. Steam gouted from whatever they were pouring into the water, and the sea air here smelled foul.
“Well,” I continued, “what is it the trunk of?”
“The World Ash, of course. Yggdrasil.”
“The tree from Norse mythology?” I asked, boggling at her.
“From what now?” she answered, looking at me with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
“Never mind,” I shook my head. “So there’s other worlds out there, aren’t there?” I glanced up. In daylight, the starry branches were barely visible, but I could clearly see the planets as bright points in the cerulean skies.
“Oh, yes,” Wire said with a nod. “I’ve never had a chance to visit, though I know goblins who have. They can get pretty dangerous. A lot of goblins go that way if they’re trying to practice their art—there’s a few different performing circuits that way. Sometimes, magicians pick pupils if they think they got promise.”
“Is that how Twig did it?” I asked, thoughtful. Perhaps if this whole thing didn’t work out, I could stow away with one of the troupes. That group performing in the marketplace looked like they might be willing to accept a filly if she showed some aptitude.
“Oh, no,” Wire shook her head. “Twig got accepted right away by a really famous magician. Maille had similar treatment from Amata Toshiro. All of the girls were exceptionally talented. Even…” she trailed off and her ears drooped.
Apple Bloom creased a frown at her. “What’s up?”
“Long story,” she said with a sigh. “My sister was one of the Wand King’s closest servants, but she… went away a long time ago.”
“Oh. Ouch. Sorry.”
“Maybe she realized he was a really bad person and took off so she wouldn’t have to serve him?” Sweetie Belle suggested brightly.
Wire said nothing, her head drooping, too.
For my part, I marched on, unafraid of what might lurk among the alleyways and parapets. I knew that if something did leap out at us, the Morgwyn would swoop in and save the day. A monster at your side does a great deal to inure you to the other monsters that might be after you. If it helped me to look more like a leader, well, that was just icing on the cake. Eventually, we climbed up on top of a warehouse roof to get a better look.
“There, that one,” Wire said, pointing a hoof at one of the foundries.
“How do you know?” I asked, looking for any distinguishing marks on the basalt building. “I thought you said you’d never been to the city before.”
“Sure, but this one’s got Wand soldiers around it.” She pointed down at a series of armored carriages in front of the building. “Proper tidy, innit?”
Oh, that was just peachy. “Well, I guess that answers my question.” Of course, it wouldn’t do to endanger the others. Maybe I could lie to them, but asking them to follow me into the lion’s den was rather too much.
After rooting around in our sack of goodies, I pulled out the sound sphere. “Girls? Get Scootaloo up after I’m gone. We may need to make a fast getaway.”
“If you think you’re goin’ in there alone, Moonlight,” Apple Bloom said, setting her hooves, “you’ve got another think comin’.”
“I dunno,” Wire said. “I’m perfectly happy to sit around here. Nice and…” She flinched at the sound of a cat shrieking a few buildings over. “Reasonably safe.”
I shook my head. “I really appreciate it, Apple Bloom, but aside from this being crazy dangerous, I don’t know if both of us can sneak through all that successfully.” Digging into the pack again, I pulled out one thing I had made sure to buy: a set of paper tags just like the ones the raccoon peddler had used to get into the city. They’d cost us a goodly portion of our earnings, but I suspected they’d be more than worth the purchase price. “I need you to look after the others.”
Sweetie Belle pouted. “I don’t really need looking after. Still, the part about you two sneaking in is a little, uhm… risky sounding. Maybe we should hang back for this one, make sure we can get away?”
Apple Bloom shook her head. “All right.” She poked me in the chest. “But next time, no talking me out of it. I’m only agreeing because Scootaloo is tired right now and I may need to take over.”
“Deal,” I shook her hoof. “All right, girls. Wish me luck.”
Wire abruptly snatched me to her chest. I yelped as she squeezed. “Please, don’ get caught,” she said.
“Okay,” I wheezed and craned myself off her. “Th-thanks…” I hurried to the edge of the roof, checking to be sure no one was watching, if only to hide my sudden blush. Then, with a few good twists of my teeth, I set the sound sphere as far as it would go and noiselessly slapped the tag on my chest. As it had before, the magical paper billowed out like it was made of vapor, covering me in a foggy barrier. With my hoofsteps silenced, I ran across the street.
The Wand guards stationed at every entrance wore thick, dark plate, their faces obscured by riveted helmets. Not one of them remarked as I passed by in plain view. Rather than try and open a door with them watching, I kept to the side and charged up to the wall of the building. Above, a huge, basalt kiln bulged out of the structure. Placing my hooves against the steeply inclined wall, I concentrated on grabbing the surface and, almost effortlessly, scaled it.
Ponies can give goats a run for their money, apparently.
Towards the top of the structure, part of the interior was exposed to the air. Like some vast dragon’s maw, it sucked air in through the opening, only to be blown out again in a hot breath. Leaping onto an enormous, dormant bellows allowed me to hop down further. I ghosted along the rafters as I looked down on a hellish landscape which was part steel mill, part weapons manufactory. All of it centered around one great furnace, which glowed so bright I couldn’t look directly into the flames. By shielding my eyes, I could just make out a powerfully built, hunched-over figure standing next to it, holding tongs deep in flame.
With two huge stomps, the figure, a vast red-skinned creature with a pair of sharp, curling horns stepped away from the forge. He took the star-bright lump of iron in his tongs to an anvil and began to hammer. Each blow sent a great shower of sparks to illuminate the cavernous armory, a flash of radiant power. Each one starkly illuminated forests of blades and bits of armor, only for them to diminish into half-forgotten shadows by its fading.
For a long time, I waited, wondering whether or not Maille had already come, or if she was on her way, or if this was some other business of the Wand King. Perhaps I would at last be able to glimpse that ruler of goblins. As time passed, however, and the ringing lulled me into a sense of security, I found myself dozing, lulled by the hypnotic pulse of fire and steel. Eventually, the armorer plunged his creation back into the flames. The bellows roared, stoking it to shocking heights once again.
In that brightness, I saw Maille, for the first time since I leapt from the Wand Castle.
This, I imagined, must be her true form. It resembled Rarity very little, yet it was still unmistakable. She was a slender thing, upright, her face and skin pale. Clothed in shimmering maille, she walked on two long, sturdy legs that each ended in dragon-like talons, and a tail trailed behind her, covered in white scales. Her hair was long and white and lovely, with a quality not unlike silver. For all her prettiness, though, she carried herself with confidence and strength, and, when she faced her master, her dark eyes wavered not at all in the intense light.
They remained there for a while, neither saying a word. It could have been a battle of wills, or maybe it was just that neither of them knew what to say.
Little did Maille know that I hovered above, wondering whether or not I could hate her for what she had done, or what she might be about to do.
Amata Toshiro broke the silence first, his rumbling voice carrying even over the ringing of his hammer. “Do you see, Maille, the shape of what is to come?” His accent was not unlike the rabbit’s, if different in some inflections.
Her face turned to regard the piece of metal being pounded. “I claim no special knowledge.” It surprised me, a little, that her voice was so like Rarity’s, if more resonant, less flighty. She couldn’t have been older than Daphne, but her surety spoke of a great deal more maturity.
“Then it is not your hand that strikes the steel.”
The master lifted the steel, which had once again chilled to a cherry red, and placed it within the forge. Wordlessly, Maille moved to the side and worked the billows, her deceptively slender arms surging as she drove air in. I only realized then that the building was empty, despite having work stations for many more goblins. They must have believed themselves alone. I felt at once an intruder, a voyeur into an intensely private moment.
Not that such would deter me, but the power of this meeting was not lost on me.
When the iron was white hot again, the master pulled it out. I’ll be the first to admit that there is little I knew of metallurgy, but it seemed to me that any natural steel should have melted at that point. It was more than abundantly clear that I was also witnessing some of the craft that Wire had informed me of.
Acting again on one of those unseen, unspoken signals, Maille tied her elegant hair back from her head and slid an apron over herself. Grabbing a great hammer that must have weighed twice as much as she herself appeared, she went to the other side of the anvil and, whenever Amata Toshiro struck the steel, she struck it, too, moments later. Their rhythm intensified as they worked together—he turning the steel, she matching his blows.
Back and forth they went, and I watched in silence. In and out of the forge, each working up a great sweat, the heat and exertion melding together.
Finally, he offered the tongs to her, and she took the steel and looked at several barrels along the wall. Selecting, she plunged it in. A great hiss and gout of steam rose up, billowing her trailing silver hair.
“What have you wrought?” Amata Toshiro asked.
She pulled it out and brought it to the fire for a better look. It was laid upon the table, and she looked at it as it cooled. “A piece of something greater.”
Well, to me it looked like a lump of twisted metal, but what did I know?
Her master laid a huge hand on her shoulder. “You know I will not take sides in this. If you go forth from here, you will go alone.”
“I know,” she said, not turning to look at him. “I didn’t come to beg you to change your mind.”
“You came to ask me to change yours. Despite my forging you, you remain unfinished.”
Maille looked down at her palms. “I don’t know what I am doing, master. Another guides my hands.”
“That is a poor way to smith.” He reached down and picked up the still-hot iron in one hand without so much as a flinch. “The hands that perform the work must have clear direction, or the metal is wasted.”
“I don’t believe it is—not yet,” she said, shaking her head. “She’s still intact, somewhere.”
The man looked at his apprentice. “Misplacing your tools? I thought I broke you of that habit years ago.”
She laughed shortly. “More like they got up and walked off of their own accord.”
“Funny. I don’t seem to recall accepting that excuse back then, either.”
“I still stand by my story,” she said, her beautiful smile now in full force. “But… this time, I worry that I’ve botched it. I didn’t have to worry about such things before. The girls and I… what did we know, then?”
“What do you know now?”
“Little enough,” she admitted, so quietly I almost didn’t hear. “Too little. I don’t think I can turn aside, though. What we’re doing… it’s very important. I’ve seen enough to know that. I’m going to have a hand in shaping a world that is to come, Master. How can I pass that by?”
“I thought you said that another guides your hands.”
Maille glanced down at her palms again and curled them closed. “So I did.” She sighed.
He turned and put the iron piece on a shelf. “Yet I already sense you will not be deterred.”
“I must not be.”
“Then your concern lies with your wayward bar of metal.” He turned towards her again and placed his great hands on her arms. She looked up into his face. “You know how I feel on the matter. It is a great crime to waste good metal without purpose, but it is a greater crime still to destroy that which is irreplaceable. Better, I think, to leave the job undone if the doing would mar this creation.” He sighed. “Yet, if it must be done…”
“It must.”
“You have a bright future ahead of you, Maille,” he said slowly. “I see in you a great artisan, one worthy to carry on the legacy I am burdened with. Since the ancient ones crossed the sea of stars to places unknown, we have been entrusted with their art. If you are to do that justice, you must not fail in doing what is right and proper and good.” He released her gently. “Take the hammer in hand. You must decide how best to shape your workings.”
For a moment, Maille didn’t seem to be able to look her master in the eye. “I… I am not sure I…” She went silent, then met his gaze and straightened. “Yes. I understand. No matter the cost to myself, the working transcends me. Such is the curse of all artists.”
“Such it is.”
“Thank you, master.” She curtsied, an act that had him blushing as the fire had been unable to make him do.
He shooed her off. “Enough with that. Go, child. You have duties to attend to.”
“Are you sure I cannot stay a bit? I feel a powerful need to work with metal again,” she said wistfully, looking over the great machines.
“Find your own forge. I am going home for the evening, and no one works here without my supervision.” He gestured her towards the door.
“Of course. Thank you, again,” she said, walking towards the door with her back straight once more.
“Oh,” he called. “Where are you staying? I may wish to send something your way.”
She turned back to face him with a puzzled expression. “You?”
“Is not an old man entitled to sentimentality when he so chooses?”
“Yours is the sentimentality of old leather and ancient steel. It creaks and groans with every motion,” she tossed back.
He laughed. A deep, bellow’s roar. “Then you’ll be sure to hear it coming.”
“I stay on Ivy Lane, in the Inn of Four Seasons, with Rose.”
“Hmph,” he grunted. “Frilly.”
“I am a lady,” she said, pulling her hair free and letting it fall around her slim form. “In spite of your efforts, I might add.”
“Hmph. Begone with you.” He tossed his hammer casually and she dodged it, darting out with a silvery laugh. With a grunt of amusement, he stalked over to the forge and watched it die down.
Carefully, ignoring the pop of my largely unused legs, I walked back across the rafters to my exit. Just as I climbed on to the large bellows, I glanced down, and thought I saw the gleam of a pair of dark, knowing eyes in the growing gloom. With a hop and a jump, I was free and into the sunlight again.
Momentarily blinded, I covered my eyes with my foreleg and watched the street until Maille and her retinue had gone, their enchanted carriages carrying them away. Then, climbing back down, I made my way back to the others where they hid beneath the sheet metal awning of a low dive. The others watched my approach, breathlessly waiting.
“I know where we’re going next,” I told them, looking back at the squat basalt building. “I’ll tell you about what happened in there along the way.”
Not that I really understood it at the time. Metaphors couched in similes. I knew they had been discussing me, but what about I could not have said.
All I knew is that I could not hate Maille.
* * *
Apple Bloom heaved as the wagon rattled fitfully across the stones. Once again, we had transitioned to another part of the city. This one rose in terraces up a massive hill, with stones fit tightly together with only a minimum of mortar to hold their places. Moreover, it, unlike other parts of the city, was given over to greenery that sprouted in great abandon wherever we looked. Trees shaded streets from the harsh glare of the sun and parks replaced plazas. Every building incorporated a garden, or at least a few plants, as far as I could see, and the goblins here, who languidly lounged on balconies and shady spots, tended towards loose garments and bright colors.
The rope harness attached to the wagon had begun to dig into my shoulders, and I slumped, panting. “Okay. This officially sucks. I did not sign up for mountain climbing.”
“Well,” Sweetie Bell said, rubbing her own shoulder, “if we’re going to make it to that inn, we gotta go up this hill. I’m pretty sure that’s what the weird snake guy said.”
Apple Bloom shoved the wagon a couple extra feet to put it on level ground, and we all collapsed into a pile.
Scootaloo, having largely recovered from her our earlier travels and her circuits about the market place, winced and gingerly stretched her legs. “We’ve been running around all day. This place is huge.”
Wire winged down from above and landed gracefully nearby. “Well, you know, if’n you’re tired, why don’t you just take the tram up?”
The four of us looked at her. Wire shrank back. “Uhm… you know? Public transportation? An easy way for the masses to get around the city? …Please don’t hit me!” she squealed and covered her eyes with her wings as our glares intensified.
“Just lead the way,” Apple Bloom growled, getting up to start pushing the laden wagon once more.
Our collective countenances were enough that Wire led us across the terrace at a safe distance, far enough ahead of the rest of us that none of us could strangle her. Eventually she led us through a thicket to reach what seemed to be a train station of sorts. Like most of the architecture on the hill, it sat in a vaguely pyramidal shape, with a flat top and broad square entryways, including huge passages for the tram rails. Ahead, tunnels dug into the mountainside or rose up on elevated rails passing between the buildings.
That just figured. If they had electricity and engines, then subways, railcars, and even sewers were not unreasonable additions. That’s what I got for assuming this was some sort of standard-issue fantasy world.
Of course, the last thing I wanted to dwell on was a boring train station. Couldn’t imagine someone who would find waiting around to be picked up interesting.
The rest of our trip up the hill was spent in placidity aboard a tram car. We broke out the rice cakes, baked vegetable patties, cheese, and bread we’d bought from a food cart with our ill-gotten gains and had a much needed late lunch. I watched the city through the windows, not really participating in the conversation. For all its alien exoticness, Mag Mell had a charm about it that reminded me of visiting Boston or New York City. Only it had magic and animal people and other cool things, so it was at least ten times better than either of those.
In other circumstances, I might have loved to go live there.
Ivy Lane proved to be near the flat top of the hill. It was less a single street than it was a collection of covered areas protected against the environment, with stone piercework windows overlooking the city. Ivy flowered all around it, even in the depths of autumn, with lilac and cherry blossoms forming a delicate carpet on the ground. There was a definite flair of India about it, one I recognized from television and movies more than anything particularly wholesome, with domes and pointed archways predominating.
“I wonder why they’re staying here?” Wire asked. “Bloody hell, it’s not like the Cup palace isn’t right there.” She pointed a hoof up a ways, to where a great stepped pyramid climbed up to defy the hill it had been built upon. Two massive stairways converged before the ziggurat, and, even from our distance, we could hear the blare of trumpets and drums as some sort of celebration wound its way up. Huge red banners streamed from the sides of the building, and it gleamed in places with the metallic shine of silver and gold. “Looks like they’re havin’ their Harvest Celebration. There’ll be heaps of food to be had there for the Cup types. Be goin’ on for days, nonstop, wallowin’ in the largesse of the realms. Not that Cups need much of a reason to go on holiday.”
“Big on celebrations, huh?” I asked.
“Oh, aye. They’ll be wanged out by evenin’.”
“Live Wire,” Sweetie Belle said with starry eyes, “your accent is hypnotic. I should practice it.”
“Rarity would wash your mouth out with soap,” Apple Bloom warned with a laugh.
Wire blushed and rubbed her head. “Just talkin’ like myself is all.”
“I think we’ve got a bit of a problem,” I said as I studied the hotel. “They’re not being super obvious about it, but there’s someone at each of the entrances and open windows.” I pointed a hoof, letting them see the robed figures apparently lounging at each spot. Whenever someone came to one of the entrances, they either struck up a conversation or nodded to them.
Wire looked skeptically down at our tags. “Going to be cutting it tight… besides, if they’re takin’ the effort to guard it, they probably have protections against unwanted intruders, especially ones using magic to hide themselves. Folks who go to a high-class place like this are usually wary of such things.” She chewed nervously on her hoof. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this, girls? I really, really don’t wanna get caught.”
“Now just you hold on a minute,” Apple Bloom said. “The Cutie Mark Crusaders don’t give up until the cows come home.”
“Sometimes, not even then,” Sweetie Belle agreed. “They like to come in early if it’s not a nice day, after all.”
Apple Bloom sauntered off towards the inn, taking a meandering route around it, leaving us to wait. By the time she returned, she was grinning ear to ear. “Well, well. They got a bathhouse.”
I waited for a moment. “Yes, and? Can we climb in through a window or something?”
“Nope, too narrow, but that don’t matter. It’s heated.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Hah,” Scootaloo scoffed and patted my head, “leave it to us. Watch and learn.”
* * *
I grasped Wire’s hooves and let her haul me out of the pipe with a sick pop of grease. I stared at the stained girls surrounding me. We were squeezed in between a brick wall and an enormous cylindrical boiler, which churned rhythmically.
“Let us never speak of that again,” I suggested.
“I dunno, it wasn’t that bad,” Sweetie Belle said and wiped her face. That only served to smear her coat more thoroughly. “Those alligators were nice. They could really keep a beat, and their soprano was amazing.”
“Never again. I don’t care—if anyone ever asks, I’m skipping over that whole mess. Eugh, I feel like I’ll never be clean again.” I shivered all the way down to the bone, with my coat sticking up at all angles where sewage and oil hadn’t slicked it. “Where did you girls learn so much about plumbing, anyway?”
Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “Poorly planned attempt at getting our cutie marks. Honestly, we’ve been a little desperate lately. I think we’ve learned enough about carpentry, electrical repair, sewing, sports team management, and interior decoration to last a lifetime without one cutie mark to show for it.” She fixed a crimp in her long tail and brushed at a singed part irritably. “Well, at least we’re in a bathhouse. Cleaning should be the easy part.”
Wire put a hoof to her lips. “Shh!”
Immediately, we all shut up and swiveled our ears. Footfalls and the swish of a robe came and went, and then another. The second set entered the room, and we watched under the boiler as a pair of slippered rabbit feet crossed the floor. They shuffled a bit as the owner fiddled with something on one of the walls before leaving as they’d come.
We breathed a sigh of relief and piled out into the room. “One problem,” I said as we collected ourselves. “How are we going to get out again after? I don’t really fancy trying to squeeze back through.”
Wire rubbed her chin as she considered a metal box attached to the wall, with insulated cables running from the box and into the hall. “I might be able to bang somethin’ up. Give me a moment.” She shook her toolbox out and popped the lid, revealing a mess of electronics equipment that might as well have been a spellbook for all the sense it made to me. Wire, though, navigated it with deft precision. She pulled a spring mechanism from one of her bags and wound it up. “Think a half hour will do us?”
Scootaloo snorted. “If not, we’ve probably spent too long here, anyway.” She held out a hoof. “All right, let’s have one of those magic tag thingies.”
“We’re good now that we’re inside, right?” I asked Wire.
“Yeah, probably.” She nodded. “They usually only secure the exterior walls.”
“All right, remember, we only have one more of these left,” I said as I slipped a tag to Scootaloo.
She swung it around, covering us once more in its billowing protection. Apple Bloom took out the sound sphere and twisted its key until it stuck. So, cloaked in silence and illusion, we crept out of the boiler room and up the stairs, following the aroma of soap and hot bathwater. A doorway flung itself open while we were in the hall, and the five of us pressed to the wall with our chests sucked in tight while a rabbit backed out and, oblivious to our presence, pushed a tea service down another way. She paused halfway down the hall and bent an ear to the wheels. Apple Bloom stretched her foreleg to hold the sphere a few feet further from the rabbit, and, when the servant wriggled the cart again, a squeak and shake met her rather than silence. Shrugging, she pressed on, and so did we.
Lapis and mother-of-pearl shell lent the bathhouse an ethereal grace. Its domed chambers swam with the reflected light of the water below, and steamy air turned everything that might have been sharp and clear into a vague dream. Statues of nymph-like young women stood at the corners, holding up the ceiling as decorative columns. As an afterthought, I stole a set of towels from a service and threw them over us to make two oddly shaped patrons in case the tag wore out unexpectedly, then we crept through. Somewhat to my surprise, we didn’t have to go searching through the inn—our quarry, as it turned out, were enjoying the inn’s cleansing accommodations already. I could just hear Maille’s voice in the final, smallest chamber.
With a gesture to the others, I slipped out of the towel I shared with Wire and stepped into the murky water, sinking in deep. Wire and the others joined me and left their covers on the side, ideally close so we could slip back into them on the way out. We silently glided through the jasmine-scented water to the edge and just poked our eyes out to watch.
The back of Maille’s head sat just above the lip of the neighboring bath. Her shiny white hair had been swept up into a loose bun with the aid of a pair of sticks, and her toned arms spread to either side. “Darling, you are making me feel positively decadent. You aren’t a servant—come, enjoy it.”
Rose stretched her hooves along the tiles at the far end of the pool. Unlike Maille, she at least greatly resembled a pony still, and even paralleled Fluttershy to a great degree. Her mane fell long across her back and sides, a deep red that faded along its length to delicate pink and bluish white tips. “I’m not feelin’ it, Maille,” she said, giving us a clear view of her mouth—which was definitely not like a pony’s, displaying pearly white fangs. She hoofed a cup of tea closer and sipped at it.
“We’re certainly paying enough for the privilege.”
“We aren’t here for privilege,” Rose snapped, roused by peevishness out of her languor. Her face smoothed and she glanced aside. “Sorry.”
“You see? This is exactly what I mean.” Maille flexed her back and lifted a powerful leg from the water, its silver scales gleaming in the soft light. “If you’re this tense, you’re liable to scare off the contact.”
“I’m liable not to care about the contact, nor anything else, for that matter.” Rose set an elbow against the floor and rested her pretty face on it. “How do we even know if she’s here, Maille? We’re wastin’ time we could be using combin’ the Everfree.”
“How you underestimate her,” Maille chided gently. “She had us played from the beginning, or near enough. The only thing that should surprise us at this point is that we didn’t see through it earlier. If the border guards reported a peddler sneaking through the lines, she was on it.”
“One peddler. How could she have found that in the middle of the Everfree?”
“How could she have escaped a castle full of goblins?” Maille ticked off her fingers. “She tricked the mine supervisor, so we know she’s able to manipulate people. She evaded Pinion and an entire squadron, so we know she’s slippery. Wherever she goes, she attracts tools and allies like a magnet does iron filings. And let’s not forget the Morgwyn.”
Rose shivered. “I don’t understand how Fetter could have been so foolish.”
“The creature brought him the child. What was he supposed to do?”
“Kill it.”
Maille snorted indelicately. “Don’t be ridiculous. The Wand King could destroy that creature, perhaps, but I wouldn’t stack Fetter up against it for all the gold in the Nine Worlds.”
“Does the King even know it was involved?” Rose asked. “I confess I ain’t been payin’ that much attention.”
“I can’t blame you, dear.” Maille slid across the pool and rested a hand on Rose’s side. “Come on. Soak a little. Let the heat ease your worries.”
“I spent day and night tramping through that forest.” Rose splashed a hoof disdainfully. “A few minutes of soakin’ won’t cleanse that. Soakin’ won’t bring back a basilisk’s missing eye.”
“No, but I’m sure he wouldn’t want you to suffer needlessly on his behalf,” Maille said, picking up a sponge. “To answer your question, no, I don’t think Fetter has told the King. Now, are you coming in or am I going to get up and wash you myself?”
Rose fixed a rotten glare on Maille, who was unbowed. With a sigh, she pushed at Maille instead, saying, “All right, make room.”
There was a bit of shuffling as Maille returned to her seated posture and Rose slid herself down into the hot water. She sighed and settled herself in, closing her eyes. “Do you remember when we used to do this for fun, Maille?”
“I do.”
“Wouldn’ it have been nice if we…” Rose sighed again.
“If we what?”
“We could have avoided all of this if we’d just told her the truth. We could have taken her to Mag Mell instead of that ancient rock.” Rose shook her head. “She’d have gone to the Well of her own accord, sure enough. It’s in her to be someone special.”
If she had kept that up, I would have started to blush.
Maille was silent for a moment. “Perhaps. It’s not the way things are done, though, Rose. We had a duty. We have a duty.”
“It’s a duty that’s eaten up our entire lives, Maille.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Maille said tightly. “What we do, we do for a purpose. I know it seems bad now, but it will work out. We just need to find her.”
“Oh?” Rose opened her eyes and glared. “Tell me, what part of prophecy mentioned a wild goose chase and eight years of waitin’, hopin’, beggin’ fate to work out? How exactly are we going to fulfill the terms now that she knows it was all a lie?”
Maille rubbed her face. “I don’t know. I wish… well, what I wish doesn’t matter. Thinking that way takes us down an ugly path. It takes us the way it took Flash.”
“Some bearer of the Element of Loyalty.” Rose laughed bitterly. “Ain’t that ironic? We lose a traitor only to get the real thing.”
“Poor Twig.” Maille giggled. “She’s high-strung enough as it is, and now she’s stuck with her almost every minute. She’s going to wind up coming apart at the seams.”
“I keep tellin’ her she should just say what she feels and get it over with,” Rose grumbled. “I’m still blown away; I thought she was Flash.”
“Yes, well—” Maille broke off as footsteps approached, hard shoes on the tile.
A golden-armored woman approached through the mist, with a helmet under her arm and great white feathery wings spread from her back. On her breastplate a grail had been picked out in silver and copper. There was a definite elegance about her, but there was nothing soft in her face.
“Strange,” Maille said as the woman approached. “I’ve always known the Cup to be a great deal more subtle with their agents.”
“Then know that what is said here is not secret,” the woman intoned. “The Cup rejects any and all overtures. King Xerxes is neutral.”
“Your previous King felt differently. This smacks of renegin’,” Rose said in a low and dangerous tone.
The tan woman stared back at her dispassionately. “What King Marduk willed is absolute. What King Xerxes wills is absolute. King Xerxes has willed that the word and deeds of King Marduk are null and void, and thus the Cup has declared neutrality,” she said, each word measured and certain. “Let your King of Wands roll the dice on his own.”
“Strikes me as an irresistible force hittin’ an immovable object,” Rose growled. “Perhaps we should hit him a few times to—”
“Enough, Rose,” Maille said sharply. “Inform the King of Cups that we thank him for his courtesy in informing us of his decision.”
Rose and the armored woman exchanged a final glare before the latter nodded tightly and marched away.
“Well, that was a vivid waste of time,” Maille said.
“Should have let me smack her around.”
Maille shrugged. “What would that have proven? We’d have made trouble and annoyed the Cup King for no real gain. The Wand King can bring it up himself if he feels it is needed.”
“We’d better get back to the ship, then,” Rose said, starting to lift herself up.
“The ship can wait,” Maille said airily. “I paid for this, so let’s just enjoy it while we can. Like old times.”
“Happier times,” Rose sighed.
I looked at my wrist and then realized I had neither a watch nor a wrist anymore. I turned to Wire to mouth “How long?” at her.
Wire shook her head at me, and I swam back over to the towels, feeling frustrated. We’d come all this way, spent so much effort, only to learn so little. So there was some dire prophecy that I was intimately involved in that they were hard up on. There was nothing in there I could use, and it was information I’d already surmised on my own.
Sure, perhaps Maille and Rose did care for me, or cared about me at the very least. Maybe that helped ease the pain of what they did, if only a little. All it meant in the end, however, was that I needed to avoid them and move on with my life.
I didn’t need them. I didn’t need anybody.
We shuffled back into our concealing towels and trooped for one of the nearby doors.
“Hey,” Scootaloo asked quietly from the back of the group, “when she said Element of Loyalty, did she mean Rainbow Dash? She hasn’t been kidnapped, too, has she?”
“I don’t care,” I answered dully. I didn’t bother to look back and see how my words impacted.
We stepped through a curtained archway into a walled garden, with the scented flowers sticking to our hooves, but apparently walking sheets weren’t the greatest disguise in the universe. A hand yanked them off us before we’d gone four steps, both owned by a pair of robed women who stood above us. They had ivy embroidered into their silken garments—servants, no doubt.
One, a curvy sort with a tiger’s striped coat and cat-like features, tapped her sandaled foot and looked down at us amusedly. The other, whose webbed hands and feet and scales spoke of piscine nature, barked at us in an unfamiliar language. The tigress waved her hand, speaking more calmingly to her and then to us in lightly-accented English. “Looks like five little Wandies wanted to enjoy a day at the spa. You girls know how exclusive and expensive this place is, don’t you?”
Wire wibbled senselessly, shrinking down. I rolled my eyes and smiled guilelessly at the girls. “You caught us. I’m really sorry, we’ll never do it again.” The Crusaders stepped up to my side and put on their best innocent faces.
The fish-like woman crossed her arms, but the tigress laughed. “Cute. You’re a slippery one, aren’t you? Well, I see no reason to make a big deal out of this—we’ll just put you to work for the day and call it even.”
Crap.
“Oh! Well, our parents are expecting us back, and it’s already pretty late…”
“Then you can head back in the morning and call it a lesson learned,” she said and smiled so that her sharp teeth showed. There was no overt malice, but she slid a hint of steel into her tone that brooked no disagreement. “I’m sure your parents will be grateful that they aren’t being sent a bill instead.”
Double crap. “Wire,” I hissed, “are you sure that you—”
Then everything went dark. A localized blackout, with all the compound’s electric lights going out at once. Almost on its heels, there came the sound of hissing steam.
The women swore, but we were already moving, galloping at full tilt for the exit. We bowled over the startled guard just as the curtain to the bathhouse was flung open. Maille’s voice rang out into the late afternoon air. “Amelia! I know that’s you!”
“We’re had! Get to the wagon!” I shouted, and we scrambled over a fence. Wire sprang into the air and went ahead of us, her wings flapping in panic. Wherever Maille and Rose’s entourage of Wand goblins were, they’d be boiling over the streets in no time flat. With our hooves pounding, we made it into the street as Wire pulled the red wagon into the open and hitched the scooter.
“Everypony on board!” Scootaloo shouted and dug her heels into the ground, building up speed while her wings kicked into high gear.
Maille, wrapped in a towel and soaking wet, sprang on top of the inn’s garden wall. “Amelia, wait! You don’t know what this is all about!”
I snatched a thunderstone from Wire’s side and flung it up at Maille, coming a foot or two short and sending sparks up from the wall. “Get away from me!”
“Somegob, bring me my cages, or I’ll strip your skins from your bones!” Rose hollered in an indeterminate direction.
Scootaloo tore off, heading first down the street towards the sunset. Already, though, I could see enchanted, horseless carriages wheeling after us. The Wand goblins atop them were armed with nets and catcher poles.
“Right!” Apple Bloom shouted as one bore down on us. Scootaloo took the turn so sharp that the wagon lifted clean off the ground and bounced against a wall. With the street too narrow to follow, the lead carriage waited at the entrance to the alley while others raced off, their wheels rattling across the stones.
Wire whimpered, covered her eyes, and squeezed down into the base of the wagon as if trying to absorb herself into it. “Th-they’re gonna catch and hang me!”
“Get a grip on yourself!” I shouted as I shook her, but it was to no avail. She simply curled up more. Sweetie Belle shrieked a warning and pointed ahead as another carriage pulled up in front of the path. Scootaloo gave a grunt of effort and turned us again, ramping up one of the sloped walls and carrying us over a startled mole-goblin’s garden before crashing down on the far side.
“We need the last tag!” she shouted back, starting to pant with effort as her wings pumped harder.
It was becoming increasingly clear that the Wand goblins had us surrounded. The only way to get out of our area any faster would have been to ramp off the terrace—and our survival then would have been doubtful. Nodding, I reached into the box and pulled the last tag, flinging it over us in a concealing vapor. We raced past an oblivious carriage and started down one of the main streets, juking to avoid the startled and frightened passersby.
“All right,” I said. “We should head back to the market. We can lose them there and—”
An eagle’s scream startled me, and I looked up. There, directly above us, a trio of birds dived towards the wagon. “Agh! Move, move!” I shouted, and Scootaloo jinked hard. Talons snapped at the air just above my mane, and Sweetie Belle screamed as one sliced into hers.
“Some monsters and animals can see through concealment,” Wire whimpered. “The others will use them to track us.”
“Rose!” I spat. “Well, I hope you like your pets being hurt, because I’m not done yet!” I took Wire’s bandolier in my teeth and tugged, freeing it so that I could have a ready supply of electrical ammunition.
“Whoa, Moonlight,” Apple Bloom said. “We need to focus! Where do we go?”
I reluctantly trimmed my destructive impulses and bit my lip, thinking fast. Where could we go that they wouldn’t… “Of course!” I turned towards the ziggurat and pointed a hoof. “There! Full speed ahead, Scootaloo!”
“What?” Scootaloo demanded. “Why there?”
“Because they’re not allies anymore!”
“I don’t think they’re friends of ours, either!” she said skeptically, but she turned down the main street anyway.
Above, the eagles dove again, and Sweetie Belle put her hooves to her head and shouted, “I can’t take this anymore!” She snatched the bandolier from me with a furious effort and started throwing stones as fast as she could, peppering the air with them and shrieking like a banshee the whole while. With singed feathers, and perhaps more than a little fear of the terrifying little creature, the eagles broke off their attack and scattered across the rooftops.
The goblins, however, had all the information they needed to close in on us. Armored goblins hanging off their enchanted rides readied their implements as fully a dozen carriages raced onto the main boulevard. Scootaloo yelled and threw everything she had into her tortured wings. Every little bounce in the road knocked us several feet into the air, and I clung to the others and the wagon desperately as she turned off the road, hit a sloped wall, and arched us high over the palace’s curtain wall.
With deceptive grace we soared. The wagon came out from under us, and Scootaloo let exhaustion take her. I managed to hold onto the other girls as we plummeted, but even Wire’s desperate, last-minute flapping couldn’t arrest the fall.
A wagon, a scooter, and five fillies came down hard in the palace courtyard with a series of sickening collisions.
* * *
Pain lanced through my chest as I stirred, there in the shadow of evening’s last sunlight beyond the wall. My vision swam into clarity, and I perceived the wagon as a crumpled mass of aluminum fully ten meters away, with our belongings scattered about it. Standing was a labor, and so was breathing, but I ignored both as best I could.
But Sweetie Belle’s crying drew me, stumbling and quaking as it was.
She kept trying to stand, but her left hindleg bent at a very unfortunate angle. I pushed her down and buried my face in her mane, wetting it with my tears. “I’m sorry,” I breathed. “Just hold still. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Scootaloo limped over, favoring one of her own hindlegs. Scrapes and bruises covered her, but it seemed her helmet had taken the worst of it. A crack split it nearly in two over her left ear, which was stained noticeably, and she discarded the broken helmet as useless. Apple Bloom bit back her own tears as she pushed herself up, only to fall when her forelegs refused to cooperate. Only Wire seemed free of anything past minor bruises, spared by her own aerial gifts.
“It’s all my fault.” I sobbed. “I… I’ve dragged you all out here, and, and…”
“Moonlight,” Apple Bloom said, her voice tight with pain. “Don’t. We’re in this… ow… together.”
Scootaloo looked at the splintered and shattered wreckage of her wagon and scooter. “Uh. Yeah. Right. Together.”
Wire perked her ears and listened to the sounds of the Wand forces pulling up at the wall behind us. Their angry shouts reached us, and she shivered.
Scootaloo walked over and put her shoulder against Sweetie Belle’s other side, helping the injured girl to stand. “Come on. Moonlight. We need a plan. I… I know you’re upset, and maybe you’ve got a good reason to be, but those guys are going to figure out a way to get us if we let them. We need a plan, and you’re—” She stared at her ruined scooter again “—usually pretty good at those.”
I wiped at my face with a foreleg, making no headway against the tears. “A plan… I… yeah…” I sniffled and tried to collect myself. It took a while. Long minutes ticked by as the sun’s light rose higher and higher, chased by shadows.
“Wire,” I said at last. “Does the Cup have airships here?”
“Uh…” She looked up at the sky thoughtfully. “Yeah. They should.”
“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” Jean de la Fontaine.
Daphne
“Of course, we can do extra cheese. Did you want a pickle on the side with that?” the waitress filly asked. It was all I could do to not crane my neck around to try and get a look at her cutie mark past the folds of her cute little skirt. In a world where destiny stamped itself on a person’s sides, I had to wonder if this was what she intended with her life, or if ponies, like humans, had to start with the small jobs before working their way up to their real dreams.
It’s funny when I think about it. She looked to be the same age as me, but she already knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life.
I smiled back at her and nodded. “Yes, please.” The straw under my rear shifted, and I surreptitiously fluffed it up when the waitress turned to go. It had me wondering whether or not this was a thing with pony cafés, or if it was in some way intended to be quaint or chic in a fashion I didn’t yet comprehend.
I flexed my hooves on the ground in front of the little mushroom-motif table and people-watched. Or, well, pony-watched. It was a habit that had quickly developed over the long hours of waiting for something to happen. Most of them were spent in Twilight’s library reading, but digging into the ancient tomes she’d requested from Canterlot demanded a far more scholarly approach than perusing more recent work did. After seeing me nod off onto the pages more than a few times, no one could really blame Twilight for politely suggesting I take a break to recharge, practice my magic, and maybe have some time around town to myself.
The worst part was how useless it all was. Moldy manuscripts full of unsupported ramblings about everything from demons in the air to the proper uses of dung in alchemy. Sure, goblins came up now and then, but it all felt so disjointed that it was clear the goblin race had managed to successfully obfuscate their presence from the historical narrative.
All this boiled down to me having no real further use to anyone.
Research was out of my hooves. Leit Motif and Marcus were off chasing leads. Naomi had already started putting together things we might need for a long-term trip. Twilight and her friends were always ready to tear off and save Equestria.
For being the person who brought all of these disparate people together, that was a real irony. I’d delegated myself into oblivion.
Despite all that, though, it was hard to feel unhappy about it. Indeed, it was something of a relief. Upon setting out, the prospect of rescuing my sister from the clutches of terrible monsters seemed so utterly impossible that the anxiety had been crippling sometimes. Now that there were loads of competent people working to help me, it felt for the first time that we might actually come out of this alive and successful. The only real source of anxiety other than my vague fears were my dreams, which remained full of unexplained imagery and uncertain context. Reflections of my waking uncertainties, no doubt.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel a little depressed that my every night ended with me drowning.
“Here you go!” the teenager from earlier said brightly, sliding the tray with my sandwich and orange juice off her head. “Enjoy!”
“Thanks,” I said, levitating the sandwich with a jerky sort of grace. It was much as Leit Motif had surmised—I had been created with an adult’s sense of herself, and all it took was a little practice, as if I’d been able to do it all along. It’s like the old saying about bike riding, only less to do with muscle memory and more to do with an inherent capacity to blow the world up with your mind. There was still no headway on learning real spells, though.
While I was in the midst of finishing the last few bites of my breakfast, Bon Bon wandered up from the road and waved. “Hello, Daphne!”
“Hey.” I waved back. “What’s up?”
“I was just doing some grocery shopping earlier,” she said. “On that note, I was wondering, have you heard back from Lyra? I need to know if she’s coming back. The fewer bales of diet grass, bottles of goat’s milk, and boxes of—” she shuddered “—puffed locusts I have to buy, the better.” She shuddered again for effect and muttered, “Really, just because ponies can eat a thing does not mean they should. And she won’t even touch my bonbons, just the store-bought ones.”
I tilted my head. “Doesn’t it offend you that she doesn’t eat your bonbons?”
“No, she buys the store-bought kind because they’re terrible. Sometimes you just want really bad food, you know?”
“Uh, no.” I said flatly.
She shrugged. “I don’t, either, but for her it’s a thing.”
“Well, I haven’t heard back from her, anyway.” I shook my head. “They should be returning by airship, so they might not send a message ahead of them. I don’t think you need to worry about Lyra, though; she’s almost certainly going to head out with us.” I glanced off towards the woods in the distance. “We’re probably heading into the Everfree when they come back, regardless of what they find. Those of us here in Ponyville haven’t really found any other good leads that didn’t dry up centuries ago.”
“Well, I wish you good luck,” she said with a sad smile. “For what it’s worth, you’re in good hooves. Lyra may drive me up a wall, but she knows her magic, even if she tries to brush it off as nothing special.” She shifted her saddlebags and glanced towards the market. “Want to join me? You look like you could use the company.”
“No, thanks.” I shook my head and perked my ears. “I think I’ll take a walk. Thank you anyway.”
“Don’t mention it,” she nodded.
In truth, I probably could have used a little companionship right then. No matter—I didn’t want to become dependent on others more than I already was. I hitched my own saddlebags back on and started towards town. These were a gift from Naomi through Rarity, and they looked and fit a great deal better than the borrowed set I’d entered with, which had been intended for a full-sized riding horse. I didn’t bother to ask how Naomi got the money for it, and I seriously didn’t want to know.
Despite growing ever closer to winter, the autumn air was still as warm and lovely as it had been the first day I’d stepped across the barrier. I let my legs stretch out a bit and trotted. No pony really paid me any heed. There was nothing remarkable about me now that I no longer sported a forest of cuts and bruises or a set of bags that were far too large for me. So what if I didn’t have a cutie mark, either—no adult was going to judge me for it.
The schoolhouse approached through the trees, and I slowed to look at the foals playing in the yard. It was impossible not to smile at such a sight. Pony foals really were the most aggressively adorable creatures on the planet. Quite a few of them were Amelia’s age, too. I focused on a team playing some pony version of soccer near the back fence and pictured her with them.
For some reason, she came out in my imagination as a unicorn filly, with a cream coat and blond mane, just like mine. Even as a foal she had that same irrepressible energy that she carried around with her everywhere else. She bounded across the field to look up at me with that sly, smug grin of hers.
“Hey, Daphne!” a stallion’s voice came out of her mouth. I blinked and shook my head, dismissing the vision and looking up to find the real source.
Oh, great. It was him again.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” Thunderlane asked as he floated overhead. “Thought I’d clear away a few of the clouds. You know. For the kids.”
“For the kids. Of course,” I said. “You're as subtle as you are charming, Thunderlane.”
“Also great with kids,” he said with a grin. Maybe he wasn’t quite as much of a dolt as I surmised, because that sounded like humor. “Out for a run, huh?”
“A bit, yeah.” I started along the fence, picking up my pace again. “Just kind of checking things out. Enjoying the sights.”
Thunderlane kept up with his wings holding him aloft a few feet off the ground. “Yeah, I bet you don’t get views like this back in Canterlot.” He paused. “Okay, well, maybe you do, but you get them from like a mile off the ground. What’s it like there, anyway? I bet it’s amazing living right there in the shadow of the castle.”
For a brief moment, I wondered if this was some sort of cosmic joke. Here I was, a whole world away, and it felt like I was just down the street getting hit on by a local boy. Well, to be fair, in actual physical distance, Ponyville wasn’t that far away, but that’s beside the point. For once, I was going to set the record straight on something.
“I’m sorry, Thunderlane, I think you’ve gotten the wrong impression,” I said, not that I knew what for the life of me what had given him that impression, “I’m not really going to be around here much longer, and I’m not terribly interested in a long-distance relationship. I mean, I’m from another world—”
“City.”
“—yes, city, and that’s not really the sort of commitment a mare can make in just a couple days of, uhm…” You continuously trying to “bump into” me and me fleeing the other way? I said in my head, but thought better of it. “…getting to know one another.”
Thunderlane dropped to the path. “Ah. Well. Fair enough, I guess,” he said.
“That Cloudchaser seemed pretty interested in you,” I lied. Then again, perhaps she expressed her like in ways I didn’t understand. Derisive ways.
“I don’t know. She’s kind of off-and-on,” he said. “I tried to see other ponies after the last rocky spell, but then Rainbow Dash took off on that acting gig and I haven’t heard from her since, either, so I figure it’s off between us.”
“And you don’t think Cloudchaser is a little peeved at being second choiced like that?”
“Huh? No. It’s totally legitimate. Still, just the way things stand. I thought you and I hit it off pretty well, though, so—well, no big deal.” He flapped his wings and rose. “Thanks for making it clear, at least. I could use that in my love life more often.”
I waved him off. “Any time.”
As he set off back into the sky, I allowed myself a small sigh. If only he’d been a pig, so I could have shouted at him. It would have been really nice to start shouting at someone right then, to have a good fight so that I could just get all of this frustration out over my helplessness and malaise.
I began to trot back to Twilight’s library so I could find Marcus and piss him off. It was only about twenty steps later that I remembered he wouldn’t be there—gone off with Lyra and Leit Motif.
I hadn’t been able to shout or fight with anybody since he’d left.
Somehow I’d wandered into the middle of Ponyville again. Young stallions and mares greeted one another and formed cheerful little cliques. I imagined myself among them, comparing them to the groups at school I’d allowed myself to become so engaged in. They wouldn’t be obsessed with pop culture or the latest trends, though—at least, not the ones I was familiar with. It was a whole new breed of familiarity, one I could let myself be sucked into oh-so-easily.
A pair of mares turned to look at me. I realized only belatedly that I had been staring, and gave them an apologetic smile and wave before trotting on. They probably would have asked after me given a moment to do so.
Any longer here and I really would be one of them.
My steps hurried and carried me back.
* * *
“Daphne! There you are,” Twilight called as I stepped in the door. “I just sent somepony out for you. Did you get my message?”
“No,” I said, pushing the door shut behind me. We weren’t alone—Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Naomi were all present. Naomi must have shaken Patch somehow, since she was no where to be seen. “What’s up?”
Twilight restacked books on the shelves behind her. “The airship is coming in for a landing. Leit Motif had a message sent saying we should all get together.”
“Wow, already? They must have gotten what they needed pretty fast,” I said, daring to allow a thread of excitement to enter my tone. I paused as I passed Naomi and rocked back on my heels, looking at her more closely. “Also, whoa, nice dress. Like what you did with your hair.”
Naomi beamed and twirled, trailing curls of red bouncing on her shoulders where they escaped the artful mass of braids and bun on her head. “Do you like it?” She smoothed her hands over the dark silk skirt, which hiked daringly over one leg. “Rarity adapted one of her styles, and I understand this is the sort of hair styling they use for a princess!”
“A greatly simplified ceremonial style,” Rarity clarified. She sipped tea from a cushion set upon the floor. “And a painter who can’t use more than one or two canvases hardly deserves the name, I say. Humanity offers many possibilities. Perhaps I should start thinking about how to expand into this hitherto untapped market.”
“Applejack and Fluttershy should be here soon,” Pinkie Pie said. “And then Leit Motif and Lyra and Marcus will be almost right on top of them! We should hang out after the big important meeting.” She bounced over to the table. “I brought some awesome cupcakes just in case!”
“They are awesome!” Spike agreed from behind the table. Twilight’s magic caught him up and dangled him in the air with a stolen cupcake in hand. “Uh. Just testing?”
“Testin’ what?” Applejack asked as she pushed the door open. The look in her eyes took me back a bit—they were as frosty as they had been when she’d heard the story of Marble Stone.
“Applejack,” Naomi asked quietly, “are you all right? Did something happen?”
“More like somethin’ didn’t happen.” She walked over to Rarity and pulled her into a tight embrace.
“Applejack? Dear, whatever is the matter?” Rarity asked. She tensed up, as if she could sense whatever dire news the other mare had to impart.
“I just spoke to Zecora a little bit ago,” Applejack said, keeping her voice even as she slowly worked into her story. “She’d come in for some of the leftovers from the harvest, like she does every year. I asked her why the girls haven’t come home yet, and why they ain’t sent word ahead.” She took a deep breath. “She said the girls came to her house days ago, and she hasn’t heard back from them since.”
It would have been impossible for Rarity to go any paler shade of white, yet she tried mightily. She put a hoof over her heart and caught her breath in slow gulps. “Do my mother and father know?” she asked in a breathless, strangled tone. “Oh, stars! We have to go at once! We’ll need to comb every inch of the woods!” At once, she leapt to her feet and raced for the door, with Applejack not far behind her.
Lost in the forest.
“Wait!” I shouted, holding them up short just as they reached the door.
Fluttershy, who was in the midst of opening it, froze and started to shut it again. “I’ll come back later.”
“No—damn it, not you, Fluttershy. Sorry.” I walked up to the two mares, looking them in the eye. There I saw fear, anger, and a powerful determination. These were two young women who had lost their baby sisters to unknown forces in those dark woods that laid outside their homes and swallowed the unsuspecting. Perhaps this is what Naomi and Marcus had seen that first night, when they’d looked into my eyes and decided to go with me.
“The Everfree Forest has a lot of dangers,” I said quietly. “You all know that better than I do. This timing, though… it strikes me as more than a little too coincidental for this disappearance to have been an accident.” I held out a hoof to forestall comment. “I know, there could be a million possible things that could have happened, but even if these events aren’t related, we’re all going to the Everfree anyway when Leit Motif and the others get back. We can all search together.”
Applejack tilted her hat down to hide her eyes as she glanced aside, breathing deeply to steady herself as Rarity did the same. “Yeah,” she said after a moment, “you make a good point. Can do more together than apart.” She looked up at me. “Mark me, though, if you have to leave the forest or we find any sign of the girls, Rarity and I… well we might not follow you out.”
I nodded. “I understand. Let’s at least hear Leit Motif out—maybe she has some news that’s relevant.”
Rarity didn’t speak—perhaps she didn’t dare to with her emotions running as high as they were—and returned to her cushion. The tea went untouched from then on. Pinkie Pie sat between the two silently, and we waited with breathless uncertainly.
Several minutes later, a knock came on the door, and then Lyra burst in like a ray of sunshine. “The conquering heroes return victorious!” she declared as she pranced in, with all four hooves striking a happy beat. “Pinkie Pie, confetti!” She held out a hoof to the pink mare. When none was forthcoming, she glanced around. “Whoa. I know I’m not welcome everywhere, but this is a tough crowd.”
Twilight sighed. “We just had some bad news is all, Lyra. I hope you’ve brought some good to counterbalance it.” Her ears perked and she glanced past her. “It sure sounds like you have, but where’s Marcus and Leit Motif?”
“Bringing in the prisoner.”
“What?”
“What?” I echoed Twilight’s statement and stared at the smug unicorn, along with everyone else in the room. “Please tell me you guys didn’t kidnap Lightning Dust? You did, didn’t you? I’m going to pony prison for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”
Lyra waved me off with a hoof. “I swear, we had perfectly good reasons! Also, you aren’t technically an accomplice to the kidnapping yet.”
“Is that a cut on your head?” Naomi asked in a worried tone.
“Don’t worry about it, Leit patched me up.” Lyra looked Naomi over. “Nice dress.”
Behind her, Marcus yelped as the back of his head hit the doorframe.
“A little lower,” Leit Motif said.
“Yeah, I got that much,” he grumbled and ducked, steadying one end of a large bag held in Leit Motif’s green aura. Leit Motif trotted in and shut the door behind her with her rear hoof. She winced and rubbed her side, where a wine-colored bruise was faintly visible under her dark coat.
Together, they formed a semicircle before us and laid the package down in the center of the room. “Ladies and gentle—uhm,” Lyra said, “dragon and human—I present to you the pony known as Lightning Dust.” She caught the bag’s end in her magic and dumped out the tied and gagged form of a blonde mare.
Leit Motif crouched next to her while we stared in horror. “No use playing coy, Flash. We have your number.” She reached down and yanked out the sock in her mouth.
Lightning Dust groaned and awkwardly shifted to a sitting position, with her legs tied together in pairs before her. “A-all right, tidy. If I were a real magician, you lot wouldn’ be laughin’ quite so hard. Shows what I get for—for neglectin’ my studies,” she said in an accent that rang all sorts of bells for me. As I so often could, I heard the three goblins in the forest as clearly as if it were moments ago. Then, with a little shake, she shimmered and changed, almost as if a curtain were being peeled aside. All at once her coat darkened to a deep yellow while her mane lost all of its color. Her eyes turned pale and her wings shed their feathers.
The other mares in the room gasped with horror. Rarity pointed a hoof. “Changeling!”
The mare known as Lightning Dust winced. “Ugh. Please don’ try to associate us with those things. I’ve never tasted love and by Thor I have no intent on startin’ now.”
“Well,” Rarity conceded, “you didn’t change in a vile shade of green…”
“No, you’re right,” Twilight said as she pressed her face close to the ersatz pony. “That definitely wasn’t changeling magic. Just how did you do that?”
Leit Motif gave Lightning Dust—Flash—a light kick from behind. “That’s not all of her tricks. Show them the other one.”
“Do I have to?” Flash groaned. She hopped away from Leit Motif as the latter lifted her foot again. “Whoa, easy there! Stupid question, I know. I just really hate doing it.” She puffed her cheeks and then shook herself again, letting out her breath as she did, as if expelling tension with it. Yellow coat turned to blue, white hair grew long and stained with color. It was an absolutely striking creature, with all the color of the rainbow—well, minus indigo.
If the prior transformation had set the mares agape, this one sent them into paroxysms.
“Stars and stones!” Rarity cried.
Twilight stood staring dumbfounded. Spike started to fan her with a library pamphlet just in case.
Applejack took her hat off. “What in tarnation? Rainbow Dash? How?”
Fluttershy rubbed her eyes and looked again. “Oh.”
“That is a gorgeous pony,” Naomi gushed. “Uh. I mean. Gasp.”
“I knew it!” Pinkie Pie shouted, stunning everyone as she leapt on top of the table and pointed down at the bound mare. “Dashie, you’re a time traveling shapeshifter who went back in time to save the world from the terrible forces of darkness!”
Silence greeted her pronouncement.
“Oh, that’s good,” Flash said. “I definitely need to use that one, someday.”
Pinkie Pie deflated as we stared at her. “What? It could happen.”
“All right, so,” Naomi said, “this Lightning Dust is actually a goblin named Flash, and—”
“Wait!” Flash said quickly. “Before you guys start smacking me around for information, just… hold on a second.” She eased herself onto her hindlegs and hobbled over to the center of the room. Leit Motif’s eyes narrowed, but Marcus touched a hand to her shoulder and she looked up at him. I blinked and stared as something seemed to pass between them. Leit calmed, but my attention was hauled back as Flash spoke again.
“Look, I…” Flash said as she looked around the room in Rainbow Dash’s eyes. “I probably ain’t the nicest person who ever lived. I… I nearly got some of you here killed and really didn’t kind of apologize for that.” She swallowed and looked down, shaking herself to return her form to that of the goblin pony. “I’ve spent a good amount of time thinkin’ back on that. It was… well, I was actin’ a lot like the sort of goblins I hated growin’ up, the sort who would pick on me and my kid sister for bein’ kind of small.”
She took a breath and looked back up at the assembled group. “I’ve been tied up for the better part of a day, so I’ve had an opportunity to do some thinkin’. Yeah, I’m a goblin,” she admitted with a tone of finality. “I’ve been livin’ among pony kind for years now. Sure, maybe I could have integrated better, but aside from signing a false name to some forms I ain’t broken any laws—well, uh, I guess underaged drinking is a law, and so is, uhm, a few minor offenses… but what I mean to say is, that I… I kind of like livin’ as a pony.” She rubbed her hooves together awkwardly within her bindings. “You all even gave me a chance after I’d done so much damage at the Wonderbolts Academy. I know it must seem a little weird, but I ain’t got no love lost for the Wand King—I came out here to be my own mare, not to be some… some pale copy.”
Flash looked around imploringly at each and every one of us, her eyes puffy and red as she held back the tears. “Please. I swear, I’ll tell you everythin’ I know. All proper and tidy, no holdin’ anythin’ back. If I know it, I’ll say it. Just…” She bit her lip. “Don’t take my life away from me. Maybe it’s fake, but it’s all I’ve got left.”
Leit Motif opened her mouth, as if to protest, but closed it a moment later and shuffled her hooves uncertainly. Even Lyra and Pinkie Pie looked stunned. Tears began to fall across Flash’s face as she once again looked to each of us in turn, lingering on first Twilight’s friends, and then Twilight Sparkle herself.
Into the silence, Fluttershy walked up to the bound mare. She reached forward and nuzzled at Flash. She dried her tears with her foreleg and untied her bonds. When Flash winced at what must have been painful bruises from the ropes, Fluttershy soothed them with her hooves. “It’s all right,” she whispered, and Flash fell against her weakly to cry.
* * *
We all filed into Twilight’s kitchen a bit later. Flash sat placidly on the long side of the table, quietly finishing a bowl of soup Fluttershy and Spike had prepared the moment the former heard that the prisoner was hungry from her ordeal. Leit Motif remained unapologetic, and we reluctantly had to agree from her telling of the capture that Flash’s potential for flight had represented an unacceptable risk. I looked at my friend thoughtfully as she walked in behind Marcus and rubbed up against her shoulder before we sat down.
“Thank you,” I said. “You and Lyra and even Marcus could have been seriously hurt out there.”
She flashed me a grateful smile and sat down next to me.
Meanwhile, Marcus had frozen and begun to stare at Naomi as if seeing her for the first time as the other human sat down beside him. “Na… Naomi?”
Naomi giggled. “That’s me.”
“You look, uhm…” He floundered for a moment. “Fantastic.”
“Isn’t he a dear boy?” she said and patted his cheek. “Last time I saw you looking like that, Daphne had been dressed up for that dance.”
“If a man can’t recognize beauty,” he said, recovering with one of his damnable cheesy quips, “then what worth is he?”
I stuck my hoof in my mouth and gagged. Leit giggled politely. It could have been my imagination, but she seemed just a bit more sure of herself as she settled in. Comparing it to my recent memories, though, she had just a hair more composure than the last time we’d sat as a group. I looked between her and Marcus again with a little frown.
“So, uh…” Flash said. “I guess I should start from the beginning.”
Twilight nodded from the head of the table. “That would be best, yes.”
Flash rapped her hoof on the table in a self-conscious gesture. “All right. So. I guess you could say it all started for me when I was just a little filly, maybe seven or eight years old. At the time, I lived with my family in a small town in the Everfree Forest on the verge of the Ways, right next to the ancient Wand castle there.”
Twilight floated a notepad out. “Ways?”
Flash nodded. “The paths between worlds. The Everfree’s full of them, if you know right where to look. You can crisscross it back and forth a hundred times and never find them. After Nightmare Moon destroyed her own castle, we goblins moved in, concealin’ ourselves just within the Way back to Mag Mell, the great goblin city that lies on no world, so that even if you were right on top of it you couldn’ find the castle.”
“Prime spot for kidnappin’ foals, huh?” Applejack asked bitterly.
Flash bristled and flared her wings slightly. “That’s untrue! I mean… sure, maybe some kids have been abducted on orders from time to time, but we don’t make a sport of it. People get lost in the Ways all the time, and if we didn’t save them they’d die.”
“And then you turn ’em into creatures just like yourself, huh? Sounds like a fair trade.”
“We don’t—!” Flash huffed and settled back. “Look, you don’t know the first thing about goblins, and we like it that way. We’re castoffs and leftovers because other people have made us that way. We don’t belong no where except those places we’ve carved out for ourselves. And goblinization ain’t our fault—it’s just the way things work out there. The Ways are dangerous and they shape you. People weren’t meant to live out on the edge.”
“I think we’re getting a little far afield,” Twilight said placatingly. “I’d love to hear more details about all of this, but we should stay focused on what happened.”
“Yeah,” Flash said with a quiet sigh. “Right. Well, as I was saying, eight years ago I was just a filly livin’ with my folks in town when the word came that the Court were testin’ young goblins. Anygob who was chosen would receive special rewards from the Wand King himself. Me and five others were picked, and when they brought me in they told me that for the next few months and years my life would need to be someone—somepony—else’s. That pony for me was Rainbow Dash. Each of the five others was a pony sittin’ around this very table. They were called the Elements of Harmony.”
Fluttershy lifted a hoof. “Uhm… I’m sorry, but I’m confused. We’ve only known we were the bearers for two years. Even Celestia didn’t know, right?”
“She’s never claimed any special knowledge,” Twilight answered, though her gaze was fixed on Flash. “But your Wand King did.”
“When the sky lit with a rainbow that rang from one side of the country to the other,” Flash said. “We were selected a few days before that, and the rainbow light’s the point when we were told what we would become.”
“Why, then? Is it some form of…” Twilight waved her hoof vaguely, “weird, metaphysical plot to try and steal the Elements? To somehow take our place before we discovered them and thus take them for yourselves?”
“I don’t know. I just know it has to do with a girl.” Flash shook her head. “That was the other thing that we were told: that there’d be a little human girl our age who would come and we’d all be friends together. They said she’d be called to us and we’d all go together to fulfill a big important prophecy.” She snorted. “That was working great until she stood us up.”
“I think it’s Daphne,” Marcus said.
I blinked.
“That sounds like a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?” Naomi asked skeptically.
Marcus shook his head. “Think about it—what other kid her age was insane enough to play around in the deep parts of the Everfree Park all by herself? Who met a unicorn? A unicorn who, I might add, was drawn to the Everfree Forest because of this very same rainboom thingie.”
Leit Motif shifted in her seat and opened her mouth, but Flash lifted a hoof and spoke first. “Ah. Pardon me, but who is this Daphne you guys keep talkin’ about?”
Hooves pointed towards me and Flash fixed her gaze, taking me in for the first time. She squinted and stared close. “That’s a unicorn.”
“I wasn’t always,” I told her. “I met a goblin in the woods who turned me into this by accident when I tried to rescue my little sister Amelia from him. That’s why we’re all here—your Wand friends kidnapped my baby sister.”
“Was the one with the wand a stunted, potato-like guy with a really thick accent?”
I nodded.
“Well,” Flash rubbed her chin with a hoof. “That’s Fetter, right and proper. He was Knight of the Wand when I left, and I guess he held on to that. How old’s your sister? I mean… maybe she is the one. Time passes differently over in Mag Mell.”
“Eight.”
Flash creased her brows at that. “Well, that ain’t right. Maybe if they thought she was actually a few years older… but, well, it’s bloody unlikely you’re the one we were waitin’ for. I mean…” She laughed nervously. “The girl we were to meet, she was supposed to be touched, special. Like, she could see things that no one else could, even things that lay over the horizon or far off in the future. The things she imagined came true.”
“Oh, well,” I said with a quiet note of bitterness, “that’s definitely not me, then. Not a single thing I’ve imagined has ever come to pass.”
Leit Motif and Lyra spoke up at once, talking over one another. They exchanged a look and Lyra ceded the table to Leit, who cleared her throat and said, “I think we may be dismissing this possibility too early. I know the connection is a little tenuous, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong.”
“What can we do with that information, though?” Twilight Sparkle interjected. “Flash, do you know anything else? Perhaps where you were taking this girl?”
“A well of some sort?” Flash answered vaguely, rolling her eyes to the ceiling as if she could find answers there. “I don’t know where it is, anyway. As for anythin’ else… sorry, not that much. For what it’s worth, you guys are way less scary than most goblins believe.”
“Uh… thanks?” Twilight quirked a brow and shook her head. “I think we’ve heard enough to know that this is very serious. Can you lead us to the goblin town?”
Flash nodded. “Of course.”
“Hold up,” I said. “This Rainbow Dash mare; where did she go? Was that part of your plan?”
“Heck no,” Flash said with a shudder. “We wanted as little to do with you lot as possible.”
Leit Motif leaned forward. “She disappeared a little under a week ago, didn’t she? Shortly after Amelia was taken.”
“And Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Apple Bloom just a little bit ago,” Applejack said darkly.
I drew up my memories from earlier in the day. “Thunderlane told me Rainbow Dash had gone away on an acting job.”
Flash’s ears perked forward. “Acting?”
The table’s attention turned back to her. Rather than shrink back, she pressed forward, looking suddenly very engaged. “I just had a really horrible thought… I mean, if they think they have the girl from the prophecy, even if they’re wrong, well… they’re going to want the false Elements of Harmony to be there. I’m probably the only one who left, so they’d need a replacement.”
“More like a stupid thought,” Applejack said with a snort. “If they were tryin’ to avoid contact with us, what makes you think they’d be so boneheaded as to contact Rainbow Dash herself?”
“Don’t underestimate the levels of incompetency the goblin bureaucracy can sink to,” Flash said dryly. “More importantly, I can’t tell you how many things we got wrong about you or your society. We’ve been prohibited from associating with Equestrians for like a hundred years now, on the Wand King’s orders. Tell you what… let me have a look at her mail from the last week.”
Twilight Sparkle got to their hooves and stretched her wings uncertainly. “I’m pretty sure it’s felonious to look at another mare’s postage, but… well…” She gave Leit Motif and myself an uncertain look. “The coincidences around here are getting just a tiny bit out of hoof. I want to see, too.” She started out the door. “I’ll be back shortly.”
* * *
“You can’t be serious,” Applejack said disgustedly. “Let me see that again.” She reached out and snatched the flyer from Twilight. “‘Looking for athletic actor for the role of Rainbow Dash in an upcoming play. Non-flyers and bipeds need not apply. All expenses paid. Please fill out the attached form for immediate return.’”
“How’s the pay?” I asked blandly. “Maybe I should look into this. I’ve been meaning to get a part-time job.”
“Sub-contracted imps, I’ll bet,” Flash said sagaciously. “They get overzealous with even the simplest orders. Probably because their brains are about the size of a robin’s egg, on the generous side. When they got the word to put out a castin’ call to all flyers, they meant it.”
Fluttershy stepped around the table curiously. “I guess that explains why Rainbow asked me to look after Tank for a while.”
Twilight looked at Fluttershy with exasperation. “Why didn’t you say—? Never mind. Whatever happened, we have pretty good confirmation that the goblins have Rainbow Dash, too. That’s pretty frustrating. If we need the Elements of Harmony to beat this Wand King back, we’re short a member… and I think it’s time I wrote Princess Celestia.” She grimaced. “I wish I had earlier, but we had no idea this was more serious than a very unusual kidnapping. No offense, Daphne.”
“No, I understand,” I said. “That’s not the sort of thing you awaken a kingdom for. What are these Elements, anyway? I’ve only heard vague mention.”
“The Elements of Harmony. They’re the six classical virtues that inform our society. They’re also six magical artifacts that represent those elements, and together they can drive back evil or destructive powers.” She frowned down at the flyer. “Rainbow Dash is the bearer of the Element of Loyalty. Without any one of us, we can’t work them to full effect. That leaves Equestria vulnerable to threats that raw force alone can’t handle.”
“Really?” Flash asked. “I always thought they enslaved and brainwashed people to your dark wills.” She coughed as the mares in question looked at her sternly. “Uh. Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
“Spike?” Twilight called as she started into the next room. “Take a letter.”
“Sure thing, Twi,” the dragon said as he followed her, grabbing a roll of paper and an ink well on the way.
Naomi crouched down next to me thoughtfully, careful to keep her dress from tearing. “How are you feeling?”
“Me?” I looked up at her. “All right, I guess. Kind of giddy, actually—we finally have a direction to go in.”
“What about all this talk of… of you and prophecies?”
I shook my head. “I don’t buy it. I mean… okay, at this point, I’ll buy that they had foreknowledge of events enough to plan this out in some fashion, even if it didn’t work out. Me being a part of it, though? Leit, Lyra, and Marcus just speculated wildly. I certainly don’t have visions of the future or anything like that.” I rubbed a leg up against the other. “If they were wrong about Amelia, there’s no guarantee I’m any better of a match.”
“All right. Fair enough, I guess,” Naomi said with a nod and ran her fingers through my mane. I smiled at her and gave her a quick nuzzle.
Flash shifting on her chair out of the corner of my eye triggered a reminder, and I wandered over to her. “Hey.”
She glanced up at me with uncertainty in her pale blue eyes. It didn’t seem as if she’d believed the idea any more than I did, but there was just the hint of wariness there—some hint of the scars of her past that she carried along with her, perhaps. “Oi.”
Shifting my stance to be less threatening, I sat on the chair next to her. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Without really waiting for a response, I asked, “How does one undo the magic of the wand?”
“The Arcana are more than magic,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, I honestly don’t know much about how or why magic of any kind works, but from the way I was told, they’re more than just spells. They’re like how Twilight there described the Elements of Harmony. They represent ideas, and they work in a way that’s not really easy to describe.” She shifted to look at me more closely. “The Wand, for instance, is the Arcana of Fire, among other things. Fire is change; it transforms things from one to another. The degree of change is important, but more important is what that change means.”
She waved her hoof towards the others. “Think about it… if the Wand—any portion of it, since it’s split into four—could change anything into anything forever and without consequence, there’d be no stopping the Wand King. He could have an army of titanium-plated dragons in a heartbeat. In order for a change to stick, for it to last or even be effective to begin with, it needs to work with concepts like identity and the spirit of what things are. A tree turned into another, similar kind of tree is easy. A tree into a dragon is almost impossible.”
“So… you’re saying that this won’t last, or…” I chewed over that information for a second. Something seemed to be niggling at me, as if this information were nothing new. “Wait. What if it’s somehow part of me to be a unicorn? I mean… there’s been times where I’ve felt as though I don’t have another body. That I’ve been this way all my life.” I glanced over to Leit Motif, whose green eyes mirrored mine as she looked back. “Like I belong this way.”
“Well,” Flash said steadily, “if that’s the case, then it may be that the only way you’ll ever get to walk on two legs again is to find someone willin’ to use a Wand on you.” She grinned. “That, or learn the goblin art of illusion shapechanging magic. Good luck, there; I had some of the best teachers the King could find and I still had trouble assuming one alternative shape. The second one, Lightning Dust, I was only able to put together because it’s so close to Rainbow Dash and myself.”
I sighed and nodded my thanks. I might have asked more, but Twilight returned with a dark frown creasing her features. “No response. I think Princess Celestia has made an unscheduled absence, but I won’t know until we can get a response back from conventional mail.”
“Wonder if she’s investigating this weird junk, too,” Lyra said thoughtfully. “We can’t wait around for a response, though, can we? Unless you can send a magical message to Princess Luna or the Captain of the Guard.”
“No, I can’t.” Twilight shifted her weight uneasily. “If there’s a threat against the Elements, we need to move now, with everything we have at our disposal.”
“The airship?” Pinkie Pie asked excitedly. “That would make this so cool.”
“Already taken off,” Lyra said with a grimace. “We can send a pegasus after them, but that might be a few hours, if they can even catch up at all.”
“Their next destination isn’t far—they’re making a stop, so there’s a chance somepony fast can catch them. It’s the only thing resembling military assistance we’re going to get for another two or three days,” Twilight said. “They’ll just have to meet us at the Tree of Harmony.” She looked to me with a small smile. “We’ve delayed for days. Now, we actually have a lead and I’m going to use it. Get ready to go, everypony.”
“Finally,” Marcus crowed.
Naomi sighed and toyed with the hem of her new dress. “Beautiful things rarely last.”
Rarity patted her on the side. “I know, dear. We must all bear that tragedy in our hearts.”
While everypony and everyone else scattered to make their last minute preparations, I went to the front door and pushed through in order to stare across the Everfree Forest. It seemed that a mist-shrouded castle lay just at the far end, looming in my mind.
“I’m coming for you, Amelia. Just hold on tight,” I said. Hope swelled in me, for the first time since reconnecting with Leit Motif.
Even then, though, I felt a quiet tremor of uncertainty. I put it down to nerves, but somehow I felt in my heart that the journey wasn’t over yet.
We still had so much further to go.
* * *
It was strangely comforting to see that so many of my other companions felt trepidation at entering the Everfree Forest again. My last experience there involved being chased by sentient plant life, so the prospect wasn’t a terribly settling one.
Of everyone, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie seemed the least concerned, which I rather expected. The latter two were counting provisions and tightly securing them in a wagon that Applejack herself would haul with a modicrum of camping supplies and other material.
Fluttershy and Rarity were hardly troubled by our first destination, this “Tree of Harmony,” which they had traveled to before at least once, and to its general area—near some old, abandoned castle—often. They fretted over handing over their respective workplaces, though, wondering who might care for their animals and clothes while they were gone and making hasty arrangements. I rather suspected that the already somewhat skittish Fluttershy would admit to being more than a little frightened of the Everfree’s dangers if asked, but had no interest in confirming it.
Marcus and Naomi were as worried as I might have expected them to be, having experienced the dangers in the same proportion I had. Naomi brushed Hector a little too much for it to be anything but nerves, while Marcus did the thing where he checked and rechecked his guns, making sure they were clean and well-serviced.
Leit Motif, who had once traveled the Ways to meet me once a day for several weeks, seemed no more concerned than if she were preparing for a long walk. Lyra, of course, displayed about as much fear as Pinkie Pie did. She parted only to say goodbye to a few friends and returned to lament that she couldn’t get any puffed locusts for the road. My bad on that.
The one person whose reaction actually surprised me was Flash. She wore the skin of Lightning Dust at the moment, but I of all people had no trouble picturing the alien creature she truly was underneath it—of everypony here, I might have expected her to show the least amount of fear of anypony who wasn’t utterly insane. Her eyes, though, were wide in their sockets, and she fluttered her wings with an uncertain twitch often. From the chest of her goblin belongings, she’d produced a set of deadly sharp hoof blades that she kept kneading on the ground, and I frowned as I considered her. It seemed to me that trusting her to be along on this mission at all, let alone carrying weapons, was a rather extreme risk that probably shouldn’t have been countenanced.
Fluttershy had, however, convinced all of us to give the disguised goblin a chance, and the other mares were inclined to take the gentle pegasus at her word.
“You know,” Flash said, in nearly flawless Equestrian accent, as she noticed my interest, “maybe it’s a little weird, but I kind of feel like I know them already.”
I perked my ears at this odd topic, but leaned in curiously anyway. “How’s that?”
“We—that is, the other actors like me—all spent the better part of a year perfecting our roles. We studied everything we could about Equestrian society and what was known about our chosen targets. A lot of it was wrong, honestly, but ultimately we just sort of acted like we normally did, just under new skins and names.” She watched the others getting ready with a quiet sort of sadness. “The funny thing is that just by being ourselves we seemed to have gotten closer to the truth than we could have believed. That meeting in there… it makes me wonder what they’re up to. Maille, Twig, Pinion, Rose, even Kiln…”
“Why did you do it?” I asked.
“Do what?” She looked at me. “Join up? Because I wanted to be something. Somegob special, who others looked up to. Why did I leave? Because I wanted to really be something, not just a puppet.” She shook her head with a sigh. “The others? I don’t know. They told us that we were chosen, that we were destined to bring the world to a better place. Maybe they bought into that talk, but I didn’t. I felt lied to the minute I stepped up.”
I tilted my head. “Change the world? How?”
She shook her head. “Just that what we did would ‘shape the world that is to come’ and make it better for everygob. Whatever that is, however we would do it, I have no idea. It’s just the sort of thing you tell stupid kids to get their egos inflated.” We started towards the others again, with a gust of autumn breeze carrying red and gold flowers around us. “The thing they don’t tell you about prophecy in the stories is that everything depends on you. Your every action, your every thought sometimes. I didn’t want to dedicate my life to something I didn’t understand.”
Her head turned towards me as we stood at the edge of Ponyville, where the houses gave way to grass and scattered copses of trees. “Honestly? You know what I find pathetically hilarious? Your quest for your little sister—Applejack’s and Rarity’s, too. I left a little sister of my own back there. She was just a little thing, and she never had the guts to stand up to people picking on her.” She smiled. A sad, remorseful expression. “I can tell you don’t trust me, so… you know. Take it for what it’s worth. I understand what it means to lose someone important to you like that. Call it selfish. If I do this thing for you guys, I ingratiate myself to the ponies, and I can go pull my little Wire out of that place so she can come live with me in Equestria.”
My attention wandered to where Leit Motif sat and stared at a blank page of her journal, her pen held uncertainly in a telekinetic grip. “I think I can understand that, yeah. You won’t mind if I still feel a little uncertain, I’m sure.”
“Everypony else is. Don’t let them fool you—Twilight had me tell her the directions to the goblin castle and Mag Mell both, among other things.” She looked up towards the flat, gray clouds hovering over the Everfree. “I think, no matter what happens here, a lot of things in Equestria are going to change. I’m the first goblin in known history to open up about the Ways, I bet. We’ve kept that protected for a long time.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. I wonder if things back home will change, too. Are goblins responsible for keeping us from knowing about things like magic and the like?”
“Not entirely,” she said with a glance at Marcus and Naomi. “I’m not a historian, so I can’t tell you much, but I know there was a point in time where it was worth your life to go into the human realm. Nowadays, we keep our true selves more hidden than normal. Even today we try not to risk revealing ourselves.”
“I guess I have a lot to decide about my own future as well,” I said uncertainly, with another glance to Leit Motif. At the time, Lyra was menacing her with Naomi’s brush and chasing her around a tree.
“Come o-on, Leit! You don’t take proper care of yourself, and your mane is so long and brushable!”
“Get away, you freak!”
“You know,” I said, “I think I could get to like it here, myself.”
* * *
“And then we take a left at the trees from Snow White, cross the river of the fabulous serpent, and we’re almost there!” Pinkie Pie announced as she bounced ahead. The girls knew this part of the Everfree like the back of their hooves, and we’d made excellent time. It was barely past noon, though the gray clouds had turned the day gloomy. The Everfree’s dense foliage seemed faintly unreal without the deep shadows of direct sunlight.
“Wait, hold on a second,” Marcus said, “how can you possibly know about the Snow White trees?”
Rarity looked at him, baffled. “The tale of Snow White, the beautiful unicorn princess who was betrayed by her evil sorceress mother and who brought joy and loveliness to the lives of seven miserable, tiny earth pony stallions?” She beamed up at the sky with a dreamy smile. “Why, it’s a classic!”
“You mean the prissy unicorn princess who was utterly useless,” Applejack grunted, hauling the supply train with as much effort as it took to stroll down a lazy street. “Not to mention, those stallions are only dwarfed in the unicorn version. They did all the danged work for her in any event; all she did was get swept away by some nameless unicorn prince at the end, leaving her real friends in the dust.”
“The unicorn version is the definitive version, thank you,” Rarity said with a toss of her mane.
“In the pegasus version,” Fluttershy said, “the prince is a pegasus who, uhm… beheads the witch and burns her house down.”
“That’s the pegasus version of every story.”
“Well, girls, actually,” Twilight said, “scholarship shows there’s no clear provenance to pinpoint the origin of the tale, and—”
“While this discussion is just fascinating,” Lyra interrupted loudly from her position in the van, “we have arrived. Evil enchanted castle yonder.”
Twilight gave Lyra a cross look. “The Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters is neither evil nor enchanted. Well, aside from the preservation spells that kept its vast and valuable collection of ancient tomes, tapestries, and other priceless historical treasures secure until it could be safely catalogued and transported away by the Canterlot Archivists for restoration and eventual public display.”
“Did you practice breathing exercises for when you do those long sentences, or is that, like, one of your earth pony powers now?”
“Lyra!” Leit protested.
“She’s a mare after my own heart,” Marcus asided to Naomi in a stage whisper.
Ahead through the misty gloom stood a castle, or what had once been one. Stones piled haphazardly against one another, slowly crumbling from the steady erosion of centuries. A frosty wind blew in from the east and I tightened my scarf about my neck. The air in Ponyville was almost balmy by comparison to what it had become in the Everfree over the last week alone. It was a reminder of how winter’s icy grip drew closer every day.
Hector, beneath Naomi, nickered and stamped his hoof. Naomi patted his neck and frowned at the castle and the rickety wooden bridge connecting both sides. “I’m not sure Hector likes it, even if it isn’t evil.”
“We’re actually heading down into the canyon there,” Twilight said, pointing a hoof at the gorge splitting the land between the castle and us, “the rest of you can stay up here while we retrieve the Elements. Well, unless you’d like to come down with us, I guess.”
Marcus and Lyra took one long look at the precarious stairway that led to the murky bottom. “Not enough nope in the world,” he said, and she nodded her head fiercely in agreement.
Leit Motif eyed Lyra. “You’d probably just teleport anyway; what are you so nervous about?”
Lyra backed away from the gorge with a little shiver of her tail. “Me and dark, narrow places don’t always get along so great. It’s why your house fills me with existential terror.” She zipped her jacket up against the chill.
“All right, be back in a jiffy!” Pinkie Pie said as she bounced down the steps, followed by her friends a moment later.
A powerful, frigid wind tugged through the trees and set the branches to swaying. Hector stamped his hooves again and tossed his head.
“Isn’t that just so noble?” Lyra asked. “He’s eager for battle so we can save our friends Rainbow Dash and Amelia!”
Flash stared at her. “You know he’s a horse, right?”
“Saddle Arabian? Of course! He’s an exiled prince.”
She rubbed her face with a hoof. “How exactly did you capture me, again?”
Marcus, Naomi, and I all gazed into the forest. “Quiet,” I said, “Hector’s got a pretty keen eye for danger. If he’s nervous, there’s something wrong.”
Leit Motif frowned and looked down into the gorge. “I think the others went into a cave. I could send a message.”
“It could just be wolves or something else spooking him,” Marcus admitted. “They wouldn’t attack a party like this, though.”
“I don’t know,” Naomi said quietly. “Doesn’t something seem a little odd?”
“Like what?”
She shook her head and adjusted the hair braided under her hat as she wheeled Hector around. “It’s like there’s something… different about the forest.”
“Probably just nerves.”
There was an easy way to solve that puzzle—for me at least. Carefully, I reconstructed the image of the area as it had appeared when we first entered, then projected it out unto the forest as it appeared now. As I compared the two, though, I started in surprise as I realized that many of the trees were now a foot or two closer, out of sync with their original positions.
“Say, Flash,” I asked quietly, trying not to stare at the trees, “you mentioned something about goblin shapeshifting magic earlier. What sort of things can it do?”
“Well,” Flash said, “like I said, how easy it is depends on the circumstances, but it’s kind of an all-purpose disguise.”
“So, hypothetically, could someone in a cave disguise themselves as a stalagmite?”
“Sure.”
I looked down at the gorge, pointedly turning my face away from the trees. “How about trees in a forest?”
“Yeah, what’re you getting… at…” Her eyes widened slightly.
“What’s up?” Leit Motif asked.
“Do you have any spells that affect a wide area?” I asked her. “Blasty kind?”
Flash adjusted the straps on her hoof blades. “The one she used on me would do nicely.”
Leit blinked uncertainly. “Uh…”
The trees rustled in the harsh wind. A comparison proved they’d moved another couple inches closer. “Use it on the trees behind us.”
“That’s not exactly an easy spell to pull off. Is something…?” She trailed off as I looked into her eyes, then nodded. Her horn lit from within as she concentrated, a light filling it just under the surface. Lyra quirked an ear our way. Her face remained unchanged from its general state of amusement, but I could see her muscles tense. Marcus adjusted the grip on his rifle and Naomi tightened hers on her reins.
It was probably too much to hope that our would-be ambushers wouldn’t notice our preparations. Seeing trees stop still against the wind was just slightly unnerving, and the illusion began to unravel from there. Armored humanoids riding one another’s shoulders, the highest holding aloft branches were all I saw before Leit Motif spun. Her eyes lit up and she opened her mouth in a silent shout. Blindingly bright light flared from her horn in a burst that was followed by first a sharp shock and then a billowing wave of fire and sound that erupted in rings across the cliff face, kicking up the bed of leaves and goblins alike into the air.
“Get to the other side!” I shouted, rearing up and galloping across the wooden bridge. Lyra stepped next to Marcus and the two of them vanished in a golden bubble to reappear on the far side an instant later. He recovered after a moment’s disorientation and took aim across the ravine. I could see the conflict in his eyes as he turned his weapon deliberately against other sapient creatures, his finger hesitating on the trigger. Golden armor fashioned itself around Lyra’s body.
The rest of us crossed the bridge, setting it to swaying wildly, especially as some of the goblins recovered and raced after us. Leit Motif, though a bit dazed from that first spell, aimed her horn at the bridge and fired a needle-like beam of light that swept across the hawsers. They snapped and the goblins shrieked as they plummeted and clung desperately to the ropes. They landed against the cliff wall with a clanging racket, while atop it the other stunned goblins shouted and waved weapons at us.
“Oo, very clever!” a high-pitched voice called from above. “Not quite there, though.” Before anyone could react we were pelted from above. Small bombs burst around us and thick, stinking clouds of yellow smoke billowed up. My lungs burned and sent me into a fit of coughing as I inhaled, and my eyes stung so badly that I could barely see. Vaguely, I perceived winged blurs above and Lyra standing unbowed in the spell-forged armor that protected her face.
Hector screamed and galloped past me. Naomi would have been above the cloud, but she was at the mercy of her terrified mount. I tried to stumble away, only discovering that my feet were carrying me towards the ledge when it gaped up at me. Desperately, I tried, just a fraction of a second too late, to arrest my motion and rear back. Flash, despite her hacking, leapt and caught my forelegs as I started to pitch over the side.
I blinked away my tears and looked over her head as beams of golden light cut through the flying goblins overhead. They sizzled as they struck and disrupted the formation, but one darting figure simply flew through it. What beams did connect bounced off her fine armor, and she delivered a powerful kick to Lyra’s head. The magic armor flashed and sparked with the impact, but held, and Lyra came back up snarling.
More immediate to my concerns, mine and Flash’s hacking made our mutual grip precarious. Her Lightning Dust disguise fell away, leaving her exposed in her goblin form. Slowly, I felt myself slipping and tried to tighten my grip. “Flash, we need to…” I wheezed.
Her grip slackened as she choked.
I tried to gasp for air and found some. “Flash!”
Her streaming eyes opened to meet mine. For some reason I could not explain, it felt as though we’d known each other for the longest time—almost as if we’d been friends all along.
Then the strangest thing happened.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl. The tendrils of thick smoke crawled. Light scintillated slowly off Lyra’s horn as she conjured golden pony shapes to fight alongside her. The grinning form of the airborne goblin twisted as she drew a shining blade from her side.
The sound of rushing water filled my ears and a woman’s voice whispered through them, soothing and pure. It’s all right. This isn’t how it ends.
I looked down. The slope was nearly sheer, but below me lay a number of grassy protrusions, choked with old roots.
Time caught up again. “Flash. It’s all right. You can trust me. Just let me go and go help the others.”
“B-but—!” she stammered, but her eyes softened as I looked at her steadily. Then, carefully, she loosed her forelegs from mine. Falling, I reached out and clung with all my might. The roots tore from the dirt wall, but held after a precarious, swaying moment, letting me brace up against the cliff. My throat ached with the caustic fumes, but I kept my coughing to a minimum.
I wished I could see what was going on up above, particularly when the sound of gunshots reached me. Down below was no more comforting. Even as the other mares down below returned, the goblins we had abandoned on the other side charged down the stairs to meet them. I marveled as other ponies leapt into action, flinging spells and hooves at the oncoming horde. Despite being outnumbered, they fought with incredible ferocity.
Yet, more were coming. They boiled out of the woods by foot or by wing to join the fray. I dug my hooves into the earth and hauled myself up, every unexpected shift in the material making me wince with fright. The drive to press on, to do whatever it took to help my friends, kept me going. Finally, I found the top of the cliff and dragged myself up.
The sight wasn’t a good one.
The smoke had cleared, but the damage had been done. Naomi struggled in a net while Hector spun and kicked at goblins who grew bolder as they encircled him. Marcus crouched against a wall where Leit Motif lay sprawled, protecting her with his own body. His reluctance to shoot had been tempered, for a few goblins struggled away across the ground clutching their bloodied limbs, while more shots rang.
Lyra stood braced in the center of the fight, with magical pegasus simulacra spinning about her, taking arrows and spears for her or leaping to smack a goblin from the sky. The goblin leader dove again, weaving through the defenses, only to be buffeted back when a flash of zig-zagging light knocked her off course, knocking her helmet clean off and sending her blade spinning into the grass.
She flapped her wings and rose back into the air, shaking her head in surprise. Freed of its confines, her mane, a frizzled mass of sun-touched electric blue, stuck up in every direction. “I’d know that kick anywhere. Flash! You’re back!”
The light resolved into Flash, whose white tail whipped behind her as she circled. “Pinion! Leave these people alone!”
“Uh…” The hovering mare glanced around. “I don’t know; I seem to be winning. That would be kinda counterproductive, wouldn’t it?”
“You’re a bunch of idiots!” Flash spat at her. “You’ve had the wrong girl! The plan doesn’t mean anything anymore! Even if it did, what makes you think this is right?”
Pinion’s face darkened and she pointed her hoof at the circling Flash. “Don’t you talk to me about right and wrong! Don’t you even think about it! You abandoned me, and the rest of us, a long time ago!” She dove down and caught her fallen sword before rising back up. “We were your friends! We’re your people! You don’t think we missed you? And what about Wire? Do you have any idea what’s happened to her since you left?”
Flash slowed, her eyes widening. “You don’ understand.”
“No, I think I do. I think you got selfish. I think you let bein’ Rainbow Dash get to your head,” Pinion snarled. “You couldn’t handle bein’ second so you needed to go be first, and damn the rest of us!”
“I didn’ mean to hurt any of you,” Flash protested.
“Well, you did.” Pinion snapped her feathered wings and launched herself up to Flash’s level. Her eyes and voice softened. “Are you gonna turn against us here, too?”
Flash’s leathery wings beat as she slowed to a hover. She looked down at her hooves, then up at Pinion. She looked down at me, and her eyes turned flinty.
“No.”
“Oh, yay!” Pinion said, turning a pirouette in the air. “We’ll have a party, just like old ti—!”
In the blink of an eye, Flash closed the distance between them and kicked Pinion directly in the face. Knocked out cold, Pinion plowed into the earth below with a thunderous impact. “I’m gonna save you from yourselves!” Flash shouted.
Dismayed at the loss of their leader, the goblins fell back towards the woods. Marcus took the opportunity to reload while Lyra caught her breath. Relief was short-lived, however, and when they rallied they came with goblins on foot, huge, troll-like creatures clad in mountains of black armor.
I shook my head. “No… this can’t be how it ends.”
Of everyone here, I was the most useless. Even Naomi had struggled to pull her pistol out of its holster while tangled in her net, and was firing warning shots into the air. Hector stood panting and bucking threateningly beside her. Lyra stood as a shining warrior, however beaten and exhausted. Marcus sighted down his barrel. Even Leit Motif struggled back to her feet and lit her horn in readiness. Again, time slowed, letting me savor each bitter moment as my friends armed themselves against impossible odds.
All of their brave, bold heroism would be for nothing.
Sure, earlier, I’d used my memory to figure out that we were being attacked, but all that had done was delay the inevitable. The warriors that imagination pulled out of the air couldn’t fight alongside my friends. An imagined storm couldn’t batter the flying goblins out of the air or send stinging hailstones into the giant ones.
Frustration bubbled up in my skull. The water rushing in my ears turned to boiling. Pain arced like lightning. Pressure built and built until it stood ready to burst free.
“No! This isn’t how our story ends!” I shouted. The horn jutting from my forehead sparked and burned. A green torch, it cast shadows across the glade.
The water poured forth, and, as it went out from me, I shaped it. A flood of green sparks washed over the battlefield, and in its wake, the forest grew. Trees sprang from the ground fully formed while budded vines roped themselves around their trunks and branches. When the buds opened, a hundred thousand flowers of every color and shape spread their petals. Waterfowl, gulls, parrots, cuckoos and cranes, hawks and falcons, woodpeckers and hummingbirds, pigeons and doves, owls and flamingos, a million birds flew into the sky. The vines poured off the side of the gorge and a river rushed down its ancient bed.
More and more came out, more than I could imagine, more than I could control. I felt like a vessel, pouring out everything I had and more that I never knew was there. Strange wooden wolves sprang out of the brush, fashioning themselves out of sticks. Huge lizards belching fire launched themselves down from the sky.
A huge goblin shrieked in terror and swung his great axe at an oak that appeared right before him—only to overbalance and fall when it passed right through the trunk without the slightest resistance.
“It’s fake!” a goblin piped, her voice rising over the din.
Of course it was. But it didn’t matter.
The goblins stumbled in disarray as they tripped and fell through the imaginary landscape, struggling to find solid ground, let alone their enemies. Their voices were lost in the piping bird song, making communication impossible. The roar of a dragon drowned out their horns and whistles.
Around my friends and allies, I lifted the veil and appeared to them, conjuring a half dozen Daphnes that waved them through a clear path, taking them around the goblins who flailed hopelessly about. Marcus and Leit Motif were led to Naomi, who they freed. Together with Hector, they rejoined Lyra, and then Flash came, dragging Pinion in her wake. Down below, a Daphne spoke rapidly to Twilight, explaining the situation and gesticulating wildly.
Through it all, I walked unharmed towards the castle gates. Anyone looking at me would have seen what lay on the other side of their vision, as if I had never been there at all. Instead, the fake Daphnes charged the goblin lines, taunting and misleading them, taking them in circles. Some sprouted wings and lost their horns to dive amongst the birds, mocking the flying goblins and calling them names.
It was a bedraggled fellowship that limped into the castle gatehouse. An expanding bubble of blue light popped to reveal Twilight and her friends, who all panted with exhaustion. Bruises and cuts covered everyone but me, and my head ached and throbbed as if to make up for my lack of actual injury.
“Daphne?” Leit Motif asked quietly, her eyes wide.
“Hold on,” I gasped. “I’m going to try and… and get rid of them.” I turned back towards the field, putting together false images of all of us, to send them away and trick the goblins one last time. As the illusionary mares raced into the woods, though, they fell apart into a mist of green sparkles. The forest and birds, too, were falling apart, leaking green light. As the pain and debilitation sapped into my limbs, so too did errors seep into my creation, until it swam together in a verdant haze. That, too, vanished as I collapsed, and the light in my horn went out.
“No,” I moaned, watching the milling goblins rally and advance up the hill towards the castle. “Not after all this…”
“Don’t lose hope,” Applejack said. She tilted her hat to shade her eyes as the noonday sun broke through the clouds at last. It filled the land with color and life once more. “Look to the west.”
As one, we turned our heads up, and saw descending through the cloud cover from the direction of Ponyville a long, dark shape. Held aloft by its great envelope, the airship glowed like a beacon as it caught the fresh sunlight. From its decks, pegasi leapt. They peeled clouds from the sky and started to strike them en masse with their hooves, darkening the puffy shapes and sending lightning bolts dancing out ahead.
I had to hand it to the goblins. When faced with a shifting battlefield and constantly changing odds, they didn’t fall into despair very easily. For a moment I thought they might dig in or try to rush the castle gates, so determined did they seem. Even as they prepared, though, a horn sounded across the glade twice and the goblins as one turned from their efforts and retreated into the woods, melting away. I exhaled and laid my head down, the cold stone a welcome relief for my throbbing head.
Leit Motif came to my side, her eyes wide as she looked down at me. “Daphne… you…”
“What?” I slurred.
Her face lit up with the brightest, most sincere smile I’d seen on her since we were children. “Look.”
I craned my neck back and followed the line of her hoof. The others were watching as well with big smiles plastered on every face. There, on my thigh, sat the image of a vase pouring out a stream of stars. My mouth fell open, and I touched it gently, as if I expected it to hurt. I ran my hoof through the hairs, noticing how each one had been individually recolored to form the image.
“A unicorn’s cutie mark is always a special, magical experience,” Rarity said proudly. “Unicorn magic always happens for a reason. Congratulations, Daphne.”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “Any cutie mark is special and magical.” She gave me a grin. “Still, fancy work.”
“Looks like a gift for illusion magic,” Twilight said brightly. “Reminds me of being a filly again. It’s very exciting! You know, I’ve been thinking of starting a class for the young unicorns around town. You can learn how to harness your talent and—”
Somehow, I got the feeling that she was wrong on that, but I couldn’t really put a hoof on exactly how at the time.
“Whoa, there; let’s not start plannin’ her life out just yet, Twi,” Applejack said. “We’ve got a few little matters to tidy up before hoof. Includin’ our new prisoner.”
So caught up had I been in the revelation of my very own personal identifier that Pinion’s capture completely slipped my mind. It might seem odd to get all worked up about a stamp on your haunch, but it was more than that. In a way, it told me nothing new—after all, I’d always known that my imagination had a vivid, lifelike quality to it. The explosion of magic was certainly cool, even though I knew that repeating that feat might well require years of study, but that wasn’t the important part. It was, in a very real sense, an affirmation that who I was mattered, that I could do something to influence those around me rather than being dragged along by them in a quest that had stopped treating me like a relevant part.
Of course, it was also another nail in the coffin of my chances to transform back into a human, but personal journeys are made in little steps.
Leit Motif nuzzled me, the smile never leaving her face. “I’m so happy for you, Daphne. It fits you so perfectly, too.” She swished her tail and did a little dance. “You and I are going to have so much fun together!”
“Whoa, Leit,” Lyra said with a little laugh as she looked up from examining her jacket for damage. “You’re freaking me out here. Don’t make too many deep, personal strides at once. It’ll give you whiplash.” Her eyes tracked to mine and I saw a brief flicker of what I could only imagine was jealousy. Then she smiled an apologetic little grin and winked at me.
“Speaking of,” Leit said, leaning towards Lyra and fixing her with a penetrating gaze, “where in the wide world did you learn all of that battle magic? You’ve been freaking me out with all of your unexpected competence.”
“Well, uh…” Lyra scratched the back of her head. “You remember that whole disaster at the wedding of Shining Armor and Cadance at Canterlot last year?”
“Intimately,” Twilight Sparkle said sardonically.
Lyra nodded. “I really felt useless, there. Not only did I fail to notice that a friend of mine—Cadance—had been captured and replaced by a shapeshifting queen of darkness, but I let myself and my friends get brainwashed into attacking Twi here. Then, when I broke out, what could I do against the invasion except cower in the cave waiting for it to be over?” Her face hardened, taking on a stony determination. “That feeling of helplessness as all of my friends and loved ones are being devoured right before my eyes, while I sit there and sob bitterly, wondering when it would be my turn to be next? Never again.” Then it brightened into a grin. “So I asked Shining Armor to enroll me in the unicorn Royal Guard advanced training program.”
Leit Motif spluttered. “Wh-what? That’s… you’re crazy! I don’t think even most Royal Guards go through that! Don’t you know how hard it is? I mean, obviously you do, but really?”
“Wait,” Applejack said, quirking an eyebrow skeptically, “are you tellin’ me that you’ve been a Royal Guard all this time?”
“Uh, no,” Lyra said, rolling her eyes. “I’m a musician. Who happens to be a Royal Guard reservist. It’s a big difference.”
Leit Motif rocked back on her hooves, staring at Lyra with an uncertain look. Whatever may have passed between them had to wait, however, because Pinion stirred and groaned from her spot on the floor. Leit helped me to stand and we all went to stand around the captured goblin.
It was swiftly becoming clear that what rhyme or reason goblin forms had was based largely on chaos. Pinkie Pie and Flash had stripped her of her silvery armor and equipment, and we could see that this pseudo-pegasus had features quite different from Flash. Her mane and tail were an electric blue, shot through with hot pink highlights, a jarring combination if there ever was one. The hair along her belly was white, soft, and downy like a cat’s, while black stripes ran across her back, making her look a bit like a particularly harmless blue tiger crossed with a pony. Unlike Flash, her wings were feathered and tinged with red.
“Bloody hell,” Pinion slurred, “anygob get the license plate on that hoof?” Half of her face had swollen from the powerful blow that took her down, so that was pretty understandable. “Ain’t tidy to hit your cousins; I’m in agony, I am.”
Flash glanced down and away. Fluttershy touched a wing to her side and she sighed. “Sorry, Pinion. I couldn’t let you hurt anypony.”
“Anygob, anypony,” Marcus muttered. “This whole universe is insane. Next thing you know, I’ll be saying ‘anyhuman.’”
Naomi jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. “Hush. Somehumans are trying to listen.”
Pinion tilted her head up. “Your solution to me hurtin’ ponies was to crack me in the face?”
“Uh.” Flash pursed her lips, looking thoughtful for an extended moment. “Yes.”
“Oh. Well. Fair enough, I guess!” Suddenly coiling her spine, Pinion sprang up into the air and back to all fours as if nothing had happened. She might as well have been elastic. She looked around to find a forest of hooves, weapons, and lit horns greeting her from the assembled watchers and quickly tucked her wings up. “Oof. Made a real botch of this one, I see. Wand King’s gonna feed me to the sewer goblin if’n I—” She gasped as she caught sight of Pinkie Pie, and her eyes lit up.
Then, with a little shake, she shed her wings and curious patterns. Her frizzy mane and tail puffed like a loaf rising in the oven, or, perhaps, a party balloon. In the space of a breath, two Pinkie Pies faced one another.
“Oh no,” Leit Motif moaned, “not this again. Ponyville barely recovered from the last time she duplicated herself.” She shuddered along her entire length, from her nose to the tip of her tail. “I’m still not done with the paperwork.”
Pinkie Pie—which is to say, the original one—rocked back on her hind legs, and then forth, pushing off the ground with her tail. Pinion matched these movements. Pinkie and Pinion craned their necks up, then sunk them down to the floor, locking eyes the entire time. Pinion pressed her head forward and Pinkie retreated, then vice versa. They trotted around one another, tapping their hooves in the same rhythm.
“Bluh!” Pinkie Pie said, making a twisted face with her tongue out, only to be greeted by the same. “Pinkie picked a pickled peck of pears parsimoniously prior to prestidigitating passionately!”
Abruptly, they both leapt on to their hind legs and snatched a cane and a top hat from nowhere at all. The rest of us backed off in shock, horror, or both as the twinned Pinkies tap-danced across the hall, singing as they went.
“Be a clown, be a clown,
All the world loves a clown.
Act a fool, play the calf,
And you'll always have the last laugh!”
At last they stopped in the middle of the room. “Oh my gosh, this is so great!” one of them said, and I couldn’t have picked who without reviewing the events in detail, so perfectly did they match. “I know!” the other answered. They giggled and bounced around one another.
Leit Motif lit her horn up and took aim.
“Whoa!” Lyra said, pushing Leit’s head down and away. “You don’t know which one is which!”
“I don’t care!” Leit grumbled, but powered down with a huff regardless.
Twilight Sparkle stepped forward, her wings and ears held low. “Uh. Pinkie?”
The two spun to face her, while the sounds of the airship landing filtered in from outside. “Yes, Twilight?” they asked in stereo.
“Never mind. Forget I asked.” She glanced between them. “So, uh… are you guys…?”
Leftmost Pinkie Pie nodded. “The bestest best friends ever!”
Rightmost Pinkie Pie grinned. “Sure are.”
Quickly, I ran back through my recollection of the shell game of their discovering one another and pointed a hoof at the one on the left. “Hold on, Pinion. This is nice and all, but you kidnapped my baby sister,” I said in a ringing voice.
The room went still, with only the propellers powering down outside breaking the silence. Pinion tilted her head and stared at me blankly. “Amelia has a sister?”
“So, you admit that you—” I froze. “Wait, she never mentioned me?”
“Nope! I mean, not that I’m doubting you or anything, but we played together for day after day after day every day for a week and she never once mentioned having a sister of any kind.”
Visions of Amelia locked in a dungeon somewhere crumbled into dust. To say I didn’t quite know how to take this information would have been a fantastic understatement. “You… played with her, and she never…?”
“Oh, sure,” Pinion nodded, “it was great! I got to be Pinkie Pie every day, and we’d play hide-and-seek, or bake together, read together, catch frogs together, sing in the rain together…” She gave herself a little shake and shifted back into her native goblin form with a pop.
Naomi lifted her brows, taking up my slack while I reeled. “For a whole week? She just blandly accepted it?”
“Yup!”
Flash stepped forward to her cousin’s side. “Pinion, look—I know you think what you’re doing is important, but you’ve got the wrong girl. This ‘Amelia’ is not the child.”
“How do you mean? She has all the signs.” Pinion frowned and tapped her hoof on the ground to count. “Right color of hair and eyes, the right location. She’s deeply imaginative, powerfully charismatic, and intelligent. Everything was going smoothly.”
“She is eight years old,” Flash said exasperatedly. “How could you possibly have made that mistake?”
Pinion’s eyes widened. “Really? I thought she was, like, twelve. I didn’t want to say anything about her height because I thought she was stunted and that would be super rude.” She tilted her head. “I mean, twelve years falls close enough to the Mag Mell divergence, so we thought it would just be a little under the expected age.”
Flash looked towards me and I shuffled my hooves uncomfortably at the intensity of her stare. “Well, she isn’t.” She put her hooves on Pinion’s shoulders. “This is all a terrible mistake. You have to go to the castle—you can explain the problem to the others, get the little girl out of there, and… I don’t even know what happens after that, but the whole thing is meaningless if Amelia isn’t the child. You know that, right?”
“Oh, sure,” Pinion nodded, “I’d love to do that.” She shot me a bright smile. “I’m sorry about kidnapping your little sister, Miss Amelia’s Big Sister. We totally meant to kidnap another little girl.”
“Uh. Thanks?” I glanced at the others and stepped forward. “Please, if you can get her back, I’ll… well, I can’t make any promises for the others, but I came here to protect Amelia. If you return her safely, I’ll take her back home and stay out of this until it’s all over, whatever happens.”
“Definitely no promises,” Applejack said darkly, “though I don’t blame you, Daphne. You didn’t sign up to protect Equestria, we can’t ask that of you.” She stomped over to Pinion. “Now, what about my sister?”
“And mine,” Rarity piped up.
“Wow, you have sisters, too? Neat!” Pinion said brightly. “I have no idea where they are! There is, though, one teensy little problem with the whole ‘me going to the castle to get your sister back’ thingie.”
My heart stopped. “What’s that?”
“She maybe kinda, uhm…” Pinion sat and rubbed her forehooves together. “Escaped.”
“Escaped?”
“Yup,” she nodded. “She escaped out of the fake Ponyville we set up to contain her, then evaded the entire castle’s worth of guards to float into the Everfree Forest on a river, then she and some other fillies managed to beat up my entire search party, and I’ve been searching for her ever since! Except I don’t think I’m going to find her, because Maille thinks she escaped on a smuggler’s wagon across the Ways to go to the great goblin city of Mag Mell, which lies between worlds.” She puffed her cheeks out. “I am simultaneously really frustrated with her, really proud of her, and really scared for her.”
Marcus broke down laughing. “Little Anteater… did all that?” he gasped. “Oh, Daphne. That’s your sister all right.”
Leit Motif caught me as I slumped and fanned me with a hoof. “Whoa, are you okay?”
“I’m not sure how much more of this I can take,” I whimpered.
Fluttershy coughed and pushed herself forward reluctantly. “Uhm. It sounds like you’re really worried about her. Why did you kidnap her? What is this ‘child’ thing all about? Even Flash didn’t really seem to know.”
Twilight flared her wings and shook her head. “It will have to wait until we’re on the move. We’ll have plenty of time to talk on the ship.” She looked towards Pinion. “I’m sorry, but until future notice we’ll have to regard you as a prisoner until we can conclusively rule out your allies as threats.”
“Will I get to spend time with Pinkie Pie?” Pinion asked.
“Uh… sure?”
“Yes!” she grabbed Pinkie about the neck and squeezed her close. “You are so, like, my idol!”
“Aww,” Pinkie Pie grinned. “I’m idolatrous!”
“That’s not what that word—” Twilight sighed. “Never mind. For the sake of Amelia, can you at least tell us how to get to… wherever she is?”
“Well,” Pinion said thoughtfully, still clinging to Pinkie Pie like a barnacle, “she’s either somewhere in the Everfree Forest, which I don’t think is likely because we should have found some sign of her by now or in the city of Mag Mell. The thing is, Maille is following her, and she’s pro-o-obably going to catch her.”
“Is Maille one of the false Element bearers?” Fluttershy asked curiously.
“Oh, yes. She’s Rarity!”
Rarity flattened her ears, lifting her chin. “Just what is this Maille character like?”
“Super pretty.”
Rarity considered that for a moment. “I’ll have to see her, of course, but that sounds promising.”
“Ahem!” Twilight interrupted with a flare of her wings. “Where is Maille going to take Amelia if she succeeds? Back to the castle?”
“Oh, no,” Pinion said, “she’s going to take Amelia straight to the Well. If you want to get there, you’ll probably have to start now, because it’s a lo-o-ong way from here, even by the Ways.”
“The… Well?” Twilight asked.
Pinion nodded. “Yup! The Well of Pirene, it’s—”
Whatever Pinion said next I didn’t hear clearly. The moment she said the word “Pirene,” queasiness boiled up in me. Four legs felt suddenly unnatural, and the room pitched as my balance vanished. “Are you okay?” Naomi asked, her freckled face close to mine.
“Y-yeah,” I said, pushing myself up. I looked over to where Pinion was speaking with Twilight still.
“So… how do we get there?” Twilight asked.
Pinion fluttered her wings and looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “It’s to the south a ways. Though I really shouldn’t tell you… I mean, you might try to foil my King and stuff.”
“Pretty please?” Pinkie Pie pleaded.
“Well, I dunno… I was trusted with a really important job.”
“Did you Pinkie Swear?”
Pinion gasped. “No! Of course not! That would be super duper important! Though Amelia broke hers and she wasn’t cursed with a terrible fate…” She withered as Pinkie Pie opened her eyes wide and trembled her lip. “Oh, I can’t say no to you! Okay!”
“Great,” Applejack said with a disgusted shake of her head. “Let’s get on the ship, then. Might as well get this over with.”
I wobbled back to my hooves and stepped out into the open air. Really, I should have been ecstatic—here I was, about to take a ride on an airship, go tearing off on an adventure, we had a firm lead on Amelia, and I managed to discover my very own special magical talent.
Yet, for some reason I couldn’t quite place my hoof on, nothing about this seemed right. Part of me wanted to turn around and run right then.
I shook myself and cleared my head. No, this was the path that would take me to my sister. No matter what, I was going to walk it.
This story won’t end, not until Amelia and I are walking back home together, hand in hand.
“The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty, and bloody-mindedness." - Terry Pratchett.
Amelia
Fires burned. Drums beat. The chill of evening air hazed our heavy breaths.
Great fire pits filled with burning oil roared to either side of us, and in their glow loomed great statues of oxen with the noble heads of kings and folded wings. Upon the ziggurat, friezes depicting dancing forms flickered and swayed in the shifting light like unreal specters. We charged up the steps of the Cup Palace to the thrum of an alien heartbeat, listening to drums somewhere deep inside the ziggurat as they kept up a steady, rhythmic beat that seemed like it might never end. With one shoulder supporting Sweetie Belle and my bag both, each step up felt agonizingly slow, a torturous battle against the force of gravity. On her other side, Scootaloo did most of the work of carrying our friend, half-pushing the injured unicorn up the steps by main force.
Wire flew down from above, her eyes wide and terrified as she looked back down towards the gate, where even now Wand carriages gathered. “I don’t see any Cup guards. I don’t understand,” she said. “They should be swarming to defend the gate against an incursion.”
“Don’t care,” I grunted. Sweetie Belle’s sniffles and little cries of pain distracted me from the hypnotic lull of the drums. Each little sob cut deep into my heart. I might as well have broken her leg personally. “Will they come up after us?”
“N-no. Maybe?” Wire shivered. “I mean… this is still the Cu-Cup Palace. Th-they’d have to be cr-crazy to come after us! They’d be violatin’ Cup sovereignty.”
A woman’s shout from below caught our ears, and we turned our heads to see several carriages leaving. Two, however, stayed behind, and the crews pushed the door open just enough to charge in. One goblin, bearing wings, began to fly up towards us, while the others ran for the stairs.
“Crap,” I groaned.
“Looks like some of them don’t care none about the lack of an invitation,” Apple Bloom said grimly. She ran down to pick up Sweetie Belle’s front, then Scootaloo pushed her onto Apple Bloom’s back. “Sweetie? I’m sorry, but we gotta move.”
Sweetie Belle sniffled and wrapped her good hooves tightly about Apple Bloom’s back. She tucked her broken leg up and whimpered. “O-okay,” she said timidly. “Let’s go.” When her friend took off up the stairs, Sweetie yelped as her injured leg jounced against the other filly’s side, but did her best to keep her mouth shut as the race went on.
If only all of us could be so brave.
“We’re gonna die, we’re gonna die we’re gonna die…” Wire whimpered as we raced up the steps.
Our hooves clattered up the steps, and we reached the top before long. A great altar stood before us, its smooth sides stained with something dark. We passed from the shadows to meet the last rays of the sun as it kissed the blocks at the ziggurat’s pinnacle. The sun sat on the horizon as a brilliant arc, a valiant defender surrendering at last to the night as we crossed the threshold. Day into night, light into darkness, the outer world to the inner world.
The warm glow of oil lamps within revealed a chamber of golden stone and carefully inlaid gems that formed elaborate patterns on a floor worn smooth by generations. Upon each segment of wall and along the arched ceiling were scenes of men and women planting fields, feasting, and praying, each beneath the images of priests holding forth radiant chalices and a king enthroned. Great statues of seated figures towered far over our heads, holding burning jars of incense in one hand and a bowl of water in the other.
We ran heedless across the floor, our hooves tapping across the tile mosaic of a chalice. Smoke lay thin against the ground, but it still managed to fill my head with a sweet, strange fragrance. It reminded me of home in so many ways—the odor of fresh cut grass, the sweet smell of the trees in spring.
Above us, Wire wobbled in mid-air. Her nostrils flared and she swayed back and forth. “What’s wrong?” I called up at her.
“It’s…” Wire shook her head as she landed beside me and ran along at my side. Her eyes were staring around with a curiously flat expression. Then she turned bright red, ducked her head, and ran with us out of the room.
Behind us, the goblin pegasus raced into the room and charged at us, but she, too, lost her balance and tumbled out of the air. I watched as she inhaled the smoke and stared around, her mouth agape and her cheeks reddening. She rose up to her hooves unsteadily and began to squirm. Her eyes turned flat as she focused on the air in front of her. She started walking in a daze, following something only she could see. She swayed her hips in time to the drum beat as she wandered off down a side passage I hadn’t noticed in my headlong rush.
“What did you see back there?” Scootaloo asked. Apparently we’d all sensed something within the veil of that smoke.
Wire shook her head fiercely. “Nothing,” she lied and ran on through the hall. The blush didn’t leave her cheeks. Vases loomed over us, heavy ceramic vessels that lined the walls.
As we ran, we could hear the other Wand goblins shouting as they reached the room. I paused and tilted my ear back and indeed heard some of the armored footsteps slow. However, some picked up again and raced after us. I considered trying to slow our pursuit by tipping one or two of the vases, but they would have been far too heavy to move on my own. Hurrying, I raced after the others.
Wire, who hadn’t slowed in the slightest, shouted in surprise and caught herself in the air as her feet failed to find the floor. The Crusaders and I skidded to a halt just in time to avoid plummeting down an unexpected stairwell, and we stood gazing down at a long chamber that ran in two wings to the left and right, with too many halls and doors leading off it to count. It was a grand hall that must have led to every other part of the palace, and it, too, had been utterly deserted. Only the silent statues watched our progress, the ancient goblins of the Cup gazing down at us in judgment. Hieroglyphics, their style like and yet subtly different from the Egyptian, covered every wall, as if the room were some vast book.
“We have to be careful,” Wire said as we started down the stairs. Her eyes were wide as she stared back to see if the remaining Wand troops were catching up. “I dunno how things are under King Xerxes, but Cup at its worst has always been about… consumption. About lurin’ you in so that you can’t ever get out again.”
“How do you mean?” Apple Bloom asked. She reached back to steady Sweetie Belle as the two of them descended together.
“I mean this ain't the sorta place you wanna get lost in.” Wire shivered and ran a hoof through her mane, glancing across the hall. “Part of the power of the Cup—when used badly—is that it can turn you around, confuse you so that you don't know yourself anymore.”
“Can you find the way to the airship docks?” I asked her tightly. The drumbeat was getting on my nerves, and I could hear the clatter of armored goblins, still on our collective tails.
“I…” Wire wrung her hooves as if they were hands, staring at the symbols over each of the doors and the statues between them. “We-well, unless they’ve renovated, I know the Great Hall is near where the docks should be—there's a platform right behind the dining hall—and the Great Hall is beside the Spring, which should be that way.” She pointed to an archway that led between the statues of a kneeling man and woman who looked as if they could be twins. “The symbol of the fountain there is the key.”
Without much in the way of hesitation, I galloped towards it. “No time to waste! Come on!”
“Oi!” a heavy woman’s voice shouted from the top of the stairs. “There they are!”
“Stop, you lil’ blighters!” a man called, and I screamed as an arrow clanged off the stones beside me. The bladed shaft had come disturbingly close to skewering me right through my gut.
“Idiot!” the woman said and cracked the other goblin across the head. “We need her alive and unhurt!”
Not pausing to listen to their conversation, we hurried through the arch with the goblins hot on our tails. With our equine strides we should have been able to beat them in a straightaway, but, almost as soon as we entered the first hall, we had to turn down a fork. A frantic Wire led the way, and I couldn't tell if she was following the hieroglyphics in some fashion or just panicking and choosing at random. Probably the latter.
Just as it seemed that the goblin footsteps were right on top of us, though, we heard them race down another way.
Wire slowed to a stop to catch her breath in gratified relief. I grabbed her puffy tail in my teeth and hissed quietly. “No time! If they double back we’re hosed!”
Apple Bloom groaned, panting under the stress of having been running almost since early morning and the weight of another filly on her back. “Hate to admit it, but Moonlight's right.”
“Sure, Ame—I mean, Moonlight.” Wire nodded and trotted ahead. At some point, though, it was clear we were indeed taking turns at random. Our path became confused, and it seemed as if our sense of direction had gotten spoiled along the way. We marched through nearly identical hallways of smooth sandstone. The same hieroglyphics and murals of farming villagers greeted us along every way. Even the torches seemed familiar. At least the clanging of the pursuing Wand goblins seemed just as lost, coming at times from the left, others from the right, but rarely directly behind us.
Soon we heard shouting, and the echoes of the racing goblins moved nearly in front of us. In a panicked rush, we ran backwards—only to come to a halt when we found the way behind us blocked by a wall that most certainly had not been there before.
“Dang it!” I seethed. “We’re being toyed with!”
“What’s going on?” Sweetie Belle said, her voice heavy. Her broken leg had swollen alarmingly, and I tried not to look too closely at it as I gesticulated to the wall.
“I’ve seen this before. Once when Fetter first picked me up and the trees in the forest moved, and again in the Wand Castle when a goblin was pretending to be a rock.” I glared at it. “There’s Cup goblins changing into walls to alter the shape of the labyrinth, or else they’re moving the walls by some other means.”
I could swear I saw the painted face of a priest on the wall’s mural quirk into a smug grin. Smashing my hooves into it angrily did nothing, however—illusion or no, the plaster and brick beneath certainly felt real enough, and my strikes only scratched the surface and chipped the paint.
Wire quivered in a corner, muttering a litany. Thankfully, though, the Wand goblins had not caught up with us. “Well,” Scootaloo said, “at least they seem to be equal opportunity jerks.” Indeed, the Wand goblins' frustrated shouts vanished in another direction entirely.
“They just want to divide us so they can swallow us up one at a time,” Wire moaned as she quivered in a little ball. “Keep us as slaves until we’re old and weak…”
Taking stock of Wire’s remaining supply of thunderstones, I wondered if we could actually hold off the Cup goblins if they decided to come after us. Probably not, but nobody needed to know that. “Well, let them try,” I said loudly. I poked Wire, then pulled sharply on her tail when she refused to get up. With a little shriek, she jumped back to all fours with her hair standing even more on end than usual. “We’ll thrash them if they come anywhere near us.”
“Yeah!” Scootaloo said, bucking her rear hooves threateningly. “I’ll pound them into dust!” I couldn’t tell if she was playing along or genuinely convinced she could fight off whatever guards this place had. No matter; if her enthusiasm kept our opposition guessing for a few minutes more, all the better.
“How are we going to find our way out, though?” Sweetie Belle asked. “I’m totally lost.”
I bit my lip, trying to think. There were techniques to get out of mazes, like always keeping to the left, but not many that I knew of for dealing with a maze that deliberately shifted itself to mess with you.
“Hey,” Scootaloo said, brushing her mane back from her eyes, “those drums always come from the same direction, right?”
“Now that you mention it…” I muttered and perked my ears. They most definitely came from a single direction, currently to our left. Their direction wasn’t immediately obvious because the actual sound of the drums came from seemingly everywhere at once, but the pulsing bass beat definitely had an origin, and that origin was to our left.
“And the sound isn't really muffled, meaning there's a clear path, so we haven’t been cut off,” Scootaloo added. “How are we going to—” She cut off when Apple Bloom shoved a hoof into her mouth.
“Wait. I think I have an idea.” For a moment we stood there as Apple Bloom cogitated.
I took stock of our little cadre. We all looked miserable and beaten up. My mane fell all across my face and sides. Apple Bloom’s looked particularly wild with the absence of her bow, and only Wire seemed reasonably intact—not that she wasn't about to have a heart attack, judging by how tautly she stood.
“Wire?” Apple Bloom asked at last, getting her attention. She gestured the older filly down to whisper into her ear.
Wire swallowed and nodded, like a puppet on strings. Apple Bloom slid Sweetie Belle to Scootaloo’s back, and then took a rope from her saddlebags, which she tied to each of us.
“Can goblins see in the dark?” Apple Bloom asked me quietly.
I shook my head. “No. Uh. Probably not.” I frowned as she cinched her rope tightly around my waist. “But, then, neither can we.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Scootaloo whispered with a grin. “We’ve got it all covered. We may not have gotten our cutie marks from spelunking, but we did pick up a trick or two.” She passed the sound sphere up to Sweetie Belle
“Do any of those tricks involve not dying in a dark corridor? Because—”
“Hush!” Apple Bloom stuffed a hoof in my mouth and nodded to Wire. The goblin grimaced and set her wings. Then she belted them forward and back, a rapidfire motion that kicked up a powerful wind that swept through the labyrinth. The lamps on the walls struggled, faltered, and died. A few survived the onslaught, but not enough to leave us in anything but near-total darkness.
The rope around my barrel nearly yanked me off my feet as the others ran and I struggled to keep up. Our hoofsteps made no sound at all, and even the sound of the blood pumping through my ears had been taken away. For all I knew, we could have been traveling through a void, were it not for the fact that my feet felt the floor and the occasional moments where I’d smack into a wall and then be dragged a different direction.
As we ran, though, I heard voices in other languages shouting across the halls. Even without being able to understand them, it seemed clear that they were trying to narrow us down again. Torches would flash only to suddenly be snuffed out by Wire’s wing beats.
Finally, light spilt open ahead of us as a man’s silhouette formed. Apple Bloom didn’t hesitate—she spun and delivered a powerful buck. I must have underestimated our strength greatly, or forgotten that Apple Bloom must weigh something on the order of eighty to a hundred pounds, because her blow struck the barely-seen fellow so hard he flew back into the stairs behind him. With spots filling our eyes, we charged past the stunned man up the flight of stairs into an antechamber. We darted through the open door and slammed it shut behind us.
I had to give it to those fillies; they were remarkably resourceful, particularly given our limited means. Chances are the Wand goblins wouldn't be able to catch up now. Somehow, I didn't think the labyrinth would risk losing more prey. With my heart lifting, I took in our new surroundings.
This room had a long arched ceiling with narrow ribbed windows to either side. They looked out into a moonlit garden with strange plants barely glimpsed. When we tried the door at the end of the hall, however, we found it locked. Apple Bloom, Wire, and I all tried to shake the door’s iron handle together, but all it did was wriggle the door in its frame and rattle a bar on the other side.
“Drat,” Apple Bloom said and gave the door a desultory kick. “Should we head back?”
Wire slumped against it, her sore wings hanging limply on her back. “They’ll catch us for sure if we do. It's just a matter of time until they find us here, if they aren't already coming.”
I went over to the window slats and peered out at the garden with a thoughtful scowl. “I… might be able to do something.”
“What’s that?” Scootaloo asked. She nudged her head against the stone windows and pulled back with a little pop. “Way, way too thin. You’d need to take my legs and wings off, and even then my head’s too big.”
“Not exactly.” I glanced back at the others. “Can you all turn around for a bit? It’s easier if no pony is watching me.”
Wire perked up. “Oh! I know what she’s doing.” She turned the curious Crusaders around. “Don’t worry, you lot. Am—err, Moonlight’s got this down.”
Well, at least one of us was confident in my abilities. I flexed my legs and stared at the stone bars. Setting my hooves against them, I applied a gentle pressure and fixed in my mind the idea of being on the other side. The fact that the garden beyond was visible made the task of Penetration far easier, but it was still the act of shoving myself through solid matter. The fact that I’d done it accidentally several times already didn’t lend me any particular confidence.
Somepony had to do it, though. Damn me if I couldn’t at least do this right for my friends.
The key to the trick of Penetration is convincing yourself that the object isn’t really solid at all—to somehow slide the tiny bits of your matter between and around the tiny bits of theirs. Daphne probably could have explained the theory in a scientific way, and exactly why it was impossible—electron pressure or something like that. You have to believe absolutely that you can pass through a solid object, regardless of its technical impossibility. Perhaps it said something about my capacity for self-delusion, but there were few more suited to the task of believing the impossible was doable than me. Ever so slowly, my hooves sank into the stone and I passed through as if a solid wall were nothing more than insubstantial mist. Rock and flesh melded together, and I could feel it like a vague wave of pressure passing through my body.
In the span of two breaths, I was on the other side. Goblin magic rules.
“Okay,” I called back, “I’ll go open the door.”
They turned and stared. Scootaloo boldly shoved her head between the bars and winced as she banged her skull. “Ow! Moonlight, how’d you do that?”
“Don’t be a bald-headed loon,” Wire chided. “It’s magic, see? She was taught by a great magician and just clean walked through the windows.”
I rolled my eyes and picked my way across the garden towards the door on the other side. It was a roundabout path, dodging through vines and under briars. I moved carefully, owing to the poor lighting—the glass ceiling and a few fires on distant exits only dimly contributed to the illumination.
As I came out of sight, though, I bumped into something large and furry and backpedaled rapidly. As my eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight, I found myself staring at a huge backside, a bear, or perhaps something stranger still. Hopefully it was asleep, and I began to creep away, only to realize that it wasn’t moving at all. Not even to breathe.
As I stalked around, I discovered why quickly enough. It was a bear—very much in the past tense. Huge rents had been torn in its front, and black liquid pooled across the moonlit glade where it had died. A tiger sat across the way and stared blankly into space, with several marks across its face and side.
If I’d wandered into this garden as blithely as I had while they were still alive, I’d have been toast if they’d wanted me for a snack. Someone had cleared the area out for me already. Immediately, I began to search the darkness for blue eyes.
“Wee bairns should not stand so idly,” the Morgwyn said from behind me, “not while their enemies close in on them from all sides.”
Really, I should be proud of myself for not shrieking. I jumped and spun to face the cat-thing. My wide eyes flicked from it to the dead bear and back again. “Isn’t that, uhm… I mean…”
“Even now, the Wand King marshals his forces. He will risk the eternal ire of the Cup to gain what he seeks, if necessary.” The Morgwyn’s tail flicked, and I looked from its barbed tail to the marked tiger. “Should the Cup King know what he has in his grasp, he, too, shall rouse.”
It’s strange, really; after the initial hackle raising, the whole situation didn’t seem all that bad. Sure, the Morgwyn had slain two creatures on the off-chance that they might be a threat to me. Maybe a day or so ago that would have been horrifying, but after everything I’d just went through, it seemed only natural. “And just what does he have in his grasp, Morg? What am I?”
“Power and promise, bairn.” It cast its sharp gaze back at the others. “You may not have much time left to escape. The airships you seek lie past this garden, past a guardian.” It nodded towards a firelit ramp near the back that led into another chamber.
“We’ll just have to hurry, then,” I said, starting towards the door.
“‘We?’ The ones back there, will they continue to aid you once they know all? What will they do, once they realize you deceived them and led them to their deaths?” The Morgwyn flitted up into the trees and walked along a branch above me. “When the time comes, will they turn you in for a breath of mercy? When it comes between an uncertain and possibly lethal attempt at escape or clemency from your enemies, which will they choose?”
“They aren’t like that!” I snapped.
“Oh?” Its glowing teeth and eyes were the only thing visible now. “Because you have been so wise in placing your trust before.”
With that, its smile faded, and its eyes as well. I hurried along, trying not to think about my benefactor’s words. Daphne had betrayed me for some tramp unicorn. Everypony I had thought were my friends in Ponyville had deceived me and kept me prisoner and were now attempting to capture me again. Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Wire weren’t like that, though; they were honest.
Except Wire only came with me because I’d made her think she was going to be punished and browbeat her into following me. The Crusaders didn’t even know my real name.
They’d just never have to find out until we were safe.
Reaching the other side of the door, I set my head under the bar and pushed until it popped free, then pulled the door open. The others flew past me into the garden, and I shut and barred the door behind them, just in case any Wand or Cup goblins tried to come after us.
“This way,” I told them and hurried down the garden path. We passed fountains, benches, and statues cluttering the night garden and came to the ramp. The drum beat was stronger than ever here, pounding like some ancient dragon’s heart. We ascended and walked into another dimly lit room. Ahead, obelisks reached for the tiled ceiling, and we faintly perceived two stairways curving around a massive statue in the center of the room. It seemed to be a sphinx, with a long body, two massive paws, and a woman’s head. Water flowed in channels on the floor.
As we passed a Cup emblem on the floor, however, fire leapt into being along the walls and revealed the sphinx as something very much alive. She opened her eyes and flexed her massive lion’s body with a cat-like yawn, and then stared down at us with dark eyes. Wire, rather than wibbling, simply turned as stiff as stone and fell over to play dead.
“Oh, crap,” I muttered.
“Wand-tongue? My, my,” she purred in a deep voice, “it’s been a very long time since anyone of that persuasion has penetrated the Palace this deeply. Few dare to disturb the sacred recesses so readily—I had not imagined anyone alive who was so foolish.”
I looked to the others and then back up to the sphinx. Perhaps, if it wasn’t terribly fast, Apple Bloom and I could run back into the forest and get ourselves lost—except for the fact that Apple Bloom would never leave her friends and Scootaloo was too slow with an injured Sweetie Belle on her back. So it would just be me. Then I could easily sneak back past the sphinx with the sound sphere after she had gone back into her nap.
Instead of running like they ought to, though, my feet stayed put. For now.
“Yeah,” I said. “Uh… sorry about that. We were running from some Wand soldiers and got chased here.”
“I do not particularly care,” the sphinx said cheerfully. “You might have preferred their ministrations to me, but what would we of the Cup be without our fabled mercy?”
My ears perked. “Mercy?” Apple Bloom asked uncertainly. She eyed the sphinx’s paws as it flexed and revealed huge meat hooks.
“Three riddles shall I ask, for ’tis mine ancient task. Should you answer true, freedom shall be your due. But should you answer false or lie, then I fear that you shall surely die.”
A sigh of relief escaped my lips. “Oh, phew. Riddles. It’s okay, girls, we’ve got this one in the bag.”
The sphinx’s lips quirked into a frown at my flippant response. The Crusaders gave me a puzzled look as well. Really, I’m surprised they weren’t feeling pretty confident. Everyone knew that there were a few things you had to work on in order to be prepared for eventualities like game shows, reality television, or adventures with strange monsters—memorizing werewolf moons was one, learning obscure trivia about mythology was another, but getting the hang of riddles was pretty much the top of the list, or near enough.
The sphinx cleared a throat and tossed her black hair, then intoned:
“Three lives have I.
Gentle enough to soothe the skin,
Light enough to caress the sky,
Hard enough to crack rocks.”
“Water,” I said, without even pausing to think about it.
The sphinx scowled down at me. “Are you sure it’s water?”
I rolled my eyes. “Three lives for the three states of liquid, solid and gas. It’s clean and cool to the touch when not dirty, it rises to the sky as clouds, and when it repeatedly freezes it can gradually crack rocks open. Yes, it’s water.”
The sphinx bit her lip. “All right.” She narrowed her gaze.
“This old one runs forever, but never moves at all.
He has not lungs nor throat, but still a mighty roaring call.
What is it?”
My hooves clipped a little pattern as I circled the others, thinking through different options. “Hum. Not that… no…” I listened to the distant beat of the drums, letting their rhythm clear my head. The Crusaders watched me circle, hardly daring to breathe. “Something that roars and yet isn’t an animal, and stays in one place… Generators don’t run forever, but something that… Ah! A waterfall!” I said and clapped my hooves triumphantly.
“Damn!” the sphinx swore. She lowered her head down to my level and looked me in the eyes with a sour expression. “All right, pretty miss unicorn. You like riddles, do you?”
“Is that your riddle? If so, I answer—”
“No!” She snarled. “It’s not!” She lifted her head and stamped a foot. “I’m thinking; shut up!”
It was hard not to look smug as the sphinx sat back on her haunches and puffed her cheeks out. Goading her could be the wrong approach, but someone who was off balance wasn’t liable to think very hard.
“I’ve got it,” she said at last, and curled her lips into a smile.
“Thought will ever trail behind,
as this one colors in the mind.”
I opened my mouth to respond, then paused. It certainly wasn’t one of the classic riddles, so perhaps she’d come up with it by herself. It was extremely simple, which indicated either that the answer was deceptively complicated, or else deviously straightforward in order to throw off people who over think things.
My eyes met the Crusaders, but each of them shook her head in turn. Wire was and remained catatonic. I started to pace again, going around and working the puzzle out in my head. “Can I ask clarifying questions?”
“No,” the sphinx said smugly.
“Come on. You should at least tell me if it’s something from Midgard or some faraway land.”
“I would think it obvious that it is not, especially to a clever riddle-solver such as yourself.” She settled back on her belly and watched me gleefully. “Go on. Take your time.”
Growling, I paced faster. My tail twitched. Twice I stopped to answer, thinking it might be something as specific as a type of bird, or as simple as the brain itself, but both times I stopped. Neither fit. If it wasn’t the brain, it wouldn’t be synapses, either, and the blood in the brain certainly didn’t color beyond red.
“Tick, tock,” the sphinx said. She flexed her claws again and let them scrape across the tile.
“How much time do I have?” I asked. The tremor of uncertainty I kept firmly out of my voice.
She spread her teeth in a grin. “Long enough to answer, but shorter than you might like.”
The damned drums continued to pound, and my heart outraced them. Possibilities flew into my mind and were discarded just as rapidly. This feline witch wouldn’t beat me.
Except she was beating me.
I circled closer to the Crusaders. Sweetie Belle still held the sound sphere loosely in one hoof—if I grabbed it and ran, I could get away.
I paused, staring at the sphere. It was my ticket out.
At the cost of everyone else.
All I had to do was reach out and take it.
“Ahem,” the sphinx said, but she paused as Sweetie Belle abruptly spoke up.
“Wh-why are you doing this?” Sweetie Belle asked. Her eyes looked up to meet the sphinx’s, and they were huge and liquid. “D-do you enjoy hu-hurting little kids?”
The sphinx glared down at her. “Now, you hold on, unless you have an answer—”
Sweetie Belle wouldn’t be deterred, though. She started to cry. Her eyes streamed tears and she began to wail at the top of her lungs. Her bitter, broken sobs filled the arena. There was such heartbreak in those mournful cries that I felt my guts shrivel up in shame at the thoughts I myself had been having. Just moments ago I’d seriously considered abandoning these people to save my own skin.
Just what sort of creature does that?
“Look, it’s just my job,” the sphinx said apathetically. “I’m bound by ancient laws.” Sweetie Belle’s cries grew louder, if anything, lamenting her short life and how she’d never get to say farewell to her parents or her sister. It could have been my imagination, but it seemed as if the figures depicted on the walls had turned their heads to frown at the sphinx. She rolled her shoulders uncomfortably.
“I’m not that bad; I’m not!” she protested. Her eyes flicked from side to side and she hunched down, as if to block the gazes. “I… I probably wouldn’t kill you, anyway! I mean, that whole line about dying is more eventual. I like kids, really! I have a cousin on Svartalfheim and I play with her cubs a lot.”
“I’ll never get to taste chocolate ice cream ever aga-ain!” Sweetie wailed. “N-no pony wi-will ever be my special somepony! I-I’ll never have foals of my own!” She banged her hooves on her head. “I'll ne-never see my sister and tell her how much I'll miss her-r!” Great watery tears fell on Scootaloo in profusion.
“It’s ‘eyes!’” the sphinx shouted over the shrieking. She waved her paws in front of the four of us desperately. “It’s ‘eyes!’ Because, you know, cones in the eyes register color so our thoughts can—Agh, please, just say it so you can go!”
“The answer to the riddle is eyes?” Apple Bloom asked.
“Good enough! Go, go!” she said, waving us up the stairs. I grabbed Wire’s tail in my teeth and hauled the catatonic goblin up after us, with Apple Bloom’s help to keep her from banging her head on the steps. Scootaloo carried the still-sobbing Sweetie Belle, whose cries were still loud enough to leave our ears ringing. The sphinx, for her part, covered her own ears and sang loudly in what sounded like an Indian language—a Cup dialect, no doubt.
We passed through the portal at the top and into a circular room dominated chiefly by a great fountain, fed by four different statues of goblins all pouring their chalices in. Once we passed through, Sweetie Belle turned her head to look behind, and her keening slackened off. It was almost as if somepony had gone and tightened a valve, because the waterworks stopped as well. “Wow, I can’t believe that worked,” she said wonderingly.
Wire jerked up. “Huh? …We’re alive?” She patted herself down. “Well. I certainly wasn't expectin’ that.”
Scootaloo snorted. “Yeah, so far.”
Apple Bloom covered her mouth to keep from laughing too loudly. “We showed her. I think Moonlight was pretty close to—Moonlight? Are you okay?”
“Ye-yeah,” I lied, turning away. No tears, but the pit in my stomach hadn’t gone anywhere. Shame was a feeling that I was neither comfortable nor familiar to me. I couldn’t look at their faces now, any of their faces. They didn’t deserve what I had been putting them through, and here I was playing them false. “Girls?”
“Yeah?” Apple Bloom asked as she, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle turned towards me. “What’s up?”
“There’s so-something I ne-need to tell you girls,” I said, and swallowed at a lump in my throat. “I—”
“Oh, hey!” Wire said, oblivious to my revelation, “it’s the Spring! I can’t believe it, I thought I’d never see it with my own eyes!”
Before we could ask what she was talking about, she flew back, lifted Sweetie Belle up, and dipped her into the bubbling water. Sweetie gave a little squeal and kicked her heels, but was soon up to her neck regardless of her struggles.
Even as we watched, the bubbling increased, and the water around her skin started to glow. It shined brightest about her broken ankle, and the three of us stared in awe as Sweetie Belle’s leg slowly straightened, letting off a thin trail of milky white that filmed on the surface of the pool before itself fading. The swelling shrank. When Wire pulled her out, she looked as good as new, and when Sweetie Belle gingerly put her weight on her rear hoof, she didn’t so much as wince.
It was incredible, miraculous even—not merely the healing, but what it meant for me. I practically fell into Sweetie Belle’s forelegs with a happy sob. I buried my face in her mane and wet it with tears. It meant that I hadn't screwed her over.
Sweetie rocked back as I leaned into her. “It’s okay.” She patted my mane awkwardly. “I’m okay now, see?” She rubbed her own leg with a wondering expression, feeling at the soft hair and smooth, unblemished skin. “That is really incredible, Wire. How does it work? I mean, not even Princess Celestia could do that!”
“It’s part of the Arcana’s purview. The Cup swallows desires and overflows with gifts,” Wire said. “Which is to say, uhm… it kind of grants wishes, and—do not drink it, Scootaloo!” She grabbed the younger filly and shook her.
Scootaloo coughed up the bubbling water and watched the froth dissolve into nothingness. “I thought you said it was magic healing water!” she protested, giving Wire a sour look. “Also, wish-granting.”
“Yeah, sure, but you don’t want to let strange magic inside you. Do you know how to control it?” She shuddered. “That’d be a right tidy mess. I took a big risk just dunking Sweetie Belle in, but my sister Flash told me it was pretty safe for brief exposure like that.”
“What could happen?” Apple Bloom asked, looking at her murky reflection.
“I dunno.” Wire shook her head. “You could end up on another world entirely, or maybe changed somehow. Maybe you’d become an empath and never be able to shut off others’ feelings from infectin’ yours.”
“Could we get our cutie marks that way?” Apple Bloom asked with a gleam in her eyes.
Wire shook her head harder. “I ain't a Cup goblin, I don't know all the lore; we also aren’t Cup Bearers, so we couldn't control it even if I were. Maybe it could give you your cutie marks, but it ain’t worth the risk no matter how tidy you might think the rewards are.” She frowned towards the open doorway in the back, from whence the pounding drums came. “Their rewards always come with a price, and usually that price is servin’ the Cup King in whatever he wants. That’s why I was so afraid of comin' here—Xerxes is the worst kind of King. He’ll hook you, addict you, and never let you go. You’ll never want to leave ever again, because he'll just suck you in with something else you need whenever you think you're free.”
“Shoot,” Apple Bloom said. “Well, I guess. Say, Moonlight—” she turned towards me “—didn’t you have somethin’ you wanted to say?”
I slid back from Sweetie Belle and rubbed my face. Each of their faces looked to mine, open and innocent. Their eyes shone with happiness, and Sweetie Belle looked so proud to have her leg working again. All I had to do was open my mouth and tell them that I was a liar who had abused their selfless friendship and all of their heroism.
The words stuck in my throat.
After a pause, I finally said, “If this is the Spring, then the Great Hall and the airships are just past this area. We should hurry and get out of here, after we take care of our injuries.”
Wire turned to look at me, washing her bruised sides with the healing water. Her pale eyes wavered and turned away, and she returned to cleansing herself without saying a word.
The pool glimmered as I stepped up to it and splashed myself. Wherever the liquid touched, cuts and abrasions bubbled and washed away as if they were merely dirt being soaped up. The thought of soap reminded me, and I dug around in my bag until I came out with a pair of tiny soapstone statues of birds, the ones I had picked up in the forest before the basilisk attack. Somehow, they’d survived all the bouncing around, and looked reasonably pristine but for a few chips.
“Will it heal petrification?” I asked.
Wire gave a shrug, and watched as I held the two rocks in under the surface in the cloth I’d wrapped them in. They soaked for a bit, and bubbles rose off them fiercely. The five of us watched in amazement as their surfaces lit up with a pearly luminescence. Then, shaking themselves free of the water, a pair of blue jays flew up to dance overhead. I beamed and felt for the first time in a while that perhaps there was hope for us after all. The two birds swooped down to perch in my hair and I laughed. Then they hopped down to the lip of the Spring, and their eyes were oddly intelligent as they met my gaze.
On impulse, I told them, “You two should go. There will be ships outside—wait for us there.”
They pecked at the stone, and for a moment I wondered if I was foolish for talking to a pair of dumb birds, but then they leapt back into the air, spun around twice, and flitted through the open door.
Wire coughed. “Right. We’re near the throne room, though, so we should be extra careful. If one of the Cup Bearers sees us… I’m not sure we’ll ever get out.”
Sweetie Belle took the hint and wound the sound sphere up. With our hooves muffled once more, we snuck up to the door and peered through. We watched from behind a columned cloister, with the shadows of mad dancers cast up against us. Down below, goblins of every shape and size blended together, red-faced with heat and exhaustion as they beat drums, played pipes, strummed, and cavorted between lit fires. They gorged themselves with wine and excess. In one corner, the winged goblin who had been lured away before danced in the air with another of her kind, the two close and covered in sweat. Overlooking it all sat a young goblin man with golden metallic hair, bearing a shepherd’s crook in one hand and a simple wooden chalice in the other. The chalice bubbled and poured red wine down endlessly to be collected and distributed by maddened shapes. His face was split wide in a smile that danced cruelly in the shifting shadows.
At Wire’s touch, we went around the terrace, coming to a vaulted banquet hall over the throne room that could have played host to a decent game of football. The windows on the far side had an excellent view of the distant statues. Enormous tables ran from one end of the hall to the other, haphazardly placed and topped high with plates, platters, and even whole troughs of the ripest, freshest food I had ever seen in my entire life. Grapes as big as a man’s fist practically glowed in the flickering light, while whole mountains of roasted bird and slabs of steak glistened in their own juices.
It was also a complete mess.
The goblins there, some as big as elephants and others as small as mice, must have had a field day earlier in the evening. Entire rivers of wine, milk, and honey poured across the floor, pooling around snoring figures, for they were all quite asleep. Engorged with what was only a fraction of the feast laid before them, they snoozed with their heads face down in pies or across benches. Some of them had been flung one atop the other, probably so others could get to the food that they had fallen asleep on earlier.
“Just… don’t eat anything,” Wire murmured as we started towards the hall. The sound sphere had worn off, but we didn’t see much need for it again yet. “We just need to get through here.”
“Why not?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“The whole place has been blessed, and the food, too,” Wire said as she trembled. “This is one of the Cup’s most sacred festivals.”
Sweetie picked the sound sphere up again. “Should we…?”
“I dunno.” Wire poked the arm of a hairy, troll-like figure. “They’re pretty wanged out.”
“Can you keep it wound up until we need it?” I asked.
Sweetie Belle nodded and twisted the key. Then Apple Bloom tied a rubber band around the ball and stowed it. “We’ll cut it if things get hairy.”
In a line, we started across the banquet hall. We picked our way over snoring bodies and avoided pools of liquid or grease, the piles of broken glass and pottery, and the heaped tables.
My mind drifted. It was like some weird haunted house, and Halloween was right around the corner. Naomi would probably make my costume again this year—
Just in time, I caught myself from pitching over the side of a table and into a bowl of spaghetti. I shook my head and scowled. Nothing had really changed, but it was as if a fog had risen up around the room. When I shook my head and cleared it, the haze went with it, and so, too, did I realize that I’d fallen behind. Hurrying, I caught up with the others and poked Wire, who was leading the way.
Wire stared down at me blankly. “Flash…?” she asked dimly, then her eyes sharpened. “Amy? What’re you—whoa!” She stepped back, and her hoof squished into a roll. The warm, heavy odor of sugar and cinnamon wafted up and filled my nostrils. All the colts and fillies at school would come to my party. They’d never laugh at me again.
My stomach growled.
“Could anypony else go for some hayfries right now?” Scootaloo asked.
Apple Bloom glanced around at the room. “I sure could.”
“Uh.” Wire shook her head again. “That’s probably a bad idea. We should go.”
“Yeah,” I said, reluctantly tearing my eyes from the succulent pastry rolls. We picked up the pace and found a clear path through the debris, trotting along.
Yet the smell coming off the tables was incredible. It must have been hours since they were left out, but it all looked fresh out of the kitchen. The drum beat sank itself into my bones and my feet struck the ground in time with its rhythm. The statues of goblins on the walls swayed. They shook sheafs of wheat and jugs of red liquid.
“You know, we could use something for the road,” I said. “Or the sky, whatever.”
Wire folded her wings tightly against her side, frowning. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“It does seem like a bit of a waste,” Apple Bloom said, bumping into Wire when the latter slowed.
“What could be wrong, Live Wire?” Scootaloo asked. She tracked her head past Wire to a pile of gooey-looking desserts that had gone untouched. They practically glowed in the moonlight. “Oh, wow, look at that.”
“One snack won’t hurt, right?” Sweetie Belle asked. She hopped up onto the bench, and I hopped up with her.
“Well… I mean… I don’t know for sure,” Wire said. She squirmed and danced below uncertainly.
I waved a hoof down at her. “Oh, relax, Wire. We’re just going to have a bite.”
“Th-that’s what I’m afraid of!” she said and fluttered up. She stared at the pastries and tore her face away with obvious effort. “I-I mean, that’s the trick. You start sm-small.” Her wings fluttered as she darted around behind us. “Girls? We really shouldn’t. It’s a bad idea.”
Apple Bloom gave her a reflexive kick as Wire tried to grab her around the middle and carry her off. After that, Wire shied away.
The fog crept up, stealing over me as I hopped on Scootaloo’s back to get up onto the table. As I hauled her up, I saw myself walking home. It was a hot summer, with all the windows opened. Mom and Dad sat at the table. Mom carved an apple with the knife in her teeth as her tail flicked with concentration. Father’s wings ruffled and his neatly kept black mane bobbed over behind his newspaper. I heard footsteps from upstairs and Daphne came down the stairs in her newest dress. I ran to meet her, leaping into her forelegs, and she laughed and picked me up, and—
Wait. Daphne and me hugging? That was just all sorts of wrong.
I stared down at the pastry sitting on my hoof, sticky with caramelized sugar and with a ripe cherry on top. It had seemed so innocent, so delectable.
“Girls, stop!” I said sharply.
Apple Bloom took one look at me. Then she bit into her cake. In turn, each of the Crusaders dug into their pastries. Then, their eyes alight with hunger, they tore into the pile, stuffing their faces.
My eyes widened in shock as I watched them. “No!” I shouted and tried to pull Scootaloo off, only for a sudden burst of strength to surge through her as she tossed me off. I windmilled my forelegs and kept from toppling off the table, readying myself to leap at them and stop them by force, when something strange caught my eye.
They were changing.
Sweetie Belle’s horn sharpened and grew, the tip catching the moonlight with a sharp point. Apple Bloom’s limbs had thickened, but only to match their increased length. Scootaloo’s tiny wings fluffed up and folded across her back—she seemed sleek, powerful.
Would that have been the end of it, I might have been able to stop them and walk away. We could have laughed about it.
Even as I watched, Apple Bloom licked at her hooves and looked at me. Her eyes were red-on-red, pupils and sclera both. Wood sprouted in her long red mane, popping little white blossoms out. “This is great stuff, Moonlight. You should try some—I feel amazing.”
“Yeah,” Sweetie Belle agreed, her voice oddly resonant and clear, “these are way, way better than anything back home.” Her hairs became translucent, then solidified along the length of her, forming a brilliant crystalline sheen of fine diamond scales. Her tail flicked, shaking off hair as it grew, leaving a long tuft at the end. She lowered her hoof as it split into a cloven one and picked up more dessert with a glow of pale green magic.
“Awesome more like,” Scootaloo said, spreading her now-impressive wingspan to let the feathers there catch the light and scintillate like a kingfisher’s iridescent plumage.
“No,” I breathed. “No, no. Guys! You have to stop!” I turned towards Wire. “What’s going on?” I begged.
“They’re… they’re becoming goblins,” she said slowly.
“Hey, Sweetie, hovah someof dose grapes over here, wouldja?” Apple Bloom asked through a mouthful.
Sweetie nodded enthusiastically. “Sure thing.”
I pounced at her. “Sweetie, stop!”
She picked me up in midair in a green aura and gave me a distant look; I could see the light refracting oddly in her smooth eyes. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
“Yeah,” Apple Bloom said, shifting and kicking plates away to give her increased scale room on the table. Her teeth were even more broad and flat than normal, strong enough to grind bone to powder. “She’s… uhm… Moonlight Shimmer? From Manehattan?”
I landed with a thud as Sweetie Belle discarded me. “Oh, right. Come join in, we can talk after the party,” she said.
The drum beat jarred thoroughly now as my heart raced. I gaped at them, watching as they ate and changed. All around us, the snores slowed, and the goblins began to stir.
It was so unfair.
After everything we’d been through, after all the scrapes we’d pulled ourselves from, after all the dangers we’d faced and overcome, this is what it came to. When Sweetie’s leg had been broken, I had thought that I’d screwed up for good, only for hope to be given by the Spring.
Now, mere minutes later, that hope had been viciously torn away.
Wire landed next to me, reaching out to Scootaloo, but I grabbed her and yanked her around. “No. Leave them.”
“But—”
“I said, leave them!” I snapped at her. Wire’s head jerked around, and she stared in terror at my bared teeth and wild eyes. “Let’s go. Now!”
Wire whimpered, but lowered herself so I could climb on her back. Then, with effort, she beat her wings and carried me away from the doomed Crusaders. We didn’t get far before a groggy voice shouted. A plate buzzed up out of the mass of goblins below, but the thrower had yet to really wake up. I could hear them shouting in their own tongue, trying to get the attention of the mad party below.
Wire shook below me. For a moment, I’d wondered if she’d been hit, but found her choking back sobs instead. “Come on!” I shouted. “We can’t be far now, Wire! Don’t give up on me now!”
“Like you gave up on them?” she called back, tears flying past as we dived through a tunnel. Feet stomped and goblins crowded at the entrance. We soared out into the night air, where the stars were bright. A storm approached from the horizon, ripe with the promise of thunder and rain as we flew towards a series of craft moored to the side of the palace. They swayed in the rising wind, their envelopes turning like great sails.
“We didn’t have a choice!” I glanced around for the bluejays, but neither sight nor sound of the birds presented themselves. Perhaps they'd been smart and flown away entirely.
“Just like you… you didn’t have a choice but to lie to them?” Wire took me over the lip of one airship that was about the size of a rowboat, with an engine in the back on a tiller. Rather than let me down, though, she reached back and threw me onto the deck with a loud thud.
“Wire!” I gasped, wincing at the pain in my shoulder as I stood. Nothing had been broken or dislocated, but it had been a rough landing. “What are you doing? Get down—”
“No!” she screamed, and I shrank back from her as she snarled at me. “I’m done with you, Moonlight Glimmer.”
I stared at her, momentarily dumbfounded. “Bu-but… Wire, I’m your—”
“Friend?” she spat. “You were never my friend. All you’ve ever done is treat me like dirt since the moment we met! You foalnapped me and told me everything I knew was over! You… you… serpent-tongued cythraul!” She hammered the ropes holding the airboat in place and tore at them with her teeth until it came loose from the moorings and drifted on the wind. “You want to run and hide? Fine! I don’t need you! Those girls showed more care and compassion to me than anygob I’ve ever known, and I’m not gonna let them become Cup slaves! All you ever did was lie to them and use them!” She grabbed the engine’s cord and pulled once, twice, and thrice until it coughed and roared.
“Wire, wait. I… I…” I reached out to her. “Please, I… I’m sorry, I… we…” I prepared to leap after her. Maybe she was right—the goblins were disoriented, we could hide and wait until they were gone. The boat would prove an excellent distraction, too, drawing their attention and making them think we’d left until it was too late.
Wire paused on the side of the deck, looking back at me with her eyes soft and wide.
Past her, the other goblins were finding their footing as they stumbled out into the night. A few had makeshift weapons, pieces of broken chairs and benches, the iron rods of oil lamps, and other random bric a brac that looked blunt or sharp. A few of them had taken to the air with mixed success, as well.
“We can’t do it,” I said at last. “Look, you… you can’t save them. We have to leave, now. Please, Wire. I’m—”
She struck my hoof with her own, turned, and dived down into the shadows of the palace.
“Wire!” I called, shrieking her name at the top of my lungs. “Don’t… don’t leave me, please…”
My mane and tail whipped raggedly across my face as the little craft picked up speed. I sobbed bitterly, but already the Cup goblins were recovering. They climbed into the other crafts or leapt into the air, all of them shrieking with rage. Some were even frothing, driven to a frenzy. On the dock, I saw one winged woman stride powerfully into the confused mass and lift an object into the air. Powerful light poured from it. Where the Wand had been a magnesium flare, this one was like a pool of shimmering incandescence that flowed out from her to the others. When she barked an order, they snapped into action, gaining clarity and discipline where they had none before.
I pushed my body into the tiller and turned the boat out away from the palace. It didn’t matter where I was going, so long as it was away. With tears blurring my vision, I could only vaguely see the forest that lay outside the city walls—crashing there would be really my only hope.
The wind up here was powerful and bitterly cold, rolling off the frozen realm of Mag Mell in an icy breath. Shuddering with the cold in my thin coat and lacking time to retrieve anything protective from my bag, I watched as the shapes of the goblin fliers raced after me. The first was foolish enough to come up from below, so I took one of the boat’s sandbags, aimed, and kicked it down to him. The birdman squawked and plummeted as the ballast struck him clean in the face. The others hung back more cautiously, but I knew it would be only a matter of time until they grew bold.
Good. The more time it took them, the longer Wire would have. I could at least serve as her distraction.
The next to approach had the head of a bearded man and the wings of a great eagle. He carried a heavy pick, and, rather than go for me, he tore at the rigging of my blimp. The craft shuddered and yawed as it tilted a few inches, and I had to push on the tiller to keep on course. I whimpered, watching as more dark shapes rose around the boat.
Just as I was about to squeeze my eyes shut, though, a bar of nearly solid white fire swept through the sky. It left a fan of spots across my vision, but then it was gone. The stalkers on the right side of my craft were, too. Instead, I saw a trio of chickens desperately flapping their wings before falling out of the sky. The others screamed, and the fire flashed again, scything through their ranks and turning the ones on my left into puffs of feathers that drifted away in the breeze. Looking ahead, another craft, a massive steel-bound airship with an enormous envelope and dozens of propellers holding it aloft, filled the sky. Spotlights rotated above and beneath it, cutting through the clouds. From a balcony on its side, a huge shape loomed, and it held in its hands a searing staff of white.
I didn’t need to see him clearly to know who this was.
Shoving against the tiller, I tried to execute a quick turn, only for the sudden change in velocity to cause the already weakened craft to shudder. The boat handled like a beached whale, and when I turned it so suddenly the gondola swung violently. I managed to hold onto the tiller by sheer effort, but it didn’t matter. Already weakened by several lost ropes, the jouncing of the craft compromised the rest. With a loud snap, the rear of the gondola swung free and hung from the front-most hawsers alone. Shaken and held dangling over the city of lights, I whimpered in terror.
“I’m sorry, everyone,” I whispered. Sorry was never enough, though. It was never enough.
The polished wood of the tiller slipped through my hoof tips.
Down, down I fell. My hair whipped past my face and the freezing night air chilled my limbs so fast they became numb within moments. With my back to the city, I watched the stars and tried to pick out familiar constellations—something to occupy my mind in the long drop, to let the tension ebb out until I felt nearly weightless. Empty.
“Gotcha!”
A flash of rainbow light shot down from the heavens and snapped me from the sky. Hooves held me tight against her chest as we arced through the air. Mag Mell’s lights tilted insanely in my vision as we pulled a tight turn, accelerating against her own inertia and battling back the force of gravity as if it barely existed. From above, a searchlight’s pillar of illumination shone down on us. With steady beats of her wings, Rainbow Dash bore me up to the castle in the sky.
By the time she rolled me out onto the balcony, I was shivering and half-frozen. With bleary eyes, I looked up. Against the golden light pouring forth from the door frame, I saw him. The Wand King.
He stood twice as tall as any man, with shoulders to match. At first, I thought him a man indeed, for his bare torso, though thick with hair, was free of fur, and his head was definitely that of a man. Below the waist, though, he had the body of a great black stallion, complete with a long tail that whipped in the wind. His vast arms bore an ash staff which he held with unquestionable authority.
There was more to him than a mere vastness, though. Even in my nearly delirious state, there was a presence that rolled off him in waves to brush up against me. It was as if the centaur occupied more space than he actually filled, like some sort of optical illusion. His eyes seemed unhindered by the dark of night as he scanned the skies, and, when they fell on me, I felt as though his attention had a weight of its own.
Dwarfed by his great size, a strange, graceful creature came from his side. She had a doe’s build, soft blue fur, a violet mane and tail that were like stiff and wiry brambles, and a pair of antlers that sprouted back from her delicate head. “Thank the stars,” she said in Twilight’s voice, “Rainbow Dash, I can’t believe you saved her. That was incredible.”
“Hey, nothing to it,” Rainbow Dash said brightly, striking a pose. “See? I told you—action star in the making.”
Twig laid a hoof against me, and I weakly tried to shove it off to little avail. “Oh! The poor wean’s frozen to the bone.”
“Get her inside,” the Wand King rumbled. His voice, as it had in the Equestrian Wand Castle, reverberated like a drum. “I shall deal with our pursuers.”
Like a sack of meal, I found myself slung across Rainbow Dash’s back. “Sure thing,” she said as she started forward the open door. “Sheesh. This acting business is rough. Do all the major production studios have standing armies?”
“Aye,” Twig said as she joined her, “competition’s pretty stiff.” A reddish glow kept me steady. “Let’s get her into a nice warm bath. Poor thing.”
“Maybe we should send a message to her folks,” Rainbow said thoughtfully. “I’ve just about finished another letter for Twilight and the girls, too.”
Twig smiled. “I’ll pen something up and send them together. It’s a shame you ain’t heard back from them, yet. I’m sure they’re really excited to hear about all of your adventures.”
“We go on adventures all the time,” Rainbow Dash shrugged, though it seemed to me that she was trying to play it cool. “Like, just a few weeks ago, we…”
I tried to stay alert to listen, but the shivering cold and exhaustion wormed its way into my vision with threads of icy black. It seemed that I had been moved, but I could not remember how or when. Though I did not sleep, time slipped away, and in my half-daze I found some relief at last.
Not being conscious meant not having to relive the memory of losing my friends.
"Thou art no more than a mortal like us and indeed we think thou art a liar!" Shu'ara 186
Amelia
I jerked awake, splashing warm bathwater and suds everywhere. My struggles subsided when I noticed where I was. The tub was all fine porcelain and big enough for three grown men—or one large goblin, I suppose. White wood panels contained soap and bottles of various sorts. My nerves still sparked like live wires, and there were only vague recollections of how I’d gotten there, flashes of halls and lamps and hooves. Splashing along to the other side, I pulled myself up to climb out, only to find Rose there waiting for me.
As at the bathhouse, she wore her own face, and rose from her haunches to meet my eyes.
“Cat’s out of the bag now, huh?” I said bitterly.
“S’pose it is at that.” She tilted her head to a towel. “You need help cleanin’ up in there, or are you about done?”
“Don’t know if I’ll ever feel clean taking a bath here,” I shot back. There wasn’t much heart in it, though. Not after the night I’d had.
She tugged the towel down in her teeth and laid it out on a small chair by the door. “Well. Have at it, then.” I made no move for it. “Come on, Amy. You ain’t going to stay in there, are you?”
“What if I do, huh?” I slid back. “Might sleep here. Wouldn’t that be nice.”
“If you fall asleep in the tub, you might drown. I ain’t gonna let that happen.”
I glared at her. “What’s it to you, Rose? Why do you care if I live or die? All you care about is fulfilling some stupid prophecy.”
“That ain’t true,” Rose said defensively. Her shoulders tightened. “I was worried about you. It’s dangerous in the Everfree.”
The tub sloshed as I splashed up to the side again. “Yeah? Like, oh, I don’t know… when a basilisk comes along and tries to eat you?”
Rose shook her head. “He wasn’t goin’ to eat you.” Her eyes lit. “Not even after that thing hurt him. He wouldn’t have hurt you in the least.”
“Yeah? Holy cats, Rose, his jaws were this close—” I held my hooves together with barely a paper-thin space between. “—to taking my head off! I would have been lunch if I didn’t penetrate through the tree.” I snorted.
“He wouldn’t have hurt you,” she insisted.
“Oh, that’s right; just petrify me.”
“Yes!” She stamped a hoof. “And then you would have been safe and we could have undone the petrification when he delivered you back to us!”
“Because I’m safe with you, am I?” My teeth ground. “You’re just a bunch of damned liars.”
Irony, thy name is Amelia.
Rose didn’t answer for a while. The only sound was the thrum of the airship’s engines through the deck. She turned towards a mirror and glanced in it, as if trying to see something in herself. “You are safe with us. And I’m sorry. We did what we had to do.”
I’m sorry, Wire. “Sorry’s not good enough.” My voice trembled, and my teeth clattered as I opened my mouth. “It’s never good enough.”
“You overheard me at the bathhouse, didja?” Rose asked quietly.
I nodded.
“Aye, well…” She ran a hoof through her mane, stirring the bluish tips against the floor. “What if I told you what the prophecy was? What all of this means? Why we took you and lied to you and everything?”
Her eyes met mine as I lifted my head. “Promise? Everything?”
“As best I understand it.”
“Do better,” I pressed. “Your Wand King must know. It’s his prophecy, isn’t it?”
She chewed on her lip—delicately, in consideration of her fangs, I supposed. “I can talk to Twig and the others, see about gettin’ you an audience.”
“I think I’m owed it.”
“We’ll see, then,” she said. “Now, towel off. I’ll be right in the cabin outside.”
“Wait,” I said quickly, holding a hoof out to catch her attention. “One thing... what's a 'cythraul'?”
She turned her face to mine, grimacing. “You shouldn't use language like that. It ain't polite.”
“I figured.” I nodded. “What does it mean, though?”
“It means something like a demon,” she said. “Like an awful creature that serves only itself and puts no thought to others.”
I kept my face steady. Rose didn't need to know that my veins had turned to ice water.
When the door shut behind her, I scrambled out of the tub and searched every nook and cranny of the little bathroom. There was a vent, but, even with Penetration, the tunnel beyond was too small for me to fit my entire body into. Nothing sharp had been left behind. My bag and all my things were gone. Reluctantly, I rinsed the last of the soap from my mane and tail and wrapped myself in the scented towels provided. I rolled around until I was puffy and at least reasonably dry.
After a moment’s consideration, I did brush my mane, tail, and coat a little—enough to make me look at least moderately presentable as a young filly. My bangs were combed until they fell neatly to either side of my largely neglected horn. I even brushed my teeth after noticing that Rose or someone else had supplied the toothbrush I’d used back in Phonyville.
Rose escorted me down the narrow hall to a room I could only describe as belonging to a lady, all ripe with full pillows and lacy curtains. Within, Maille sat at the very same workbench she’d used in her shop, only cranked up a foot or so for her greater height and upright posture. I watched as she stitched a pattern on a green silk garment of indeterminate shape before Rose tapped her hoof on the door and drew her attention.
The dragon girl turned to face us, and her eyes lit up as they fell on me. “Amelia. I’m so very glad to see you again.”
I tilted my chin up, setting my stance firmly. Rather than snap back at her like with Rose, though, I instead glanced towards her bench. “What’re you working on there?”
“Just the final touches on that ‘special project’ I promised you.” She fingered the shimmering cloth. “I was working on it when they said you were missing. Haven’t had a chance to work on finishing it until now.”
In spite of myself, I glanced away. Every fiber of my being screamed out at me to denounce this woman and her accomplices, but it was very hard to do that when she sounded so darned sincere. She had always sounded genuine, though. That’s how they roped you in. “Knock it off,” I said at last.
“Knock what off?”
“I’m not buying it. Besides,” I lifted the hem of green silk. “This is the wrong size for a foal. It isn’t for me.”
“It is,” Maille said, “but I’ll have to show you later, when it’s finished.” She pressed me back gently and carefully packed the green silk away. The sticks were pulled from her hair, and she let it fall once more down her back to her hips. A slight smile crossed her lips as she noticed my attention. “Strange, I know. It took a long time for me to get used to being on four legs. Pony magic was even harder to master. I’m from so far away that I’d never even heard of Equestria until I was selected.”
“Where are you from?” I asked. My eyes followed her as she moved about her little room. I watched the sway of her silken dress as it flowed with her own graceful movements. Rose sat on a cushion by the door, evidently provided for Maille’s pony friends. Or quadrupedal, at the very least.
“Another world on the Great Circuit. You probably saw it in the skies of Mag Mell.” Maille sat on the edge of her bed and folded her powerful legs. Her claws had been covered in slippers. “You went a very long way. I dare say that if it weren’t for those Cup goblins, you might have eluded us again, at least for a while. For a little girl, you showed great resourcefulness in escaping the castle, the forest, and the city.”
“I had help,” I said bitterly, turning away.
“That must have been a feat all by itself,” Maille said, in that instructive tone she had sometimes taken back in Phonyville. “Don’t sell yourself short because you didn’t do it all by yourself. Being able to find and lead good talent is impressive all by itself.” She leaned forward a little with an uncertain look. “Where did they go, though? No one was on that boat with you, and I saw you enter the Cup Palace with that Wire girl and those three girls myself.”
My face fell. “They’re gone,” I said, and the words were lead weights in my gut. A hoof touched me and I jerked away from Rose. “They didn’t make it,” I snapped and turned away. The sadness in their eyes was the last thing I wanted to see right then.
“Amelia… I’m sorry,” Maille said quietly. “We wouldn’t have hurt your friends. I wish we could have done something to help them.”
“Sorry isn’t good enough,” I growled. “Sorry doesn’t make things right. It doesn’t bring people back. Sorry is never good enough.”
Maille, Rose, Twig, Kiln, Pinion, Rainbow Dash, Fetter, Daphne, the Wand King. If it hadn’t of been for those people, none of this would have ever happened. Wire and the Crusaders could have lived their lives peacefully, out of the way of danger.
Maybe if it weren’t for someone named Amelia, they’d have never wanted for it, either.
“They might be all right,” Rose said. “The Cup will more likely hold them than harm them.”
“What does it matter? They’re never going to be freed.” I scraped a hoof along the floor. “I can’t help them.”
A hoof hooked around me and pulled me back. “I don’t know about that. Your future ain’t closed off,” Rose said.
I smacked her hoof away and gave her a sullen glare. “What’re you talking about?”
Maille and Rose glanced between themselves. The former moved to a crouch in front of me. “It’s what I was trying to tell you earlier, Amelia. It’s the whole reason we brought you to Ponyville.”
“Phonyville,” I spat.
They shared a smile at the word. “Yes, that. I know you feel hurt because you were lied to, and you’re right—you should feel hurt. You were hurt. We did lie to you, and it’s perfectly natural to feel that way.”
My eyes narrowed. “Stop patronizing me and say what you mean.”
Rose gave a sigh and interjected. “What we mean is that you’re a very important little girl. Years before you or any of us were born, it was set down that we must prepare for the comin’ of a new age. A time when the world—all the worlds—would change in a deep, fundamental way.”
“And that if we wanted to be there to guide it,” Maille continued, “then we would need to gather certain people. Six young ponies and one human girl. Not just any six ponies or any one human girl, though.”
“What, am I a wizard or something?” I rolled my eyes. “Look, the ‘Chosen One’ speech is, like, the most cliched thing ever. I’ve read tons of fantasy books and it’s all the same thing. What the hell is so special about me?”
“Ah.” Rose paused. “We don’t actually know. The Wand King and Fetter do. They keep the full wording of the prophecy.”
Maille shook her head. “We know you’re supposed to be bright, quick-witted. There’s certain phrases, too. You can see things that no one else can. The things you imagine come true.” She reached a hand out to me. “You’re supposed to be special, touched like few others. I know that to be true. You’re not a normal little girl at all.”
“No,” I said, looking her in the eyes. “I’m your special little piece of metal, aren’t I?”
Maille rocked back, her eyes wide. “How could you—?” She touched her hand to her chest and took a deep breath. “Yes… of course. My master wished to send something my way. That certainly explains how you showed up at Ivy Lane.”
Rose gave me a weighing look. “I’d say I was right, then. Aye… you are a strange little girl.”
“He knew I was there the whole time,” I said, ignoring Rose in favor of focusing on Maille. “What does that say to you? If he’d wanted you to find and capture me, he’d have just pointed me out and I wouldn’t have had the slightest chance of getting away. Instead, he gets you to tell me where to find you. I kind of wish I hadn’t. Maybe he was trying to warn me away.” I walked past her to the door. “Or maybe he was trying to give me a choice, the kind of choice you people have never let me have.”
“You don’t understand how important this is, Amy,” Rose said, but abated as Maille touched her back.
“No. We’ve underestimated her from the start,” Maille said, her voice quiet yet firm. “Amelia understands very well the meaning of duty and sacrifice by now. If she hadn’t before she started, she does now.” Maille turned towards me, and, though she stood at her full height and towered well over my head, it didn’t feel as though she was trying to look down on me. “If you do, Amelia, then maybe the working hasn’t gone awry. We’ve lied to you up until now—will you hear us out, hear the full story of how important this is, and decide then?”
“Will you back me up if I say no?” I asked in turn.
“I will,” Maille promised. “On my honor.”
Rose sighed. “I suppose it’s only fair she get to know. On to Twig, then?”
“Indeed.” Maille reached forward and opened the door.
She was right. I had learned a great deal since leaving Phonyville. Many of those lessons had been drilled into me with a great deal of pain, suffering, and hardship. Among those things was the power of deception, and how thinly sliced lies are more easily swallowed, especially when they’re delivered with conviction.
If they thought I was conniving before, they had no idea what was coming.
Our trip down the ship’s corridor was very short, mostly because we were near immediately interrupted. As we stepped out into an open galley between two decks, a pair of heavy shod hooves appeared at the top of the stairs I was to be led up.
The hooves were strange in and of themselves. They could have been blocks of heavy fired clay, or perhaps stone, and the pony they belonged to didn’t look much less solid. Her coat, such as it was, was short and bristly, concealing not at all her solid, powerful muscles. Her face was pretty for all that she looked like fired ceramic—or, at least, it would have been, if she weren’t scowling.
“So. There she is,” the mare said. She tossed her short, stiff, black mane back with a contemptuous flick. “Seems I owe you a few quarins, Maille.”
Maille, ahead of me, leaned back against the stair rail to look between the two of us. “Technically, we found her in the air over the city rather than in the city, Kiln,” she said with a smile, “but yes, I do believe I did win the bet.”
I started up towards the false Applejack, but any thoughts of trying to browbeat or wheedle her fled as she set her gaze on me. Her onyx eyes were approximately as obdurate as the rest of her. It wasn’t like I hadn’t already planned to be cautious around Kiln, having remembered quite vividly the way she treated the cross-eyed pegasus mare in her barn on my final day, but, where I had loosely categorized Maille and Rose as allies for the time being, I fit Kiln into a new slot entirely: trouble.
She made no way for me as I approached. “You could have gotten killed out there.” Reaching out, she produced a pouch out of midair, reminding me again that Twig wasn’t the only one gifted with a more solid grasp of goblin magic than myself. From it, she took a piece of paper and dusted tobacco on it, then rolled it up into a cigarette. She didn’t smoke it, though, she merely rolled it around in her hooves and ignored Maille’s disapproving look to stare down at me.
“I was lied to. Why should I have trusted you?” This was really something I wasn’t in the mood to deal with. Not with everything that had happened to me today. Keeping a level head was the only way I was going to get out, however, so I kept my voice even. Kiln, as Applejack, had always been straightforward and direct with me before, so I took a gamble on her now. “If you were in my hooves, what would you have done?”
Kiln watched me for a few moments more. I resisted the urge to squirm under her unyielding gaze. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been through,” she said at last, her tone flat and emotionless, before she finally stepped aside. As we passed, though, she put a hoof in front of me. “And don’t think I can’t see what you’re really like.”
Rose, from behind me, shot her an annoyed look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We lied to her, sure enough,” said Kiln as she flicked her cigarette into the air, making it disappear from sight, “but she’s a liar. Maybe she’s the chosen child, but that says nothing about what she’s like as a person nor about what she’ll do with the new age.” Kiln’s eyes flashed with quiet intensity. “You keep an eye on this girl, Maille.”
“Well, aren’t you just a tidy little bucket of joy, Kiln,” Maille said tersely, putting her hands on her hips. “Can’t you be happy that she’s back and safe? Our work won’t have been for nothing—that has to mean something to you.”
“You know what meant a lot to me, Maille?” Kiln said quietly. “Long hours by the sea, just the lot of us, six girls who had no idea what they were in for. It meant a lot to me when Twig’s folks took me in. Purpose tore us apart, and I mean to see that purpose come to a swift and final conclusion.”
“Purpose is what brought us together in the first place. It brought us together again.” Maille reached out to touch Kiln’s head, only for the mare to jerk away and walk around the terrace.
“Tell that to Flash and Pinion,” Kiln shot back as she walked away. “Good luck trying to figure out how this is all supposed to work without them, either.”
“What?” I asked, turning to face the others. “What happened to Pinkie—I mean, Pinion? Isn’t she with you guys?”
Rose nudged me with her head towards one of the doors nearby. “Don’t worry about it.”
“What if I am worried about it?” I protested. “I like Pinion. I mean, okay, she kind of terrifies me at times, and she tried to capture me with a net that one time, but she was really fun to be around.”
“She hasn’t reported back yet. It’s possible she’s just late for the rendezvous,” Maille said. She opened the cabin door and stepped inside.
Twig’s room, like Maille’s, was instantly recognizable in its own distinct way. In place of the tons of old books I might have expected from Twilight’s library, Twig’s walls were peppered with anatomical charts, clippings from newspapers, and, tucked way over in the corner, numerous photos of Rainbow Dash, grounded or in flight. Books had been piled beside a large wicker basket cushion, and her bed had deep curtains. The room was smaller than Maille’s, and, rather than feel cramped, it had a warm, cozy sense that reminded me of the best parts of my brief apprenticeship, when our heads had been tucked close together as Twig demonstrated some obscure trick or another.
“Empty? Wasn’t she supposed to meet us here?” Rose asked.
Maille pushed the curtains of the bed open and peered in. “Nothing here.”
From the terrace, the sound of light hooves scrabbling against wood reached us, and Twig bounded around the corner like the gazelle she resembled. “Sorry! Sorry,” she said as she stepped in. “Rainbow and I were talkin’ and I lost track of the time.” She paused in midstep, looking down at me, and smiled. “Amelia! Oh, thank the stars. I know I saw you when you landed, but you were near to death with cold…”
“Lost track of the time?” Rose asked airily. “I’ll bet.”
Twig kicked her with a rear hoof and walked up to me. “Regardless, we’re all glad to have you back, we are.”
I stepped back in the now-crowded room and examined Twig’s stuff in lieu of looking at her directly. “Yeah, so I’ve heard.”
“Now, Amelia,” Twig said in the tone she used as a princess and a teacher both, “I know you’re upset, but you have to understand our positions.”
“Rose and Maille already gave me the speech,” I said. “Yeah, yeah, I’m some special ‘chosen one’ with all these super powers or whatever.” I turned back to face her. “It’s a lot of vague promises, Princess, that don’t go anywhere.” Pausing, I let the barb settle in to gauge its impact. Twig considered me, running a hoof through her bramble-like mane in a futile attempt to settle it. I took that to mean she was mildly guilty but not enough to really be deterred. After a moment’s thought, I added, “I just want somegob to explain what this is all about. No more secrets and lies.”
My body language I kept deliberately minimal. If anyone could have caught me holding back or dissembling, it was Twig.
“She’s willing to hear us out, Twig,” Maille said. “It’s the least we can do.”
“Is it?” Twig asked. “None of us had a choice. Still…” She frowned at me. “You’re a smart girl, Amelia. I should have realized how smart after I trained you.”
“You know, that saved my life a few times,” I admitted. “Your lessons, that is. There were a lot of sticky situations where I’d remember something you’d told me. And the Penetration trick you taught me really got me through some scrapes—literally.”
Twig looked a little surprised. “You paid that close attention to my lessons?”
“In Mag Mell, I conned goblins out of over a thousand quarins with the books from your library and some crap my friends picked up by using your lessons.” All right, so that was only partially true, but it served as a good example. If only it were an example that didn’t involve the ponies I’d left behind.
That did the ticket, though. Twig’s face split into a broad grin. “That’s wonderful! And you got away with it, too?” She danced a little jig on all four hooves. “If I’d had another couple weeks with you, Amelia, I’ll wager you could have escaped us entirely!”
“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” Rose asked dubiously.
Twig waved her off. “Never mind that. What else did you use, Amelia? Just the Penetrations?”
“Well,” I said thoughtfully, “I’ve used Restorations as well a few times, and I think I managed a Teleportation once. I still haven’t gotten the hang of Transformations.” I made a sour face. “Vanishing still gives me trouble. I can make things Vanish about half the time now, but making them reappear is the tricky part.”
“Oh.” Twig scrunched her face. “You didn’t Vanish anything important, did you?”
“Just some stones and random junk I had.” I tilted my ears forward. “Why?”
“If you Vanish something and forget how to Produce it… well, you’ll probably never see it again.” She snorted. “I lost a pair of earrings my grandmother gave me that way. And more than a few coffee mugs.”
I giggled. “Really? Where did they go?”
“Who can say? Goblin magic—illusion, more properly, it’s older than all of us—is a very mysterious force.” She shook her head. “I don’t think anygob has a full theory of it, especially not that question in particular. It could be those earrings are buried far beneath the earth of some distant world, or perhaps they’ve disappeared from the universe entirely.”
“That’s kinda cool,” I said, and glanced at the other girls. “Do you mind if Twig and I catch up? It’s getting a little crowded in here.”
“Of course,” Maille said. “We should be seeing if dinner is ready, anyway. I’d imagine you’re famished.”
My mind flashed back to the dining hall and its seductive succulence. “I’m not hungry,” I said quickly. The churning of my stomach threatened to betray me. “Ate a big meal.”
“All right, well, we’ll catch up,” Maille said with a nod. Then she and Rose stepped out, closing the door behind them. “Come join us in the galley with Twig when you’re ready.”
Score. I had Twig all to myself.
It started with small talk. I opened up to her about my journey, she told me a bit about what it had been like to grow up in a magician’s apprenticeship—a great deal of manual labor and self-doubt, apparently. I left out most of the contributions of my companions, mentioning them only roundly. I did take opportunity to plead Wire’s case, in the event she did come to her senses and return.
“You kidnapped Wire?” she asked with eyes wide.
“Well… not deliberately. It was kind of an accident.” I grinned sheepishly. “Please don’t let her get into trouble? It really wasn’t her fault.”
“I understand. I’ll make sure her parents know.” She flopped onto her bed. “I wish I could say that I had nearly as much fun as you.”
“Didn’t you get to spend most of it with Rainbow Dash?” I asked, feigning innocence. “I thought you two were pretty good friends.”
“I, well…” Twig squirmed on her sheets for a moment. “I guess? I don’t really know how she feels, though, and I just get so… tongue-tied around her. I’ve never met anypony who was half that… cool and mysterious. You know what I mean?” She looked at me uncertainly and kneaded a pillow between her hooves.
I nodded and gestured for her to go on. She definitely had it bad. Even Daphne had never pined after anyone quite that pitifully.
“I never expected her to be so nice, too. Nothin’ at all like the legends—I don’t think she’s ever so much as thought of skinning her enemies alive, let alone actually done it.” Twig rolled over to stare at the ceiling. “What am I sayin’, though? She’ll never accept me now that she’s seen what I really look like. I’m just some weird goblin magician she met on a job. I can’t even brush my hair nicely.” She covered her face with a pillow and groaned. “How am I supposed to compete with a princess, anyway?”
“Well, you know,” I said, worming up to the side of the bed, “any relationship is really built on trust, isn’t it? She must have shown you a lot of trust, if she kept working with you after what happened back at the castle… But you haven’t really returned that trust, have you? You never told her that I had been deceived; she didn’t have the slightest idea.” After a pause to let that sink in, I settled on the bed, near her ear. I felt like the Morgwyn, a shadow whispering secrets. “I’ll bet you haven’t sent even one of those letters to her friends.”
“I… I can’t, I mean…” Her eyes widened as she looked at me. “H-how do you—?”
“Come on, Twig. It’s obvious,” I said. If I’d had hands still, she’d be in my palm. “You sounded so guilty when you were talking to her, it’s a wonder she didn’t call you a liar right then. Is it any surprise you can’t talk to her when you feel so ashamed at deceiving her?” I twitched an ear and smiled like a cat. “I’ll bet you read all of her letters, too, looking for any hint of how she felt.”
The stricken look on her face and the way her eyes shifted told me louder than words that I was on the money.
After all, I knew exactly what she was going through. If she felt a fraction as sick at lying to Rainbow Dash as I had when the Crusaders were lost, then she was writhing in agony.
“I wonder,” I asked, taking a step up to her, “have you written letters back to her as Twilight Sparkle—the real Twilight Sparkle—but didn’t have the nerve to pass them on to her?”
Swing and a hit. Twig flinched back as if struck and hugged her pillow tightly. “I-I don’t mean to. I… I ain’t got a choice! The Wand King said we’re not to tell her anything.”
“What’s that say to you?” I put my hooves up on the pillow and looked into her eyes, holding her fast. “That if she finds out, there will be trouble. She’ll be upset. Why would the truth hurt her, Twig, unless this plot was somehow against her?” I dropped my voice to a low register again, reveling in the sensation of control. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. You and the false Elements of Harmony are part of some game to hurt her and her friends.”
“No!” she protested. “That’s not true! We’re going to take you to the Well of Pirene and help you meet your destiny! It has nothing to do with Rainbow or her friends.”
“Oh?” I tilted my head. “Do you know that for certain? I thought only Fetter and the Wand King did. What do you know?”
“We’re to take you to the Well, where you’ll fulfill your destiny by being the first person in three thousand years to lay hand on the Golden Bridle.” Twig wiped sweat from her brow, her eyes flitting around. “We-we’re supposed to be there, in place of th-the Elements.”
“Why?” I asked. The Golden Bridle sounded terribly familiar, like I’d read a book or seen something on television about it. “What does the Bridle do? What are the Elements there for?”
“I-I don’t know,” Twig stammered. “I mean… you’re supposed to usher in a new age with it. An age where goblins and men can finally return to grace.”
“Grace?”
Twig took a deep breath. “Grace is, well… it’s a quality that used to thrive in the world, embodied in things like the Elements of Harmony or the Arcana, or even people. It’s an ancient myth, one not many people know about. The Wand King does, though. He’s ancient. He lived in a time when Equestria was a part of Earth, not separated on a little branch like it is, and men, ponies, and other creatures lived together in harmony. Back then, the animals could think like men do, just like they do on Equestria still, and men were as full of magic as any other creature. They were said to be filled with grace, at one with the world, and they neither aged nor truly died.”
I settled back to listen, my ears alert.
“Something terrible happened, though. I’m not really sure what… the Wand King says that mankind and ponies and the other kinds transgressed, and they were punished so that their children became mortal and could no longer see the true nature of the world without becoming twisted. He says that they lost the true grace of magic within them, and carried only sullen sparks. They eventually left, leaving behind first Midgard, and then the great city of Mag Mell, to worlds we cannot reach.” She adjusted her seat and gestured, forming an image in the air beside her of a jagged white tree. “At that time, when men and ponies were mortal, Equestria split from the earth and formed its own world, an incomplete world, but one where they would be safe.”
“From men?”
Twig nodded. “I know the Bridle is involved in that, somehow. Men used it to cross the Veil to Equestria safely, and that’s why it’s had a weakness ever since—a child of man may pass so long as they do so on a bridled horse.” She made a sour face. “Used to be that goblins who didn’t come recently from pony stock originally had to do that, too; I guess we’re too twisted to count. It’s gotten weak since your birth, so now anygob can cross it, mind.”
“And what do the Elements of Harmony have to do with this, whatever they are?”
“The Tree of Harmony is the force that keeps Equestria separate. I’m not sure how or why, but I think it’s because it represents the compact of harmony that bound the race together in ancient times. The Elements each are on par with or even greater than the Arcana as sacred receptacles of power, so I can’t even guess at what they can do together.” She shook her head. “That’s just my supposition, though. My master, a great magician, taught me everything she knew, and even that pales compared to the ken of someone as old as the Wand King.”
“So if I’m supposed to help fix this, why the secrecy? Why did the new Cup King turn against it, or call it a gamble?” I drilled my gaze at her. “Why are you needed in place of the real Elements?”
She shook her head harder. “I-I don’t know. I mean… I know that I was chosen because of h-how similar I am to Twilight…”
“Not the same, though. So,” I said, poking her in the knee, “you’re part of some strange ancient prophecy that you don’t understand, replacing Rainbow Dash and her friends—”
“It’s not—”
“And,” I cut her off, “your Queen Stylus and Page Rail both went missing or died under mysterious circumstances.” I lifted a hoof to her, sardonic. “Face it, Twig, in any faerie tale, you’re on the villain’s side. Rainbow Dash is on the hero’s side, and she’s Loyalty—she’s not likely to crack and join your team. What are you going to do when she finds out that you’ve been lying to her and this whole thing is some sort of insane trick involving her close friends?”
“I…” Twig’s mouth scrunched up and she tightened herself up. “I…”
Silence hung.
“I should go see Maille and Rose,” I said. “I’m feeling famished, now.” Leaving her on the bed, I hopped down and walked over to the cabin door. As I closed it, I heard a pained sob.
Victory.
* * *
It had never really occurred to me to wonder before that I might be a little unusual for a girl my age. Certainly, adults had called me precocious all my life. They said I was quick, ahead of my years—sometimes, they called me too smart for my own good and too clever by half, and I knew what they meant when they said that, too. The other kids didn’t like me. It was hard to blame them when I called them slow and stupid for not being able to keep up with my games and ideas.
I didn’t care. The only people that understood me were the older kids, and they wanted nothing to do with me.
My world had expanded beyond them, though, all of them. I rode a castle-sized airship to meet destiny. If I hadn’t been an unusual girl before, it didn’t matter anymore. Usual girls don’t get to play high stakes games with strange aliens. If I was Chosen, so much the better.
When I stepped outside Twig’s cabin, though, I halted, feeling a wave of uncertainty break over me like a splash of cold ocean water. What gave me pause was not so much regret over what I had done to Twig—I genuinely appreciated her advice and aid, but she had brought this on herself—but because when I looked around outside I expected to see four young faces looking back at me expectantly. They’d be revved up for the next adventure, even timid Wire, and eager to hear what I had to say.
Would their faces instead twist with disapproval when they saw what I had done to Twig?
I would never find out.
At this point, I had a decision to make. My original intent had been to escape on a light craft and flee to Equestria, but now I wasn’t so sure. This talk of the Well and the Bridle had me intrigued, and I found myself tantalized by the possibility of strange magic that lay just within my grasp. The goblins had driven me to it, but that didn’t mean that going was necessarily a bad idea.
One thing was certain. It would have to be on my own terms. Perhaps going to the Well was my destiny, but if I let a giant ancient centaur hold my hand, then I might as well just give up then and there.
That left only two remaining issues to solve: getting there, and throwing off pursuit.
If the Morgwyn had been here, the whole task would have been easy. It could have told me some secret way out and sabotaged the ship to help me escape. The cat-monster certainly could be here and I’d never know it.
A light bulb clicked on in my brain. If the Morgwyn could potentially be here, then it didn’t matter if it actually was or not. The fact that it might be was so plausible that all it would take was a little push.
On the way to the galley, I took opportunity where I found it. Pitching my voice with a heavy Wand accent, I went up to an armored goblin stepping into a nearby cabin. “Oi, didja see that cat just now?”
“What cat?” he grumbled down at me, his granite face uninterested.
“A tidy big one. Black like smoke, eyes like blue fire? I swear I just saw it slip away when you walked up.”
His eyes widened and he whipped his neck around. I moved on. Anygob who looked like a pony I avoided, since they might have been background characters from Phonyville and wouldn’t have bought my act for a minute.
A tall, thin, female goblin cleaning a vent was my next victim. “Careful. I heard somegob a deck down talkin’ about some sorta creature slippin’ into the vents. All black fur with a barbed tail and devil blue eyes.”
Feeling a little cocky, I decided to spice it up with my next mark, a trio just outside the galley. “Did you see Fetter earlier? He was talkin’ with somegob in the shadows as called itself the Morgwyn. Who speaks in third person all the time, seriously?” I leaned forward. “You know, he came to the castle with two other goblins, he did. Word is they was never seen again.”
A grin split my face as I rejoined Rose and Maille. When I wandered in, I found them at a table with a number of pony goblins; probably the background ponies I’d been worried about earlier. Perfect, they could share in my next move.
“Hello, Amy.” Maille gestured next to her. “Have a seat. Where’s Twig?”
“She said she wasn’t hungry.” I looked at the spread and pulled some bowls over. “So, I have a question,” I said as I set a couple eggs on my toast. “Why does everyone always say ‘the’ Morgwyn instead of just ‘a’ Morgwyn, or call it ‘Morgwyn’ without the ‘the’? And why is it an it, not a he or a she?”
Maille choked on her cereal. “Hel’s Teeth!” she swore. A few other goblin ponies at the table glanced our way, and tried to pretend they weren’t listening.
Rose’s face darkened at once, but she, rather than Maille, answered, practically biting off her words. “That thing ain’t either. It’s neither a boy nor a girl because it don’t need to be; it’s unique, and I hope it goes extinct sooner rather than later.” She shivered—the reaction was considerably different from the overexaggerated fright she’d displayed as Fluttershy, but the tension in her spoke volumes about her fear. “I can’t imagine what it wanted with you that weren’t a black-hearted ploy.”
“Oh, well; I was just wondering,” I said idly. I chomped down on my toast.
“What happened to the creature, Amelia?” Maille asked, perhaps a touch apprehensively.
“It kept popping up during my trip.” I kept my tone even and unconcerned. “Pretty much wherever I went. It said it was keeping on eye on me for somegob.”
“Somegob?” Maille frowned. “Do you know who?”
“No.” I sipped from my orange juice. “Just that it would always be near me, in case I needed it.” I looked at them innocently. “You don’t think it could have followed me, could you? I mean, we’re way up here, and you guys caught me by surprise. Unless it knew you were here somehow, I guess.”
“Fetter,” Rose growled. She put her hooves on the table and began to stand, only for Maille to grab a handful of her mane and pull her down.
“Rose, calm yourself,” she said.
Rose shook her head free. “He’s the one as used the monster in the first place!”
“I know, but keep your voice down.” Maille glanced around to see the other goblins at the table talking amongst themselves. “It isn’t like him to take risks like that.”
“The two of them seemed pretty close,” I chirped brightly.
“You haven’t seen the Morgwyn on the ship, have you?” Rose asked me. Her eyes flicked to the corners of the room, as if a black cat-monster could have been hiding in a well-lit galley.
“No,” I said, wide-eyed. “Well, I usually don’t. It just kind of appears when it wants to, sometimes.”
“If you do,” Maille said, “please, don’t listen to it and come for us at the first opportunity. I know it helped you escape, but we don’t know why or what for. It’s killed goblins before and I don’t know what Fetter was thinking…” She paused and raised her voice. “Idle gossip and flapping tongues are a fine way to lose one’s station in life.”
The buzz in the room subsided. Rose muttered, “That won’t be enough.” A sentiment which echoed my own thoughts nicely.
“Come along, Amelia,” Maille said. She chivvied me along ahead of her into the hallway. Somehow, though, rumor ran ahead of us like a barking dog, and, before long, we ran into goblins whispering about shadows watching them, of glowing eyes seen in darkened corners. Perhaps most importantly of all, I heard one goblin telling another that she’d heard Fetter himself had invited the creature on board.
Maille scowled, and stepped inside her cabin long enough to retrieve a green silk bundle.
“What’s that?” I asked, perking my ears up. “Is that the project you were preparing for me?”
“Indeed.” She frowned down the hall at the armored goblins bustling through the side corridors.
“Damn,” Rose grumbled. “They’ll be turnin’ the whole ship over before long.”
“It’s not our concern… not yet anyway,” Maille said, and the three of us moved to a less cramped area of the vessel. Brass finishings gleamed on the walls, and I looked down off the side of a rail to see a great hold full of small craft. Little airboats like the one I’d taken shared space with small planes and larger, heavy-bottomed helicopter craft that could carry many goblins in their bowels.
I took particular note of a number of small craft with rapidly beating wings and carriages of cloth over wood-frames. They flitted around the small hold like hummingbirds and had pretty simple-looking controls. A feather-coated woman in one tilted a stick to adjust position, and another to adjust altitude. The main challenge would be finding the height to reach the controls—perhaps a few boxes would suffice.
“Amy?” Rose nudged me. “Come along, then.”
As we went, we found increasing signs of panic among the crew. Vents were being opened and scoured, cabins were thrown open. My seeds of rumor and suspicion were bearing bitter fruit for the goblin defenders, and through it all I hid my suppressed glee.
The three of us walked into a long chamber with wide staircases leading down into the hold. Fetter waited there, the first time I’d seen the lumpy goblin since arriving at the Wand Castle. Changed into a fine outfit of blue and gold trim, he actually looked reasonably respectable, and might have seemed authoritative but for the slightly harried look on his features. He worked his wand nervously between his fingers before jumping at our approach.
“Ach! Maille, it’s you. Thank Thor,” he said, adjusting his hat as he glanced around.
“Fetter,” Rose said icily. “What’s the matter? You lose your pet?”
“Rose.” Maille waved her down. “Fetter, what’s going on here?”
“Morgwyn’s been spotted all over the damned ship is what.” He flicked his eyes from side to side. “It’s lettin’ itself be seen, toyin’ with me.”
“What in the name of Thor were you thinking in getting its help in the first place?” Maille asked. “That damned cythraul can’t be controlled.”
“What was I supposed to do?” he demanded, pointing his wand at me. I backpedalled a bit, remembering what the King’s had done to my assailants earlier. “The bloody beast had her already! If I’d made an issue out of it, Allfather only knows what it might have done. Killed her, for a start, and then probably gotten to work on me.”
“Well, you let the devil in,” Rose said with an indelicate snort, “you find a way to deal with it. Best have an explanation ready for when the King finds out.”
“Right now, though, we need to get Amelia in to see him,” Maille interrupted, stepping forward.
He blanched and took a step back from the taller woman. “That ain’t part of the plan! Whatever for?”
Rose placed a hoof on my back. “We promised her an explanation. I think she’s ready.”
“Ready?” Fetter glanced between them. “Are you both mad? That was never part of the plan!”
“It wasn’t part of the plan for her to escape and run wild around Mag Mell either, now, was it?” Maille pointed out sardonically. “What about Flash and Pinion? We need her cooperation, Fetter.”
Before he could really cogitate a response, however, a titanic voice rang through the vessel, seeming to rattle the lamps in their fittings. “Fetter!”
Rose tilted her head with an ear cocked. “Looks like news has reached the Wand King, Fetter. Hope you have that excuse ready.”
“Damn,” Fetter swore. He twisted in place and glanced towards the hangar; for a moment, I wondered if he might flee.
Rather than let him make a decision for himself, though, I stepped forward and put my forelegs up on his side. “Mister Fetter? I’d really like to help out. I’ve heard the truth from Twig and Maille and Rose and I realize that what you’re doing is extremely important, and I want to be a part of it.” I wagged my tail. “I’d love to help with anything I can do. I… I could even help with these awful rumors about you and the Morgwyn! That thing never mentioned you even once, and I remember how bravely you stood up to it.”
That elicited a blush from the Wand Knight, while Maille and Rose both brightened. The dragon girl put a hand on my shoulder and looked at Fetter intently. “We can still recover this from disaster, Fetter. We can get Pinion back, and with Rainbow Dash we don’t really need Flash anymore.”
“Moreover,” Rose said, “there’s the matter of timin’. If the enemy has captured Pinion, as we figure they might, they’ll know how to find the Well if she talks. And what if the Morgwyn decides to snatch her while it’s here?”
“What in Hel’s name are you suggestin’?” Fetter shot back.
“Let us take her,” Maille said fervently. “We can go to the Well with Amelia and the others. We can secure the Bridle and sort the Elements out later.”
Oh, Maille and Rose. You two were wonderful.
“No!” Fetter protested. “Absolutely not!”
I tilted my head. “Why not?”
“It’s—” He spluttered on his excuse. “The Wand King, he won’t allow it. Absolutely not.”
“Aren’t you already in hot water?” Maille reminded him. “If you aren’t seen to be doing something decisive about this crisis, you might as well hand in your wand.”
He looked between the three of us, sweat beading on his brow. “Look, I can’t…” He swallowed. “There’s no way. The King…” Shuffling his boots, he glanced back and forth. After a moment, he grabbed Maille and spoke to her tersely. “Don’t leave the ship without me. I can talk the King into it, or else, well… it won’t matter for me none then. The Bridle’s well-guarded; there’s goblins there who’ll listen to me.”
“We should get ready, then,” she said, with a nod towards me.
“Right.” He backed up a pace and the three of them looked down at me knowingly.
Before I could open my mouth to ask “what’s up”, the wand lit up in Fetter’s hands. White fire raced along its gnarled length before leaping out to strike me once more in the chest. Much as it had on the river bank, the blast knocked me spinning and robbed me of my senses with the force of its impact. This time, I endeavored to hold limp rather than risk flailing around. Tremendous heat baked me from the inside-out, drawing my breath in ragged gasps as I felt my blood boil.
I was enormously grateful that the process of my bones shattering and reshaping into a new configuration had been numbed so thoroughly. After seeing the amount of agony Sweetie Belle and the others had gone through with their injuries, it was not something I would have looked forward to. My limbs stretched, my hips creaked with dissatisfaction, my nose and jaw pressed back into my skull while my skin smoothed out, turning from a pony’s pale flesh to my original, tanner complexion, with the thick coat giving way to sparse white hairs. With a violent, unheard shriek, my horn dissolved and melted back into my forehead.
And so, panting, feeling not unlike a piece of dry, overcooked chicken, I put my human hands under me and climbed back to my human knees. Shuddering with recently-tortured muscles, I forced myself to stand up. Sharp canines and incisors met my teeth, and I could roll my shoulders and feel the difference.
If they had been expecting me to look shocked or surprised, they were sorely disappointed. However naked and disheveled I was, with my long blond hair falling all about my nude form, the difference between the little girl they’d captured a week ago and myself was night and day. Innocence and knowledge.
Maille, to whom I still barely came up waist high to, crouched and unfolded the bundle of green silk. It was, in fact, several garments—a full outfit consisting of an undershirt and a lovely dark green silk tunic that would belt at the waist. She also held a shimmering coat of chain-link maille, which was so fine and supple that it seemed almost like linen rather than a suit of metal.
“Holy cats, Maille,” I breathed, genuinely taken aback by the work. I felt at the material, noticing how she’d picked out shapes in different colors of thread on the tunic. Wand, Cup, Sword, and Ring, along with six colored gemstones around the collar.
“Knew you’d love it.” She smirked with more than a hint of professional pride. With a twist and shake of her body, she fell to all fours and changed at once, her white hair darkening and curling as she took on Rarity’s visage. The red light of her horn enveloped the garment and touched it to me. There was a flash, and the costume donned itself on me, with the maille hidden beneath the outer tunic. It might as well have been a coat of feathers for all the weight it had. The fake Rarity cinched a fine leather belt about my waist and buckled it with an elegant dragon-head buckle, then collected a pair of shoes Rose carried in her teeth. Despite lacking either socks or time to break them in, they slipped onto my feet and flexed without any real chafing. It was as if I’d worn them all my life. As an afterthought, she fiddled with my hair and pulled it back with a spell. To complete the ensemble, she placed a bag about my shoulders—my own, heavily modified to match.
“There!” She said proudly, lifting a mirror. “Isn’t that just the look the future hero of the Nine Worlds should have, darling?”
I had to admit—the strange creature reflected back at me did look impressive to my eye. She carried herself straight and tall, and the outfit lent her an air of otherworldy purpose and strength. There was more to it, though. Changes even at that juncture. My face hadn’t been quite that catlike before I’d left home—my eyes sharper and more focused, my teeth pointier, my countenance more focused. Not only was my posture better, but I moved with a more subtle grace, with less of the jerky motions I’d had before. I was even taller by an inch or two.
Goblinization comes in stages.
Oh, well. At least height wouldn’t be an issue with the controls anymore.
I wrapped my arms about Maille’s neck. “Thank you. I’m… I’m sorry things couldn’t have worked out better earlier,” I murmured, again in a spate of honesty. One could have written a book with what I’d omitted, however.
But sorry is never good enough. Someone can apologize until they’re blue in the face and it doesn’t change what’s happened.
Rose looked to the door where Fetter had disappeared through. “Shame we couldn’ get you down to the ground. Fetter’ll sort it out, though, or we’ll have a new Knight of the Wand ’ere long.”
That, of course, wouldn’t do at all. My web of lies wasn’t that well-constructed, and it would fall apart with the slightest genuine scrutiny. The rumors would only take a matter of time to be traced to their source, too. Not only would that mean the end of their trust in me, but it would also mean that the Wand King would be both fully involved and right there as I claimed my destiny. That wouldn’t do at all.
Just as well, though. I still had one card up my sleeve.
“I should talk to Twig,” I said. “She can probably come up with something.”
Maille shook her head. “We shouldn’t defy the Wand King, Amelia.”
“I haven’t heard anything from the Wand King,” I said cynically, “just Fetter’s word on what the Wand King said. Besides, it’s not like we’re going to steal a craft and go on our own or anything.” Brazen of me to say, but Twig had said that sometimes the best way to hide things was in plain sight. “Twig can back Fetter up, or maybe find some other way to convince the King.”
They glanced between one another. “Well,” Rose said, “we need to go find Kiln again, anyway. Will you be all right without us, Amy?”
I nodded. “I can find the way. Catch up with me there.”
Much had changed. My strides took me down the corridors with purpose, and goblins cleared from my path. Extraneous details that might have distracted me a week ago were dismissed in the intensity of my focus as I marched up to Twig’s cabin door and barged in without knocking. I couldn’t even spare a moment to consider the fact that I was a nearly-hairless biped once more.
Twig looked up from her pillow, bleary-eyed. From the looks of her eyes, she’d been crying since I’d left. Her eyes were at first surprised, then angry, and then widened in recognition as they settled on me. “Amy…?”
“Yes,” I nodded, shutting the door behind me. I watched the doe-like creature pick herself up awkwardly. This would be a delicate operation—I’d already cut into her once recently, and the Wand King’s actions had forced my hand, but a misstep would land me in hot water.
“Wh-what happened?” she asked, wiping her face. “You’re not supposed to be turned back until we get to the Well.”
“Oh, Twig, it’s awful,” I said, moving to her side. “It’s Mister Fetter an-and my friends.” An ability to cry on command would have been useful, but I settled for a low note of panic and fear. “For some reason, everygob thinks that the Morgwyn is on board, and that Mister Fetter is helping it out! The Wand King is furious, and Maille and Rose are really worried! They think he might disappear, just like Queen Stylus and Page Rail did.” I pressed myself into her soft coat.
“Wh-what?” Twig gasped, putting a comforting foreleg about my shoulders. “I… no, that’s… Freya have mercy.” She shook her head with a disturbed swallow. “What was that about your friends?”
So far I’d been playing fairly plausible lies, but I went out on a limb this time. The Wand King’s own need-to-know policies could be used against him. I’d already sown the seeds of doubt—it was earlier than I would have liked to harvest them, but I had little choice. “I thought I’d lost my friends—Wire and the others—along the way, but when the Wand King summoned him, Fetter was so afraid that he told me the truth. He said they’d been taken separately to the Well and placed under guard there, in case Rainbow Dash or I try to act against him.”
I tried not to tense up more than I had to for the act. My eyes watched Twig’s face apprehensively, searching for any hint of her not swallowing it. Sure enough, her features clouded as she frowned down at me. “Fetter told you that? How could that have happened? They weren’t with you.”
“They came in an airship after mine,” I said quietly, looking down at the floor. “I… I abandoned them. I didn’t think they’d make it, so I jumped on an airboat and tried to escape without them.”
It took no acting at all to pull the latter sentence off.
“Amelia…” Twig softened and pulled me close against her. “I’m so sorry. We… we never should have done this. Don’t blame yourself. No girl at your age should have to go through all of this.” She sniffled. “I don’t know how you’ve managed.”
“I’m fine,” I whispered, burying my face in her shoulder. “I’m fine. I’m okay. I-I…” My throat constructed and I had to cough and wipe my eyes and nose. No time to be traumatized, had to finish it.
After all, sorry is never good enough.
“You need to tell Rainbow Dash. She can save them. They took her adoptive sister, Scootaloo, and the sisters of her friends, the real Applejack and Rarity. Those are the girls who helped me out.”
“Amelia…” Twig froze. “That’s… it’s treason to go against the Wand King…”
“Do you really think he’s doing this for the good of everyone?” I asked bitterly. “He just wants to control me, control my destiny. He killed those Cup goblins who were chasing me, you saw it. A chicken hitting the ground at that height is dead. Do you think he cares more about you, or Mister Fetter, or anyone else for that matter?” I tightened my grip about her. “I overheard him at the castle. He fears the Elements of Harmony, and he wants to use Rainbow Dash, me, and everyone. But… we can do it, Twig. We can do it on our own and beat him. Maille, Rose, Rainbow Dash, even Flash and Pinion and Mister Fetter.”
My voice had become strong again, strident and powerful as I looked her in the eye. I could see the change in Twig, watch as the barriers I’d broken down earlier reshaped themselves, buttressing her from within.
“Tell her the truth. Explain everything and she’ll understand. You can fix this,” I whispered, “together.”
“I… I’ll talk to her.” Twig nodded firmly. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” She extricated herself from my embrace and hurried to leave the cabin.
The door had barely shut before I opened it after her, watching as she scurried down the hall with her gazelle-like leaps. There. My time bomb was ticking, now I had to get out before it blew.
I hurried through the corridors, my new boots serving their purpose well as I practically flew down the stairs past the gangs of goblins searching for the Morgwyn, all of them too preoccupied to pay me any heed. It had only taken the abuse of all of the compassion and trust others had of me to do it, but I’d managed to light off a civil war. All I needed was to get to the hangar before it exploded around me.
Though I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d forgotten something important.
Turning the corridor to the hangar, I leapt at an open hatchway and slammed so hard into empty air that had become as unyielding as stone that spots appeared in my eyes. I rebounded to the floor and stared up crosseyed. The doorway shimmered, and, as the mirage cleared, I saw that the door was in fact closed—it had only appeared to be open.
“Well,” Kiln said dryly from behind me, “look at that. The girl wonder isn’t perfect after all.”
I rose shakily to my feet and pressed my back against the sealed hatch to find Kiln standing there, clad in heavy silvery plate armor and flanked by a small squad of heavy-set goblin ponies. They were all quite reminiscent of the farmhands she’d had working on her farm in Phonyville, but there was no friendliness in their eyes now.
“Kiln,” I breathed. “Look, you—”
“Don’t even start, kid,” Kiln said coolly. “You have a disturbing habit of opening your mouth and making folk do what you say.” She regarded me with quiet disgust. “The minute this hogwash about the Morgwyn started, I knew. My friends may want to believe you’re the innocent harbinger of the future, but I knew better.” She spat, a gooey gob hitting between my feet. “You’re a serpent, the kind that slips in your bed in the night and kisses you with poison.”
“Maybe you’d better find a new Chosen One, then,” I snapped back. “I’m the one you’ve got.”
“Yeah?” Kiln took a step forward. “What makes you think that just because you were chosen, that makes you special?” Her lip curled. “Prophecies ain’t set in stone. They’re instructions, guidelines. And you know what? Maybe we do need a new Chosen One.”
I mentally inventoried my bag. I had the sound sphere, but little else that would help me distract or fight off an armored squad. There was no way I was going to be able to Penetrate through the door behind me in time—I knew because I’d already tried, but my heart was racing too fast for me to properly concentrate.
“Morgwyn! Help!” I shouted.
“Oh, now that’s cute.” Kiln snorted. “You think I buy that the monster’s here? Color me surprised to find that you’re the one in league with it. Figures a that cold-blooded murderer would be right up your alley.”
Damn. I needed to keep her talking. Time was on my side.
“Kiln, please. I just want to—” She cut me off by the simple expedient of socking me in the gut. To both her and my surprise, the impact was immediately absorbed by my armor, despite the fact that it was mere chain. The blow spread across the entire surface area of my torso as the material stiffened in response to the strike. Sadly, it was still powerful enough to bounce me off the door and bruise my chest.
The grim-faced goblin shook her hoof, glancing down at me as I recovered on the floor. “Maille makes damned fine armor, I’ll say. Won’t help you now, though. Boys?” She gestured to me. “Take the little princess to a cell to cool her heels.”
“What in Hel’s name is going on here?” Maille demanded. She slid into view clad in jewel-bright steel, with Rose at her heels. A pair of griffins—or griffin-like goblins—backed the latter up. They stared at the farmhands and Kiln in mild horror. “Amy?”
“Just taking the trash out, Maille,” Kiln growled. “She’s been playin’ you like a fiddle.”
Rose stamped her hoof. “Kiln! What are you on about? I know you were suspicious of her, but are you beating up a child?”
“This child would set the whole damned ship on fire, given the chance,” Kiln said sharply. “She’s the one who started the rumors about the Morgwyn bein’ here!” She pointed a hoof at the two of them. “Are you two so blind that you can’t see what she’s doing to you? She’s playing you against the rest of us!”
Though still stinging from the blow, I managed to reach inside my bag and twist the sound sphere’s key. While they argued, I rose to my feet and opened the door, with both the sound of my movement and the door silenced. By the time one of Kiln’s henchgoblins shouted, I’d already slammed the door open and started to run.
“Stop her!” Kiln shouted, the sound echoing oddly thanks to my moving globe of silence. The goblins beyond were too much in a tizzy from hunting for the Morgwyn to really notice. I didn’t pause to see if Maille and Rose opposed her, but hoofsteps followed me out.
I made it to the railing over the hangar before one of them, a huge crimson stallion who had played Big Macintosh, caught up with his enormous strides. His foreleg closed about me in an unbreakable vice, and I shouted and screamed and beat at him to no avail. The sound sphere fell and bounced down to the floor of the hangar below.
“No one to help you now,” he snarled. “Game’s at an end, bairn.”
Laughter echoed through the chamber. Deep, powerful laughter. It seemed to come from far away at first. Then it came again, closer at hand, issuing from a vent. More laughter joined it, a chorus of sinister chortles filling every corner of the hangar. At once, everyone paused to listen, and the Morgwyn spoke into the silence.
“Oh, how lovely this is. They squirm and they shiver in the guts of their great machine. They think they can pin smoke, that they can reach into a mirror and pull out their own reflection.”
I felt the stallion’s arm quake.
“Such irony. They should know better. To seek the Morgwyn is to find it, to call its name is to draw it. Foolish creatures. The Morgwyn is older than your kind. The Morgwyn was ancient when your master first drew breath as a squalling babe. The Morgwyn blackened the skies with ravens eons before you shaped the Wand from the stolen elemental chaos of fire.”
“Now you’re in trouble,” I said with a frustrated growl. I squirmed out of the weakened grasp of the stallion and shot a dark look back at Kiln, who advanced after me with undiminished purpose.
“Hear, o’ King of Wands, o’ ancient centaur. Hear, Nessus the River Ferryman, Nessus the Hero-Slayer, Nessus the Twice-Damned. The herald comes for thee.”
It came in a rush, from where I couldn’t have said. Heat and flame, darkness and power, the Morgwyn struck Kiln and her gang. Kiln fought back with equal ferocity, but I didn’t stick around to watch.
With so much chaos, no one stopped me as I leapt on to one of the ornithopters. It only took a moment to look over the controls, but the craft sat on a rail, and a large lever stood nearby. As I reached for it, a figure dropped from the rail above and landed with the floor reverberating from her powerful legs. Maille stared at me uncertainly, her eyes wide.
“Amelia?”
I looked back at her, silent for a few moments. “I’m sorry,” I said, and threw the lever. The ornithopter slid free with a thunk and a screech of metal-on-metal, riding out into the void.
Sorry is never good enough.
I plummeted through the freezing air and clouds, my new outfit warding off the chill excellently. Maille’s last gift did its job perfectly. I gripped the engine cord and pulled hard until the engine coughed and the wings churned the vapor around me. I stared around at an ocean of clouds, frowning. There was no way I’d be able to find my way to the Well, not like this. If it weren’t for my contingencies, that might have been the end of my mad rush.
I looked up to the heavy bottom of the fortress airship, squinting as searchlights found me. Damn it, Twig. She couldn’t fail me, not at such a critical juncture. My time bomb was the only option I had left.
Tick.
Tick.
Boom.
It started as a sound, one not unlike the crack of a gun. I watched as the hull shuddered with some sort of internal impact. Another impact echoed through the night air and the hull shuddered again. Then, with a woman’s scream of primal rage, a burst of rainbow light blew through the hull with a shower of shorn timbers and arced ahead through the clouds. I smirked and slammed the controls forward, racing after Rainbow Dash’s wake. She was my beacon.
With the false information of the Crusader’s whereabouts, I’d more or less forced Twig to tell Rainbow Dash where the Well was, after all, and I knew she’d head right for it. Despite its many hitches and snags, my plan was complete.
It was time to claim my destiny.
* * *
Fire filled the sky. The aurora stretched in a green curtain from one end of the sky to the other. I wondered if this was near one of the planet’s poles, whichever planet this was, or if this place was simply unique that way. The light was so bright that I had no trouble reading the controls.
The shade was hauntingly familiar, too. It was a vivid, almost unnatural green hue, one that I swore I recognized.
The aurora’s radiance bathed the clouds below me in seafoam green, and they soon parted to reveal the ocean far below, its waters shimmering as the wind whipped its surface. An island rose in the distance. I was drawn to it like a moth to flame, my eyes roaming across its rocky cliffs and forbidding beaches. Under the ethereal light, columned ruins revealed themselves as a whole ancient town surrounded by crumbling walls and fallen into disrepair. Its buildings clung to the cliffs like strange coral, daring the storm to wash them away.
My tiny, buzzing craft came in low over the walls, and the stunned and dazed bodies of goblins were littered across the streets. Some terrible force of destruction had ravaged this place mere minutes before, smashing through walls and people alike as it searched every corner and crevice.
I flew on. This wasn’t what I had come to see, entertaining as it was to view my handiwork. Rainbow Dash trouncing the defenders was an unintended—but welcome—side effect.
I scaled the island’s greatest rise, leaving the town behind as I followed a stairway cut into the cliff face. There, at the top of the hill, a temple had been carved from the living rock. Caves led off into the marble hillside, but a good portion of the complex remained open to the sky. I brought my craft down near the roof, easing it against the wind, and, largely due to my complete lack of skill, landed hard. The wooden frame and cloth skin cracked and split with the force, and I was nearly thrown clear. I felt my shoulder wrench as I jolted and shook, but ignored it. The pain would fade soon.
There was another change from before. I’d only been so-so at coping with the pain of injuries before the week. Now, nothing seemed able to deter me.
I had eyes for only one thing.
Massaging my arm, I climbed over the wreckage of my craft and strode through the columned arches. I ignored the rearing male and female statues of winged and horned ponies just as thoroughly as I did a mosaic of bronze-age men holding aloft a golden light, while creatures on four legs or two cowered from them.
The smooth marble was slick with water, but I paid it no heed, for Maille’s boots held their traction well. I blithely ignored the fact that no goblin defenders had been knocked out up here—indeed, it should have been odd to me that there were none to be seen at all. I was perfectly alone, and that suited me just fine.
I could feel it calling to me. It sang the song of the aurora, its tune changing in concert with the dancing lights. Bright, shining chords hung on the air and thrummed deep within my soul.
A gash in the rock met me, and I stepped inside the cave, careful of my footing as I picked across unworked stone. The song was clearer here, more pure. All of the human- or pony-constructed nonsense outside was mere window dressing, a familiar patch for the unready. My steps carried me through a winding, pitch-black passage until I once again stood beneath the open sky.
Black, rose, and white marble streaked up, there at the epicenter. The aurora above twisted and kneaded itself around this pole, as if it were more vital than any mere magnetic peculiarity. The rock here had been cut not by hands, but by some titanic act of nature. Here, sheltered from the winds, lay a spring as smooth and clear as a pane of glass.
In its depths glimmered a star.
A streak marred the night sky’s perfection, and Rainbow Dash alighted on the stone nearby. She stared at me for a long time, her rose eyes strained and hurt. “So, it’s true, huh? You really aren’t a pony.”
I shook my head, looking back at her uncertainly. I didn’t know quite what to feel—it seemed difficult to keep my earlier anger with her against this new information, particularly when she looked like that. Her fear for her loved ones had an almost palpable sensation.
Yet the anger remained.
“Where’re the girls, Amy?” she asked tersely. “Twig told me they were here. You told her they were.”
“Rainbow,” I said quietly, “why did you leave me behind?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Back in the fake Ponyville. You’d come to tell me the truth, didn’t you?” I set my bag down on the stone and turned to face her again. “Why didn’t you? Why did you leave?”
“I…” She bit her lip, her great wings folding. “I was angry. I was going to tell you, yeah. I thought you knew that it was a show, really, and were just blowing me off.”
“It’s easy to play ignorant, isn’t it?” I said bitterly. “How come you didn’t figure out the real truth sooner? Did you like playing the hero that badly?”
Rainbow shuffled her hooves. “Well, no. I mean… yeah, I was really keen on the whole acting thing, and Twig… well, she…” Her cheeks reddened. “She talked it up so… awesomely, you know? From day one, she spoke like it was the greatest show in the world, and that we should all be proud to be a part of it. Then she met me, and she made it out like I was the best thing to ever happen to them.” Her eyes turned distant. “I didn’t want to disappoint her. She really looked up to me, and that means a lot to me. I know what it’s like to care a lot about what somepony thinks about you.”
The mare exhaled and lowered her head. “But, yeah… I was pretty much blind to the whole stupid thing. Look, kid… Amelia… I should have cleared this up from the start. I’ve learned to be better than that, and I wasn’t this time. Now ponies I care about are in danger. You’re in danger. Heck, I’m in danger.” She scratched at the back of her head. “What I mean to say is… I’m sorry. I screwed up. I… look, if you lied about the girls, I forgive you. You were probably a prisoner and stuff and I can’t really blame you.”
She extended a hoof to me. For all that she was beautiful as a brash, boisterous creature, humility suited her well. “What say you climb on, kiddo, and we go fix this thing?”
I stared at Rainbow Dash for a long time. It was an uncomfortable awakening, an awareness of the fact that she was not the unreliable creature that I’d come to believe. Indeed, I realized that I had been counting on that fact, relying on the notion that she loved Scootaloo so much that she’d fight her way through the Wand airship to this spot. I played out the possibilities of our reunion, pictured the looks on everyone’s faces as I returned on her back. Maille’s dismay would turn to joy. Twig’s tears would dry. I’d show Kiln that I wasn’t just a liar. We’d smash our way through the Cup Palace and rescue Wire and the Crusaders. We’d flatten the Wand King and all of his hordes. I could return home and apologize to Mom and Dad for worrying them.
“Sorry,” I said into the silence, realizing at last that childish fantasies are exactly that, “is never good enough.”
With that said, I tilted forward and dived into the pool.
Freezing water and my golden hair swirled around me as I sank. I kicked hard, taking myself deeper. My lungs began to burn before I ever came near the star, but I ignored it as I had the pain in my shoulder earlier.
There, at the bottom of the Well of Pirene, I found it. The object itself was, in simplest terms, a plain, unadorned harness with a set of fine, chain reins, resting there on a shelf near the fissure that fed the spring. Even at that nascent level of understanding, however, I knew I looked upon an object that transcended simple categorization. It shone with its own inner radiance that filled the world with a clear, crisp light—no, that doesn’t do it any justice. The Golden Bridle did not shine with light so much that it opened the way to a world beyond imagining, through which poured an unimaginable essence that defied merely mortal concepts of photons and nerve impulses.
You must not, a woman’s voice whispered in the recesses of my thoughts as I neared. Please. I beg of you.
I stretched my hand out.
In my mind’s eye I saw her, a cloud of shimmering green hair spread behind a beautiful mare as she lifted her hooves imploringly. You know not what you do. This is not what was meant to be—you are not the Aquarian. The world cannot bear your touch.
Yeah? I answered back. Too bad. The world owes me.
I reached out and closed my fist around the chain.
That was the point where I changed forever. That was the point where the little girl Amelia gave way for good.
Joyous song filled my mind at contact with the Bridle, and I knew things as I never had before. All at once, it seemed as if a fog had cleared from my mind and my senses. Individual grains of sand stood out on the spring’s floor as my sight sharpened, and all around me I felt subtle shifts in pressure as Rainbow Dash disturbed the water’s surface above.
What strength had been stolen by deprived oxygen returned now in full measure, and I marveled as I spun about nearly effortlessly to face the surface. Much as with my senses, it was as if a veil had been violently stripped away by the Bridle’s touch, revealing deep reserves that had always been there, just out of reach. I kicked towards the surface and surged.
It was as if a light shone forth not merely from the Bridle, but from within me, and all it had taken was the merest touch of that device. This was nothing like a unicorn’s magic, but a raw motive force within my very core.
Rainbow Dash swam back in shock as I burst from the water and landed on the stone shelf with surprising athleticism. I breathed in the air and tasted upon it the coming storm, felt the gentle kiss of the aurora’s light on my head, and heard the hump of the propellers of King Nessus’ airship as it came over the island. When my palm touched the rock wall, I could feel its strength radiating back at me, trace its fracture points and flaws with a thought merely by directing my inner light at it.
“Amelia? What… what are you?” Rainbow Dash breathed. She shook the water from her mane and stood staring at me with wide eyes. “Celestia’s white flank, what… what…” She seemed to be having trouble concentrating, her eyes glazing as she beheld the bridle in my hands. I turned to see her flare her nostrils and try to backpedal, only to stumble and recover awkwardly when her rear hooves encountered water.
I pushed the wet hair from my eyes and regarded her with my new awareness. Instinctive fear radiated off her, and that wasn’t merely my assumption at seeing her rolling eyes or rapidly moving chest—I felt it as surely as I knew my own mind. Some part of her that she didn’t understand feared this thing in my hands as deeply as a horse back home might fear a hungry lion.
Yet she seemed to have no power to escape it. Her wings refused to move, and her legs stiffened with paralysis. She opened her mouth to object, to scream, but only short, gasping whimpers escaped.
She trembled as I stepped towards her. The Golden Bridle pulsed in time with her breath. They tugged at one another with inexorable power. I looked down towards the ancient talisman and then back up towards the mare. It all felt so right.
This was my destiny. This, I believed, was what I had been born to.
And if not, well. Damn destiny. It’s what I deserved.
And, so, as ancient Bellerophon and Pegasus in the legends of old, I bridled Rainbow Dash at the Well of Pirene.
“Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.” - Lewis B. Smedes.
Leit Motif
The Everfree Forest fell away behind us, vanishing beneath the clouds as the airship sped to the southwest. We were retracing our steps towards Los Pegasus and beyond, hurtling through the sky with all the speed that the craft could muster.
At the time I did not even know the vessel’s moniker. It seemed terribly unfair that we had commandeered her twice now, one instance of which she had quite possibly saved our lives, and we couldn’t even put a name to her. Eventually, I tired of the view and rejoined the others at the center of the deck, near the ladder where my friends had gathered. The grizzled pegasus captain glided down from the envelope, where he’d been conducting an inspection of the harness.
He glanced around at us with a steady gaze. “Where’s Princess Twilight Sparkle? I need to have a word with her.”
Daphne stepped forward. I couldn’t help but smile again as I saw the jar on her haunch—if a unicorn is to have a long-overdue cutie mark appear, that was certainly the way it should be done. She deserved every inch of approbation for such a feat. “She’s gone below with our prisoner,” she said with a smile toward the sailor. “Thank you for coming to our aid, Captain Holder. I’m not sure we would have made it without you.”
“All in an Equestrian’s duty, ma’am,” he said, though he showed a tight grin. “Besides, it gave my crew a chance to stretch their wings a bit. We may not be a warship, but we need to be ready for whenever the Princesses call. No more surprise invasions catching us off guard, thank you.”
“We are grateful, all the same.” Daphne nodded. “I know it has to be hard on you to drop everything.”
“Bah.” Captain Holder waved her off. “Some things are more important than profit. Besides, the Princesses are good for it; they won’t let me or my crew starve.” He tilted his hat to Daphne and took off down into the ship.
I gave Daphne a small frown as he went. “When did you hear the Captain’s name? I didn’t even know it.”
“Hmm?” She glanced back at me, then creased her brow in concentration. “I don’t recall. I must have heard it from Twilight when we saw you off last time.” She half-turned her head, staring at nothing in particular, a habit that seemed increasingly frequent of late. Now that I had seen her wielding false images so adroitly, I had to wonder precisely what went on in that head of hers. And Lyra accused me of being spacey.
Naomi pursed her lips but said nothing. She was still rather shaky following the fight below, and her fingers shook as she worked at her braids, though her eyes were still sharp as she regarded the two of us.
“So, hey. Everyone’s complimented your butt stamp so far except me,” Marcus said brightly. “So let me say, nice as—ow!” He winced as Naomi struck him across the back of the head. I moved forward and opened my mouth to tell him off.
Instead of getting angry, though, Daphne laughed, catching all of us off guard. All eyes were on her as she beamed like a loon. “Thanks for that, Marcus. I needed it, really,” she said, before turning and trotting down into the ship with a little skip in her step.
The three of us gaped at one another. Marcus squinted down at the former human’s vanishing blond tail. “Did she hit her head? Or does getting your butt stamp screw with your senses?”
“I think she’s just happy,” I said, shaking my head.
“Oh, then there’s definitely something wrong,” he said. “Daphne’s not allowed to be happy anymore. She’s probably been possessed.”
I allowed a small giggle and brushed my mane back as I gazed up at him. “Oh, yeah? Possessed by what, dare I ask?”
Marcus grinned. “I dunno, but whatever it is, I hope it stays. She’s a lot less abrasive this way.”
Naomi rolled her eyes and gestured to the ladder. “We should probably go see the others. I want to hear what Pinion has to say about Amy and this Well.”
“Yeah. I want to hear all about how lil’ Anteater escaped from an entire castle,” Marcus said, his grin splitting even more widely. “That certainly sounds like her.”
“You’re very fond of her, aren’t you?” I asked as we started down. “I’ve heard you mention her positively a few times.”
“Me? Yeah.” Marcus nodded. “She’s a cute kid, and ridiculously smart. She could give Daphne a run for her money, and she wasn’t stuck up about being smarter than everyone. More importantly, Amy liked all my jokes.”
Naomi crossed her arms, regarding Marcus with polite consternation. “Daphne wasn’t stuck up about being smarter than most of the class. Though, he’s right. Amy is a very clever little girl. I can believe she’d run circles around these goblins.” She twirled a red curl around her fingers. “She was passionate about everything. I really believe that she’ll be someone great someday, once she learns how to apply that focus.”
“Hear hear,” Marcus agreed.
“What’s her relationship with Daphne like?” I asked, turning my face away to regard the opposite wall. It may be that they weren’t great at recognizing pony expressions yet, but it wouldn’t do for them to see a twinge cross my features. “She’s been so driven to find her, I have to imagine they’re very close.”
“Uh.” Naomi coughed. “Not so much, honestly. I don’t think either of them would give one another the time of day before this happened.”
Marcus shook his head firmly. “That’s not true. I have little siblings, I know the sort of looks Anteater gave her sister. She totally wanted to be a part of Daphne’s life, but Daph always shut her down.”
“I don’t know,” I said with a little more bite than I’d intended, “after hearing how Daphne’s parents treated her, I wouldn’t blame Daphne for feeling like she needs to get away from her family.”
“Leit’s right,” Naomi said, after a quick, weighing look at me, “Daphne was going through a lot of stress. She pushed me away, too, at first, and a lot of her other friends.” Her eyes turned sympathetic as she regarded Marcus. “You know now how much her life has been shaped by what happened when she was a little girl. She’s repressed so much, is it any surprise she’d have trouble coping?”
Marcus didn’t answer for a while. He looked deeply uncomfortable, and I remembered belatedly that this man had been in a relationship with Daphne. That meant that he had, in a way, also been responsible for hurting Daphne. Rather than my customary sting of bitter resentment, though, I just felt sorry for them both.
I had never even bothered to ask what the circumstances of their breakup were. A week ago, I might have assumed that he’d done something to hurt her—but, really, of the two of them, Daphne had seemed to have the most to prove when it came to their game of jabs and insults.
After getting to know him on our last airship journey, and seeing now how he withdrew from Naomi’s question, I perceived now a sensitivity I’d never really paid attention to before. The look in his eyes was true, genuine hurt, and the way he held himself spoke of uncertainty. It seemed as if human males were very like our stallions—oh, sure, they put on a brave face and try to shrug off disappointment, but beneath the skin beats a real heart.
As we paused in front of the cabin, I considered Marcus in the light of the electric lamps. He’d make a very interesting-looking pony, if Daphne was any judge. A pegasus, from his Discord-may-care attitude. He could even keep the jacket with some modifications for his new physique, and that white undershirt would look rather fetching with it.
“Leit?” Naomi prodded my side. “The door? Which you are standing in front of?”
“Oh.” I yanked my eyes back to where we were going and lit my horn up to open the door to Twilight’s quarters. It was one of the largest rooms on the craft, but it still felt fairly crowded with a small army of ponies, goblins, and now two humans. Pinion sat behind a writing desk that was bolted into the floor while everypony else clustered nearby to watch.
“...And that’s how I replicated your famous triple-layer lemon pie!” Pinion said as we stepped in.
“Wow, so that’s what happened to my book of recipes! Do you still have it?” Pinkie asked.
“Yeah. I’ll have to bring it around some time! I’d love to see the real Sugar Cube Corner.” Pinion beamed. “I had to build it from, like, only three different photos.”
“I’m sure that’s fascinatin’,” Applejack said, “but it ain’t really what we came for.”
Twilight nodded, her quill paused over a sheet of fresh paper. “Yes, please. I’d like to hear more about these Wand goblins and their plan—we keep getting our information piecemeal, and it’s very frustrating.”
Daphne, the one who had the greatest stake in any of this, simply nodded silently and looked towards Pinion intently.
She ran a hoof through her electric mane and beamed at us, ignoring the large, shiny lump that Flash had given her earlier. “Well, okay. I warn you, it’s a bit of a doozy.” She took a deep breath and launched into her tale. “Well, see, it all began when I was just a wee little goblin bairn livin’ with me folks at the goblin city way over yonder…” Her tale, which she elaborated on with a bare minimum of breathing, covered a bewildering array of events.
There were whole new concepts touched upon that had the scholars in the room—myself, Lyra, and Twilight—scratching our heads. The idea that humans and ponies used to live together in harmony with other kinds did not seem strange, but the way she described it, it was as though everypony had been an alicorn, something timeless and ineffable to modern ponies.
Daphne’s face remained steady throughout the rendition. She had a definite interest in what was going on, but her ears didn’t really prick up until her sister was brought into the picture. Her face, and those of the humans, split into grins as Pinion elaborated on how she and Amelia spent their time together in a false version of Ponyville, and then how she’d escaped through the Everfree Forest.
“Wait,” Rarity interrupted, “can you describe those three girls? The ones who fought you with her.”
“Oh, sure. One of them was a redhead, and then another was an orange pegasus with stunted wings, and the third was a white uni—”
“The girls!” Rarity and Applejack gasped at once. They looked at one another and then simultaneously reached over the desk to grasp Pinion. “Where did they go after that?” Rarity demanded. “If you touched a single hair of their coats I’ll—!”
Pinion gagged and flailed her hooves spasmically as the two mares shook her. Flash and Marcus managed to pry her free, while Twilight and Pinkie settled Rarity and Applejack down. Pinion caught her breath. “No, no!” the goblin protested. “Heck, they nearly knocked me clean outta the air! I ran off when the Morgwyn intervened.”
“That concerns me,” Daphne said quietly, “I don’t understand how you let that thing near her in the first place. It fills me with… dread.”
“You and me both, sister,” Pinion agreed.
“Don’t call me that,” Daphne snapped, her ire rising in an instant. “Even if you are willing to work with us now, you still participated in this knowingly and willingly from the start.” She settled back after a moment’s silent glaring, rubbing a hoof across her face. “Sorry. That was a bit much.”
Pinion simply winced and went on with her story. “Well, after that, we lost them. Maille was positive they’d gone off to Mag Mell, and I stayed behind to hunt her. When we got reports of you lot movin’ towards the Tree of Harmony, well… we thought we’d try and set up an ambush. Tha-a-at didn’t go so well!”
“Yeah. We were there,” Marcus said smugly.
“Hey, it was going fine until somepony busted out the theater extravaganza!” She looked at Daphne, chewing on her lip. “That was amazing, by the way. Is that amazing, Twig—err, Twilight?” She glanced towards Twilight.
“It’s about the level of power I would expect an adult cutie mark event to be,” Twilight said with a shrug, and swished her tail as she turned to look at Daphne. “Though I am a little impressed by how much detail you could manage with that illusion. That’s dozens—no, hundreds of simultaneous perspectives.”
“I… wouldn’t know.” Daphne shook her head. “It’s just the way I think.”
“When did you have opportunity to see timberwolves?” Twilight asked. “In the Everfree?”
“I must have.”
Naomi raised her hand. “If I may?” She lowered it as the ponies looked up to her. “I’ve heard of the Well of Pirene before. It’s part of the legend of Pegasus.”
Marcus quirked an eyebrow at her.
“Hey.” She grinned and shrugged. “If it has to do with a horse I’ve probably heard of it. Anyhow… in Greek mythology, Pirene was a river nymph who went mad with grief when her son was murdered by the goddess Artemis. She turned to tears and became a fountain in the city of Corinth. It’s said that anyone who went to the fountain and drank from it became filled with inspiration, and so poets and authors often traveled there; another legend says Pegasus himself created it when he touched the ground there, as he did on another mountain. Pegasus—who in Greek myth was a demigod—paused to drink there, it was his favorite watering hole, and he was captured by the hero Bellerophon with a golden bridle given to him by the goddess Athena. With it, he mastered Pegasus and rode him.”
She looked down to find the rest of us staring at her in abject horror. “What? It’s just a story. More importantly, Corinth isn’t in Equestria, and the Well has been dry for centuries.”
“Ah, well, see,” Pinion said, “you’re technically right. It was in Korinthos, before the Division.”
“The what?” I asked.
“It’s like I said. In ancient times, before, well, a lot of important things in human history happened, Equestria didn’t exist.” Pinion put her hooves together. “When the races started to conflict with one another, that’s when the founders of Equestria withdrew. Back in those days, all kinds were bound together by a Covenant, an agreement of peace and harmony, that no thinking creature should harm another. They would cooperate instead, following, well…” She smiled awkwardly at the other mares. “Friendship.” She flicked her bushy tail and went on. “The other races came together under the leadership of the equines and agreed to renew the broken sacred compact. That’s how the Tree of Harmony came to be—it branched off a new world from Midgard.”
Twilight Sparkle sat back, looking deeply alarmed. “I’ve never even heard of this. It’s never been hinted before. It doesn’t even make sense.”
“You don’t think she’s lying, do you?” Fluttershy asked quietly.
Flash bristled, but Pinion laid a hoof on hers. “It’s a legend passed down through the goblins, and our King was there when it happened, long before he became the Wand King. If it’s not true, well, I’m just tellin’ you the story as I know it. My grandmother told me it when I was just a bitty goblin fluffball.”
“Celestia has never even hinted at such a thing,” Twilight said more firmly, though her ears were alert and quivering.
“She never told you about the world of humans linked up to yours on the other side of the Everfree Forest, did she? A forest she and her sister built their first castle in.”
“I saw her and Luna discover the Tree of Harmony for the first time!” Twilight protested. “It was in a vision.”
Flash blinked at that, looking at Twilight more closely. “So… they could be as clueless about this as anypony?”
“Well, that’s odd,” Pinion said thoughtfully. “I mean, after all, it was their parents who did it.”
“Parents?” Rarity asked. “You know who their parents are? I didn’t think anypony knew who their parents were.”
“Uh. Not their names, no, just that it’s an alicorn pair who, uh… what was it, Flash?”
“The earth and the ocean,” Flash said, running a hoof through her blond mane carelessly. “I used to tell Wire about it.”
Daphne looked momentarily uncomfortable. I glanced towards her uncertainly, but said nothing. She could have been thinking about herself and Amelia.
“So Amelia’s role in all this,” Naomi asked, “what is it?”
“We’re supposed to take her to the Bridle at the Well of Pirene. The real Well, the one that came with the division of the world,” Pinion said, “there, she will initiate a new age.”
“The Bridle? The Golden Bridle? The thing that enslaved a… prince horse or whatever?” Marcus asked. “Sorry, but, that sounds more than a little sinister.”
“It’s not like that at all!” Pinion said. “Well, I mean… that’s what we’re told. She will take the Bridle and reunite the worlds, and then goblins and men and ponies and everyone will be brought back into grace, a world of magic and hope and possibility.”
“Back in our world, there’s this movement called the New Age movement. It’s a bunch of really screwy religions that came out around the beginning of the last century. None of them are really what you’d call, uh… well-supported. The term New Age, though, refers to what’s called the Age of Aquarius. It has to do with what astrological sign the sun rises under on the vernal equinox, something that changes every, uh…”
“Two-thousand one-hundred fifty years,” Daphne supplied. Her face was still creased in an uncertain frown.
“Ah.” Twilight brightened. “I know about that. It’s just basic astronomy, though, there’s nothing significant about it as far as I know. There’s some debate about when it will occur, though, or even if it has occurred, based on the boundary between Aquarius and Pisces. It’s all very arbitrary, honestly.”
“Humans—rather, some humans—believe that which constellation the sun rises under determines the character of that era,” Naomi finished. “Supposedly, the Age of Aquarius is going to be a new age of enlightenment.”
“Sounds like a load of hooey to me,” Applejack said with a snort, “but these goblin types sure seem to believe in it.”
“Hey,” Flash said, “if you grew up as someone living on the edge of civilization, afraid to show her face because she’s considered a monster, maybe you’d take hope in an ancient legend promising your comeuppance, too.” She rubbed her chin. “As for what we call it, well… we just call it the New Age, I guess. The Cups call it the Water Pourer’s Age. I don’t think the Ring or Sword types are really all that keen on it.”
I turned to Pinion. “You don’t know anything else about Amelia, do you?” At the goblin’s head shake, I took Daphne and maneuvered her towards the door. She did not object, though Naomi seemed surprised. “We should start working on her magic,” I explained to her, hoping she’d get the hint. To my relief, she did, and walked out with me. Marcus and a couple of the other mares followed a moment later. Lyra departed for the deck, while Fluttershy scurried off, probably to find someplace to catch her breath after having been trapped in a room with so many others.
“Thanks,” Daphne murmured. “I was starting to lose my cool there.”
“It’s all right,” I reassured her. “We’ll have plenty of time to catch up on the news. I’m sure this talk about Ages is just archaic gibberish.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rarity said, passing out of the cabin behind us. “After all, Nightmare Moon’s return was predicted by an old mare’s tale, was it not? Perhaps some kernel of truth lies buried within.”
“I wonder,” Naomi murmured, looking towards Daphne’s flank.
“I’m not some child of prophecy or whatever,” Daphne snapped, her whole body tensing. “I just want to take my sister and go home. We don’t have a place in this. You three grew up with me, you know I’m just… normal.”
“You’ve never been just normal to me,” I said quietly, brushing my cheek against hers, “but that’s something else entirely. Come on, let’s get you settled. I wonder if my cabin from last time has been claimed?”
“Fine,” Daphne said with a little huff, allowing me to guide her along.
This moodiness of hers seemed out-of-place, but there was no telling where it might be coming from. I exchanged a glance with Naomi and parted from the humans, taking Daphne with me into my room. Once inside, I walked Daphne through illusion lessons, and she soon began to delight again—with her special talent unlocked, it was as if the floodgates had opened.
Unlike many apprentice unicorns, she had no trouble at all visualizing her desires. Like an artist, a young illusionist must learn the arts of perspective, color, framing, and other elements of composition, but Daphne’s mind was like a gateway into another world, pulling images fully formed in whatever shape or seeming that pleased her. Now that she had to settle down and master the rigorous art of spellcasting, though, things were a little rockier. She made frequent mistakes—applying too much power here and there and making her images splotchy or tearing them apart entirely, or just failing to get her magic out of her horn at all.
Within an hour or two, though, she had the basics down, enough that she was playing with her own images. I watched from my cot as she conjured forth a tiny scale model of her own downtown, then began to populate it with people. Humans were eerily fascinating creatures. I marveled at their rolling gait, noting where they differed from their fellow bipeds, and found myself examining their individual styles of dress and grooming with interest. Lacking the vibrant colorations and variety of ponykind, I noted how they compensated—it was rather like the big cities of Canterlot and Manehattan, where everypony felt undressed if they didn’t at least have a hat or a necktie.
“That’s strange. Is Marcus deformed?” I squinted down at the model humans. “I don’t see any quite like him.”
“Ah, no.” Daphne coughed. “We aren’t a very diverse town is all.”
“Oh? So there are humans with blue or green hair and skin elsewhere?”
She giggled. “No.” She turned her horn and dusted green stars across the table built into the wall, displaying a range of male and female humans. Pale skin, olive skin, black skin, and every shade between.
I rolled my eyes and smacked my own forehead. “Of course. No severe body hair, so you’re reliant on varying amounts of melanin in the skin, resulting in varied tones.”
Daphne pursed her lips. “Lyra wasn’t kidding—you must have been the top of all your classes.”
“Not all,” I demured, glancing away. “Twilight, now, she was top of every class, but she was also a different year.”
“You should talk with her,” Daphne urged me, “she could probably help you graduate. I’m sure you don’t want to be a… uhm… what is it that you do?”
I lowered my head. A washed-up recluse. “An insurance claims adjustor.”
“Say what?” Daphne tilted her head.
All of a sudden I wanted to be anywhere but there. “It’s a very rewarding position!” My hoof tapped out a nervous pattern on the wall. “I get a lot of good work done. Ponyville is always being devastated by some new catastrophe.” My ears burned as I clamped a hoof down on its sister to keep it from clattering. “I’m very happy. It pays well.”
Daphne sighed. The images on the table dissolved into green mist and she reshaped it, idly creating figures. “You’re like your house, Leit Motif.” A tiny dark unicorn foal and a little girl lounged together on a hillside under the summer sun. “Beautiful on the inside, full of intrigue and fascinating insights. I wish you’d let it out a bit more.”
More shapes trotted into the scene, but I had already started for the door. My thoughts were whirling, champing at the bit to get out of my head, and the little cabin suddenly felt far too cramped and claustrophobic. I paused at the door to regain my composure and turned to apologize for my abruptness when my mouth fell open and dried. There on the table, with an adult Daphne and Leit Motif, were Legato and his new wife, nuzzling one another in the corner of the scene under an apple tree.
“Where did…” I pointed down at the images. “Have you ever seen those two before?”
She frowned and looked down at her creation, almost as if she wasn’t actively conjuring it. Dozens of ponies moved across the scene—I recognized most of them as local residents. “The dark stallion who looks like me, under the apple tree,” I clarified.
“Oh. No. He just popped into my head,” she said. “He does look a lot like you, doesn’t he? That’s kind of funny. Do some ponies have colorations like his little marefriend there? I never saw any in Ponyville.”
“No,” I murmured, “you don’t find patterned coats around Ponyville. You’re sure you didn’t see them anywhere? Perhaps at the train station before I left the first time?”
Daphne shook her head. “As soon as you were on board, Twilight and I went back to the library. We had a lot of work left to do.” She flicked her golden tail and turned her head towards me. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” I shied away. “I… j-just need some fresh air. Bye!” I shoved the door open and trotted out. Ideas buzzed in my head like a swarm of parasprites. They consumed every unattached thread of thought. My steps carried me towards the ladder, hoping to find Naomi outside.
Lyra’s soft voice and slow lyre song met me as I surmounted the deck. I could see her and a quartet of off-duty sailors, one mare tapping a drum while another played a recorder in minor keys.
“Day by day I draw farther away,
Though my heart grows far colder each day,
Over the hills and valleys I go,
Yet long for when our paths cross again,
Why did fate join us together,
Only to take us away?
Why did fate join us together,
Only to take us away?
Black grows the sky, and cold the stars aloft,
Yet I hope they’ll lead me back home once more,
Are you still waiting for me, can you hear my voice?
I carry yours in me, even as I roam,”
My hoofsteps slowed as her spell fell over me. There were some forces in this world far more enchanting than mere unicorn magic, after all. Clouds waved behind the gentle green unicorn like an ocean as she sang her heart out without ever raising her voice out of its mournful tones. The words, with one accord, both soothed my agitated mind and deepened my lingering melancholy.
In another time, in another frame of mine, my thoughts would have drifted back to Daphne. Somehow she had managed to consume my life with her arrival, drowning everything else out. The song was an old one, and it spoke of journeys, and losing the ones we cared about—the captivated sailors around me certainly empathized. Yet, as I listened to the last lingering notes of the refrain vanish into the thin air, I realized that Daphne wasn’t the only mare I’d lost along the way.
Lyra plucked her strings idly while the sailors went back to their duties while the other impromptu band members packed up. They must have been playing while Daphne and I had been practicing. I trotted over in Lyra’s general direction but stopped short of actually approaching her.
It felt wrong just to open up to her. After all the years of my ignoring her, it didn’t seem as if I had a right to intrude. Yet part of me knew that I had to take this chance. No matter how hard I tried, though, I couldn’t budge my legs one step closer.
So, instead, I sang.
It was something I hadn’t done since I was a filly, and I was half-surprised to find that I could still hold a tune at all. It was a soothing vocalization, bereft of words. It spoke of a vibrant, energetic creature, like the trilling of a piccolo, dancing its way across life and touching everything in its passing with a feathery grace.
Lyra’s head snapped around, and she smiled and plucked at her strings, enveloping my solo in a trembling veil of uncertainty, making it seem as if the flute might never realize its own potential.
I responded with a thrumming counterpoint, a reluctant voice struggling to know itself. My steps carried me closer. Lyra brought back the high notes and danced them across the surface of my low ones, a tender and probing meeting, just as we came nearly nose-to-nose.
“Careful,” she said, breaking the song, “any closer and we might as well be kissing.”
My face turned bright red and my legs and tail turned stiff. “Lyra!” I barked, scandalized.
She giggled and leaned back against the rail, flexing her forehooves and laying them to either side.
I stamped a hoof and glowered at her. This time, though, Lyra needed no fancy tricks to deflect my wrath—it ebbed away quickly enough on its own as I began to laugh helplessly.
Ironically, my laughter must have alarmed her more than my anger. “Leit? Are you all right?” She waved her hoof in front of my face with an aghast look. “You haven’t caught the laughing pox, have you?”
“It’s all right, Lyra.” I slid my hooves about her neck. “I’m okay. Really. I’m okay.”
“Leit. You’re freaking me out here.” Lyra eased into my hug, patting my back clumsily.
I laughed again and gave her a squeeze. “I’m sorry for making so much trouble for you. You’re a good friend and I… I never really…”
“Aww, come on, kid,” Lyra said, her face breaking into a grin. “Don’t cry. You’re already ruining our tough girl images as it is.”
“I-I’m not, I…” I rubbed at my face, laughing helplessly once more as my hoof came up wet. “Damn it. I am. And you know what? Th-that’s okay.” I drew back from Lyra, holding her hooves. “You aren’t lazy at all, are you?”
“How’s that?”
I tossed my head and smoothed my mane back from my face. “All my life, I thought you were… well, you know. Lackadaisical. Indolent. Libidinous. Shiftless.”
“Oh, do go on,” Lyra said dryly. “I’m not sure how much more flattery I can take.”
“It’s all a front, though, isn’t it?” I smiled coyly. “You put up this Discord-may-care attitude, but all this time you’ve had your nose to the grindstone. When we were in school, you drove yourself to exhaustion and beat pressure that made me crack—all while impressing the Princess herself. Then when monsters attack the capital and threaten all of your friends, you put yourself through hell to become a… well, shockingly competent fighter.” I lowered my head slightly, staring at the wood grain. “And when a… a stubborn former roommate shut herself up in her house, you wormed and fought your way in no matter how hard I slammed the door in your face.”
Lyra sighed heavily. “Welp. That’s it. You caught me.” She levitated her lyre over the rail. “Might as well end it all, my starving artist persona is dead and buried.”
I swatted her shoulder and hugged her again. She grinned and brushed my mane back. “All right, fine. Maybe I am more than I let on, but you shouldn’t beat yourself up for not noticing, Leit. You were going through a rough time, and I tried to give you your space and find a way to draw you out of your shell at once.” She plucked a few strings. “It’s a delicate balance, and sometimes you had a right to be angry at me. I… well, I hope it managed to help you in some way.”
“I think it did,” I murmured, pulling back from her. “You kept me sane, somehow.”
“Great!” She tilted her head. “Now, what the heck is libidinous?”
I stared at her for a moment and offered her a bewildered smile. “You… stupid, brilliant mare you.”
“That’s a contradiction, kid.” She started into a soft melody and looked at me thoughtfully as her hoof played across the strings. “You should consider getting back into music. I played some of your pieces from after you got your cutie mark—they were very inspiring.”
I rubbed a hoof along my foreleg self-consciously. “I’ll consider it. Actually… there’s something I wanted to ask you, now that I’m up here.” The railing shone in the sun as I looked out over the sea of clouds. “You’re familiar with mythology and folklore, aren’t you? All that talk of Aquarius… you didn’t seem to have had much to say.”
“What is there to say?” Lyra shrugged and shifted into a more martial melody. “The pegasi have legends of an ancient member of their tribe who first learned to split open clouds and flood the land with water, with implications that he was the bringer of life to the dry earth below. The constellation is usually drawn as a plump cloud.”
“I think we need to look again at the notion we had about Daphne being the one the goblins are looking for,” I said with quiet intensity.
“Why?” she asked, her lips curving down. “Has something come up?”
The clouds rumbled in the distance, darkening on the horizon. I turned to look at her. “Haven’t you noticed how odd she’s been lately?”
“She’s a human turned into a pony. Of course she’s been acting odd.”
“Flash had a couple very specific criteria for the child they were looking for. She’s supposed to be touched. She can see things that no one else can, and the things she imagines come to pass.” My hooves shuffled on the deck. “Ever since she got her cutie mark, she’s known things that she can’t know. She knew the Captain’s name before she’d ever met him or heard of it. She knew timberwolves and could accurately portray dragons, hydras, basilisks, cockatrices, and manticores despite never meeting them. Just a few minutes ago I saw her conjure up an image of my brother Legato and his wife. Even if she’d seen Legato—which she claims she hasn’t—she’s never seen his wife, since she’s from out-of-town and they eloped suddenly.”
Lyra flicked her tail as she sat, curling it around her other side. “I did think that little display of hers was pretty incredible, down at the castle. Even if it wasn’t all that great a display of raw power, who the heck can draw up that much creativity?” She leaned back. “I’ve seen great works of imaginative magic in my time, but never something that lifelike.” Her eyes narrowed. “We should talk to Naomi—she seems to know human legends pretty well.”
“Exactly my thought. Her and Flash both, to compare our three traditions.” I nodded and started towards the ladder. Lyra followed a moment later after packing her lyre away, and the two of us searched through the public areas. We found Flash all right: her, Rarity, Applejack, and Twilight Sparkle all relaxing in the library. The young Princess had her nose buried in a book, and we caught the last strains of the others’ conversation as we opened the door.
“I still don’t think it’s a good idea,” Applejack grumbled.
Rarity waved her off as she lounged languidly in one of the larger chairs. “Oh, pish posh, Applejack. What can it hurt, truly?”
“I wouldn’t do anything to it even if it let me,” Flash said with an earnest edge to her words. “I… I just want to see it.”
Twilight glanced over at Applejack and Rarity. The former nodded reluctantly after a moment and settled into her seat more deeply, while the latter smiled and walked over to Twilight’s saddlebags. She reached in and levitated out a red stone. I found myself staring as I laid eyes for the first time on one of the most valuable objects in equine history—I couldn’t even imagine what the insurance payout would be for such a priceless artifact. Probably priceless.
Flash seemed to recoil from it at once as it was brought closed to her. Not out of any sort of radiation from the gem, as far as I could tell, but more out of some inner sense of revulsion. I could see the echoes of Lightning Dust’s broken glory in her eyes and practically felt her tremble as she beheld the object that had shaped her life, however indirectly. Like a desperate mare stretching her hoof into a flame, she reached out and, ever so hesitantly, touched it.
We all watched, waiting to see if something would happen as a result.
Nothing did.
Flash pulled her hoof back and curled her legs up under her, looking down at the floor. “Take it away.”
“Dear…” Rarity began sympathetically.
“I said take it away!” Flash snapped, tightening up on her seat. “It’s just one more sign of how pointless my life was. I don’t want to see it again. Please.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, and I could just barely catch her last words. “Loyalty would never choose a traitor.”
Rarity sighed and tucked the jewel safely back into Twilight’s saddlebags. I glanced over at Lyra to tell her we should come back another time, only to find her gone from my side and already making her way toward Flash.
“Hey,” Lyra said, stopping by Flash’s side.
The goblin jerked her head up. Even in the guise of Lightning Dust, she had a glare to rival my own. All of her powerful muscles were taut with furious energy. “What do you want?”
“We wanted to ask you a few questions,” Lyra said pleasantly, no more affected by Flash’s dyspepsia than she had been by mine.
Flash kept her glare up for a few more seconds until it wavered and fell. “Fine. At least I’ll be useful.”
“I dunno,” Lyra said, “you sure know how to smack ponies around when you have a mind for it. That’ll be pretty useful in the coming days, I’ll wager.”
Grumbling, Flash got to her hooves and trotted over with Lyra to join me. “Whatever,” she said, ruffling her feathers. We took her from the library and searched back among the cabins until we found Naomi.
Uncharacteristically, we found her all alone, curled up on her cot while she smoothed a hand through the mane of a plush pony doll. She looked up at our entrance, surprised.
“Hey, uh… you all right?” I asked. “We aren’t intruding or anything?”
“Just feeling a little homesick is all,” she said, putting the doll away and smoothing back her sunset mane. “Especially after that mess back at the castle. I felt a little worthless. It’s all right, though. I wouldn’t miss this trip for anything.”
“We wanted to ask you a few questions about Aquarius, if that’s all right,” I said, going to sit on a stool embedded into the wall. “You looked at Daphne’s side when it was brought up, why?”
“Because it’s a vase,” Naomi said, falling into a clinical tone. “In particular, it’s a heavy-bottomed amphora. While her cutie mark isn’t pouring out water, it’s worth noting that Aquarius is an air sign, and therefore denotes rarefied intellect.”
“So if we take it literally,” Lyra said thoughtfully, “Daphne is pouring out thought?”
“It certainly seems like it,” I muttered. “She’s capable of things that no one is. Maybe not in raw power, but in imagination.”
“The Water Pourer washes away the old and leaves room for a fresh start,” Flash murmured.
“That, too, is part of Aquarius’ mythology,” Naomi said with a frown. “I’d hesitate to say that it annuls sins, but there’s a definite vibe of baptism to it.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Maybe more about change and truth—astrology is a pretty ridiculous discipline, honestly, so it’s hard to nail anything down.”
“Isn’t this all a little strange, though?” I said. “When did we go from a kidnapped kid to discussing some sort of… spiritual revision of the cosmos?”
“Don’t ask us, ask the Wand King,” Flash growled. “You heard Pinion—he wanted the child.”
“What for, though?” I asked. “If all of this is true, then it should happen with or without his intervention. The stars will move into the proper alignment and the Age will come. Right? So why the big fuss?” I scrunched my face up. “Much as it pains me to give even passing credence to astrology.”
Lyra leaned up against the door frame. “Control, probably; it’s likely that he’s seeking some sort of influence on how it plays out. It’s got to have something to do with the Elements—he knows something that we don’t.” She frowned at Flash. “You keep mentioning a prophecy, one that names the Elements specifically. Where does it come from?”
“I don’t…” Flash’s own frown deepened. “Hang on, maybe…” She held a hoof up to forestall questions as she puzzled over some dim recollection. “I think I remember something. There was a goblin who I saw with the Queen sometimes. He’s a type you find among the Ring Court—sort of leathery, hunched over with long, drawn-out faces and tails that drag behind them. “
“Is that unusual? Do types usually keep to their own Courts?” Naomi asked.
Flash shook her head. “Not unheard of, but rare. I didn’t think much of it until now, but he didn’t wear Wand clothing, either.”
“Do you remember anything else about him?” I pressed, worried she might lose the thread.
“Yeah, a little.” She nodded, her eyes lighting up. “Queen Stylus treated him with a lot of respect, not like a servant at all, and I think he… yes, he definitely had rings, though I don’t know if he had a Ring.”
“Didn’t follow that,” Lyra said.
“A Ring. It’s a counterpart to a Wand,” Flash explained. “It’s the Arcana of Earth, and it represents stability, protection, and knowledge.”
Naomi, Lyra, and myself exchanged glances, then we all nodded. I turned to look at Flash. “We need to know what the wording of that prophecy is,” I said. “It may be important to sorting this mess out. Is there even the slightest possibility you may be able to find this Ring goblin, or those he was with?”
Flash shuffled her hooves awkwardly. “I, well… I’d have to find a Way back to Mag Mell—I mean, I already know where some are, and I… that is to say, I’m a great flyer, and it probably wouldn’t take me too long and…” She swallowed. “It could be huge risk. And you don’t trust me.”
Naomi slid forward to put a hand on the faux pony’s back. “This could help your friends, too,” she said. “They’re all wrapped up in this, a part of something bigger than they are.”
“Loyalty,” Lyra said soberly, “is looking out for those who need you. Even if it might cost you.”
“Loyalty,” Flash echoed, her eyes widening slightly. She straightened her neck and nodded. “I… all right. You’re right.”
Naomi smiled and rose. “I should pack you some things.”
“I should get going,” Flash turned towards the door. “The airship’s carrying me away, I’m wasting enough time as it—”
“Nonsense,” Naomi prodded her side, making the goblin defend herself with a wing, “you’ll be even worse off if you get hungry or cold or thirsty along the way. And what if you need some money? I’ll meet you on deck with some saddlebags, then you can go.” She bustled out of the room, fired up with purpose once more.
Lyra and I exchanged a glance. “Earth pony,” we said in unison, and giggled.
Giving us a puzzled look before turning to the door, Flash departed after her. I started off as well and went down the corridor towards the aft of the ship. Lyra called after me, “Leit? You going somewhere? I thought we’d catch up.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, nodding at her, “I just wanted to take care of something first.”
“Not going to see Marc, are you?” Lyra asked with a grin.
I lashed my tail. “What? No! I mean… I just wanted to see how he was settling in. Especially after shooting people—if Naomi feels bad about the fight, imagine how he must feel?” Lyra said nothing, and I glanced back at her. “I only wanted to say hi, really.”
“Really,” Lyra said, deadpan. “Well, you have fun!”
“I’m not going to have fun,” I growled, snapping my tail at her and continuing on with my head held high. Lyra just didn’t understand my lofty, sincere ideals. I couldn’t help it if she was puerile and obsessed with temporal affairs.
Not that Marcus had anything to do with affairs, of course.
My steps carried me to the engine room, since I had seen the human in no other place and remembered his proclivity for machinery. Though not normally open to passengers, the sailors didn’t seem to know what to do with their passengers, now that they came with a princess in tow. We were next to royalty, in a way, and ponies still had yet to figure out their bookish new royal. Clockwork shining with the sheen of lubricating oil churned in the recesses of the frame, while in the rear an enormous wheel spun as lightning drove it from a great glass jar filled with storm clouds. The snap and crackle of static power provided a steady background to the click and whirr of the mechanisms.
Spying an upright figure, my steps quickened and I smiled brightly as I approached Marcus, only to slow in surprise when I saw a blond head beside him. Daphne? I thought, and indeed confirmed it for a creme unicorn with a closer glance. On some impulse, I stopped rather than approach further and pricked my ears to listen.
“It’s just hard to believe that Amy, my little sister, could have done all that,” Daphne said, kicking at the paneling as she stood next to Marcus. The two of them were in a break area, keeping out of the way of the engineers. One young earth pony came up to speak to me but I scowled at her so fiercely she immediately turned and fled. “She’s just a kid. It’s not even her ninth birthday.”
“She’s a smart kid,” Marcus said. “I’m honestly surprised your folks never put you in advanced classes or anything like that.”
Daphne quirked a brow at him. “I’ve been taking college courses on weekends since at least last year. Didn’t you pick me up from there a few times?”
“You were taking classes? Huh.” He leaned back in his seat. “Honestly, I had no idea. Man, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could harness lightning as well as they do? That’s a lot of power in a compact spot.”
“Ugh.” Daphne tossed her mane. “You never paid attention to anything I did. And, yeah, it would be fairly impressive. Did you notice that dam near Ponyville? It must have supplied power to the entire countryside.”
Marcus looked down at her. “That’s not true, and you know it. I asked after you a lot. You put me off and gave me non-answers. How often did I ask about your day only to get, what, a terse ‘fine’ or a ‘I don’t want to talk about it?’” He ran a hand through his hair. “Half of what I know about you came from Naomi or Gina or Jim. It was like some sort of detective mystery.”
“I told you about things.” Daphne glanced away. “Sometimes.”
He didn’t answer that. He didn’t need to—Daphne began to shuffle her hooves and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye again. “I don’t like talking about myself. I just—” She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath before letting it go “—wanted to get on with my life.”
“From the sounds of it, you spent almost ten years trying to get on with your life, Daph.” Marcus looked down at her sadly. “And look where it’s gotten us: first-class passengers on a horse-drawn zeppelin.”
“I know, and…” Daphne bit her lip, coughing something indistinct out.
“Come again?” Marcus asked.
“Ahmsorr,” she mumbled at the floor.
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to slur?”
“I said I’m sorry,” she said hotly, her cheeks reddening. She bumped her head against his side and sighed. “Sorry. I… I’m sorry.”
Marcus tensed up a little. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“I…” Daphne sighed again. “Yes, I do. I… made life hard for you, Marc. It… it didn’t even have anything to do with you, really. I was hurting and I couldn’t admit it to anyone.” She rubbed her chest with a hoof. “I couldn’t even admit it to myself. All I did every day was bottle my feelings up.”
“You were traumatized,” Marcus said quietly, “I’m not going to hold that against you.”
“Until a few days ago you had no idea.” Daphne looked up at him. “Don’t lie—you hated me, and you had every right to. I… I don’t blame you for telling me to take a hike. You didn’t deserve that.”
Marcus scrubbed his head and held his hands out imploringly. “Daphne, please, don’t be like this. Yes, you infuriated me, and maybe yes I’m only getting now why, but I didn’t hate you.” He came down to her level, looking her in the eyes. “I… I don’t want to see you beating yourself up over this. I swear, I didn’t hate you. I just wanted you to open up to me, to let me know how you were really feeling and what you were really like inside. I wanted you to spend time with me and not shove me into a corner except when you decided you needed me.” He paused for a moment, the air growing heavy. “Honestly, at the end there, I thought you just didn’t care about me.”
Daphne’s eyes watered and she lowered her head. “It’s not like that… I always liked you, Marcus. I… I just didn’t know what to do once we were together.”
“It’s all right, Daph.” He rested a hand on her shoulder. “We’re both adults—well, almost adults—we can…” He paused, catching himself. “I mean…” He sighed. “What I’m trying to say is… I forgive you. We don’t have to hate each other anymore.”
Crying openly now, Daphne nuzzled at his cheek and pressed towards him. They hugged awkwardly, with his arms around her neck.
“Isn’t that sweet?” a unicorn mare asked the earth pony engineer from before. She had an absolutely idiotic expression of contentment on her face—my objectivity on the matter cannot be questioned. “I hear he used to be a pegasus until a minotaur cursed him.”
“I bet he was really handsome,” the earth pony sighed meltingly. Bimbo.
The engine room had become incredibly hot and stuffy in the course of my eavesdropping. My chest felt tight, and I needed fresh air desperately. I turned and ran for the door, my hooves clattering along the catwalk, and raced up the closest ladder leading to the upper deck. The blast of cold air coming from the east was like opening the fridge door and sticking my head in. Even so, its refreshing qualities seemed limited—even gulping lungfuls of cold air, the tightness refused to dissolve, and I wandered over to where Naomi was provisioning Flash, cinching saddlebags tightly around the latter’s barrel.
Flash squeaked and danced away from Naomi, covering her lower body with her wings. “Hey!” Since we’d last seen her, she’d put on the blue jumpsuit and goggles of a Wonderbolts trainee, doubtless to protect herself from the unstable weather of the Everfree.
“Oh, sorry,” Naomi said brightly. “Was that too tight?”
“Too tight—!” Flash growled. “Just watch where you put your hands, lady!” Her face softened, however infinitesimally, as she spied my approach. “Hey, Leit Motif. Something up? You look like somepony died.”
“Huh?” I slapped my cheeks, trying to restore some color and held a hoof up to keep my long mane from flying into my face with the wind. “No, I’m fine. You all set to go?”
Naomi held back her own hair, looking towards the northeastern sky. “She’s set. I’m no flying expert, but you’ve got a good following wind at least.”
“Yeah,” Flash ruffled her feathers, “not that I’ll need it. Maybe I’m not Rainbow Dash, and I can’t pull off a stupid sonic rainboom, but I don’t need to be.” She faced out towards the ship’s aft, back the way we came. “I was her equal at the Wonderbolts Academy.”
“You think of going back?” I asked her quietly, almost inaudible over the wind. “You mentioned that your suspension was temporary. Princess Twilight… she’ll support you.”
Flash frowned, looking at me for a while.
“Back at the library, you told us that you didn’t want this life taken away from you,” I said, my tone stronger. “You said that it had been the best years of your life, living here among us. That dream’s not out of reach for you anymore.”
“Maybe it isn’t,” Flash said quietly. She looked down at her blue-clad hoof, then fished around until she pulled a battered silver wing pin out. She examined it for a moment, and then pinned it on her chest. “If I make it back…”
“You’ll make it—” Naomi started.
“If I make it back,” she said tightly, “then I want to be called Lightning Dust again. I want to live here, in Equestria. I…” She shut her eyes.
“How about I call you Lightning Dust now,” I said, “and tell you to make sure you make it back?”
Flash—no, Lightning Dust—met my eyes. She even smiled a little. The two of us had gone full circle, from our first chance meeting to the assault and kidnapping to now.
I glanced aft as well, nodding. “Go, Lightning Dust. Everypony’s counting on you.”
With no further fanfare, Lightning Dust spread her wings wide and caught the wind, leaping off the deck and rocketing back the way we’d came. Almost instantly, she vanished into a zigzagging golden contrail, one that shrank and vanished to a fine line on the horizon before vanishing entirely.
“Do you really think she’ll make it in time to do any good?” Naomi asked quietly.
“You? Cynical?” I asked, baffled.
“Somepony has to be.” She smiled sadly. “I have to prepare for the worst.”
I turned my head and gazed after Lightning Dust’s wake. “I don’t know, Naomi. I think she can do it. Call it a hunch.” My eyes settled back on her, and I opened my mouth, thoughts of Marcus and Daphne swirling in my skull. Instead, I said, “Let’s get something to eat. We should tell Twilight about our discoveries, anyway.”
And, so, down we went.
* * *
“Sheesh, Leit, are you going to eat anything?” Lyra asked, staring hungrily at my untouched plate of tomatoes, kale, and arugula and slathered in a healthy dose of my favorite honey mustard dressing.
“I’m not really feeling all that hungry,” I said and poked broodily at the greens.
“Where’d your appetite go?” she asked. “You barely touched the midday meal, either. Now you’re not even going to try to eat dinner?”
“No,” I said at last, putting my fork down. Not even the nap I’d taken after Lightning Dust had left gave me any comfort. The entire time had been spent tossing and turning in my cot. “I think I’m just anxious about what we’re about to find. Pinion says we’re close now, aren’t we?”
Applejack munched on a salad flavored with sliced apples. “I hope. I’m sick of the ocean already, and I ain’t even seen it much. Give me solid, firm ground any day.”
“So are you going to eat that?” Lyra asked.
I sighed and pushed it over her way.
“Yoink,” Lyra said, pulling my bowl away with her magic and digging in.
I propped my head up on my hoof and stared across at the others, watching them finish off their early supper and prepare as best they could for what may come. Not that there was much left that we could do that we had not already done. I stared across at Daphne for a while, watching her pour feta and cheddar over her meal, and laugh as Marcus said something to her. Without them fighting at every turn, the group meals had brightened considerably.
That, for some reason, only made me feel more awkward. Perhaps it was just jealousy. After all, now Daphne had more friends than just me. It became impossible to deny that Marcus and Naomi were real friends of hers after traveling with the former and witnessing the latter. However twisted—and faintly perverse—Naomi was, her heart was simply too big. Marc had defied all of my expectations as well.
I watched as he got up and walked out of the dining area with the object of fetching his things. He had shown himself to be far more dependable than his appearance suggested, and his world-weary attitude belied a deep compassion I couldn’t help but admire.
It was a painful reminder of how I’d never really had the opportunity to rely on anypony. All throughout my academic career and the disastrous fall, the only pony I’d ever had to confide in was myself. Certainly never anypony I could really care for in the way Daphne and Marcus must have felt for one another. Oh, certainly, there had been young colts I’d been interested in, but working up the nerve to talk to them was far beyond anything a nervous wreck of a filly could have mustered.
None of them had ever approached her, either. Why would they have, really—she was a distant, shy creature who never let anypony get close.
I sighed heavily, then my hoof slipped and I banged my head into the table.
“Oh, just go talk to him already,” Applejack said, rolling her eyes. “You ain’t gonna forgive yourself for lettin’ him slip through your hooves.”
“Huh?” I asked, wincing as I came back up. “Nnn-ow.” I touched the growing bump on my head and glanced at her sideways. “What’re you saying? I just hit my head is all.”
“Don’t play coy, Leit Motif.” She prodded me in the side. “I know what it means when a young mare makes eyes at a stallion—well, boy—all day and heaves mighty sighs like that. Let it never be said I can’t tell when a pony’s lovestruck.”
“L-l-l-love?” I squeaked, staring around to make sure no pony else had heard. “That’s preposterous, Applejack! I’m—Nothing of the sort is going on here!”
Applejack smirked and waved her hoof dismissively. “Now, now, I know what you’re thinkin’: he’s a human-whatsit and I’m a pony. ‘It ain’t natural and it’ll never work out.’” She pointed after the departing Daphne. “Well, take a gander at your friend over there. She’s made a transition, and I’m sure one or the other of you could work it out. Crushes at your age’re an important part of life, so take a chance.”
“That’s not what I’m objecting to!” I snarled. “I’m not…” My voice pitched to its lowest register “...crushing on Marcus!”
I stood up from the chair. “It’s ridiculous, absurd! I couldn’t fall for him! Even if he wasn’t a weird upright monkey creature.” A glass of lemonade floated over in the grip of my telekinesis and I knocked it back. “He’s brash, ill-mannered, messy, and he dresses… rebelliously! He’s not interested in things I am—I think, maybe, I don’t actually know—whatever! Absolutely, positively not.”
My tail lashed as I paced back and forth. “I mean, not that I wouldn’t like to get to know him. As a friend! And it’s just that I rarely get to talk to anypony I find really interesting and it seems like he really understood me the last time we talked.” I huffed. “Why can’t there be more stallions like him, honestly? I could overlook a few bad habits if they were endearing like his, and a comb now and then wouldn’t kill him, and… and…”
The sound of my hoofsteps faded well before I’d quite realized I’d stopped with them. Applejack could have knocked me down with a feather right then.
“I see my work here is done,” she said, plopping her hat back on and rising to her hooves. “You take care now.” I barely took notice as she departed.
My head craned to the table and I zeroed back in on the plate of greens Lyra had demolished moments ago in my generosity. No appetite. Strange butterfly feelings. Long stares. “Oh Celestia, no,” I muttered, laying a hoof against my chest. “What if I am falling for him?”
It was as absurd as I’d protested. The very idea was insane. Leaving aside all of our differences, how he was obviously not suited for me or vice versa, how he obviously isn’t in any way the sort of stallion I thought I’d find myself liking, the simple fact was that I had no real interest in a relationship. All throughout school I’d kept my interest academic at best, trapped in the level of ideation. At the time it was because I’d been focused on my studies, but I knew the real reason was because I didn’t feel like I could trust another pony with my feelings. Now I was an independent mare living her life, needing and wanting no pony else.
Except that wasn’t entirely true, I realized as I considered the matter on my way back to my cabin. After all, I’d already begun to plan the sort of life Daphne and I were going to share after these events were over. Mere hours ago I’d begun a painful, long-awaited reconciliation with Lyra. The possibility that I might next contemplate long-dead dreams of romance and close friendship with a boy stood not incalculably far from those strides.
At the least, a chance to get out and get to know people didn’t frighten me as much as it once did. So long as I had the chance to recuperate now and then, there was little harm in leaving my shell on my own initiative.
Sliding the cabin door open, I frowned at where Daphne sat on her cot, practicing her magic once more. Even if I could contemplate the shadowy specter of a relationship, there were certain barriers to this one. Their heartfelt rapprochement in the engine room indicated a defrosting in their own friendship, and the way they’d laughed at one another’s jokes in the dining room only served to drive another nail into my gut. I felt ashamed at the very notion—jealous of my best friend, the closest thing I had to a sister, for rekindling a friendship with a boy that I maybe, sort of, might have been allowing myself to become interested in.
Almost as if she’d read my mind, Daphne spoke up as I entered, not bothering to look up from her illusionary play. “Hey, Leit. Man, you wouldn’t believe the day I’ve been having. Pinion and Naomi were staring at my butt half the afternoon, and Marcus just wouldn’t stop talking about you.”
Once again, I froze in my tracks. “Oh?” I asked, trying to keep my tone even. “What did he say?” In truth, it came across as exaggeratedly disinterested, but Daphne seemed too distracted to notice.
“Well, we were talking earlier,” Daphne said, flicking her tail along the bed, “and we kind of made up.”
My heart sank at once. I busied myself with my travel things, picking up my saddlebags and checking the straps for wear. “Oh. That’s nice.”
“Yeah,” she smiled sadly, “I guess we are a little old to be fighting like children. He can be so irritating sometimes, and I guess I’m no prize.”
“I guess if you patched things up together, that’s all right, though?” I asked.
“Sure.” She heaved a small sigh. “Would you mind a small confession?”
“Not at all,” I said, buffing a tarnished buckle.
“I kind of wished we were still dating.” She laughed nervously. “Look at me, talking about boys again. It’s like I’m back in the locker room.”
“So…” I paused. “You’re not still dating?” I watched her carefully.
“Well, no. I don’t think that would be a good idea.” She shook her head. “We broke up for a reason, and just because we forgave each other doesn’t mean the hurt isn’t there, or that the reasons we broke up are no longer valid. Maybe if something changes…” She bit her lip. “But I don’t know what that might be. I’m grateful to him for helping me, but you can’t build a strong foundation out of that.” She sighed and laid her head down on her legs. “Honestly, I can’t think of boys or anything like that. Whenever I try to think of the future, I’m sucked into fears about what will become of me or Amelia.”
She tilted her head to me and smiled wanly. “Who needs relationships, anyhow? I’ve always seen myself as an independent person.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said distractedly as I wandered into the latrine and stared into a small mirror there. My mane hung long and unkempt, falling just past my knees and in general disarray across my back, as it often did when I was frazzled and hadn’t had time to tend to it. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen a hair stylist or had it trimmed. Using magic and a heavy brush I arranged my hair and tail into something less disastrous, and tried simultaneously to put similar order to my thoughts.
Much like other parts of my life, I was letting myself get worked up into a tizzy. One part felt guilty for not putting much thought to Daphne right then, while another part reassured me that she was, if anything, doing better than she had been in days. A much larger part chided me for the ridiculousness of contemplating a transpecies romance of any sort. It tsked, noting in a cool, logical fashion that this was poorly thought out. The logistics of it were complex, potentially even insurmountable.
I’d never had a coltfriend. I barely knew this guy. We didn’t even come from the same culture. Heck, I certainly wasn’t physically attracted. The chances of him submitting to being transformed into a pony were minuscule.
Of all the voices I listened to in the end, though, it was the one, tiny voice whispering, If there’s even a slim chance of getting to know someone who might understand you, it’s worth trying.
Even with that, I barely made it out the door. While Daphne went back to practicing with her magic, I pulled my journal out and wrote a list of things I wanted to talk to Marcus about—asking after his family and aspirations, sharing interests and seeing if anything gels, working out his plans for the future. Potential relationship wasn’t even on the map. No, I reasoned, if this is going to work, we’ll need to get to know one another first, see if it’s even a remote possibility.
Logical, sensible, rational. That’s the way to tackle problems.
So armed, I trotted out of the cabin to chase the wayward human down. Knocking on his door elicited no response, and searching the library, engine room, and mess proved fruitless. It was just as I started back to my cabin and gave up that I turned and nearly plowed into him. I stared at him for a while, and he looked back at me, wearing a white shirt and with his hair damp and freshly combed. “Uh,” he asked after a while of our saying nothing, “is something wrong?”
I might as well have had lockjaw from how badly clenched my teeth were. Every time I tried to bring up one of my carefully structured topics, I shied away. I knew, before even asking, that he’d reject it out of hand. What could he possibly see in me anyway? I was just a washed-up nopony whose only relevance to him was that I was his ex-girlfriend's barnacle.
If I could just… “Forget it,” I said hotly. “Just… forget it.” I turned and ran for the ladder to the upper decks. The darkened stormclouds ahead of the bow suited me just fine right then. I could see pegasi from the crew darting through it, guiding a clear path through night air.
Marcus caught up to me there, throwing his jacket on and marching up to me with a stormy look of his own. “Okay. What the hell was all that about?” he demanded. “If I did something wrong, sure, whatever, I’ll own up to it, but don’t just…” He bit off whatever he was going to say next and took in a deep breath. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s not like that,” I said, not looking directly at him, “you didn’t do anything wrong.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, mussing it. “Well… maybe I can help? I’m not very good at it, but I can listen at least.”
I laughed helplessly, covering my face with a hoof. “Damn it,” I said, “you did it again.”
“I thought you said I didn’t do anything!” he protested.
“No,” I said, “I said you didn’t do anything wrong.” I glanced up at the stars above. The rest just came out in fits and starts. “It’s just… you and Daphne and Naomi… you all came out of no where and ripped me out of my life. I thought I had it good. I was so wrong. I haven’t had it good in a long time, I’ve had it awful. Do you know what happened to me in school?”
Seeming to sense that the question was rhetorical, he said nothing and listened.
“I cracked.” My shuddering breath eased as I closed my eyes. “I was staring at the books in the library and I just… I started screaming. I wasn’t screaming at them, or at anypony. It had about as much sense as a gear stripping itself of its teeth under pressure or a spring coming free.
“After that, I just gave up. Everything. It didn’t matter any more. I got a job I didn’t give a flying feather about so that I could go do my own thing and other ponies would leave me alone. And I thought I was happy alone. I thought that’s all I needed, to be in my little safe spot where no one could touch me.”
I watched him for a while, wondering if he would speak. He just nodded and let me go on, and I took it like a life line.
“I was wrong. So wrong, Marc,” I said quietly. “Daphne proved that. Lyra proved that. Even you proved that. I need more in my life than just… than just me. All I have right now is just a house full of memories and regrets.” I looked up to him, stepping forward. “I want more than that. I need more than that.”
It was Marc’s turn to look speechless as he met my eyes. To my great surprise, he slid to a knee and put his arms about my neck. “It’s all right,” he murmured, and maybe it was.
That perfect little moment was ruined, however, when Daphne came running onto the deck so fast that her feet skittered and slipped on the planks. Her eyes were wide, staring out at the cloud bank as if she could see right through it. She shouted at Twilight Sparkle, who stood on the far side with her friends. “Shield! Put a shield up!” she shouted.
The clouds parted. Green fire filled the sky, a coruscating aurora that danced and swam more brightly than the moon as it illuminated an island below. Above that island, the largest airship I’d ever seen smoked and burned, its wailing klaxons rising even above the rumbling of the hurricane that was now upon us. There was a brief moment of stillness, and then the air was shattered by thunder claps and cannon fire.
“The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness...This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.” Plato.
Daphne
Twilight Sparkle checked another item off on her scroll, and I breathed a sigh of relief as she beamed. “Excellent!” she enthused. “You’re really coming along nicely, Daphne.”
I reached a hoof up to rub at my sore horn, looking at the array of colored children’s blocks stacked in increasingly improbable arrays across the cabin. “Nicely for a unicorn of my age, or nicely for a unicorn who just got started?”
“The latter,” she admitted, but she added with an upbeat tone, “and I predict that with a few months of practice, you’ll be out of kindergarten-level magic.”
“Oh,” I said with a toss of my head, “joy of joys.”
Twilight smiled warmly and swept the blocks up in a wave of magenta, dancing them across the cabin to stack themselves in neat order. Their progress was envious—though I could create illusory images of startling clarity and precision, I felt clumsy when it came to manipulating real objects, unable to apply force with any real accuracy. It wasn’t unlike putting on a pair of snow mitts and trying to handle an instrument. I could saw at the thing all I wanted, but I would be lucky to produce sound, let alone actual notes.
“Are you going to keep practicing?” Twilight asked as she latched my trunk up. “I was thinking of heading up to the deck, myself.”
“Yeah, I think so.” I rubbed the quilted comforter on the bed with a grin. “Nice and warm down here. You can go freeze your horn off up top, though, if you like.”
She laughed, turning towards the door. “All right. Pinion wasn’t sure when we’d arrive, but I’ll send somepony down if we get close to the island.” She clipped smartly out and shut the door behind her as she went.
Even as she left, I turned my attention to the air, and the things that awaited me there. It had been hard enough ignoring them when Leit Motif and Twilight were there.
My mouth creased as I regarded the shapes whirling unbidden and uncontrolled in the still space of my cabin. Angular snakes swam in zigzagging courses. Wheels turned and glittered. Letters hung like cloudy mist, colliding every so often to form words, and those to form phrases. Pictures and lines shaped like birds snatched up words like wriggling worms and devoured them whole before soaring away through solid wood.
It didn’t stop there, either. Without any prompting, images of my school and Ponyville wavered as behind a clouded glass. People and ponies occupied dimensions running perpendicular to one another, such that I could turn my head and see one or the other in some bizarre hologram.
“Practice?” I muttered, “I can’t seem to stop.” I drew the comforter over my head and buried myself in darkness, but closing my eyes only served to draw greater attention to the strange phantasms.
It had been so since the moment I’d unleashed my talent. Perhaps I’d been too tired to notice at first, but they became increasingly clear as we loaded onto the airship and took off. Every kilometer we ate towards the Well made them more aggressive and numerous. The flood that had opened up within me had left a shattered dam in its wake. A trickle now oozed through the cracks, a steady stream of thought.
Squeezing my eyes shut more tightly still, I tried to restore order to chaos. With a brush I swept up the scattered images and shoved them into a jar. The image of the jar I embellished, spelling out its details so that it would remain fixed. It was a heavy-bottomed amphora, detailed with wavy lines. The lines moved, sawing in opposition, such that it seemed that there was a live ocean on its surface. I reached out and slipped my hooves into the handles, gently swirling the jar, watching within as light swelled and spun. Everything else was pushed away, leaving a dark void as I turned the jar over, pouring out the liquid thought, concentrating intently so as to make sense out of what I saw.
Music thrummed about me as the stuff of imagination gained substance, churning into clouds. Within them, I saw Flash and a rainbow mare clashing amidst lightning. A light entered a wingless Twilight Sparkle’s eyes as she confronted a mare of inky darkness. The roots of a great tree split the streets of an American city like a plow through fresh earth. A silver alicorn mare wept to fill an ocean. Amelia, shining like the sun, rose in the morning sky, while the great and the low alike bent knee.
Over the Earth I stood and poured, a remote figure above the clouds. Wherever my green mists touched, light and life sprang forth in profusion. Six gems glittered at my brow, radiating peace and serenity. From the stars I plucked a sword to sever injustice, a shield to preserve the peace, a chalice to relieve the weary, and a staff to guide the uncertain…
Gasping for air, I scrambled out from under the bed sheets and stood panting in the center of the room. My breath frosted in the air, and I was as cold as ice all over. I rubbed numb legs and fumbled telekinetically for the vent. To my surprise, it stood open, and was breathing in warm air. The sounds of the ship’s engines vibrating against the floor seemed too loud to be real, and my every step reverberated in my head like the beating of alien drums.
Heat worked slowly back into my body. Feeling constrained by the cabin, I pushed out into the hallway and stopped a sailor. I recognized her at once from her distinctive golden curls. “Honey Dew? Hey, I was wondering if you saw where Leit went.”
The mare edged back from me and spread her wings slightly in a seemingly unconscious gesture. There was no recognition in her gaze as she regarded me. “Uh. Have we met?” She tilted her head with a puzzled frown. “Are you with the Princess’s entourage? I’m sorry, ma’am, I must have forgotten…”
“No!” I said, too loudly. “No,” I repeated, reaching out a hoof only for her to shrink back, her eyes widen in concern and a touch of fear. “I… I’m sorry.” For once in my life, I couldn’t place where I’d met her before. There was no excuse. I pulled my hoof back. “Sorry, nevermind.”
Her expression cut deep, and I hurried away down the hallway as quickly as reasonably possible. That look, that sudden shock, reminded me just a little too much of how my parents had regarded me, long ago.
Once again, the sound of my own hooves thundered in my ears. The doorway to the library provided a convenient resting place while I rubbed at my temples and wondered just what the heck was happening. All the background noise—the ship’s engines, the sound of echoing hoofsteps, even my own heartbeat—grew deeper, thrumming and overwhelming. Desperately, I pushed it away and watched as the hull of the ship faded into insubstantial mist, peeling away layer-by-layer to reveal the night sky. The ship plowed through curtains of black cloud, and I peered through even that to see what lay beyond.
My breath caught in my throat. There, beneath a green aurora lighting up the night sky, sat the island from my dreams. Not my figurative dreams—the actual memory palace I’d constructed. Its seas were no longer calm, churned as they were by storm winds, but there was the waterfall, and the ancient town climbing up its slopes, and the pool surrounded by columns by the living rock crevice.
“No,” I muttered, “of course I would imagine that; there’s nothing special about it.” I ran a hoof over my face. “I’m not going crazy. I’m not crazy.”
“Of course you’re not crazy, Daphne,” a soothing, masculine voice said from within the library.
Wheeling around, I stared, jaw unhinged, at the man seated there, flipping idly through a book on earth pony agriculture. He looked up to me through his wire-frame spectacles and smiled warmly. Big and bearlike, he nevertheless came off as completely unthreatening, a comforting anchor in a storm-wracked world.
My breath froze in the air.
“You are not crazy, Daphne,” the psychologist said as he laid the book back down, “and you never have been.”
“N-no,” I whispered. “You’re not here, you’re not real. This… this is just a hallucination… brought on by… by f-fatigue, and stress…”
“If it were another person, probably, though you well know that you are not fatigued.” He folded his hands together, leaning forward to gaze at me intently. “A normal person. But you are anything but normal, aren’t you? Sane enough, but different. Different in a way few others are. Touched by forces beyond yourself.”
I took a nervous step back, my ears alert. “Who are you? He never spoke like that.” I leaned away. “No… what are you?”
“I’m a messenger,” he said, “from someone very important to you. Though you haven’t met her yet, she has met you. She was there from the very moment you were conceived, and she’s been waiting for you all of your life. We all have been waiting for you. The whole world has been waiting for you.”
“What? No, I… I don’t understand!” My legs shook, threatening to dump me unceremoniously onto the floor.
“And you might never get a chance to. Hurry, Water-Child.” He rose, pointing to the image of the island still hanging in my vision. An enormous, bulky air fortress listed in the air as it burned and smoked. “It doesn’t end here. It must not—” Thunderous booms echoed through the night, and he turned to meet my gaze once more “—yet it will, unless you act.”
Cannons pinged off the armor, erupting in quick succession, only for the next volley to tear through the weakened plates and erupt all around me, sending hot shrapnel and splinters of wood through my flesh. Twilight Sparkle, standing on the deck, threw up a shield too late, with fires already raging throughout the hull—
A hoof shook me, and I woke covered in sweat in the corridor outside the library. Honey Dew and a stallion with a bandage cutie mark were looking down at me, their faces wide with concern. I stared around wildly, but found the ship intact.
The faux therapist’s words echoed through my brain, and I surged to my feet, throwing off the two well-meaning ponies as I galloped to the stairway. My hooves scrambled across the deck. The clouds were already beginning to part. Green light touched the sky, threatening to drown the stars.
“Shield!” I screamed as I laid eyes on Twilight Sparkle. “Put a shield up!”
It was exactly as it had been in my mind. There, sconced in the churning sea below, the island gleamed under a sky lit in viridian flame. Over it loomed the titanic airship, its engines straining mightily to keep the bulky craft in the air even as it took damage from within. What were perfectly functional, however, were the cannons along its side, arrayed in batteries that were already turning our way.
Once again, I experienced that deafening retort as the surprised goblin gunners targeted our unexpected craft. In my mind, the shells arced through the air towards us. It was like watching a movie for the second time, hoping and praying the horrific events to come wouldn’t.
Then, with a brilliant flash of blue light, they didn’t.
Bone-shuddering failed to encapsulate the sound that followed. Spiderwebs of force splintered and wavered under the fusillade, but held. Fireworks burst mere meters from where I stood, but spent their fury fruitlessly against the canopy of fire projected from Twilight’s horn.
Marcus swore loudly, covering Leit Motif’s body with his own as he threw her against the deck in a surge of adrenal strength.
“Jumpin’ jiminy!” Applejack shouted. She leapt to catch Twilight as the princess found herself blown back with the force of the blasts. The two skidded to a halt near me. “Cap’n! Can we answer fire?” she demanded as the air cleared. There was no second volley—perhaps they were confused that their target was still in the air.
“This ship wasn’t outfitted with cannon,” I said, shaking my head. “They had some planned, but the order was cancelled.”
“This ship ain’t armed, we were going to be, but—” Captain Holder stopped and stared at me.
“N-nevermind!” Twilight gasped and crawled back to her feet shakily. “We need to fall back!”
“Take the ship around the island,” I countered. “The gunners on that side aren’t at their posts.” In my mind’s eye, their posts stood empty and abandoned, with seagulls feasting on forgotten snacks.
Captain Holder and Twilight looked ready to argue with me, but once again her shield lit up, scattering sparks and flashes of lightning as it cracked and splintered. Applejack braced her friend, holding the alicorn up as she strained to hold her spell tight.
You must hurry! the woman’s voice from before urged me, Please!
“Just do it!” I said, my tail bristling. “We’re so close!”
“To what?” Pinkie Pie asked, sounding genuinely confused.
I opened my mouth to answer her, but nothing came out. I snapped it shut and stared down at the island. Never before in my life had such a potent sense of nameless purpose seized me before. I knew, without knowing why, that I needed to set foot on that island, to run the path to the hillside and plunge into the depths of rock and stone.
“Do it, Captain,” Twilight heaved.
The captain grunted and ruffled his feathers, but his barked orders held no trace of hesitation. His sailors gathered clouds around the craft, slipping out from beneath Twilight’s protective shield to form a screen of dark storm clouds about us. More cannonfire ripped through the night, but few found their mark, and our passage was heralded by bombs bursting in air with flashes of red and gold.
Naomi found her way to my side as we sailed, sliding to her knees beside me. She put a hand on the back of my neck, asking, “Are you sure about this? What’s going on, Daphne?”
“More sure than I’ve ever been,” I muttered, staring through the clouds at the ruins below. Perhaps the goblins found them a hindrance, but they inhibited my sight not at all. “I have to hurry. Can you get me down any faster?” I asked Twilight.
“I’m not sure I could manage a teleport right now,” she said demurely, rubbing her head. “That shield won’t last, I… Well, I wish my brother had been here, let’s say. Maybe the pegasi can carry you?”
“Uh, there’s like a whole garrison of goblins down there,” Pinion said, belting her armor on. “I’ll try to talk them down, but we’re safer in numbers.”
Lyra trotted up, looking as ever as if nothing particularly strange were going on. “I have an idea. This ship has lifeboats with gliders for carrying away the wounded and ground-bound. We can all take a couple of them down.”
“I wouldn’t want to take away the crew’s lifeboats,” Rarity said, biting her lip.
“If it’s important to Daphne,” Leit Motif insisted as she joined the group, “then it’s important to all of us.” She gave me a knowing glance, her eyes intent. They were the same shade as the eerie lights in the sky.
“All right,” Twilight agreed with a nod. “Captain, we’ll signal you for a pickup if we need help, but do not, under any circumstances, risk your ship against—”
“With all due respect, Princess,” the Captain cut her off gruffly, “this ship and everypony on board are yours to the last. You do what you need to do, and trust us to do our job.” He met her disconcerted look with one of grim determination, his gaze narrowed, his jaw set. “We ain’t about to pick a fight with that behemoth, but we’re not leavin’ you in dire straits without a chance of rescue.”
A group of earth ponies were already levering a pair of hefty wooden craft to the deck and affixing sturdy wings to them. Twilight sighed and nodded, then we crowded in. With a heave, the sailors swung us out over the empty air, and I reached out and gripped both Leit Motif’s and Naomi’s legs. We huddled together in a pile and braced. Then, with an exhilarating rush of air, the sailors released us and sent us soaring downward at terrifying speed.
Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Lyra, Marcus, Pinion, Leit Motif, and even Fluttershy all worked with magic and muscle to pull us out of the dive as we fell below the cloud layer. Lashed by fierce rain-laden wind, we aimed as best we could at the hillside. Applejack, in the lead vehicle, waved her hat wildly and pointed, her words lost in the screaming air, but her intent became clear enough when she turned the glider and aimed for a long boulevard winding around a cliff face on one side of the island. Closer and closer we came, with apprehension building by the moment, until the earth rose up to meet us. Lead glider and follower touched down on the ancient stones of the abandoned road. They shuddered, thumped, and bounced their way along, shaking their passengers and threatening to toss us free. At last, we skidded to a haphazard stop, alarmingly close to the gaping cliff edge.
The ground seemed to tilt and sway as we wobbled off the life rafts. Powerful winds tore at the wings, threatening to push them closer to the edge, while the waves lashed and punished the jagged rocks down below. Together with the other unicorns, I lit my horn and retrieved our supplies. Naomi’s eyes lingered on the airship as it slid safely into the concealing clouds.
“He’ll be all right,” Marcus said, laying a hand on her arm, “I think ponies know how to take care of a horse.”
“Will we be all right, though?” Leit Motif asked gloomily as she stared around. Crumbling plaster and brick houses lined the street around us. Their ravaged facades spoke of ancient tragedy, and the weathering of ages had only served to strengthen that impression. Statues of men and horses alike seemed to weep with dark channels of grime.
The curious duality of the lost town struck as we made our way up the hill. Few staircases were narrow or tight, ramps were everywhere, and many public buildings were broad and open. The fact that many of the pony statues were clothed in like manner to the human ones was evidence enough. Wherever we looked, there were signs of human and Equestrian cohabitation. If not the same houses, then certainly the same public spaces.
“Is anypony else getting the willies?” Pinkie Pie asked, for once less exuberant than apprehensive as she stared around. “My tail’s getting all twitchy.”
“Please don’t tell me you have a ghost sense, too,” Twilight Sparkle groaned. “Not that ghosts are real.” She froze and glanced over to Pinion. “Right?”
“Beats me!” the goblin said with a shrug.
Perhaps ghosts are real, and perhaps they aren’t. It’s a question I don’t have an answer to yet, though I doubt it is so. After all, if any place was haunted, it should have been this one. Everywhere we went, it felt as though I could trip and fall through a veil if I weren’t careful. Shapes moved out of the corner of my eye. Anger, rage, fear, and helplessness pressed at the edges of my mind.
When we turned up the road towards the temple at the summit, I suddenly found myself walking into direct sunlight. Blinking, I stared around to find myself alone on the path, which was no longer choked with weeds and dust. Screams echoed up from the town, and my ears flattened against my skull. I heard hooves pounding and turned to find a crowd of heavily armed stallions charging past me. One of them shouted at me, “Run, you fool! The humans will be back! Don’t make our sacrifice count for nothing!”
It wasn’t in English, but I could understand it all the same. They charged against a city aflame.
Above, a figure soared in the sky, lightning crashing around it. A man mounted astride a white figure, clashing against another winged horse.
“Daphne?” Naomi’s voice pulled me back to the storm-tossed darkness. I stood on the threshold of one time and another, one hoof poised in a distant past under an unforgiving sun, and the other in a night-shrouded present.
“I’m all right,” I said, walking back into the then-and-now. A few looks were cast my way, but no pony seemed to have noticed anything odd beyond my behavior.
None of them could see what I saw. Honestly, I’m glad they didn’t have to.
Armored goblins groaned as they littered the path. Several stirred before collapsing into heaps again. A quick investigation showed hoof indentations in their helmets and breast plates, a recent and savage beating by somepony very fast, strong, and motivated.
“Rainbow Dash,” Leit Motif concluded at once as she poked a burly goblin’s dented bucket helm, “I’d recognize her path of devastation anywhere.” The goblin tried to sit up, but she aimed a ringing buck at its head and put it down again.
“This couldn’t have been that long ago!” Rarity said, excited. “She could be here, right now! We should—!”
Whatever we should or shouldn’t have done was lost in a sudden crash that knocked all of us off our feet. Dust billowed up as something huge and heavy fell from the airship and ploughed a crater into the earth.
As we all found our footing once more, the thing rose. A huge hand pushed a pillar aside as if it were no more than a sapling, sending its heavy segments crumbling and bouncing across the cracked tiles. The wind caught the dust and blew it away, to reveal a chimeric mountain—a powerful blend of man and horse.
There was more, though. Of us all, I’m positive only I saw it. There was a light shining from within him, a halo of it rimming his head. He had a presence that seemed to exist beyond the mere flesh, and it felt as though I could reach out and touch it, if only just barely.
“No plan,” the Wand King growled, his voice deep and menacing, “ever goes quite as you expect. You’ve come a great deal earlier than I expected, Princess Twilight Sparkle.” When he stepped out of the crater, the great centaur towered over us. He stood head and shoulders over the tallest men alive, and all of it was clenched with rage. He held a vast ash staff so tightly I thought he might splinter it.
Quickly, we set ourselves as best we could. Most of us took cover behind fallen building stones, even though we knew they represented minimal cover to such a behemoth.
“Are you the one who’s responsible for all this?” Twilight shouted over the wind, standing her ground. “Just who are you, anyway?”
“Nessus,” I muttered, “King of Wands.”
“Who I am is none—” His head whipped around and I jumped as his eyes fell on me. I’d had no idea his hearing was so sharp—not that I’d really been thinking when I’d spoken. “So, the Morgwyn brought you lot as well, did it? I’ll need to be particularly inventive with Fetter. I’m sure I can find something suitably revolting for him to spend the remainder of his worthless days as. As for you, Princess, I can’t have—”
His speech was interrupted with a hail of gunfire. Marcus, apparently taking the old adage about never leaving a villain to monologue to heart, unloaded round after round into the centaur, pausing only long enough to aim and fire again in split-second timing.
King Nessus jerked as the shots tore into his bare chest to the accompaniment of gasps from the surrounding mares. Everypony braced as the echoes faded, watching the centaur as he straightened and looked down at his chest. A pitiful trickle of blood matted the heavy hair and he brushed a hand across the wounds. Flattened bullets clattered to the ground.
“Ah, crap,” Marcus muttered.
The staff lit up with a magnesium-bright glow. White fire arced along its dark ash surface. “Humans. Always breaking the drama.” King Nessus scythed the staff and a smoking bar of light slashed across our ranks.
Horrified at the prospect of being transformed against my will once more, I was already diving for cover, but the light seared through stone as if it were air. Just as the beam overcame us, though, a blinding flash met it. Hot air blasted me back into a stone wall and knocked the wind right out of my chest. When I got back to my feet, dazed and half-blinded, I stared back to find six crystals interposed between us and the king.
Twilight gaped, but recovered first. “Hah!” she said as she tossed her windblown mane, as though she had planned it all along, “whoever and whatever you are, your magic can’t touch us!”
“My magic, no,” the centaur said, and reached down to pick up a slab of marble that must have weighed half a ton in one meaty hand. “How about this?”
“Uh.”
The slab flew, and Lyra and Leit Motif blasted it in unison, but the fight was already upon us. The best that could be said about it was that it had been short, however one-sided and brutal. Ponies are strong creatures, but Nessus had the might of ages and the will to use it. He shed bullets like hard rain, and when his hooves flashed, earth and stone shattered. A full buck from Applejack barely swayed him, while his return strike sent her flying into a column to bounce off with a sickening crunch. A purple shield splintered and shattered under a fist, which grabbed Twilight Sparkle by the midsection and flung her clear across the ruined temple. Lyra, bold and beautiful in gold, flung herself in front of Naomi to take a blow that would have shattered the thin girl’s entire body. Instead, it broke Lyra’s armor and sent her spinning.
In desperation, I flooded the world with green smoke, hoping we could run to safety while he floundered. Nessus, however, turned to face me with his terrible eyes piercing the cloud. “Mere unicorn tricks will not hinder my sight, mare.” Huge hoofsteps carried the mountain, and he snatched Marcus up as he tried to run in one hand and hooked Fluttershy out of the air with his staff. He held both in his titanic fists and began to squeeze them as they struggled and fought for air. “This ends now!”
“No!” I screamed. Across the battlefield, my eyes met his, and at once the shapes and sights that threatened at the edge of my sight came alive. Fear, hate, anger, pain, loss—they sparkled in the air and I drew them together. The green fog coalesced at once into a shape, a human shape, a woman with long midnight hair who stood in mute protest before the centaur with her arms held wide as if to bar him.
It was as if someone had reached out and pressed the Pause button on our lives. Nessus froze as still as carven stone, staring at the woman’s image. For that brief instant, he stood transfixed. Then she faded and our eyes met again.
* * *
As suddenly as that, I was somewhere else, watching.
Somewhere warm, under a hot sun, with moisture rising off the wet earth and rushes beside a fierce river. Unaware of my presence, two people stood under the fronds of a date tree. One was a beardless centaur youth, a Nessus before he became quite so massive and fierce, while the other was slim and female, the woman whom I had conjured. They spoke in low voices for all that they thought they were alone—he with bitter, helpless anger; she with soothing comfort. Her hands were on his broad chest, for he came not so high as he did millennia later.
Scenes flashed before me like bursting bulbs, irrespective of time or place. They kissed knee-deep in a river, or they were riding together across the hills with her on his back. A bearded Nessus crushed flowers atop a cairn of stones. A sea-green alicorn sheltered a pair of centaur colts beneath her spreading wing.
A pegasus stallion shouted down at Nessus as storm winds tore at his mane. “Traitor! Half-breed scum, you brought his wrath down upon us! On your own blood!” Nessus, stricken, tried to protest his innocence as blood ran from his gut to stain the water black.
A man’s broad figure, wreathed in light, loosing arrow after arrow to wither the shapes of centaur stallions and mares alike beneath his unnatural hail.
“Brother!” Nessus shouted, now holding the limp form of another centaur. His huge hand pressed against a green-flecked wound, struggling and failing to staunch a torrent of blood. “Brother! I beg you, do not go!” A bag of healing herbs stood emptied, many glasses and jars discarded helplessly across the cave floor.
“The stars await, brother mine,” the older centaur said in a voice thick with pain but as strong and steady as a river. “The child… you must…” He wheezed and hacked, blood dribbling from between his lips.
“Damn the child!” Nessus swore, his eyes stinging with tears. “Damn her, Chiron! Her kind slew you, they betrayed us! What do I care for some whelp while my own blood lies stricken? When…” He looked away. “My fault. This is my fault…”
“Do not… hate them, brother.” Weakening hands gripped Nessus’s shoulders. “Do not… condemn all… for the actions of one… I…” Coughs wracked his body again, shaking the powerful centaur as if he were a frail, bedridden child. “Do not… you must… for the sake of… the worlds…”
“No!” Nessus screamed, as the figure began to fade within his arms. “No! Chiron, no!” But it was too late for pleading, and the centaur Chiron passed into twinkling lights that shimmered and vanished.
Jarringly, without warning, I was somewhere and somewhen else again. A storm wracked the river as Nessus struggled to cross with his bloody wound. The pegasus stallion shouted down at him from above. “What madness led you to betray your own kind, Nessus?”
“A special kind of madness,” another man’s voice answered from the far shore, deathly quiet. “A madness which has laid low greater creatures than we. The madness of love.” In the following silence, the storm air crackled as a mighty bow was drawn.
* * *
Nessus’s scream split the air of the ruined temple. Wordless and primal, it shook the very foundations. Marcus and Fluttershy were flung aside as he raged mindlessly, destroying everything around him, smashing statues into powder and toppling ancient pillars. “Deianara!” he screamed at last. “Deianara!”
Even before the echoes faded, he returned his attention to me, his hair wild across a face red with unholy fury. His nostrils flared, and he snatched up his staff. The King of Wands called down no magic—he would need none to bludgeon me into a smear. Thunder crashed around us as lightning struck the cone of the mountain behind him. Part of me felt keenly the need to be there this very instant, but he still barred my path.
“The story doesn’t end here,” I said, and knew it to be so. I said it in his language, in the tongue of the ancient Greeks.
“Yours does,” he said, as deadly quiet as Heracles had been on that fateful day. “No more tricks can save you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ve already delayed you enough.”
Lightning Dust swooped down from the sky between us, sending burning stones flying as she knocked me clear. Actual lightning bolts struck all around us. Expecting more pegasi, I was more shocked when a woman, brandishing a writhing tongue of sparkling electricity in one hand, appeared before Nessus. She turned aside the Wand King’s return stroke with her strange sword and pressed him back with her answering swipes, as if they had been of a size rather than dramatically mismatched.
Looking up revealed a small fleet of aircraft hovered above. Lightning Dust checked me over for injuries and gave me a sour gaze. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you to dodge when someone’s swingin’ a shillelagh at your skull?”
“Afraid I missed that lesson,” I muttered as I pushed back up. “What in the hell is going on?”
“The Courts have come to war,” she told me with a smug grin. “Well, Sword anyway, them and…”
A shimmering crystalline wall erected itself around our party as Nessus charged back on the offensive. It inhibited him not at all, but when he struck at Pinkie Pie and Leit Motif his blows slid off harmlessly. In the center, on the smoldering remains of the slab he had thrown at the start, a wizened old goblin held aloft a circular device that shone with a pure light.
“Ring,” Lightning Dust finished brightly.
Even as the rescue spared us from death, though, the mountain lit up. Peal after peal of lightning crashed around it, a long, rolling blast that rocked the ruins as the mountain was struck again and again with blinding forks.
No! the mysterious woman’s voice screamed in my mind, and I screamed with her as my vision was dragged through the ruins, racing along an invisible path through the crack in the rocks and into a grotto filled with brilliant light. There, a shining human shape placed a burning golden bridle across the face of a blue mare. No! We are too late!
Lightning Dust held me as I came back to myself, and I stared helplessly as golden radiance poured from the crack at the top of the mountain. “No.” A streak of rainbow light shot forth from it faster than the barrel of a gun. It turned in the green aurora light, tearing and shredding the delicate folds till they dissolved in the warm night air, before arching off across the sky.
I knew who it was. I could see her face. I felt her heart beat.
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. She should have been far away. She never should have been able to set foot here on the soil of this island.
I knew it in my heart, but, for once, my heart was wrong.
My voice rose in a weak, plaintive call.
“Amelia. No.”
The world shivered around me as if it were some cheap set ready to fall away, but I braced and forced myself to confront the world at hoof rather than the one that awaited on the other side. Nessus raged and spent muscle and magic against the people in the crystalline barrier to no avail—he could neither strike nor grasp any of us against our will, and when the woman struck back he howled in pain as her electric blade seared even his skin. The wizened goblin who held the shield fast faced the demigod impassively and did not budge.
“How now, King of Wands?” the cowled woman asked in a lilting voice, lifting her blade of spark-spitting lightning as if to charge through the barrier and strike. “No prize for you this night.”
The night lit up again as our airship’s spotlights made a pool of brightness, and Nessus looked up. Doubtless he saw his flagship being harassed off the field as well as we did, with swarms of pegasi and smaller vessels buzzing over it like flies. “You’re wrong in that, Knight. I’ve already won my prize, and my champion will write my victory in the stars, as it was in the days of old. Keep your wretches—you’ll find them a poor reward.” Huge legs coiled and sprang, carrying him high into the air and out of sight in the darkness.
The shuddering impact of his landing paled in comparison to the way the world shivered around me as I began to fade out again. I wobbled across the ground towards Marcus, my hooves refusing to find stable footing. It was as though my body were trying to walk on two legs again and found all of this mucking about on four a hassle. I threw my hooves over him and lifted his shirt to check for injury. Still gasping for air, he pushed my searching muzzle away, only to stop when he met my eyes.
“Daphne? Are you all… right…?” His voice echoed dimly, as if from a great distance. He receded from me, the world shrinking to a bright tunnel.
I turned toward it, blinking away the sudden sunlight that threatened to blind me all over again and stared around. This was exactly where I had been moments before, but, instead of ruins, the hilltop temple was fully intact, if equally empty. A warm summer breeze rose up from the tropics to stir at my mane and carried with it a woman’s voice.
She sang, a deep-voiced mourning in that ancient tongue I knew as well as the English I had been born with. Following it, I walked past the statue Nessus had destroyed in his landing to reach the caves. Every step was familiar to me—after all, this was the place of my dreams. I didn’t need the smell of salt water or the crevice in the rock to tell me that, for scattered around were neatly ordered crates and boxes and pedestals stuffed to bursting. Entire books paged silently in the breeze and reels of film stacked one atop the other in tin towers, committed to memory everlasting. Every toy I’d ever owned sat in racks along the cave walls with album after album filled with photographs depicting every face I’d ever laid eyes on. The caves split and diverged in a dense labyrinth of tight passages, but I’d only filled a fraction of them, and barely touched the ruins beyond.
It was a wicked irony. If I’d dared explored my own dreams more, perhaps I’d have had more knowledge of the pony race long before my tragic and nearly terminal encounter with Fetter.
Putting a hand to guide my way through the narrow passageways, I wondered if Amelia had noticed the branching pathways when she came mere minutes before me in the waking world. She had a way of rushing headlong into any situation, and, if the fires on the Wand juggernaut had been any indication, she’d done so with the forces of hell on her tail.
Thinking of tails, I noticed only then that I had hands, and looked down in surprise to find myself clad as I had before my very skin had been stolen away. A girl once more, and not a horse, if only in my own mind. All of that agonizing over whether I’d lose my identity, only to come to terms with being a mare, and here I was on two legs again.
It felt anticlimactic. Worse, it felt cheap. Silly, but there’s no accounting for emotion.
The alicorn waited for me in a chamber at the top of the caves. Impossibly, the open balcony looked not upon the sunlit island, but out over the clouds, miles above where we ostensibly sat. Her mane spread long and green across her chair, and her soft seafoam coat glistened like morning dew with the twinkle of stars. Her eyes creased with sadness as they fell on me, but with a longing that pulled more keenly still. A mother’s eyes.
I shifted uncomfortably in my tennis shoes under that gaze. It reminded me far too much of the fact that my own mother lay very far away. In my mind’s eye—something that sounds oxymoronic when I was inside a dream, but still—I saw her sitting with her phone in the living room, checking the messages with only the faintest spark of hope. How I longed to reach across the void to her, for her to hear my voice and know that I was safe, even if in reality I had just survived a terrifying battle.
“Alas,” the alicorn mare said quietly, “we cannot always commune with those whom we see in our hearts.”
“Pirene,” I murmured, facing her again. “That’s your name, isn’t it? You’re named in legends—though they seem to have left out the part about you being a magical horse. Then again, they also failed to mention the part where Nessus wasn’t trying to rape Deianara.”
“Be they by human or equine tongue, legends oft lose their meaning when repeated down the long centuries,” Pirene said, the starlit mare rising from her seat to approach me; unlike most of the Equestrian race, she stood taller than Marcus, even without the aid of her graceful horn. She lifted a hoof and pressed it to my cheek, uncomfortably reminding me again of my mother with her tenderness.
“The son you grieved was Pegasus, wasn’t it? The Pegasus,” I said as our eyes met. Vast gulfs of time raced together, bridged in an instant. I could see him, proud and strong, a bolt of lightning in the sky. “Cloud Breaker,” I named him. A flash of gold, a bright bit. “Taken by man.” Swords wrought in bronze, spears, clashing and shattering. “It started the whole conflict. The reason our worlds moved apart.”
“One of many reasons; the greatest and most egregious sin,” she said with a heavy sigh. “My little Water Bearer. I am so sorry.”
“I…” I swallowed heavily. “I’m not…?”
“Mine?” She laughed liquidly and withdrew her hoof. “No child of my body, certainly. Of my spirit, though… well, that will have to wait. Gods, how I had hoped this meeting would be under better circumstances.” She shook her head. “A moment may be stretched only so long, child of my spirit, so know this from my own mouth before you hear it from others: this was not meant to be. The Event has not come to pass.”
“What Event?” I asked breathlessly, hardly failing to notice her emphasis. This “child of my spirit” business left me heady with confusion, but I had so many other questions spilling out of me I hardly took notice just then. “Please. You’re the only person I’ve met with any inkling of what’s going on who isn’t trying to kill me. Why do I see things? What is this place, and why am I here? I thought all of this… I thought I was just a bystander, an accident, but I’m not, am I? What is the Water Bearer and why am I it?”
“You see the truth, Water Bearer, for that is my gift to you,” she said. “Knowledge flowing from the stars to the earth through you, my vessel.” She put her hooves about my shoulders and held me close. Despite my misgivings, the sensation was so familiar and warm that I found myself wanting to nestle into her and forget everything else. “Do not fear it. It is a blessing, to clear your sight for the trials ahead. Even if your destiny has been stolen from you, even if you may never reclaim your exalted purpose, know that you will always have that.”
“What—” I croaked and had to start over. “What about Amelia? What’s going to happen to her? What has happened?”
“You will know soon what befell her,” she said sadly, “and you must be strong. There is hope for her yet, she is not so far gone as she realizes. Deep down, she is still the child you know, no matter what darkness hangs over her now.”
Well, that was about as ominously phrased as it could have been. Weakly, I laid my cheek in her soft coat. “You’ve barely told me anything.”
“I know, and for that I am sorry.” Pirene stroked my hair. “I wish there had been more I could do to help. I cannot express how frustrating it is to look down from on high and be so powerless to change what I see.”
“Chiron,” I said on sudden inspiration, “probably feels the same way. You both faded away, didn’t you? Out among the stars.”
“Clear-sighted as ever.” Pirene offered me a bright smile. “You never should have put your dreams away, child. You were made far poorer for it. Would that my poor Chiron had lived to see you; I think he would be proud of how far you’ve come, entirely on your own.”
My eyes lowered. “I know that now. I’ll… I don’t know. I have my life ahead of me, if I live through this.” Shaking my head, I looked up at her. “Will I? Me and Marcus and Naomi and everypony else?”
Pirene looked out the window. “Who can say? Today, destiny shattered in your sister’s hands, and a new day waits to dawn.”
“My sister!” I said. For just a moment I felt like pricking my ears, only to realize I couldn’t here. “What’s happened to her? Is she all right? How did she ever get away from the goblins?”
She looked at me with sad eyes and sighed heavily. “Your sister is her own rescuer, and hale, but… hurt, too, in ways that lie deeper than the flesh. You must go to her. She may be free in body, but her spirit is shackled in hate and fear. The Seer will tell you more.” The nymph gave me a gentle push with her head as she turned back to face me. “Go, child of my spirit. Your friends await. We will speak again. Help Celestia and Luna—my nieces have faced enough tragedy in their lives.”
“Wait!” I cried, but it was too late. Her first push lifted me off the floor, and her second buffeted me through the air. My lungs were squeezed as I found myself contorted back into pony shape.
“No, come back,” I slurred plaintively through my muzzle as I struggled against the darkness, “I have so many questions…”
“Bork bork to you, too,” Marcus said, somewhere over me.
Naomi’s voice answered back, waspish. “That’s Swedish, Marc; she was clearly speaking some form of Greek. Also kind of offensive. Also not helping.”
The darkness, I soon realized, had the name of Leit Motif, whose inky mane pressed up against my face as she held me tight. Shifting my face, I found us belowdecks in the airship once more. Marcus’s shirt was off, revealing a bandage where Naomi or somepony had patched what must be broken ribs from the centaur’s grip.
Twilight Sparkle’s face appeared in my field of view and brightened as she saw my eyes make contact with her. “Oh, good, you’re responsive again. Goodness, I thought it was another false alarm.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“You’ve been staring into empty space for the last several minutes,” Leit Motif said, nosing at me as if worried I’d fall over again. “Twilight had to carry you into the ship.”
“Several minutes? That short?” I glanced around the cabin. “You ponies don’t waste any time,” I said, rather than admit to feeling as if I’d been gone nearly an hour. That was a conversation that could wait.
“Captain Holder interpreted the blinding flashes of light in our battle as a signal,” Rarity said, with an irritated little click of her tail. “Really, you can never rely on a stallion to stick to any reasonable pre-agreed plan in this day and age.”
“He did scoop our hides out of the fire again, Rares,” Applejack drawled from a porthole.
“Hardly! We had already routed the enemy.”
“We?” Lightning Dust’s voice cut in, as irascible as ever. “Who’s this we, sister? I seem to recall being the one to bring the cavalry while you lot were playing centaur bowling.”
Twilight spread her wings and shouted, “Girls, please! This isn’t the time to argue. We need to figure out what to do next, and Daphne is certainly in no shape to be stressed out right now.”
“I’m fine,” I protested, craning myself up. Leit Motif helped me to the floor and I gave a shake of my tail. “I was just… I mean…”
“Having a communion,” a new voice suggested in a tone of quiet certitude. It did not raise itself against the noise of the cabin, but it did not need to—when this one spoke, others quieted to listen.
Behind me stood the stooped form of the goblin who helped rescue us in the ruins. A staff propped his aging form up, one hung with rings in tin and brass and other base metals, while his long nose protruded from his cowl almost as much as his long, wispy beard. Against the wall behind him leaned the goblin woman who had faced Nessus in battle, the one the Wand King called a Knight. She certainly looked a warrior of some sort—even at apparent rest she had an alert, bladelike quality to her. Now that her hood had been thrown back her features were clearer, a short mane of bristly sandy hair and alert ears over a cat-like face. Marcus, I noticed at once, averted his gaze from her with a pinkness about his face.
“Oh, you haven’t really been introduced to our new friends yet, have you?” Lightning Dust asked as she pushed forward. Practically preening, she stretched forth a hoof to indicate the girl at the door. “That there is the Knight of Swords, whose name I’ve totally forgotten.”
“Saria bin Domad, you have been told,” the Knight snapped, a tail flicking beneath her robes. In her amber eyes I saw fierce pride and blowing sands. Cool dates beneath a sheltering tent. Hot blood.
“Whatever.” Lightning Dust’s eyes fell on the older goblin, and she took on a respectful, almost reverent attitude. “Daphne, this is the Seer. He’s the Page of Rings—has been since any of our grandmothers were born, I’d wager. Even Kings walk lightly around him.”
“It is because my bones are so fragile these days,” the old goblin chuckled, “one false step would crush the life from me.” He turned his gaze to mine and, when our eyes met, I saw a storm-tossed shore against high, brittle cliffs. I saw his true birth name on the lips of a lovely maiden long dead. I saw acorns turn to flowering oaks and deserts to forests. I saw him holding his ring of office to the stars and gazing across time and space.
When he smiled back at me knowingly, though, I had the strangest feeling that he’d seen as much or more of me than I had of him in our brief contact.
Whatever he saw, it didn’t really matter. That obscure prodding was telling me something new, and I was getting better at following. “You came to tell me what went wrong, didn’t you?” I asked. My “communion” had, if nothing else, taught me to second-guess my instincts less. I had some inkling of where they were coming from, now. “In fact,” I added on a second impulse, “you were the one who started all of this, weren’t you?”
The others, who counted everyone but Pinkie Pie, Lyra, Fluttershy, and Pinion, watched our exchange in silence. Some comprehended, a little or in part. Leit Motif seemed to understand best of all, but even she only offered silent encouragement with her close proximity.
The goblin’s staff tapped as he went to take a place near the center of the room. “Indirectly, I would like to say, but it is a poor clairvoyant who lays responsibility at the feet of those who listen to his words.” He turned to look at me again, and I saw in his eyes the broad, kind face of Chiron the centaur. “Old men sometimes forget that wisdom is the lack of choice, of knowing there is only one right path, and yet we scurry about seeing alternatives regardless. Sadly, all the wisdom in the world cannot mend a poor choice.” He settled on a backless chair and laid a hand on a gnarled grey knee. “Yes, Water Bearer. I am the one who set the prophecy that started all this. The prophecy that was to have as its opening act your claiming of the terrible bridle which lay at the center of the worlds’ strife at the Well of Pirene.”
Marcus raised a hand and asked, “Ah, pardon me, but it sounds a bit like you suck at prophecies. I don’t know what I saw back there, but I’m pretty sure Daphne did no such thing.”
“Mind your tongue, boy,” Saria barked. “The Seer, he has spoken truth to gods and men alike. Do you think destiny a toy for the uninitiated to play with?”
“Peace, Knight,” the Seer said, raising a hand to still the prickly woman. “It is a fair question. After all, he has seen with his own eyes what has become of my utterings.” He cleared his throat. “I see I have a few misconceptions to clear up. It sometimes feels as though my life is one long repetition of the dangers of trusting too much in moldy old words.” He settled his sharp eyes on Marcus. “The truth of the matter, young Marcus Flores, is that you misunderstand the meaning and purpose of prophecy. It is not foretelling how the future and events are to be, like some history book written in reverse. Prophecy is a lantern, to reveal the path in the murky, uncertain swamp of the future—it is a guide. Should one strike out on their own, they must contend with paths unseen.”
“Something of an instructional?” Applejack asked skeptically. “Like a map, or a repair manual?”
Rarity perked her ears. “Dare I say, I think I get what you’re thrusting at—they’re instructions on how to obtain particular results, yes? When the future is uncertain and frightening, you offer a means to achieve a given end so ponies—forgive me, people—can have confidence in the future.”
“And,” I finished, “like a manual, if you fail to follow the instructions you end up with a totally unexpected product.” It confirmed everything I had already known in my heart, everything that deep down inside me struggled to come free. “So,” I added quietly, “it’s all true then; I was supposed to come here, I was important in some way. Was. And now I’m… discarded.”
“In a sense of the word? Yes.” The Seer looked around at the others sharing the cabin. “You should understand the fullness of it, however, that you may better understand what has transpired. It may be that you would hear it by yourself first.”
“These are my friends,” I said with a frown. “I don’t have secrets from them.”
“No? Not even the visions?” he asked with a shrewd gaze. “Nor the shapes and portents that haunt you even now?”
Immediately, my cheeks reddened and I looked down at the floor. “I… I didn’t understand what they were.”
Marcus and Leit Motif opened their mouths and spoke over one another, reaching out for me at the same time. They gave each other a glance and blushed as well. Marc gestured for Leit to go on and she said, “If you want us to go, we won’t mind. I—well, we—have been noticing how strange you’ve been acting, but it’s your business.”
I laughed weakly. “Thank you, but… this isn’t just about me. I’ve dragged all of you into this after me. If anypony has a right to know, it’s you girls.”
“And me,” Marcus added.
“Yes, you girls.”
The Knight of Swords chortled into a mug of apple juice Fluttershy passed her.
“As you will,” the Seer said in his grave voice. He held the Ring of his office up, a beaten bronze circle a little more than a hand across. It hung there, and when he gave it a spin it began to rotate unsupported. Ghostly images appeared within, of men and women and ponies limned in sunlight. “It all began such a very long time ago. The Age of Heroes was in its twilight. Men and ponies and other creatures stood near as tall as gods in that Age, but we all knew its end lay near. Where lives had once been bounded only by violence, each succeeding generation knew death as they never had before. With their children subject to decay and aging, the heroes could only watch helplessly as jealousy and hatred grew among their kinds, and they forgot the harmony that had once reigned between them.”
Twilight Sparkle, listening raptly, furiously scribbled notes in her corner of the cabin with her tail twitching in the air like an excited cat’s.
“While we could still touch the magic of the gods, we made what provisions we could.” A staff, a ring, a sword, and a cup rotated around one another. “Even as conflict brewed between the races, the greatest sorcerers pooled their strength, forging sacred power into four great Arcana, vessels of symbolic might through which we continue to preserve and protect the world. Wizards and wise spiritualists from each corner of the known ancient world and the worlds beyond gathered in the land that would come to be known Mag Mell, to draw down the last ancient powers left to us by the departed gods. By then, however, it was too late.”
My heart thumped in my chest. It seemed as if I already knew this story—would that the words written on my heart would come to me sooner, when I needed them, instead of moments before another told me of them. Perhaps it was because Amelia had stolen my place, leaving me broken and incomplete.
“A force came into the world, then, sweeping across the halls of the minotaurs, the wild Vanara nations of the jungles, the windblown mountains and their griffin fastnesses, and the hoofed races of field and glen—”
“Dominion,” I murmured. My eyes were fixed on the shining golden bridle depicted in the spinning disk. I could have sketched it myself given paper. An iron law spread to every corner of the earth like the creeping shadow of night.
“Just so.” The Seer inclined his head. “Total dominion. Rulership over all the spaces of Midgard.”
I could tell that the others in the room, unable to keep up with the explanation as I could, were being left behind. “How did it happen?” I asked plaintively. “We were such good friends. Why did we turn against all the others races? What could have given us such power?” I bit my lip. “Power to turn people into beasts. To make slaves out of whole kinds.”
“Who can say? Some say it was a hero, spurned and filled with loathing, who turned all of his seething hatred and power into a device to capture the other kinds and make them serve his kin.” The Seer shook his head. “Perhaps it was a god with a voice of thunder, a god of men who sought to give his chosen total control. The Ring gives me great sight, but it cannot pierce the mists that veil the origins of the Golden Bridle, only help unravel its blood-soaked course through history. Man fought against the equine kind and their allies, and corruption sank into the very bones of the earth.”
“We heard some of that through Pinion,” Leit Motif said grimly. “What relevance does this all have to Daphne, though?”
“It sets the stage of the event,” the Seer said. “We—the sorcerers and wise folk of old—knew that so long as the world decayed and grew corrupt, the situation would only grow more dire. The alicorns split Midgard in twain, and with their magic sustained a second world, but it, too, was vulnerable. Creatures from the First Age, the Age of Creation, slipped through and plagued it with their chaotic powers, and threatened to spill over beyond.”
“You don’t mean… Discord?” Twilight asked.
“One of many. True monsters, hekatonkheires, cyclops, and worse, many of which are imprisoned behind your Gates of Tartarus, some slain or sealed on earth by the last remaining heroes or those of the Arcana courts, some escaped to rampage across the other worlds.” He fixed his gaze on Marcus and Naomi. “And on the remaining earth, true magic has become a thing of legends and lies, of whispers in the dark. The soul has gone out of Midgard, a world growing colder and crueler; their present age of prosperity is only the precipice before an abyss of blood and despair, one iteration of an endless cycle that plagues their race and will draw them ever deeper into despair.”
Naomi paled, and looked ready to demand more, but Marcus put a hand on her arm and shook his head. They listened quietly.
A tree sprouted in the midst of the spinning disk. In its highest boughs, astrological symbols migrated like strange birds. “So it was that we looked to the stars, and planned ahead. One turning of the cosmic tree would we need to wait—to pass from the end of the then-present Age of Aries through the Age of Pisces. Throughout those long centuries we would prepare the way, keeping cataclysm at bay, until the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. To the greatest teacher of our age we entrusted a task—to bring together the houses of equine and man and raise a child who would embody the principles we desired.”
Where it had run hot, now my blood turned as cold as ice. Goosebumps prickled on my neck as I said softly, “Chiron. The teacher of heroes—you entrusted the task to him.”
Marcus and the ponies gave Naomi a puzzled look. She cleared her throat. “Chiron was reputed to be the greatest of centaurs, an immortal quite unlike his brutal race. He was an intellectual, gifted in medicine, music, and an athlete as well, skilled in archery and hunting. Most importantly, he trained many of the heroes of myth, including Achilles, Jason. Perseus, Asclepius, and in some traditions even Heracles.”
“A suiting mentor to bring forth a new hero,” Knight Saria said, her liquid voice bitter, “for a new Age.”
“To this new hero would be entrusted the Golden Bridle, to break its chain of violence; with the Elements of Harmony at their side, they would gentle its fierce power,” the Seer said as a youth of indeterminate gender appeared, holding a jar that poured out clouds. Depending on how one looked at it, the figure could be human or equine, so indistinct were its limbs and head. “So, too, would they pass through trials, to earn each of the Arcana as seals of office, and thereby win the power needed to bring hope to worlds old and new, to reawaken the spirit of a dying earth and begin to reverse its dire state of decay.”
“Except…” Naomi glanced between the Knight and the Page. “Well. Chiron died. Heracles killed him, deliberately or by accident, with a poison arrow. Or is it like Nessus and rumors of his demise were gravely exaggerated?”
“Deliberately,” I murmured, “and Nessus was there to see it. To hold Chiron in his arms as he faded away, among the bloody remains of their families.”
The Seer smiled a tired, sad smile. “Yes, and to receive the secret, the charge to bring up the new hero. The Water Bearer.”
“Well,” Applejack said dryly, “I take it he didn’t take it very well.”
“I cannot speak to Nessus’s reasons nor his intended aim, but he took what had been a perfectly good prophecy and perverted it,” the Seer said. “He wished to alter the events, to raise the child as his creature in a manner of his choosing.”
“So where does Amy come into this?” Marcus demanded.
“Amelia?” The Seer raised an eyebrow. “Why, no where. She wasn’t even a fluke—the possibility that one other may usurp the place of the Chosen One wasn’t even considered. She shouldn’t even have been relevant in the child’s life. If all had gone according to plan, Chiron would have raised the child himself after engineering her birth, and Nessus certainly aimed to kidnap her at the earliest possible convenience.”
Child of my spirit, Pirene had whispered. Would that I knew what that engineering entailed, but I could not focus enough to ask the wizened goblin just then.
“Yet, here she is, taking Daphne’s place.”
“As I said at the outset, destiny is not an immutable force, nor is prophecy an ironclad contract,” the Seer said, catching his ring out of the air as he did, “we see only possible futures. If the instructions we hand down are altered or misinterpreted, the result must needs be different as well. Amelia usurped the place of the Water Bearer, and I do not know if even the departed gods know what she will do.”
“How did that dreadful Nessus fellow fail to capture our Daphne in the first place?” Rarity asked as she bestirred herself from the seat she shared with Fluttershy.
“That, perhaps, is the most troubling part of all.” He glanced to me. “Perhaps the true Water Bearer might have some insight.”
Of course I knew. It had been plain as soon as I remembered that terrifying night in the woods. “The…” I caught my breath. The name hung on the tip of my tongue, but some twinge warned me not to say it aloud. Indeed, I dared not even picture the creature as I had before. Blue eyes haunted me with fierce intent. “A harbinger of chaos and death. Black as night, smoke and blue flame.”
“The Morgwyn?” Marcus asked, damn him, and a pall swept over the cabin. At first I thought only I noticed it, but I could see the wizened Seer touch his ring and murmur something. A moment later, the feeling evaporated like a thin mist on a summer day.
“A creature of the First Age,” Saria agreed, “an age of chaos, when the rules changed from day to day—such as there were days, no, Seer?”
“It intervened, and It has stalked her steps,” the Seer agreed. “Instead of a hero to bring forth, It ushered in a champion of chaos.”
Marcus bristled. “Amelia wouldn’t do anything wrong,” he said hotly, looking down at the goblin with his fingers tightening on the table’s edge. “Amy’s a good kid. So she’s a little eccentric and, okay, maybe a little greedy at times, but she’s eight.”
“The Amelia you knew on earth would not have,” the Seer said gently, “but even I cannot say what she has been through, with the Wand King’s ministrations and her subsequent escape.”
“She bridled Rainbow Dash,” I whispered, “I saw it.”
The other mares looked at me with abject horror. Even Leit Motif, who made no secret of her dislike for the missing pony, seemed as though her stomach had dropped through a hole in her belly.
“A child’s innocence can be their undoing. It is a sad truth,” Saria said as she stepped forward. Surprisingly, it was not me the cat woman went to, but Marcus, prying his hands off the table where the knuckles had turned white. I felt ashamed for reasons I couldn’t readily explain—I knew he’d gotten on well with her, but not how well, and it suddenly bothered me deeply that I didn’t know him quite as well as I’d thought. Perhaps his mind went to his own numerous siblings, too.
“What do we do?” Naomi asked, wrapping her arms about her thin frame. She looked like nothing so much as a scared little girl then, a sight I liked no more than seeing Marcus’s helpless anger; Naomi could be silly and frustratingly stereotypical, yes, but she was strong. “Can we… can we push things back the way they should be?”
“I do not know,” the Seer admitted, and for a moment he seemed to wear every one of what must have been several thousand years of his ceaseless vigil. They tugged at his leathery features and sank his rounded back and shoulders. “Even in Equestria, turning back the clock is a daunting task, and what has been done is not readily undone. One may sooner turn a rotten apple ripe and return it to its tree than reset an Age.”
Applejack tilted her hat back. “You sure came to the right bunch for that, then.”
He chuckled. “Perhaps I have. Regardless, there is something we can, nay, must do: stop Amelia before it becomes too late to do so.”
Though no signal had been given, every head in the room turned to look at me. For a moment, I wasn’t certain if they were asking my blessing, seeking my advice, or turning to me for direction. I sat there, a useless lump of unused clay in the dim candlelight.
It all seemed so dry and clinical now that I laid it all before me. A fantastical destiny awaited me since birth, a birth foretold in ages past and watched over by a demigoddess. It had been my fate to be brought up by a figure of legend, prepared for the daunting task of bridging two lost worlds and healing them.
When I had been a little girl, it would have been the greatest, most exciting discovery in the world.
Little Daphne, so full of life and energy, would have devoured the chance as readily as she devoured everything else. Magic, history, a proud heritage and a vibrant future would have filled her with courage and purpose.
Now, as I looked down at my beige hooves, it all crumbled into dust around me. That beautiful destiny belonged to another Daphne—a Daphne long gone and remembered only by myself and dimly by Leit Motif. The Daphne of this reality had only been able to watch helplessly as the very sister for whom she had crossed worlds usurped her place in the order of the cosmos. Amelia had torn through the aurora that was to herald my coming like the ghost of a dream that it was.
I knew then, in heart and head, that I wasn’t ever going to be the same bright-eyed girl I had been. I could never, would never be the hero of that story.
The worst part was that the world was too small to contain all that grief. I could barely process that it had happened at all. I snatched at tatters and scraps and found only the remnant of a remnant.
Anyone who says you can’t miss what you never had wasn’t in my hooves then.
Leit Motif broke into my despondent silence with a touch of her nose. Her long dark mane fell across my side as she laid her head against my shoulder. Her eyes were the green of the aurora, and they spoke to me with more depth than any words could convey: here was one life, one soul, I had dredged up from darkness.
Perhaps I couldn’t be the hero the world needed. I wasn’t fighting for the world, though. Through forest and hill, over sea and ruin, past dream and memory, I’d come seeking my sister to save her from the clutches of a terrible fate.
If there was even the faintest chance I could save her, I had to take it.
“All right,” I said quietly. Even with the distant thrum of the airship’s engines, it sounded almost loud with everypony straining to listen. “Anything we can do.”
Fluttershy raised a hoof tentatively, just as we were beginning to pull together around the Seer. “Uhm… not to interrupt or anything, but, uhm…” She rose to her hooves and walked over to a dark porthole. “Does it seem odd to anypony else that the sun isn’t up yet?”
There was a pause, and then a brief scramble as ponies searched for a time piece. Twilight Sparkle simply glanced out the window and frowned. “You’re right. Judging by the stars setting now, the sun is… about a half hour late. It should have been dawn.”
A tense silence fell over the room.
“Sweet heavens,” Rarity said tremulously, “then where is the sun?”
“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.” Arthur Miller.
Amelia
Green light shattered around me as Rainbow Dash reared and bucked. Try as she might, struggle all she would, there was no escaping this confinement. Delicate chains of soft gold held her as solidly as tempered steel, and the bit between her teeth turned her shouts to whinnies of fright. No matter what she did, how she fought, she could no more slip the Bridle than she could have resisted it being put on in the first place.
One sharp yank hauled her head eastward. We looked out over a smoking landscape of storm and sea, where a great airship burned in the sky above the broken spur of land that held the island ruins. It was by my hand, however indirectly, that the fires raged aboard that beast of a machine, but I no longer cared. Let the goblins cut one another’s throats; they couldn’t touch me any longer.
Rainbow Dash balked, her feet kicking as she tried to throw me from her back. Her powerful muscles surged and flexed between my legs. In response, I tightened my grip and growled at her to be still. To some surprise on my part, it was not the grip or the words she responded to—my touch she recoiled at, my words she scoffed. I could feel her resistance melt away as I focused my intent on her. The sensation, an electric current carried between her mind and mine, thrummed between my fingertips through the chain.
Wordlessly, I bid her go, and then the air shattered around me. Her wings surged and pony and rider cut through the night air like a bullet fired from a gun. Wind buffeted me, a continuous hammer, but I bent forward over her and pushed out into it.
Naomi often said, when Daphne and I came to visit and ride with her, that a truly good rider grew to know her steed so well that they formed one unit, one mind, that what one felt the other felt as surely as if it had happened to their own selves.
How small the horizon of her imagination was.
When Rainbow Dash beat her wings, I felt the muscles clench all across her body as she drew energy from every corner of her being. Each burst of power was precisely timed for maximal advantage in flight; she was a finely-tuned engine of motion, and I felt her every contraction as if it were my own. The wind blowing past her, the heart beating within her chest; they might as well have been against my skin instead of hers. It was as if her every thought passed through mine before she knew she’d thought it.
As we rocketed from the island towards the distant continent, I wore Rainbow Dash’s skin as another might a snug coat. A true union of rider and mount.
And what a mount she was! The clouds hurtled by underneath so fast their misty hills and valleys seemed all a blur. Rarely before had I been pushed to this level of performance, it was as thrilling as the first time I ever flew on my own power over the awed faces of my peers. The youngest flyer in a generation, and the first in a thousand years to pull off a sonic rainboom! Not that anypony believed it was really me at the time, but they all learned when—
Rainbow Dash nearly spun out of control as I jerked the reins hard. My head began to swim as breathing became more difficult, and the coast spiraled up to meet us. Just as spots crowded into my vision Rainbow Dash leveled out and began to glide, allowing me to catch my breath as we soared over the lights of little villages by the beach side.
I ran fingers through my tangled blond hair, smoothing it down my back. There was no mistaking it; I had been reliving Rainbow Dash’s memories. If I looked back, I could see them as clearly as my own, remember the pride my—her—father displayed when Rainbow Dash had landed back home on her own two wings. There were snatches and impressions of the years between that childhood triumph and the far sweeter victory of the Young Flyers’ competition.
There was no telling how long it had lasted. Long enough to get from the island to Equestria’s shoreline, certainly, however long that had been. In my head it felt like hours, or perhaps longer.
It didn’t matter, though. For the first time in weeks, I was free. Unlike the last time I’d escaped, I was mounted on the back of one of the fastest creatures known, with the liberty of an open sky on all sides. I only needed to ride Rainbow Dash long enough to get where I was going, release her, and then whatever weird crap the Golden Bridle had going for it wouldn’t matter anymore.
Except for the slight problem of not knowing where I could go.
Spying lights on the horizon—a cloud city of grids and lines, so Rainbow Dash’s memories informed me—I turned away towards low scrubby mountains and tried to work out my next move. The most obvious conclusion, the one I had been struggling towards ever since the goblin lies had been revealed, was that I had to get back home. In my mind I saw myself, dirty and smudged, mounting the steps back up to the front porch, knocking, and being welcomed back into the golden light of home where it was warm and safe. My parents would scold me and be quite cross with me, but they’d welcome me all the same.
So it was in a child’s imagination. Once you get home and safe in your own bed, the monsters couldn’t touch you anymore. By now, though, I knew better. Sheets were a poor barrier against goblin swords and your father may seem big and tough, but compared to a ten-foot centaur he may as well have been a reed. That I didn’t even know where exactly to find the Way home became a rather insignificant problem in comparison.
Even if I did get home, though, and even if they could protect me—by spiriting away on an airplane, by taking me into protective custody, by revealing themselves to be wizards, or whatever—there was really no guarantee they’d want to. My face was barely recognizable in a mirror, and in order to protect myself I’d have to tell them what was going on. If any hint of the things I’d done slipped through, I don’t know how they’d ever look at me as their daughter.
I’m not sure how I can even call myself their daughter if I’m lying to them that much.
Gritting my teeth in anger I pressed my knees against Rainbow Dash’s sides and silently commanded her to descend. The freezing high altitude air gave way to a warm autumn night as we descended to a granite shelf jutting out of the softer hills, beside a still pool that reflected the moon and stars above. When Rainbow Dash’s hooves clattered along the rock I didn’t even bother waiting for her to stop, instead bounding off her.
What should have been a wild and broken bone-filled fall instead turned into a neat little landing as I spun in the air. The heady feeling of power the Bridle had kindled within me hadn’t faded noticeably. It’s a twisted thing, feeling more alive than I ever have while at the same time feeling more frustrated than I had ever been.
Everything I’d fought for and the Bridle and power I’d earned had just bought me time, or, worse, a slow descent into exile somewhere far away from everything I knew and loved. If I can’t go home, where the hell can I go?
I threw back my head and screamed at the sky. The uncaring stars twinkled back, defiant. I couldn’t even find comfort in their familiar shapes and patterns now, not with the bleak fate they spelled out for me. I’d come so far only to find it was just the damned beginning.
Wailing about it wouldn’t accomplish anything, though. That, too, I’d known since the escape from the Wand Castle. The only way I was getting anywhere was by using my brain and figuring out a plan, and that required taking stock.
Behind me, Rainbow Dash watched me with mute uncertainty. I could almost see how faded the light in her eyes was. Her very manner was docile in a way that seemed so wrong, with her golden-muzzled mouth turned down. As I’d half-suspected, even without me there to hold her reins she was powerless to free herself, either from the Bridle or my presence.
It really should have disturbed me more than it did, but it didn’t.
I looked out from my hilltop perch, out over the land. As I focused my attention on the distant lights of the floating city, I found details popping out at me with incredible clarity. I read the words on neon-lit signs over a mile distant and saw pegasi winging to and fro across the clouds. That alone almost lifted my spirits. This had to be what Twig had told me about, some part of the “grace” of the ancient peoples who had once walked the land. Evidently, I had, on taking charge of something from out of this world, regained some measure of their nature.
“Perhaps I can use that?” I muttered to myself, for lack of anyone else to talk to with Rainbow Dash in her current state. “But how? I’m not strong enough to beat Nessus, even so.” I had no delusions about the little rebellion I’d fomented amounting to anything against a creature like that, either.
There was one tool I could draw on, though; a tool that knew a great deal more than it had let on, from the very beginning. I rose and smoothly mounted Rainbow’s bare back again, then called to the night in a firm voice, “Morgwyn. Come here, if you’re still alive.” To seek the Morgwyn is to find it, to call its name is to draw it.
“The Morgwyn is not so readily disposed of, bairn,” came the sibilant whisper, like a rustling of scales over dry sand. This time, I felt more than saw it; an oven’s breath of heat and a presence that seemed both there and not there at once. It paused meaningfully, and then its blue gaze cut through the night. “My, almost not a bairn at all, is she? Oh, no indeed. So little innocence remains.”
“You’re immune to poison, aren’t you?” I asked, ignoring its comment. “You found my threat about as credible as a mouse roaring at a lion.”
The Morgwyn lifted a paw to its face and licked it clean with a tongue of curling smoke. “And the bairn is much better spoken than when we first met beneath the high moon of Mag Mell. We all are more than we appear.”
“And just what are you, then?”
“This one has said before that the Morgwyn is the Morgwyn. It is the only one of its kind that has ever been or shall be.” The barbed tail flicked in the moonlight as the creature circled around my place. It didn’t really seem to move so much as it flowed, sliding from place to place in the dark of night. “What substance is the Morgwyn made of, what manner of thing is it? Does it matter? This one was born when there was only one world, one world with uncountable faces. A better world, one not frozen and dull like these nine.”
Rainbow Dash reared back as the Morgwyn snapped across empty space to sit in front of us, but I stilled her with a stern thought and firm grip. “Why should I continue trusting you, Morg? What do you want? You don’t work with the Wand King, you don’t work with the ponies, and I certainly don’t think you work for me.” I narrowed my gaze at the creature; it was a struggle, unfamiliar as I was with my new powers, but it seemed as though I could penetrate its obfuscation more certainly by clearing my mind, much as I had when I viewed the far off pegasus city. What good it would do me, I had no idea. The shadows fell away as my eyes drank in the moonlight, revealing details and even faint colors in the landscape.
“Yet the Morgwyn has been your steadfast companion since the very first, has it not? The only one to remain by your side when all others fell short.” The creature lifted a paw, turned upwards as if in supplication. “Never did this one permit you to fall to ruin.”
“Neither did it truly help me. I could have been home, or somewhere far away. Real friends don’t let a child go traipsing through danger.”
“Indeed,” it agreed, “and did the bairn not rise to the occasion splendidly each time?”
I frowned. “Beg pardon?”
“This one was clear, but it shall elaborate regardless.” The creature’s blue eyes flared in amusement. “The Morgwyn did not spare the bairn from challenges that she could master of her own accord. It destroyed that which would have ended her outright but did not steal the choice meat from her jaws.” The Morgwyn laughed coldly. “After all, the Morgwyn will not be able to protect her always. The bairn must grow, and be prepared to face her foes on her own terms.”
“After everything I went through, you’re telling me that I had to suffer through all of that because it was an appropriate challenge?” I said, but my anger was cut off before it could really get started. The Morgwyn was right—assuming it wasn’t going to protect me indefinitely, which seemed unlikely with its attitude, then there was no way Nessus would leave me alone. Except there were some niggling little problems with that. “I’m not the Chosen One,” I told it bitterly, “my dear sister is. You picked the wrong girl.”
“Oh, was she?” the Morgwyn’s grin split into a half moon of glittering teeth. “This one was under the impression that the Morgwyn had picked the right girl, and not the forgotten leavings of some watery horse.”
“How do you mean?”
“There is little point to interfering with a prophecy if you only mean to bring it to its proper end,” the Morgwyn explained. “The bairn is correct—her sister was the one named, the one meant to be. When the named one’s sister was born, who took notice? No sign heralded her coming. No hoary sage in their crypts of carven stone uttered her name. She was unimportant, irrelevant, an accident who was destined to live and die and be forgotten.”
Forgotten, unimportant. An accident. Just a footnote in Daphne’s personal history. “You took notice, though,” I whispered.
“This one did. The Morgwyn saw, and the Morgwyn moved. One touch was all it took. This one did not even have to kill anything; all it needed to do was keep the child apart from her destiny long enough for the engine of human indifference to take hold.” Its voice dropped to a fell whisper. “Then, it merely had to wait for its own chosen to grow.”
While I sat my horse in stunned silence, the Morgwyn chuckled and slid up to my side. “So, the child sees; this one has been her steadfast companion since the very day she was born. No one else, not her parents, not her friends, not her sister, not the goblins, not the stars, and certainly not the thrice-damned gods paid her any heed. The Morgwyn was the one who delivered the god-forged bridle of dominion into her eminently better-suited hands.”
I smoothed Rainbow Dash’s mane to quiet her quickened breath, but it was I who was in more desperate need of comfort. My life had been turned upside down so often that I didn’t know where I stood in relation to anything else. Part of me wanted to shout down the Morgwyn and tell it that my parents loved me, and that even if Daphne knew she was a Chosen One, the worst she’d do is gloat about it. Hell, the fact that I wasn’t really the one the Wand King was looking for meant that I could just tell Nessus who he was looking for and have done with it. It’s not like Daphne cared enough to come find me herself—let the ponies defend her if they loved each other so much.
Except…
If I left now and abandoned Daphne, that would be the end. Even if I saw fit to forgive my sister—and I clenched my jaw hard just considering that possibility—and deliver the Golden Bridle to her, it would mark the end of my involvement, my time in the spotlight. I’d live in her shadow for the rest of my life, and I had become pretty certain the Bridle had ensured that life would be very long indeed. I stared down at the reins and remembered how I’d told myself I deserved it when I’d taken it.
“Why me?” I asked, no longer angry at the Morgwyn. “What makes me so different from her, aside from how special and amazing she is and I’m not?”
“It is you who holds the Golden Bridle and not she, is that not so? All the force of history bent to make way for her, yet it was the unremarked and unremembered sister that seized the day with her wits and cunning.” The creature’s tail waved behind it as it regarded me. “You are as clever as her without any supernatural aid. You have the gift of drawing to you those who would otherwise pay you no heed. Perhaps your sister only failed because of this one, but if you did not have the talent to become her replacement you would have perished regardless of the Morgwyn’s efforts.
“Most keenly of all,” it went on, “you have a will that your sister never possessed, a will to power that drives you to success even when the odds are impossible. Who of the two of you is more worthy to bear it, then? The child chosen by fate or the child chosen by mettle?”
Who indeed. I was the one out here on an alien world all on my own. My parents couldn’t save me, they wouldn’t have understood the first thing about where my life had gone. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle had been foolish enough to eat from the forbidden fruit—fruit I’d only narrowly avoided. Wire had abandoned me for them, and then I’d turned Maille and Twig and Rose against their friends and allies. None of them would have understood what I’d had to do to survive. They’d never be able to look at me again the same way as they had.
The only friend I had left was a demonic smoke monster. The only creature in all the worlds to care about what happened to me or to sympathize with the choices I’d made. What does that make me?
It made me a bit of a monster, too, when you got right down to it. Monsters don’t get to go home when the day is done in the good stories. They don’t get to curl up in bed with their snake plush and tell themselves it was all a dream and now the nightmare was over and their life can begin again with lessons learned.
It all boiled down to the golden chain in my hands. There was no place in the world for me, not anymore, not unless I made one. Maybe the Bridle was a terrible thing and I was doing terrible things, no matter how badly the world deserved its lot, but if I stopped now everything would come crashing down on my head and that would be that. I’d been running one step ahead of danger and if I stumbled now I’d be caught.
“What must I do?” I asked the monster.
Its eyes burned in cold triumph. “Seize fate in your own hands, and break the chains that hold you.” It shifted its gaze to Rainbow Dash. “But, first, you will need a weapon.”
* * *
The moon rested fat and lazy over the horizon. That we’d beaten it to the horizon was incredible. Rainbow Dash, freed of doubt or choice, had outdone herself and the two of us streaked across the skies like a many-hued comet. Now only the verdant green carpet of the Everfree lay before us. From this high up, it looked like little more than a collection of mossy boulders cut through with rivers and the vast scar of a canyon on its southern face.
Ponyville spread to the northwest, the real Ponyville, and the sight of it sent a longing shiver through me. Fake or not, I’d had happy times there. A few lit windows and street lamps glowed against the predawn morning with a welcome invitation.
Rainbow Dash’s memories made it even harder to pull away. They swarmed about me, relics from the long trip here from the coast. The more I sank myself into Rainbow Dash to quell her protests, the more her life enveloped me. It stretched back behind me, years and years of lounging in trees and clouds while Ponyville passed me by underneath. I looked back at my hair streaming golden in the wind where I might have expected a rainbow banner.
“Damn you,” I growled at the pony between my legs, “it’s only for a little bit longer! Stop it!”
She didn’t answer, of course. She never did.
The Morgwyn’s mellifluent voice rang through my memory, and I turned Rainbow Dash down towards the forest. It had little enough reason to lie to me—whatever else it was, the Morgwyn wanted me for a purpose, and its needs coincided with mine. I scanned the forest, details leaping out at me with startling clarity as I focused from my elevated position. As it turned out, I hardly needed it, for the castle I sought rose from a clearing near the southwest.
Stallions in golden armor looked up at the two of us streaking in. I could see recognition on their faces, even as far up as we were—Rainbow Dash’s proud contrail would announce her presence more clearly than any banner. According to the Morgwyn, they would be busy investigating some sort of battle that had taken place in front of the castle yesterday. My quarry would be somewhere high at this time.
Golden sunlight poured forth and I banked at once, urging Rainbow Dash on silently. The window was narrow, but my window of time was a great deal more precious, so we tucked in tight and threaded the needle.
“Halt!” a man’s voice shouted, and a pair of thickset stallions turned to face us with a low, aggressive posture and snapped a glimmering field of force across the hall to bar our path. The one on the left, a pale unicorn, jerked his head up in surprise as we hovered there. “Miss Rainbow Dash?”
Behind them, the hallway burned bright as day. I could see the glint of the Bridle reflected in their eyes, but my hopes of simply being able to bull through on its influence were dashed. I could see its effects on them just as I had with Rainbow—their ears turned alert, their eyes widened slightly, their tails slackened, among a hundred other little signs—but it wouldn’t be immediate enough.
The other, a dark pegasus with an enormous wingspan, relaxed noticeably and lowered the tip of a spear held crooked in his forelegs. “Are we glad to see you. Did you get the message the Princess sent… to…?” He trailed off as he took her in and found me on her back. “Uhm. What are you wearing and what is that thing on your back?”
Rainbow, of course, did not answer. I couldn’t have made her speak if I wanted to. The unicorn had let the shield flicker, and the two of us leapt forward.
Displaying admirable alacrity, the pegasus leapt to intercept us with terrible speed, swinging his spear to sweep me off the mare’s back. Unfortunately for him, as fast as he moved, he may as well have been swimming through molasses as far as I was concerned. My heart pounded in my ears as I leaned back and ducked the swing. As I guided Rainbow Dash in, he unexpectedly shortened the spear and jabbed it. My dodge wasn’t quite quick enough, and the blade’s broad head sliced under my right arm. Spark flew, and the blade glanced off Maille’s hidden shirt; I barely even felt the impact.
Faster than the poor guardstallion could have imagined, we turned his momentum against him and flung him straight into the ceiling, where he cracked the ancient stones and remained. Pulling the spear from his limp form, I swung it around to strike the unicorn with the butt.
Though not as fast as his comrade, the unicorn guard was quick enough to catch me in a powerful telekinetic grip. So rapidly did it arrest our motion that the air boomed like a drum, and all the air was driven out of Rainbow Dash’s lungs at once.
I growled and struggled against the field that tensed all around me. It was difficult to breathe, let alone move. The unicorn was saying something through gritted teeth as he struggled to hold us steady, but I wasn’t listening. There was a destiny that needed stealing and opportunity was fast disappearing. I began to push against the spell, pouring all of my effort into it, thrusting and clawing.
“Get…” A pressure built up, just under my skin. “…out of…” Fire filled my veins, blood turning to fire. “…my…” I gathered the fire into my lungs and my arms. “…way!”
The shout echoed up and down the corridor as the spell burst into splinters. Despite weighing in at what must have been well over three hundred pounds, when the spear butt struck the stallion it snapped clean in two and sent him crashing into the opposite wall.
My breath came hard. I felt nearly spent even though I had hardly worked up a sweat. “Wow, this whole ‘being filled with the supernatural power my ancestors had thing is pretty awesome,’” I asided to the uncomprehending Rainbow Dash, “it’s almost enough to make me rethink this whole course. I could be a superhero or something.”
It wasn’t enough, though. Nessus was stronger by far, and I somehow suspected that a lone unicorn’s telekinesis didn’t really compare to the full power of the Wand. “Come on,” I directed Rainbow Dash, yanking her around and galloping away from the scene of the fight. Faintly, I hoped the stallions would be all right—they were just trying to do their jobs, after all. If I started looking back now, though, I’d never be able to move forward.
Once before I’d opined that Rainbow Dash was the most magnificent horse I’d ever laid eyes upon. Perhaps her coloring is still the most fantastic, but it was like comparing a brightly painted mound to a mountain after I laid eyes on Princess Celestia. When I came upon her she was crowned in her full glory, wreathed in sunlight almost too bright to look upon as she set about moving the heavens. I’d been expecting something more like Twig’s Princess Twilight impersonation, but Celestia had everything Twilight did and more.
Long, supple limbs displayed corded muscle whenever they tensed beneath an alabaster coat. Her outspread wings could have darkened the family living room, while she herself must have stood tall enough to look down at my father, himself not a short man. A mane and tail painted in the softest part of the sunrise flowed long and waved in an unseen breeze. Even preoccupied with her magic, she radiated a palpable sense of majesty that Nessus would have wept with jealousy to behold. Her face held that ancient gravity with a tender gentleness.
And here I had come, a thief in the last fleeting moments of the night.
Dismounting from Rainbow Dash, I pulled the Bridle from her head and slipped the bit from between her teeth. Rather than immediately fighting me as I might have feared, she simply gazed at me uncertainly. There was a blankness in her eyes that really should have bothered me more; I told myself that it was just excitement, my hands were trembling after all, and I stood before the most superlative member of pony kind so distraction was expected.
Just as the Morgwyn had said, the Princess’s need to devote herself to her task left her unable to respond as I prepared myself, and it was only as I was approaching her that the daylight dimmed and left her eyes. Such eyes, too; for all her apparent youth, I could see her age in them. They were old, even if the rest of her was young and hale.
The deep-set sorrow I witnessed in them was nearly the final straw that doomed my endeavor. She sank to the chamber floor, her gold-clad boots resting on the tile. Like Rainbow Dash, she seemed powerless to turn away as I held the Bridle up to her. In her eyes, though, I saw more than blank awe and uncomprehending fear.
Do not do this thing, her eyes pleaded with me where her tongue could not. It may as well have been my mother, so deeply did it sink. It wasn’t a frightened supplication for mercy from a terrified captive, nor was it a judgemental condemnation from a righteous ruler. No, it was a more insidious thing than either of those—it was a gentle remonstrance that reminded you that what you were doing was wrong, and you knew very well that it was, and no amount of fooling or excuses will ever make it right.
That’s exactly what it was, too. This wasn’t like with Rainbow Dash, where I’d been fueled by anger and a heady rush of power to punish someone who had piqued me. This was a callous and deliberate act of selfishness. It came at the behest of a deceptive, manipulative little cat-monster whose own true aims were still as-yet unknown to me. If I’d had any illusions about what I was doing, they were gone then.
I wish I could say it was hard, doing what came next. It wasn’t.
Hate flared, hot and fast. Not for her, not then at least. My limbs trembled with such incredible anger that I had trouble stepping up to the great mare, but who I was angry at I couldn’t say. Perhaps I was angry with myself for not being a better person, or maybe I was angry at Nessus. Maybe I was angry at Daphne for not being able to fulfill her own destiny, Morgwyn or no, or maybe I was angry with the sages for giving it to her in the first place and putting me in the position I was in.
Maybe I just hated everything, then.
Celestia did tremble. Her neck lowered, however, in spite of her struggles against it. All of her magic, all of her strength, all of her many subjects—they wouldn’t avail her now. She bowed her proud neck before a power greater than either of us; a crueler, more ancient power whose will it was that deemed her kind should serve mine. Proof that terrible things can come in beautiful packages.
Around her head went the bridle, fitting itself to her slender frame. Into her mouth went the bit, silencing her more thoroughly still. Across her magnificent mane draped the golden chain, and when I vaulted onto her back she danced skittishly. I’d sat strong horses before, horses I couldn’t handle, but never one like this. If Celestia meant to buck me, it would be a short trip from her back to the hard floor.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. Now that she had been bridled, I could see her thoughts as clearly as my own. Such fear, and she kept it so masterfully underwraps. Hundreds of spells and counter curses whirled through her mind, but she could summon no magic now. Still she fought, and her will, too, made Rainbow Dash’s seem a pale candle.
In spite of myself, a current of electrical thrill ran up my spine. The more I drew on the reins, the more I sank my awareness into her mind to suppress her own, the more I brought her under control, the more intense it became. Power the likes of which few before me had experienced twisted and writhed helplessly in my grasp, and I liked it.
Where this sensation had come from I paid no heed. It was mine, now. I possessed it.
Just like I did the Princess.
Rainbow Dash, despite being freed of the bridle, stood watching with dull incomprehension. Her eyes were as flat as a pair of rose-rimmed coins. I regarded her briefly. “Well, I said I’d free you eventually. It’s not my fault the damned thing is permanent,” I told her bitterly. Then, striking Celestia’s sides with my heels, I launched her towards the ceiling. Grabbing hold of her magic, I aimed a blast at the ceiling and rocketed up and away.
The sliver of sunlight in the east sank back into the horizon as if in counterweight to my meteoric ascent. Power the likes of which I had never dreamed—of which no human in ages had known—coursed through me and lit off in sparks and bursts from Celestia’s horn, artifacts of her ongoing struggle to hold on to herself. I made no particular effort to quiet her—I feared no retaliation from her subjects, not now. Anypony coming to rescue their ruler would have to battle through her first. There’s a dark sort of irony in making a captive fight her own freedom.
Freedom. Speaking of, I had it at last. Perhaps Nessus could have captured me as I was, but even he feared Princess Celestia. With her power, I could return to my earth and do whatever I pleased.
Banking her sharply, I turned back over the mass of the forest and began to scan for familiar landmarks, hoping to follow one back to the Ways whence I came.
With Celestia in hand, there was very little back on earth that lay outside my grasp. I could only brush her vast knowledge of magic, but just the lightest touches opened up an incredible new world. It would be trivial to hide her away in some mountain and strike out when the whim suited me. That didn’t even account for my own new personal powers. I could become a real-life superhero. Well, not many superheroes used a captive as their source of power, but the idea was there.
For a few moments, I felt like a kid again, soaring through the sky with dreams of adventure and glory racing alongside me like bright-winged birds.
One by one, though, those beautiful birds fell from the sky as their gossamer plumage melted in the harsh light of truth. The whole notion, too, soured. Even if I were inclined to save others from the myriad ills of the world, Rainbow Dash’s memories showed the fleeting value of fame and glory, and I knew that the world would never accept such a thing so innocently. Every government on the planet would want what I would put on display, and new religions would crop up like mushrooms after a hard rain. There were no supervillains back home, petty crime was hard enough for even legitimately skilled policemen to solve, and the notion of wading into international politics to fight the real monsters was fit to give me nightmares. No matter what I did, I’d be exchanging one enemy for a hundred.
Really, the most fit thing to do was to hide my powers and Celestia and only use them as needed or in covert fashion. It wouldn’t be difficult to make a life of some sort.
Dreams gave way to stark realism. My childhood had well and truly died.
A bend in a river looked familiar, and I had Celestia swoop over it again for a better look. Indeed, it was the place where I’d washed ashore with Wire. “There’s a place where my childhood took a stumble all right,” I muttered, “It couldn’t have been two or three days ago, but it already feels like years.” My eyes tracked upwards as I pieced together the meandering course of two scared fillies through the forest on hoof; there, the place where the Morgwyn ripped out Rose’s basilisk’s eye; way over there the ambush by Pinion and her gang. Further on by another stream where the racoon’s wagon had camped. It may as well have been a story belonging to another person, the beginnings of a faerie tale with a happy ending that I’d never get to see because someone went and burned the pages. “They ought to put a grave marker on top of the Cup Palace. ‘Here Lies Amelia Ocean’s Innocence.’”
My grip on the reins tightened as memory carried me back to the dining hall. The thick smell of caramelized sugar and savory meat and burned grease came back so sharply I felt a painful twisting in my stomach. If one thing was terrifically unfair about my new state of being, it’s how painfully sharp memories had become—no more dim recollection on distant events, but stark and uncompromising remembrance even of things I’d rather forget. For as long as I’d live, the faces of Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle changing and twisted into something unrecognized, the way the light of familiarity left their eyes, would be there waiting.
Furious, I turned Celestia and skimmed along above the river, following it back to its source. Her astonishment at seeing a bank of concealing fog melt away to reveal a hitherto hidden castle was more than worth the pang of seeing the Wand Keep once more. It stood as I remembered it, if revealed in greater detail. Cut from the living rock, it had almost the look of a natural object, a quality enhanced by its general lack of windows or turrets. The lie was given by the great windmills turning from its many faces, a veritable forest of them, and the massive gates across the canyon bridge, surrounded by gargoyles and defensive crenellations.
A town spread along the other canyon, a nest of winding streets with rickety houses, more turning windmills, and squat brick factories, but it held only academic interest for me at this point. Somewhere leading away from this grimy Shangri-la lay the Way down to a state park and a lit porch that was a world away and yet so near at hand I could taste it.
Still, as I began to wing around the town, my attention kept wandering back towards the Keep. For a week, that granite shell had been my prison. Within its hollow, a stage doubtless still hung, strung with lamps and treacherous sets. A world I’d been happy to live in, but that the goblins had perverted and stolen away from me.
Part of me wondered whether even now my gaolers were out there with their King, fighting and dying as their airship burned around them or how many lingered in the apparent safety of their fastness. Surely, some had been left behind to hold the fort in case of a surprise attack, or even just to ensure that the local taxes were collected to fund the war effort. I knew the frog goblin in the sewer certainly hadn’t gone anywhere. They could be down there right now, eating and drinking away the morning without a care in the world. Unpunished.
The first beam of light raked across the cliff face, scything through several feet of stone in a ragged line that detached a whole section of sandy stone that turned the river into a grey froth. The next beam severed the great water wheel cleanly from its mount and sent it tumbling and crashing down the flow to splinter and break on the merciless rocks. Each ray only encouraged me, and I grinned as Celestia’s sizzling golden light blazed forth. Hovering over the damaged face, I had her gather her strength and fire it in a shimmering battering ram that plowed through the thick wall.
We swept through into the void in time to see rocks bounce and clamber off the scaffolds and structures within. Above I could see the bottom of the stage, and a few good flaps brought us over the wall to look down on the faux Ponyville itself.
My lips curled in a sneer as I looked down at it. I had to wonder what sort of idiotic child would fall for a collection of painted sets surrounding a paltry collection of cottages and a single tiny apple orchard. Even with goblin magic building the illusion up, it seemed patently ridiculous that she couldn’t have noticed how the artificial sun reflected the outer walls flatly.
The apple trees lit up like torches as we passed over them and a displaced boulder plowed through the barn. Long grass sizzled and blackened over the meadow where we’d had our picnics, and the pond boiled. Houses were blown to so many splinters and split planks of lumber embedded themselves in the ones still standing. Between my legs, Celestia’s stomach turned as we neared Sugarcube Corner. I saw Ponyville as it really was laid over my vision, the pastel citizens oblivious to the flames leaping around them.
If anything, the memory only served to enrage me further. If the lovingly decorated bakery could have seared and melted under the bolts of pure force Celestia threw at it, it would have. The hill where Pinkie Pie—Pinion—and I had played hide-and-seek on erupted into dirt and gravel. Finally, I had her blast Twig’s library with gales of frozen air. The leaves and branches turned crisp and white with frost, and, then, the flesh of the tree cracked and splintered until it burst in on itself. The books would probably survive. They didn’t deserve annihilation.
Finally, I turned my gaze up and charged Celestia’s horn with power. It hummed and crackled with magical energy as I pointed it up at the false sun that mocked her. That evil thing which hid the truth by blinding me to the reality that lay beyond.
As I did, though, I remembered something. Wire, an age ago, telling me how she’d worked on the stage’s false sun, and how proud she had looked at the memory of it. Her mustard-yellow face so rarely held anything but fear and apprehension.
Slowly, Celestia’s hum died, and I turned in a slow circle as she hovered there. Most of the fires were already going out, but the ones that remained showed a stark, broken landscape, covered in shattered wrecks and burnt out pits of charcoal. The walls were now stained with soot and would fool only the blind.
The smoke stung my eyes, making them run wetly. I scrubbed at them with a sleeve and pulled Celestia around, flying back through the hole we’d made. None of the airborne goblins intercepted us—I could feel them and their kin, cowering behind the stones and in their homes as if that would protect them. It seemed suddenly strange that they would have preserved the stage as it was with a war on.
“They took everything from me,” I told Celestia thickly. I coughed, clearing my lungs. I wasn’t honestly sure if I was informing her or trying to justify myself or making up my mind about some course of action. “They stole my whole life and I can’t get it back.”
Celestia tried to answer back, a gentle warmth leaking through the reins, but I shut her down hard with a sudden snap of anger. I didn’t need platitudes or pitying understanding; I needed my life back, I wanted my childhood back so hard my guts twisted themselves into hard little knots and stayed that way, but she could never give it to me. I knew that much already.
Before I even really knew it, I’d winged Celestia back across the trail the carriage had taken me. We flew over the secret goblin lake and past the ancient paved roads until we landed near the Veil with a clattering of hooves. Somehow, the sun was coming up again, and it seemed almost a shame. I’d last laid eyes upon the sparkling river of the Veil under the light of the moon and again before that, and its surface had shimmered so beautifully both times. Now, I’d come under my own auspices to cross back into my realm, and as I sat watching the river it lost its mystical luster and became, to my eye, little more than a white rapid, plodding along its way towards an ocean or a lake or a swamp somewhere distant, or perhaps no where at all—it was magic, after all, and even Celestia seemed uncertain of its nature.
Here, in a place no Equestrian could find, was as good a place as any to catch my breath. Perhaps the Wand goblins might be able to track me, but Nessus was far away and after my display of power they would be loathe to embark on a hunt, lest the tiger turn and show her claws.
Even dismounted, I was careful to wrap Celestia’s reins around one wrist. Naomi may have scolded me something fierce for putting myself in a position that apparently reckless, for if a normal horse bolted or reared I’d be trapped, but she didn’t have a mind-to-mind link with a very determined and powerful alicorn. I wondered idly if she’d have any problems mentally dominating an Equestrian, assuming she survived the heart attack of meeting one.
Even in spite of everything, I couldn’t help but smile at the thought. Naomi put on a good face, but anyone with eyes could see that she’d never abandoned her childhood dreams. I couldn’t imagine what she would think if she saw me now, though.
I didn’t want to think about it.
Rather than make a break for it, Celestia simply lay down as I bid with her hooves tucked up under her body, and I sat down for a meager meal of whatever-is-in-my-bag-this-instant. Fragments and crumbs of snacks from Sugar Cube Corner that were days old and badly bruised sandwiches from Mag Mell were all that remained, and I scarfed them down all the same. No meat, given my recent herbivorous existence, but it satisfied me all the same.
I stared at my prize as I ate. It wasn’t how I’d imagined it, not remotely—but, then, nothing else had. I’d come to Equestria on the promise of meeting a princess, and here she was, trussed up and unwilling. I found myself staring down at empty hands after a time, wondering where my food had gone, and then belatedly remembering that I’d devoured it all.
With all the excitement, I’d been able to ignore the fact that I’d been up since the dawn that had brought me to Mag Mell with the Crusaders, barring a brief, unsatisfying nap aboard the Wand airship. All of that time had been spent running, fighting, panicking, or flying.
In spite of it all, though, I felt no particular need to lay down; I drew from within, and, however inadequate my needs, it served to sharpen my senses again and brought strength to my limbs, even if they still protested. I considered pushing on home, calling on the Morgwyn for its tainted advice, or perhaps striking out on my own.
With a heavy sigh, I let go. Not of the reins, but of my urgency. If someone caught me here, so be it. Perhaps I didn’t have to be tired in body, but I couldn’t summon up the will to struggle through. The Morgwyn may want me to shatter the heavens or whatever, but all my fighting thus far had just led me in circles, or perhaps a spiral, right down a drain into nothingness. I laid myself down on the grass by Celestia and let the tension drain from my body. The glittering chain wrapped around my arm felt heavy on my chest, and it seemed to pull me down, lower, deeper into the soil until my eyes closed and I was lost to the world.
* * *
When my eyes opened, it was two thousand years early.
Mother was gone, now. She had followed Father into the place I could not go.
I had to tell myself that each and every morning, lest I forget. Before I’d started reminding myself I would stumble tiredly around, wondering where the warmth of her presence had gone, until cold realization sank its tendrils into my mind and stirred the memories I dare not look at, the ones hidden behind the locked doors that echoed with thunder and smoked with fire and bled thick red blood.
Aias would have been there to comfort me, a few days ago. No more would he bellow and laugh and muss my mane with a huge hoof or let me wear his great bronze helmet and pretend that I was a warrior. He lay buried where the fever had finally taken him, and his helmet and armor with him; their protection was worth little when I hadn’t the strength to bear them.
Our little party came down to three, then, where once it had been many, and so full of hope and promise. Andromache had tried to explain what it was all about before she left. Not much of what she said had made sense, but she had tried all the same, telling me that it all rested on me now, that my slender shoulders had to bear the weight of the new world.
“What new world, Andy?” I mumbled groggily, wanting to go back to sleep. I buried my head in my forelegs and willed the damp fen around me to dissolve back into the sun-filled columns of home. “I don’t have a horn. I don’t have wings like you. I’m just a filly.”
Andromache would have said that earth ponies have their own strengths, that all mares began as fillies, and that one day, if I proved as worthy as my parents, I would have horn and wings and more. I’d told her that Athena had just sprung out of her father fully grown, wings and horn and all, but she had simply laughed bitterly and said nothing more. She never would again, either, for she had left and never returned. She’d gone to find help, and day and night and day again had passed, long days and long nights and short days and short nights, until finally all the grass had gone and it was time to move on.
Now, we were only two. Aias had often said that duty was as heavy as a mountain, and a little foal could feel a mountain if you’d been carrying her for days and weeks and on and on, over hill and dale and ‘round lakes and across rivers swift or sluggish. Most often she slept, but sometimes she woke and nuzzled at my side in search of milk I couldn’t give her, only crushed berries and hard-won honey until her teeth were strong enough to stomach the disgusting grass off the ground.
Sometimes, she howled instead, especially when the callous moon she had been named after rose through the clouds. “Hush, Luna,” I would whisper to her, rocking her back and forth to no avail, “I’m here. I’m here.” I wondered if she might bring the monsters down on us, then, or if her sharp wailing terrified them.
Mother had said I mustn’t call them monsters, that every creature had a place under the aegis of harmony; if they seemed brutish and terrifying at first, you merely had to scratch beyond the surface and find the beautiful core underneath. Yet, though mother may have been right about some monsters and perhaps even about how skin-deep appearances were, I knew that there were monsters out there. I knew, even if I had never seen them with my own eyes. Andromache and Aias had painted them in my mind, treacherous and cunning, grasping and greedy. They said the monsters had come with swords and axes and spears atop slaves. They said my cousin had been the first to fall under their power, and that my Aunt Pirene had died to try and keep the peace.
I had hoped Father would be the last. He stalked through my nightmares, a giant among ponies as he had been in life, and wherever his shadow fell mountains ground to dust and valleys jutted up into fresh molten spurs of stone. His dead eyes followed me, weighing me with the judgement of kings, while the gaping hole mother burned in him bubbled and—
No. I would close that memory and lock it away. Luna needed me; I couldn’t give into despair. Not like mother. “Was it her wounds that did it, or her heart?” I asked Luna, who turned her sweet dark face up and stared without comprehension.
What a trial she proved to be, too. No sooner had she started on grass than she had discovered how to work her wings, and the sleepless nights brought on by a screaming baby took on a new terror when she could vanish at any moment where I couldn’t follow. That she grew tired swiftly was the only reason I didn’t lose her the first day, and thereafter she buzzed along when she could, but tethered with a vine about her middle held in my teeth. She chewed it off frequently, so at night I wrapped her in Aias’s cloak and held her as tightly as I dared. That seemed to work; most nights she was content simply to nuzzle my neck and snuffle and cry until I woke with a damp neck, but an intact sister.
Mother said that I must forgive them. Forgive those who stole everything from me, from the stones of my home to the bedrock of my family. They’d scattered the ponies and their allies to the winds. Even the world was strange to me—one day I would trudge across a burning desert to find a line of snow covering the earth ten feet deep and growing. Other times I would find sheer cliffs rising out of a plain, the loose dirt already crumbling and smoothing into rounded hills. Had the monsters stolen the sense out of the world, too? It seemed as if nothing was as I remembered it from my earliest childhood. Where were the cities and fields, the fortresses and ships? I learned to avoid the harsh places in time; it hardly mattered how long it took me to get somewhere, after all, if I hadn’t the faintest idea where I was going.
Weeks turned to months; I knew because the moon became full and full again, and then on and on. In time, we grew tired of roaming and built a little hut in the woods where it seemed stable and free of danger. I raised a garden, working out the process little by little. Luna grew, turning from a melon-headed infant to a stubby young filly, and at the same time as she sprouted she grew more and more distant and unwieldy—like any pegasus, staying in one place made her restless, and there were times I wouldn’t see her for days as she migrated here and there. She always returned, though, and told me of the strange things she had found.
I tried to tell her how our new home paled in comparison to the dimly remembered place she had been born in, but she had no memory of it. She could not recall the fragrance of the pomegranate trees that grew outside my little room, nor the sound of stately voices raised in prayer, nor the way the sun had glittered off the mosaic tiles and carved marble pillars. I hated to admit it, but as time went on so, too, did I begin to wonder if perhaps I remembered only a memory of a memory, and whether I had ever truly lived there at all.
As for me, I dug at my fields, day in and day out, trying to find some measure of peace in the flow of nature and life. I found parallels to the war of my youth in such obscure dramas as learning how to keep insects from devouring my harvest, and learning to coexist with the smaller animals and creatures enlightened me to the uncertain and delicate balance of nature. I’d like to say it was my earth pony qualities asserting themselves, but in truth it was a long, frustrating, and thankless struggle against a world as yet untamed. Every night I went to bed remembering how the earth had trembled before the hooves of Kreios, my father in his stony wrath, and my mother Theia in her power and sorrow, her seaweed green mane tangled and unkempt as she lay upon the shattered rocks, only to seal them up again for a new day.
If only Aias or Andromache could have seen me. I had to wonder what would they think of their little princess, then, grubbing in the dirt as she grew from a scared little filly to a gangly young mare.
It’s ironic, really, that it was I and not Luna who reconnected us to other ponies. It all started on the day I crawled out of my mud and reed hut to meet the sun and found a wounded unicorn stallion washed up in our little stream, with a pegasus lance still stuck in his thigh, and, absurdly, all I could think about was how tangled and unkempt my uncut, unwashed mane and tail were as I raced down to fish him from the water.
For a time, I forgot about Mother and Father and Aias and Andromache. I forgot about hatred, and learned what had happened to the harmony my family had died for.
* * *
Groaning, I forced myself away, pushing aside the thick woollen blankets of sleep that wrapped so tightly around me. My hooves flailed wildly, shaking the reins and flapping uselessly at the ground and bruising unexpectedly soft flesh. I stared for a time at them, unblinking, until I realized that the things at the ends of my forelegs were not hooves at all, but spidery hands which were alien and unfamiliar.
My panicked breathing cooled as I stared around the forest canopy and remembered. Not centuries, but merely minutes. Not Celestia, but Amelia. This flesh was my flesh, not hers, and I was a human now, a little girl and not a grown mare. So I kept telling myself, over and over again, until it became true.
I turned to look at Celestia, and found her looking back at me. There was no hint that she knew what I had just gone through—no flicker of subterfuge crossed her mind, and her eyes held only uncertainty. Even still my fist tightened around the reins as I approached her.
The anger would not hold. Not this time. “They took everything from you, too, didn’t they?” I asked her, not expecting an answer. My hand went to her mane, parting the flowing strands as I looked up at her; even standing her head overtowered mine. “You were only a kid, just like me.” My hands balled again, clutching her mane and the reins both. Trapped between two worlds. She was even a better sister than I was. Better than Daphne by far.
Even bound as she was, Celestia struggled to reach me, to communicate wordlessly through our bond. She resisted the Bridle’s dulling properties far better than Rainbow did, certainly. I brushed her pity aside, curious suddenly to know what was driving that resistance. To no real surprise, I found a core of light within her much like the one the Bridle had imbued upon me.
Ichor, the word came from her as our minds touched as one, and I understood immediately as well. The ethereal substance the gods had flowing in their veins in place of blood. Like the heroes of old. A dying breed, according to Twig, and yet we two have somehow regained it. Did Twilight Sparkle do so as well? Other alicorns jumped to mind, a pink one by the name of Cadance and ones long dead.
Well, we both had blood, certainly, but perhaps something more animated us than base matter. In another circumstance, a better place, I might have found that academically interesting, but for now it resonated almost painfully. It said louder than words that we were of a similar make, just one more link between us.
It was wrong to keep her. I knew that. I knew it hard, even without Celestia’s eyes trying to convince me. I could see the ghost of her father, a molten font of destruction, bound by the very same forces I was using to hold her.
And yet…
My eyes turned from the Veil towards the distant keep. I seemed to see through the miles, to where a river met the Veil again at a different place, to a different land. A great city stood there, and a ziggurat rose above it.
Ever since coming to this place I had been dragged around and beaten. My only companion was a probably faithless cat-monster the titans likely spat out eons ago, full of piss and anger. My childhood, my innocence, broke upon those stones.
Down that path lay a new destiny, a destiny only I could forge, and then only if I had the will to seize it.
“You’ll go free,” I promised Celestia. A cold fire leapt along my fingers and ran down the golden chains. She jerked with fear, but I held her fast; her heels dug into the earth, but the reins made me stronger by far. “Soon, you will go free.” The fire touched the bridle and the bit. A flicker of a memory touched me through her—Luna, fully grown wreathed in darkness, the moon behind her as she became something new, something powerful.
Yes, that will do.
“They hurt us. They hurt both of us, you and I,” I whispered to her as the fire caught in her mane, leaving it unharmed but transfiguring it. I stoked the divine fire within her, bringing it out, filling it with the rage she locked away as a child. I tore open the shadows that obscured the images of her dead parents, letting them lay stark and bloody before the helpless filly. I exposed the truth to her as Twig had taught it to me—I told her about how her family had sought to split the world from their oppressors, and how the enemy had come with the Bridle to capture and destroy them and turn them all into stupid animal slaves. Nessus might as well have been the same as those ancient humans; after all, he intended on taking the Bridle, and taught me to fear Celestia and obey his minions. Well, now I had Celestia, and I wasn’t going to be his puppet any longer, and I fed my hatred into her.
Tears ran down my face as I watched her change, as her raiment turned to molten gold and reshaped itself into something fierce and martial, as her eyes became tiny suns, as her mane and tail took flame and burned with unnatural fierceness. I would have given anything at that moment for a measure of my innocence back, to not know what it was I was doing.
But I didn’t have any left. It had all been stolen from me and smashed.
A blast of incredible heat dried the tears from my cheeks. Celestia stood before me, wreathed in unbound power that shone like the sun itself. Even that magnificent monster bent knee when I approached, allowing me to mount her. Her firey mane snapped and coursed at my heels, but they left me unmarred.
Black was the earth when we left it behind.
Bright was the blue sky when we cleaved it in twain with a sizzling trail.
Mag Mell stood shrouded in deep fog when we found it and the fierce, cold gales from Niefelheim drove it across the land, but they melted away at our approach. The creatures who had driven me to this extreme would soon pay.
“And I saw, and beheld a white horse: and she that sat on her had a sword and a cup; and a ring was given unto her: and she went forth conquering, and to conquer.” A forgotten goblin.
Amelia
The tolling of a great bell reached us as we descended from on high. Winter had come for Mag Mell with all its attendant demons in a blanket of ice-tinged gales, but I was about to teach the ancient city—or, at least, a small portion of it—to fear fire instead.
Within moments of our appearance in the sky, airships wheeled about bravely above the great city to face our approach. In other circumstances, I might have hesitated, knowing that the city was on a defensive footing. I hadn’t the foggiest idea what a frost giant really was, but apparently Mag Mell had fended them off yearly for who knows how long. Were I on my own, I’d have abandoned the entire mad idea.
I wasn’t alone, though. I had Celestia and everything she represented. As I turned her down into an aggressive dive, the clouds shattered and broke to admit the searing light of the sun.
A sun that hadn’t been there before, either, but that’s the sort of advantage you get when you ride an alicorn.
The crews aboard their crafts reeled at the sudden brightness of day, and Celestia and I shot past the first line of defenders without so much as a single shot fired. By now, bells were ringing out across the city, pealing their desperate cries to the defenders at the walls and gates. Yes, I answered them with silent, fierce grin, come, Cup King, defend your home. I’ve come to play in your labyrinth again.
The carved blocks of the ziggurat glowed in the daylight. Snow melted off the terraces and poured down its sides in great torrents as chill morning turned to balmy summer’s day. I could only imagine what the defenders clustering at the air docks must see—a mare wreathed in fire, mount and passenger both shining even against the ineffable glory of the sun at their backs. Small wonder they scattered as Celestia snapped her wings and sent a hot wind gusting across their backs.
A few brave souls lifted bows and loosed, only to see their arrows ignite and burn to ash within instants of touching Celestia’s radiant corona. I laughed, and with a slash of an arm I sent a blazing tongue of flame down. It roared with a furnace’s heat and blackened the ancient stone while the Cup goblins broke and ran, some even going so far to dive off the side to land with sickening crunches four or five meters down on the next level.
After what had happened to Sweetie Belle when we first came to this place, a few broken bones seemed an apt herald.
Celestia’s hooves cracked a great paver with a report like thunder as we landed, and, wherever her hooves touched, the stone vitrified, leaving a trail of glassy disks in our wake. Goblins cowered in corners or—even more foolishly—beneath tables and flinched when our bright rays touched them. Some even screamed as they anticipated their flesh blackening and crisping, only to collapse in relief when the heat remained mercifully bearable. They weren’t the ones I was here for, after all.
I exulted in their fear, sitting tall on Celestia’s back. I had crawled and scurried to avoid their notice once before, those wretched creatures, and now they quaked at my passage. Would they have been so merciful in my place? I think not.
There would be no wheedling or pleading with anyone to get my way this time. Now I was the one who would call the shots.
Even now, The air within the entry hall was filled with the rich flavor of their feast. It wasn’t so great a spread as the one that had taken Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle, and no goblins were sprawled along the benches and floors as before, but, when I laid my eyes upon the tables and trenches, a fury ignited in me nonetheless. I turned Celestia’s head, and at once a long table erupted in flaming wooden chunks with a sullen detonation. We dismantled the dining room piece-by-piece as goblins fled in all directions, flinging their weapons to the ground and even shedding their armor to run all the faster. I even burned the designs on the walls, scouring the painted plaster right down to the rock walls.
It was only here, at the end of the dining hall, that we found our first real opposition. A host had been drawn up along the stairs and galleries of the Cup King’s throne room. Pegasi and other winged goblins waited tensely in the high vaulted ceilings, and over all of them flowed a strange, misty brilliance. It gushed forth from a single, radiant point—an uplifted cup held in the gauntleted hand of a stony-faced woman in golden armor. It seemed a lifetime ago that I’d last laid eyes upon her, but I recognized her well enough. Her graceful body remained unbowed as she stood at the head of her troops, with her wings tucked at her back and a spear in her other hand.
“You go no further,” she said in Wandtongue. “In the name of King Xerxes, I demand you cease your assault and end your unjust trespass.” Whatever she was doing with her Cup, it seemed to be buoying the other goblins; not a flicker of fear crossed their features. They edged forward into defensive formations with interlocking shields upraised.
“Unjust?” I asked, raising my voice over the crackle of Celestia’s flames. “I was here before, you know. Yesterday, probably; I don’t think I’ve lost that much time.”
The woman did not answer, her smooth, tan face unreadable.
“I’ve come to collect some things that I left here. Three foals, a teenage mare, and two bluejays.” I turned Celestia to fix my gaze on her directly. “You, whoever you are—I don’t know what your deal is, but you’re doing your job and I don’t feel like hurting you for that. Give them to me, and maybe I will leave here without causing any more damage.”
“I do not know what you are seeking, but it makes no difference, intruder,” the woman responded, “and, even if I did, it would make no difference. I am bid to keep my master’s peace and his property.” She lifted her chin and the point of her spear. “No matter your power, we are the Court of the Cup, and we do not submit to terror.”
If I’d had hackles they would be raised. “No, but you sure like using it, don’t you?” I asked, bristling. “Your temple is sick, do you know that? Tricks and traps that screw with your head, messed up rituals, trapped food—where the hell do you get off calling me unjust? Where’s the justice in trapping someone for life because they were hungry and desperate?”
Celestia stamped an angry hoof and burned a gouge in the ornate tiles.
“All know that the sanctums of the Cup Palace are inviolate. We have the right to defend our own in whatever manner we see fit,” the woman said as she settled into a combat stance, and her people moved forward another pace. “If you were among those Wand goblins invading our home that day, then you need concern yourself with your companions no longer. They have paid the price for their temerity. You may even see some of them among us now. As to your demands, I will hear no more of them—begone, or fight.”
I narrowed my gaze at the obstinate woman, and Celestia’s flames leapt as her intensity matched mine. In a way, I had to admire the Cup bearer, even if she was just a cog in a machine. Perhaps it was just her magic, but I’d imagine that even naked and unarmed she’d still look as stubborn and entrenched. If she wanted to bar my way this eagerly, though, so be it.
On that hair-thin balance between intent and violence, however, another voice broke in. “Ladies, please,” a boy’s voice called, “we would not be amiss in hearing her out, would we? Perhaps her arrival was somewhat… unorthodox, yes, but wisdom demands we seek a peaceful alternative where it presents itself.”
Meaning he thinks I’m dangerous enough that he’d rather appease me than spend the blood and coin getting rid of me would take, I surmised.
“Knight Priyana, part your soldiers,” the boy continued in his high, aristocratic voice, “I would address our guest myself.”
Priyana’s face contorted in anger and flashed back again so quickly I was certain I had imagined it at first. Obediently, she straightened and flicked a wing to gesture behind her. The phalanxes parted and Celestia walked between them, her light reflecting off their masked helms. Knight Priyana accompanied us, the golden pomegranate on the butt of her spear tapping the tiles in our passage.
There were no signs of the bacchanalia that had raged through the Cup King’s throne room the last time I’d been here. Everygob present now was martially inclined, touched by the radiant stream emanating from Priyana’s Arcana. They were much more orderly than the Wand troops I’d seen—far better dressed, too, with their serviceable silk garments and woven coats. In the great throne sat the young man I’d seen before, with his metallic hair shining beneath a crown of beaten silver. He looked my age, but could have been Celestia’s for all I knew, his recent ascension to the throne notwithstanding. The chalice was the same, too, a simple wooden cup that stood in stark contrast to Priyana’s cup of hammered gold. Also unlike hers, his held red wine, though it did not deplete noticeably as he sipped.
I resisted the urge to crack an Indiana Jones joke—somehow, I suspected the humor would be lost on this bunch.
“Oh, you haven’t any fear, my dear,” King Xerxes said. “They may look grim, but, as you know, we of the Cup understand that it is important to appreciate life. Humor is but one of many facets of earthly pleasure.”
In another time, another life, that might have rattled me, as it was intended. Make me think that all my thoughts were open to him and put me at a disadvantage in our negotiations. Today, it mostly gave me an opportunity to reflect on how much I’d changed.
“Cut the crap, Xerxes,” I told him. “I’ve told you what I want. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, and Wire—you can skip the birds if you don’t have them. I think I saw them get away, anyhow.”
He smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. Two could play at this game; he had his magic cup, and I had my ichorous eyesight. I cleared out distractions from my mind and let Celestia worry about the soldiers as I focused my senses. The acrid smell of scorched meat mingled with the sweat and stink of fear, and few in the hall reeked of it as much as this boy king. The wine had a heavy, powerful odor to it, and I felt a pressure that put me in mind of the Bridle when I focused my attention on his Cup. It was a divine thing, truly, and the wine gave him more courage than he had.
Curiously, I noted in passing that the cup in Priyana’s hand felt more like an echo of the one in the King’s, as the moon mirrors sunlight. Or, at least, it did on my earth.
“Ah, yes, your darling companions,” he said. “Word reached me of the brave young children who did so deftly slip through the Palace’s labyrinth. I do not know how you came by your human shape or the magnificent mount you ride upon, but clearly it was not beyond the skill of the clever little filly who led them. Surely, you must be more than you seem. A hero of old, come to test our trials.” He turned his head to look down at his Knight. His words were all sweetness, but there was a bite there as well. “Rejoice, Priyana. The stain on your honor is cleansed. You could not be expected to have prevented this one’s escape.”
Priyana steamed beneath the collar of her golden armor, and the muscles in her neck tensed. The King’s senses were not so sharp as mine, so I doubt he noticed her anger as he turned back to me. Not that I cared about their petty power dynamic; still, it was fun seeing that she found him as insufferable as I did.
“Yup. Hand them over.” I didn’t care to make a flowery speech, and the scent of his wine was getting thicker. The sooner I left, the better.
He tapped the shepherd’s crook against his arm. “My lady, I stand in honor of your obvious power and prestige. Gladly would I grant any request you have, for what fool would I be to deny the Water Bearer in full possession of the Golden Bridle?” His smile never left. “Please, do us the honor of your presence in the halls and regale us with your tale. All the world has awaited your coming, even if it knows it not. What is your name, Water Bearer, and how did you come to our Palace?”
So he didn’t know I wasn’t Daphne’s replacement. That fact I buried deep, and focused on my impatience and irritation with him instead. It wasn’t difficult, as I had it in abundance. “It pleases me to give you neither my name nor my presence for longer than it will take to get what I came for and leave. Am I going to have to start making examples?”
“You’ve provided ample examples of your strength already, Water Bearer,” the King answered. He lifted his wine for another sip, and the stench of it was such that I was shocked he wasn’t reeling. “Of course I will restore your friends to you. They were taken during your escape yes?” He paused, then nodded in satisfaction. “Yes, they were the ones who triggered the feast, I see. I can see that I should have inventoried the new goblins we gained that day. It can be such a bother, but there are occasions like these where it proves necessary.”
Does he just plan on droning on all day? I wondered as I reached up to rub at my eyes. It would be good to get a nap or even a full night’s sleep once I’d rescued the others. It would be nice to see their faces again. They’d be frightened, I thought, and maybe even angry at what I’d done to the Princess. The Crusaders would be at least. I’d let Celestia go and apologize to them for abandoning them and finally, finally, I would have done something worthwhile. We could sleep in a big pile like before and put this whole nightmare behind us. The adventure through the goblin city, we’d tell others, and keep the darker parts to ourselves.
We’d tell them all about how we got through the Palace, too. It’s like escaping from a whirlpool or a black hole. Like Wire said, About lurin’ you in so you can’t ever get out again.
Now, that was an odd thought to have. The scent of wine was so heavy it could have been cut with a knife, and one might have thought that I had been the one drinking it instead of the Cup King. Really, he was the one who had to worry here, after all. He was so frightened he told his guards to stand aside so I could have my way.
So my present feelings of anxiety and distraction were probably nothing. He hadn’t spoken in a while, just kept on sipping and drinking even more deeply. It’s not like I’d just been lured into another trap or something.
Crap.
My fury, my rage at having been tricked, burned through the haze that clouded my mind. With a shout and a burst of light, I reached out, seized the hands holding me, and flung them clean across the room to smash against their fellows in a clatter of armor. Somehow, I’d gone from Celestia’s back to kneeling before the throne, which I now saw was coated in a dark red mist that oozed down its steps as it poured tenebrously from the Cup King’s Arcana. The mist boiled away as my own radiance leapt out to meet it, and I stood defiantly.
Behind me, Celestia was well out-of-reach, with Priyana and her troops holding spears against her. She seemed as confused as I had been—her power far exceeded mine, but mine was the one controlling hers through the Bridle when the Cup’s magic had overcome me, and I wasn’t holding the reins just now.
“It would have been better to let the wine do its work, Water Bearer.” The Cup King tsked softly. “Its dreams are sweet, and you would have eased into your servitude ever so gently. Now, I fear, I must ask my soldiers to pummel you into submission.”
Still seething, I glared at the soldiers moving into position around me. “If you think I’m going down easily, you’re mistaken.” Now was a terrible time to test the powers and reach of the Bridle, something I should have done earlier, and it was hard to fake confidence. “You can still salvage this, Xerxes. Give me what I want and tell your people to stand aside, and I won’t have Celestia tear this place apart. One word from me and everyone here fries.”
Xerxes’ smile did reach his eyes, then, but it was a cruel, cold smile. Too hard to fake, it would seem. “No, Water Bearer. I don’t believe so. I believe you’re going to end up one of my loyal creatures, will ye or nil ye. Just like those idiot little friends of yours.” The wine-dark mist poured forth with greater intensity, a wave threatening to press in against my light. “Just like you’ve always known. What a burden they were to you, weren’t they? You were well rid of them; discarded like all the rest. Your life is one long series of using and abandoning people, and now it’s coming to a close.”
Anger could only push me so far forward through my own failings. Xerxes had me where he wanted me, using his powers to read my guilt and use it against me just as he had my arrogance. The weight of it pressed in on all sides, bowing my shoulders. I saw their faces as they changed and twisted, and Wire’s as she turned away from me in the end.
There was just one problem with his plan this time.
“Hey. Xerxes,” I croaked.
“Yes?” he asked airily.
“You’ve never really loved anyone, have you?”
“Untrue,” he said, “but why do you—?”
His voice cut off in a high screech as I suddenly bounded the distance from the foot of the steps to almost smash into the throne where he sat. Fear, real, uncut fear filled his eyes as he looked into mine. I could see myself reflected back in them, with eyes like pools of blazing green fire.
He tried to strike at me reflexively with his crook, but I seized his wrist and squeezed until the bones crunched sickeningly and it dropped weakly from his limp hand. “Because,” I said, my voice low, trembling with the force of my wrath, “if you had ever betrayed someone you loved, the only thing you’d feel more strongly than guilt… is hate.”
The world moved in slow motion. Priyana shouted orders to her soldiers. Xerxes babbled before me, offering me riches, power, anything I asked. I didn’t need to ask to know the truth now, though. He didn’t have what I’d come for.
Even if he had, the little monster had run out my patience. He’d done terrible things to countless others and would have done so to me if I’d given him the chance. Through his eyes I saw the soul of Cup King Xerxes. There was only a shriveled little man in a boy’s shape, a pretty shell for a thing of base debauchery. I remembered the saturnalian rituals he’d presided over when I’d snuck through the throne room and knew the truth of what Wire had been afraid to tell me about this place. What it did to the men and women it caught.
Here, in the Cup Palace, my innocence died a second death. The first time had killed my childlike surety that every ending would be happy, and that plucky courage would see the day. The second time killed my faith in the basic redeeming nature of all life.
I could accept his stammered offers and leave here with Celestia, unmolested, but only for a time. I saw that, too. I had twice humiliated this King in front of his subjects, and there is no King who can stand long without rising to face such challenges. Even then his eyes flicked, rat-like to either side as he searched for some plan to dispense with me. The Cup goblins gathered to rush the throne and me on it.
There was no other choice now. He had tried to enslave me, just as he had my friends, and I couldn’t let my story end here. I couldn’t let this wretch stop me.
It had to be done.
There were tall wrought iron lamp stands throughout the throne room, including alongside the great chair itself. They were round and black, with brightly burning bowls of oil on top. One snapped in two when I took hold, and the cut end glinted sharply with a cruel point.
There in the Cup Palace, my innocence died a third death.
They broke and ran when the power of the Cup failed them. When Priyana’s light fled them, so too did they flee. Where Priyana herself had gone I had no idea, but as I reached the bottom of the stairs, only Celestia and I remained in a hall of discarded shields and weapons, lit only by the flickering lamps and Celestia herself as the clouds hung back over the sky.
That plain wooden goblet, a single carved piece of some reddish wood I didn’t know how to identify, sat comfortably in my hand, its neck nestled betwixt my fingers. It resonated faintly on a level beyond the merely physical, humming in tune with the fire in my soul. The Cup seemed to welcome my attention, swirling it around and around until it vanished within its depths, fathomless. I began to walk towards Celestia, and the Cup swallowed my desire to be near her. With a disorienting twist, I suddenly found myself at her side, crossing the intervening distance in a single footstep.
“Granting wishes indeed,” I muttered, remembering Wire’s comments. “Why didn’t Xerxes just wish himself to freedom, then?” I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, a twitch at an ear, and lifted my voice. “Well, Morg? Any ideas?”
“Because, Cup-Winner, in your world there is no gift which comes without a price,” the sibilant whisper returned as the Morgwyn slid out of the shadows of the throne. “The once King did not believe you were capable of that which you did, not truly. He still saw his victory over you, consumed in the last by his own illusions.” The creature laughed. “Ironic, truly. The ancient ones created the Cup in part to more deeply understand themselves, to meditate and cleanse their minds of illusion and desire. Yet, it is a font of those self-same desires and illusions.”
I glanced into the depths of the Cup and then back at the Morgwyn with narrowed eyes. “He could also read my mind. I wonder what I would find if I tried using it to read yours?”
“This one would say that you would find what the Morgwyn has desired all along. A return to that which was.”
“Why did Priyana’s Cup lose its power?” I asked instead. “Transitions have to have happened before. There was a King before Xerxes.”
“The Arcana were made, once, in an age long past. They can be unmade, and were meant to be, in the age that is meant to come and has come. One should think this obvious.” It tilted its head. “You have not broken them, yet, but you hold the master Cup, the original, and the winged woman’s bowed before its master.”
I spat. “That’s Daphne’s destiny, not mine.”
“Was this one unclear in its meaning before, Sun-Tamer? You have seized the Water Bearer’s destiny, clawed it right from her uncomprehending hands.” It pointed a paw at the Cup. “There lies the proof. The Cup and all of its power, the depthless might of elemental water, is yours to command. Therein lies the embodiment of desire, empathy, and transcendence, the immanence of desire into physical reality and the proof that your world is never so concrete as you believed.”
“That’s quite a lot to put on one bitty drinking cup,” I muttered, but did not dispute. If the child Amelia had gotten a hold of this device, there would have been no end of marvels that she could have conjured up. At the least, it would be an excellent tool for helping the others, if I could find them. Once my life had settled out, then I could try reclaiming a bit of that lost magic.
If I ever did.
At the moment, though, my only wish was to leave this place and all it represented. The very last thing I wanted was to meditate on my own desires and feelings, too, so I had little need for the Cup this instant. I tucked it into my belt, then lifted my arm in surprise. The sleeve of my tunic came several inches short of my wrist, which should have been impossible with Maille’s tailoring. Looking down at my leggings, I found the same.
I couldn’t worry about things like that then, though. My encounter with Xerxes had proven how incredibly dangerous the goblins still were to me. He had very nearly taken me with all my power, and I had made far more enemies than I’d destroyed.
Damn the Morgwyn, it was right. I had evaded its designs for as long as I could, only to find myself drawn inexorably towards them. The only way to dig my way out of this was to go deeper and hope I found light on the other end.
“Where can I find the other Arcana?” I asked, turning to face the monster.
It lifted its head, a shadow cast starkly against Celestia’s too-bright flame. “The true Ring lies in a world unseen by human eyes in generations, where once the heroes of old began their trek into the nether realms. Look above the land of frost and mist to a place of stone and darkness. The true Sword works its ways in a land familiar to you, one torn by bloodshed and violence. With the Ring, you could find it wherever it is hidden, and the Wand also, which you must gain from the hand of Nessus alone.”
“And? When I have them all?” I asked bitterly. “What terrible thing will happen then?”
“If by terrible you mean great beyond the ken of mortals, Sun-Tamer, then yes, something quite terrible will come to pass. A true wonder.”
“I suppose I’ll have to see for myself, then.” Turning, I slid up onto Celestia’s back and turned her back towards the rear entrance. Her flames had dimmed considerably since our entrance, and my low irritation was not enough to sustain them, so, as we started towards the airship docks, they extinguished and returned to her common, ethereal hair, even though her armor remained transfigured and her aspect fanged and dangerous. The Morgwyn had already gone by the time I mounted, though its words lingered with me as we took flight.
Soon we lofted high out over the ancient city. We passed straight between the statues of the founders of Mag Mell and the Arcana both, skimming over the polished granite shoulder of the woman whose face held such surpassing wisdom. I knew my face would never look like that. Whatever made her so confident about the world was entirely mysterious to me.
Perhaps it had been elusive for her, too. After all, her city was now the den of a band of warped and twisted mortals who squabbled for their daily bread and knew not what lofty ideals she had once espoused. Maybe every adult was just faking competence and hoping no one would notice.
It was with those thoughts in mind that I buried my face in Celestia’s mane against the chill high air and sank my mind into hers to set course Trunkward and Heavenward, to seek the next leg of my journey and the destiny I’d stolen from my faithless sister. Icy clouds parted to make way, and it was as though we’d passed into the frozen southern seas, to glide between icebergs and antarctic currents on our way to an uncharted, inhospitable continent.
Somewhere along the way, she closed her eyes. Her mind lingered on, sharing its space with the ancient mare who was pressed on by a force she could not deny. The only company she had left were her memories, and their roots stretched back far and away, half-forgotten beneath the piled soil of ages.
* * *
It was the first true voyage I could remember. There had been one other, when I was very young, but I could not now recall it, the one that took me from my home in the columned temple by the pomegranate trees to the terrible land of hardship and uncertainty. It pained me to acknowledge that I was rubbish on a deck, too scrawny to be any use at the oars, too unsteady to climb the rigging, and ultimately too green to do much more than linger near the rails and pray for calmer water. A greying minotaur kept the beat for the oarponies as we rowed on.
Luna flew with the seagulls against the wind, as bold as she pleased, though whenever one of the sailors tried to speak to her she flew back to me and hid behind my tail, as she did now. Her mane had been cut short with the aid of a young mare who had taken pity on the two of us. As tangled, filthy, and torn as it was, we had to resort to simply sawing off the great mass of it with her knife, leaving it to merely chin-length. Our communication was limited, as I only spoke a smattering of Canaanite, but I thanked her all the same. The other sailors were polite, but I kept my distance anyway. The stallions made me uncomfortable in a way I couldn’t quite put my hoof on.
The captain had thanked us for nursing his sailor back to health, and with the help of the aging Cretan minotaur translating I gathered that they had come from Carthage on this very vessel, only to end up displaced like everypony else when the horsemen came after. It was a thought set to give anypony chills, particularly me—men riding ponies with no wills of their own.
The news they gave us was even worse. Ponies and other creatures divided against one another, tribe against tribe, ponies against griffins, griffins against minotaurs, sphinxes and merponies against everypony else. When our leaders had been killed, there was no one to unite so many creatures from separate lineages and all speaking so many different languages from around the world. I remembered enough to recall how hopeful we had all been, and to hear it all far apart so thoroughly made me wonder just how pointless our sacrifices had been.
Small wonder I didn’t bother telling them who I really was. Luna wouldn’t betray it—for all she knew, we had been abandoned in the woods, and I aimed to keep it that way. To tell them would just give them false hope. I wasn’t an alicorn, and I certainly wasn’t a leader.
Our ship traveled seemingly without aim while the sun and moon spun in their chaotic orbits. We stopped along shorelines to gather water and food, and, sometimes, bury our dead. The waterways shifted in unexpected fashion; sometimes we’d be on a wide sea with no land in sight. Other times the land would close in around us, and we’d be lucky to ply our way through narrow rivers. Sometimes we’d have to get out and port the ship over rocks, cutting great rollers from the surrounding trees; I enjoyed those times, paradoxically, because then at least I could help in hauling and cutting and running water and food to the others. The worst were the times when merponies would raid, and then the others would fight while I held Luna close and cowered belowdecks, praying no one would get too badly hurt.
We almost never saw other types of ponies until one day. We came across a village, only to find it frozen over completely, in spite of the balmy tropical land around it. The ponies there were locked in place, icy statues frozen in shivering agony, and an ethereal neighing laughter echoed from the ruins. Luna cried herself to sleep that night, and I went over to where the captain and his wife were sharing a meal with the minotaur.
“What will you do now, Captain?” I asked the captain that evening, looking at him while the minotaur translated; my Canaanite was a lot better by then, but I still had some trouble with phrases and vocabulary. “You have a crew of ponies from every tribe, and more besides. If ponies are so divided they’d attack and hurt your crew… if the world itself is out to get us, what can you do? What can I do?”
The captain, a dignified unicorn, shared a glance with his wife, a heavy pegasus in armor, and took her hoof. “As much as we can,” he answered, the minotaur’s rumbling Greek coming a moment after. “We haven’t forgotten the old way. The new world, it is in chaos still, but, if we keep faith, we still have strength to go on. Earth ponies can mend the broken land, pegasi can master the raging skies, and unicorns can set the world to right. Minotaurs can build, griffins ward the realm, and more.”
“King Kreios and Queen Theia live on in our hearts, and all the other great ones,” his wife said. “I believe they watch over us still, from the stars. If you don’t lose faith, perhaps they can show you a way to help in what little way you can. I’d like to think that we can do them proud.” She gave me a warm smile. “We need young ponies like you and your sister to carry on and build a new society. I… if I could have children, I should have liked a daughter who was as determined and resourceful as you. Surviving as you did was no mean task, especially with a little one to care for, and I’m sure you did your parents proud.”
“Perhaps,” Captain Holder said slowly, “you and your sister could be ours. There is certainly room at our table, and we could be good to you.”
I couldn’t answer them. My throat was too tight. My eyes swam with unshed tears.
I couldn’t sleep that night, either; I spent the rest of it staring at the sky, searching the stars for familiar shapes. I only gave up when the sun rose early, as it often did, and found a fitful, dreamless slumber thereafter, devoid of hope. I would never do my parents proud, and I knew they wouldn’t be watching.
It’s funny, really; for all that I failed to take the captain and his wife’s words to heart, I still earned my wings a mere three days later.
* * *
This time, when I came back, I really didn’t want to. I wanted to know how I—or, rather, Celestia—had earned her wings, how she’d found some scrap of hope in that pit of despair and whether or not she’d found a new family, but, no matter how I fought and struggled to return to sleep and Celestia’s dreams, wakefulness pulled me back with inexorable chains.
I knew intellectually that only hours had passed, if that, but remembering Celestia’s life wasn’t like normal memories. I lived them. Once again, I stretched awkwardly, feeling like I should be on all fours. My hands wouldn’t work until I flexed my fingers repeatedly, and when I saw a lock of blond hair I wondered who it belonged to until I recalled that my hair was blond, not pink.
The clouds had parted, revealing a strange, sunless realm. Huge mountains of clouds surrounded a bleak, barren landscape of basalt that rose in staggeringly huge squared-off cliffs, with great steps of hexagonal columns that looked almost carven. Actual carvings of enormous faces, male or female or neither, loomed from the canyons down at us as we passed.
My mind reeled as I tried to process the meaning of it all. I’d come from Midgard to Mag Mell and risen above one world to find another. Maybe I didn’t have encyclopedic knowledge like my sister or Naomi’s sprawling education, but I knew there was something wrong with how we humans saw the universe if places like these could exist. The Morgwyn had intimated as much.
Speaking of, I probably ought to have asked the damned cat-monster for better directions. This world, whatever it was, did not make navigation easy.
Food was easy to find, at least. All I had to do was turn over the Cup and shake out some fruit or crackers or even once a half-cooked hot dog I had to discard into the abyss.
Just as I was preparing to turn back, however, pinpricks of red light caught my eye. Swooping closer, I found a canyon where countless red lanterns had been strung across the chasm, above and below. It was like flying through a sea of crimson stars. There were walkways cut into the stone, and I saw goblins watch as we passed. They stood out in their storefronts and crowded along rails to watch our passage. Colorful kites flew in the air, eastern dragons and butterflies and paper moons dancing alongside me. At the end, I found a great staircase with its base near the cloudy void below, connecting each level as it rose to a solid monastery or palace carved into the cliffs itself.
The lack of opposition bothered me a little. Perhaps the Ring folk had not heard about what happened to the Cup King just yet. As I focused my attention on the onlookers though, I saw a mixture of apprehension among the crowded faces. None of them spoke, though, nor raised weapons, even though some carried them. Feeling a little apprehensive myself, I alighted Celestia on the stairway and, on a strange impulse, slid off her back and led her by the reins the rest of the way. From within the structure and all around the many levels of the Ring city, voices rose. First a few, then many. Perhaps even all.
It was one sound, in ten thousand voices: om. It blended into a continuous hum, a strange rising and falling susurration that reverberated through my bones.
I stopped briefly to stretch, feeling my clothing and chain mail to be uncomfortably tight. As I did, I heard a series of metallic pops, and then the whole of it suddenly loosened to better fit my frame and height. With some surprise, I bent down and picked up torn rings of inferior metal.
Somehow, Maille had ingeniously rigged my armor and clothing to suit me as I grew. I’m not sure which was more alarming—that she had anticipated such a need or that it had come so quickly. A mirror would have been nice just then.
Each step of the stairway was broad near the base, enough that I would have had no trouble riding her up the stairs for a time, but they grew steeper and more perilous the higher we climbed. Celestia’s feet gripped the stones better than any goat’s, while I kept my balance through a combination of ichorous concentration and Maille’s excellent boots.
A great lintel of unsmoothed stone led to the broad roof of the monastery. The waves of sound were so faint there that they might have only been felt. From the edge of the platform spread a seemingly endless swell of grey cloud, a sea that spread to what could have been a horizon, or, perhaps, a vanishing line so far distant even my eyes could not pick it out. A wizened, nut-brown man sat at the edge, with heavy roughspun clothing about him and a ring of beaten copper held in both hands.
I paused long enough to upturn the Cup and dump a load of alfalfa for Celestia to munch on before approaching the Ring King.
“Okay,” I demanded, with my guts tied in knots after the unnerving reception, “what’s the deal here? I’ve come for the Ring, you have to know that, since you obviously knew I was coming. Is this some ridiculously over elaborate way to try and stop me? If so, forget about it. I’m taking what’s mine.”
The man—goblin, whatever, could have been either—opened his eyes and relaxed faintly. He regarded me over the copper circle in his hands in silent contemplation for several beats before shaking his head slowly. “No,” he said, his Wandtongue accent low and strong. “We knew you—or another—would come, and that you would want the Ring, but we have prepared nothing to prevent you. They call below for the new age you have unwittingly heralded more than for you yourself.”
“That’s my sister’s deal, not mine,” I growled.
“Perhaps, but you are the one standing here before me.”
That was so like the Morgwyn’s phrasing, and so painfully true, that I had to laugh. It made me sound absurd in this solemn occasion, but so be it. It wasn’t a very happy laugh, honestly, but it was some form of humor all right. “So, what?” I asked. “Are you just going to give me the Ring, then? Even after what I’ve done, after you’ve seen what kind of person I am?”
“Foreknowledge is not wisdom, or else we would not be having this conversation,” the man said, “and you would do well to remember that when you take it. Some would say that simply giving you the Ring is foolish, yes. Some might even say that I am gambling the fortune of the world.” He held his hand out, and the Ring shrank into, well, a small ring, fit for one of my fingers. “Perhaps I could have hidden from you, delayed this meeting for a time, though the one beside you would have sniffed us out eventually. I should rather gamble on a future that could be.”
“What does that mean? If you’ve already seen the future, what’s the point?”
“It means that you have not yet decided what you will be. The future spreads before us, and any further pruning we of the Ring attempt will only stunt its growth prematurely. I surrender myself, and my power, to fate. Tomorrow is a new day, and I will wait to see its sunrise, or not.”
He turned his hand, and the Ring fell from his palm to thud against the basalt as if it weighed ten times more than it should. When I bent to pick it up, though, it was as light as any copper ring might be. The smooth metal slid easily around a ring finger, as snugly as if it had been fitted for my hand alone.
“What is it?” I said quietly. “The… beast.” I avoided the Morgwyn’s name, unwilling to draw it just now. “Not the Ring.”
“A thing that remembers chaos, true primordial chaos, when little had meaning and all shape and form were subject to whim. Where time runs backwards and sideways as often as forwards. It would return to that state, if it could.”
“Where mistakes can be undone?” I asked.
“Perhaps.”
I stroked the Ring’s outer surface, saying nothing. It resonated with my soul the same way the Cup had. Where the Cup was a pool without end, the Ring turned in on itself and defined itself. It had no beginning and no end, no middle, no break or flaw. The uncaused cause and the inviolate purpose. Above all it was a cycle with no beginning, the universe in microcosm.
“All one piece,” I murmured. “No wonder you can see the future. If there’s multiple futures, though, does that mean there’s multiple pasts?”
“Who said there were multiple futures?” The old man quirked an eyebrow. “Or only one past for that matter, yes. If you follow a line that bends to the horizon can you always be certain that when you return to your starting position that you have, indeed, come to the same place? Even if you leave a token there, how certain are you that it was the very same one, even if it appears in all respects identical? Could the world have been created moments ago with all appearance of having always existed, or could new things be created ex nihilo in the midst of an eternal universe? Answer these questions, Ring-bearer, and perhaps I will answer yours in a satisfactory manner.”
“Right. Forget I asked.” Turning, I slid the Ring off my finger and silently bid it expand in my hands until I could have fit a fist through it. I sensed there were many purposes I could put it towards—protection chief among them, which would be extremely handy in a very short while—but the main one I was interested in was knowledge. “Show me the Sword,” I said.
I probably didn’t need to talk to it, but my sense of drama demanded it.
Light wavered and wove itself into a hazy image. Buildings made out of plaster and mud brick in a dry, dusty town. I understood at once why the Morgwyn had named it familiar—TV aerials indisputably placed it on earth, and I had seen places like that often enough on television to have a pretty good idea where it lay. The Ring showed me a path, a Way in fact, winding back through the skies of Mag Mell and bypassing Equestria entirely.
“What is this place called?” I asked as I turned my attention away from the ring. “Which of the Nine Worlds is this?”
“The ancient Norse named it Svartalfheim, and populated it with colorful creatures drawn largely from their imagination and the dimly remembered past. The name suffices for lack of a better one, but the truth of it is more complicated by far. There are more tombs here than living people, by far. One may call it a world of graves, for those who could not make it further.”
I ran a hand through my tangled blond hair, smoothing it against the breeze. “The people they called the Alfar, the elves, from whom Maille and the other goblins of Mag Mell learned their craft… they were the ancient people, weren’t they? The first men who had the power of the gods in them, like I do. Legends said the elves went across the sea.” I glanced past him to the clouds ghosting silently along.
“They did at that,” he agreed. “And they launched from this very pinnacle. Seeking what, I do not know. I could not tell you what the other worlds are truly like beyond the faint legends. Even those of us who lived in the Second Age do not have much true knowledge regarding the gods, least of all how and why they forged the world the way it is.”
“Perhaps I’ll find out.”
The old monk had no response for me, and the silence stretched on awkwardly. Lacking any further topics to broach and having not exactly forged a connection with this strange old wizard, I turned on my heels and walked back to Celestia. As I mounted, I began contemplating what else I might see in the Ring, if I could suss out what was hidden from what was not. I immediately rejected any glimpse at my sister or her ilk. The Crusaders and Wire came to mind, but I put it aside after a brief, tantalizing moment spent contemplating it.
Soon, I would be ready to face them. I just needed a few more tools.
Together, Celestia and I dove through the canyon, back towards Mag Mell and Midgard and the next part of our hunt. We dove back through the clouds that divided the realm of Svartalfheim from the branch, and I urged Celestia on faster. The Ring flew ahead like some errant sparrow to reveal the path in its center.
Time passed. I couldn’t be sure how much, with an unchanging field of grey and white and black swallowing up the world, but I knew it was a fair amount. When we finally broke through the clouds, it was already dark in Mag Mell with the leaden sky turning purple in the east, even though it had been nowhere near noon when we’d left the Cup Palace. That troubled me some—it meant that I’d spent a great deal of time in Svartalfar, more than I’d intended, and by now word would have gotten around.
The Ring dipped low almost as soon as we appeared in the sky, and we hewed away from the city towards a dry, dusty plain I had not seen from the road. Piles of wind-smooth rock pierced the dusty earth. Whole hillsides were in bloom with flowers that shone red and gold, doubtless from the moisture that rolled in by day, but I had no eye for their beauty just then. My gaze was fixed ahead, following the unseen trail, and, when the Ring turned straight down suddenly, I didn’t even hesitate as I gripped my knees about Celestia’s flanks and dove directly towards the earth. A hole half-hidden by a dune-covered rock face swallowed us up, and we raced with breakneck speed. Once again I was grateful for the Bridle’s deadening of will, for if Celestia had balked for even an instant we would have dashed ourselves against the coarse stone. Somehow, impossibly, we were flying up, against the force of gravity, and then the passage narrowed intensely. When it seemed as if we might crash, I sent a blast forth from Celestia’s horn and she tightened her wings against her body. Molten debris blew up and away as we spun into a dusk sky filled with clear stars.
Celestia spread her wings and drifted to alight on a rock atop a low mountain, surrounded by a crinkled desert landscape turned white by the light of the moon. There were smaller mountains backlit by city lights rising to the north and west, and, to the east, a dark sea with bright lights along its shore spread far to the south.
My attempts to establish the bearing towards the Sword were interrupted when Celestia began to dance skittishly. I touched her mind and found her agitated in a way that was hard to put a hoof on properly. Climbing down, I put my own hand against the dusty stones and closed my eyes.
Indeed, there was something distinctly unpleasant about this place where we’d come forth. It was as if blood had seeped into the stone, and more than blood. It was as if the blood had carried something fouler in it, like sewage floating in a stream, to dry and cake the surrounding rock until all it could remember was death and decay.
This was an ancient place. A place of ancient power—of the darkest sort, one foul enough to more than turn my stomach. If magic is returning to the world, does that mean this is going to come back, too?
I snatched my hand away and rubbed it against my tunic. “Well, let’s not have a picnic here,” I muttered, sliding onto Celestia’s back and booting her back into the air. There wasn’t even a hint of objection from the mare this time.
Call it a symptom of the odd mood I’d been in since arriving at Svartalfar, but the encounter with that place of death served to remind me of the anger that lurked in me again. It had never really died. Like a coiled serpent it had gone quiescent during my conversation with the Ring only to rear up at the scent of blood. It reminded me of Nessus and his ambition. More than that, it reminded me of the Cup King and his cloying red wine, pouring from a dark altar of lust and base desire.
“If the goblins’ ancestors had intended them to be the wardens of Midgard and protect us from evil, they must be rolling in their graves right now. Or maybe they’re weeping across the sea of clouds, still living their immortal lives.” I ground my teeth. “Jerks. If they’d stuck around instead of rolling out to some paradise way off, we’d all be better off.”
Celestia had no comment. Of course, her ancestors had rowed off a portion of the planet to escape persecution of the most oppressive sort imaginable, so I couldn’t imagine she’d empathize very strongly.
The Ring hummed gently to catch my attention, and I gazed across the desert at a distant patch of light. A populated place.
Well. So be it.
Once again, I stoked the flames of my wrath and joined them with Celestia. The reins took light with cold fire and so, too, did the Bridle. Deep into her skin it soaked, until she began to radiate a dreadful corona. She snorted as I dug through her memories and unearthed all of her ages of pain and fear and anger she’d kept locked up, filed away where civilized people hid them so they could remain civil.
Nightmares could be bright and shiny. Nightmares could be made of fire and light.
When her mane and eyes ignited into an awesome conflagration, her power was at its zenith, and I dipped into the raging inferno and shaped a spell. Even with her increased power, I knew there was naught I could do to the sun here—it was too large, the Earth too set in its course. That was a shame, but Celestia had far more tricks than that.
With a sun-bright flash of light, we teleported miles in an instant, right into the midst of battle.
* * *
So it turned out that I was right: Sword did know we were coming, and they threw a surprise party for us.
Moments after we appeared, a bright flash enveloped us, followed nigh-instantaneously by what should have been the kiss of death. Somehow, I was faster; I reached down with my mind and seized upon the most powerful protection we had. The Ring on my finger gleamed more brightly than Celestia did, and the pressure wave rolled over us like a soap bubble.
My ears rang as the debris from the rocket cleared, and I scanned the mud brick buildings below. If I’d had any hesitation about my course, they were gone by the time I directed Celestia to fire a flaming lance down at a rooftop down below. The beam scythed through the building and cleaved off an entire side, sending the rest up in dust and smoke. The figures attending the rocket platform dived for their lives, and I couldn’t have cared less if they’d retained them.
Even with that retaliation underway, we knifed through the sky. I didn’t know how the Sword goblins had guessed at our approach, but most likely they had more than one battery and alert people to wield them, while I dare not test the Ring’s limits. Deadly firework eruptions lit the night sky and confirmed my fears sure enough.
With a flash, we teleported again down to street level, and, while the goblins above searched in vain, I lifted Celestia’s head and lit her horn in a red-gold blaze. From a cloudless sky came burning sparks hissing down. First a few, then a rising torrent, showering the nearby structures with burning projectiles, some that merely caught to flame whatever would burn, others that smashed through plaster roofs and walls. Thunderous detonations signaled the finding and annihilation of ammunition dumps. Chunks of masonry joined the furious rain.
A different, sharper sort of thunder erupted around us and I threw up a golden shield in time to see it ripple and splinter. Bullets hissed and spat and sprang off to ricochet around the street where we hovered.
“You lot don’t scatter like the Cups did, do you?” I growled, my voice reverberating to the dark figures silhouetted by the flash of their firearms. “I can respect that. I’d give you the deaths you all clearly crave, but you’re just distractions.” I plucked the Ring from my finger and searched while Celestia bounced cars down the street with her hooves and telekinesis. Metal screeched and flames roared in a symphony of violence while I searched for the impression of the Sword.
The Ring vibrated in the air, then turned rapidly around.
“Ah, crap!” I shouted, too late, and expanded another bubble to teleport out.
Lightning and frozen wind, scorching heat and unbearable cold, buffeted me as a titanic force shattered Celestia’s barrier in a single swing. A sensation like two giant’s fists struck my back before the light swallowed and carried us into an empty building half a mile away.
I groaned and felt at my back, where two bruises were doubtless spreading from where the bullets had hit me. Once again, I owed my life to Maille’s cunning and skill—a bitter salve. Celestia herself had taken a few rounds, but most had clearly either ricocheted off her peytral or embedded themselves into her skin without penetrating. Indeed, I’d say that shooting her only served to piss us off.
Screwing around would get me killed, though, and nearly did. The side of the building—a theater, I think—caved in, and I barely had time enough to call upon Celestia’s magic and the Ring again. We flashed back into the sky, firing tongues of flame as we went, and the sky lit up around us. One-by-one I burned out the few remaining rocket emplacements, and then sent waves of fire rolling down the already smoke-choked streets.
I don’t expect I killed many, if any, Sword goblins with flashy, dramatic moves like that. I didn’t mean to, though; I meant to show the King how futile his minions would be, to draw him out again. Perhaps as important was my unwillingness to directly demolish the buildings until I saw that there were no children or other noncombatants. Outside our battle, there were some, yes, and all fleeing in earnest, but the lack of any movement that wasn’t furtive or directed in the streets below encouraged me. Soon, they, too, beat their retreats, in ones or twos or whole squads.
At that point I sent burning disks, hissing circles of fire and force, down to erupt inside the remaining buildings. That sent them running all right.
As the opposition died down, we alighted among the burning wreck of a city district. From the smoky flames a tall, slender figure emerged, its shadow wavering in the hot air. It waved its left hand, from which sprouted a long, thin blade, and a dust devil spun around, whipping the flames on higher and clearing a path for the King of Swords.
Clad in a flowing robe of white and ash grey, the King cut a blade-slim form himself, and the Sword gleamed. Like the Ring and unlike the Wand and Cup, it was metal, but common iron rather than copper. The surface was pitted, as if it had rusted and been cleaned, but I could feel the power radiating off it. The wielder surprised me far more, though.
“Hold,” I called. For some reason, Celestia in burning demigoddess-mode made me feel rather formal, “I have come to challenge the King for the Sword. The Ring showed me this place, and this time.”
“I am the King of Swords, child,” the woman said. I might have called her tone cold, but it, like her blade, held a paradox of righteous anger and icy fury. “And you are not the Water Bearer.” The robe caught fire, igniting from the radiant heat of the flames surrounding us alone, but she paid it no heed. I watched as a gust of sharp arctic air tore the flaming scraps from her, revealing a black combat jumpsuit under fully practical modern armor. Her black hair whipped in the wind, and I was even more surprised to see that she appeared fully human, with no trace of goblinization.
“If I were, I would expect you to just give me the Sword.” I tilted my head. “I guess I’m the King of Cups and Rings by that measure. They choose who they will, huh? Good for you on that one, as long as it lasted.”
“It chose me, yes, but you are merely an usurper.” Her eyes narrowed. “In more ways than one.”
In spite of myself, I glared at her and tightened my grip on Celestia’s reins. It was nothing I hadn’t said myself, but even still, it galled to hear it put that way from this woman. Sword is good at cutting things, apparently. “Give me the Sword,” I growled.
“No, child.” The Sword changed seamlessly into a long-hafted spear, and the King shifted seamlessly into a ready stance. “Let Ring gamble if it chooses. I will not permit the Nine Worlds to fall into chaos if I can avoid it, to live or die on the whims of a foolish, selfish girl.”
“What the hell do you think I am? The apocalypse? And what are you?” I snapped. “I know where we are! I can watch a news channel as well as anyone from my planet—what good have you done with your power here? Sword is conflict, and it looks like you’ve brought plenty of it here!”
“Conflict is the nature of the Sword, yes, but part of conflict is change, and change can be for the good as well as the bad.” The woman’s eyes did not waver from mine. “You know this, but you do not temper it. You would change all. Where I must respect to some degree the rights of men and women to make their own decisions—yes, even if it leads to great harm as it often does—you enslave those who you find convenient to your path.”
“She is not my slave!” I paused. “Permanently! I’ll let her go when it’s safe, when I’ve accomplished what I need to do!”
“And when will that be, child?” she asked pointedly. “When it is convenient for you, yes? First you start with trying to escape, then it escalates. You seize a greater mare and gain greater power, and then you discover that your new weapon gives you latitude to right a wrong. Not satisfied, you begin stretching outward, from Cup to Ring to Sword.” She tapped the butt of the spear against the tumbled brick. “When will it stop being convenient for you to hold one of the most powerful entities in Midgard? When you have the Arcana in hand? I think not.”
“Shut up!” I screamed at her. “That’s not how it is!”
“Perhaps, but even if you do find it within you to release her early, if the world is plunged into chaos, it will be too late for her or any of us.” She began to advance, with short, aggressive steps. “I will tell you this once: relinquish the Cup, the Ring, and the Bridle to the true Water Bearer and stand aside.”
That made me laugh. It was a genuine laugh with real mirth, not just a bitter guffaw. “Yeah, if you think the Water Bearer is going to be any better than me, you clearly haven’t met her,” I said. “She’s selfish, vain, arrogant, distant, and a liar on top of all that. If she cared about you or any part of this, she’d have done something to stop me by now.” I shook my head and Celestia stamped and pawed a hoof. “No, your Kingliness, I think I’m the only Water Bearer you’ve got.”
The King actually seemed taken aback by my words—not in any visible way, but I could feel her harden inside. There was a long silence; the roar of the flames seemed impossibly distant for all that they stood meters distant. At last, she spoke with a fatal sort of determination, “Then let it end here, and call it a mercy to us all.”
Take it from me, as I’ve learned a great deal about these things, there’s nothing so idiotic as a duel. In any one-on-one fight, unless the two combatants are roughly evenly matched the outcome is going to be a foregone conclusion. Wherever possible, tilt the battle in your favor by whatever dirty trick you can, because no one is going to console you for losing honorably.
Maybe it was the Arcana driving us on with the Sword demanding that we battle to decide the fate of the world, or maybe it was just the fire raging inside me pushing me into an insane decision, but at that moment I wanted nothing more than to smash the King’s face in and take what was mine. With fires burning all around us we came together in a stunning blast of power.
If I thought it was going to be easy, though, the King swiftly disabused me of that notion. She parried Celestia’s devastating beams with neat flicks of her wrists, the hard iron surface of her spear deflecting them to cleave through sky and pavement. Her answering stroke was a scything current of lightning that we only barely turned aside. The furious tendrils turned debris white hot and made a car scream and erupt with superheated metal. Unbelievably, that attack proved little more than a feint, as she took a step forward and vanished.
“Goblin magic!” I hissed, sending Celestia diving forward before the woman rematerialized in a swirl of dust with a flurry of dancing strikes. I had to spring up on Celesta’s back and run up her neck to avoid being skewered, and Celestia screamed as a blade pierced her side. It cut through her enchanted flesh as cleanly as if it were little more than paper. The King’s next stroke met a wall of crystalline force projected from the Ring in my outstretched hand, and the resulting blast of energy as the two Arcana met snapped a nearby telephone pole in two.
If one counted our sources of power, it was her one Arcana and whatever abilities she herself had versus my two and the ichor Celestia and I shared between us. Hers, though, was the Arcana of conflict and battle. More, I wasn’t using the Cup to any decent effect, so if I was to derive any advantage from it, I’d best decide.
Celestia bucked hard with both her rear hooves, and the woman took it on the hastily raised haft. Even so, the nightmare’s hooves blasted her through a flaming wall and out the other end. “Up!” I urged, and stood on Celestia’s back as she spread her wings and launched us into the air, to rain fire down from above.
Any hopes I’d had about putting distance between us was shattered when the King rose to meet us, riding a cloud of air propelled by gusts of gale force wind. The fires fanned with her and danced as she struck, again and again. The spear became a hammer to pound us back, and then she moved to intercept our flight so fast she turned into a human-shaped blur. My perceptions slowed as she raised an axe and swung it to meet us.
Wrapping the reins about a leg, I grabbed the Cup with my other hand and, desperately, swung it at her, grabbing at the first thing that leapt into my imagination.
The axe embedded itself to the shaft in a giant slab of beef, and the weight of Celestia plowing into the King knocked her off her perch long enough for the two of us to recover.
“Meat?” the woman said skeptically as she superheated the axe and blew it off, then caught herself on another cloud.
“I’ve only made food with the Cup so far, so sue me!”
“The real Water Bearer wouldn’t have such difficulties.”
I screamed wordlessly and sent a wave of sunfire down, then teleported back to the earth to send sizzling beams up, trying to catch her in a crossfire. No such luck—she flashed and dove between the beams, dancing ever closer with the flames gleaming off the perfect edge of her weapon.
Mixing up Celestia’s spells only served to slow her down. If I tried to grip her telekinetically, she sliced through the threads of magic and vanished in the resulting haze, only to reappear and harass us elsewhere. We blanketed the land in ice and she skated across to send bolts of lightning our way. I had Celestia pick an overturned truck up and swing it at her only for her to run up its side and dive straight down towards us.
This time, I wasn’t quite fast enough. First her sword laid open my cheek, then the hand holding the Ring, and then a leg through Maille’s armor. Only the Ring’s fullest power prevented me from losing anything, and its reverberating response pounded the city block to dust. Somehow, I managed to spring up on Celestia’s back and head butt the woman square in the forehead. She reeled back and I bit down on a scream of pain so we could teleport down the street.
It wasn’t enough. She was a hundred—no, a thousand times more experienced than me, and all the memories I’d lived with Celestia were before she’d gotten into her later battles. I had more power, but it wasn’t availing me very well.
Perhaps I could read her intentions with the Cup, try and anticipate her moves before she could execute them, but even then it would be a hairfine advantage I wasn’t sure I could exploit properly. If it took her a hundred strokes, she’d get in enough to bleed me and weaken me, and then she’d have me.
I couldn’t win this fight.
Once again, time slowed to a crawl as I tried to think of something, anything that could pull a victory out of thin air.
My eyes fell on Celestia once again, her nightmare visage obscured to me by the flaming mane that tossed and sparked in the inferno winds. I tightened my grip on the Cup. That’s right. She’s been in battles before. Over two thousand years of experience in using her power.
And yet I hesitated. The last time we’d shared only a fragment of her youthful memories, and even that had been overwhelming.
Pain blossomed in my side as a hot shard, propelled by another blast from the Sword, found me. I damned myself for allowing a distraction that might have cost me the fight and teleported again, this time to the far side of the ruined area. Then, ignoring my wounds and taking the Cup and the reins in hand, I touched one to the other and sank my mind through the funnel of the Cup’s rim, down, down into Celestia’s deeper consciousness…
The King came. Her footsteps barely touched the ground as she half-flew towards her target. She must have been concerned, seeing us merely standing there, with Celestia’s wings half-folded at her sides. Anyone in a duel like this would assume a trap—yet she had to finish it, no matter what.
I had to admire her.
Golden flames leapt in her path and she cut through them. Four, eight, sixteen Sword Kings came at us from every direction, illusions thrown up in the rippling air, though each might have been as deadly as the real thing. I wouldn’t find out.
Swords met her. A ring of telekinetic blades, then another, then spears taller than three men, all with spectral ponies to wield them. The Sword King and her copies cut them down by the dozen, only for more to take their place. They surrounded her, dove at her, and she became a haze of motion, parrying and dodging and slashing with a naginata that became its own whirlwind of spinning destruction while her copies fell and vanished.
I came on her then, as well. We, in truth, but our motions were so unified that there may as well not have been a rider. My horn blasted a searing beam that she caught on the flat of her blade. Even the incidental heat of it evaporated my telekinetic constructs, and the world shrank down to the two of us, lightning-wreathed Sword and the full, uninhibited strength of an ancient demigoddess. The Sword King pushed back, sending my own fire back at me along with scorching lashes of lightning that left jagged blue lines in my vision.
The earth shook beneath us, and distant rumbles knocked masonry off buildings and cracked foundations miles away. Still I came on, pushing forward, warded by a corona that seemed to come from deep within me, shining out through my skin as if it were transparent.
Soon my horn and her blade were nearly touching, and the arc of current between us could have fused atoms. The explosion, when it came, lit the sky from horizon to horizon, a rising column that spent its fury into the upper atmosphere.
Even then, the Sword King was not done. Her blade found me as she somehow came through even that torrent, cutting deep into my gut—but, this time, the pain was nothing I hadn’t felt before. I grabbed her hands with my own Ring-bearing one and there held her fast with all its power. My other hand, curled into a fist about the Cup, found her in turn. Again and again I struck, pounding and beating. Finally, I gripped her head and fell off Celestia’s—my?—back, and, rolling on the ground with the Sword still in me, pounded her head on the ground until, finally, blessedly, her grip slackened.
Bloody, sweaty, panting, I lay there tangled in the King of Swords, her blade, and Celestia’s reins about my ankle, while all around was silence. The King could have been dead or she could have been alive, but I didn't have enough left in me to feel guilty. The fires had been extinguished in that one titanic blast of wind. Moments later, the sound of distant alarms reached us, and I knew the surrounding city was responding to the catastrophe that had rocked it.
The light in me flickered uncertainly. Celestia’s mane dimmed and became once again the pink hair of sunset. My legs—my legs, not Celestia’s—shook as I forced myself to hands and knees, wincing whenever the Sword bumped and twisted in my innards. My world had narrowed again to a dim, wavering tunnel, and I could hardly think for how numb and weak I’d become in the wake of my fight.
The Sword was mine. I just had to unsheathe it.
I gripped the hilt, the hold firm despite my own slick blood, and willed it to change as the King had changed it. It took several tries—my thoughts were even slippier than my hands had become, and the thought ‘small knife’ was harder to grasp than it should have been. The blade faded and shrank at once into a tiny shiv, and fresh blood freed itself to spill out onto the steaming earth.
“Healing…” I moaned, fumbling about for the dropped Cup. “Need…”
My fingers curled around the wooden cup just as my limbs gave out, and Celestia tucked her head under me to pick me up and place me on her back. I didn’t know if I’d given that order, or if she’d somehow been able to take it on herself, but I was past caring. I stared up at her red-slicked muzzle and clung to her mane like it was my only lifeline.
Somehow, I had to trigger the Cup’s healing powers. Yes, the chalice in my hand, that one. I stared at it, wondering for a long moment why I was holding it, what it was, who I was, what I was doing with it.
We were flying again. Back towards the pit, the place of blood and sin. I think I ordered it, but I couldn’t recall. Everything had grown fuzzy and indistinct. Shimmering water spilled out of the Cup, an endless flow that seemed hypnotic in its radiant beauty. Tentatively, I touched my fingers to it and found it cool. It eased the burns on my fingertips.
More lost time. I was in a desert, now, and Celestia had settled down at my side as I lay against her. The water flowed forth in a rivulet, and she kept pushing the lid of the chalice towards me. Finally, feeling an idiot, I remembered at last what I was doing and weakly raised the rim to my lips and drank, and drank. The water gushed over my face and nose, but rather than sputter and drown I just held my mouth open and let it course over me. A sea of interweaving light.
Down I went once more, sinking into its tranquilizing depths. My memories waited for me down there, the smell of summer grass and overripe pomegranates, the tinkle of chimes and the wet sap of pine needles, the wind in my hair and the sand beneath my hooves. I closed my eyes, let go of any semblance of control, and faded into dissolute nothingness.
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Daphne
“So the thing that really gets me,” Naomi said as we trailed Twilight and the other mares back up to the main deck, “is that the story you and Pinion told doesn’t really jibe with the evidence. Where’s the billions of years of stellar development and the millions of years of fossils showing a progression of forms? The way you tell it, we declined rather than the other way around.”
“Who is to say that both versions are not simultaneously true?” the Seer asked. He moved more slowly than the rest of us with his hunched, shuffling step, and gratefully accepted the silent offer of Marcus’ arm to help him up the ship’s ladder. “It is true that we call the Age of Chaos the First Age, but even you humans have figured out that time and space are interrelated. We say that we live in a world where effect follows cause, the arrow of time points in only one direction, and the titans are bound into the fabric of the cosmos, but in the First Age this was not so—can we even say that the First Age predates the Second and present Third Age, truly? When the gods brought order to chaos, the universe settled out the details as best it could.”
“So it’s something like… we’re living the version of the cosmos that best fits a causal narrative?” Naomi asked, tentatively. “So there are functions of chaos which still live with us, like… goblin magic, say?”
“And Discord,” Lyra piped in, “and the Morgie-thingie, too?”
“Well-spotted, my dears,” the wizened goblin said, bobbing his head. “One might even say that the titans are simultaneously bound and not-bound, but we are living in the state in which they are more bound than not. There are some creatures from that era, such as the harbinger, yes, who would much desire to return to that existence. It is the only one they understand.”
“It said that it would be there to guide that end and would set a flame that would consume all worlds,” I quoted sullenly.
“Indeed. That is why this turn of events is so dangerous. The power meant to be placed in the hands of the Water Bearer, if used improperly, could cause great damage to the delicate fabric of the worlds.”
Leit Motif’s face hardened. “Discord gave Equestria more than enough of a taste of chaos for me.”
“Could you all stop?” Marcus begged. “This is giving me a headache. I also don’t like the implication that Amy is somehow going to be the cause of an apocalypse where we go to some whacked-out chaos land. She’s not a bad kid.”
“Innocence,” Saria, the Sword Knight, said from the deck as we came up. “It can be the most wonderful and terrible of things. Who can say what she is thinking?” The catlike woman rocked back and forth on her heels. Her eyes, unlike the crew’s, were not fixed on the still-dark eastern horizon but on the Wand’s air fortress. Fires still burned on its bulk; some were old, others new. Someone had managed to regain enough control to level it out, but it still turned in lazy circles. All around our ship, the smaller aircraft of the Sword and Ring fleets had drawn up in a protective squadron.
Twilight was in the midst of delivering orders to Captain Holder, and any prior hesitance on her part to exercise her authority as a princess was gone in the face of the present crisis. “We need to head for Equestria at once, Captain.”
“Aye, Princess,” the salty sailor agreed. His helmsmare had already turned the craft towards the eastern horizon, and the engines thrummed beneath our feet. “I’ve already plotted a course around that great steel beast.”
Empty miles spun by beneath me as I looked out across the bow to the continent beyond. A dark-coated alicorn mare stumbled out of sleep, stricken and terrified. Far and wide the guard spread, but, no matter where they roamed, their quarry was nowhere to be found. I winced as more images flooded in all around me, tiny pony shapes charging into a searing white light atop a mountain like so many moths into flame, with about as much effect. We charged into that light now; heat seared me to the bone and burned our ship to cinders.
“Water Bearer,” the Seer’s voice cut sharply into my haze. “Focus. Do not permit the visions to rule you.”
I felt his hand on my shoulder and gasped as he pulled me back to the world. My chest heaved as if I’d dunked my head underwater and held my breath. “We’re going the wrong way,” I told him as I caught my breath.
“And where should we go?” the shrewd little man asked, his eyes glinting like a pair of garnets.
“I… I don’t know.” I shook my head. I shared a glance with Naomi and Leit Motif and offered them a slight smile to reassure them. The images flitted out of the corners of my eyes; they stubbornly refused to form a coherent pattern. Glimpses and flashes of an ancient city, of girls I’d never met yet strangely thought I knew, of a dark shape looming over all, of the stars unraveling and splitting into infinite mirrors. “I’m not sure I know how. Can’t you…?”
“Perhaps I can.” The goblin tapped his stick against the decking. “I will not be with you indefinitely, however. If all had gone as it should have, I would have taught you to control your gift, how to manage the creative vessel that is your birthright, but one cannot put the tree back into the seed.”
The others who had come to the deck were all looking at me now, including Twilight and Captain Holder. I swallowed tightly and shook my head. “Do we really have time for that?”
“And what time have we, Daphne?” he asked, using my name with surgical precision. He looked out over the storm-wracked night. “It may be now or never.”
It was a very near thing that I didn’t just turn and run back down to my cabin and hide. Damn the little gremlin. He knew, he had to have known how much it hurt to know what I could have been and be unable to touch it. He had been the one to reveal it to me, after all, he had been there to see my face when I’d seen and known.
Of course, both of us knew I’d never abandon my friends, or my sister. Still, it hurt to try and grasp at the tattered threads of a destiny long lost. I wasn’t sure how much of my reluctance was the fear of messing up—and how much was a fear of catching some portion of it and becoming even more aware of how much I would never touch.
In a way, it’s like if I’d been able to go back to Massachusetts and couldn’t step foot over the threshold of my parent’s house. I could look all I wanted, but I could never touch, never be a part of that world ever again.
“How do I begin?” I asked, biting back a sigh.
“You already know the first thing,” he said, pointedly.
I opened my mouth to object that I most certainly did not, but then I frowned and considered. After a moment, I did. I turned to Captain Holder. “Stop the ship. We can’t go back; not yet. If we go back now, we’re doomed. There’s nothing we can do to help Luna, only get swept up in… something that’s coming.”
While the captain went to order his sailors, I looked to the goblin expectantly. “Very good,” he said. “To be an oracle, to receive knowledge from the divine realm, is no easy task, Water Bearer. You will always have more information than you require. The trick of learning what is necessary and what is not is one that will take you, well… a human lifetime to master, at least.”
Naomi gave me an odd look at that comment, but said nothing.
“You have practiced clearing your mind, yes? I’d imagine you have some skill at meditation already.” Without waiting for my acknowledgement, he continued, drawing the tip of his walking stick through the air to make a circle. “There is a reason that the Ring is the Arcana of knowledge. What is new is old, and what has come before will come again in the fullness of time. That is why you know some things for certain even though they are at first glance unfamiliar.”
“I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make sense,” Marcus objected.
“Well, you aren’t a super special oracle and stuff, are you?” Lyra said. “I’m sure this makes perfect sense to somepony with higher dimensional whatsits. That’s the technical term.”
“Shush,” Leit growled and prodded Lyra in the ribs.
“I’m not sure how that helps me,” I admitted to the Seer. “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting that you already know the answers you need,” he said patiently. “You need only remind yourself. Don’t fight the flow of information, hold your goal in mind and allow yourself to be guided to the answers you require.”
I scrunched my face up. “That’s it?”
“It is a suitable beginning lesson. We can refine your technique when we have leisure.”
“Helpful,” I growled. Still, it was more than I had going for me a second ago. I went over to the rail and emptied my head with practiced ease, shoveling my myriad fears and stray thoughts into a corner
“Come on, everypony,” Applejack said, rounding the others up, “we ain’t accomplishin’ much while we’re lollygaggin’ around staring at her.” Nice of her, though it wasn’t really a serious concern for my concentration. I’d come a long way from the self-conscious teenager I’d been back on the human earth.
Once again, I found myself swept away in a torrent. There was a dead boy with metallic hair staked to a throne, myself and Leit picking flowers in our youth, a tree made of stars splintering and all the glittering worlds ground to stellar dust. I wanted so many things it was a wonder that I had any focus at all, but I concentrated on what I needed, letting the stream carry me on. I heard the birth cries of a people and the death screams of a world, and then it all came around again.
I bit my lip and regarded the others as they busied themselves. Some of them, like Leit Motif and Rarity, did their best to stay out of the way of the sailors and chatted in little groups, while others like Naomi had gone below. I could see her now, tending to the wounded among the pegasi and soothing them, her veterinary experiencing allowing her to at least work alongside the ship’s medic. Even Marcus had craned into a hard-to-reach spot in the engine room and made himself useful. Thanks to the Seer, they were all relying on me now, and I was about to ask a great deal of them.
Incidentally, I also realized at that point that I would have to be careful with my new powers. Peeling through long distances and layers of ceilings and walls is great right up until you start seeing things you really would rather not, and privacy violations are more or less the norm. My hooves took me to a midshipmare attending to the cockpit. As our eyes met, I remembered how she’d wept the day her father announced his lung cancer, how he’d hid it all throughout her engagement and wedding so as not to spoil her happiness until it was absolutely necessary.
“Lieutenant Critical?” I addressed her. “Please call your captain, the princess, and the others, please. I know what we have to do now.” Almost, I told her about how at this very moment her father was in remission and expected a full recovery; I wanted to give her that much for unwittingly exposing her life to me, but somehow I didn’t think she’d appreciate the intrusion.
“Yes, ma’am,” the mare responded smartly before stepping off to bark orders to the ratings and see to the captain and princess herself.
Rubbing my head, I turned and jumped to find Saria inches from my face. Ripe dates, cool shade, a furtive kiss shared behind an old truck. “Gah!” I scrambled back half a pace, tearing my gaze away from her eyes. It didn’t stop the sounds and images coming, but it made them easier to ignore.
“You would be less easy to surprise if you did not become so distracted, yes, Water Bearer?” she asked, and unlike the Seer she spoke the title with something approaching respect. With him, it almost seemed as if that was merely my pony name. I preferred the latter, honestly, even if it was an absolutely terrible pony name. She flexed her gloved fingers around her sword hilt, which was wrapped in leather inscribed with apotropaic verses. Short black hair had been cropped close about her chin, and there was more than a little feline in her mien. “There will be much danger, no matter our chosen course. I am thinking you should endeavor to remain in this time. Of course, a few moments ahead of time may warn you of danger, no?”
“No. I mean, yes. Probably.” I rubbed my temple again. It didn’t hurt, per se, but anxiety fueled high blood pressure, and that could threaten to turn into a headache. The ache became a throbbing of blood in my ears and steadily petered off, though, to my relief. “How much can we ask of you and your people, Knight Saria?”
“Ask us to fight, and we will fight, Water Bearer.” Her tail flicked idly, appearing briefly beneath her pale khaki garments. “Those who live by the Sword are prepared to die by it. It is only just, no?”
“Appropriate, perhaps. I don’t know about just,” I muttered. “Try not to die, even so; in fact, try not to kill, either. Aside from not wanting deaths on my conscience, even justified deaths, we may be fighting those whom we’d rather have on our side. That’s going to be difficult if they’re pissed off at us for spilling the blood of their former comrades.”
Saria smiled, displaying rows of sharp teeth. “The Water Bearer asks restraint. She needn’t worry that her newfound protectors are overly bloodthirsty, though. The Sword is best when tempered. Our King Alisha demands that we make conflict a virtuous cycle, to begin only when it is absolutely necessary and end when it is no longer needed.”
Applejack and Marcus appeared from belowdecks, the latter wiping oil from his hands and arms, though he left plenty of splotches on his face and white shirt. “That hasn’t always been the case with past Kings, I take it?”
“Just so, Water Bearer.” Saria rocked on the balls of her feet, peering towards the eastern horizon, catching a hint of light. The crew gasped and a few threw up ragged cheers as the first slivers of a belated dawn touched the world. “Unstable Kings who demand blood for blood and drive wars and feuds without satiation. They do not last long. There are those who are thinking that because conflict is our soul, we must always be at war, but they do not understand that the true purpose of conflict is to end stagnation in tyranny. Kings who forget this also find that we of the Sword Court are less obedient than most.” She smiled again, and this time her toothy grin was distinctly predatory. “Is it not so that constant instability is as stagnant as a slow, stable strangulation? The crops in the field can no more grow if they are burned and trampled than if they are flooded or neglected.”
“I’ll admit, I didn’t peg you for a philosopher, Knight Saria.” I gave her a grin of my own. “You’re not exactly poetic, but you have a surprising amount of thoughtfulness.”
“I?” She snorted. “I am but a poor girl raised from the dust to become somewhat nobler dust. My predecessor was a poet, you must know, and he painted pictures with words as easily as he did with his blade.”
My head tilted to the side. “What sort of pictures does one paint with a blade?”
“Red ones. I think it would be obvious, no?”
I laughed in spite of myself, and Saria laughed with me. She gave my back a friendly smack that nearly flattened me, and then bowed with one hand on her hilt and the other touching her forehead, lips, and heart. “Saria bin Domad will ride to battle gladly with you, Water Bearer. Merely point her to that which you wish destroyed and it shall be gone.”
“I hope it won’t be riding into battle on me,” I joked. Even so, the occasion seemed to demand something a little more courteous; her heartfelt offer to kill whatever I wanted touched me. “I am honored by your trust, Knight Saria,” I said, putting a hoof to my chest. “I don’t know that I’m the Water Bearer you came to fight alongside, though. That girl is gone, before she ever had a chance to live.”
“Yes, it is so. It had been written, yet what is written is not always what comes to pass.” She smiled again, and, though one could never call her beautiful, there was a certain fierce attractiveness about her that arrested the eye. “But you are the Water Bearer we have, no? That which is written can be rewritten, and a new future forged.”
Mine wasn’t the only eye arrested. I saw Leit Motif ‘accidentally’ crunch Marcus’s foot beneath on her return. That started an argument, but it wasn’t really my business anymore. “I hope so,” I told her, and turned to address the gathered ponies and other creatures. Lightning Dust maintained her pony facade and stood alone near the railing, while Pinion wore her goblin shape just as easily as she waited beside Pinkie Pie. “Thank you all for coming,” I said once they’d all quieted. “I know it must be a little strange for all—” I spared a glance for the goblins “—well, most of you to countenance taking direction from an unverifiable source like this. Believe me, it’s weird for me, too. I’ve never been the sort to take things on faith.
“Now, though, I’ve come to understand that the things I see and hear, the visions that have haunted me since I was a little girl, are more than just colorful flights of fancy, or, worse,” I said grimly, “the symptoms of a delusional mind.” With my back to the bow, the sun rose behind me and warmed my back; I let my eyes drift up towards the remaining stars in a sky devoid of its aurora, wondering if perhaps I could spy Pirene there looking down at me. “Now, I have ample evidence that I can and do know things beyond any merely natural ability. And I know that if we charge home blindly we’re going to face a force so terrible that it will consume us without blinking.”
Considering that I was asking them to trust me with not only their lives, but the lives of their loved ones and kingdom, the mares with Twilight were giving me remarkably steady gazes. When our eyes met, I found some crinkling of doubt looking back at me. All of those eyes, though, had seen more in the past few days than they had in years. Twilight Sparkle ruffled her wings and stepped forward. “All right. I believe you, Daphne. I’d like to properly study and analyze this ability, but I’ve had some experience with premonitions already.” She shot a glance to Pinkie Pie, who gave her most innocent gaze back. “Do you have any idea of what we should do, then?”
I looked to Naomi and Marcus. The former pulled her hair out of a bun and let it fall in fiery waves down her back, and gave me a quietly sympathetic look that told me at once that she understood my pain. The latter had long since turned from the scorn of a week ago to a weighing, even thoughtful scrutiny. He gave me a nod, and for just a moment I remembered how we had come together, when we’d built one another up rather than tear each other down.
Leit Motif didn’t even require that. Her eyes burned with silent intensity, and I knew she’d follow me into Tartarus and back.
Lyra, of course, merely grinned and asked, “Yeah, Daphne. What awesome plan do you have in mind?”
I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Not really awesome, but I’ll give it a whirl…” My eyes turned distant as I looked inward. “I know who we need to fight, now. It’s the very person who I came all this way to get: my sister, Amelia. There’s a darkness guiding her, a creature that I believe is ultimately responsible for all of this tragedy, but even if we could somehow find and stop it, it’s too late for that to make any difference. My sister is growing stronger, gathering power to herself, and by the time we get back she’ll be stronger than all of us combined. We need to level that playing field and change the odds in our favor, and that starts there.” I pointed a hoof over the side of the ship at the listing Wand battleship. A cannon fired uselessly at the island below, as if on cue.
“You’re kidding,” Lightning Dust said acidly. “What the hell are we going to find there?”
“Your friends, for a start,” I said, and the skin beneath her coat drained of color.
“Pardon me,” Rarity said, raising a hoof delicately, “but even if we should be able to recruit the remainder of Flash’s—forgive me, Lightning Dust’s—former sororal companions, what should that accomplish?”
I scraped a hoof along the deck. “I won’t lie to you. I’m not entirely certain—I can’t see the future so well that I know precisely what is going to happen when. I can’t even say entirely why I know what I know. I do know that without their help, though, we might as well pack up and find a place to ride out the coming storm.” I kept myself steady as the doubt multiplied in their eyes. “I know, that’s even less to go on than we all might have hoped. I have to trust this instinct, though; it’s the same feeling that tells me the names and histories of ponies I’ve never met. I know that there’s business with the Wand and that we’ll need them and their allies to help us in a coming fight. I’m sorry; I wish I could offer more.”
“That, Water Bearer,” the Seer said, breaking in before uncertainty could grow, “is more than we had ten minutes ago.” He rapped his walking stick against the planks to ensure he had everypony’s attention. “More importantly, it coincides with my own divinations; the Wand vessel is key to our coming endeavors. Captain, I believe I can help you avoid its remaining cannon batteries. We should plot a course as soon as possible, as we have already wasted enough time.”
I stared at him, slightly open-mouthed. The last part about avoiding the cannons was true enough, but the first part about it coinciding with his divinations had been a complete and total lie. I could see it as plainly as I saw his pointed nose; he knew no such thing.
The others dispersed, all but Naomi, and with a spring in their step that hadn’t been there since we’d come to the island. The Seer hunched his way past me, and his garnet-like eyes glittered. “A little direction,” the goblin said, “can do wonders. Sometimes, that direction includes a little judicious prodding.”
“Duly noted,” I murmured, and shifted to face Naomi. The slender girl slid to her knees and put her arms about my neck. As ever, Naomi knew right how to penetrate to my most vulnerable spots, and I sagged against her, feeling the weight of the past day settle down on my back.
There was no need for words at first. Naomi knew what was eating at me, after all, be it Amelia or my missing past or the terrible fight yet to come. After a few moments, she pulled back and smoothed my mane down the back of my neck. “Are you going to be able to handle this?” she asked. “Your own sister may try to, well… hurt you.”
“She’s already hurt others,” I said, frowning. “I’m not sure what all is going on. It’s… fuzzy where she’s concerned. Like the world—time itself—is twisting around her and making things indistinct.” My eyes slid towards the horizon. “It’s my responsibility, though. I should have taken better care of her. I should have been the one to… well, a lot of things, I guess.”
“There is something else,” she said. “I was wondering… would it be possible for you to see what’s going on back home?” She smiled hesitantly. “We’ve been gone for so long, I’m getting really worried about how everyone back home is holding up. It’s going to be the most miserable Halloween of all time.”
I chuckled weakly. “Yeah. I… well, I guess I can at least try.” Notwithstanding the fact that I’d thus far avoided allowing my attention to drift to my parents. Still, this was for Naomi—I couldn’t deny her anything after what I’d put her through. I closed my eyes and let my mind drift along the currents, letting them take me back across the barrier between our disparate worlds.
“Your parents are angry,” I murmured. “And so are Marcus’. Your families are like… two opposing camps.” A motorcycle flashed at the impound, and the shattered remains of my busted cell phone decorated a desk along with my clothing. “They… they think Marcus kidnapped us, since he took those guns. The police do. Me and you and Amelia. There’s a manhunt going on to find us.”
Naomi’s hand tightened in my mane, her eyes burning with the same shame I felt. “Don’t worry,” she said soothingly, “we’ll clear his name, once we get your sister back and you turned human again. Are our parents all right…?”
Cracked ribs, bruises. Hospital lights. “Your dad fought Marcus’. Or mutually, I guess. Mom’s spoken to them both, though.” I saw her face, tired and worn. She stood looking out the window of her office at the university. “She feels… something, but she doesn’t understand it. It’s dim in her. She doesn’t believe Marcus hurt us, but she’s worried. She’s worried she’ll lose her children forever.” I bit my lip. “They’re… they’re holding a vigil tonight for us. You should see it. There’s candles and they’re floating them on the river.”
“That sounds beautiful. Don’t cry,” she whispered.
This was the main reason I hadn’t allowed myself to look back until now. Seeing would have been hard enough, but it’s never just seeing. It’s hearing, too, and feeling, knowing how our family’s ache for our absence. The terrible gulf of not knowing what fate had befallen their children. The suspicion and rancor. Doubt ate at Marcus’s mother’s heart and she broke down crying every morning she made breakfast for her other boys and girls, wondering if her free-willed son would end his days in a cell.
Naomi let me cry into her shoulder with what few tears I had left to give. “When did I start weeping so much, Naomi?”
“Well, you know, Water Bearer and all,” she laughed weakly. “Don’t kid yourself, though. You’re strong, Daphne, and I’m not just saying that. You saved us, and you’ve come all this way through all these trials. If you get a little heartbroken now and again, well, you’re entitled to it. You’re like your mother in that.” She smiled brightly. “The Seer told me a bit about that, you know. The whole… thing passed down the female line, on and on for ages, all of them determined and gifted. Apparently that’s why things here resemble stuff on our earth so well—because the Everfree Ways have been following your maternal line all across Europe and the Americas, and apparently a brief stop at New Zealand. They were super adventurous.”
“And if I’d done my job, everyone could have a wonderful taste of divine inspiration like my family has,” I shot back bitterly, but winced as soon as I’d said it. We’d been through this routine before; I rubbed my head against her cheek apologetically. “Pressure’s getting to me. I really, really don’t like being the center of attention like this. You can’t imagine how awful it is.”
“Tell me about it. My best friend is the culmination of two thousand plus year-old prophecies. That’s just revolting.” She stuck her tongue out, and rubbed my side. “Don’t let it get to you, though. You were set up. I know my saying that isn’t really going to help right now, but one day you’ll learn how to live with this. You’ll hate yourself for retreating into that shallow shell, but you’ll get over that, too.”
“When did you get so wise?” I grumbled.
Naomi laughed. “I’m just saying the obvious. If it’s wisdom, it’s only because everypony else is so dense.”
The horizon rotated about us as the ship turned towards the Wand Fortress. The Seer stood within the cockpit, consulting his ring of office as we approached. “What are you going to do once all of this is over?” I asked Naomi as I watched the sailors move into action.
“You’re the soothsayer, you tell me.”
I scrunched my face up at her. “Even if I could see your future—which I cannot right now, if I ever can—I want to hear from you, anyway.” I touched her with a hoof. “You say I’m strong and that you aren’t wise, but you’re stronger and wiser than you know. This whole trip would have ended with me torn apart in the woods without your help, or starved in a tree somewhere. I want to hear you tell me about your plans, because I want to draw on your strength again.”
She smiled modestly and twirled a strand of fiery hair through her fingers. “I want to learn how the goblins change form so I can become a mare and move here to Equestria.” She grinned broader at the sight of my face. “No joke. I love it here. It’s everything I dreamed of and more. I don’t want to just abandon my family and old home, though… I want to be the first to move back and forth between our two worlds on a real permanent basis. I can bring things from our earth here, and teach the ponies all about what they’ve missed. One day, when humans are ready for it, maybe I’ll be the one to tell them all about ponies.”
“That’s… rather ambitious, actually,” I said, eying her closely. “Are you sure you’ve thought it through?”
“As well as I can without the time to really plan. It’s not exactly a hard trip, once you know how to do it. Leit Motif told me all about her shortcut, and I can get people to help protect me from the monsters as I do.” Her eyes lit up as she spoke. “I’ve already planned out the house I want to build here, and the garden I’ll raise, the open range I’ll run on…” Her eyes sparkled. “Maybe I’ll even meet a nice stallion and settle down to raise a crop of foals.”
I blinked. “That sounds awfully… monogamous for you.”
“He-ey.”
“Also surprisingly straight.” I poked her in the ribs. “And don’t you hey me. I thought you were a committed philosophical polyamorist? And more than a little, uh…”
“Bi? I am!” She giggled wickedly. “And I’ll be totally upfront about the poly; that’s the sort of thing you need a lot of trust and understanding for.”
“I was actually going to say depraved, but…” She swatted me and I smiled, but went on anyway. “Are you sure about this?” I asked a little more uncertainly. “I mean, about the whole… thing. For me, being transformed was, well…” My ears fell. “Distinctly traumatic.”
“You had your autonomy and agency stolen from you, Daphne,” she said gently, rubbing one of my ears. “Of course it was traumatic. I’ve spoken to the goblins, though, and they say that it’s different when you do it their way, especially if it’s a welcome change. And for me, it will be. You know me; it will be one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. So, Daphne… whenever you’re feeling ashamed about bringing me here and exposing me to all this danger, try and remember that this is the most incredible, amazing, wonderful gift you could possibly have given me. I don’t care what anyone says—that’s divine intervention enough for me. For what it’s worth.”
I blushed and ducked my head. “Thanks.” I scuffed at the deck. “It’s worth a lot, to me.”
“Oi, ladies,” Marcus called. He stood nearby, helping a unicorn guide a heavy metal plate into place on the rail. All around us, others were erecting defenses to fortify the deck. “You’d better get into cover. We don’t know what they’re going to throw at us as we approach.”
“Don’t suppose you can make a copy of us with some of that sweet green magic, huh?” Lightning Dust asked as she joined her cousin Pinion, bedecked in her goblin armor. She squirmed. “Can you loosen the straps around my hips, Pin?”
Pinion smirked. “What, pony food a little too rich, couz?” Lightning Dust’s hoof caught her in the gut and she wheezed laughter.
“The ship’s too big for me,” I said regretfully, glancing up at the gas envelope. “I don’t have it in me to do a whole field like I did at first.”
Marcus grimaced as the enormous bulk of the fortress filled our eastern skies. Its propellers churned clouds far above and the drone threatened to drown out our own ship’s meager buzzing. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Daph.”
“I do,” I said quietly, “don’t shoot anyone if you can avoid it, Marc.”
He gave me an uncertain look in return. “Trust me, that’s been the hardest part of all this. I don’t need to be told twice. If they’re confused and fighting amongst themselves, they’re going to be dangerous, though; a few warning shots should do wonders to convince them to back off, I hope.”
“I think we’ll be good. Nessus has come and gone,” I said with a sour frown. “I would have felt that one.”
“Call me craven, but I’m glad about that. I wasn’t eager for a rematch.”
Captain Holder’s voice rang out over the low din of ponies readying themselves. “Cut the engines! Pegasi, ready grapnels!” He stalked up and down the fortifications as we stared at the heavy wooden wall before us before grabbing a grapnel in his teeth and rising to join his sailors. Blackened pits of twisted metal marked the places where ammunition stores had been blown to pieces, and the hull bore the ashen scars of recently roused flames.
Collectively, the crew held its breath as we glided by with deceptive grace. Our ship slowed as air dragged against the envelope and hull, and, as we slowed to match the air fortress’s speed, the captain signalled and the pegasi advanced to fling their grappling hooks up into what seemed to be a docking area for smaller ships. The grapnels dug into the soft wood, and, as one, the earth pony members of the crew tugged with all their might to haul the ship in closer.
With a screech, a troupe of goblinoid ponies clad in black armor tucked their wings and dove down from their hidden perches on and in the great fortress. Some carried huge axes with which they attacked the envelope, cutting through layers of reinforced fiber to release the precious gas within, while others hacked at the grapnel lines and others still loosed stones and arrows in an attempt to sweep the deck.
“Ice arrows!” Captain Holder bellowed, personally cracking a huge tiger-striped mare in the face and taking her axe. “Up the rigging, you dogs! Drop ballast!”
“Helium! Get those hoses fixed!” the deck officer shouted as well, adding her voice to the others as the crew scrambled into disciplined action. As helium tanks were winched out of the hold and attached to pumps, a spry young mare sliced lines holding bags of gravel to the sides of the ship. Even as the shredded gas bag lost its buoyancy, the quick action of the crew—and the stalwart strength of her earth ponies—kept the vessel moving up.
A group of pegasi carrying curious white bows launched into the air. With their forehooves freed, they could easily string and loose quarrels of pale arrows that instantly froze over anything they hit. Goblin ponies, suddenly weighed down by ice and with their limbs and wings locking up, fell to be caught in nets cast by Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, and the ship’s few unicorns.
The Sword goblin crafts cut in then, putting the Wand defenders to rout. Before long, boarding ramps with spiked ends had been thrust out to the deck. Marcus fired his gun at the hatches to discourage a counterattack as ponies poured across the ramps to secure a bridgehead, and then I and the other mares were across.
I looked out over the interior deck and time flowed backwards. A green-clad blond girl ran forward, her cat-like face intent as she raced for the sleek shape of an ornithopter. Above, goblins screamed as they fought with a shapeless form of heat and flame and darkness that came at them from every which way. From a catwalk a silvery-white woman fell and landed powerfully on her dragon-like legs. “Amelia?” she called uncertainly, holding a hand out to the girl.
The little girl’s felid eyes met hers. Grief twisted her features, and tears watered the green of her eyes. “I’m sorry,” Amelia said. I wondered if she knew how heart-broken her voice sounded.
Leit Motif’s hoof shook me back to the present time. I gave a last glance at the empty rail where Amelia had made her escape. “Yeah,” I said as I trotted along beside her, “we definitely needed to come here.”
“Any idea of how we’re going to find what we’re looking for?” she asked.
“Not a clue.”
“Great,” Leit grumbled and tossed her mane. “Because our lives weren’t dangerous enough.”
We came upon Twilight and the others conferring with Captain Holder, who was trying to fend off one of his officers who insisted on fussing with a cut on his thigh. “I think our party will be fine going ahead, Captain. It’s best if you and our, uh—” Twilight glanced over at the Sword and Ring goblins gathering at the far end of the docking bay “—new friends here secured the area behind us.”
“Your Highness, I must—get off, mare!” he growled at the officer, who steadfastly ignored him as she telekinetically threaded a needle with sinew. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you and yours to go chargin’ in ahead like you did on that island.”
“If anything, it’s going to be less dangerous now, if that beastly centaur won’t be here,” Rarity said, sniffing. “We can handle a few unwashed brutes.”
“Uh,” Fluttershy coughed, “can we not resort to violence, like, immediately? We’re just here to save Pinion’s and Flash’s—uh, I mean, Lightning Dust’s—friends. We don’t want to make them hate us for hurting their friends.”
“I’m with Fluttershy on this one, and it’s also a good reason for us to go on ahead,” Lyra chimed in. “It would take your ponies too long to advance and our quarries might go to ground if we come in force. If a few of us go, we don’t look as threatening.”
“Which may just mean that they target you all the more for being vulnera—ow!” Captain Holder yelped, glaring at the unicorn. She’d applied a topical numbing agent, but apparently not a great one, as he’d jumped the moment she touched the needle to tender flesh.
“We’re going, Captain,” Twilight Sparkle said firmly, “also, get that wound treated. We need you, and the ship, patched up for our return journey to Equestria.”
Holder set his jaw, looking as if he might argue, but a glance at the rents in his vessel’s gas envelope deflated him. “Aye,” he conceded, settling back.
“Don’t worry!” Lyra patted his shoulder. “I’ll be with them every step of the way.”
“Somehow, that ain’t fillin’ me with confidence.”
“Let’s go, girls, Marcus.” Twilight turned on a heel and frowned at the various hatches. Pegasi with ice arrows and earth ponies with long Equestrian swords waited at the entrances, alert for trouble.
I stepped forward, then, squinting so as to peer through the layers of wood and metal finishings. Ghostly green gears spun in circles around my vision, locking together into intricate shapes. “We need to head aft,” I said after a moment’s contemplation.
“You know, I’m curious.” Applejack tilted her hat up to look at me. “How do you know that?”
“I dunno. Things just fit together sometimes.” I gave her a wan smile. “I’ve been spot-on so far, though. It’s not been the most pleasant ability to have, but it’s gotten us this far.”
She started forward with an indelicate snort. “Fair enough. I suppose we don’t have anythin’ else to go on right now, anyway.”
“Let’s just hope I won’t be wrong where it counts.” I slipped in behind Twilight as we went, with Leit Motif and Naomi not far behind. The narrowness of the passageways forced us to go single-file as we passed through the hatches, but the corridors widened out as we went. Saria led the way with her sword aflame, distant booms and shouts signalling the continuing internal struggle. Lightning Dust and Pinion guided us, convinced that their friends would be wherever the fighting was thickest.
They weren’t wrong at that. Our party came out of the narrow corridors on a walk overlooking huge, humming shafts that rose from the depths of the fortress, up to its roof and beyond, humming like a swarm of impossible insects. Below, great steam engines churned merrily away. Somewhat lower than our position, a group of goblins had erected makeshift barricades around a control room while others were trying to break in without much success.
“How are we supposed to tell ’em apart?” Applejack asked, staring over the side cautiously. “I can’t tell one side from the other. Why are they even fightin’ each other, anyway?”
“My sister had something to do with it,” I said, flicking my tail from side-to-side. I focused my attention on the defensive position and saw the white dragon girl from before, thrusting with a great spear to keep off an ogrish goblin five times her mass.
Pinion drew her saber and grinned. “Let’s find out!” She and Lightning Dust sprang to the railing and dove on the attackers from above, while Saria soon joined them.
“Oo.” Naomi winced and flinched back from the rail. “That’s brutal.”
I declined to observe, myself. There had been enough battles in my vicinity to last me a lifetime. What had me more concerned were the occasional flickers of motion I caught out of the corner of my eye—yet whenever I tried to examine them more closely, they skittered out of sight completely. Even reviewing it in my memory didn’t help, for I could only reflect on something so well if I didn’t pay enough attention to it in the first place.
“I think we’re being followed,” I informed Lyra and Leit Motif. “Wish we’d brought the Page of Rings; we could use some foreknowledge right about now.”
“Says the oracle,” Lyra scoffed. She dodged a kick from Leit Motif and glanced around. “I’ve been watching, but I haven’t seen anything yet. I’ll keep an eye out.”
A ferocious shout and the slam of an armored ogre hitting the floor drew our attention again, and we raced down to find Lightning Dust panting over the limp, groaning body of the large goblin that had been at the forefront of the fight.
Our reception by the defenders wasn’t particularly warm. A hard-eyed group of goblinized ponies stared out at us suspiciously, a suspicion that turned to shock and then fear as Twilight Sparkle appeared in a burst of teleportation magic. They set themselves with their spears and prepared to charge when Pinion sprang in front of them shouting, “Wait! We come in peace! To you, I mean, we kind of smacked these other guys around, yes, but we’re here to help!”
“Pin?” the woman’s voice called, and a beautiful young woman in form-fitting armor stepped from the control room, her silver hair in disarray. There was something of a dragon about her, and her limbs, though svelte, were corded powerfully with muscle. Her eyes swept across the strange party, alighting with increasing shock on the two humans, the alicorn princess, the ponies, and then on Lightning Dust. Her eyes widened even further. “That… that armor… that’s my make!”
Before I could shout a warning, she was on Lightning Dust, one hand grasping the mare by the neck and lifting all two-hundred and fifty pounds of her clean into the air, and the other putting the spear tip just beneath her eye. “Where did you get that armor?” she growled and shook her prey. “What did you do with Flash? Answer me!”
Lightning Dust gagged, unable to reply as she kicked feebly. Instead, she gave herself a little shake and the pony form melted away her to reveal the shock white mane and mustard-yellow coat. She grinned weakly and rasped, “Hey… Maille… nice to… see you… too…”
Stunned, Maille’s grip slackened and Flash fell choking and wheezing to the floor. Immediately, the dragon girl scooped her up and crushed her tightly to her chest, which didn’t do any favors to Flash’s breathing. “Oh, Freya’s mercy,” she whispered, “I can’t believe it. I… I thought you were dead.”
Flash winced and put her hooves against the other girl’s shoulders. She pushed gently. “Don’t waste any tears on me,” she said, and coughed to clear her throat. “I… well, I didn’t…”
“She betrayed us to pursue a life of fortune and glory as a pony,” Pinion explained blithely.
Pinkie Pie grinned. “Oh, she is good.”
Flash pursed her lips, but didn’t object to the characterization. “I’ve been living in Equestria ever since I abandoned you, trying to make a living.”
Turning her head to look at the others, Maille didn’t answer for a moment, though she kept a firm grip on Flash. “I won’t say it didn’t hurt, Flash. It did, a lot. I’m finding it a little hard to blame you right now, though, all things considered.” She sighed. “Everything’s gone to Hel. Ten years of our lives were just… and now it’s as bad as it possibly can be. Maybe you betrayed us, Flash, but we’ve betrayed everything. Every principle I thought I stood for. I’ve raised my hand against sisters-in-arms, and…” She lowered her gaze. “Worst of all, I’m fairly sure I’ve destroyed whatever good faith the Water Bearer had in the world… by not questioning myself sooner.”
“Ah. Well. I have one piece of good news for you, then,” Flash said. She squirmed free and moved aside to sweep a hoof in my direction. “Tadaa.”
“Sorry, what?” she blinked at me owlishly. “Tadaa what?”
I nickered in annoyance and stepped forward. I smoothed my mane back behind an ear nervously and looked up at the kneeling woman. In her eyes I saw the heat of a forge, the resolute strength of steel, and a foundation made uncertain by shaky ground once thought sure. In her I saw how a skittish, wiry girl had been shaped into a purposeful young woman. “Hello, Maille. My name is Daphne. I’m Amelia’s older sister, and I am the true Water Bearer—such as that means anything anymore.”
“Oh, well,” one of the goblin mares watching muttered and rubbed her face with a claw, “that explains a lot.”
“Tidy,” another groaned, smacking his forehead.
Maille, for her part, watched me in tense silence. It stretched on for longer than it had when confronted with Flash’s betrayal. If I reached out I could touch her thoughts, see the parade of failures and guilt with my own eyes. Denial loomed on the horizon like a cancerous welter. One thread was constant throughout, and once again I found myself in the docking bay watching as my sister wept and fled.
“It’s not too late to help her,” I said quietly. “There’s still time to set it right.”
I didn’t need supernatural powers to see her recoil in shock. She fell back as if strings holding her up had been cut, and she stared at me with eyes wide open. “No,” she whispered, and the simple word carried ten years of grief.
Pinion moved up to help her, but I held a hoof out to forestall her before stepping up to Maille’s side myself. I’d hidden behind others too long as it was. “Eight years ago, we missed connections. Some two weeks ago, your Fetter picked up the wrong girl… my sister, Amy. In a way, this may have worked out for the best, because your master Nessus never intended on truly fulfilling the prophecy in the first place, driven by ancient hatreds and revenge as he was. You’ve already experienced doubts about how he was going about it; why did he need a fake set of Element bearers in the first place, after all?” I laid my hoof against her shoulder. “You’re blaming yourself for what happened—is happening—to Amelia, too. You tried to stay true to the vision laid out from your childhood even in the face of your doubts. You told yourself that it was what was best for the world.
“When you got to know my sister, though, you started questioning it more than you ever had, didn’t you? It seemed more than surpassing cruel to lie to her, no matter how much of a pain she could be, and when she slipped your grasp and fled you couldn’t bear the thought of her getting hurt because of your neglect.” I sighed. “When you found her again, and her lies had refined and sharpened, you blamed yourself for making her into something so bitter and hurtful. Any and all harm that’s resulted from her, you place squarely on your own shoulders.” I met her gaze again. She sat there listening to me, too astonished to speak. “That takes real courage, to take responsibility for your mistakes. I wish I’d had someone like you around to show me how important that was before now.”
Flash shook her head slowly. “‘She could see things that no one else could, even things that lay over the horizon or far off in the future. The things she imagined came true,’” she said, echoing her own words from days ago. “I doubted it before, but she’s made a believer out of me, Maille. She brought me back out of despair.”
Personally, I thought Twilight’s offer to forgive her and let her live as a pony had done that, but, in spite of my desire to stay out of people’s lives, I knew it to be at least partially true.
“Be that as it may,” I said, “the prophecy’s dead. No amount of resuscitation is going to bring it back… but we can still pull Amelia from the brink. She has the Bridle, and she’s going to do terrible things with it unless something is done to stop her.”
Maille took my hoof and slid to her knees. Her eyes drank mine in, and she nodded faintly. “I can see it. You are the one we were looking for. I can see her in you, too.” She tightened her grip and her face turned stricken. “If you’re looking to help Amelia, though, you’ve come to the wrong goblin. Everything you said is true. She hates me, and everything I stand for. I can’t help her.”
“You’re wrong,” I said softly, “I’ve seen it. Amy cares deeply, but she’s lost within herself and I can’t bring her back alone. You are a part of that.”
“How?”
That self-same question had occurred to me as I’d asked Captain Holder to embark on this mission, and I’d been flying on faith ever since. Now, though, seeing Maille and how she reacted to my words, I thought I had a better idea. It wasn’t the bone-deep certainty that accompanied my visions—just a little old-fashioned deduction. “Because she needs to see how you’ve changed, and understand that someone acting on the best intentions can make mistakes and still come back. She needs to see people who love her and want her to come back to them.”
I glanced over at Flash, who still remained as her goblin self. “Forgiveness is the most important part of that path, I think.”
Maille’s cheeks reddened, and she turned her head to Flash as well. She held an arm out tentatively.
Most surprisingly, it was Flash holding back. Guilt creased her face and she half-turned, her ears low.
“Starting, I think,” Lyra said, nudging her gently, “with yourself.”
“It’s okay, Flash,” Maille said. “You’re here, I’m here. We’ll face this together.”
“No, it’s not okay!” Flash fluttered her wings and stared at the rest of us, wide-eyed. “I turned on her, on all my friends, because I wanted somethin’ for myself! I abandoned my sister when she needed me most! We ain’t gonna wrap that up all tidy-like!” She shook, but darted away when Fluttershy tried to move near to comfort her.
Maille was more insistent than the little pegasus, and rose to her feet. She went over to Flash and picked her up again, holding her tightly. “Yeah. You’re right, it ain’t tidy. It’s going to be hard putting things back together. It won’t get started unless we do it proper, though, and we can’t do that unless we’re together. So… it’s okay. I forgive you. Just come back to us, Flash.”
“I… I’ve already decided to live in the pony world…”
“Yeah, I can see that. It’s all right.” She smoothed the other’s mane back. “We’ll get through this, and then we can help each other achieve our dreams, whatever those may be. We’ve been held back from them for too long.”
Flash didn’t answer. She was too busy crying into Maille’s shoulder.
There weren’t many dry eyes in the room there, I was proud to note. Even the half-conscious ogre looked chagrined from where he lay, and Saria coughed and pulled her hood up while Marcus affected disinterest. Rubbing at my own eyes, I smiled as I found Leit Motif burrowing at my side, and slid a foreleg around her.
“Oh, oh! Hugs for me, too!” Lyra said, pressing up against Leit’s other side and eliciting a groan—and a hug—from my old friend.
“Heh,” Applejack said, tilting her hat up, “not that I object to a good reunion, but, we’re kinda in the middle of enemy territory right now and all.”
“For now,” Maille said, giving her friend a last squeeze before setting her down. “That might change, but we’ll need the others. Rose, Twig, and…” She frowned “…Kiln.”
Pinion perked her ears up. “Huh? Is something wrong with Kiln?”
“You might say that,” Maille said sardonically, “because she’s on the other side.”
* * *
“That is truly magnificent, if I don’t say so myself,” Rarity observed as we marched along. Our numbers grew as we gathered more of Maille’s stalwarts, though most split off to go face other challenges in securing the oversized vessel. “Not a single hair is out of place. Why, I could very well model my own outfits on you!”
“Thank you, darling,” Maille said as she trotted beside her, tossing a mane as curled and violet as Rarity’s own. “I’ve taken ever so much care in mimicking your mannerisms with our limited intelligence. I’ve studied every public appearance of your work there is, and devoured every op ed published in every fashion magazine to bear your creations.”
“You say you’re an armorer, though,” Rarity said, pursing her lips. “I’ve never worked with a ‘fabric’ quite so obdurate, I must say. Does that not present extra challenges in fabricating my fabulosity?”
“Armor is a canvas like any other. That it must be practical as well is simply another hurdle to be overcome.” Maille smiled brightly. “Of course, I did have to adjust my style considerably to work with cloth. Linen and silk tear far more easily than meshed steel, you can imagine.”
“Oh, well I can.”
“What I want to know,” Naomi cut in, “is how difficult it is for you to go back-and-forth between being a quadruped and a biped like that. Isn’t it disorienting?”
“It can be, at first,” Maille agreed, and in mid-stride she rose up on her hind legs and swelled out to her full height. She shook her long silver hair out and smiled. “One gets used to it after a while, though.”
“Naomi here wants to learn how to become a pony,” Pinion said. “I’ve been trying to teach her, but I’m not very good at anypony who isn’t Pinkie Pie. If she wanted to learn Penetrations or Teleportations or Levitations I could help her, but nope.”
“Half of her reasons are fetish-related, I’m sure,” Marcus muttered just out of their hearing.
Maille assessed the smaller girl curiously. “If you’re really dedicated to the idea, Twig would be an excellent teacher. She’s one of the most gifted magicians of our generation.”
Twilight quirked an ear her way and smiled at Leit Motif awkwardly. “Is it weird if I’m a little nervously excited to meet my own copy-mare? This is all getting a little strange.”
Leit tossed her mane. “Nah. Strange would be if one of them was in love with one of you. Now that would be awkward.”
Strange. I had thought I was the one who accidentally told hidden truths all the time.
“You know, while we’re all asking questions,” Marcus said, “I’m kind of wondering how the heck you mistook an eight year-old for a sixteen year-old.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Pinion said, “you could have asked me that. Goblins don’t age the same way—it’s kinda hard to predict, actually. Sometimes Mag Mell don’t always sync up right with Midgard, either.”
Maille nodded. “Amelia lied about her age, too, and, more importantly, Fetter was desperately eager to believe she was the one we were looking for. He’d spent a considerable time in exile on the Ways.” She glanced at me behind her. “So were we all, in truth. Twig and I raised the greatest objection, but she fit everything we thought we knew. We were inclined to overlook the difference.”
Saria hissed back. “Careful! I sense danger ahead.” Her tail flicked under her robes agitatedly. “The air is charged with conflict.”
“Oh, goodness.” Fluttershy flapped her wings nervously, as if to disperse the charge in the air. “That sounds… bad.”
Our party drew to a ragged halt and we glanced about at the golden wood hallways suspiciously. Saria gestured and jogged ahead as the rest of us trotted after her. We passed another intersection near the rear of the vessel, and a great bellow shivered down the halls. A long, wind-swept gallery overlooking the island greeted us. Gold touched the land and gray the sea as the sun began its belated rise. Standing in the twisted ruins of a cannon battery was a mare seemingly fired from brick and clay, with heavily armored goblins forming a defensive ring around her against a menagerie of black tigers, hissing reptiles, and screeching raptors. Several goblins bled from fresh claw or teeth marks, and others lay behind the lines weak or still. One poor unfortunate had even been turned to stone.
Unlike Maille’s stand, this battle had come to a stalemate. The monsters stalked and hissed outside the circle while spears bristled out nervously. A rose-maned mare stalked behind her creatures, her fangs bared and her eyes alight. The reason for this state of affairs became readily apparent when I saw that the heavyset mare had her hoof laid against someone’s head.
The figure groaned and whimpered, kicking her long, delicate legs feebly. A pair of horns graced her head and her purple bramble-like mane was matted with blood. Twilight drew her breath in sharply and gathered light around her horn, but I put my hoof to her side and shook my head. “Bad idea. This is a tense situation; I can’t see many paths that lead us out of here cleanly and none of them involve hasty action.”
Saria growled at that, but stood her ground. Maille pushed past her, shouting, “Kiln! What in Tyr’s name do you think you’re doing? That’s Twig you have there!”
“Back off, Maille!” the hardened goblin shouted back. “I told Rose and I’ll tell you—no gob needs to get hurt if’n you surrender! I want Fetter’s wand, now!”
“Fetter’s gone!” Maille shook her head. “I don’t know what happened. Nessus came back with a vengeance and we got separated. All I heard is that he got attacked by some smaller goblins and they carried him off. Kiln, please, we’re friends!”
“Friends?” Kiln spat. “What Niflheim ice rink do you think I was born in? ‘Oh, but Kiln, didn’t we play together as bairns?’ Yeah, and then the rest of you went haring off to your wonderful little apprenticeships while I got stuck in a work gang! You and your little cythraul are tidy as can be, just alike.” She pressed her hoof harder. “Privileged lil‘ devil-spawns.”
Rose growled deep in her throat. “I swear, if you hurt Twig, I’ll cut you open and see if’n your guts are as hard as your—”
“Rose!” Pinion gasped.
“What?” she snapped. “Kiln’s right—what did she ever care for us, eh? She’s as bad as Flash. When we told her how the King had us all played for a tidy bunch of marks she didn’t even hesitate before turnin’ on us! Just wanted to lick the King’s hooves and take what she never earned.”
Kiln slammed her rear hoof on the decking. “Oh, sure. Your little cythraul Chosen One is a dab hand at lyin’ and she’s got you all dancin’ to her tune like the pied bloody piper.”
For me, the scene was even more threatening. Streams of thought and possibility wove confusing patterns and knots through the crowd of belligerents. Accusations landed with the force of lead bricks, enflaming tensions and tightening the knots wherever they lay. It needed defusing, and fast, but I couldn’t make sense of anything. “Fluttershy,” I asked quietly, “can you get me closer past those animals?”
Her eyes widened and she stammered. “I-I-I-what?” She glanced over at the gathered forces and swallowed heavily. “I… I guess I could ask the animals to step as-aside, but wh-what about the g-g-g-goblins?” she asked.
“I’ll chance it. Naomi?” I cast over my shoulder. “Put your first aid kit on my bag.”
“What in the blazes do you think you’re doing?” Leit Motif hissed.
I shook my head, balancing the plastic container on my back as Naomi set it there. “Just trust me.”
With Fluttershy at my side, I stepped forward as the insults and diatribes flew over our heads. Fluttershy’s unease faded as she addressed the animals in a gentle voice. Indeed, she was utterly fearless as she tugged on a one-eyed lizard that must have outmassed her threefold. Rose caught sight of what we were doing but gaped silently as she really noticed Fluttershy for the first time.
“Excuse me, would you be ever so kind as to let my friend through?” Fluttershy asked the monster with a warm smile. “She’s not going to try anything untoward, I promise.”
Amazing what a little politeness will get you. The monsters begrudgingly obliged by shifting to form a space—not much of one, especially with the hard-eyed goblins watching for any weakness, but enough that I could squeeze in with scales on one side and a ferocious mare-eating tiger on the other.
The goblins proved a more severe barrier. They looked down at me with stony faces and hard eyes, yielding not an inch.
“Kiln,” Maile’s voice rose, the argument growing ever more heated, “for the sake of whatever’s dear to you, don’t do this!”
“You’re with me or against me, Maille! Twig’s chosen her place, but you can save her! You and yours can tear Rose a new one or I’ll bloody well split her skull!”
“Whoa, whoa,” Pinion said, “let’s just take this down a notch. Kiln, ain’t no gob needs to get hurt.”
“And no gob will get hurt if I get my way!” Kiln said with an increasing bite of desperation. “Can’t you damned well see that lying little witch has gone and blinded you? Y’all are fightin’ for the wrong side! We need to pull together to keep this from spiralin’ into a right tidy mess.”
“It’s already a mess!”
I ignored the fight and focused on the soldiers. As I did, their own needs and wants clarified out of the chaos. “Look… I’m unarmed, unarmored. This hostage thing isn’t going to be resolved any time soon.” I slowly lifted a hoof and pointed between them. “Back there, your friends are badly hurt and you don’t have medical supplies, nor the hands to spare to help them.”
One of the soldiers tightened his grip on his spear and set himself more firmly, but another creased his face and frowned down at me. “You know medicine?”
The first aid book I’d memorized wasn’t exactly field practice, but I knew my way around the basics, so it wasn’t exactly a lie when I nodded. More importantly, resolving this would allow everygob to get treated by professionals like Leit and Naomi.
“It’s a bloody trick,” the other snarled.
I levitated the box in front of me and opened it to display the contents. Only then did I realize that with my gifts I probably could have made anything, including empty air, look like a full first aid kit, but I was new to this sort of thing so sue me. “No tricks.”
“She’s a unicorn. They have pony magic,” the suspicious of the two said more insistently, but I could see I had the others. One of those who hadn’t spoken elbowed the suspicious one in the side and, as reluctantly as the animals had, a chink in their line opened that was just wide enough for me to squeeze through.
Almost no sooner had I’d crossed the threshold than Kiln wheeled to glare at me with her baleful eyes. It was just what I had been waiting for, for all that a slip here would mean it was my head on the block rather than Twig’s. It was the least I could do for her after messing up her destiny.
Pain found me, and not my own. Kiln’s eyes were full of it—an obscure pain that stretched back as far as she could remember, guiding her every step as she was dragged unwillingly down the path of becoming the fake Applejack for a cause she didn’t believe in, in a fortress she didn’t care for, and worst of all performing for a child she thought was kin to demons. Sweating and toiling while the ponies she thought were her only friends went haring off to their own adventures was just a small, albeit not insignificant, part of all that.
None of that actually mattered, though; what really killed her, day in and day out, was the sight of her own self in the mirror. She could have borne any hardship, weathered any insult, and fought any odds if the sight of her own body hadn’t revolted her. It felt like being cheated, like the universe had played some cruel prank on her.
The universe, of course, had done just that. Of everything I saw in her, one tiny, seemingly trivial bit of information was more important than all the rest.
“Marble Stone,” I named her.
“What?” she demanded, an upraised hoof pausing.
“Marble Stone,” I repeated. “That’s your name. Marble Stone.”
“What? What are you talkin’ about?” Her hoof wavered in the air. Her whole body tensed and relaxed, back and forth. Her confusion and uncertainty gnawed its way into her gut.
Sweat beaded along my brow. I was deeply conscious of the fact that a full complement of well-trained killers stood behind and ahead of me. They were preoccupied, but that wouldn’t save me if they thought I was doing something untoward—to use Fluttershy’s word—to their leader. “You don’t remember, do you?” I asked tightly. “The process beat it out of you. They didn’t just lie to you about what you’d become, they took your name away, too, Marble Stone.”
“I don’t… what are you…” She stared at her own hoof, releasing enough pressure for Twig to breathe readily again.
“It wasn’t her fault,” I went on, keeping my tone even but firm, “the goblin who talked to you, she really believed that you’d be happier with them. She couldn’t have known how they intended to shape you, Marble Stone.”
“Stop callin’ me that,” she said, but it had no force. Indeed, she shook worse than Flash had. A great pile of muscle and hard-skin, she nevertheless seemed to have lost all of her strength.
“Boss?” a goblin asked in concern. One of the injured ones on the ground grabbed her spear.
It was still possible to back out. I could see that option before me as clear as day; all I had to do was shrink back and Kiln would go back to being Kiln. If I did go through with it, though, I knew exactly what was going to happen to me. With a deep breath, I took the plunge.
As my hoof touched the side of Marble Stone’s head, a hot, knifing agony filled my side as a thrusting spear blade bounced off the bottom of my rib cage and dug into my gut. Stars filled my vision and my scream might have rocked the ship. It didn’t matter, though. I felt it as a surge from deep inside me, as if an indescribable torrent of energy had surged through me as a conduit—and with a flash of green light, the two of us vanished from sight.
* * *
The aurora twisted below as milky streams of stars hung in empty space. No matter where I looked, it was always uncomfortably bright and glaring. Shading my eyes with a leg, I spied a small figure laying dazedly before me. Her stone-grey coat contrasted against a straw-colored mane. No pony would ever call her pretty.
“Wha…” She groaned and tried to push herself up on her stubby filly’s legs. “What’s… going on…”
I walked forward, my hooves striking nothing at all without a whisper. “I’m… not sure,” I admitted. I looked around, but no answers fell into my lap. Instead, a lingering sensation of familiarity filled the strange surroundings. I touched my side and marveled at how the pain had gone; I could still feel the wound, but it was as if it didn’t matter just then.
Perhaps it didn’t.
The young Marble Stone looked down at her hooves, at the long strands of plain yellow hair. Her face twisted up. “I don’ understand. Where are we? What’s happened to me?”
As she asked, the niggling sense of familiarity resolved itself. I’d been here before, or else somewhere very like this. This was the realm where Pirene had met me mere hours ago, just in a more elementary astral state. I wondered if my own dreams connected here as well—there was certainly enough strangeness in my memory to make it potentially plausible. It was like an ocean of thought; it felt like home.
“I’m going to show you what happened,” I answered, though not quite to the question she asked. “That’s one of my jobs, I think. Even though the big thing is ruined, I’ve still got some parts of it that were left with me.”
A heavy-bottomed vase appeared before me, a twin to the cutie mark on my sides, and from it windows sprang into being around us, portals to scenes buried deep in the past, to a little filly on a little farm just outside of Ponyville and the hardened goblin mare she grew to be. They papered the space around us until we were surrounded by a wall of flickering images. Marble Stone quivered in a tight ball with her legs over her eyes, refusing to look. “No, no,” she croaked. A window appeared before us, the first time Kiln looked into the mirror and saw herself as she was, misshapen and ill-formed, and her eyes hardened. There her heart first denied that she had ever been Marble Stone.
I set my hoof against her forehead and smiled sadly. “I know it’s hard. There’s going to be things you aren’t proud of back there.” I looked up at scenes of her struggling along in the mines below the Wand Keep, hauling carts of ore and facing the mocking scrutiny of her rough-and-tumble peers. “And things you won’t want to remember. The worst part about all of this is that there’s no going back. There’s no way to prevent yourself from being abducted, and you can’t make the promises that lured you in come real. You can’t take back all the mean and terrible things that happened to you, or that you’ve done.”
I reached into the vase and pulled out the journal we’d found in the Ponyville library. The pages glittered as I flipped through them to reach the empty pages beyond her last entry. “Your story’s not over, though. You can still write it.”
Marble’s eyes peeked out from between her hooves. The empty page shone, brighter and brighter.
Memories of being a child, of growing up alongside Applejack and her family and friends in Ponyville, flooded down from the sky and back into her. I watched each one with her, feeling again like some great conduit for the forces around me, gently guiding them and her.
It wasn’t just for her benefit, either. I let go of my fear, my regret, my shame at being a failure. I surrendered to the truth. I accepted that I, too, couldn’t wallow in regret and uncertainty. I let the tide wash over me and cleanse me as the light filled us both.
No matter that I wouldn’t be the same person destiny had called for, no matter how tainted my memories were, no matter the mistakes I’d made, I was who I was, and only in embracing it could I find peace within myself and help to reach a better future.
I am the Water Bearer. I am Aquarius.
* * *
Our assumption was short lived. The force that brought us into the astral realm deposited us back in a flash. Marble Stone’s sobs filled the air as she wept brokenly. The unfinished-pottery look she’d sported before was gone. Now, she seemed refined, with a smooth coat in the gentle hues of fired clay and a stiff mane and tail the color of spun gold. She cried long and hard.
The other goblins didn’t seem to know what to do other than watch. Twilight Sparkle kept silent as she eased up to my side. “That was, uhm… uncomfortably familiar. Are you okay? Do you feel… especially different?” She gave my sides a pat, looking for hidden wings, it seemed.
“She is,” Saria said, sheathing her blade. “Can you not tell? The numinous spark is kindled. Not as bright as yours, Princess, but it will grow.”
She was right—I did feel different. The sensation of being a conduit, of flowing over with strength and clarity, had not left me on my return. Colors seemed more vibrant, sounds sharper, and even the air smelled crisper. In spite of that, things weren’t quite as overwhelming now as they had been before. The barrage of extrasensory information was easier to control, the haze was clearer, though I still couldn’t look too closely at people without their life stories spilling out.
Ah well. That was just something I’d have to get used to now.
“I feel a lot better,” I said, offering a small smile. “I think we’re done here. How is Twig?”
Twilight nodded her head back inside. “Naomi’s treating her. She should be fine.”
“What about Maille and Rose? I don’t see them.” I started towards the hatch. Just inside, sheltered from the elements, Naomi and Marcus were helping the gazelle-like goblin to stand after having tended to her wounds.
“They went off to round up the rest of the goblins. With our help, the last of their opposition should collapse.” Twilight frowned. “Not that I was really all that excited to order ponies to attack, but it’s the only way to wrap this up in any reasonable amount of time.”
“It’s all right,” I said, glancing up and through the decking to see what was going on in the rest of the ship. “They’ll surrender, and then we’ll be on our way.”
Again, I felt that strange motion in the corner of my eye. I yanked my head around but found nothing. When I returned my attention to the present, Twig and Twilight were standing off, looking decidedly awkward. Unlike Rarity and Maille, or Pinion and Pinkie Pie, this wouldn’t be a celebratory meeting. Still, there was more curiosity in both of them than trepidation.
“Hi, uhm—” Twilight began.
“Well, hi—” Twig said, right on her heels.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you—?”
“Stars, I didn’t mean to interrupt—”
“Well, it’s okay, you can—”
“You should probably—”
“Agh!” Twilight growled in exasperation and flared her wings. “Okay, you go first!”
“But—”
“No!” Twilight jabbed her hoof at the goblin. “You start.”
Twig took a deep breath and patted at her wiry mane in a futile attempt to settle it. “I, uh… I’ve always been an admirer of you. Princess. I hope you know I never meant any harm. We were always taught to fear Equestrians. Speaking of, could you please ask Princess Celestia not to destroy our homes in fiery wrath when she finds out about all this…?”
“She, uh—doesn’t really do that sort of thing.”
Twig was babbling on as if she hadn’t heard her. “I understand she will be righteously skeeved off at a plan aimed at supplanting her, and Thor knows she has a right to be. I won’t say it’s all King Nessus’s fault because we were all pretty well on board with it, but, well, he never told us just how far this was all going to go, and now that we’ve met some of you I’m sure we can work something out.”
“Look, it’s perfectly fine,” Twilight tried to get a word in edgewise, “I’ve already spoken to Flash and Pinion about it.”
“The others are really good people, even if we’re a little rough around the edges, and I want to help bring Amelia back safe and sound. I’ll take full responsibility, since I was supposed to be the leader, just like you. And I’m sorry if I ever tried to get between you and Rainbow Dash. It was… it was never going to happen, I know, and I shouldn’t have tried to interfere…”
“Twig, it’s all right, we’re not going to punish you for—wait, what? Me and Rainbow Dash?” Twilight blinked.
“Yes!” Twig threw her forelegs up on Twilight’s shoulders, her face stricken. “I’m so sorry! I couldn’t help myself… you know how she is, all… full of verve and purpose and she’s just so beautiful. I’ve never felt so guilty, I thought that if I could just be you, even an imperfect you, then I might have had a shot, but I-I knew an amazing, heroic mare like her wouldn’t even look twice at an awful goblin like m-me no matter how I dressed up, and… and…” Twig startled to sniffle. “C-can you f-f-forgive me for tr-trying to steal the love of your life, Princess Twilight?”
Twilight gaped.
There was no help for it. I started to laugh.
Rarity, who had been watching from nearby, raised an eyebrow at Twilight. “Yes, Twilight, dear. Can you ever forgive her?”
Twilight’s face turned as red as hot steel. “I… what… I don’t… doesn’t…”
“I think what the Princess means to say,” Lyra interjected, “is that she completely understands how you feel.”
“What?” Twilight asked.
“Yes, in fact, she’s really grown quite distant from Rainbow Dash recently,” Rarity added. “All quite tragic. The news is all the rage in Canterlot.”
“What?” Twilight asked again, aghast. “You… huh…”
Naomi grinned from ear to ear. “She really means to say that she gives you her blessing, and hopes you two have a very happy life together. Isn’t that right, Princess Twilight?” She poked the back of her head and bobbed it back and forth in a nod. The Princess was too stunned to do anything but wobble her head back and forth like a doll.
“Really?” Poor, besotted Twig’s eyes turned completely liquid and tears starting to flow. “You mean it’d be okay if I… and Rainbow Dash…? Oh, thank you!” she wailed and threw her legs around Twilight’s neck, who could only choke in response. “You truly are a gracious princess!”
My laughter died down, and I wiped my own eyes of tears. I wormed a telekinetic thread through Twig’s forelegs and spared the Princess an accidental assassination. “Okay, okay. Twig, we need to get to Amelia…”
“Oh. Yes.” She smoothed her coat and stood up straighter. “What’s our plan?”
“Take all the goblins and ponies we can lay our hooves on and march on Canterlot Mountain. Well, fly—marching would take too long. We have to be there by Devil’s Night—err, the night before Halloween. Or Nightmare Night, whatever.”
Marcus stared down at me. “What? What do we need so many people for? Amelia doesn’t have an army.”
“Heh. Yeah, about that…”
* * *
“Oh dear,” Twilight said, hours later. We were far above the ground, but even from our height we could see the mile-long scorch marks in the countryside leading up to a small, flat-topped mountain west of Ponyville in the hills. Great twisted, scorched bars of bronze lay scattered across the land, and an enormous cave gaped like a smoking mouth.
“I knew what we were going to see, but actually seeing it is another thing entirely,” Leit Motif said grimly as we stared over the railing. “Tartarus, its gates unbarred and unguarded.”
“Obliterated is more like it,” Maille said, her claws digging into the railing of the Equestrian airship. “Amelia…”
The Seer eased himself away from the side, shaking his head. “The prison that Celestia and Luna used to seal all the titanspawn of the world that they could not otherwise contain. Over a thousand years’ worth of true monsters, beasts from the age of chaos, set free.”
“Why?” Marcus demanded. “Of everything she’s done, why that?”
“The Morgwyn’s doing, no doubt,” the Seer said. “It may be that it convinced her that she needed the additional protection. They would heed the Morgwyn and obey Amelia for as long as it was convenient, most like.”
Marcus looked crestfallen. I wanted to reach out to him then, to let him know that all Amelia did she did because she was scared and alone, but I let my hoof drop and walked to the ship’s ladder. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Leit Motif talking to him quietly, and smiled. Down below decks I went to check up on Marble Stone and Applejack and found them eating together in the mess. Marble’s beautiful new form stood out from the other ponies taking their ease, though she still held herself uncertainly as she spoke to her long-lost cousin. She was still a large, strong mare, but where before she had the look of a poorly made clay figurine, now she was adequately proportioned. Greys and browns swirled in her coat with hints of soft blues and greens, and when she smiled her whole face lit up.
I left them to their own devices and went further back. Twig I found in the library, and I questioned her about Amelia’s last moments on the Wand vessel as best as she could relate them—better, really, since I picked her brain while I was at it. Not something I enjoy doing, but at the present time I needed to make an exception.
What I heard and perceived troubled me greatly. The callous, even brutal way Amelia had manipulated the goblin to enact her mistake confirmed all the signs I’d received so far. If I was going to find Amelia and bring her back, I would need to be prepared to face a veritable mountain of bitterness and regrets. For all that Marble Stone was more than twice her age, I doubted that Amy would be so easily persuaded.
For some unsettling reason, I wasn’t sure that I could bring her back.
On my way back up the ship’s central corridor, I paused, trying to unbox that premonition. Like all of my odd feelings over the trip, it almost certainly had some significance beyond just my fretful heart. Very few of my feelings had turned out to be wrong of late, and, if I could take steps to understand and react to this one, there might be a chance to react to it.
It’s at that point I felt something far more disturbing. It was a creeping, chilly certainty that ran up from my from my hooves and down my spine. Without knowing how, I knew the ship was in danger, and from something terrible—no mere goblin surprise attack, but something from that prison that had been locked away for ages. It whirled like a storm, sucking everything into its path.
My hooves quickened along the wood, but I didn’t get far. All at once, the electric lights flickered and shattered, blowing out in their sockets. Ponies shouted in surprise in nearby cabins, but their voices sounded distant. I lit my horn, and found myself in the center of a whirling pit of darkness with only the island of my light to guide me. I tried to reconstruct an image of the corridor to escape with, only to recoil in surprise and disgust when I found that the darkness came from my mental image.
“Yes, Water Bearer.” The sibilant whisper came from seemingly all around and no where at once. “This one is with you now.” Its blue eyes blazed balefully at me as it materialized as a deeper shadow separating from the rest. “The Morgwyn must congratulate you. It did not think that the Water-Pourer would recover from its despair, no. It didn’t quite believe that she could find her way across time and space to come so close to her goal.”
I glared right back at the monster. Even as it was, a thing of chaos and death, now that we were in such close contact I could see into its mind. I didn’t particularly like what I found there. It wasn’t evil, not as we understand the word—inside itself, the Morgwyn was one long scream, a howl echoing throughout the ages from before time was time. It seemed stable and even germane on the surface, but below the currents were all desperately churning; ultimately, it was a mad creature from an insane world being driven slowly sane. It didn’t hate, it didn’t particularly care to see anyone suffer. It just wanted to achieve its singular goal of returning to its native home.
As for the rest of us, well… It simply didn’t recognize other beings as really existing.
“Fleeting, butterfly lives of little consequence,” it hissed, flicking its tail. A nasty barb gleamed in the light of my horn. “Death and life are states with no boundaries in chaos. Better ended, sometimes, than forced to live in this agonizing cage.”
“Why didn’t you just kill me, then?” I asked, trying to summon up some trick. The Morgwyn dwelt with me, as I should have known it had. Escape seemed impossible. “Why did you take so long before this point?”
“The Morgwyn needed you alive, to provide the catalyst to its designs, and then the Morgwyn could not reach you. Your connection was strong, yes? But not strong enough.” The creature began to circle, cautious even with victory so close at claw. Its voice went on, trying to lull me into letting my guard down. “No, not strong enough. The Water Bearer could think of this one so perfectly as to call it, but only now, with the ichor running in your veins and shining out from your heart could you truly manifest what was unreal into the real.” It stalked a pace closer, closing the circle. “This one could be with its champion, guiding it, but it is time, one thinks, to close off that last flicker of hope.”
“Chopping me down at the finish line,” I growled. “We’ve never met, but you fear me. I could have torn down all your plans, couldn’t I? Amelia isn’t completely lost. She can still come back.”
“The Morgwyn does like to talk too much,” it admitted, flashing its glowing teeth. “This one will take no chance on such a thing ever happening. It has waited too long.” It lifted its head and inhaled deeply. “Do you feel it? It’s a taste right now—through you we are connected together to the chaos-time, and this is but a preview.”
My horn shone brighter, and copies of myself appeared around me, as perfect as the real thing in all but the critical detail of physical force. “I wouldn’t count me out just yet. You little wretch. Do you think I’m going to go down easily? You stole everything from me, you wrecked the fate of untold billions because you couldn’t handle a world that didn’t change.”
“Yes.” The blue eyes flared. “Your unicorn illusions are feeble. This one will not be much delayed in dispatching you. You will not be saving your dear sister.”
“No,” I said, and knew it with dead certainty. “I won’t.”
The Morgwyn came at me, then, from a hundred directions at once, all teeth and claws and whirling darkness. I leapt, sacrificing my fakes to race out into the strange, shifting landscape beyond. Into that unnatural night I sent forth a single, piercing beam of green light. For a few moments it shone desperately through the blackness.
“Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Leit Motif
On my travels, I often felt as if I were alone, even when surrounded by other ponies. In a town like Ponyville, where everypony knows everypony else, it can be hard to avoid getting accosted, which is why I ended up spending so much time at home alone. When you’re traveling, though, most ponies can read your body language enough to tell when you want to be left to your own devices, and will respect that, much to my satisfaction.
On a ship with a bearing directly towards war, though, I found myself alone for an entirely different reason. All around me were ponies—and other things—who I’d come to know over the course of a very wild and dangerous adventure. Now, though, it seemed as if the world were passing me by even more quickly than the earth beneath the keel. I sat by the railing, surrounded by ponies and, at the same time, completely alone.
For once, the problem wasn’t that I didn’t really care for anypony around me. On the contrary, common experiences meant that I could at least partake in the pleasure of still being alive after harrowing danger. The problem was, ultimately, that they all had a purpose.
I did not.
Ever since leaving the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters, our course had deviated so firmly from merely helping Daphne rescue her sister that it left my head spinning. At the point where we were uncovering ancient plots to undermine the very fabric of the pony race and discovering other planets, I became—well, not lost, precisely, but definitely flummoxed. There was a certain academic interest to it all, but that was it. I wouldn’t have minded studying it at a distance, but clinging to a line in a maelstrom is quite a bit different than observing it from afar. Yet everyone around me seemed to be eating it up, even the humans Marcus and Naomi, who hadn’t even known magic was real until they’d found their friend transfigured.
Speaking of, Daphne herself had become rather strange. She was the sole reason for my being here, the entire focal point of my existence, but she was being forced to address a strange new world of her own before she could really pay attention to me again. I didn’t begrudge her having to deal with such a difficult and very personal problem, but it did leave me feeling rather lonely.
So, in a move I viewed as quite reasonable, I went to address the experts on such things.
“How many times have you saved the world by now?” I asked, sitting across from Fluttershy and Rarity.
Fluttershy squeaked. “I-I don’t know if I’d call it ‘saving the world,’ exactly…”
“What do you call stopping villains bent on conquering all life?”
“Uh.”
Rarity waved her hoof and smiled beatifically. “It’s all right, dear. Honestly, Leit Motif, I’m not sure how much we can truly take credit for. Oh, certainly, we freed Nightmare Moon from her hatred, re-imprisoned Discord, but that’s really it. Even then, it was mostly the Elements doing the work for us.”
I tilted my head. “What about Queen Chrysalis or Sombra?”
“The former was more Shining Armor and Princess Cadance, and the latter was Twilight and our dear friend Spike more than the rest of us.”
“Even then,” I said, shaking my head, “you’ve at least been involved in earth-shattering events before. How do you deal with that sort of situation? Right now it doesn’t even feel real to me.”
Fluttershy shuddered. “By hoping very, very hard that it will go away.”
“Truly, dear?” Rarity ran a hoof through her mane. “That’s how it always feels. We weren’t honestly thinking about the fate of the entire world as we traipsed through the Everfree Forest in that first, most dangerous trip—though perhaps we should have, with no sun forthcoming—but we were far more concerned with surviving the moment. Discord’s reign was certainly terrifying, but we weren’t in a position to appreciate how dramatic it all was until long after.”
“They wouldn’t have stopped there, you know,” I said, quietly thoughtful. “There are other worlds out there, we now know. You saved not only the ponies of Equestria, but Daphne’s world and all its people.”
“Well!” Rarity laughed. “I hope one day they’ll know to whom to be grateful.”
“I’m just glad everypony and everyhuman is all right,” Fluttershy murmured.
“Yes. Any small part I contributed to alleviating their suffering I count as a blessing,” Rarity agreed and turned back towards me. “Why do you ask, dear? Is something amiss?”
I rubbed my hooves together uncertainly. “How do you do it? I’m staring the situation right in the face and I just can’t wrap my head around it. Do you just get used to facing existential threats?”
“No.” Fluttershy shuddered again.
“In a way, I suppose we do,” Rarity said. “I do not know how it is on the humans' Earth, but here it seems we’ve just been inundated with terrible threats.”
The Seer, sitting nearby, shifted and smiled slightly. “Until quite recently, humanity stood on the brink of global catastrophe. One might argue it was economics that saved them in the end, but perhaps they, too, were rescued by some plucky band of heroes? Hard to say.” He glanced down at his ring thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t let your fear get to you, miss. Even if we should fail, it would not truly be the end of all. There is always light and hope, if you look deep enough. We are all witnessing the birth pangs of a new era, and some danger is to be expected.”
I laughed nervously and returned to my feet. “All well outside my field, thank you… I think I need to see Daphne.” I turned and walked towards the ship’s aft. Fluttershy followed after and continued past me when I paused at the sight of Daphne talking intently to the white dragon girl, Maille. Fluttershy, for her part, settled beside a black tiger that could have eaten her in a few gulps.
“Poor kitty. How’s your head bump doing?” she asked the beast in a soothing voice. The great cat whimpered piteously and raised its head to look at her, careful of a freshly sewn wound left by one of the goblin’s weapons.
“He’s just a big baby,” Rose said, giving the tiger a fond backrub. “Give him a bit of a rest and he’ll be proper tidy, you’ll see.” Even in her proper state, the resemblance between the two of them was uncanny. Their main differences were in coloration and, of course, the presence of fangs in Rose and wings in Fluttershy.
Neither of the two seemed willing to look the other in the eye. Fluttershy would sooner have initiated conversation with Rose’s basilisk, and Rose looked almost ashamed as she stared at the decking.
“You, uh… did a great job on the stitches,” Rose offered.
“Thanks. I, uhm… it would have been difficult if you hadn’t helped calm her down.”
The two of them shuffled their hooves and said no more, focusing on the animal between them instead.
Small steps. The goblins had possessed a number of astounding attitudes about Twilight and her friends which would make the first leg of the journey rather tense. With Pinion and Lightning Dust speaking persuasively on our behalf, though, and Maille getting along so famously with her double, the others looked to be warming up to some small degree. Down below, Applejack and Marble Stone were rekindling a forgotten connection, while up above Twig was trying to teach Naomi how to shapeshift herself into a mare.
“Here’s hoping that the folks in the fortress airship feel the same way,” I muttered.
“Sorry, Leit, did you say something?” Twilight asked from my side.
I jumped a little and gave the princess an apologetic smile. “N-nothing. Sorry, Twilight.”
“It’s all right.” She turned back to face Knight Saria, a concerned expression on her face. “Anyway, as I was saying… you spoke earlier about a spark lighting in Daphne, and how it wasn’t as bright as mine yet. Do you mean to say that Daphne has some amount of alicorn magic?”
My ears pricked up.
“Alicorn magic, numen, grace, ichor, it is all the same thing, yes?” Saria waved her hand dismissively. “They are words to describe what is the heritage of all beings. When the Water Bearer’s sister touched the Golden Bridle she became more than what she is. You are the bearer of the Element of Magic, so from the first moment its power touched you, a spark was lit inside you. The Elements, they too possess numen, no?”
“No—I mean, I hadn’t really put much thought into it.” Twilight paused. “Well, okay, I’ve actually written treatises on the topic and have tried to study it as much as I can, but from what you’re telling me we’re missing a goodly portion of evidence.”
“You have only had a small portion of the greater worlds to look at. We will have much time to discuss when this is done, but we have touched on this topic before, yes? The truest magic is ancient and mysterious, and it manifests differently in all peoples and things.” She patted the wrapped hilt of her sword. “It dwells in here, a reflection of the greater Sword. It unites the nature of Equestrians. In griffins, they become towering and ferocious, and in humans it makes them more than they are.”
Twilight—and I—glanced at Daphne with the same scrutinizing gaze.
“Sorry, did I hear that Daphne is a latent alicorn?” Rarity asked. “Goodness, that doesn’t make her a princess, does it?”
“Uh. Well, I wasn’t until I gained my wings. Besides, I’m reasonably sure citizenship is a requirement for that,” Twilight said, but rolled the thought around. “Then again, Cadance can’t really be a citizen of Equestria if she’s the head of a semi-sovereign state. But then the Crystal Empire is a dependent nation which shares its military and a vast body of legal literature, and officially its citizens are also citizens of the Equestrian state, subject to all—”
Rarity put a hoof to her friend to forestall the torrent. “Suffice to say it’s not a question we can answer here.”
“Your princesses, they are the heirs of the legacy of the great alicorn kings and queens, no?” Saria asked.
Twilight scuffed a hoof. “My family isn’t of royal blood, though. Well, strictly speaking. I kind of ascended.”
“It is not so different for the Water Bearer, then, no? She is of the spirit of your alicorn forebears. Even humans have something similar, for every so often a mortal would become so great that they would be assumed up into a more perfect state. It is something of a spiritual adoption, and in that sense the Water Bearer is as much the child of Pirene as she is her parents.”
A commotion at one of the lookout nests drew our attention. The unicorn there, with a telescope pointed at the ground, whistled sharply. He flushed as the attention of all and sundry turned to him. “Uhm. Everypony? I think I’ve found what Miss Daphne was talking about.”
In an instant, the wreck Daphne’s sister had made of the gates of Tartarus had everyone’s attention, leaving me to linger on the sidelines. If anything, the event left me feeling more numb than worried. Oh, sure, the release of hundreds, maybe thousands of terrible monsters that were now free to roam about the countryside had me worried, but, once again, it felt like something happening to another mare.
I felt so selfish. All I wanted to do was reconnect with Daphne, maybe move in with her, so that we never needed to be torn apart again. Everything beyond that just felt so surreal. By that point, I’d figured out that I was probably experiencing more than a little anxiety and maybe even some situational depression. The trip to Los Pegasus and then the Pony Sisters’ Castle had both been fairly traumatic in their own ways. That coupled with the events on the island and then Daphne’s slow spiral into her own universe were more than enough to put me out of sorts.
Of course, none of that really helped.
I lifted my head in time to see Daphne walking purposefully towards the aft ladder into the ship and sighed. Preparing to follow her and speak with her, I found myself pausing as I noticed that she had just left someone at the railing. The other monkey wrench in my life, to be exact.
The sight of Marcus twisted my guts up.
That perfect moment just before the cannon shells had hit over the island, that was the point where my latest brush with ennui had begun. I’d poured my heart out and the contents had spilled uselessly into the empty air. Cold numbness crept its way over the rest of my body and I began to turn away. I wanted nothing more than to go belowdecks and bury myself beneath a pillow. The world didn’t need me.
As I turned, my eyes caught those of Lightning Dust’s. The mare hadn’t changed out of her Wonderbolts outfit, not since the time we’d parted for her to go on her mission to find the Sword and Ring goblins. She stopped me with a hoof and gave me a perplexed look. “What’s with that glare? You okay?”
I reached up and rubbed at my face. So much for resolving to control my emotions again. “Yes. No. I’m fine.”
“You don’t sound fine,” she protested, but didn’t seem inclined to push the matter. She removed her hoof.
I began to continue past her, but a flash of silver caught my eye, and I spied the winged pin on her chest she’d put on before leaving. “Hey,” I said, “isn’t that…?”
“Wonderbolts Trainee Wingmare insignia, yup,” she said with a bittersweet twist. She touched it with a hoof.
“You decided to keep it?”
She smiled wanly. “Yeah. I thought a lot. About what you said. Before I left.” She laughed quietly. “There were a lot of times I almost ripped this thing off and threw it into the sky, but… what can I say? The dream doesn’t want to die. And then I met up with my old friends, and they… well, it’s not all tidy, but they understand where I’ve been and what I want out of life. So I’ve decided that, yeah, I’ll go back to training if they’ll take me.”
I turned my head back towards the railing. Marcus stared at nothing in particular, even as the airship moved on.
“So did you—”
“I’m sorry, Lightning Dust, hold that thought,” I said apologetically. The old goblin Seer was right. Hope did lurk even in the dark. “We’ll talk later, okay? I need to take care of something important right now.”
Winds whipped across the deck as Lightning Dust nodded and let me go, sending my mane and tail streaming. I came up to the rail beside Marcus and rested my forehooves on top of it. The stage had been set, all the players had their marks. Now came the fun part: trying to find a way to broach a conversation. Turns out my jaw clenching in the face of deep, troubling personal conflicts is a bit of a habit.
Blessedly, Marc took that problem away by starting. “I don’t get it,” he said quietly. “I don’t understand how someone can go so wrong.”
“You really care for her, don’t you?” I asked softly. “Amelia. What did she mean to you?”
“Nothing, really.” He shook his head. “Well, that’s not entirely true. I mean… you know how I said I have a lot of siblings, right? Amelia kinda fits a little sister role for me, even though we’d only barely met. I’d come by with Daphne one time to meet her folks and we just clicked. She was more than happy to dig up dirt on Daph, and we laughed at the same jokes. She’s a scarily smart kid, too; I got the impression that kids her age bored her, and didn’t like her to boot, so she grasped at every chance she could get to talk to someone like me.”
“So, when you and Daphne broke up…”
He frowned even more deeply. “I suppose you’d say she lost a friend. One a good eight years older than her, but still. Damn it.”
“You can’t blame yourself on this, Marcus.”
“No, I know, it’s just, what if there were signs all along and I never noticed them? Maybe I should have told her folks about how she told about other kids picking on her, or maybe I should have introduced her to my kid siblings so she could have some friends her own age who wouldn’t treat her like crap.”
“I think that all falls under the rubric of blaming yourself,” I said with a small smile.
He laughed bitterly. “Yeah. Good point. I want to blame myself, though. I want this to be all my fault, so she doesn’t have to be responsible for whatever it is that she’s doing.”
“You’re a good stallion, Marc. Ah. Person.” I chuckled nervously. “She’s just a kid, she doesn’t deserve all this. Who can say what she’s been through to make her do the things she’s been doing? I barely caught any of what the goblins were saying, and it all sounds pretty darned traumatic for a young filly to go through.”
“Thanks. I guess I knew that, but I needed to hear it anyway,” he said. His posture had relaxed, and now his distant eyes seemed less haunted. We stood there in silence for a bit, but for the shouting of the sailors and the snap of the wind. The ship’s engines struggled mightily as the envelope dragged like a sail against the turbulent air.
Once again, my treacherous throat failed me, and once again he spoke first. “You know, we left off in the middle of a conversation the last time we spoke.”
My tongue tied itself even more firmly. I swallowed past a lump in my throat and stared firmly at the horizon. “Y-yeah.”
“What you said back there… ever since then, all through that whole mess with the centaur, and then the goblins in their sky castle…” He tugged at his shirt collar and glanced down at me. “All that about living in a house of regrets and memories and stuff… about needing more in your life than that? It’s been running through my head ever since.”
I couldn’t answer. Lyra could have snuck up behind me and cut my tail off at the base and I’d never have noticed. A large part of me wished I could teleport all the way back to my house in Ponyville and stay there until the war blew over, but, even if I could have done, I would not have.
“I think it hits pretty hard because before this whole thing started, I was thinking about leaving school, too. I was going to take my motorcycle and just ride off, find work on the road wherever I could. Try to find some… purpose to life, you know? I thought that by leaving everyone I knew and loved behind I’d be able to get a fresh start.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And, you know, maybe that would have been. But the thing is, I think I get what you mean, about needing more in life. Even if it’s… kind of strange and it’s hard and you don’t really know where to begin.”
“I like kind of strange,” I offered dully, then blushed a dark purple. “Uhm. I mean…. oh, heck, I don’t know what I mean.” If only somepony had been around to teach me how to invite a not-colt into my creepy, dark living room during my stunted childhood.
Snowflakes drifted by to settle in his hair, and I opened my mouth to continue before snapping it shut again. This time, it wasn’t a mere case of tongue tying. “Is that snow?” I asked.
He dusted at his head then reached out to my coat. I flicked an ear as he picked something up on a finger that quickly melted. “Snow? Wow, little early in the year for that, isn’t it? Or at we just that high up?”
I glanced around, and saw that we weren’t the only ones getting a fresh coating of white powder. “But Winterfall isn’t for another two days. We haven’t even had Nightmare Night yet,” I protested.
“Winterfall?” he asked.
“Yeah, the time when the pegasi switch over to snow clouds,” I said distractedly. “There shouldn’t be snow anywhere yet.”
“Captain!” the lookout shouted. “There’s something dead ahead. A storm just spinnin’ itself out of nothing!”
“No,” I moaned as I realized what was going on. The world was sweeping away from me again, tearing at the foundations I’d carefully built and rebuilt. “No, no. I’ve gotten so close…” I felt like crying. My hooves shifted as if the planks beneath them were little more than textured sand.
Two strong arms caught me as I slumped. The owner grunted with the weight but held me steady. In surprise, I looked up to find Marc’s face staring down at me. “Whatever comes,” he said intently, “we’re going to finish this conversation. I don’t know what this is, but I want to find out.”
Our eyes met as the vessel shuddered. The crew rushed around us, manning their posts as the pegasi tried to put together a defense against the darkening sky. The wind stole my breath. It was like an electric current striking from head to tail, searing away the numbness as it went. I no longer felt so remote, so disconnected. More than that—I had something that I wanted to accomplish. A goal to keep me moving forward that wasn’t just a pit of black uncertainty.
“Daphne!” I gasped, my eyes widening. I moved so quickly Marcus almost toppled flat on his face. I caught him in a bed of magic and righted him. “We have to find her! She can tell us what’s going on.” Alert now, I raced for the ladder.
Darkness met me. It came screaming out of the lower decks and I only barely backpedaled in time. Roiling, churning, it writhed like a thing alive rather than the mere absence of stuff, and, with a terrible rushing sound, it was then sucked back down. From deep within the ship’s core, capacitors screamed as they were suddenly overloaded, and the engines began to whine and weaken.
It was all I could do to keep my footing on the deck as the blizzard winds ripped at the vessel, and, without sufficient power to fight it, the ship began to turn inexorably toward the maelstrom. Captain Holder’s shouts pierced the gloom as he tried to rally his sailors, even as the vessel plunged through a curtain of icy mist to reveal the spinning eye of the storm that hung over Equestria. Shafts of pale, stygian light pierced the roiling black column like the final gasps of a dying sun, and a terrible wailing tinged the wind’s screams.
A rope wrapped in golden light found me and curled about my midsection. It secured me to the main mast, and I gripped it to steady myself. “Well,” Lyra shouted over the wind, “I think we’ve found one of the Tartarians!”
“Yeah.” I nodded, tearing my eyes from the terrible thing. “I need to find Daphne!” Before I could start down the ladder, though, Applejack came up it with Marble Stone at her heels. “Applejack! What’s going on down there?”
“Trouble. Somethin’ came and tore through the engine room, like a shadow outta heck,” she said, staring wide-eyed into the maelstrom. Pegasi were being whipped around even as they tried to establish a safe area, and the only thing that kept them from being swept away were the guide ropes about their middles.
“It was the damned Morgwyn,” Marble Stone growled. She snapped her hoof and pulled a hammer from thin air. Her eyes scanned for more trouble.
“Where’s Daphne?” I asked. “Is she coming? We might need her help!”
Applejack’s face turned stricken. “Leit. I… I’m not sure.”
“Not sure? What do you—” A terrifying screech split the air, and Lyra thrust me aside as black wings and talons flashed. I looked up to see a terrible man-shaped crow clawing for Applejack and beating its wings. Marble Stone reacted instantly, striking the head of her hammer into the creature’s torso and shattering ribs with ease. Lyra was an instant behind her, blasting it with a golden ray that sent it spiraling over the rail. All around, more of the crow-monsters were swooping and screeching. Captain Holder led a charge to defend the ship, sending them reeling, but rather than attacking random ponies they seemed to be concentrating rather purposefully. Two tried to approach the Seer only to be firmly rebuffed by a shell of crystalline light, while no less than six tried themselves against Saria, who had become the epicenter of a forest of lightning arcs. Twilight blasted left and right with purple beams.
Rarity and Fluttershy, though, were not so fortunate. Swarmed and overrun, the bird creatures seized the two of them in their talons and opened their wings to let the wind carry them away. I’m not entirely sure what came over me, but I shouted a challenge and charged, my horn lighting up as I sent sizzling bolts at the ones carrying Rarity away, actually landing a blow. Lyra’s and Rarity’s horns lit up, and together the three of us seized the other captor and flung him into the deck so hard Rarity bounced.
As I turned to try and free Fluttershy, though, a talon flashed and a line of hot fire cut across my forehead. I gasped and reeled as my own blood half-blinded me, struggling to put another spell out against the advancing shape with its nightmarish black beak. Thunder roared, and my attacker jerked back once. Another shot rang out and feathers burst from its chest before it slumped lifelessly at my feet. There was a clink, and I looked up to see Marcus standing there, ejecting another shell as he sighted a bird and fired again.
Lyra helped me to my feet, but even as we did the deck bucked beneath us and knocked us down again into a pile with Marcus. Naomi appeared before me with her hair in a tight braid and a quick hand as she wiped away my blood and applied gauze.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. Naomi pushed me back down as I struggled to get up. Even from my seat, I could see that the airship was listing dramatically, and the maelstrom spun around us disorientingly. I pushed her hands away with a hoof after she’d soaked up the blood. “Get me a mirror. I can handle the cut.”
“We’re in deep, that’s what,” Marcus growled.
“Control has been damaged,” Naomi said, her voice strained with an enforced calm as she held a small mirror up. “We’re on backup power and it’s fading fast, too.”
I was relieved to see that the cut was shallow; being a head wound, the bleeding looked worse than it actually was. I bounced a green beam off the mirror’s surface and closed the cut as best I could for now. “Wh-what about the monsters? Fluttershy?”
“Gone,” she answered grimly, “both of them. They just… hauled her over the side.”
Nearby, I heard Twilight shouting at the Seer, “How did Celestia beat this thing? Do you have any idea? I read about it in my books, but there wasn’t much detail!”
The Seer held onto Saria’s arm against the tilting of the deck. “She flew into its heart and battled the titanspawn directly, twice! The first time as a young mare when she earned her wings, and then later again when she’d found Tartarus!”
Twilight Sparkle stared out at the vile heart of the storm. It had grown disturbingly close, such that its churning bulk filled half the sky and its wailing keened constantly. She set her shoulders and marched to the railing. “Applejack? You’re in charge now.” Never had I seen her look more fitting in her role as princess as she opened her wings and steadied herself to leap.
“Wait!” Leaping from between Pinkie Pie and Applejack, Lightning Dust seized the princess’s tail and hauled her back to the deck just as she launched.
Dazed, Princess Twilight stared up at the ex-goblin mare. “Huh? Flash—er, Lightning Dust, we really don’t have time to plan or—”
Lightning Dust shoved a hoof in her mouth to silence her. “You’re right, we don’t!” She stared up at the others, her blond mane rippling as she stood framed by the vile storm cell. “You’re not a strong enough flyer for this. You get into those crosswinds and they’ll batter you senseless in moments. There’s only a handful of mares in Equestria who could even think of doing it, and I’m the only one of them here.”
Maille, Pinion, Marble Stone, Rose, and Twig pushed forward. “Flash, Dust, whatever,” Pinion said, staring up at the torrent. “You aren’t exactly a super powered alicorn princess, you know…”
Maille put a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to prove anything to us anymore, either.”
Dust shrugged it off. “Yes I do!” She growled and bit at her armor straps to undo them, sending the pieces to the ground where they were picked up by Twig’s red magic, her twin gazelle horns lighting up.
“We forgave you! It’s all tidy between us!” Rose said.
“I didn’t,” Dust shouted back, and I could see that her eyes were glistening. “I’ve never forgiven myself for leaving you all behind, not when I was first hiding out in Equestria and certainly not since meeting back up with you again. Hel’s arse, if anything, it’s only made it worse!” She wiped at her eyes bitterly. “You all welcomed me back and I didn’t deserve any of it. I never earned my way back!”
“You don’t have to!” Rose snapped. “Ach-a-fi, Flash, Think about Wire, ya bald-headed idiot!”
“I am!” She flung off the last piece of her armor and belted her pony sword back on. “I’m doing this so you lot can go find her for me and tell her how bloody sorry I am for not being the sister she needed me to be.” She put a hoof on the railing. “Tell her I was the greatest flyer in Equestria.”
Rose stomped forward to stop her, but Marble Stone put a leg in front of her. No amount of shoving let Rose budge past that solid barrier. Twig nodded slightly and stepped forward, wrapping a hoof around Lightning Dust’s neck to gave her a tight embrace. “Tell her yourself when you get back,” she said lightly.
Dust squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the tears out. “I will.” And with that, she was gone off the side. A streak of zig-zagging light leapt up in her wake and sliced into the heart of the storm, seeming pitifully small against its terrifying bulk.
Pinion looked ready to follow after her, but Marble Stone stopped her with a firm shake of her head. “Don’t even. You ain’t the flyer she is.”
“Well?” Rose demanded, wiping at her face. “What are you gods-damned ponies waitin’ for? Let’s get the bleedin’ power back on.”
“We’re trying, but there’s a lot of damage down at the engine!” A midshipmare said.
“What’s broken?” Maille asked intently.
“Camshaft, gear box…”
“Do you have any replacement parts?”
“Some, but we—” She yelped as Maille bowled past her and raced belowdecks.
The ship began to twist even more violently as we careened in. Sickly pale light flashed hellishly across the faces of earth ponies and pegasi, both straining to keep the envelope from ripping its cables clean off the deck. The Seer’s ring flooded magic into the hull to help quell its groans as the wood bent and warped. Then, just as it seemed as if nothing more could be done, a terrible cry pierced the air like a siren. The maelstrom picked up speed, and the piercing shafts of light flickered and danced. As it sped up, though, it became more chaotic, and the winds began to fight one another, spending their energy in great thundering blasts of lightning and bursts of snow and slush that served to weaken the storm’s grip.
The deck thrummed, and for an awful moment I thought the ship was about to tear itself apart, but then an ensign cried out in a breaking voice. “Captain! She’s got power!”
Steely-eyed, Captain Holder righted his cap on his head and seized the wheel in both forehooves. “We need a clear path!”
No matter where I looked, I couldn’t see anything. The storm was falling apart around us, but I couldn’t for the life of me have said where Canterlot mountain had gone, let alone which way was safe through the torrential winds. I pressed into Marcus and Naomi’s sides, clutching them hard.
Pinkie’s nose twitched and she frowned. Then it twitched again, and her ears flopped. A shiver went down her spine. “Oo… that one tickled. I think something’s coming, and… hey, look!”
We all followed the line of her hoof to the ship’s bow. There, shining through the darkness, a ray of green light touched the ice-slick prow. It wavered and flickered, but held steady, shifting left and right as the ship did, keeping a steady direction through the sunless murk.
“Daphne,” I whispered, and raised my voice. “Captain! Follow that light!”
The grizzled pegasus grunted and heaved the wheel over. “Come on, girl. You’ve taken us this far, don’t let me down!” Slowly, like a whale breaking the waves, the battered vessel turned against the wind and thrust forward. Back and forth we weaved, and the crew heroically tacked the vessel to and fro. Lightning flashed from the sky and part of the envelope caught on fire, only for it to be extinguished by the icy winds a moment later. Shards of ice rained down, some piecing the hull, but on we went, fighting every step of the way.
The light of the sun filled our world, and never had its warmth felt so sweet. I blinked away the glare and saw the dark, looming bulk of the mountain at the heart of Equestria ahead, a spire of rock that dominated the rolling fields and lakes and lesser peaks around it.
“Oh, stars,” Rarity whispered.
That there was a battle about the mountain was not in question. Winged shapes flocked to and fro, and its surface was marred with swarming figures. Smoke rose from the city that clung to its side, and even the castle seemed to be under siege, with magic and fighting shapes visible even from here. The rail line was a ruined scar, and the waterfall had been choked with debris and dark shapes.
At its snow-capped peak, a fire pierced the heavens.
“We need to go up there, don’t we?” Applejack asked, adjusting her hat on her wind-blown mane.
Twilight bit her lip. “Yes. But, without Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy…” She looked at the satchel which held the Elements of Harmony helplessly.
“We can find them!” Applejack insisted. “We have the Seer, and we—”
“—are running out of time,” Daphne’s voice said as if from a great distance. The green light that had guided us grew in strength and, from it, she stepped out—or part of her did, backlit in shining astral light. Built of insubstantial green mist, her sad eyes looked over the mess of Canterlot mountain and then our poor ship.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help earlier, everypony. I was—am—pretty tied up.”
“Daphne!” I cried in unison with Naomi, Marcus, and even Lyra, the four of us charging up to her. “What’s happened?” I demanded. “Where are you? Are you all right?”
The image flickered and crackled fitfully. “I’m… somewhere, somewhen that’s hard to describe. The Morgwyn tried to take me out so I couldn’t reach Amelia, and I’m sorry to say it succeeded—in a sense. It’s stalking me through the… place I’m in now, trying to kill me, and it’s about all I can do to keep this connection up.”
“Where are you?” Twilight Sparkle asked. “Maybe we can…” She trailed off as she saw the hopelessness in Daphne’s face.
“I’m afraid you’d have an easier time getting to the moon without help. I don’t even know how to get here.”
The Seer shuffled up. “Perhaps a titanspawn…” He trailed off as well, shaking his head. “No, she’s right. There is no time.”
“What are we supposed to do, then?” I demanded. “We don’t have all the Element bearers and we don’t have you, Daphne!”
“At the risk of sounding sappy, you have each other.” She smiled weakly. “Look, there’s still hope. Maille, Rose, Twig, Marcus, Naomi… you can still reach her. There’s still a chance.”
As if on cue, the Wand battleship pushed out of the trailing edge of the dying maelstrom, its huge propellers churning black clouds into thunderheads.
“Fight your way to her. Please.” Daphne’s image wavered and dissolved briefly into a haze of green mist before it coalesced again. The halo around her head intensified and for a moment she almost seemed real again. “We may even be able to rescue Fluttershy. I don’t know; everything is a jumble now, and there’s so many futures I don’t know where to begin. I’ll guide you, though, as best I can.”
“We’re going to need to land, then,” Twilight said determinedly. “As high as we can, with as much force as we can.” She turned towards the captain and frowned at him. “Captain… how much more can we ask of you and your ship?”
Captain Holder looked to the scarred envelope, the severed ropes, the tired crew, and the shattered boards of his vessel. All of us could hear the tortured way the hastily repaired engines clanked and banged below. He turned his face back to the young princess and met her gaze squarely. “All we have left to give.”
“For Equestria,” the deck officer said solemnly.
“Equestria!” a pair of ice archers said. “Equestria!” the cry went up, taken up by every remaining voice. “Equestria! Equestria!” A forest of hooves pumped into the air.
Twilight blinked and rubbed at her face before standing tall for the assembled ponies. “All right, I… thank you, Captain.”
He gestured a hoof at Rose and Marble Stone. “Can you lot signal that behemoth? We’re going to need all the firepower we can get.”
They glanced towards Twig, who smiled and pulled a red cloth out of thin air. She spread it over the air and, when she pulled it aside, a great polished mirror revealed itself on the deck.
“Oo,” a watching pony gushed. “Do you do parties?”
Marble Stone rolled her eyes and tilted the mirror up. She caught the sun’s rays and flashed them at the preceding ship. An answering ray met her, and she began to signal by tilting the mirror away and back. “We’ll be ready, Captain.”
“So be it.” He pushed through the ruined portal of the cockpit door and grabbed an intercom horn. “All hooves, this is the captain speaking! Evacuate nonessential personnel! I want every able body either at battle stations or off my ship in five minutes!”
“How we are going to get down to the mountain?” Applejack asked as the deck suddenly became quite crowded with rushing ponies. “There ain’t nearly enough life rafts left.”
“You aren’t going to need it,” the Captain answered sternly. “We’re going down to meet the mountain.”
Naomi’s eyes widened. I was surprised she hadn’t cottoned on to the meaning of ‘all we have left to give until now.’ “But… with the ship in this condition, can it survive? You don’t have control for a soft landing.”
“We do not,” the Captain agreed. He gave us all a long look before taking the wheel. “Ponies, humans, goblins, whatever you are—it has been a pleasure serving you.”
“To your positions,” the deck officer said, taking us in hoof and guiding us forward. She saw to it that we were tied down securely once more before going back to stand beside her captain.
Naomi began to sob quietly and Pinkie Pie offered her tail as a tissue, which she accepted. Marcus and I kept our silence.
The Wand battleship closed distance remarkably swiftly, or perhaps our engines had simply been damaged that badly. Even at this distance, the thunder of its broadside shook the air. Shells trailed in the air before timed fuses erupted in brilliant fireworks. The first volley fell well short of the clouds of Tartarian monsters. Like a hornet’s nest kicked over, they wheeled in the air and launched out, rising up from the mountain slopes. I was glad I couldn’t see them up close; even from here, something seemed wrong about the way they flew, each group as different from the others as I was from Naomi.
The second volley was lethally accurate. Shell bursts ripped through aerial formations and sent dark shapes tumbling out of the sky, smoking and wailing. Still more came, and the battle was on.
It was a battle I, blessedly, had no part in. The titanspawn fired back with beams of rippling light or stranger things by far, but it was the heavily armed Wand airship they reserved their fury for during that first battle. Meanwhile, our little ship closed in on Canterlot mountain’s steep slopes. Out of the Wand ship’s hangars boiled the craft bearing our Sword, Ring, and Wand allies.
Daphne appeared again, whispering to the Captain, and he closed his eyes briefly and nodded. “Release the ballast!” he cried, and axes were swung up and down the ship, sending the last remaining bags of dirt and gravel falling. Inexorably, the ship rose.
Any hopes that we might have avoided trouble were dashed, as rocks rose up from below and pinged off the armored hull. Something fast and huge crashed into the hull, unseen from my vantage, and then an awful tearing echoed up from the engine room. Captain Holder threw himself at the wheel and turned it rapidly as the ship began to list.
“Brace for impact!” voices shouted. All around, ponies and goblins alike hunkered down.
The Seer raised his ring. Shards of light flew rapidly across everyone on deck.
I buried my face into Marcus’s side, refusing to watch as the cliffside inexorably approached.
The proud airship struck prow first, but Holder’s quick action kept it from hitting head-on. The thin armor crumpled at once, and then the wood beneath it. Timbers splintered and split as the whole vessel began to slide across the rocky top of the cliff. The vessel’s entire bottom was gutted on boulders and hard earth. The propellers on the side of the deck screeched to hard stops and died. The cables holding the envelope snapped and whirled off. Still we kept on sliding.
As if in final insult, a wrenching forest of snaps in the superstructure signalled the breaking of the ship’s back. Had it not been for its grinding halt, the entire vessel might have split in two. As it was, there was a gap in the deck and several of the lower rooms had been split in half. Many of its passengers, myself and Marcus included, found ourselves flung up and away. I expected to meet a short, brutal end with the ground, but I bounced and banged across it with what felt like feather touches until I came to rest a few yards from the wreck of our once proud vessel.
No, I corrected myself as I rose shakily and bruised to my feet. Nestled there in the grip of the mountain that had taken it, the ship’s wreck was still proud, still defiant even as it lay split nearly in twain. It had done its final duty with a minimum of complaint and to the best that could have been expected of it.
“I didn’t even know her name,” I said numbly.
Coughing, Lyra eased herself back to her hooves. Like me, she had been saved by the Seer’s magic, and dozens of others like us were now picking themselves up. “I survived? Wow. I would not have called that.”
“Hector?” Naomi called, ignoring her bruises to race over towards the ship.
“He’s fine!” Rose called back, suppressing a groan as she peeled herself off a rock. “Twilight added a little extra for him and the others.”
I wobbled over to Marcus and nudged him. He blinked up at me dully. “What was the ship’s name?” I asked him.
His eyes cleared and he craned his neck up to look at it with me. “I’m… I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“Her name,” Daphne’s disembodied voice said, “is the Lodestar, after the star in the north which has guided sailors for generations.” She appeared on the ridge above. “Hurry, now, all—they’re coming.”
Princess Twilight glanced around until she spied her. “Can we get help from Princess Luna? Or maybe—” She grimaced “—Discord?”
“I am afraid they are both facing significant titanspawn hordes. The Morgwyn specifically targeted them, too, with the anticipation that they would be a threat. There are other ponies on the mountain, though; if we get a move on, we can reconnect with them.”
“All right. Everypony, grab what you can,” Twilight said, testing her wings and moving to hover so she could favor her limp.
Rarity shook dust from her mane, looking at her friend with concern. “Twilight… there’s a fair number of injured here. Some badly. I don’t think we can all abandon them.”
“The Seer, Saria…?”
“I am fine,” the feline warrior said, climbing off the deck. “The Seer, though…”
“Is he…?”
“He lives, but he neglected his own safety, so as to save more of you.” She touched her heart. “Even your Captain is in better shape. He may have bought all your lives with his own, may the gods give him rest.”
I breathed a sigh of relief with that, as romantic as going down with one’s ship was.
His first mate pushed through the wreckage, her sides bandaged and part of her tail severed, but she took a determined stand. “I and the remainder of the crew will hold this position, Princess. We have ice arrows, clouds, and the ship forms a natural defensive wall.”
“What about medical aid?” Twilight asked.
“Little.” She shook her head. “I’m afraid there’s not much we could do about that either way.”
Turning from her attentions to Hector, Naomi bit her lip, then raised her hand. “I’ll stay.”
“Naomi?” Marcus asked, surprised, looking up from examining his rifle.
“I may not know Equestrian anatomy in-and-out, but I am, uhm… qualified in first aid and some veterinary science for horses. I’ve been treating them all my life.” She smiled sadly at Marcus. “I’m sorry, but… we’ve proven several times now that I’m useless in a fight. I’m not like Daphne or Saria or any of these mares that way. If I go with you, I’m only going to get in the way and maybe get someone killed for real.”
I wanted to speak up and tell her that I, too, had no business in a fight, but my tongue dried in my mouth and I kept my silence.
Marcus considered her, then nodded and embraced her. “You’re something else, Naomi. Don’t kid yourself; you’re braver than one in a thousand. If it weren’t for you, we’d never have made it.”
She sniffled and rubbed her nose. “Thanks.” Then she pushed Hector’s reins into his hand. “You take care, all right?”
He looked up at the enormous horse. “Are you sure?”
“He’d just get into trouble here. At least with you he’ll be getting into trouble deliberately instead of by accident.”
“Well, boy, looks like you’re getting a real adventure now,” he said, patting the horse’s neck. Hector whickered eagerly and stamped his hooves.
“Isn’t he just the bravest?” Lyra sighed.
“Yeah,” I murmured, staring not at all at the horse.
“Come on, then!” Maille said, the dragon girl climbing out of the vessel and shouldering a great, broad-bladed spear. She looked down the mountain’s slope as it curved around; the hooting and hollering of some strange host echoed up at us, and we could hear their footstamps. “No time to waste.”
Marcus nodded and mounted up smoothly, then together we caught up to the group heading further up the ridge, towards a narrow defile that allowed us to climb higher. Behind, Naomi waved, a red-headed figure atop the deck, before turning and going to treat the wounded. We didn’t stay to watch the battle unfold, though the sound of ice arrows freezing clouds and dropping them like icy meteors followed us up.
Now, our party was down to just us. Saria, the other goblins minus Lightning Dust, the Bearers less Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, Marcus, Hector, Lyra, and myself, along with a few creatures of Rose’s. An awkward band if ever there was one, composed of aliens, deceivers, former rivals, and jumped up magic students. We had allies coming soon, but, in a large way, it was just us against the forces of chaos and the enslaved thousand-year ruler of Equestria.
Most of them—Lyra shockingly included—were either highly trained warriors with a sense of purpose and discipline, or the Element Bearers, who had saved the universe several times over. Even Marcus had pulled his weight and then some with his sophisticated firearms. Somehow, a reclusive never-was had found herself thrust into their midst.
Our way through the tumbled rocks was led by a bright green star that pierced through the frozen gloom, watching over us from above. That alone kept me moving forward, because at the other side of that light was my major reason for being here in the first place. It was hard to keep complaining to myself when I knew that Daphne was in a fight for her life in some place I couldn’t even imagine.
We scrambled over cracked sheets of granite blueschists between heavy white boulders that had fallen from further up, their surfaces covered in only the most resilient lichen. The already chill mountain air had been made more so by the unseasonable arrival of winter brought by the maelstrom. We all had much larger concerns than chills at the moment, though, for a shadowy figure swirled into being atop a stone ahead.
The Morgwyn’s blue eyes seemed far away; a ghost, an image even. Saria reacted at once, sending a scathing arc of lightning through its position—to little effect beyond scorching the stone. The Morgwyn laughed and more copies alighted on the stones around us, wavering like soot from foul flames.
“Your champions grow tired, Water Child,” it observed languidly.
“They’ve seen worse,” Daphne answered, the green star pulsing with her words. “Everyone! Keep alert!”
“This game is not unique to you. The Morgwyn, too, can play.” At once, the Morgwyn’s bodies flew apart, turning into flights of sooty black crows. Vile, hirsute forms leapt from their concealment and fell among us shrieking. Grotesque mockeries of the form of men or apes, they swung huge arms tipped with ugly, blunt nails.
If they’d hoped to find us prey, they were sorely disappointed. The goblins rose to the occasion dramatically before the rest of us; in smooth coordination, Maille, Pinion, Rose, and Marble Stone fanned out in their armor and broke their ragged charge. The answering strikes, from Maille’s polearm to Pinion’s sword to Rose’s hooves to Marble’s hammer, were far less ineffectual, and the apemen fell back bloodied. Twig, in the center of the formation, cast out a circle of glittering powder that erupted into blinding fireworks. Knight Saria, of course, was a force unto herself, threshing the titanspawn with her blade like an earth pony at harvest.
Into the confusion Lyra, Marcus, and the Bearers hit, with hooves, bullets, and magic flying left and right. Rose’s one-eyed basilisk fixed a pair, and their limbs began to turn to stone on the spot. An apeman that leapt onto its back was met by the leap of Rose’s black tiger, and then a screeching eagle caught another and lifted it high into the air to dump off the side of the cliff.
I started to gather my own magic to join in, but something seemed wrong. This attack was rather anemic to have demanded the Morgwyn’s attention like that. Its crows circled around still, and I was reminded suddenly of how Twilight and her friends had been so deliberately targeted on the Lodestone’s deck.
“Well-spotted,” Daphne’s voice murmured into my ear. “This is clearly just a distraction. I’m trying to spot the trap. Keep ready.”
Trusting in Daphne, I lit my horn brighter and held myself alert in the deceptively calm eye of the storm of violence surrounding me. My patience was rewarded when a piercing green light fell on one of the white granite boulders which, now that I looked at it more closely, did seem rather oddly lumpy compared to the others. Deciding not to waste too much time on geological musings, I opened up on it with a searing ray of green light.
The rock gave a surprisingly humanoid scream, and dust and chips of stone flew as it bounced up the hill and away like a tossed toy. Perhaps I wasn’t a powerhouse like Twilight Sparkle or a trained combat unicorn like Lyra, but damn it if I didn’t have some weight to throw around.
The crows screamed in fury and dove at me. I gasped and covered my head, but a brilliant green radiance surrounded me, causing the sooty black birds to be seared into glittering motes. I looked up to see Daphne’s transfigured unicorn form standing over me protectively for just a few minutes, her face set and determined, before she again faded.
The intervention had been enough, though. Two more stones unfurled themselves in a sinister approximation of goblin magic. Huge cyclopean beasts with stony skin surged into the fight, knocking through with sheer mass and sending apemen, goblins, and ponies alike spinning. One of them reached down to snatch up Twilight Sparkle, but eldritch fires erupted around her, and the creature flinched back long enough for Applejack to buck one of its legs out from under it, sending it teetering away. I stared at the flames in shock, covering my face against the heat, but it soon became apparent what was going on as Twilight’s tail passed through a fire without burning. Daphne’s ghostly laughter in my ear confirmed it.
More flames burst around the others, giving them precious moments to rise. Unfortunately, one apeman, already maddened with bloodlust, dared leap across the flames to tackle Maille. Slowly, the others lost their fear and the flames dissolved into green mist as they charged back in. Instead, they leapt up around the field, and the other cyclops laughed as soldiers began to emerge from it, leathery-winged ones in the dark scalloped armor of the Night Guard.
“Hah!” the other cyclops bellowed in a huge voice. “Little ponies think we’re gonna fall for the illusion trick twice?” He turned and snared Pinkie Pie with a huge fist.
“Nah,” Pinkie Pie said brightly, unconcerned with her sudden predicament. “This one’s real.”
Ten night ponies charged and bowled the cyclops over, leaving Pinkie Pie suspended in midair as he fell. “See?” she said to him as she landed easily and he flailed helplessly.
Taking a page out of the Morgwyn’s book, the concealed ponies pounced on the titanspawn. Marcus came pounding up on Hector, the horse’s nostrils flaring and the rider no less excited as he sighted with his pistol and squeezed a round off into an apeman holding down Pinion. I raced after him to regroup with the others, and soon the remaining monsters ran off down the slope, harried by thrown spears. Marcus charged after them, sending a few more rounds their way, before racing back up the slope.
“Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes,” he said to a pair of Night Guards alighting on a stone nearby. He glanced down at me with a grin. “Arrived just in the nick of time.”
“We were led by some sort of ghost pony,” one of the two mares observed. The other ran a hoof through the bristle of her blue mane and grinned at him. “Who and what are you?”
He popped a clip out of the bottom of his gun and pushed a new one home. “Just a new hero from afar, ladies.”
They giggled and rolled their eyes. Marcus sighed, and Lyra trotted up with a grin. “Don’t worry, Marcus. You won’t be trapped in a strange world where the only people to appreciate your masculine charms are colorful horses forever. Unless we turn you into a cute stallion first, then you’re never leaving our sight.”
I dug a knee into her gut and glowered.
“Princess,” their leader, a tall mare with a wing-crested helmet, addressed Twilight, “are you all right? I fear we wasted valuable time questioning the strange green mare—we have seen too many odd sights lately to trust such things lightly.” She paused. “Not that we find ghosts all so common that we’d trust them off-hoof anyway, but the circumstances warranted extra caution.”
“I’m fine,” Twilight lied. She was favoring one of her forehooves even more obviously than before. “I think the rest of us are—”
“Wait!” Pinkie Pie cried, bouncing up. She pointed her hoof at each member of the party in turn and gasped. “Where’s Rarity?”
“They grabbed her early on,” Daphne said glumly. A few of the night ponies looked uncomfortably at the talking star. “My ability to see things is growing ever more unreliable.”
“Damn!” Applejack swore, and the rest of us stared. It was so unlike her we didn’t do anything as she stalked up to the captured cyclops and kicked him in the head. He yelped and flopped uselessly in the ropes holding him down while she climbed up on his chest to glare down at him. “What have you done with Rarity and Fluttershy?”
“No kill, no kill!” he whimpered, cringing back from the comparatively tiny orange mare. It wasn’t immediately clear if he was pleading or objecting. “Not supposed to kill, master ordered, can’t ignore her voice.”
“Strange that titanspawn would be so squeamish.” Saria put a hand to the cyclops’s temple, frowning. “I can feel something familiar here… Cup magic, I am thinking. That certainly explains how she is controlling them.”
“They’ve not killed any ponies yet. Indeed, they seem almost suicidally focused on trying to capture,” the Night Guard captain added.
“Yes, yes! Take ponies away, especially the special ones,” the cyclops agreed in a whimper.
“Actually, your Highness, that’s something we wanted to address with you,” the mare said. “We were charged by Princess Luna with delivering somepony very important to the capital and ran into trouble here.”
Twilight’s ears pricked up and she frowned. “Important? Who?”
A very somber stallion herded a few other pegasi and night ponies ahead of them. All of them had the look of Royal or Night Guard, and one of them had a nasty bruise across his face.
“These ponies were all present at the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters when it was attacked, near Princess Celestia’s chambers.” The mare pushed one gently and he listed to the side, disinterested. One of them sniffed hopefully at another stallion’s food satchel.
“The Bridle,” Twig said breathlessly. A sick realization dawned on her face. “Wait—from when Celestia was captured? Th-that… you don’t mean…”
Silently, another pony was drawn forward. She followed her guide unresistingly, her eyes utterly devoid of anything resembling thought. Her mane and tail fell limp, a once proud rainbow sapped of its glory.
Twig’s scream drowned out any other sound of grief. She ran forward, flinging the poor bystanding Night Guard out of the way in spite of her narrow frame. “Rainbow Dash! It’s me, Twig!” She put her hooves on the other mare’s shoulder, trying to stir a response out of her. “Please, speak to me! Tell me you’re in there! Oh, gods. What have I done.”
She collapsed into a heap against the mare, her bristly tail curling around her as she folded into a ball. Maille tried to gentle her without much success.
I scrupulously avoided looking at Twilight Sparkle and her friends. Just then, I was remembering the rather awful things I’d written about Rainbow Dash in my journal, and didn’t much fancy the guilt I’d feel seeing their grief after wishing harm on her. She’d been a troublemaker, sure, but the worst I’d ever wanted to see happen to her was a little karmic justice. Not… that.
“What can we do?” Twilight asked Saria in a deceptively calm voice. It was a voice that was trying very hard to remain steady.
The Knight looked back at her, snow flurries dancing about her ears. “I cannot say. Magic to cure magic. Perhaps the Element?”
“Of course!” Twilight brightened with bitter hope. “I should have thought of that myself!” But when she clipped the Element of Loyalty about its owners neck, the jewel remained dull and lifeless, and so did Rainbow Dash. She didn’t even seem to recognize it or her friend as they neared, and she paid little enough heed to the distraught creature hanging off her as it was.
“They didn’t help us when Discord turned us against our natures,” Applejack said quietly, “not until we had them all together. We need them together.”
“There’s something else important about this, too,” Lyra said. She flicked her tail and nodded her head towards the listless ponies. “Notice something? When ponies get near the Bridle, that happens. So, tell me, how in the heck are we going to get close to Amelia?”
“We won’t,” Twilight said, “this is as far as we go.”
“What?” Marcus asked, surprised. “What do you mean?”
The princess shook her head. “Lyra is right. None of us can get near her, and we can’t do anything so long as the Elements are separated. We need Rarity and Fluttershy back.”
“I can’t just abandon Amelia! I need to reach her, damn it!”
Pinion hovered by his head. “Hey, hey, don’t forget… you’ve got us, still!”
“And we still have an army,” Marble Stone pointed out. “Which is where, exactly, Water Bearer?”
“They’ve formed a beachhead higher up the mountain,” Daphne said.
Marble Stone nodded and marched up to her cousin. She stared at her awkwardly for a moment and flicked her golden tail before speaking. “Looks like this is partin’, then, cous.”
“Heh, yeah.” Applejack tilted her hat back. “For now at least. That seems to be goin’ around a lot in these parts.”
Pinion prodded Pinkie Pie. “Can I call you cous?”
“Absolutely!” Pinkie Pie grinned broadly and sucked her clone into a tight hug.
Applejack chuckled, and, in lieu of a hug, gave her cousin a hoof bump. “See you on the other side if this don’t work out, then.”
“I’m staying, too,” Twig declared.
Maille gave her shoulders a squeeze, “Twig, dear…”
“No!” She sniffled and clung harder still to Rainbow Dash. “I’m not leaving her! More titanspawn might come for her!”
“They’re bound not to kill, and she won’t resist. She’ll be all right. Amelia might not be.” Maille turned her friend’s face up to look into her eyes. “You’re her teacher. You’re responsible for what happens to your student.”
Twig’s face blanched. “That’s not fair, Maille.”
“Aye?” Maille nodded. “That it isn’t.”
Twig rose unsteadily to her hooves. She gave Dash a lingering look and a squeeze. She whispered something into the unresponsive mare’s ears and moved over to join the goblins, monsters, and Marcus while the Night Guard began to ready themselves to move out and follow the princess.
Lyra looked at me expectantly. She lifted a minty eyebrow. “Well?”
I started, glancing around. “Well, what?”
“Are you going to go?”
I watched the Night Guard move into their formations. Daphne had appeared out of the aether to converse with Twilight Sparkle, the two of them doubtless trying to hash out the location and disposition of their missing friends. Then I turned my gaze up to the roof of the world, where the golden fire still raged at the sky. With a heavy swallow, I turned towards Marcus’s band and trotted over.
“Leit…?”
“Don’t try and talk me out of it, Lyra!” I snapped. “I know what this means! I’ll stop before we get anywhere near the top. I just… I need to see this through, no matter what. I don’t have a place with Twilight and her friends, either. Marcus—and Daphne—need my help more.”
“Whoa, whoa.” She lifted a hoof placatingly. “I wasn’t objecting. I was just about to ask if you wanted some company.”
I stared at her.
“Well, hey,” she said with exaggerated umbrage, “if you’d rather I not I can always just trot on home and veg out on the couch like I usually do.”
“You… you…” I groaned and threw my hooves in the air. “You impossible mare!”
“I know, it’s a superpower.” She trotted off after the departing group, her tail swaying excitedly. “Come on! We need to catch up.”
With a great exasperated sigh, I raced after her. The goblins—and Marcus—all looked surprised to find me there. Saria frowned briefly, but then turned it into a smile. “It takes much in the way of bravery to face impossible odds.”
“I’m brave,” I said, “because I have enough imagination to puzzle out all the terrible things that can happen to me. Lyra is just oblivious to reason.”
“I prefer impervious to reason, thank you.”
“Regardless.” Saria chuckled.
Marcus didn’t say anything, but the brief look and smile we shared was all that needed to be said.
* * *
The way up the mountain was hard. Several times Marcus had to dismount to lead Hector up a particularly difficult stretch. Daphne’s star kept us on the trail, and warned us of hazards. The Morgwyn did not appear to trouble us, and we could hear the thunder of the Wand battleship’s cannon still. I wondered how many tons of ammunition had been expended against the rocks by now, and whether or not future archaeologists would find themselves inundated in shell fragments.
Marcus voiced some concern about the killed titanspawn—some of them dead by his hand—when I brought that up, but Saria seemed rather cool on the idea. “Some titanoi do not trouble the peace, it is so, but those would not be the titanspawn here today. The ones here are only refraining from killing because it is that they were ordered; rest assured that it is not for lack of inclination.”
“I’ll admit, that makes me feel better,” Marcus said, sliding back on Hector as the slope evened out. “Mostly because it means Em isn’t, you know…”
“Entirely beyond all hope?”
He nodded by way of answer.
Lyra glanced their way. “Few are entirely beyond hope.”.
“Just so,” Saria agreed, “yet it is comforting all the same to those who knew her, no?”
“Speaking as somepony who didn’t know her,” Lyra said, “it gives me a lot of comfort knowing that she hasn’t descended to the level of psychotic murderer.”
“Lyra,” I chided quietly with my eyes on Marcus.
“Sorry. Just sayin’ is all.”
Maille shook her head. “I know there’s hope. The last thing she said to me was how sorry she was for doing what she did. She knows that she’s wrong.”
Marble Stone snorted. “It ain’t stopped her so far.” She grimaced at the harsh looks directed her way. “What? Yes, so things were never tidy between us and they still ain’t. But I’m… maybe willing to give her a bit more consideration for what she’s been through than I was before Daphne touched me, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is what she is.”
“And what’s that?” Marcus asked with perhaps a touch of belligerence.
“Arrogant, manipulative, deceitful, and driven,” Marble Stone said. “She doesn’t hesitate to destroy to get her way.” She flicked a cigarette from the empty air, looked at it, and then flicked it away. “She made a lot of enemies and now she’s armored up. Tell me that ain’t a recipe for disaster.”
Twig shook her head. “It’s true; she is extremely manipulative, even if a lot of that was just us wanting to believe her and not checking her story as thoroughly as we should have.” She glanced back the way we came, as if trying to spot a rainbow-colored trail streaking across the air. “She was surrounded by people who didn’t have her best interests at heart, though, to put it lightly. What she’s doing now is an extension of that failure of trust. As precocious as she is, she’s still a child.”
“I ain’t sayin’ she doesn’t have a bloody damned good reason for it.” Marble picked her way across a narrow cleft in the rock. “I’m sayin’ she has everythin’ she needs to be dangerous, includin’ motive, opportunity, means, and a healthy heapin’ of traumatized intellect to tie it together with rationalization.”
Marcus set his jaw. “I refuse to believe that she’s become a monster.”
“Take it from me, human. Becoming a monster isn’t a ‘hey, I’m going to be evil now’ moment, it’s a series of little steps, and when you look around you wonder how in Hel it got so dark. Then you tell yourself that’s the way it’s always been, and then you’re in a tidy little pit.”
He had no answer to that, but I could almost sense his frustration. I wanted to reach out to him, but the words wouldn’t come. I was never that eloquent.
“Why can’t you talk to her?” Rose directed up at Daphne. “You’re all disembodied and stuff.”
“I’ve tried. There’s simply no way for me to manifest near her. It’s not even like a wall—it’s like there’s some great gulf between us that I can’t bridge, and it just gets deeper and wider the more I try to cross it.” Daphne paused. “Speaking of, be careful up ahead. The terrain only gets steeper and more dangerous, and there’s lots of places for chaos monsters to hide. That, and Nessus is on the mountain with his own people.”
Maille grit her teeth. “I suppose it was going to come down to a confrontation between us eventually.”
Ahead hovered the little fleet that had followed us here, those airships which hadn’t beached themselves on the mountain. The rest remained tethered like so many strange and heavily armed balloons. We saw their camp as we picked our way along a narrow path, laid out radially from the cliff along what must be Court lines, and each grouping was easy to recognize. The Sword goblins all dressed as Saria did, for instance; those who wore clothes at all bore flowing garments that would serve them well in hot, dry climes. A small force of them trotted out to join us, and Saria leapt forward to embrace them and clap arms, speaking quickly in a foreign tongue that sounded rather a lot like Saddle Arabian.
Lyra motioned up the mountainside as we joined them. I squinted up at the summit, which looked shockingly near. The path up to it was torturous, but that wasn’t as bad as what we could see now that we were closer. Titanspawn clung to the cliffs below the top of the mountain, most of them not even trying to hide. Far, far above the parts of the mountain the battleship or any weapon here could fire upon, they watched and waited.
“Rest while you can,” Maille advised the two of us. “We don’t want to linger here any longer than we have to. Getting caught in a pincer is about the worst thing that could happen, especially in this terrain.” She gestured to a pair of huge ogres, each hauling in crates; those of us who weren’t too restless took seats and broke into them for one last meal. Blessedly, the goblin ponies had plenty of good hay and fresh flowers, though Marcus came back from the Sword goblins with a poker stuck with smoking chunks of meat and peppers and slathered in some sort of garlicy yogurt.
I made a sour face at the carnivorous meal. Well, no pony is perfect after all.
The Ring goblins were quite distinct, and their equipment had a much more archaic feel to it. Like the other groups, they came in all shapes and sizes, but almost all of them were heavily armored. It had a distinctive style as well that was unfamiliar even to me. Mostly, though, it tended towards metal scales or lamellar, and all of them wore silk. A few of them wore fanciful helmets which depicted exotic beasts or demons, and one of those, an equine goblin with a red horned demon mask, stomped up. “I understand that Aquarius rides with your band,” he boomed in an enormous voice. “Who among you is she?”
The star flickered shyly.
“Come on down, Daphne. We need to make you known to these goblins, anyway,” Maille said. Marble Stone was conversing with the Wand goblins nearby, and some Sword goblins had put up an awning to protect our impromptu war council from the elements.
With a small sigh, Daphne did appear. I might never have known she was in a battle for her life on the other end by how calm the unicorn image appeared there. She’d demonstrated a talent for splitting her thoughts in multiple directions before—it made me wonder just how deep the well went with her.
The sight of her materializing certainly had an effect on the assembled goblins. Several of the Sword court members fell to their knees, and the Ring leader took his helmet off—revealing a surprisingly handsome face—and looked at her as if his entire life had been vindicated.
Understandably, Daphne began to look deeply uncomfortable. She turned to look out over the assembled forces and tightened her jaw determinedly. “This isn’t the way it was meant to be, but it’s what we were dealt. I can’t promise you that I’ll be able to live up to your expectations of what I was supposed to be…” She shook her head. “No, I can guarantee it. I’m not your savior; never was.”
“We know,” the Ring goblin said, scratching at his short beard. “So it was relayed to us by the Seer before his parting. It is not easy to put aside two thousand years of anticipation, even in the face of disappointment.”
“Just so. Some will moan in their drinks and curse this day,” Saria agreed. “Yet, is it not the way of the world to disappoint? Ever since first our ancestors wrested the worlds from chaos, we have been faced with the fact that the universe does not conform to expectation. That is its purpose—a world which responds solely to whims is chaos. It is a childish place, where nothing matters.”
“Here, though, we make do with what we have.” His gaze drifted up to the summit. “For as long as we have it.”
“Well, I…” Daphne flickered and faded, then surged back a moment later looking even more harried than before. “Damn,” she swore and glanced around quickly. “You’re all still here, good. I’m sorry, but as much as time is meaningful, I’m running out of it. This is an important conversation, and I’m resolved not to shrink from it when the time comes. For all my flaws, for everything that’s gone wrong, if you will still have me… well, right now we need to win that future.”
Once again I felt profoundly left out of the conversation, but I didn’t interrupt. Indeed, I felt a swell of pride as I watched the assembled goblins nod and defer to Daphne, because I saw that she had changed.
It seemed an eternity ago that a ragged, blank-flanked mare had shown up at my doorstep in a town that seemed impossibly far away. I hadn’t been willing to accept her, at first, and even as I did it revealed her for a barely functional wreck who was trying to hold together her shattered world view and ego with a thin thread of determination.
This image of her, projected from her heart, revealed how far she’d come. There was vulnerability there still, and a deeper sadness in the way her eyes tightened than when we’d first reunited. Overriding all of it, though, was a determined poise in the way she held herself that revealed the deeper sense of purpose and resolve.
I had watched her kindle that resolve in our journey in and beyond Equestria. From the moment she’d earned her cutie mark to the shores of Pirene’s island, to the Wand battleship, to her present disembodied state, I’d been there to see her evolve even as her foundation came unsettled with revelation after revelation about her life and history. If that wasn’t something to be proud about, I didn’t know what was.
“Hey, Leit,” Pinion said, poking me in the side. “Time to go.”
Reluctantly, I put down the rest of my meal and downed a glass of water. There was no way I’d be able to function with anything close to a full belly. The food I’d already eaten would be challenging enough to keep down with the way my stomach roiled.
The passage up to the summit took the form of two major paths; a narrow defile which led almost directly to the top, and a winding slope which ran more meanderingly along the side. No pony thought to include me in their strategy discussions, but since they were splitting their forces in two, I wagered they were taking both. There was probably some clever tactical reason for it, but I knew what I needed to do.
Lyra and I joined Marcus, with Twig, Pinion, Rose, Maille, Marble Stone, and Saria all forming a core around which Rose’s animals and Marble Stone’s gang constituted a shell. Ours was the column heading counterclockwise along the longer path, which was mostly the Wand and Ring goblins. The Sword and a few others were forming up for an assault up the north face.
Their steps quickened as the chaos creatures surged to meet them. My heart quickened. Lyra nudged up beside me with her shoulder. The combination of freezing, oxygen-starved, high-altitude air and the strangely dissociated sensation I’d felt all day combined to give the proceedings an unsettling, dreamlike quality.
It all seemed so terribly unreal at first. I saw fighting. The creatures were of a thousand types and none, with forms as diverse as shuffling mudmen to multi-headed chimerae to enormous snapping serpents. That I knew they were under strictures not to kill shouldn’t have served to make the fight any less brutal, but nothing made me feel less numb.
Not, at least, until the Morgwyn put in its second appearance.
It began as the crows. They rose up from seemingly everywhere at once, great swarming murders of them clawing at the air and cawing at the steel-grey sky. “Do they think that this one does not see what they do, these ants that crawl along the side of the center of their world? Does the Water Child think that the Morgwyn has not known that she would attempt to circumvent what has been set into motion?”
A black cat’s face shoved suddenly out of the darkness ahead of us, staring right at Marcus. “You will not steal this day from me. Turn back and the Morgwyn will even be generous—it will teach you and yours how to survive when the titans’ chains are free. It loses nothing by doing so. What does it care if you remain when the tyranny of matter and energy is overthrown?” It stood in a tunnel of shifting darkness that seemed to stretch off into infinity. “Your damned ‘gods’ often neglected to mention the pockets of stability. You could live your lives happily in one, free of want and suffering—or include it if that is your desire—for as long as you have will to uphold it.”
“Wow, that is some deeply philosophical stuff right there,” Marcus said. “I would probably answer it with a bullet to your head, but since you’re only pseudo-here to begin with that probably won’t work. Let me put it into terms you’ll understand, then…” Marcus glowered back to fully match the intensity of the Morgwyn’s fiery eyes. “You’ve destroyed the lives of two girls I care very deeply about and wrecked the hopes and dreams of countless others. For that alone, I would lock you in stone and let you go slowly mad. Even if it weren’t for that, even if I believed you’d hold to your bargain, I don’t think you have as many cards as you think you do. Amelia’s still her own creature, and what happens next is going to be up to her, not some sociopathic shadow puppet.” He spat on the ground and Hector knickered in agreement.
“I quite agree. Regrettably for you, you won’t be there to influence her in that decision.” The Morgwyn bared its fangs and leapt snarling for Marcus.
I gasped—the creature seemed solid, and for a terrible moment I thought its claws would shred right into him. Before any of us could react, though, green vines snapped around the cat from behind and arrested its motion in midair.
Down the tunnel, shining bright as a star, Daphne stood on a cloud with a great vase beside her from which the vines had emanated. “I hope you didn’t forget me, Morg. You know, he’s right; you did ruin my life, and I think it’s high time we had it out over that. You’re the source of all the misery and despair in my life, and I’m going to show you exactly how that’s made me feel.”
The creature struggled briefly, then turned back to insubstantial darkness and flowed back into the tunnel. “You would engage the Morgwyn for real, even knowing that this domain is mine, that it is my birthright, and all its formless chaos is my home? The Morgwyn’s stake in this is greater than you can imagine—you fight for some future you don’t even understand, bairn, while this one has longed for home since before the word had meaning. You have no great power, no unstoppable passion; you are barely more than mortal.”
“I’m the vessel and conduit of an entire age,” Daphne said. “Surely that counts for something. Order overcame chaos once before; maybe I’m not a god like they intended, but you’re no titan, and I have a promise to my friends to keep,”
“So be it,” the Morgwyn hissed quietly. Then violence erupted on all fronts.
They came from the sky. They came boiling over the cliff. They swarmed out of crevices great and small. They even erupted out of the earth. Over us all rippled the ever-shifting battle in another plane entirely, of Daphne and the Morgwyn wrestling green against blue. No simple throw down, they fought with weapons of the imagination, with spinning galaxies and elaborate labyrinths and twisting puzzles and sprawling equations. It was hard to say which was more real, honestly; the blood and sweat in the snow or the ethereal battle that seemed ever-present, just barely within view.
It was all I could do not to get in the way. I tried to keep close to Hector and Marcus, but almost immediately he had to run off to parts I couldn’t see. Then the earth shifted below me and I barely scrambled to safety before the stone fell away entirely, turned in an instant to a slushy mud by a vile, brown-slime covered creature that rose from its depths. It looked like nothing so much as a terrifying frog, with armored ridges covering its head and sides. I blasted it at once, but my magic barely served to faze it.
Then Marble Stone was there, shoving me back and taking a claw on the shoulder. The blunt nails failed to penetrate the burnished steel Maille made, and Marble Stone growled right back at the beast. “I’m not lettin’ you filthy cythrauls take my life away from me again!” She bellowed a war cry and shattered the thing’s entire ribcage—or whatever it had—in a single blow.
Lyra hauled me to the left, in time to avoid the falling body of a lizard-bird with a battered, bloodied goblin pegasus smacking its face into the ground. All of that paled, though, to the trouble that lay ahead. At first, I thought it was treachery. Wand goblins had drawn up above us and were flinging stones and spears down at our lines, after all. Then, of course, as I saw other Wand goblins charge up to meet them, I realized that these must be the loyalists Nessus brought with him.
Somehow, that the centaur himself wasn’t putting in an appearance unsettled me even more than if he had. At least then we’d know what he was up to.
I got to return the favor to Lyra when the battle shifted again; a huge blue-skinned demon with a forest of spikes on its back swung a club down towards her, but I lit my horn and, in a flash of green, the two of us disappeared and reappeared a few yards back, deeper in the allied line.
Unfortunately, our “line” lacked distinction at that point. With them coming from above and below, the goblins’ valiant attempts to maintain discipline were being literally undermined. No matter where we looked we saw them struggling, I could blast crowmen out of the sky all day long and Lyra could use her finely-tuned telekinetic constructs to support the others as best she could, but progress seemed impossible.
“We need to fall back!” I heard Maille shout from a tight group of goblins. I gasped as I saw her and the others about to be overrun by an enormous loyalist Wand goblin the size of an elephant, but just as it was about to step on them, Twig appeared and yanked the image away as if it were some painted cloth. Revealed in their place, a group of chaos apemen shrieked and were bowled over by the trampling goblin.
“No, seriously!” Maille shouted. “We need to fall back and regroup.”
This proved easier said than done. Not only was our approach narrow, but retreating through an active melee offered its own challenges. Then the massive Ring goblin bucked a chimera clean off the cliff and bellowed “Fall back!” and that got them moving.
It also complicated my life a great deal. Quickly, I swept up Lyra and Pinion in my grasp, seeing the latter reel back from a spear strike, but the two of us didn’t exactly appear in a safe place as I’d hoped. I’d aimed for the center of the column, but with our moving back that shifted the center likewise, such as there was one. That dropped the three of us literally on top of the struggling elephant-sized Wand goblin warrior from before. Pinion took this opportunity to bludgeon him while Lyra and I fell off the other side. I landed hard, winced, and fell to my knees. All around us more goblins surged. I couldn’t be sure if they were friend or foe. Saria seemed to have no trouble, but she was too far away to help.
Just as a pair turned to face us, shots rang out and dropped one. “Leit!” Marcus shouted as he pounded over. “We need to get out of here! Can you teleport us back?”
“Y-yeah,” I nodded, and reached out for his hand with my hoof. My horn lit up. “Lyra, we—”
Whatever I was about to say I forgot it at once as an explosive blast of fire picked me up and away. I screamed as I saw Hector rearing and Marcus struggling to keep on, even as I was flying back. Everything seemed terribly slow-motion, then. I turned almost languidly in mid-air and saw Lyra and a couple others flying back with me, and we bounced off heads and bodies until we began to slide inexorably towards the fall, especially with no one here to help us. Seeing the expanse of Equestria before me, I panicked and finished the spell, grasping hard onto Lyra.
Immediately, I knew something was wrong. A clean teleport takes a fraction of a second and doesn’t leave you dazed and blinded with light. The two of us emerged, a little scorched and stunned, somewhere I hadn’t exactly intended.
At first it seemed peaceful, and it made me fear that I’d somehow managed to jump to another mountain entirely, but, as my hearing returned, the sounds of fighting was clearly audible. They weren’t coming from above us, though, nor anywhere to the side, but below. I rose up and saw the fights on the slope nearly thirty yards below. Turning, I gasped as I saw how shockingly close the summit was. The terrible golden bonfire which blazed atop it seemed to radiate an otherworldly heat. All of the snow had been melted off the black rock and the air here was almost balmy. Strangely, discarded helmets, armor, weapon, and clothing littered the earth hereabouts.
That we’d come this far was shocking, and well outside my capabilities with that spell. Without any familiarity of the area it would have been nearly impossible to reach, and we were lucky to have gotten away with all our parts intact considering I’d done it while freaking out.
“Lyra, look!” I said, pointing a hoof. “We’re almost there!” Then I cringed as my own words came back to me. “Oh, damn,” I added, remembering the warnings about the Bridle. Still, those injured by it had all been in very close proximity, so we should have been fine as long as we went no further.
“Fat lot of good that does us,” Lyra said, dusting herself off and shaking a kink out of her tail. “We’re winning, though.”
“We are?” I asked, amazed. “It sure didn’t look it.”
“Not if you know how to look at it right. The titanspawn are hampered by their restriction, and they were never that coordinated to begin with. The Wand patriots were fighting with them, but it’s hard to raise your hands against your former friends; especially when your own friends often forget that you aren’t enemies.”
“All we need to do is hole up here, then,” I said brightly. The sensation that we might actually win was nearly intoxicating.
Lyra gave me a dubious look, but she glanced around and seemed to lighten up a bit as she did. “Actually… yeah, that might be possible. Come on.” She trotted with purpose towards a natural chokepoint; a place where the rock had broken nearly in two, and provided good cover from enemies attacking both below and above.
“What’s with all this trash up here any—whoa!” I gasped and yanked Lyra back as a flare so bright I thought it might have been magnesium half-blinded me. It shot like a beam through where Lyra had been and struck one of the discarded helmets. Smoking, the helmet flew back—and then up, changed into a startled bird.
“N-n-no further!” a nervous voice called. “We d-did th-those others, we can do a tidy number on you, t-too!”
“Yeah!” a girl’s high-pitched voice agreed. “What she said.”
Lyra blinked. “Sweetie Belle? Is that you?”
From behind the very cover we’d bee-lined for, a strange head poked out. It glittered like a smooth diamond, with a crystalline unicorn’s horn. “Lyra?” She frowned. “That’s your name, right? You gave me music lessons? This seems like an odd time for one.”
Three more heads poked up. One was a large, bulky earth pony with red-on-red eyes and a mane like a thicket. Another was a sleek pegasus with two sets of powerful orange wings. The last one was shockingly familiar; she had the look of a smaller, sicklier Flash, with the same white shock of a mane and mustard yellow coat.
“Sweetie!” the red one growled. “She’s not here for music lessons, she’s part of the battle!”
“Oh. Right.”
“I’m sorry,” the red one said to Lyra, “the brainwashin’ hit her a little hard, I think.”
I stared at them. “Aren’t you… the Cutie Mark Crusaders? What happened to you girls?” I barely stopped to hear their answers, looking at the fourth member. “And aren’t you Flash’s little sister, Wire?”
“M-me?” Wire squeaked and ducked her head. “Y-you know me, you… wait.” She leapt up on top of the rock. “You know my sister?”
“We sure do, and we’ve got some amazing stories to tell you about that,” Lyra said. “She would be here right now, but do you remember that great big storm? She left to fight the monster in that, and to tell us she was doing it for you, kiddo.”
Wire’s only response to that was to squeak and ruffle her leathery wings. She stared off at the roiling sky, as if hoping to see her sister.
“We had the most amazing adventure!” Apple Bloom said.
“Aside from the time I broke my leg,” Sweetie Belle grumbled.
“Or we got brainwashed into becoming Cup slaves,” Scootaloo added. She spread her impressive double wingspan, grinning hawkishly and rubbing at her chin with a claw. “Not that I’m entirely complaining…”
I stared. “How did you end up here of all places?”
“Wire here rescued us,” Apple Bloom said, chuffing the goblin pony on the back. That elicited another squeak from her. “And then we snuck onboard this humongous airship. But then things got kinda crazy and we had to make a break for it.”
“We had a run in with Wire’s old boss and had to smack him and a couple other goblins around.” Scootaloo held up a gnarled wooden stick. “That’s how we got this. It’s pretty sweet.”
Sweetie Belle tilted her head. “The guy who had it seemed glad to be rid of it, actually. He pretty much just gave it up and ran.”
“Fl-flash is here, for me?” Wire mumbled.
“Yes, we covered that,” Scootaloo said, “try and keep with the program. Right now we’re on the part where we came all this way to try and help Moonlight Shimmer. Or Amelia or whatever.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“Try not to be,” Lyra suggested as she joined the Crusaders, “we’re going to have company very soon.”
“Good or bad company?” Sweetie Belle asked.
“Both.”
I nodded. “We need to hold this position. There’s people who can help Amelia coming with a small army at their backs.”
“Not swiftly enough,” Daphne’s voice said, making me jump in surprise. I turned to find her ghostly form standing there against the waning sunlight.
“What?” I asked. “Daphne, what do you mean? Did you defeat the Morgwyn? What’s going on?”
“Who’s that?” Sweetie Belle whispered.
“Daphne, obviously,” Apple Bloom hissed back. “Shush! I’m listening!”
“You just heard her name, you don’t know who she is!” Scootaloo grumbled, but they quieted at the repeated “Shush” from Apple Bloom.
“I mean it’s not enough,” Daphne said. She gestured down the mountain behind her where the sounds of fighting were still audible. “We’re winning the battle, but they’re pushing back at great cost. I can’t get the others up here, and the battle is still ongoing between the Morgwyn and I—I’m trapped.” Her face fell. “No matter what scenario I run in my head, there’s just no way to deliver any of them here—not Marcus, not Maille, not Twig, not anyone.”
“B-but… I can teleport!” I said, but realized the problems with that at once—a safe return to this spot was almost impossible for somepony of my current skill level, and I was already pretty burnt out as it was. “Or Princess Twilight!”
“Even if she had been with us from the first, that wouldn’t have worked. The Morgwyn had our number, there; it had creatures especially ready to jump Twilight Sparkle the moment she showed herself.” She looked down at the two approaches. “Can’t fly them up here, they’ve denied air superiority. Every turn we make, they’ve planned a counter.”
As we looked, we could see another, more immediate problem—a swelling surge of chaos creatures heading right this way, climbing right over the rocks.
“No,” I whispered. “That… it can’t be done? We’ve come so far! Amelia is right there!”
Daphne didn’t answer, her gaze fixed below.
“What about the Crusaders?” I asked, looking at the four confused girls. “They were friends with her, apparently! Can’t they go?”
She spared them a glance. “They would only serve to make it worse. I’m sorry—they’re the primary reason she’s in the state that she’s in. They’re part of the solution, but not sufficient. She needs someone who can reach her on her level.”
“There has to be something you can do!” I tried to touch her shoulder, but my hoof slid right through her insubstantial substance. “Daphne, please!”
“I don’t know.” She grit her teeth and shook her head. “No. I know that for a fact—there is nothing I can do. I can see it as clearly as I see anything, Leit. All my planning, all my efforts… and there’s nothing I can do to change what’s going to happen.”
Silence, such as it was, fell over the mountain air below the summit. I tried to process the despair I should feel, but couldn’t. It was just too big, too overwhelming. I felt guilty and ashamed and helpless and frightened all at once, but any attempt to express it felt inadequate. Any minute now, too, the titanspawn would be upon us, and then the stars only knew what would happen.
“So…” Lyra, who had absorbed all of this without any seeming reaction, stepped forward. “Nothing you can do, huh?”
“Nothing.”
“That settles it, then,” she said, nodding as if it were nothing at all. “Leit will go.”
“What?” the two of us demanded in unison, our heads snapping around.
“What, what? I thought it was obvious.” Lyra shrugged. “Daphne can’t reach her; she was choice number one, but that’s just not going to happen. Then there were Naomi and Marcus and Maille and Twig, but none of them can make it. The Crusaders and Wire would only make things worse. She wouldn’t know me from any random pony. That just leaves Leit Motif.”
“But… that’s…” I shook my head incredulously. “She doesn’t know me from any random pony, either.”
“No, but you know Daphne better than anypony alive, and besides, you’re missing an important factor here.”
“What’s that?” Daphne asked, her tone oddly speculative.
Lyra poked me in the gut with a hoof. “Ask yourself… to which of the two of us does this mean the most?”
“I don’t understand,” I said, rubbing my side.
“I’m thinking back to that first afternoon when Daphne appeared at your place, and you dropped every defense you ever had to let her in. You cleaned her up, you listened to her problems, and you reordered your previously impenetrable life because you’d finally, finally found something you could derive meaning from.” She prodded me again. “Who flew halfway across the country on a hunch? Who stood by her every minute as her entire world was torn apart?”
“Well, you flew with me, too, and you were there to help pick me up—”
“Yeah, but let’s face it,” Lyra said with a broad grin, “this was never about me. This was always, always about the three of you. From the very start—eight whole years ago—it was you, Daphne, and newborn Amelia. The rest of us are just being tugged along in the wake of the fates you three wove. And look at what it’s done to you!”
“M-me?” That was it. Clearly, Lyra had finally gone completely bonkers. Yet I couldn’t help but be transfixed by her words.
“I’ve seen you grow, Leit Motif,” she said, “I’ve seen you change. You’re not the neurotic little unicorn who hissed at the sight of the sun when we went out for pizza. You don’t tear other ponies’ faces off just for disagreeing with you. When you look to the future, you see hope. Heck, you even have a potential boyfriend if you can get around that pesky species barrier. You’ve built a life for yourself that’s nothing like anything you could have managed before. You threw out your own journal because you didn’t just want to write about how terrible your life was, you wanted to live it.
“Face it, Leit—you have an enormous stake in this. If it had been the Leit of a couple weeks ago, sure, I’d have volunteered—and probably failed—in your place, but you can’t keep selling yourself short. You may not be some big prophesied Chosen One, or a mighty unicorn like Twilight Sparkle, or whatever, but you don’t need to be. Someone has to do it, and all you need is the will and determination to see it through.”
I opened my mouth to deny her again, but found that no words would come out. I got to thinking about Daphne and how I’d walked with her through all of the myriad changes thrown her way. Have I been changing, too? I wondered, and I looked down at my scruffy mane and battered body. Perhaps I’d had my cutie mark, but I had forgotten its meaning. I used to be somepony with an identity.
“But… I can’t get close,” I said in a final, weak defense, “I’m a pony. The Bridle will crush my will.”
“That’s wrong and you know it.”
I turned my head to regard Scootaloo, who still held a magic wand curled in a wing.
“Besides,” Lyra said, “I’m better than you at combat magic.” She walked over to the crack in the rocks and sat herself down. The oncoming horde was getting disturbingly close, now that they’d shed their attackers. “Everything that’s been done so far, every sacrifice, has been to bring someone to this point. That someone just happens to be you. Maybe it’s a fate thing—not the sappy bit-store romance version of fate, where it’s the universe telling us what to do at all times, but the kind of fate the Seer guy talked about. Prophecy is just a tool to move us along to the future we desire, and we’ve fought every inch of the way to secure that future.”
She held her forehooves out, and a golden globe appeared for a moment to drop her lyre into her waiting limbs. She plucked a few strings to check the tuning and make some adjustments.
“Yeah,” I murmured, “it would be a serious waste if I just threw that all away.”
“Uh.” Sweetie Belle raised a hoof. “Can somepony please explain what’s going on?”
Daphne laughed quietly. “We’re taking the future back, dear.”
“Damned skippy,” Lyra agreed. “Now, get going—I’ll hold this lot off as long as I can.” In spite of being the sole pony facing down a rushing swarm of monsters from the pit of chaos, she grinned more broadly than ever. Then she drew her hoof across the strings, playing a simple melody to warm up—then slammed into a rapid, aggressive beat. Her horn lit into a brighter gold than I’d ever seen in her before, its power swelling with each chord. Just as the first lines neared she unleashed her fury—auric lightning arced out of the sky to blast the earth with thunderous detonations. Rank after rank of gilded pony constructs filled the valley and met the broken charge. When they tried to fly right over, she blasted them with searing bolts of pure force. On she played and sang, and each line was punctuated with destruction.
After picking my jaw off the ground I turned to the Crusaders and drew them in. “Listen, I need you to help her fight off these monsters, but there’s something important you need to do, first. To me. I need you to turn me into a human.”
“What’s a human?” Sweetie Belle asked.
Wire lit with understanding first. “I know what a human is, and I… I think I ken what this is about. A-are you su-sure this plan will work?”
“No. Honestly, I’m pretty sure I’m going to fail.”
“Near-certain chance of failure?” Sweetie Belle asked, glancing at her friends.
“That sounds right up our alley,” Scootaloo said.
Apple Bloom nodded vigrously. “The Cutie Mark Crusaders are all about fightin’ desperate battles against incredible odds.”
“O-okay…” Wire swallowed. “C’mon, let’s get it done with.”
All four of the girls put a hoof to the wand and I frowned. “Uh… are you sure all four of you need to do that?” I asked.
“Sure. It’s kinda finicky, but we’ve gotten used to it.” Sweetie Belle beamed. “I mean, we hardly ever explode things anymore.”
“Hah hah!” Apple Bloom laughed nervously. “Just… ignore her. Okay, here we go… on three. One. Two… three!”
White fire leapt along the length of the wand, briefly illuminating the world in sharp, harsh contrast. A searing bar sprang from its tip and slammed directly into my chest, picking me up and throwing me back against the black volcanic rock. My scream rattled the stones as I felt my innards boiling inside my own skin. There was pain, even if it wasn’t the sort of pain I might have expected.
My bones snapped and melted. I could feel my hips pushing forward, shifting to accommodate the way my legs and thighs twisted back. My spine fused, then deformed with a series of pops; each pop vanished a rung of my neck or my tail until the first had shortened considerably and the latter had vanished completely. There was a terrible pressure in my skull as my horn and muzzle receded into my face, while each of my teeth cracked and popped and shrank to fit my new mouth. I bucked and writhed on the ground as every nerve was excited at once with a sizzling hiss, while my coat burned itself away, revealing smooth, olive skin beneath. I tried to push myself up, but my muscles refused to cooperate and spasmed wildly. I flopped about on the ground like a seizure victim or a particularly distressed fish.
Worst of all were my hooves. The way my hoof split before my eyes and ran like wax was nothing—it was all about the way each new finger felt as it popped into being. I was assaulted by hyperstimulation, by impossible degrees of freedom in the way they moved and bent. It was like I had a thin, flat foot with five tiny, super-sensitive hooves.
Fortunately, blessedly, the most intense of the sensations faded as the changes settled. I exhaled a steaming breath of hot air and sucked in cool, refreshing gasps. Very carefully, feeling rather more fragile than I likely was, I put my new hands under me and slowly craned into a sitting position. Something in the wand’s magic must additionally alter the brain’s motor complex, since the disorientation and unfamiliarity I might have expected in a full-body transformation was limited.
As I sat there sucking in the thin mountain air, I felt rather oddly shaped, and for a horse-turned-human, that’s saying something. My hips felt outsized and my chest heavy, and for a moment I wondered if I might be deformed; the only fully adult, fully human female I’d ever met had been Naomi, and she had been very svelte. Apparently humans differed more greatly in body form than I’d imagined. The darker tone of my skin also surprised me, but then Marcus, too, had smoother, darker skin than either Daphne or Naomi. My mane, at least, felt entirely my own, and it fell thick and black down my back to nestle around my hips. I spied my cutie mark on my thighs, still, too, picked out in skin instead of hair.
Getting to my feet proved another challenge, and I had to grasp the stone wall to avoid spilling over. The booms and screams of the one-mare battle Lyra was waging shook the ground and threatened my already fragile balance, but I found it surprisingly intuitive. The sensation of being upright was a little harder to get used to. The ground was too far away, and I had no idea what to do with my arms or my fingers. I tried folding them to my sides, wrapping them around my middle, twining the fingers together, but no matter what I did it all felt terribly alienating.
Well, now I knew how Daphne felt in reverse.
“Are you sure we can’t come?” Apple Bloom asked. During my change they’d scrounged up a cloak from one of the piles of equipment on the ground.
“I think we need to trust Daphne’s judgement on this,” I said. At first I tried to grab it telekinetically, which almost immediately gave me a headache and made me look silly as I concentrated on the cloth. Blushing darkly, I reached out and took it in hand. I’ll say this at least—having hands makes some dexterous tasks a lot easier, particularly when you’re horn-impaired. The red cloth felt scratchy against my skin, but humans made a huge deal about modesty and I didn’t want to distract the issue more than it had to. “Help Lyra—that wand will make a big difference in holding back those things.”
“Yeah, we’ll be on it.” Scootaloo nodded. “Hey, uh… when you go to meet Moonlight, tell her we don’t really hate her for what happened.”
“We’re a little irritated,” Apple Bloom said.
Sweetie Belle winced. “But don’t mention that!”
Wire smoothed her mane back. “Just tell her… I take it back, what I said, calling her a cythraul and all. I don’t know what she’s doing, but… yeah.”
I considered asking for luck, but decided against it. Luck wouldn’t help where I was going. Taking a deep breath, I started up the final path for the fiery summit. Rocks dug into my exposed feet and scraped my knees and hands, but I was determined now. When I’d started this day, I’d felt empty, numb. Like nothing I’d ever done or would do mattered. The events surrounding me felt attached to somepony else.
“Do you know if this is going to work?” I asked the dimming green star behind me.
“No. I can’t tell you how incredibly frustrating it is to be this close and yet so far, either. But, Leit…”
“Yeah?”
“I love you. I’ve two sisters and both of them were taken from me. The time we’ve spent together… it’s been the best few weeks of my life, once you take out all the danger and heart break.”
I offered the sky a small smile. “For me, too. Thank you, Daphne, for getting me involved.”
“You still don’t need to do this, I should say. Neither of us have any idea if we can reach her or not. You sure don’t have a plan.”
“No. Lyra is right, though. It doesn’t matter how impossible something is—if it’s the right thing to do, you have to try anyway. She was right all along and I never listened to her until now.” I took a deep breath. “Good bye, Daphne. I love you, too.” I gathered up my courage and continued on into the light. I didn’t know if I had a chance to succeed where all others before me had failed, but I didn’t care.
For just a little while, I mattered.
Our fate would be decided here, on the roof of the world, where time stood still.
“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but I have not love, I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:2.
Amelia
Death could have been better.
I suppose it wasn’t as bad as I might have thought. No sudden cessation of consciousness, just a clean, quiet feeling of drifting in limitless depths. I had to admit that there was a certain serenity to it. No one would ever find fault in me ever again, and, even if they did, I was well beyond the reach of hurtful words and deeds. It was a clean state, free of pain and unclouded by knowledge. Frankly, the absence of closure bothered me not at all; there was no way I could have borne the shame of seeing those I’d left behind after the things I’d done.
Then again, an endless existence of sensory deprivation was probably about as clear a definition of Hell as I’ve ever heard of. Doomed to drift forever in a cold, lifeless state. I couldn’t twitch a muscle; I didn’t even know if I had muscles left to twitch. It certainly felt as though I was exposed to some eternal vacuum that had radiated away all of my warmth and sense of myself.
Inevitably, though, those fears proved beyond much doubt that I had not perished, for they signalled the reawakening of my mind. Dimly, I recalled becoming inundated in water and struggled to piece together how and why; even that faint recollection throbbed. Hot, piercing fire and cold, crushing water co-mingled with a thin line of agony between them. That, too, soon faded to become but a dimly remembered dream.
Do I even want to remember how I got here? I thought. Isn’t this enough? It obviously hurt, it obviously cost me a great deal, enough that I feel it was a blessing that I never got to say good-bye. Whatever happened before clearly isn’t worth it. It would be so much easier just to let go of these attachments and drift back into oblivion. To fight would be to struggle, and struggling would be a painful, difficult process that likely end up not mattering in the end.
What good would it do to keep bringing these memories back?
And yet…
Foolishly, stupidly, I wormed my way back towards the memory of light. For reasons I will never be able to articulate, I needed to know who I was and what I was about. Sure, it would have been easy to have given up there and let it all end, but something pushed me forward. Something has always pushed me forward. The only way I would ever stop trying, stop being, would be if every option in the universe were stolen away and every conceivable path were closed.
Even then, I’m pretty sure I’d still try.
There, I exulted silently as the first touch of weight and light made itself known. Never had I thought that I would find the sensation of gravity comforting. I tried to stretch and shake off my grogginess, to remember how my limbs worked.
“Child, it is time to get up.”
The words came as out of a deep fog, remote and muffled, and yet the voice was warm and soft. A woman’s voice.
I rolled over on to my belly and blinked away the light. My face buried itself into my pillow, and my earlier courage fled as I tried once again to let myself sink back into oblivion. For some reason I knew that if I woke up, I would have had to face something terrible, something I hated and feared.
The smell of ripening pomegranates lulled me back inexorably. I simply had to know where and who I was; my curiosity would not be denied its satiation.
“The sun is up, and little princesses cannot lie abed for all time.” A hoof removed my head from the pillow, gently but firmly. “Arise, Celestia, and meet the day.”
My eyes opened to blearily behold a scene bathed in golden light through narrow, fluted columns. Vaguely seen trees waved in the morning breeze. Warm hooves pulled me against the chest of the mare who sat in bed with me. Her dark silver coat was adorned with midnight black jewelry, and a crown of the same stuff sat atop her cerulean mane, the tresses of which flowed like liquid, an ocean current all on its own in defiance of the wind.
“Did you have such sweet dreams you were reluctant to leave, dear?” she asked. She shifted a bit to take pressure off her gravid midsection, revealing the extent to which her belly swelled.
I wanted to tell her “no,” that my dreams frightened me, even so dimly remembered as they were, but somehow I knew it wouldn’t matter. It seemed as if this was something I’d been searching for, something I had wanted to hold onto for as long as I could. I wouldn’t spoil its serenity with pointless complaining. “Where is Father?” I asked, my tiny voice still groggy. I needed to know, even though I didn’t know quite why.
“He is out today, dearest, you know that.” She gave a fond sigh. “Overseeing the fields with as much childish enthusiasm as ever; I swear, he sometimes forgets that he is no longer just an earth pony.”
My chest constricted. I felt something awful grip my heart; without knowing how, I knew something terrible was going to happen to him. “No. We have to go get him.”
“It is all right, Celestia.” My mother smoothed my pink mane back. “Your father will be home soon.”
“No, you don’t understand!” I pulled free and leapt to the floor. Still groggy, I wobbled on my hooves before finding my footing then galloped through the open door. “He won’t come back the same!”
“Who won’t come back the same, honey?” my mother asked as I charged into the living room. She looked up from the couch where she’d curled up with her science journals while the television played the news on low.
“Daddy!” I said, my little heart pounding as I ran up to her and put my hooves on her side. “It’s… you have to…” My urgency depleted rapidly as I tried to remember what it is that had me so worried.
“Oh, sweetie,” she scooped me up in her arms and nestled me there. Her hands smoothed my golden mane back and rested on my back. “Daddy’s fine. He’s at work right now, that’s all. Did you have a bad dream, Amy?”
I wanted to tell her “yes,” that I’d had horrible dreams, but they were far away and fading fast. “It’s nothing,” I said, worming into her embrace. “I just want to…” To what? Stay right here? It was so warm and enveloping, but the nagging feeling that I was missing something important kept drawing me back. Feet on the stairs spelled a full end to any such comfort, and I jerked my head up to see a blonde unicorn rush out the door.
“Daphne? Wait!” I cried, squirming free of my mother’s embrace and running after her. “Sis, stop!” The door nearly slammed shut in my face. I flung it open and charged out, momentarily blinded by the cruel sunlight reflecting off a snowfield. I squinted against the glare and plowed through under the watchful gaze of jagged blue mountains after a rising form.
“Sister, wait!” I cried again.
“Luna!”
Luna didn’t go very far, kicking and rising through the air only long enough to nestle on a cloud which immediately turned a sullen black. Her mane hung limp around her head, the stars in it glittering only dully. “They’re gone, Celestia. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
I spread my wings and flew up to join her. Under other circumstances I might have sat beside her, but something about her manner put me off, and I settled for hovering a few yards away. “We didn’t know, Luna,” I said cautiously. “We barely know how the Elements work to begin with. We couldn’t have predicted this.”
“That’s small comfort to the crystal ponies languishing even now in the-stars-only-know-where,” she snapped hotly. Her cloud perch rumbled its agreement. “They counted upon us to free them once their magic failed.”
“It’s not your fault. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
Her feathers bristled like an angry bird’s as she craned her head around to glare at me. “Isn’t it? Which of us wanted to study the Elements, to come in cautiously, to perhaps try another approach? I don’t recall you disregarding concerns in the naive hope that the Elements were a panacea to every monster and dark sorcerer that came our way!”
“And they have been…! So far…” I flew closer. “Luna, please. They will return. For them, it’ll be but the blink of an eye. You and I… well, we haven’t been getting older, have we? We have time to make up for our mistakes. The people back home love us—”
“—Love you.” She knocked my hoof away. “And why shouldn’t they? Perfect Celestia; the Once and Future Princess. Effortlessly charming unicorn nobles, earth pony councils, and pegasus chieftains, the hero who united the realm! What have I ever done but follow along with you and play in your shadow?”
“Luna,” I said, taking a firmer tone, “that’s not true, you—”
She plowed on as if I hadn’t tried to interrupt her. “And the one time I suggest a course of action, I blow up an entire kingdom!” She’d gone well beyond the booming voice that was so useful in uniting fractious pony factions—her final notes echoed across the benuded tundra, off to the snowy caps and back. “Nothing I ever do matters,” she added in a brittle tone.
“That’s not true! Luna, you can’t let this hang over you, it isn’t your fault! Yes, maybe you were rash, but wasn’t I rash for following you? We had no idea what would happen, and we had no reason to believe it would—”
“Spare me your empty forgiveness, Celestia. You can’t give me that. I can’t, either.” She waved a hoof across the empty snow. “Only they can, and they aren’t here.”
That hung in the air between us for a long time.
“I’m going,” she said at last. “I’ll see you back at the castle.” Her wings spread and she soared into the air, fast becoming a dark speck against the grey sky.
I always hated myself for not following after her, for leaving her to her peace, for not noticing that flash of darkness across her gaze.
“Wait!” I cried, racing after her, desperate to change what I already knew was set in stone. “Luna! Luna!”
I splashed into the grey sky and pulled my head out of the stagnant pond it had been thrust into. Hands grabbed hold of my mane and jerked me back up. Trees and a leaf-strewn ground and the fence dividing the school from a nearby park spun in my vision as I struggled to collect my senses.
Jenny Haniver thrust her face into mine. The older girl hadn’t deigned to get her hands dirty, but she lorded over me as if she’d pushed me into the ground herself. “Well? Are you going to apologize?”
“For what?” I asked, trying my best to look dignified while dripping pond scum and being held up by two other kids. “The part where I called you stupid or suggested a horse could outsmart you?”
“Both,” she seethed, “but what I mean is that crap you pulled today. Do you have any idea what you did back there in front of the teacher? The whole class? You made me look like an ass!”
“All I did was show how you got the problem wrong and do it right. It was so you could learn.” I paused. “And then I called you stupid, but only after you made fun of me at recess.”
Her mouth tightened. “Smart aleck little brat; you think I give a damn what you said to your little nerd friends in the sandbox? Do you have any idea how much crap I got? The whole damned school knows a wicked freak made me look stupid. Guess there’s no point in you going to advanced placement anymore, Jen; they’ve got third graders smarter than you. And then you go around flaunting it like you think you owned the whole damned school.”
“I thought you said you didn’t care what I said to my ‘little nerd friends in the sandbox.’”
“I know what I said!” She flared her nostrils, and I felt the others’ grip tighten around me, but, instead of lashing out at me, she put her arms across her chest and breathed through her nose, glaring down at me until her ire had cooled somewhat. “I want you to apologize.”
I was about to shout back at her, but I hesitated. Maybe at first I’d been confused at how angry she’d been—all I’d wanted to do was correct her algebra mistake on the blackboard and show the class how it was done—but after she’d responded so spitefully I couldn’t hold back gloating over the fact that the teacher had praised me and criticized her in front of the entire advanced placement class. Even so, none of the flaunting I’d done merited her continued spite, and especially not getting cornered and shoved into a stinking pool by her friends. I felt indignant at the idea of offering an apology to someone who should be apologizing to—no, thanking me.
Yet, Father had always taught me that it’s better to defuse a situation if at all possible. Getting beat up over something so stupid wouldn’t make me feel any better. Actually, it was like to make me feel worse, by virtue of all the bruises.
“Fine.” I tossed my muddy hair. “I’m sorry, Jenny.”
“Sorry what?” she asked.
My mouth tightened into a line. It took effort to speak again. “I’m sorry I made fun of you.” I hesitated before throwing in, “I guess I could have showed you how to correct the problem in a way less likely to get you made fun of, too.”
That should have been the end of it. I’d eaten my undercooked, undeserved crow, she could see that. She’d gotten to push me around and made me apologize to salve her wounds.
Pride, though, is a cut that heals poorly.
“Come on, Jenny!” one of the girls holding me, Stacey, said. “You aren’t going to let this bug-loving little freak get away with this, are you?”
Crap.
“I think we should make her eat some if she loves them so much. You’ve seen her showing them off, spiders and bugs and snakes and crap.”
“Piss off,” Jenny said dismissively. “It’s over.”
“Yeah?” Stacey asked. “And what happens tomorrow, huh? You don’t think her little friends are going to remind her about how she showed you up? And what about the kids in our grade? You’ve seen this kid operate; she says one thing to one guy and another thing to some girl and then all of a sudden the whole damn school is talking about whatever she wants.”
It wasn’t like that, and I wanted to shout about how it wasn’t, but my eyes were locked on Jenny. I watched the steady transition as her face changed from an irritated satisfaction to an uncertain fugue to unwilling acceptance and then to smug arrogance. “Yeah. I guess I’m going to have to teach you a little lesson of my own, you little freak, so it sticks properly.”
Stacey and the other girl holding me grew excited, starting to bounce. The other one announced “I call hosies on the bugs” and, for just a moment, I felt their arms go slack. Without warning, I ripped free and barreled at Jenny.
My gaze narrowed to a red tunnel as I slammed my hoof into Tirek’s face. He was larger than me, stronger than me, and his magic had grown to overmatch mine, but I didn’t care. The smug look of arrogance melted off his face.
I howled like a banshee as I swung my other fist. Jenny was larger than me, taller than me, stronger than me, but it didn’t matter. She fell back and I fell on top of her, swinging both arms. She raised her fingers to try and scratch at my face.
Tirek’s counterattack cut through my side, but I barely felt it. All the peaceful overtures he’d thrown back into my face, all the ponies he’d drained and left for dead, all that mockery and spite, I threw back into his teeth, breaking bones with every strike as I harried him across the thundering field.
Jenny’s face was swollen and her nose was bleeding, but still I kept at it. She was one face of many, of a principal and counselors who never believed me, and church ladies who called me wicked, or kids who called me freak. Freak, freak, freak, freak, all the damned time.
What’s the point of loving peace when there are monsters in every corner of the world who try to take advantage of you? What use is diplomacy when all it ever seems to do is make you appear weak? What good is taking the higher ground when everypony who cheats and takes an easier option gets ahead of you?
Where’s the value in working hard when you’re judged on who you are and not what you do? What’s authority good for if everyone in authority is an idiot? What’s the point of being smart and gifted when everyone just wants you to shut up and not make waves?
I’ve tried to compromise, but my enemies never give me the chance. Everything from Sombra to school yards to a sword in my gut.
The Sword. I stopped fighting. I was dreaming. It was a really, really intense, vivid dream, but I was dreaming all the same.
I looked up and saw Daphne and Luna looking back at me. Then they turned and began to walk away. In spite of knowing that it was a dream, I felt my guts threaten to tear themselves out through the hole the Sword had made. I held out a hoof or a hand or something I don’t even know out to them and called out, but they never so much as glanced. They didn’t want to look at me.
And why should they.
* * *
Consciousness was a struggle. It was a battle in and of itself. It was as if there were mountains of cotton all around, and fighting only made the sinking faster. The sun pierced my eyelids, and, bit by awful bit, I stirred my protesting body. My cracked, dried lips opened to yawn, only to be brought up short by a fit of hacking and dry retching—how I could feel so dehydrated after pouring healing water over me I have no idea, but I needed to rectify the situation at once. Weakly, I stretched for the blurry double-image of a wooden cup only to realize that it lay firmly grasped in the very hand that sought it.
When I tried to bring it to my lips I found that some of my struggles were due not merely to tiredness, but that the links of my maille constricted painfully around me. Flexing and stretching harder with my growing strength gave rise to a series of tinny pops, more pins coming loose. So freed, I brought the Cup to my lips and tilted it back desperately.
Cool, refreshing water met me. It slopped gracelessly over my face and chest, but I was past caring. I drank and drank until my thirst had been quenched. Mother would have been wroth if she could see me then; I could just picture her dark-silver face scrunching up in distaste. Which immediately begged the question…
Wait, what? Dark silver?
The shock of that more than anything is what woke me fully. I lowered the Cup and stared out across the dry waste outside Mag Mell. Even in my half-delirious state, I knew there was something wrong with thinking of my mother as a several thousand year dead mare, but for the life of me I couldn’t put my finger on it just then. Indeed, it seemed quite reasonable; several thousand years ago my parents had died, leaving me to struggle in a strange new world that I would eventually come to reluctantly rule.
I could remember all of it—well, most of it—perfectly, from the early days digging in the dirt to the adventures on the chaotic high seas with my adoptive parents while waiting for the land to settle, to saving the pony nation from Discord, to slowly piecing its government together, and the long, painfully lonely reign to follow. I read libraries and wrote more books than I can easily remember, and I went to war and made common cause, I suffered puffed-up dignitaries and nobles I didn’t have the heart to deflate. I trained student after student and—
And.
Other memories pounded at my head, pushing aside the long, dry years with a searing immediacy. A little girl stolen from her home and forced into a cruel game, where she learned the hard way that the only path to freedom was over the bodies of others. That certainly explained why I had hands instead of hooves.
Because, after all, I wasn’t really Celestia. I was the crazy, desperate girl who’d wrapped the magic torture device around Celestia’s head that had been directly responsible for killing her parents. I’d shoveled her own pain back at her until she became my own personal weapon of mass destruction. And more.
I felt around my gut. There was a hole in the front of the armor and tunic Maille had given me, and I suspected one would match it on the other side, but the belly between them was whole and unblemished.
I didn’t know how to feel about that.
I clenched my fists and pressed them against my face. For a long, terrible moment, I’d wished the King of Swords had won that battle instead of me. Or, if not, then that I was too far gone even for the Cup.
I’d won both of them with violence, after all. Strange how the more violent of the two probably hadn’t resulted in anything worse than a beating.
That it had been the Cup—the less violent of the two Arcana—that had saved me, though, that was a horrific irony, because I knew what it had cost me to win it. I couldn’t even admit it then, but I knew.
Celestia had been a shining example of everything that was right and good and proper. Maybe she had regrets and weaknesses and challenges, but she’d overcome them with incredible fortitude and strength of character. I could see that then, so very clearly.
Me, though—when life gave me lemons, I smashed the fruit with a hammer and used the juice to blind my enemies so I could beat and rob them. A short, nasty, brutish life.
“What’s the point?” I demanded of her, turning to the mare and trying to find some wisdom in her ancient eyes. She had little enough to give, though; the long fight against the Bridle seemed to have left her tired, and her magenta eyes were dim and uncertain. “Even if I win, what then? What do I have left?”
Nothing, I answered myself, you’ve already burned every bridge and alienated everyone and everything you ever cared about. No one will ever accept you again, and no one should. You can’t force them to love you, and now they’re going to have to stop you.
It was at that point that I realized how truly cornered I had become. In one hand, I held one of the most powerful tools for destruction in several worlds. In the other a great tool for healing. On a finger was a device of protection and knowledge. Monstrous as it was, I still had Celestia, too. I’d sought them all to try and free myself, but in doing so, I’d turned friends into enemies and made more enemies still. I couldn’t go anywhere in the Nine Worlds without attracting massive opposition that would, eventually, wear me down. The Elements of Harmony, Nessus, the Crystal Heart; there were things that could touch me still.
Standing, I dusted myself off and fixed the fit of my gear absently. I stroked at Celestia’s mane; ironic, really, I could close my eyes and imagine that I was feeling my own mane, even though the one in my memory was really hers and I’d stolen those memories as thoroughly as I’d stolen her.
“I’ve fought so hard and come so far, but all I’ve done has only served to hurt those around me. What can I do?” I begged her. “The Sword King was right. I’ve become the monster, damn it. Damn me. I’m just another Sombra at this rate. Even if I can beat all comers, what does that make me?” I shut my eyes and buried my face in her side. I wanted desperately to go back into her mind and lose myself there, to swallow my eight years in her thousands and forget we’d ever been separate, but I knew that wasn’t how it worked.
“There has to be a way out. That’s all I’ve wanted all this time, just a way to get out. But what can I do? I can’t give the Arcana back, the Cup and Wand goblins will kill me. Luna will definitely kill me even if I release you.” I bit back a sob. “I wish Twilight Sparkle could just blast me with the Elements and make it all better, but you have to be possessed of evil for that to work. This is... all me. Just me. Just a horrible little girl...”
Wishing wouldn’t accomplish anything, though. Wishing implied that there was some higher entity which would respond and act to correct matters. If there were any gods, they damned well weren’t listening.
It was all up to me.
“I have to make this right.” I tightened my hand in her glorious mane. “I have to make all of it right.” It had all started out so small. I just wanted to selfishly erase a few mistakes and make my life better as a result, but the evil started back further than that. Seeing thousands of years with my own eyes had awakened to me how truly insignificant my problems had been and how severely my wrecking destiny screwed things up.
“It’s not enough just… just to undo what I did.” I turned my gaze on the Bridle and felt my hands quake. I could feel it slipping around my own muzzle, see what it did to my—no, Celestia’s—father. How it had torn in twain an entire world and brought evil down onto uncounted billions. That was the center of all this.
I pulled the Ring from my finger and let it spin in the air before me. The King of Rings had told me what I needed to know. In the depths of the Ring, the mists of time peeled back before me to an age very unlike my own. The King of Rings had told me what had to be done: true primordial chaos, when little had meaning and all shape and form were subject to whim. Where time runs backwards and sideways as often as forwards.
“The only way out is in,” I whispered. “I have to finish what I started.” Celestia tensed and seemed confused; I didn’t think she could understand me, exactly, but telling her was like telling myself. I had to hear it more than she did.
It was what the Morgwyn had wanted all along. I’d struggled to avoid it, twisting and turning, but it had me trapped. Perhaps it had known all along that it would come to this eventually; that in the end, it wouldn’t be my longing for power, for change, but my drive to keep things the same, to return to what once was, that would lead to this moment.
The Ring told me the rest. It showed me a girl wreathed in power, surrounded by the four points of the Arcana and six colored lights that I knew all too well: the Elements of Harmony. I needed to be crowned in the full might and glory of the Water Bearer, to bridge the gap between the heavens and the earth. The Ring quaked as it struggled to comprehend what followed such a moment, what I proposed to do then. “I can do it. I can change everything. I can use all that power to break the world and remake it whole.”
The Ring practically screamed at me. It struggled to point out how difficult it would be, even with so much power at my fingertips. It put the world at terrible risk; if I lost control, Chaos would be free and all sense and sanity would be buried under a tide of confusion.
Yet, were the worlds not already drenched in blood? How many uncounted billions had to die before things got better, if they ever did, or some conflict tore the earth apart? How long until Twilight and her friends fail to stop some menace and their world and ours were destroyed? Goblin Kings like Xerxes and Nessus could undo the works of more reasoned figures like the Sword and Ring Kings.
All the real good and beauty of the world had fled when the Bridle was fashioned and used to prop one species up above the rest. If ever there was an opportunity to change the world, it was now, and I was the one person in it to have the means to succeed.
Mounting up on Celestia’s back was the most difficult thing I’d ever done, even with my mounting resolve. More difficult than any of the challenges I’d faced fleeing the goblins, more heart-wrenching than Wire’s turning, harder even than the battle I’d fought against the Sword King. I’d sooner have returned to my Earth where I’d fought the King and handed back the Sword in apology.
The purpose of the Water Bearer was to bring grace back into the world, to pour inspiration from on high and revive a dying universe. I would accept that role. I would use that power to wash away the sin wrought by Man that drove away the other kinds so that the world never need have faltered in the first place.
Then, finally, I could wash clean the stain from my own heart.
* * *
They marched in the snow by their thousands. Shadows they seemed, dimly seen through a curtain of ice flurries beneath a sky darkened by an unnatural storm. They cringed against the light of my passage as I winged my way over their heads. My army of darkness.
Their fear radiated up like a great stinking miasma as they beheld the mare of dayfire that was mine to control. They knew her, one and all, for she had been their gaoler, and, as her light touched them, I knew them as well. In my mind it had been my own hard labor which had imprisoned each of these twisted mockeries behind the gates of Tartarus, and now it was my blade which had set them free. From a twisted, goatish mockery of a centaur to sickening clouds of evil fumes to hundred-eyed giants, I had unleashed a terror. Even with the Cup to hand, which magnified the intensity of their emotions and touched every mind below, I knew they followed me for only one reason.
It was that reason which made my stomach churn the most and sent disgust through my bones. They followed me now because they respected me—no, they were in awe of me, because I was the one who had laid low their hated judge and executioner. It was as clear as Celestia’s reflection in their vengeance-hungry eyes, even without magic.
I was the one they had been waiting for all this time, their deliverer from the prison of Order into the time of Chaos.
And still I used it. I bent their awe into dominion willingly and lifted the Sword to lead them forth as their wills became mine. All my misgivings, all of my guilt, and all of my shame weren’t enough to deter me.
“First,” I had proclaimed, and my words had resonated through the Cup to every heart and mind of my dark host, “do not kill. Do not permit any to come to lasting harm. Obey this commandment above all others, even if it conflicts directly with my orders.” I had to wonder how many of them felt a twinge of uncertainty when that order wrote itself into their hearts; they couldn’t have met many dark lords who advocated virtual pacifism.
The command was a paper shield, even so. It didn’t matter that I intended to crush their hopes of an eternal paradise, a return to Chaos, a free pass of butchery, or whatever mad urges they prayed I would fulfill for them. I could draw upon the ancient strategic wisdom of the Sword and lead them with wholly undeserved brilliance. None of it made up for the truly titanic—irony included—risk that I was taking in breaking them free, leashing them, and leading them into battle against the ponies of Equestria.
Yet, with the alternative of facing Luna, Discord, and their armies personally, I could see no alternative. The risk was great, but my visions of the future in the Ring had been crystal clear; if I went alone, it must result in surrender, death, or worse. It didn’t matter for whom—even if I did defeat all comers, there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d be able to finish my task. Not after Luna.
No. I’d already crossed that line once at Xerxes’s throne. Even though I planned to erase everything that had happened today or die trying, every person or pony I came against today was another innocent, as far as I knew. I had been a victim myself once. I wouldn’t make another. Not if I could help it.
Look where that had gotten the world.
Dwelling on the tragedy which had become my life would do no one any good, however, and so it was that we at last emerged from the Unicorn Range and into the vale beneath the great blue spire of Canterlot Mountain. Thick falling snow turned to rivers of slush beneath Celestia’s nightmare passage, and we arced through the air as a beacon, one signalling the way to destruction.
It had been my hope in dumping an early winter on the land to paralyze all traffic to and from Canterlot, be it military reinforcements or unwitting civilians, and I got my wish. As Celestia I well knew how much activity this valley saw in the days leading up to Nightmare Night, but as far as the eye could see the land remained locked under a frosty glaze.
All but one set of stragglers in a lonely train mired in the fresh-fallen drifts.
The wolves got there before me, or the creatures which stood as mockeries of wolves with their ice-rimmed forms. Obeying my command, they fell upon the startled engineers trying to dig the train out and pinned them without harm while baying at the passengers to warn them against venturing forth. One wolf even allowed a particularly stalwart earth pony to beat and shatter his ribs while two others snuck up and slammed him into the side of the engine.
Their struggles died as they witnessed me, however.
They could scarce have missed my approach. Wreathed in Celestia’s flame, I descended from on high with the electrically crackling Sword in one hand and the Bridle in the other. I scanned briefly for any sign of Discord or Luna, but those ponies’ horrified gazes arrested me. They didn’t know who Celestia was, I realized, with her hair ablaze and her eyes pits of sunlight, but their looks of terror weren’t directed at her—every eye had settled on me. Within the cabins I saw tiny foals quivering as they tried to hide behind their parents and mares trying and failing to look brave as they gathered themselves. What few were given to utter, gibbering panic were balanced by those who readied themselves for one last, desperate stand.
I opened my mouth to speak, then stilled myself. For just a moment, I had been about to address them as "my little ponies" and reassure them, just as Celestia had done time and time again in her long career, facing dark lord after evil queen one after the other.
Exactly what would I reassure them of this time, though? Holy cats. Amelia, just who was the dark lord there? Who was marching into Canterlot with an army of monsters at her back beneath the churning storm-beast called from the darkest part of Celestia’s past?
Slowly, the ones screaming began to calm. At first I thought that they had just hollered themselves hoarse, but then I noticed that the others were becoming lethargic as well. Looking into the eyes of a father standing over his colt, I saw the light in them dim ever so faintly. In a sickening instant I realized that I could feel their minds touch the bridle. One-by-one, they succumbed to its seductive lassitude. I could reach out and touch them and rifle through memories far happier than mine, but the one thing I couldn’t do was back off the bridle’s control, not while it stood so near them.
I was deluding myself if I thought that just because I’d ordered my monsters not to harm the ponies, that if I was careful and sure, that if I just did everything right, I could somehow come out of this with a clean conscience. No matter my justifications, no matter whether or not I believed that I was still doing the right thing and choosing the lesser of two evils, I was evil, if only because I brought so much harm into the lives of others. I could blame the Golden Bridle, and it truly was a horrific instrument, but it was just an instrument. I was the one who wielded it.
That is who I’d become. The monsters at my back were in awe of me because I stood for terror and chaos. I was a monster leading monsters, and no amount of dithering would change that fact.
I watched the light leave the brave, the scared, the foolish, and the brilliant eyes of my little ponies and couldn’t turn away. Even as I left, I could still feel their dimmed wits tugging at me through the reins; its power had grown as I had, and I needn’t even touch it anymore to reach through it to another’s mind.
“Fate-stealer,” I thought I heard the Morgwyn whisper, though it was impossible to tell. “Wherever you go, no matter how you twist and turn, in spite of all your good intentions, you destroy everything. Go, go and shatter the destiny of worlds.”
On reflection, I knew it for my own voice speaking to me in the Morgwyn’s, but it didn’t matter. The sentiment was the same. My course remained unchanged. If anything, I knew I had to succeed at all costs, lest everything that had happened be for naught.
The battle, such as it was, began shortly after. Titanspawn ran this way and that at my command, with layered diversions meant to keep the city’s few remaining defenders occupied. South went the goatish centaur to Ponyville to draw Discord’s ire, and north went moon-touched shapeshifters to provoke Luna, and I advanced up the mountain’s slopes towards its summit where I might have a commanding vantage over the entire country. To their continued disposition I gave little thought; perhaps it was reckless, but a large part of me wanted my plan to fail, for some brave pony to sweep away my assault as they always had before. Defeat would offer peace of a sort.
Nearing the mountaintop, I looked down and gave new orders to the monsters at my heels. “Find the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony and bring them and the Elements to me. Prevent anyone from interfering with me at the top unless I order otherwise.”
Thunder rumbled across the darkened horizon as Celestia and I mounted the summit. Angry storm clouds swirled even above the peak, and a thick layer of snow crunched beneath her hooves as she set down. Standing here at the top of their world, it felt as though countless, ineffable eyes were upon me, awaiting the turning of the age.
“All right,” I murmured, “now to send out the challenge.”
The snow flashed into vapor as Celestia spread her wings and lit her horn, sending up a pillar of flame that pierced the sky. “Nessus,” I said, speaking into the Ring, “your Chosen One calls you. Let's settle this matter once and for all. Come peaceably and I will not destroy you. Fail to answer my call, and I will hunt you down to the furthest reaches of the Nine Worlds.”
“I am here, Water Bearer,” came the booming answer, catching even me by surprise as the enormous centaur seemed to melt out of an outcropping of rock. All around the summit, I perceived that others were revealing themselves, twitching aside concealing cloaks that had aided in their goblin magic. A whole forest of hard-eyed, cold-hearted goblin elites. Nessus himself looked like he didn’t even need the backup; even atop Celestia, he towered over me, as vast and barbarically powerful as ever. The gnarled ash staff in his hands could shatter bone even without its divine properties.
Even so, I had to keep myself from smirking. Water Bearer, indeed. Even a monster could take pleasure in small victories. “Keeping abreast of things, were you?” I asked and patted the hilt at my side. “Water Bearer, yes, but you must also know that I’m Cup-winner, Ring-holder, and Sword-wielder as well.”
“It could scarce have escaped my notice. The goblin world is aflame, from the secret tunnels beneath our earth’s ancient cities to Mag Mell and the steadfast keeps of Nifelheim.” He cracked a mirthless smile. “When I saved you over the skies of Mag Mell I wondered if perhaps I’d been in error judging you to be my chosen. I should have trusted in the force of the ancients’ prophecy making, it seems.”
“And up until a few days ago I was much shorter. We all must deal with change, it seems.”
He growled and twisted his hands around the staff. “Had you not defied us, we would have come to this point sooner, with far less in the way of suffering.”
“As if you care about suffering,” I scoffed. “I know you tried to pervert my destiny. That’s why the Ring and the Sword goblins turned against you, and it’s why the Cup King declared neutrality.”
“Don’t I? I could have been far more aggressive in my search for you, Water Bearer. I could have had quite a few failures put to death. My goblins could have torn whole human towns apart and set to torch pony villages.”
“Being a Saturday morning cartoon villain doesn’t make you any less of a monster.” He didn’t ask what that meant, but I supposed it was clear in context. “You had me stolen from my home. You set me up in a sick reality show. I don’t know exactly what you would have done to me if you’d had your way and controlled me all the way to gaining the Bridle. Are you telling me you did everything compassionately? What about the Wand Page Rail and Queen Stylus?”
“Stylus is unharmed. Imprisoned, but unharmed. As for Rail—well, you are quite right. I never claimed to be compassionate,” he chuckled, “and you would be right to name me liar if I didn’t claim to have abused prophecy for my own ends.”
“You’re a bitter, selfish old man. I can smell it from here.” I smirked. “What, let me guess—as a half-breed of pony and human you were rejected by both sides after the original war of the Bridle, and now you want revenge on both bloodlines?”
His eyes blazed quietly, but his voice was even. “Don’t pretend to understand my pain, child. What excuse have you, then? A minor case of rather comfortable kidnapping and you threaten to destabilize the known universe?”
“As if you understood the first thing about what I want!” I snapped. Ouch. That one had hit hard. I took a breath and Celestia danced her hooves under me. “Fair enough, I suppose. Stones and glass houses and all. Your motivations mean a whole lot of nothing to me, though, and I doubt you care much more about mine. What both of us want, what both of us need, is for me to have what it takes to fulfill my destiny.”
“If you’d played along, you’d already have your tools.” He snorted. “I’d have delivered the Elements right into your hands.”
“I’ll have them in due time, don’t you worry. Sure spoiled your plans.”
“Yes,” he agreed, and his smirk more than matched the one I’d worn. “And yet, for all your struggling, here you stand, exactly where you would have been had you done nothing at all.”
At first blush, I might have concurred. Indeed, that very possibility had been gnawing at me for some time. My experiences—perhaps, more accurately, the several thousands of years gained through Celestia—had matured my perspective, even if it hadn’t tempered my passions. “So, what, you could do all of the dirty work for me? You’d wrest the Cup, Ring, and Sword from their respective holders while I sat playing with imaginary friends in a play house? You’d have delivered me to the Bridle, sure, just in time for me to capture Celestia, Luna, or both so you could use them to battle the other Kings of the Arcana. You’d have broken the wills of the Element Bearers.” I paused thoughtfully. “Yes, I would have done nothing and ended up in exactly the same place. But, you know what?” My voice hardened. “I’d rather have committed my own crimes of my own accord than have them committed on my behalf. Maybe I would have been an innocent, but I wouldn’t have been innocent. There’d be blood on my hands for not being smart enough, not being clever enough to figure out that I was being fooled. The only way for me to have avoided being a part of this mess would have been to run away and keep running, and you know what? To hell with that. I’m not going to run away from my problems. Yes, I’ve screwed up, but I’m going to make it right, and I’m not going to scamper off like a little girl to be picked off at your leisure.”
Our eyes met and the air around us crackled. We stood there on the roof of Equestria as our wills rose to meet, coiling up to clash like something alive. The power radiating off him was as strong as it had been when we had first met, perhaps even stronger. However, my own presence and will swelled to meet his in a sharp, thunderous abrasion. We were like two living flames struggling to outblaze one another, and the shadows cast by Celestia’s flame darkened and shivered.
We broke off a moment later, though. Neither of us had what we’d come to gain, after all.
“So we’ve come to this place, by one way or another,” I said, catching my breath. I was pleased to see that he was red-faced from our near-collision, too, with his barrel chest stirring faintly. “I fought my way through the Arcana, gaining them in ways thematic and appropriate to their nature. Cup through passion, Ring through reason—if not necessarily my own—and the Sword through contest. Four artifacts forged by ancient wizards from the lingering power of their world. It stands to reason there’d be a trick to winning the Wand. Everything I’ve done so far has fit a narrative, after all.”
“You’re quite right in that. The Wand is only won through one way; a negotiated settlement. It is the bridge between one and another, a mutual contact between two or more entities.” He planted one end of the Wand into the ground, and white fire rose from its tip. “A contract made on it cannot be broken by either party; the world itself will bend around it.”
“Which makes it a bit of a coup for me that I did all this myself, isn’t it?” I twirled the Ring around my finger. “If we’d done it your way, I’d probably have agreed to just about anything you wanted for the Wand, and there wouldn’t have been anything I could do about it. You could have backed it up with threats if I wasn’t cooperative and waltzed away thereafter, happy as can be, with me unable to do anything to touch you thereafter.”
He barked a laugh. “I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t have just cut you in on the deal from the start. You and I speak the same language.”
If that was meant to get into my skin, well, it was working, but it was nothing I hadn’t already berated myself for. It did remind me to be wary, though; Nessus had the look of a classic centaur, with all the apparent barbarism and brutality that entailed, but I’d be an idiot if I assumed he wasn’t clever. A centaur taught Herakles everything he knew, after all, and Nessus didn’t win the Wand over by flexing slabs of muscle at it. Not to mention, he was certainly older than Celestia and far more ruthless.
“You wouldn’t have gone through all of this trouble to arrange this fork in prophecy if it weren’t for some spectacular gain,” I said. “I overheard some of the conversations in Mag Mell, so I know the other Kings were going to have your head for this. Let’s stop beating around the bush, and get to the meat: what is it you want?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to wait for the Morgwyn to come scampering along to whisper into your ear and say what it is you want, girl?” Nessus tossed his head back and laughed. “You talk a mean game, I’ll concede, but I know for a fact that you couldn’t—and indeed didn’t—progress this far on your own merit. Where is the Morgwyn, then? Is that titan’s lap dog lurking in the shade, waiting for me to call it out? I will name it and gladly, if you have need of its advice.”
“I’ve transcended the Morgwyn. I do what I do because I have chosen to do it. The Morgwyn wants something, certainly, which I have no intention of giving it.”
“Do you?” He chuckled, a rumbling from deep in his chest. “Then what is it you are doing?”
Erasing history, I thought. “My duty,” I said instead, and it was the absolute truth as I understood it. Perhaps not the whole truth, but that was my prerogative.
“That’ll be scarce possible without the Elements to hand.”
“Which, again, is my problem.” I shrugged. “All of this posturing and I still don’t know what you’re after, o‘ great Goblin King. Out with it, so we can settle this.”
He snorted and stamped a huge hoof, rattling loose stones off the side of the mountain. “What I want? A great many things, girl. I do want vengeance on the pony and human races that scorned me as a child. I want the true immortality as a celestial daemon that was denied me but granted to my brother Chiron and Tethys, our accursed mother. I want one who is dead restored to life so that a crime may be answered and justice delivered by my hooves. I want his victim granted life everlasting. Give me this, child, and I’ll support you as the Water Bearer and finish what the Morgwyn began.”
Restoring the dead to life hadn’t even occurred to me as an option. Of course, it seemed obvious that if I could crack time and space in half, then death probably wasn’t really out of reach either. It was clear he was coming from a place of ancient pain, and perhaps I could sympathize with that somewhat, but let’s face it: he hadn’t earned a damned iota of reparation, and I’d sooner let the Morgwyn eat me than let him strong-arm me into harming others to suit his thirst for vengeance. In my hand, the Sword shifted smoothly into a powerful lance with a long blade.
“Now, see, my patience is running thin, Nessus. As I pointed out earlier, regardless of how I did it, I fomented a rebellion beneath your nose, I burned your keep from the inside out, and I hold three out of the four Arcana without your aid.” I aimed the lance negligently in his direction. “You know, I seem to recall promising not to kill you… but I said nothing about not humiliating you in front of your men and running you through a few times. You’re tough. You look like you can take a bit of punishment.”
To be honest, bargaining wasn’t really one of my talents, either. I tended to wheedle, bluff, and demand more than spin a deal, and even I knew that violent threats more or less signalled the end of diplomatic talks.
Sometimes, though, you just need to put all your cards on the table. Somehow, I knew swearing on the Wand would remain binding regardless of how exalted I became.
“I’m not going to just give you the Wand,” he growled. “Threaten me as you will. If this comes to blows, you will fail in your aims.”
“Yes,” I nodded serenely, “but I’m willing to bet I’m more keen on giving up what I want than you. You see, you’ve been planning on this for millennia, so I know you want it bad. As for me? Well, you seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that I won’t accept flinging your shattered corpse off this mountain as a consolation prize if I don’t like the deal!” I punctuated my remark with a flash of lightning from the tip of the spear that shattered a stone near his feet, My voice echoed across the empty air. Celestia dug a gouge in the earth with her hoof and snorted menacingly before lowering her horn, which still blazed with sunlight.
If Nessus found it at all impressive, he didn’t react. The hesitation, however, spoke volumes.
I smiled tightly. “You know, in other circumstances, I would find it hilarious that for all your planning you’ve still bitten off more than you can chew. Insult me for relying on the Morgwyn if you will; I don’t mind. I was an idiot to trust it as far as I did, but it brought me here, with the power to destroy you, so I guess I owe it thanks for this at the least.” My smile turned into a sneer. “Let’s face it; you’ve been superseded. You haven’t been relevant to events from day one. So, Nessus, I have no interest in joining your pathetic campaign of vengeance. I neither know nor care about how someone wronged you in the distant past, and, as for the long dead, I’m sure they’re happier far away from you than they ever could be among the living.”
Now it was his turn to darken with anger. His face smoldered like the caldera of an angry volcano, but I didn’t allow him opportunity to respond.
“Rather like me, actually. You want to join your brother? Fine. That’s the least objectionable of your terms, and it gets you out of my hair for the rest of eternity, so tell you what—take it, or die and pray you get to see whoever it is you miss so dearly in the afterlife after I’m through with you.”
Nessus growled and twisted the wood so hard I thought at first that it might break. Once again our eyes and wills met, and for a second it seemed as if I might indeed get my violent, selfish wish to kill him.
Once again, though, he turned aside, defeated.
“Done,” he said, his voice heavy, “and done.”
“Done,” I answered, adding on a strange impulse I couldn’t have explained, “three times done.”
Fire leapt between us in an arc as bright as a carbon lamp. The Wand leapt across it and I caught it in an outstretched hand.
It is literally impossible to describe in human terms how it feels to be master of all four Arcana. Any attempts made pale before it. I’ve experienced being a human with superior senses ever since touching the Golden Bridle and an alicorn with thousands of years behind her, but to say both experiences paled into insignificance against what the Arcana opened up for me was an understatement. I rose from Celestia’s back, supported by nothing but still air, and my senses spread out from the mountaintop. As far as the eye could see—farther, even, since I penetrated the storms and gloom I’d had cast over the land—my senses spread, and farther, to witness events on other worlds.
So, too, could I feel the universe itself turning beneath me. The moment, the event in time I’d been waiting for was near at hand. Strange, really; for all my twisting and turning, I hadn’t managed to avoid Daphne’s fate. Instead, I was running to embrace it. I was just as the Morgwyn had called me: the thief of fate.
Dimly, I could even perceive something beneath the world as it appeared, lying underneath the strata of reality. Chained forms writhing with anticipation, sensing that their moment was coming, too.
It still wasn’t enough power, though. Not enough to threaten the status quo. Perhaps I could sense those alien forces beneath the stratum of the universe but I couldn’t so much as shake their chains. There was still one thing—or, rather, six things—missing.
Bursts of familiar magic reached my ear, and I brought my senses back to the mountainside and turned my gaze down its face. There, a flying purple shape blasted the mountainside with powerful rays. Half a mile above her, the clink of the Elements in her saddlebags still reached my ears.
True to their nature, Celestia’s champions had come and fought through my forces, just as I had known they would.
“Now, how am I going to… ah, of course.” I stretched down and seized hold of the Bridle, but not to touch Celestia’s mind. Instead, I reached through it just as I had back at the train and felt around until I began to fill the minds of the listless soldiers in the charge of the thestral ponies Luna had sent, searching for one person in particular. All the minds the Bridle had touched spread out before me, and I zeroed in on my chosen vessel.
Poor Twilight. She probably wasn’t expecting her reunion with Rainbow Dash to be quite that violent. I watched as the rainbow streak launched directly at her from the side of the mountain and cracked her hard enough that it made me wince even through the Bridle’s dampening.
It didn’t make me proud, but it wouldn’t matter shortly. I was so close.
I ordered Rainbow Dash to bring her up before touching the minds of my chaos creatures, verifying that they’d secured each of the other Bearers. Applejack appeared to be the last holdout, so I had a half dozen mud creatures pounce on her and haul her through the earth itself. I felt even less proud about that, for Celestia’s memories of their triumphs and tribulations stood as bright and clear as if they were my own. Perhaps they’d pull through with a stunning victory again and right this insult if I was lucky.
One by one, my minions threw the Bearers at my feet and the Bridle seized a hold of their minds. Twilight was the last to arrive, and she struggled weakly against the pounding she’d been given. Dull-eyed Rainbow Dash deposited her before me with a graceless thud, and the young princess lifted her head. Her eyes filled with such pain and heartache at seeing her bridled mentor that my own heart broke on the spot.
It wasn’t hard to think of her as my student, as the child I’d raised from nothing to become the heroic princess. She struggled to her feet against the soporific pull of the Golden Bridle’s magic and glared at me with all the remaining force she could muster. Like Celestia before her, the light struggled to remain kindled in her eyes, but she fought on all the same. I’d never felt so proud of her as in that moment, when the odds were truly impossible and she still wouldn’t give in, not with her friends and loved ones on the line.
I stretched my hand down and touched her forehead gently. The wind billowed out our hair and tugged away the few words of protest she managed to croak out.
“I’m so sorry, Twilight Sparkle,” I said quietly. “But that’s not worth anything, I know. I’ve done terrible things and I wish I could take them back… I wish I could let you win. But I can’t. I have to do this. I wish the Elements could blast me and make me be happy again, but I know now that they won’t—can’t—fix me. Sleep now, please. It will be over soon, and you’ll wake up one day never knowing anything had ever been wrong.”
I don’t know what it was that did it. Perhaps it was me, perhaps the delay, perhaps she changed her mind, but one way or another, her knees grew weak, and her eyelids heavy, and she lay down there in the midst of her closest friends and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, the center of a five-pointed star of insensate mares.
Lights rose from her bags to shine in the air. Red, orange, green, blue, pink, and purple. They spun in the air around me and I held out my hands to them beckoningly. Up they rose, dancing around my crown in a tight, fast orbit, six shining stars that had once torn one world into two.
Time stood still.
Far above, the sky had cleared, and the stars were close now. They watched pensively with their gazes turned down to the summit. Uncounted, unseen shapes waited in every corner and crevice of reality.
It was so breathtakingly easy. What had seemed an immeasurably complicated task a moment before now revealed itself to be so simple I should have seen it before. I stretched out my mind and the world parted before me, folding into concentric rings that glowed with the sunlight of five thousand years in a tunnel that stretched for eternity, and yet its end lay within reach of my fingertips. The path lay open before me; a way back to fix all the terrible mistakes that had led to this moment. The horizon lay right at my feet and opened onto a world long gone where I’d be able to put my nightmares to rest at last.
All I had to do was take a step.
Into that frozen, ineffable moment, gasping and sweaty, stained and bruised, a woman fell. Nearly naked, with only a torn red cloak to protect her against the cold, she cut a pathetic figure. Her long black hair lay tousled across her back and sides, and she looked as if she’d nearly scraped the skin clean off her feet and knees. Stumbling, blundering awkwardly, she fell against the stone I’d shattered in my confrontation with Nessus and caught her breath, wheezing and dry heaving.
For just a moment I felt like the child I hadn’t been for so long. “Hey. You’re kind of ruining the moment here.” I couldn’t help but feel a little petulant. I was at the culmination of a mythic destiny I’d taken such care in stealing and there she was, some strange almost-nude woman blundering in like an actor off her cue.
She lifted a hand, still struggling to gather herself in the thin mountain air. “Wait,” she rasped, “just… wait a second. Give me… give me just… a moment… don’t blow anything up.”
I’d never seen her in my life, and yet there was something strangely familiar about her. Automatically, I started to respond tartly that I certainly wasn’t planning on blowing up anything, but I caught myself just as I opened my mouth.
Strange. I didn’t usually feel this flustered around people. Particularly not when filled with incalculable divine might. Reluctantly, against my better judgement, I pulled back enough to regard her more closely.
Still breathless—clearly, this was no Olympian—she struggled to speak again while bent over at the waist. “Please, just… hold on a moment longer. I want…” She wheezed and spat on the stone, then wiped her mouth. “I just want… to talk to you… before you do anything.”
Though I still couldn’t place what was so familiar about her, I hesitated. Nothing about her suggested enormous power, so I didn’t think myself nor my aims were under any threat. This wasn’t some angel or god come to challenge me before I could act, at least not as far as I could tell. Indeed, she seemed to be exactly what she appeared to be: someone who had come a long way through a great many tribulations, all just so she could talk with me at that instant.
Curiosity and cats, what can I say.
“Yeah?” I asked. “What do you want?” So it was a little brusque, but the eloquence I’d summoned up against Nessus seemed to have fled along with my tenuous serenity, both vanishing in the face of this unexplained sense that we’d met in some way before. After watching her wheeze a bit more in trying to respond I rolled my eyes and pushed her down on her rear with a little tendril of force. “Just take a breather before you try to talk. Sweet flaming asteroids, you’re going to hack a lung up at this rate.”
Her shoulders shook as she sat, as much from anxiety as from exhaustion I realized. Her fear rolled off her in waves, but not fear of me I thought. It was something else. Perhaps performance anxiety.
I remembered that Daphne had been like that before public speaking or other stressful situations, but this certainly wasn’t her. Even so, the thought of Daphne brought me tantalizingly closer to that sense.
Finally, licking her dry, chapped lips, she caught her breath. “Amelia, wait. I mean… really wait.” Her eyes fell on Twilight Sparkle and her sleeping friends and widened, then turned huge as she saw Celestia waiting obediently near the edge of the summit, but she swallowed and went on. “You can’t do… this. Whatever you’re doing, you need to stop.”
I was almost disappointed. I’d half-expected something a little more original with all this drama. Perhaps she’d had a message from the gods about how they wanted to challenge me to celestial bowling with the planets for the fate of the world, or something cool like that. “Ah. No.”
Her total lack of force made me wonder if she’d just slink away, crestfallen at my blunt refusal. Instead, she rose to her feet. There was no particular drama in the act, it had more the air of her collecting her thoughts than any kind of statement. I sensed that she had approximately the same level of personal charisma as a sack of flour, with a smidgen more in the way of social skills.
“Yeah, well, uh… I can’t say I wasn’t expecting that,” she admitted, pushing her hair out of her face. “Just… will you listen a minute? I know, you don’t know me, I don’t know you. I shouldn’t even be here. It’s just… I’ve come a really long way and I’ve seen a lot of ponies get hurt over this and I don’t want to believe… I just have to try, okay?” she asked, though I couldn’t have said if it were directed at me or herself. “There’s a lot of things that have gone on. At the very least you deserve to hear our side of it.”
I turned to look at the tunnel, watching as it sparkled beneath the starry universe. “Who is ‘us?’” I asked as I returned my attention to her. “Just where the heck did you come from?”
“Ponyville.” She plucked at her hair awkwardly with a hand. “I don’t normally look like this.” Which certainly explained the fixation with her fingers and the casual way she ignored the way her cloak fell.
“Fetter?”
“Ah… indirectly.” She frowned, looking at me more closely. “You are Amelia, right? I mean, I guess you have the look, but…”
“Yes, that’s my name.” Most of me, anyway. The part that’s doing the driving. “What made you think I wasn’t?”
“It’s just the, well…” she trailed off and gestured at me vaguely.
“What?” I crossed my arms over my chest and, quite by accident, had my answer. Glancing down, I shifted in shock as I realized just how tall I’d become. As I’d spent most of the last several days mounted or delirious, it had been easy to ignore the myriad changes my body had gone through along with my mind, particularly after I confused myself with Celestia so many times. Now, though, I couldn’t help but notice. It was more than just height, though; Maille had correctly predicted my proportions, and the armor and clothing were at their fullest extension. Long, strong limbs, a mane of dirty blond hair, and a feline sort of rangy grace completed the portrait. I had no doubt I’d see a slight slit in my pupils if I looked.
I had been right, earlier; I wasn’t a little girl any longer.
The silence grew thick and I blew out a tense breath. “Yeah. I’ve… been through a lot.”
“Tell me about it,” the cloaked girl muttered dryly. “So how about it? I can’t stop you, I can see that. I don’t think I really stack up to princess-destroying women who hover with, like… lightning and halos and stuff floating around them. You can do what you want, just… would it kill you to talk it over before you leap into anything?”
“I’ve already decided what I’m going to do.” I looked down at a palm, remembering how it had once been so small. “But, no. I don’t think time is really a concern right now. So, fine. Go on.”
“Oh, great,” she said, exhaling a bated breath in relief. “Grand.” She braced herself against the side of the shattered rock. “I almost figured you’d… well, never mind, I guess. So, uh. Right. What I am going to say.”
My face quirked into a frown. “Are you making this up as you go along?”
“No! No!” She waved her hands placatingly. “No, I mean, yes, I’m making up the… words, thing… as I go along, but everything I’ve come to tell you is true.”
“You know, among other things, I’ll be able to tell if you’re lying. That’s kind of a thing I can do.” I tapped the Cup floating in midair beside me.
“But I’m not lying,” she said more confidently. Indeed, if anything, she seemed to cling to my response and grew emboldened. “You have the Ring, too, so you can independently verify anything I say.”
“Fair enough. So let’s start with an easy one.” I tilted my head. “Who are you?”
She took a deep breath as her anxiety spiked. Then she took another for good measure. Whatever gave her nerve nearly failed her then, but she managed to face me and said, “My name is Leit Motif. I was sent here by your sister, Daphne.”
There was a ringing in my ears as I stared at her, frozen stiff. A voice echoed down at me from beside a wagon in the streets of Mag Mell in what seemed an eternity ago. Oh, your sister loved her dearly. The two of them were as sisters. Inseparable. It was like a tripwire going off and setting a forest ablaze with bouncing landmines in my head.
“The unicorn,” I whispered. “Her little friend.” My voice began to rise stridently. “You’re the one she came to see in Equestria when she abandoned me. The sister she chose.”
“Uh,” Leit Motif, the unicorn. took a step back. “Amelia—”
“When did you find out I was here, huh?” I snapped in a voice like thunder. “Were you having a nice little tea party with the real Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends when the word came in that I’d stolen your ruler? Gosh, it must have been hard for Daphne to even remember who I was after all that time together.”
“Wait! Just hold on a minute!” Leit took a few more steps back, half-concealed behind the rock now. The shadows twisted and writhed across the ground.
“How nice of her to send you along! Is she going to be popping in later? Gosh, I sure wouldn’t want to interrupt whatever important business she’s on. Maybe she wants to finish that damned game of hide’n’seek since she did such a piss poor job the first time. What’s she counted to now, about twenty thousand? Her perfect god-damned memory should be able to keep track of our positions, at least.”
A crack appeared on the ground beneath me and I spent my fury at the sky, lashing with fire. “What, am I being unreasonable?” I demanded of the universe. “Yes! I get it! Sure, she was irresponsible and maybe it’s not as bad as I’m making it out to be but I don’t care! Would some closure have been so hard, did you have to tear this away from me, too?”
“Stop!” Leit Motif shouted at the top of her lungs. “Just stop! Please! You have to listen!”
Belatedly, I realized that she’d been shouting for a while now. The grinding of stone on stone and the clap of thunder and lightning had drowned her out almost completely. The earth subsided as I lowered my arms; the five comatose mares hadn’t even twitched, and Celestia did little more than flick her tail. I looked at the former unicorn, who clung desperately to the broken boulder even with the ground steady.
“You can hate me if you want,” she said. “I get it. I never meant to wrong you, but that doesn’t change anything. Just…”
“I don’t hate you,” I lied. I did hate her, though, I really did. I looked at her and knew at last what it was about her that seemed so familiar. It was Daphne’s face, or part of it; as seen through a mirror darkly. That was what had tugged at me. There was more of Daphne in her than had ever been in me. She was closer to my flesh-and-blood sister than I ever would be. It was childish and it was stupid but I hated her for it all the same.
“Don’t hate Daphne, then.” She stood shakily. “That’s the thing. You’re wrong about her… she came here after you. All this way because of you.”
I froze in midair again. “No.”
“The very minute she realized you were missing she went after you. She crossed the Veil and the Everfree and fought her way to my doorstep.”
“So she could…” I couldn’t hold onto the earlier thread of suspicion anymore. Her words rang true, and more, in my heart, I knew she was right. “She just wanted to… I don’t want to hear it.”
“She asked me for help. She wanted to find you. She was desperate to save you.” Leit Motif had found her stride now. I tried to turn away, but she wouldn’t have it, scrambling across the stone to keep ahead of me. “Don’t you see? That’s why I’m here! That’s why Twilight and her friends are here. And why she took Marcus and Naomi with her so they could help her find you! I took her to Twilight for help! We found a goblin, one of the goblins who was supposed to fool you, and she told us all about the Water Bearer and how you were being used! We went into the Everfree after you, but when goblins attacked we found out that Daphne really was the one they’d been aiming for. A ship took us across the sea to the island of Pirene, but we just missed you, so we came all the way back here.
“We gathered the other goblins, Pinion and Maille and Twig and even Kiln, who is really somepony named Marble Stone who was foalnapped just like you were, and we all joined together to come all this way to find you. And you know who led us through the storm and through the fighting on the mountain? Your sister, Daphne. She has an incredible gift and she’s used it to try and save you from all the terrible things that you’ve been going through and it’s breaking her heart to fail over and over again. She wants you back, Amelia. She and the Crusaders, too, little Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle and not-so-little Apple Bloom and even Flash’s sister Wire.” She looked up at me imploringly. “Wire said she was sorry for what she said, that she didn’t understand. There’s so many people out there who love you, Amelia. They know you hurt Celestia and Rainbow Dash, and others still, but you were just a scared kid and even if you weren’t, they know you’ve gone through so much. If it weren’t for the Morgwyn, your sister would be here right now in my place, but it cut her down because it knew she was a threat and I was the only one left who could make it. Lyra and the others have given almost everything to get to this point. Please don’t make it all for nothing.”
Each word might as well have been another stroke of the Sword to my gut, tearing and rending my illusions just as the weapon had opened up my innards. There was no way I could deny her words, no rhetorical dodge I could employ to escape their implication. It was the awful truth I’d been unwilling to face but had known about since the very beginning which had reared its head again and again. It forced me to face the root of the singular driving force which had propelled me to this point.
I loved my sister.
Every time I’d neared the point of admitting that to myself, be it at the Cup banquet or in Celestia’s dreams of Luna and myself or in the false Ponyville before I’d burned it to the ground, I had turned away and buried the feeling under every raw and angry emotion I could muster.
I loved her for every stupid little thing, from the zoning out she’d always done whenever she got lost in thought to her stupid perfect memory with its encyclopedic knowledge of whatever to her real friends who accepted her. Ever since I’d run away from our last argument I’d steadfastly denied I’d ever cared because it seemed like the final straw, that all my attempts to catch her attention were for nothing. Until right now, I could have pretended that I didn’t matter to her at all, I could hate Leit Motif for being the sister she wanted, I could hate Nessus and the goblins for her being the Water Bearer and not me.
It made me realize that I could have had Daphne all along, but I couldn’t face the possibility of rejection again. Maybe I could have had Wire and the Crusaders if I’d been willing to face up to my lies. Maille and the other goblins would have offered me support, and Rainbow Dash could have carried me to safety. Instead of all those wonderful people, though, I’d turned to a sick little monster for comfort because it, at least, accepted me for what I was when no one else ever had.
And then, only then, did I realize how wrong I’d always been.
When it was too late.
I didn’t bother to wipe my tears as I met Leit Motif’s eyes. Still, my voice was clear. “No.”
The other woman didn’t seem to know how to take that. She’d been standing on the tips of her toes, flushed with passion at her words, but she rocked back and looked at me uncertainly. “No? No, what? No, you’re not going to blow the world up…?”
“I wasn’t ever going to blow the world up.” I shook my head. “No, as in… this doesn’t change anything.”
“Wait, what?” Leit Motif gaped. “But… I’m not lying, look and see! It’s all true!”
“I don’t need to. I know you’re telling the truth. I… thank you, I guess. But it doesn’t matter. I still have to go through with what I’m doing.” I looked at the portal again. “Heck… if anything, I’m more convinced than ever.”
Rather than run her mouth off with a new round of objections, Leit Motif pursed her lips and considered me for a moment. After she collected her thoughts, she stepped forward to my side to look through the hole through the world to the grey-tinged skies beyond. “What are you doing with all this power, then?” she asked.
“I’m going to fix it,” I said. “All of it.”
“All of what?”
“This,” I waved my hand over, well, everything. “It needs to be stopped. It needs to be torn out by the root. I’m going to make the Bridle never happen, so humans and ponies and the other races don’t need to fight, not over that at least.”
“That’s… insane,” she said bluntly. “How can you possibly control that sort of thing?”
“I have that power,” I said. “I may not be the real Water Bearer with whatever special gift my sister has, but I can do that at least. She was going to fix the world, you know; the least I can do is help with that.”
“Except that’s what the Morgwyn wants you to do. You aren’t still…?”
“Listening to it?” I shook my head. “No. I’d already stopped, and you… kind of shattered everything else it ever told me. Look,” I said, and pointed at Celestia. “Do you see that thing about her face? I’ve held it. I know what it does, both to the wielder and to the victim. I have lived her life from start to finish because it put me inside her head, and to her and the others? It quiets their brains, makes them forget everything they ever knew and blocks them from forming their own decisions beyond eating and sleeping and even that I can just override. It stole her father and killed her mother. Before that, it destroyed an entire civilization and turned who knows how many people into listless animals.” I paused to let it all sink in. “Tell me, after all that, do you really think I’m doing the wrong thing?”
She frowned. “And what about us?”
“I’ll work it out. I can do that, too. I’m going to save the world, Leit Motif. I’m going to save it and everyone on it, all nine of it.”
Leit Motif sighed and shook her head, making her hair dance about her hips. “Honestly? Yes. I see your point and what you’re trying to do. I even kind of… well, I wouldn’t say admire it, but I see where it’s necessary to act.”
“But you still don’t agree with it?”
Leit chewed her lip. I turned away and stared at the portal. Just as I was gathering up my determination anew, though, she spoke up. “There’s just one thing left that I want to ask.” She reached out and touched my arm. “Amelia… do you hate yourself?”
“What?” I whirled to face her, but my angry, automatic response died in my throat. “I don’t… I mean…” My objections skittered away like water on a hot plate; it was a little hard to deny when I’d spent much of the day contemplating how I’d become the monster to lead all monsters. “I thought I was supposed to be the mind-reader here,” I protested lamely.
Leit gave a slight twitch of her shoulders. “What can I say? If I’d done half the things you’d done, I’d hate myself, too. I’d hate what I’d become. I’d do anything I could to fix it.”
It hadn’t even occurred to characterize the feeling as hatred towards myself before, but now that she had brought it up it was hard to see it as anything but self-loathing. With the bitter fruit of my labors rotting all over the mountain and its surrounding country, to assert otherwise would have been madness. I looked down, taking note of my altered form and the tools I’d wrested from their rightful owners. “Why shouldn’t I? You’re right—you’ve seen half of what I’ve done. There’s worse and more. I wasn’t pushed into it, either. I drove myself here. Oh, yeah, we can blame the Morgwyn and Nessus and whatever all we like, but I have to own up to what I’ve done.”
“And owning up to it means making the problem never happen in the first place, is that it?” Leit Motif nodded. “Yes. I get it. Honestly, that’s why I didn’t really have an answer when you asked if I agreed with what you plan on doing. If you can control it, if you can make it work… yeah, maybe things will be better. I have a lot of trouble believing that you can really preserve the people who came after the split, but I don’t have your powers. So… yeah. Sure. I agree on the face of it.” She pointed towards the shining portal. “But if you step through there, where does this end, Amy? What is your future—well, future past—criteria for making world-altering decisions? You’re trying to correct a terrible crime that was committed, yes, I understand, I sympathize, but are you doing it because it’s really the best course available, or is it because you’re so deeply ashamed of your actions that you can’t bear to live in a world shaped by them?”
She shifted her feet on the stone, obviously tired and sore and in dire need of better protection from the elements, but the light in her eyes belied her anxiety. “I’ve been there before, you know. Maybe I never hurt ponies like you did, but I’ve been in a place where I hated and blamed myself for what I’d become. I pushed away everypony who ever tried to help me and buried myself in work to keep from really examining myself in the mirror. I know what it’s like to think that no one will ever love you again, and that, just maybe, you never deserved that love to begin with. I don’t relate to other ponies well; I dismiss their problems and kind of ignore their feelings and don’t really empathize with them like I feel I should, and I hurt because of that, too.
“I understand that you think that doing this will redeem you, but it honestly seems to me like you’re just digging the hole deeper. You’re hiding from the consequences of your actions and trying to erase the living memory of everyone who might have touched on it. I know what it’s like to do that, too, to live in a dark place where no one can reach you, and feel secure and pretend that it’s the way you’ve always wanted to feel, but that security is just...” She exhaled heavily. “And what happens when the world goes to pot again, Amy? It’s going to, you know. One way or another, some human or somepony or some goblin or griffin or whatever will find some way to screw everything up. Are you just going to hit reset again, and again, and again, trying to find the perfect world?
“When you get right down to it… isn’t that the sort of chaos that the Morgwyn is after? You can never move forward, you’re always moving backward, and time and space have no real meaning. How do you expect to stay sane with no one to really connect to or understand you, particularly when everyone else is living in a limbo?”
The other woman fidgeted with fingers and cloak, seemingly out of things to say. She tried a few false starts before sighing and shaking her head. “I can’t stop you, but, if anything I’m saying makes sense to you, please, think about it.”
I did. I paced back and forth across the narrow cleft of the summit with the stars weighing heavily down upon me from above.
The first instinct was to affirm that she had, indeed, never experienced anything quite like I had. She didn’t have blood on her hooves. She hadn’t lived through Celestia’s memories of the terrible world that followed her parents’ deaths and all the many otherwise preventable disasters and betrayals that followed. I doubted she comprehended in any fashion the level of bloodshed seen on the human side of Earth over those long centuries since the split. What did my desires matter in the face of all of that?
What desires did I even have left at that point? I was no longer a child, not in any sense of the world. I didn’t have a life to look forward to. She was right: I was living in a dark place and I wanted no light to touch me, because I couldn’t bear to see myself.
“How… did you get out of that situation?” I asked, pausing by her.
“If you’d asked me a little earlier? I’d have said your sister did it.” She pulled the cloak more tightly about herself. “I don’t think that’s exactly right, though. She was the catalyst; she moved me out of my safe space, and it was up to me to figure out what to do with my life then. It was… hard. Very hard. I still don’t think I’m ready to face my problems.” She petered out then, lost in thought. In a strange way, I appreciated that; the last thing I wanted or needed just then was someone pushing me.
“I don’t belong in your world, Leit Motif,” I said bitterly. “I don’t belong in mine, either. I don’t have a place to go when this is done.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t, really. Only I could think up answers to my problems. Up until now, those answers had always been at the behest of others, be it in accord with them or in direct opposition to them. I’d never truly acted of my own accord.
“The one who makes the choice is me,” I murmured aloud, to myself more than anything. No Morgwyn, no Nessus. No Daphne, certainly no Leit. My parents and Celestia couldn’t help me anymore. All of my vast power, the sun-shattering strength I’d cleaved to my side was completely worthless in making the decision for me. It did offer one thing, though.
It allowed me and me alone this moment in time to make a choice, to decide what the shape of the future would be.
The Elements of Harmony began to spin around my forehead as I gathered my will. The four Arcana rose and hummed, vibrating the very fabric of time. Leit Motif flinched back and then covered her face with an arm, retreating back behind the rock as I shone with the light of the sun.
I wouldn’t shirk my responsibilities. I knew what my choice had to be.
The portal in space and time swelled up before me, and I regarded it with silent contemplation. Its rings and worlds pulsed with the fate of ten thousand years, of uncounted destinies I could snuff out in a moment. Stepping through it meant taking charge of it, of becoming the steward of an entire universe to see that it never decayed to the corrupt and base state it was now. It meant freeing myself from one burden to take on the great burden of being the salvation of the human race and many others, and in so doing wash the world clean. It was the task meant for my sister, but I was prepared to take it on myself. All I needed to do was make a choice.
So, I chose.
With inexorable purpose, I reached forth and grasped hold of the fundamental forces and squeezed the gate shut into a hard little knot of reality between my palms.
“Never again,” I whispered in a voice that shook the earth and reverberated through the heavens. “Never again will this power be concentrated into these or any hands. The past will be as it was, the future will be as it will, and it is up to each of us in the present to take responsibility for our actions and the state of the world. If we are to right our wrongs, heal our wounds, cleanse our sins, and reshape our world for the better, we must seize salvation for ourselves rather than have it thrust upon us.
“I choose this life, this world, this time.”
When I released my hands, a shockwave rippled out. Unseen by all, unheard by most, it was felt from the nearest stones of Equestria to the furthest shore of the most distant world. The universe completed its turn, an infinitesimal shift that nevertheless changed it down to its most fundamental level. The titans in their chains heard it and howled as their seals tightened shut. The stars shivered with it and returned to their stately courses.
A new Age had begun. Not in an act of hubris, but in humility, all because one woman had come, naked, alone, and powerless to face the ineffable.
And with the new Age came new laws, and even I was not exempt from them. It began as a subtle tearing, a terrific pressure that started somewhere in my mind and grew almost instantly to become a splitting agony. Immediately, I reached up and cast down the Elements, letting six jewels clink to the ground around me as their power split away from me. Never again would one person hold all that power at once, I had said, and now it was so.
The Arcana quaked around me as they struggled to split, but I held on for now. There was still something I needed to do, and I could feel it coming.
The sense grew in the air. At first it was a faint green spark, and then it was a twinkling star, before it split open and spilled forth verdant mist. Wreathed in the light, a young woman in tattered clothing descended to touch the peak. Translucent at first, with the light shining through her, she became more solid in turns until, standing before me in flesh and blood, Daphne fully realized herself in the world.
There were no words. I couldn’t have said if one or both of us hesitated or not. All I remember was finding my way into her arms and pressing her close in turn. I know I wanted to recoil after that, not because of her but because I didn’t feel I deserved to be welcomed back, but she sensed my fear and clung all the tighter. Shame filled me, because I had to look down at her by a few inches where once I’d been half her size, and I knew that was the mark of my failures, but her eyes held nothing but satisfaction for a longing that had at long last been fulfilled.
“Amy,” she spoke into my ear and squeezed me against herself harder still, “I love you, I love you, I love you. I should have been there, I should have saved you. Oh, Amy…”
I could no longer hold myself together, and I broke down like the little girl I should have been, crying into her hair. I wept for Celestia and Luna, for Wire, for Maille and Rose, for Twig and Rainbow Dash, for Kiln and Twilight Sparkle and my parents and Naomi and Marcus and Leit Motif. I wept for Daphne. “I love you,” I said back, my voice cracking. I said it again, and again, each time less coherently than the last.
But most of all, I wept for me, for all that I’d lost and would never have again.
There was no turning back, now, not for me, not for anyone.
I still believe that forgiveness isn’t enough, but I know now that there is more to it than that. No matter how far we go, no matter what we do, no matter what anyone says, there’s still a road back, there’s still hope, however dim. No one can forgive me, but I can choose to act to redeem myself.
Speaking of which, there remained one task I needed to do.
“Where is the Morgwyn?” I asked her, my voice thick. I was surprised I could speak at all, but determination made the difference. My resolve, if nothing else, had been hardened.
In silent answer, Daphne pulled back slightly and held out her hand. The air split open again and deposited a vine-wrapped black figure, letting it land hard upon the stone. Manacles of shining steel encased the creature’s limbs in geometric patterns, and it was stretched out as if on a rack on an iron pattern, a triangle inscribed within a circle.
Once, it had been a majestic creature, as much smoke and thought as flesh. Now, I saw it for what it was: a stain left behind by the previous universe that had never been properly cleaned up. Beaten and bound, the Morgwyn, the harbinger of the age of destruction, the fulcrum which had moved the world, lay limp and listless in its prison.
Even so, when its devil blue eyes found me,, a tiny spark kindled in them. “B-bairn,” it wheezed, drawing air through its lips. The tail, its barbs broken off and oozing blackness, twitched in its bindings. “The Morgwyn… knew you were… meant for greatness. It knew it from… the moment… you were born.” It rolled its eyes back and tilted its head. “Finish this, then. The Morgwyn knew you would… herald a new Age… even if it was not the one this one desired. Make it… complete.”
I regarded the chaos creature for some time, with one arm still tightly grasped about my sister. She opened her mouth, but then thought better of it and said nothing, leaving me to my thoughts.
“Well?” the Morgwyn rasped. “Will you not finish it?”
“I will,” I responded. “I have to, really. You created me, you know. You made me what I am. You didn’t make me enough, I guess, since I kind of hosed your plans, but I owe it all to you. That makes you my responsibility.”
“Yes.” The Morgwyn nodded. “Then do it. This one… would have it from none other.”
“You seem to be under the impression that I’m going to kill you. Or disperse you, or whatever it takes to make you stop existing.” I took a slow breath and slid away from Daphne gently. Gesturing, I made the Morgwyn’s prison rise up with it to turn and face me directly. “I’m not going to kill you, Morg. I’m going to change you.”
The Morgwyn’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Change?”
“Yes…” I reached forward and ran my fingers through its coarse fur. “You see… all killing you would do is remove you as a threat. I don’t think that’s an appropriate punishment. You brought misery and death and suffering down upon so many people. So, I’m going to change you, to torture you in the most severe way possible.” My face hardened. “You don’t care, do you? It’s not that you’re evil, exactly, it’s that you don’t really feel any empathy for anything that isn’t you. All you’ve ever wanted was to return home, and the universe stood in your way, so you lashed out at it and tried to return it back the way it came.
“So… here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to change you, Morg, so that you feel empathy, so that you can’t escape the consequences of your own actions and the shame and heartache and guilt that comes with it. I’m going to make you solid and real, I’m going to change you into a creature of order like us so that real change, real chaos will be forever beyond you.”
As I spoke, the Morgwyn’s eyes narrowed further, and then as what I was proposing became clear, they widened and filled with what I could only describe as the most acute existential horror ever experienced by any being.
I left it savor that for a moment, and then I hit it with every ounce of power I had.
The four Arcana blazed with might as they engulfed the Morgwyn in a seething cauldron of twisting energy. It rippled and shifted about it, forming into crystals and liquid flows and spirals of arcing fire and lightning. The Morgwyn’s screams echoed up as if from a great distance, of horror if not pain. Gradually, the tenor and pitch of the screams changed as well, becoming higher and more filled with panic as, for the first time in uncounted eons, the Morgwyn felt the real emotions of a living being. Hands and legs pressed out at the bubble, the shadow within changed inexorably into a new shape.
Just as the screams began to die off raggedly and it seemed as if the creature within might perish after all, I pulled the magic back.
There, crouched naked and shivering before me, sat a young woman who could have almost have been my twin. Her blue eyes were wide and her teeth were chattering, her long black hair hung messily down her back and sides, her limbs were shaking. She was in shock. The raw sensation of being a real, concrete part of the world must have been completely overwhelming, a sensory overload of terrific proportions.
Feeling the strain of holding onto the Arcana becoming completely unbearable, I seized her head between my hands and gave my final order. “What you do from now is your own choice, but know this: you may never harm yourself nor permit yourself to be harmed, nor may you bring harm to others. You will live with the responsibility of your actions, just, like, me, and you will act to redeem yourself or you will suffer and wither until you’re nothing but a shell, clinging to a miserable life. That is your punishment.”
With that, I let go. The Arcana, freed of their task and me, shot off as if a rope had been cut and bounced down the mountainside. Without their power holding me up, I stumbled and fell. I felt hands catch me, and blinked through the spots in my eyes to see Daphne and Leit Motif looking down at me in concern.
“Amy,” Daphne murmured, “it’s done. You can let go, now.”
“No,” I said, gently but firmly extricating myself. I stumbled a bit, but managed to regain my feet. “I still have to do something.” I pulled free of their hands and wobbled over to where Celestia waited insensibly. While Leit Motif and Daphne watched, I took the Golden Bridle in hand again.
Its siren call of power and privilege filled me once again. I was amazed I’d never noticed how blatant it was before—how deeply it tugged at you to use it, to become the master of all, how addictive it was to let your will fill another and make them yours. For just a moment, even after all I’d been through, the temptation to leap onto Celestia’s back and start over very nearly seized hold of me again.
This time, though, the sensation of power left a sour taste in my mouth. When I looked at the creatures whose minds I’d touched, all I saw were broken dreams. I tilted Celestia’s head up and pulled the Bridle free, as fast as I dared without ripping skin and hair out with it.
Holding the ancient artifact in my hands, I looked down at it. The gold still glowed as if it had been freshly plucked from a forge, a heatless light that nevertheless warmed my hands with the power that flowed beneath its metal straps. Yet another monstrous thing that was my responsibility. What I should do with it was much less clear, given that there could be no safe place for it, least of all in my hands.
“Amelia,” Leit Motif said, “we should—”
“I think that’s about enough of that,” a deep, booming voice interrupted. I snapped my head up to find Nessus there towering among us. A full half of the boulder I’d split earlier was missing, evidence of his hiding spot using goblin magic.
“Ah, crap,” I muttered, backing up. Daphne grabbed Leit Motif and pulled her away, her eyes intent. They stood over the nearly catatonic Morgwyn, shielding her.
“So. Deceived all along,” the Wand King said, and King he was, with the ash staff held firmly in one hand. He must have seized it as it fell from me earlier. “I suppose that’s the price I paid for putting my trust in the Everfree goblins. As they say in your country, ‘if you want something done, do it yourself.’” Shivers ran up my spine from the vibrations in the rock as he strode forward, a single hoof as heavy as my entire body. He held out a hand, his gaze hard. “You had your chance, girl. Give me the Golden Bridle now and I’ll even forget the insults you paid me. Or, how did you put it… I’ll throw your broken corpse off the side of the mountain. Of course, I get to take it anyway, but it’s your choice little one.”
I glared up at him. “You know, your brother—Chiron, right?—must be real proud of you right now.”
“I never did quite live up to his standards, but that’s all right. He’ll forgive me in time. The Bridle, now.”
I looked at him, then at Daphne and Leit Motif. I glanced over the still-comatose forms of the Bearers and then to Celestia. This was exactly the predicament I’d taken the Bridle and the Arcana for in the first place, being cornered by a power much greater than mine and unable to fight back. If I’d just kept the damned power I’d be the one calling the shots.
But that’s the price of making the right decision, sometimes.
I looked up at Nessus again and lifted the Bridle in one hand, with all the chains balled together in my palm. It looked deceptively small that way. Such a little thing, to be the focus of so much fear and horror.
“One,” I said. I waved my free hand over the Bridle.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“Two.” I waved it again, closer this time.
“Just give me the damned—” he growled and reached down.
“Three!” I clapped my hands together. Rather than the clink of gold, the sound of two hands clapping echoed through the thin air. I lifted my hands, revealing two empty palms.
Nessus looked around. “What? Where did it go? What did you do?”
“I Vanished it,” I said. “Twig taught me that while I was still hanging around in your little Phonyville.”
The huge centaur seethed and took hold of my tunic. He yanked me clean off the ground and snarled directly into my face. “Then Produce it, or I’ll start by turning your sister and her little friends into kelp and finish with this entire country in smoking ruins.”
“First, I’d like to see you try and get past Luna, but second,” I said, and spread my hands with an innocent smile, “Twig never taught me how to bring things back.”
Nessus’s eyes looked as if they were about to pop. He shook with anger, momentarily speechless.
“Oh, and third, thank you.”
He blinked. “What?”
I reached out and seized the Wand in both hands. “For giving me a purpose.”
Our eyes met and locked. It was the contest we’d both wanted earlier, the clash of his will against mine. Ichor leapt in my veins and I yanked free of his grasp.
If he’d been unhindered, he could have crushed me flat with sheer physical strength, but we were locked in a contest of a different sort now, and his limbs no more could have moved than mine could as we settled in. Fire leapt up along the Wand, but we kept it contained between us. It twisted and tried to force its way to one or the other, and we both realized in the same instant that it wasn’t truly certain who its master really was, not after the confusion of the Age shifting and the unresolved bargain.
Once again, the air crackled with force. His face split with concentration as the light from the Wand turned as bright as a flare, casting even the faintest shadow into hard contrast and turning the two of us into a stark black-and-white picture of still struggle. In him lay the strength of ages, a will to conquer and a sly cunning that had kept him alive since ancient times. He brought all his hatred of man and pony to bear, the wrong done him in ancient times raw and bleeding.
It occurred to me then that if we’d faced one another like this earlier, I would have lost. I mustered not only the stubborn will I’d possessed as a child, but the solid certainty over a thousand years ruling a diverse kingdom had honed in Celestia. I knew that if I faltered now, my friends, my loved ones, everything I cherished would fall under this ancient centaur’s hooves. The other Arcana Kings were powerless at the moment, Celestia was a casualty, the Elements were inert without their Bearers, and Luna and Discord would be hard-pressed after the day’s events.
And, yet, even being the thin line between destruction and freedom wasn’t enough, not while I still hated myself for my failures, when I judged myself pathetic, a monster in soul if not in shape.
If it weren’t for my sister standing right there, silently cheering me on, urging me to take hold of this one thing that I could claim as my own triumph.
For her sake—no, for mine, but at her urging—I would be a hero just this once.
Steadily, I pushed the Wand’s fire to its tip. The grace within me swelled and even Nessus’s strength paled before mine as I turned the staff between us.
“I believe… we had a bargain,” I gasped. “Here. Go join your brother, if you can.”
The fire leapt up Nessus’s hands and arms, blazing across his body. He didn’t scream or cry out, but then it was entirely painless. His entire body turned at once an impossibly bright white, tinged in strange shadows, and then it began to separate, little motes blown away in an ethereal wind. I thought I heard the sound of hoofsteps, far off in the distance, racing closer. A shape, tall and clean-shaven, glimpsed for but a moment in the faint line between light and shadow.
When it faded, nothing remained of what had once been the King of Wands but a dark patch on the blue-tinged stone. I fell forward, and this time caught myself on the end of a white staff. Startled, I pulled myself up against it and found that it was, indeed, the Wand, but it had been polished smooth and shrunk to my size, rather than a great trunk of gnarled wood. It felt warm, but not the seductive warmth of the Bridle or the searing heat of all four Arcana at once; it was a steady, comforting warmth, the sheltering flame of civilization, held within its depths.
I had little time to contemplate it, though, for once again we weren’t alone. Arrayed around the mountaintop were goblin soldiers, Ring, Sword, and Wand, alongside Maille and her friends, including one I didn’t recognize but supposed must be Marble Stone. A mint green unicorn lay on a stretcher carried by two others, her eyes glazed but alert. I almost couldn’t believe it when I saw Marcus, bleeding but intact, hurry forward and seize Daphne in a tight hug. Then, as soon as he pulled back, Leit Motif slammed into him. He looked startled, not seeming to know the girl buried against his chest, but a light dawned in his eyes and he wrapped his arms about her tightly as well. When I laid eyes on the goblinized Cutie Mark Crusaders, I felt my heart leap, but not as much as when I saw Wire walking tall beside them.
Marcus, and all the rest, stared at me. None of them seemed to know what to make of me. I stood on the edge and looked back at them. Then one of the Wand goblins who had accompanied Kiln fell to her knees with a great clanking of black armor. “My King!” she shouted. “King of Wands!”
The chant was ragged at first, but, one-by-one, the other Wand goblins followed suit. Few fell to their knees, but one and all they raised their voices. “Wand King! Wand King! King Amelia! King Amelia! A new Age has come!”
Nearby, Twilight and her friends were beginning to stretch, with a forest of pops rising from unused limbs. Celestia lifted her head, her eyes still dull, but her breathing had deepened and it seemed as if she, too, were rising.
All of Equestria was waking from a bad dream, now, I saw. The snow was melting off the ground, the nightmarish chaos creatures were beaten or banished. The terrors of the long night had passed, and a new day awaited birth.
Daphne stepped forward, looking out over the crowd that had gathered on the winding cliffs below. “Amelia…” she trailed off, trying and failing to find a way to start, but her intent was clear enough.
I reached out and took her hand firmly. Our eyes met again, and we were sisters once more. We were nearly equal in height, and perhaps I carried more years now, but that much had not changed. “Yes… I still need you. I need you more than ever. Daph…”
She shook her head and smiled. “It’s all right. I’ll be here for you. I promise… and this time, I won’t fail you.”
I swallowed past a lump in my throat and nodded. We looked back over Equestria and just enjoyed the sensation of being alive together, as if no one else in the world existed just then.
It was a new day in a new era, and there was light on the horizon. A new dawn awaited and, broken, battered, fearful, shameful, lost, confused, and uncertain though we may be, as much as building the future would challenge and try us, we would walk into that sunrise together.
“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” Stanley Kubrick.
Daphne
Bells sang from every corner of Canterlot to ring in the dawn. It was the third day of Princess Celestia’s return and still the celebratory fervor had not died off. Her beloved subjects had felt her loss too keenly not to need to remind their princess that they loved her dearly each new morning. Their silver song touched the Royal Castle as gently as did the breath of winter making its rounds across the countryside. The pegasi were being understandably gentle with Winterfall’s coming, particularly given how badly the weather patterns had been damaged by the demon maelstrom.
Airy, high-vaulted windows looked down over the mountain and its embracing vale. Very little sign of the preceding weeks had imprinted themselves on the landscape, aside from the scars left by the Wand Fortress’s bombardment. That, too, remained as well; with the chaos in the Wand nation, there had been no one to fuel the massive warmachine, and, with all the critical damage it had sustained in the rebellion and subsequent battle against the titanspawn, its engineers had given it up for good and beached it like some giant’s toy dropped beside the lake to the city’s south. With just a little effort, I could focus my vision enough to see the pony and goblin crews swarming over its surface to pick it clean of valuables and process the remainder back down to raw materials. It was the first of what would be many new steps in cooperation between the formerly disconnected kinds.
Cooperation between diverse peoples was a topic much on the minds of the people seated around a low table in Celestia’s room, I found as the guard at the door ushered me in. Twilight Sparkle looked downright ecstatic as she flipped through a notebook and made annotations on a scroll already dense with information. Applejack pushed a pen around on the table in abject boredom, while Rarity inspected herself in the table’s mirror-finish. Maille and Twig lounged on cushions on the other side, the former resplendent in a pearl-and-lilac gown while the other fidgeted nervously with her drink in a red magic grip, trying not to stare too openly at the figure at the head of the table. She, of course, was Celestia herself.
Three days and nights of recuperation and the ruler of Equestria still lay atop several cushions rather than sit at the table. Not for the first time, our eyes met, and I felt the bone-deep sorrow and weariness that still plagued her so long after having her mind and will suppressed and driven by that terrible instrument. Still, she lifted her head with the grace and pride only a mare of a thousand years could muster and smiled at my entrance, showing how much she’d recovered. Her sunset mane flowed magnificently down her side once more, blowing in its own ethereal breeze, and her voice was clear when she greeted me, “Hello, Daphne. We’re just about ready to get started. Is Naomi with you? She wished to be a part of this as well.”
“She’ll be along in just a minute,” I said. “She just got delayed coming back. A matter about an impromptu street performance by a local school.”
There were times, are still times, when I wasn’t sure how I felt about being able to speak confidently about events I was neither physically present at nor had any rational connection to. Just another thing I’d need to get used to.
“I see you’re settling in well enough.” Maille brushed a silver lock behind her ear. “When did you start wearing hooves again?”
I gave my tail a flick. “Just last night. I wanted to take a walk around without everypony staring at me.”
Twilight frowned. “I was under the impression you weren’t comfortable as a mare, though. Weren’t you happy when you had the chance to be human again?”
“Of course, but…” I lifted a hoof to inspect it. “I don’t really feel like this is so unnatural anymore. I wondered for a long time if I was losing myself, and I suppose I was for a while there. It was really touch and go. After I got my cutie mark, though, it got a bit better, and then events after that… well, I have my feet in two worlds. I have to accept that. I’m a human and I’m a pony, too.” I spared a glance at Celestia, thinking of Pirene as I did. “Even if the pony part hasn’t really manifested until now, it was always there, waiting under the surface.”
Twig tilted her head curiously. “So all you need to do is think of yourself as a pony and ‘poof’? No rigamarole with slipping yourself into a carefully crafted role like we do?”
“My little foray into chaos taught me a lot of things I’m not sure I really understand yet, and probably never will.”
“You’ll have quite a bit of time to ponder the questions you have, my little pony,” Celestia said.
Applejack’s and Rarity’s ears instantly perked up, and the former straightened herself to look at me. “Is it true, then?” Rarity asked. “Is our Daphne here truly another…?”
“There is certainly some measure of what I once termed ‘alicorn magic’ in her, yes,” Celestia agreed. Seeing Rarity’s eyes light up, she added in an amused tone, “I wouldn’t start planning another coronation, though.”
“Well, I think we should start—” Rarity almost bit her lip as Celestia rode over her suggestion, and her cheeks rosied. She crossed her hooves on the table. “Well, one can forgive a girl for dreaming.”
Applejack raised a hoof. “Not that I really care—and I gather from meetin’ Daphne that she don’t, either—but ain’t that kind of what an Equestrian Princess is?”
Celestia tilted her head. “I’d been under the honest impression that the trait was exclusive to certain exemplary ponies and that they should be accorded some responsibility in order to use it wisely. In truth, I’m pleased to see that other species, humans included, have some version of it. It never quite satisfied my sense of fairness.”
“I’d imagine that’s why you made Twilight and the other princesses with status equal to your own, rather than insisting on your divine right of birth and hoarding reign,” Maille said thoughtfully.
Celestia answered only with a mysterious smile.
I stepped from the doorway just in time to avoid being struck on the behind as Naomi marched in. Never in her life had my friend ever looked so proud merely to be alive, and it showed with every strike of her newly-minted hooves against the floor. Her rich red mane danced in coppery rings down her sides and her tail was like a proud crimson banner. She flexed her forelegs in a graceful pony bow as if she’d been born to it and beamed at Celestia. “I’m sorry for being late, your Highness,” she announced, “there were these impossibly adorable foals putting on a play, and I just couldn’t help myself. I galloped straight here as soon as I realized I was running late.”
“That’s quite all right, Naomi. Please, have a seat. You were quite insistent on being part of this meeting, and I want to hear what you have to say.”
“And a lot to say I have,” Naomi agreed, going to seat herself on a cushion. She practically glowed as an earth pony, her soft gold coat emphasizing her fiery hair. She patted the seat next to her and I settled down as well. “I know I’m young compared to everyone else here, but I think I can speak intelligently about the matter.”
I nodded faintly, but needlessly. Celestia was a good enough judge of character on her own.
Twig wagged her head. “It provides some tidy symmetry, with the common ponyfolk, goblins, and humans—uh, usually humans—getting equal representation. Assuming you don’t mind us speaking for the Ring, Sword, and Cup. I’m not sure anyone can really speak for Cup right now, I guess, but the Seer is recuperating and gave his blessing, and Knight Saria asked us to fill her in.”
“Everything said here is nonbinding, regardless,” Celestia said. “This is merely for the sake of perspective.”
“Yes,” Twilight Sparkle nodded vigorously. “Now that we know there are other worlds, the question for Equestria then, is, well… what do we do about them?”
“‘Do’?” Rarity tilted her head. “Twilight, dear, that was impossibly vague. What do you mean by ‘do’?”
Applejack tapped the table. “What she means is what’re we gonna have to do now that we know they’re out there? There’s whole peoples out there we ain’t ever heard of that we need to figure out. Do we keep ‘em out? Let ‘em in? Are we gonna trade with them? What with? And what about their side?” She nodded her head over at Naomi, Maille, and Twig. Implicitly, I noticed, she didn’t really seem to include me in that arrangement. “Goblins ain’t had contact this good with ponies since ever, and humans still don’t know we exist.”
“Let alone the question of whether or not we should contact them,” Twilight said. “I don’t like to think about not opening up free and honest inquiry, but we don’t really understand the kind of dangers that exist in the outer worlds. There’s also the dangers here in Equestria that might get out if we’re not careful.”
“It is not ‘whether’, my beloved student,” Celestia said with quiet conviction, “but when. The Veil my mother and father created to keep Equestria secure is fading rapidly, as it has weakened all this time. Even were it not for that, we have entered a new Age, and even I only have memory of one. I feel it as surely as I breathe; change is coming, and we will neither be able to maintain isolation nor will we thrive if we try.”
“Goblin merchants are already leaping into the market,” Maille said. “Word spread fast through the troops going home. It’s a trickle, now, just the ones who’ve already been smuggling back and forth, but it’ll get bigger soon.”
“Well, shucks,” Applejack said, “I shoulda sent word to Big Macintosh. We’ve got plenty of winter stores, and I’ll bet no goblin or human’s tasted any apple quite so fine as an Apple Family Heirloom.”
Rarity pressed forward. “I do see your point, Twilight, but we’ve met these humans and we’ve seen they’re really very much like us, even if they are positively child-like when it comes to matters of magic. The goblins are rough-and-tumble, certainly, but that’s nothing new after griffins and minotaurs. A well-crafted diplomatic exchange, perhaps, and sponsored exchanges could go a long way to smoothing difficulties.”
Twig grimaced. “Well, uhm… that’s going to be tricky. I mean, I guess the circumstances are a little different with the damage done, but…”
Naomi cleared her throat, cutting in with the sort of confidence at being heard only someone who’d grown up in a large, extended family could muster. “Pardon, but, I think I can add a little perspective here, if you don’t mind me sharing my thoughts.” The others quieted and turned to look at her. She gave a pleased twitch of her tail and flicked her ears forward. “It’s funny, actually, that we mention how isolated Equestria has been, but I think that really pales in comparison to how tragically locked off the human side of earth is. The goblins—” She nodded her head towards Maille and Twig “—have had limited contact with both worlds and others for millennia. Maybe Equestria was ignorant of its place in the world, but you really have no idea how right you were when you said that humans were child-like about magic, Rarity.
“Picture, if you will, how you ponies felt when you learned that your world wasn’t alone. A little shocked, perhaps? Surprised at the scale of it, really, and how near at hoof it was, but not really all that floored by the prospect.” She shook her head. “Imagine if you will a world where not only have people been convinced that they are the sole intelligent species in the world, but that any possibility of there being other habitable worlds with other kinds of thinking life must be millions of miles, billions of miles away, a gulf so vast it won’t be breached in lifetimes. Imagine not only not having magic, but all evidence, all evidence indicates that magic and the supernatural in general are completely lacking, or they’re so shoddy as to be completely suspect.
“Then, I want you to take that feeling and apply it to not a handful of decision makers, not their hundreds of advisors and top-level bureaucrats, but I want you to apply it to a planet of nearly seven billion people. Not all of them don’t believe in magic, I should clarify, but all of them believe in something that is going to be shaken to the core by this revelation. The true history of the world is something no one, as far as I know, has guessed, and these aren’t the sort of people who give up their cherished beliefs lightly.”
She took a deep breath, her mood growing somber.
“Then there’s the darker portion of it… namely, that while people in general may be happy to accept Equestrians, not every ruler or government out there is quite as enlightened as our beautiful Princess here. I know that Equestria isn’t quite as peaceful as I’d hoped when I came here; I know you have neighbors and politics and the like, but you haven’t had the sort of resource crunch and bitter wars that we’ve had, not in an Age. The goblins know what I’m talking about, I’m sure. We don’t have magical power, no, but compared to the goblins and ponies we’re lightyears ahead in technological advancement. The revelation of Equestria is going to be a seismic event that will test the stability of every government on our earth and the fragility of our world view. Even the most progressive, forward-thinking person on the planet is going to be shocked to the core.”
Silence followed Naomi’s “thoughts.” Celestia lifted her head and smiled faintly. “I can see that we were not amiss in waiting up for you, Naomi.”
“Well,” Twig said, a little flabberghasted, “what do you suggest, then? You sound like you already have a plan.”
“Oh, I’ve had a plan for a while now,” Naomi said brightly. “I kind of figured something like this was coming eventually, so I’ve been turning it over in my head almost since I arrived in Ponyville. You see… I agree with Twilight in that you need to be careful, but I also agree with Celestia in that, eventually, for one reason or another, we will need to bridge that gap and heal the wound. Maybe one day Equestria won’t be separate anymore, or maybe things will change on the human side, but, one way or another, Midgard is going to become aware of itself again. What we need to do is lay groundwork so that we can try to control the impact as best we can.” She reached back into her saddlebags and pulled out a notepad. “What Equestria needs, foremost, is to become more fully aware of its neighbors. To that end, I’d like to propose, with Celestia’s government and the aid of the goblins, an organization to sponsor and facilitate ponies going to the human side under the guise of magic—pony, Wand, or goblin. We need to remit not only knowledge and goods, but technical, scientific, professional, and political expertise, so we’d need to infiltrate them into universities, trade schools, corporations, media, and government. Simultaneously, we need to find select humans on the other side who can be trusted to start building relationships with so that we can smooth the way. That way, when the time comes, we’ll have not only advocates, but well-placed people able to help blunt the blow.”
All of a sudden, I started to laugh.
Naomi prodded me in the ribs as I dissolved into giggles. “Something to add, Daph?”
“Oh, no.” I grinned and wiped the tears from my face. “Just reflecting on irony. I’m kind of superfluous all of a sudden, and yet I feel like that’s a good thing.”
“Well… that’s not really true.” She frowned. “Even if my plan is a good one…” She paused and tossed her mane. “And of course it is a good plan… but even if it was a flawless plan, we still can’t predict everything that’ll happen. If anything, you’re more vital than ever, even if you never had the chance to be the person you were supposed to be… the Age is still your oyster, you know, and it may need you to help resolve it.”
That sobered me up right quick, albeit not for the reasons Naomi thought it did. It reminded me that I’d come here not only to listen to Naomi’s plan, but to discuss something important with Celestia. As I glanced up at the princess, though, she seemed to sense my need and cleared her throat.
“That does sound like an excellent start, Naomi. I think I’d like to give this my tentative approval and direct you to my advisors. Twilight? Could you and the girls take Naomi to see Cabinet and make sure that they know she’s to have their full cooperation.”
“Of course!” The younger princess rose to her feet and gathered her materials in a telekinetic scoop. “I really want to hear it, too. I have some ideas that I think could improve it; you probably don’t know a lot about unicorn enchantments, do you, Naomi?”
Naomi glanced my way, knowing something had passed between the princess and me, but she allowed Twilight to draw her into a conversation and they nattered right out the door. Maille and Twig sensed that they, too, were being dismissed, and rose to step outside. Maille paused by me, looking down with her eyes thoughtful. I sensed she wanted to talk, and knew who she had on her mind, but she held back and glided out the door with her friend a moment later.
“Your aunt says ‘hello,’” I said as the door shut behind Maille. My tail flicked unsteadily, back and forth. I tried setting it on my usual left and then on my right. I tried laying it out straight. Eventually, I rose to my feet and began to pace. It was perhaps a smidge rude, but my nerves were firing too rapidly to sit or lay down. I felt overstimulated, as I often had during an intense project, a sensation I now knew was caused not by any mundane malaise but by something supernally great.
If I cleared my mind and listened to my heart, I could feel it. At any given moment, I was a conduit, and information flowed ceaselessly into and out of me. I could turn my head up and see through stone and slate roofs and the depths of space, an invisible star pouring the light of knowledge through my soul.
“Change is never easy,” Celestia said by way of quiet answer. “The best changes, and the most difficult, are the ones which force us to reexamine ourselves and ask the deep, probing, uncomfortable questions of who we are, what we stand for, and whether or not we may be wrong about ourselves and our perception of the world around us. The mind is a machine which generates a narrative that addresses our circumstances, and the truly healthy mind is one which is constantly moving and flowing to adapt, and thus is ever uncomfortable and certain only in its own forward momentum. Failing to update one’s personal narrative in the face of new ideas is a recipe for ossification, and the death of reason and growth.”
I paused and glanced at her. “You got all that from my telling you that your aunt said ‘hello’?”
“No,” she laughed softly. “I got ‘all that’ from the way you flicked your tail.” She pushed herself up on her forelegs and tapped the cushion next to her.
Reluctantly, I walked over and sat by her. It felt a bit like violating her personal space; no, worse, it felt like I was an unknown and unwanted relative who’d shown up at the door bedraggled and needy. The thought gave me further pause, and I tried to unpack it as best I could.
Really, it all seemed so clear after I examined it. Pirene, in our brief, terse meeting, had felt like Mother did. For all that I ostensibly didn’t know her, I felt as though I had all my life. With a disturbing lurch, I cottoned on to why I felt so lost and disturbed as a pony, even to that instant—because it felt natural, because it resonated with my soul. I was Pirene’s child, and part of me had known it and longed for it, and I’d rejected it out of fear.
Once again, Celestia seemed to sense the unspoken shift within me, and her wing settled in around me. Already twice my current size, the wing practically engulfed me in warm, soft, clean feathers. I felt the limb tug gently and I leaned into her, breathing the soft scent of her coat in.
“Comfortable with it or not, you are kin of a sort, in spirit, though not in flesh.” She chuckled. “You’re afraid, and rightly so. You know the changes in you didn’t stop when you gained your cutie mark, nor when you assumed yourself into the celestial realm with young Marble Stone, nor when you defeated the Morgwyn and brought yourself back from chaos. You’re not a coward, either; you didn’t shy away when your sister was taken, and you won’t turn aside now.”
“I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be, though, or what I’m supposed to do.” I looked up at her. “Okay, sure, I have all this power that I’ve barely touched and don’t really understand. I have insights and knowledge and the power to see the past and sometimes the future and distant places. What does that make me, though? Some sort of soothsayer for Naomi and her plan to reunite the worlds? Am I going to succeed the Seer and make a prophecy to guide the world to a new, better outcome?”
Celestia smoothed my mane back with a hoof. “This is going to make me sound like the most obvious mentor in the world, but, I don’t have any answers you can’t give yourself, Daphne. You’re on your way to becoming an alicorn—and the human equivalent of that, whatever the name for it is—and that means more than power, it means responsibility and, as importantly, a certain amount of self-determination. Twilight and Cadance were and remain my beloved students, but all I can do now is guide them and try to nudge them to become better ponies. According to the Seer, destiny is what we make of it, and no pony epitomizes that better than us.”
“Ugh.” I scrunched my face up. “You’re right, that was singularly unhelpful.”
She laughed and gave me a squeeze with her wing. “I know, but it’s true. I can listen to your concerns and provide suggestions, Daphne, but you have to chart your own course in this. I would love to help you sort it out—and I know just where to start, too.”
“Oh?” I glanced up at her.
“Well, yes, shouldn’t it be obvious?” She beamed. “The magic of friendship. You know better than I how you managed to live through the last month or so, let alone succeed. Twilight Sparkle is guided and supported by her friends, and without them she would have been nothing more than one more of my students.” She glanced out the window into the clear blue of the sky. “Of late, I’ve been feeling the lack. I wonder, perhaps, if events might have gone differently if I had friends like hers still. Your sister reminded me that I am, in some ways, still a child wandering after her mother and father.”
It was the first time anypony had directly brought my sister up for a while, and the indirect mention stiffened my tail. Still, something Celestia said stuck with me, and I frowned. “You know, there’s going to be more.”
Celestia glanced down at me.
“More alicorns. More of their human equivalents—heroes or demigods or whatever—and the other races. More chaos, too. I’m not confused about one thing about myself: I’m still pouring magic back into the world. Real magic, too, not mere goblin or unicorn stuff.” I worried at my lower lip. “Naomi doesn’t know the half of it, yet. The Elements of Harmony, the Arcana, you, Twilight, everything… it’s just a few small pieces of a nine world puzzle. The divine and the mortal worlds are growing closer once again. My sister and I are only the newest symptoms of it.”
The words put into perspective some more of the strange feelings I’d had. Visions of the world shifting, of sands blowing off ancient monuments, of shapes stirring in the deep. Fires leapt awake on distant mountains and ice cracked in the dead of winter. Men and women waking in the midst of their lives as if from a long slumber.
“Even on my earth, there are things that have been just… lying dormant instead of simply going away. The titans are sealed, but their spawn live on and try to gnaw at the chains.” I frowned still more. “There have been forces building up to it for a while now. Twilight’s taking of the Elements and her subsequent rise to alicorn status. Discord’s and the Crystal Empire’s return. The events of three days ago have broken the floodgates, though, and even if I wasn’t here I don’t think they’d have stopped, merely slowed.”
“Well,” Celestia said quietly, “I certainly wasn’t exempting myself from the need to change. If anything, my recent tragedy has proved that turning my gaze inward and away from the outside universe will only expose Equestria to incalculable danger. We’ll simply have to adapt to meet each challenge as it comes up.”
“I hope that we can. You’re right, though; my burying my head in the sand or refusing to face myself.” I sighed heavily. “And I absolutely do need to talk to my friends. I’ve been avoiding something else, too.”
“Oh?”
I shook my head and stirred from the warm shelter of her wing. “Thank you, but I’ve unloaded on you enough. I’m going to need to do a lot of thinking on my own about this, too.”
“As you wish.” She folded her wings at her side and extended a hoof. “As per your request, I have kept your activities as quiet as equinely possible, though of course rumors do fly at the speed of a racing pegasus. Still, even without an official mention, I want you to know that I’m grateful for your actions here. Should you require anything at all, please do not hesitate to see me.” She smiled again, a knowing smile. “Take it from me… when you’re looking forward to as long, long a life as you are now, it’s important to have ponies you can turn to and rely on in times of need.”
“I hope I won’t have to impose on you, Celestia,” I said with a grateful smile. “If it’s any consolation, know that you will know what it feels like to have friends again, both old and new, in the coming years.”
The Princess blinked and looked faintly astonished. There are perks to this job, as it turns out.
As I wandered through the castle, I felt like nothing so much as a stone in a river. All around me flowed the currents of other ponies’ lives, and I could see them all. Even if they didn’t know it yet, every servant, guard, petitioner, and visitor to the castle today would find their lives shaped by coming events. Today they thought they’d narrowly avoided another scrape with existential disaster, but tomorrow they’d be wondering about vacations to Mag Mell and the effect foreign magic would have on their lives, tomorrow they would worry about how their children would deal with the human world and vice versa, and the day after that…
Well, even I can’t see that far ahead.
I allowed the currents to carry me on, metaphorically, until I left them at the filigreed gates that opened out onto the still-green palace gardens. There was, as had been the case for the last several days, no traffic going to or from this part of the palace. The few ponies who knew why did not speak of it, but everypony in the castle knew one way or another that it was to be avoided at all costs.
The trees were a world’s difference from the ones back in the Everfree State Park, but somehow, as I walked under their swaying boughs, it felt a lot like that October day way back when. The experiences of the past month had been enough to fill a lifetime, and yet the touch of loamy earth beneath my hooves brought me right back to a deceptively routine park walk. Little packs of snow here and there on the earth hinted that winter was making itself known even in this secluded sanctuary.
Following the sound of bird song, I found the one I’d come to see. She stood with the sunlight dappling her flanks and gazing up with a quiet smile at a pair of blue jays dancing and wheeling overhead. Her mane ran long and golden down her side, waving and sparkling irrespective of the still air and her pale cream wings were tucked up against her side. A deep, untouchable pain lurked just beneath the skin, but for now she seemed at peace here where it was quiet and apart from all else.
“I didn’t think you liked birds,” I observed as I walked in over a bed of moss. I glanced up at the two and saw two small soapstone statues, a pool in a palace hall. “Though I suppose you would make exceptions for those two.”
Amelia gave a weak chuckle and turned to face me. It was hard not to be struck every time I saw her by how changed they were since that walk so long ago. The incredible age I saw in her eyes was too like Celestia to be entirely her own, and it brought me back out of that day and into the present—and, to some extent, her future. I steadfastly ignored looking ahead, though, and focused on the now. “I still prefer bugs and spiders and snakes, don’t worry.” She lowered her horn to touch mine in a close, loving gesture that was also entirely Celestia’s.
I accepted it all the same and reached up a little higher to rub my cheek against hers. “We can’t all be perfect.”
She laughed again in a manner less forced and fell into step alongside me. The two jays went to sit on an elm branch while we walked through the garden at a meandering pace. I spied the white Staff against the trunk and glanced back at her. “Have you heard anything from the goblins?”
“Twig comes to see me twice a day. I’ve had to explain to her that it would be very rude to Celestia to skip out before she has had a chance to recover and pass judgement.” She ruffled her wings and gazed out at the wall. “Even if it were only temporary.”
The Amelia I’d known wouldn’t have hesitated for an instant at fleeing punishment. This change, though, I knew had been potential in her. If nothing else, Amelia stood by her convictions. “She hasn’t said anything to you, then?”
“No. I’m in no hurry, though. I think we got to know each other… a little too well as it is.” She said it lightly, but she couldn’t hide the pain lurking in her tone.
I walked a few inches closer to her and gazed up. She stood a little shy of Celestia’s height, which still meant that she towered over me. Still, when someone’s heart lays bare to your gaze, there’s a rather significant leveling effect. “So this is how it is, now, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“This,” I gestured up and down her. “You can look like anything in the world, now, and this is what you choose to spend your private time as. Doesn’t it feel… I don’t know. You spent several days bridling Celestia. Now you are an alicorn—isn’t that a little messed up?”
Amelia sighed. “Yes. Now I am.” She glanced my way. “No, it’s not some sort of self-loathing martyr thing. You should know better.”
“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t always violate other people’s deepest secrets all the time.” I jested, but sometimes people needed the reminder.
“Mm,” she said doubtfully. She walked a few paces more before going on. “I lived her life, Daph. I mean… well, that’s exactly what I mean. I lived her life. I have something like two thousand years of memories and most of them aren’t originally mine. How am I supposed to cope with that? I know they aren’t mine, but when I think back on the things I like it’s her that comes up more often than me. I…” She looked down at her hooves. “This body feels more me than any other. I just don’t know where she begins and I end sometimes, Daph. That’s… that’s scary, and yet it’s not, and that kind of scares me even more.”
Pausing together between rose bushes, we shared a look of mutual sympathy. My heart went out to her at once, and, between one breath in the next, my head was level with hers as shoes instead of hooves dug into the trail. My arms went around her neck and we embraced one another.
“Sometimes, I want to h-hurt,” she admitted in a quiet whisper. “Hurt more. I want to suffer like this so I can stop… stop feeling so damned guilty all the time. Part of me doesn’t want it to ever go away. Guilt hurts a lot more, Daphne.”
“I know,” I said and tightened my grip around her. “You can’t understand how it feels to know I’m responsible for what you’ve become. If I’d just…” I stopped before I could gush on. “I’ve gone over this so many times already. If I’d just done any number of things, today wouldn’t be today and we wouldn’t be standing here.”
“I do, a little,” she said, then added bitterly, “or Celestia does, at any rate.”
“I know what that is like, too.” I cupped her cheek and ran a thumb along her fine coat, getting used to the feel of who my sister had become. “We’ve changed so much, Amy.”
“We’ll have plenty of time to get used to that, I suppose, you and me.” She bit her lip and hesitated. “Daphne… do… will there ever be a time when… when I feel all right again?” she asked with such deep-seated guilt I felt my stomach twist. It wasn’t even just that she felt guilty over her actions—merely asking the question, entertaining the possibility that she might no longer feel the way she does, left her deeply pained.
“Yes,” I answered with no hesitation at all, and in deference to her feelings added, “but it won’t be easy. You—we need to accept a lot of things that are going to be difficult to countenance. I don’t know if you’ll ever entirely get over it, because it’s going to shape you from here in, but… yes, there is a light for you, too. I promise, you’ll see it again someday.”
She buried her face into my chest and wrapped me up in her wings tightly. I held her as she cried and stained my white shirt with tears. I didn’t care that she was technically older than me in every way that counted—she was still my sister, and I would be as big a one as I could be from now on.
I stroked her mane, running my fingers through its length and twirling a tip around my index. “Heh, you know, it occurs… I still owe you ten cookies.”
“Daph-ne!” she protested with a stamp of a hoof, the words choked through tears. “You’re ruining the moment.” She paused. “Also, you never accepted the deal. It doesn’t count.”
“Well, I’m still going to make good on it.” I kissed her horn. “You kept me seeking you for the better part of a month, after all. Ten homemade cookies in mother’s kitchen, then. We’ll have to pick some eggs up on the way back tomorrow; I can see Father’s let the ones in the fridge go bad.”
“Daphne…” she said again with more hesitance. She ruffled her wings and shifted her feet, opening her mouth.
I put a finger to my lips to forestall her and shook my head. “No, Amy. Don’t think about it too much. We need to heal, and not just you or me.”
Amelia sighed and acquiesced with a bowing of her head. “Okay. Tomorrow. I promise.”
“Thank you.” I gave her neck another squeeze. “Do you want to spend some time alone here…?”
“Yes.” Her head tilted up to look at the sun through the leaves. “It helps with… everything.”
“Does it help her, too?” I asked.
“Morgan?” she glanced away into the more shadowed parts of the gardens. “I don’t know. I don’t particularly care, either.”
“Liar.” I brushed back her mane with a gentle touch. “Redeeming her redeems you—you believe that right down to the bone. Maybe you’ve become part-Celestia, but I know you believe that you became something else, too.”
Amelia shivered. “Damn it, Daph. You don’t need to be so blunt about it.” She looked back at me. “It’s… a little more than that, honestly. It’s less that I think I became like the Morgwyn… I…” She scuffed at the earth.
“You feel like you always were,” I said, and suddenly understood. I didn’t need magic for this one; it was clear enough on its own. “You want to lose yourself in Celestia, don’t you? You want to deny the Amelia part in every way you can. You think that you were always bad.”
There was no answer. Amelia stared at the earth as if she were trying to bore into it and hide away forever.
“I can’t give you answers, Amy, but… never think that way,” I said with a voice firm in love and conviction both. “I’m not just saying that, either. You screwed up, yes, you admit that, but you took long, hard steps to make it better, too. The little sister I knew is the same little sister that pulled through on the mountain top three days ago, not Celestia. You were, and are, a determined, willful person who accomplished a lot of really incredible things. Until you learn to own that truth, you’re never going to get over your pain, and burying yourself in Celestia is just going to make it worse. Even if it was just eight years, those experiences make you who you are and distinguish you from her, for good and bad.”
I tilted her head up to meet her green eyes with my own. “You’re Amelia, King of Wands, maybe kind of Princess of Equestria, and my little sister.”
“Little big sister,” she grumbled, but I could already see my words were having an effect as she lifted her head to meet my gaze levelly. “Also, if you call me a princess, I’m going to call you one, too.”
“Ouch.” I winced. “Touché.”
Her own transformation was less sudden than mine. It was a shiver and a shake, a slightly unsteady rising from four legs to two that became more certain as her body popped and shifted. She reached back and shook free her long blond hair and straightened her tunic. It was still unspeakably strange to see my formerly eight year-old sister as a fully grown woman in the prime of her life, but I suppose in retrospect it was one of the least odd things I’d seen.
Even in this shape, her semi-divine nature was clear if one knew how to look. The power behind her eyes, the unnatural grace of her limbs, the way the light seemed to fill her hair in a sort of halo—I knew that I had that same nature to me as well, now. What really set us apart were the faint slitting of her eyes, the slight feline cast of her face and limbs, and the cat-like pointing of her ears. More scars, more trauma.
“You’re right,” she said at last. “Ugh. Why do you always have to be right all the time?” She rubbed her arm as it raised goosebumps and frowned down at her fingers. “This body still doesn’t feel entirely right, though. Even without the whole ‘wow, I have big girl parts’ thing, I still feel a little more at home on four legs.”
“Another thing we have to get used to.” I smiled and smoothed her tunic for her, straightening it out to best take advantage of Maille’s crafting. My sister had filled out the promise she’d shown as a child, and it felt comforting to see a bit of mother’s genes come out in her like this, even if it was far too soon. “Poor Mother. She’ll have to beat the suitors off with a sword and a copy of your birth certificate.”
Amelia blushed and swatted me. It was good to see her acting normally again, no matter how tinged with her omnipresent guilt it was.
“There’s one thing I wanted to ask, by the way.” I frowned faintly. “That thing you said, when you surrendered your power… why did you pick that, of all things?”
“You mean, why didn’t I hand the power of the gods over to you?”
“For which I’m profoundly grateful, but still, why?”
She smiled slightly. “Because of that, actually. Everyone’s probably been telling you that you were born for that moment, that you were supposed to be the one to fix everything and make it all better. I don’t doubt for a minute that you were meant for it, in the sense that they created the prophecies to bring you to that moment, but… I know you, Daphne, better than they do. You would have done the best you could, you never would have been as selfish as me, but by the same token you never could have brought yourself to really, truly change the world by fiat. It’s not in you to take things away from people without giving them a fair chance, which you would have had to do for any real effect to occur.” She looked across the gardens to where her staff lay. “There’s still the possibility that we can change the world in a deep, powerful way, but I’ve made it so that one person will never be able to gather that kind of power and have the sole authority to do so like I did unilaterally. We’re past the point where we need some vast, pseudo-parental figure telling us what to do, and if we’re going to fix the world it needs to be done cooperatively and with mutual consent and regard.”
“A direct repudiation of the right of conquest?” I raised an eyebrow. “You have changed.”
She crossed her arms. “And I’ll still kick your butt in Civilization if I have to. Soft, culture-loving weakling.”
“War-mongering tyrant.” I laughed. “Oh! That reminds me.”
“What, you needed a reminder of something?”
“Hush.” I reached out a hand and concentrated on the saddlebags I’d shifted away on my transformation back into a human. Reaching inside, I pulled a long, thin white plush snake out of the air. He was a little crinkled after being stuffed in it for so long, but a little smoothing did wonders. Proudly, I held him out to her. “I promised myself I’d return this to you when I found you again. I kind of missed that by a few days, but… really, I think today is the day I really found you again, talking with you here.”
“Asmodeus?” she murmured, and her voice cracked like a little girl’s. She gingerly took the serpent in hand and looked at its little head. Then, in spite of all her ancient dignity and vast power, she began to cry again.
The last time I’d held that snake, I denied to myself that I had been bawling like a child. Now, I admitted it freely. We came together again, sister-to-sister, and held one another as if we feared we might be torn apart again.
“I’ll come,” she whispered into my hair. “I’ll come home with you tomorrow. I promise, I really do this time.”
“I know,” I answered, and, for just a few moments, everything was all right again. Really, truly all right. The ecstasy would fade soon, but I held onto that perfect moment for as long as I could.
Eventually, though, we had to part. I slid back into pony shape and she did, too, and started on out of the garden. My thoughts turned to Marcus and found Leit Motif as well, and I smiled as I peered in on them. They were so awkwardly cute around one another, each one a little uncertain of where to go but both eager to try. Really, I should have been ashamed at peeking at them while they had no way of knowing that I was, but a wandering mind is hard to rein in.
As my mind wandered, though, it drifted back towards the garden. I found myself looking back in on my sister as she stood in silent contemplation by a statue of Celestia. Without me there, she had removed her facade of calm to let the welter of emotions beneath her skin boil forth. She leaned heavily against the Wand, as if the earth were trying to swallow her up.
Then a shadow detached itself from Celestia’s shade, resolving into the dark form of the Princess of the Night. My sister saw her at the same time I did, and her eyes widened. At first, she lifted the staff defensively, but then, with a defeated, almost grateful expression, she lowered her head and held the staff wide, exposing herself. Startled, I turned and prepared to gallop back.
Luna regarded my sister with a hard gaze. Tension revealed itself in the set of her jaw and the tautness of her coat against her muscles. Rather than lower her horn, though, she lifted a hoof. “Be still. Were I to take vengeance, Amelia, I would have done so before now.”
“I didn’t really believe you would anyway,” Amelia murmured, but I could sure hope went unspoken. Damn it, Amelia, I thought we’d discussed that.
Luna’s lips pursed tightly and she folded her wings at her side. “My sister, when she woke, told me of how you had shared experiences. I am… aware you know me as she does.”
“I wouldn’t presume—”
“It matters not,” Luna said, shaking her head. “You have gone well past the horizon of presumption already; any more will not change anything.” They stood awkwardly for a few moments, with Amelia unable to look at her directly and Luna unable to take her eyes off her. “My sister has spoken for you. She has told me a great deal, and I have always been inclined to believe her, but I came because I wished to…” She took a slow breath and flexed her wings nervously. “I want to have it from you directly.”
Amelia stared at the ground. “When you were restored by the Elements of Harmony, the very first thing you did was apologize to your sister. I… didn’t. I still haven’t. It’s not that I’m not sorry. I am sorry. I’m so sorry I can’t… express it in words. I don’t think my apologizing would mean anything. I feel remorse for my actions, but the fact remains that I was in full control of myself. I wasn’t possessed, like you. I was lied to, but that’s not enough.”
“Why?” Luna asked, rather bluntly.
Amy’s head pulled up. “Why, what?”
“Why isn’t it enough? I want you to explain it to me.”
“Because I deliberately ignored warning signs and problems with the lies that were being fed me. I didn’t want to hear the truth, and so I didn’t tear apart the holes like I should have. What I did… it was my failure. I can’t apologize in any way that’s meaningful.”
Luna snorted. “My sister would call that a particularly unhealthy attitude.”
Amelia nodded. “She’s a hard mare to live up to, isn’t she?”
Luna winced and glanced up at her sister’s statue.
“You’re right, though. It isn’t very… healthy.” Amy scrubbed her hand in her hair and looked at Luna imploringly. “Honestly, I don’t know how to cope with this. I’m out of my mind half the time. Daphne tells me it’ll be all right, one day, but I don’t see it.”
Luna sighed and shook her head. “She is right, to a point. You are correct in that it was different for me, but I was far from blameless. I do know what it’s like to have to live with the guilt… the guilt of being one to place your own selfish desires in the way of the world’s well-being. The truth is, Amelia, that you will never stop feeling guilt, but it will fade. It may seem unforgivable now, but you will come to place it in context. All things considered, you weren’t as bad as you could have been, and that matters.” She turned and started back towards the palace. “Unlike my sister, I don’t know if I can forgive you yet for what you did to her. I do know what it’s like to be in your hooves, but the part you’re missing is that an apology can become meaningful when one changes and acts in a way to address the offense. Become a mare worthy of her legacy and perhaps we can meet again under better circumstances.”
“I hope so,” Amelia whispered, half to herself.
I tore my perception back to the castle’s main corridor by the gardens and sighed heavily.
“Why so great a sigh?” Marcus asked. I turned and found myself face-to-face with a tall, tan pegasus with speckled wings in a black jacket. He stood cockily, if awkwardly, in the corridor with Leit Motif at his side, the latter looking concerned.
“Just thinking about Amy is all,” I said reassuringly, and glanced over their shoulders to see Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy approaching.
“Hello, everypony,” Fluttershy said. “Oh, Leit Motif, you’re back from the market?”
“And with a cute friend, too!” Pinkie Pie said as she bounced to a stop. She squinted at him suspiciously. “He looks kind of familiar, actually. Have we met before? I may have thrown a party for you at some point.”
He rolled his eyes. “You have, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, uhm… th-this is Marcus, Pinkie,” Leit said abashedly. “Naomi talked him into it when they met with Amelia this morning.”
Fluttershy scuffed the tiles with a hoof. “I thought that might be it, but I didn’t want to say anything.”
“Naomi?” Marcus asked, ruffling his feathers automatically as he grinned down at Leit Motif. “I seem to recall somepony else saying she’d love to show me around the Canterlot shopping district as a native…”
Leit Motif blushed purple and hid her face behind her mane, mumbling something incoherent.
“This is a good look for you,” I said teasingly. I took one of his wings and pulled it out to look. “You should consider sticking around.”
“Hey, hey, hooves off the merchandise.” He snatched it back and ran a hoof through his dark mane. “And I might have to if you can’t clear my name back home.”
“Clear your name?” Fluttershy asked. “How do you mean?”
“Oh, I’m just wanted for the multiple murders of Naomi, Daphne, and Amelia. I’m going to have a lot of fun getting a job with my search engine history.”
“Search what…?”
“Don’t worry, Marcus,” I said. “We’ll take care of that. You won’t have to bother with future employment.” I smiled cryptically. I was definitely going to enjoy some parts of being an oracle.
He gave me a slightly alarmed look, but Pinkie Pie was already butting in. “Oh! We totally need to show the others! Everypony gets to be a pony!” Then she went bounding down the hall.
As we followed her lead, Marcus and Leit Motif dropped behind us a bit. She ducked her head and glanced at Marcus out of the corner of her eye. “Are you?”
“Am I what?” he asked.
“Sticking around. For any length of time. Once you’ve gotten your name cleared.”
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “you know it’s funny, but I was kind of planning on leaving home for a while anyway once I got my GED. I couldn’t really figure out where, though. Now I’ve discovered that there’s whole worlds out there that no one from mine has ever seen and lived to tell about it.” He stretched a wing out to lightly brush her side. “That, and there’s some people I’d like to get to know.”
Leit blushed so deeply her cheeks turned almost black, and, glancing around to make sure no one else was watching, snuck a quick nuzzle on his cheek.
I stifled a giggle. It was uncertain, tentative, and a little awkward, but thrilling all the same. Quickening my steps, I hurried to follow Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy out into a courtyard. Led by the sweet song of a lyre, we found Lyra sitting in the shade of a peach tree with her back legs crossed. For somepony who had been bedridden with magical exhaustion for the better part of two days and with fresh rows of stitches from injuries taken, she looked radiant with the flashes of sunlight touching her mane.
“Rarity-y-y-y!” a girl’s high voice protested. “Can you knock it off, please? That stuff smells terrible.”
Rarity let loose an annoyed huff of air. “Maybe if you’d keep your scales nice and clean I wouldn’t have to polish them so often.”
“They’re almost all gone, now! I didn’t want scales to begin with!”
“And as long as you have them I expect you to take good care of them! You really should be more concerned with your appearance, Sweetie darling.”
From the other side of a fountain I saw Rarity pinning a smaller pony so she could rub a rag against her side. Sweetie Belle’s feet had returned to hooves and most of the scales had faded over the last few days, though her mane and tail still glittered with bits and pieces of crystal and her horn was still unusually large and sharp for her age.
Apple Bloom grinned from where she sat. From the looks of it, she could have been any normal pony, but there was still a wildness in her curly red mane and her eyes were curiously bloodshot. “Yeah, Sweetie.” She sniggered. “If your scales ain’t bright enough to see your reflection by, it just won’t cut it.”
“Laugh it up.” Sweetie lashed her tail like an angry cat. “You’re already back to normal.”
“Hey, girls!” Pinkie Pie said as she bounded to a halt. “You’re looking great today!” She bent down to Sweetie’s side and found a dozen odd pink ponies staring back. “Oh, hey, I really can see my reflection!”
“I know, isn’t she gorgeous?” Rarity sighed. “All this lovely crystal will probably be gone soon, though, if Apple Bloom is any indication. Are you quite certain it won’t be permanent, Maille?”
Maille turned a page in the book on Equestrian arms and armor she was perusing at the fountain’s side. “That really depends on her. Goblinization depends on a lot of factors, including how long it’s been, how intense the experience was, how much it matters to her that she keep to a particular identity… if she really isn’t comfortable with it, then she’ll change back eventually.”
“Vindication!” Sweetie Belle pumped a hoof into the air.
“Speaking of, where is Scootaloo?” Fluttershy asked. “I haven’t seen her all morning.”
“Right here!” a voice shouted, moments before a tiny orange form whipped by in a blast of air. With a graceful mid-air pirouette, Scootaloo alighted on top of the statue at the center of the fountain, grinning from ear-to-ear. There had been no apparent change in her form since the previous day, nor the one before that, nor the one before that for that matter. She flexed her large, powerful wings to their fullest extent, and then her second, smaller pair as well. Two claws kept her grip on the statue’s head admirably.
A chuckle came from above and a puffy white cloud descended. “Nice landing, kid, but you’re still sloppy. You only sent Fluttershy jumping, like, four feet at best.” The occupant grinned and tossed her mane in a shower of color. “I could have scared her enough to make her jump ten.”
Fluttershy looked down from the tree branch she’d fled to. “Oh. Rainbow. You’re feeling better?”
Rainbow Dash glanced over at her and her grin slipped a bit. A haunted shadow crossed her features for a fraction of a second, and then her smile was back in full force. “Yeah, I’m feeling great. Healthy as a horse.”
Remembering how badly Celestia had been and noticing how Rainbow didn’t seem particularly inclined to get up off her cloud, I questioned that. Not openly, though—Rainbow Dash had her own methods of coping.
“Hey, so,” Marcus said, striding forward, “you’re digging the new form, kid?”
“Oh, yeah,” Scootaloo revved her rear wings and hovered down to join her friends. “It’s totally sweet. I mean, look at me! I look almost like some sort of pony-griffin thing.”
“Hippogriff,” Sweetie Belle added.
“Yeah, one of those! And I can fly!” Her face turned distant with a beatific smile. “I’m not lumbering through the air waiting for my magic to kick in right, either. This is real, proper flying. Tidy.”
“Proper tidy,” Apple Bloom agreed.
“Stars,” Rarity groaned. “Please tell me that’s not going to be the new slang with you girls.”
“Wire says it all the time,” Sweetie Belle complained. “It’s a great word!”
“If Wire jumped off a bridge, would you do it?”
Scootaloo nodded vigorously. “Yes, because I can fly.”
Marcus glanced over at Maille with a lopsided grin. “I take it she’s not liable to turn back anytime soon?”
She laughed. “Probably not. Speaking of, you seem to be coming along rather nicely.”
“Hey, hey.” He raised a hoof. “This is only temporary, strictly try-and-buy.”
“I think it’s a great look for you,” Rarity said, now pulling a comb through Sweetie’s mane. The little filly beat her hooves on the ground, but was powerless to escape her sister’s ministrations. “Most of the castle mares seem to agree. I’ve heard them talking about the mysterious stranger who arrived and fought off the invading monsters with thunder and fire.” She giggled and pointed her head at one of the windows looking out from the palace.
Marcus turned his head in time to catch a gaggle of pony heads dropping out of sight. He groaned and covered his face. “I finally, finally get the chance to be an action hero, and the only girls around to appreciate it are horses. This is truly hell.”
“Mm. I don’t know about that,” Leit said from his side. “It seems like it might not be as bad as you think.” She did cast an absolutely withering glare at the window, though. I pitied any of those mares if they were daring enough to try anything.
I tried to get closer to Rainbow Dash, but her cloud just “happened” to drift further up as I neared. Rainbow pointedly didn’t look at me and called out to Scootaloo, inviting her up. Instead, I sauntered over to Lyra. “Hey, you’re being quiet,” I said. “That’s extremely uncharacteristic of you.”
Lyra played a sad little melody, her hoof rippling across the streams. “Oh, it’s nothing. I just had a nasty shock this morning is all.”
“Oh?” I tilted my ears forward. “What’s up?”
“Hector rejected me.”
I stared. “Sorry, what?”
“Shot me down, just like that.” She tapped her rear hooves together. “I suppose I expected it. It never could have worked out between us.”
“You don’t say.”
“I mean, he’s who he is and I’m just a common but independent and vivacious unicorn mare of only slightly extraordinary talents with my whole life ahead of me and big plans that can’t wait on a stallion.” She sighed lustily. “Still, it was nice dreaming of settling down.”
“You worry me, Lyra.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” she said reassuringly. “He was a perfect gentlecolt about it.”
I scrunched my face up. Could he really have…? I wondered. The new Age could have shaken something loose, I guess, but… I shook my head quickly. No, more likely Lyra had just been screwing with us the entire time. Probably.
I decided I’d rather leave it at that.
“So, big plans, huh?” I asked instead. “What’s that going to entail?”
Lyra switched to a complicated little melody. “Well, Princess Celestia is going to honor me publicly—after I get back from our trip—which is going to be just murder on my musical career.”
“What?” Every word she said just dragged me deeper down the rabbit hole. “I don’t follow. How could fame be a bad thing for that?”
“Celebrity means I’m a sell-out. I’ll be completely ruined.”
“I see.” I didn’t.
“But, hey! Some doors closed, others opened up, some literally. There’s that city of goblins out yonder, and maybe one day I’ll take a spell over in your world. I bet I could make a killing.”
“Yeah, but it might be a little hard to get around on the human side of Earth.”
“So I figured, though it seems to me I’ve heard some rumors that it might be changing in some substantial ways sometime soon.” She gave me a tight little smile. “I figure there’s going to be a lot of opportunity come that direction. Maybe somepony of my talents might be able to find a niche somewhere.”
I worked my jaw quietly. Lyra had surprised me time and time again over the course of my journey, and, if that wasn’t a pointed reminder not to take everything she did or said at face value, I might as well hang up my seer credentials at once. Looking at her in a new light, I saw a mare virtually everypony throughout her life had consistently underestimated to their considerable detriment. She played her melodies and spouted seeming nonsense with a free-spirited, devil-may-care attitude while quietly working to better the lives of those around her.
Really, I got the strange impression that Lyra, of everypony who had come through this mess with me, had been the most prepared and the least damaged.
“So is everypony as cute as Hector over on your side, or is he an outlier?”
Then again, maybe she was already nutters to begin with. I started to laugh helplessly.
A polite cough drew my attention, and I looked up to find a pair of uniformed pegasi waiting solicitously. With a leg in a cast and a bandage over one eye, Captain Holder looked the worse for wear, but even still he stood tall and proud. At his side stood young Lieutenant Critical, sporting a much shorter red mane to make up for the fire damage done to it. The Captain doffed his cap and inclined his head politely. “Miss Daphne. A fine thing to see you among the living again.”
“A fine thing to be so, Captain.” I smiled warmly in return. “I’m glad to see you all right, too. And Lieutenant… no, Lieutenant Commander Critical now, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She smiled brightly, shifting to show the fresh insignia rank on her shoulder.
“Somepony took notice of how the lieutenant took charge of the battle after my second and myself fell,” Holder said sardonically. “I agreed that such behavior was hardly suited to a mere midshipmare.”
“Then I owe you for keeping Naomi safe,” I said, “even with the monsters ordered to avoid direct harm, I know there were a lot of ponies who were seriously injured.”
“With respect, ma’am, it’s we who owe you,” Critical disagreed. “Your guiding us out of that storm made sure we arrived at all, and your information was invaluable to the defense of the wreck.”
I winced. “The Lodestone was a beautiful ship, and she really came through for us. I don’t think we’d be here without her. You have my condolences, Captain.”
“She did her duty, and we ours,” Holder said, though it didn’t take a seer to tell that his voice was tight. “There has been some good news on that front, however.”
Critical was less restrained, and practically bounced on her hooves. “We’re being recommissioned! Princess Celestia had what was left of the Lodestone hauled back to the yards and it’s going to be retrofitted into a new model. She even promised that we’d be the first to field-test new guns from Mag Mell.”
“Lieutenant Commander, please. It ain’t seemly to celebrate violence and its implements,” the captain chided, though I did catch his mouth quirking up.
I smiled. I could well imagine this stoic sailor quietly gushing over his metaphorical child in the privacy of his own cabin. “You’ll see a lot of changes in military technology over the next few years. With any luck, it’ll be irrelevant sooner rather than later.”
“Do you think so?” Critical asked, her ears wilting. “That just seems like a complete waste.”
“I can’t foresee all threats, but… well—” I glanced over at the others, especially the young Crusaders playing along the stones “—truth be told, things are going to get more chaotic from here in, at least for the immediate future. More creatures like the ones you faced on the mountain, except acting without compulsion, and stranger things. I don’t know if conventional war will ever come to Equestria, and I truly hope it doesn’t, but you may have need of those weapons.”
Captain Holder grunted. “Equestria’s been caught with her rump exposed more often in recent memory than I like. Even if it ain’t normally in our nature, I plan to be prepared. Relying on heroes like Princess Twilight to save us is just asking for trouble; one day she might not be there to pull our straw out of the fire.”
“I hope the nation’s in good hooves, then,” I said, and reached forward to embrace the two of them. “Duty or not, you two and your crew were incredible. Thank you.”
Captain Holder coughed awkwardly, reddened, and reaffixed his cap, while Lieutenant Commander Critical giggled and gave me a squeeze back.
The captain was right. She did seem a little giddy. I gave her a closer look and smiled mysteriously. “Oh, and congratulations to you and your husband, Critical.”
“Huh?” She tilted her head, puzzled. “You mean the promotion?”
“Nope. Don’t worry, you’ll find out.” I giggled. “Thanks for coming to see us, too, both of you.”
Captain Holder tipped his hat. “I wish you luck in your own future.” With that, he took off to join the others. Lieutenant Commander Critical trotted along behind him, sparing another puzzled glance back at me as she went. I approached as Rainbow Dash came down to greet them, coming upon the rainbow-maned mare from behind.
Hearing my hoofsteps on the stone, she turned and met my eyes. Pain leapt from her skull into mine, reflections of Celestia and her friends, memories from Amelia’s blended into hers, and, above all, the terrible, constricting feeling of helplessness as golden chains closed in around her.
“I’m not forgiving her,” Rainbow Dash said quietly, her voice barely a croak. “I gave her a chance, and she…”
“It’s fine,” I answered gently. “I don’t expect you to. I’m her sister, not her… person who makes excuses for her. Do you think you ever can?”
“I don’t know.” She ducked her head and kneaded the cloud uncertainly. “She’d have to change. I don’t know how somepony can make up for that, though.”
Her humiliation at being rendered helpless couldn’t have been more clear. That and being compelled to turn on her friends was a powerful combination for resentment. Tension the likes of which Rainbow Dash had rarely known in her life riddled her features and tightened the corded muscles beneath her coat. I wondered if anyone but her closest friends would ever know the difference, or whether or not she was seeking the help she obviously needed.
Poor Twig. I hoped she’d be able to overcome the legacy of lies and terror her kind had brought to Rainbow Dash’s doorstep.
As the awkwardness built between us, though, Scootaloo, evidently feeling like not enough attention was being paid her, took the opportunity to dive in and thunk softly into the cloud next to Rainbow Dash. At once, Rainbow put on a cheerful, happy-go-lucky grin for the child. “Hey, Rainbow! Let’s go race around the towers again! I think I can totally beat you this time one-two-three-go!” she rattled out and immediately shot into the air like a tiny orange rocket, leaving vapor in her wake.
“Hey, wait up, kid!” Rainbow called, shooting off into the air after her. “You’re not beating the champ that easily!”
I paused my recollection and concentrated on the image of Rainbow Dash in the moments before she’d left, projecting my memory of her in front of me. The smile, which had at first seemed forced, I now saw lighting up her face and putting a spark back in her eyes. Her body, rather than tense with lingering fear, was coiled with excitement and verve.
I smiled and started walking away, towards the castle gates. Hoofsteps pounded after me, and I glanced over my shoulder to find Leit Motif racing to my side. She tossed her inky mane to right it and gave me a shy smile. “You looked like you were deep in thought again.”
“I know, it’s starting to become a really bad habit.” I shoulder-bumped her and we giggled. “There’s a lot for me to think about, really. Big things are happening and, like it or not, I’m kind of a part of them now.”
“It feels like I’ve needed the last few days just to catch my breath. That trek up the mountain was murder on my legs, let alone what happened at the top. I didn’t think my heart would ever stop pounding for as long as I lived.” She glanced back towards the courtyard and then back at me, our hooves clopping rhythmically on the tile. “It feels a bit like I’ve neglected you since you got back.”
“Don’t be crazy,” I said reassuringly. “We’ve both been busy. Honestly, I was worried you might feel neglected. If it wasn’t Princess Luna asking me for more details, it was the Ring and Sword representatives asking about visions, or Discord hinting loudly for information on whether or not the titans will really be freed sometime soon and if he should look into Ragnarok insurance.”
“Will they?”
“Not so far as I can tell, no.”
“Oh, good. We don’t offer coverage for apocalypses in any event. The firm would already be bankrupt.” She grinned at her own joke, something she never would have done just a few weeks ago.
We paused in a foyer to admire the mother-of-pearl inlays on the tile of an indoor gazing pool. Our images reflected back up at us, a bruised, long-haired dark mare with a mirthful smile and a somber, withdrawn blonde. It’s like we’d reversed positions. Well, I hadn’t exactly been ecstatic when I’d come to her doorstep, but I was certainly pleased to see her.
She turned her head to glance at me through the curtain of her mane. “Bit for your thoughts?”
“If my thoughts are coin-operated, it may take quite a few to get them all out,” I said with a slight smile. “A lot of things, I guess. Same things that have been bothering me for the last couple days, really.” I harkened back to Celestia’s words and met her eyes, the ones that were so much like my own. There was no coincidence in that, even if the reason for it escaped me. Two lost souls locked in a strange embrace across the universe.
“You’re still kind of trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do now, aren’t you?” she asked.
I gave her a wan smile.
“Me too.” She kicked a back hoof awkwardly.
“You?” I gave her a curious glance. “What’re you confused about?”
“Well, after confronting the fact that my entire life since leaving you was a stress train that violently derailed and its burning aftermath filled me with hollow lies, I’m kind of at a loss.” She tugged at her mane. “Okay, so maybe not that melodramatic, but… the idea of just going back to my house in Ponyville and closing it again isn’t really acceptable, you know? For the first time in my life, I have real friends that I can’t count with four hooves alone. I’ve changed too much since you found me. I’ve… really, finally grown up. After the sort of month I’ve had, how do you just go home and pretend nothing changed?”
I stared at my reflection in the pool without answering.
“There’s things I want to do now, places I want to go, people I want to see, and, well… there’s you.” She placed a hoof against my side. “I lost you once, Daphne, and it ruined my life. Wherever you go, well… I want to be there, too. I want to be a part of your life again. You’re… you’re the sister I never had, and I’ve felt your absence my entire life.”
“Leit…” I took her hoof and held her close. “I understand, of course. I… well, maybe it would help if I just showed you.”
“Showed me what?” she asked, lifting her ears.
I gestured her along, and together we passed through the vaulted ivory passages of the castle and out into the crisp wintry air of the mountain city. As we passed the government buildings surrounding the palace, I pointed to a street corner. My horn lit up and green mist swirled in front of us, forming a flat representation of what I saw with my other senses. An ornate bronze arch that opened to a stairway leading beneath the road. “In just a few years, Canterlot’s going to have its own public transit system. There’s the subway entrance. You should see the galleries down there—in a nation called Russia, their underground stations are breathtaking works of architecture, but they’ll pale in comparison to what you’ll have going in Canterlot.” I painted the image for her, of vaulted, mosaiced halls lit with golden chandeliers. Even the trains had an elegance to them, with dark wood accenting gold and red finishings.
A charming blue-and-white railcar moved up the mountainside through my window of time, its engine glowing with a unicorn’s enchantment. In its wake were white-wheeled cars with sleek lines and quiet electric engines. A glimpse of the sky far above showed at least a dozen airships, all more sophisticated than the noble Lodestone but just as beautiful.
I walked with Leit, pointing the window at different buildings. “See in there?” I turned it to a store selling phonographs and vinyls. Small saddle-hooking radios and colorful TVs appeared. In one screen, ponies chatted around a table in a television show not yet conceived, while in another Princess Celestia visited a children’s hospital with foals not yet born. “Ponies are going to take to mass media like Applejack to apples. The ability to talk with one another over great distances instantly is going to be a huge hit, and your kind’s native creativity is going to soar.”
Leit Motif pursed her lips thoughtfully. “This isn’t really what’s bothering you, though. I mean, you and I have both known that contact would change us. Heck, we’re already doing a lot of this ourselves. Ponies are no strangers to invention and change; I know for a fact that there’s been successful experiments at sending messages over phone lines and shrinking engines to develop small, personal transports; this is just us cheating by cribbing your notes.”
“If that were all, I’d call it a day and stop worrying.” I closed the illusion—we were attracting stares by the gaily-garbed passersby anyway. “Heck, as far as social changes go, you ponies are going to be great. It’s more than that, though. Did you know goblin steel, the kind that Maille works with, has two to three times the tensile strength of the best stuff we humans have come up with? They have to work it with magic, it’s so durable. Picture buildings twice as tall as the ones in Manehattan, but instead of bulky and drab they’re light and delicate. Architecture and art are going to become almost synonymous in Equestria, and that’s just the start. In just three months there’s going to be a play by goblin artists—and goblin scam artists will proliferate, too, leading to more and better organized law enforcement agencies. In three years, new forms of magic from across the known Worlds are going to be made known and studied. I can’t predict what sort of strangeness that’ll cause.” I tilted my head. “Have you heard of yakshas, sprites, gnomes, kirins, or ababas?”
Leit Motif shook her head.
“They’re creatures with magic not too dissimilar to the sort we unicorns use, mental projection of internal power and all. Those’re the least alarming of supernatural oddities that will become more and more relevant as time goes on, and I can’t even begin to predict what sort of impact they’ll have here on Equestria, let alone the nations of my world.” I winced. “Speaking of, my world’s about to get a lot uglier before it gets better. People don’t realize it, but they’ve just narrowly avoided a rather severe collapse, and the sort of problems we’ve had recently are only the start. War, famine, climate degradation…”
I bit my lip and looked back at the castle, which glittered in the afternoon sun with its proud towers thrust into the air. “That’s really just the tip of the iceberg, though. I’m looking out onto a vast ocean of possibility and I see deeper currents, powerful ones that will put these early movements to shame.”
“Tell me,” she urged. “I can’t help you if you just cryptically hint.”
I shook my head. “You know all this talk about divine magic and ancient heroes and monsters and the awesome legends of the past? What once was will come again, and we won’t be ready for it, no matter what we do. New alicorns, demigods, the relics of ancient civilizations…”
Leit Motif stared thoughtfully at me for a long time, saying nothing. I scuffed at the street and glanced up at her, watching as the breeze stirred her long mane and tousled mine. All around us the elite of Canterlot walked about with their noses in the air, blissfully unaware that the storm they had just weathered was only a prelude for the hurricanes to come.
“So,” she said at last, “what I’m hearing is that this stuff you’re talking about isn’t coming for a while, and there’s really not much you can do about it, which means you’re getting worked up for nothing.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I—wait, what?” I snapped my head back at her. “How do you mean by that? This isn’t nothing, it’s an inexorable future full of challenges that I have to be prepared for!”
“Right—” she nodded and lifted a hoof to emphasize her point “—an inexorable future, meaning one that you can’t directly influence yet.”
“Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be dangerous and worrisome for the people and ponies affected.”
“No, but what are you going to do about that?”
“I—” I opened and shut my mouth. “Well, I mean, I’m…” I stamped a hoof. “That’s what I wanted to ask you about! I don’t know what I should be doing and I need help figuring it out!”
“Exactly.” Leit Motif reached out and poked me in the chest. “Listen to yourself, Daphne. You’re getting worked up over things that you don’t honestly have control over. You’re stressed because you feel—no, you’ve been made to feel—like you’re responsible for everyone on every world. Sure, that’s what the ancient prophecy-makers intended for you, but that’s not the way it is anymore. Even if it wasn’t, though, you’re still getting stressed out by putting too much on yourself when you have no ability to do anything about it.” She smiled sadly. “Take it from somepony who knows what she’s talking about. After I lost you, my parents thought that the best thing they could do to help me was warning me about where I was going to end up. They loved me, in their fashion, and they thought that by hammering me into shape and scaring me into responsibility, I’d buckle down and make sure that I had a great future. I did great, at first, I studied constantly and learned a great deal of things which I still use today, but I couldn’t keep perspective.”
She turned her head to look down the road, and I saw the tower of Celestia’s school for the gifted just above a coffee shop. “You know what happened then,” she said sadly. “I was so frightened of losing everything, so stressed out by what was expected of me, that I lost it completely. I abandoned everything I knew because I’d grown to hate it. How much worse is it for you, somepony who can see the terrible possibilities that other ponies only dream about?”
“It’s not just going to go away, though.” I looked at her imploringly. “How can I just turn my back on it? Sure, right now I can’t do much aside from help Celestia prepare, but in the future I might need ten of me just to keep up.”
“So prepare,” she said, “but do it sensibly. Don’t freak out about what you can’t change, learn what you need to learn to prepare, and when the time comes, don’t screw up.” She nudged my shoulder with a smile. “You said it yourself, it’ll be a few years before anything you said really manifests. You have unicorn—and maybe goblin—magic to learn, not to mention getting a grip on your own powers. That’s enough to go on as it is. You don’t think Celestia, Luna, Twilight, and the rest of us are going to sit on our butts, do you?”
I shook my head, laughing weakly. “No. Damn it, Leit, when did you start being wise?”
“I’ve always been wise, I just forgot about it.” She giggled. “I seem to recall I was always the voice of reason when we were kids.”
“You mean a scaredy-pony.”
“Healthy caution!” She grinned and gave me a squeeze. “You’ll be fine, Daphne. You’ve already pulled us out of the fire once. Let go for a bit and be yourself again. If anypony has deserved a rest, it’s us.”
Her shoulder was warm and close as she held me up. “Fine,” I mumbled, “I’ll… try.” I closed my eyes and sighed heavily. I packed as much of my tension and formless fears of the future into it as I could, expelling them from me. The resulting sense of lightness left me feeling heady and almost disoriented—I couldn’t give up all of my concern, not by a long shot, but it felt good to let go.
“I’m glad I found you again, Leit Motif.” I lifted my hooves around her neck. “I wish we’d been able to come together without having to save my sister or without this… weight hanging over us.”
“Me too,” she said quietly, “but I’m not letting you go, no matter how hard it gets.”
Leit had always talked about how I changed her life and completed her, but I’d only rarely stopped to think about how she’d done the same for me. I filled the void left by the gnawing of my nebulous, as-yet-to-be-determined responsibilities with her love, propping it up by Amelia’s and Naomi’s and a dozen others who’ve become so near and dear to my heart.
There would be a time to relax and recuperate from my ordeal, but the thing that would keep me sane is their love for me and mine for them. No one is an island, not even Aquarius.
I’ve spent so much time and energy worrying at how I’d fix a broken world that I’d driven myself to distraction, but Leit Motif reminded me of the look I’d seen on Rainbow Dash’s face when Scootaloo had reminded her of their own special bond for one another. Healing damaged worlds begins with the people in them, and if we remember the bonds of friendship, that truly divine magic which our pony brethren rely upon, then even in the face of a chaotic and uncertain future we can find hope.
The following morning, with the sky still dark, I entered a room of delicate indigos. A fireplace filled the space with gentle warmth and golden light, illuminating the clouds and shooting stars along the walls. On a large cushion, Celestia reclined, and her sister Luna stood at the balcony overlooking the last of the morning stars.
“I’m glad you could make it so early.” Celestia smiled warmly, rising to welcome me. I was pleased to see that her legs no longer trembled, though a faint sagging and weariness belied her health. “I hope my sister’s call didn’t disturb you.”
“I can’t say I’m used to people inviting me out to places in my dreams,” I said, “but it’s fine; it wasn’t exactly the best sleep anyway. How can I help you, Celestia?” The cushion Celestia offered me was warm and snug and I looked between the two questioningly, only belatedly realizing that I’d called her by her first name without attaching the honorific. That was a weird lapse on my part, but something about the meeting made it feel strangely right.
Luna paid the indiscretion no mind. “My sister has been too polite to impose upon you in such a fashion, but your imminent departure spurred me to swallow courtesy and involve you in a personal matter.” She turned from the balcony, regarding me with a deep, serious expression that failed to hide an acute sadness. “I have very little memory of my childhood, save that I apparently gave my sister many fits about a somewhat wild and misspent youth, but the one thing I have absolutely no memory of… are my mother and father.”
Oh. Did that get awkward fast.
Celestia smiled sadly and gestured apologetically with a wing. “I know this is an intensely personal thing to ask and can’t imagine you enjoy invading others’ lives, but my sister and I would be deeply grateful if you could help us understand them. It’s a sad irony that my own memories of them are largely gained through Amelia’s jarring of memories I thought long lost. More than just for personal reasons, though, I want to better understand their intentions and what went into creating this land we know today as Equestria.”
“Though the personal reasons are still the more important of the two,” Luna added assertively. She folded her wings and walked forward to sit away from the fire, with the firelight flickering in the deep blue of her coat.
I kneaded the cushions under my hooves and sighed faintly. “No. I understand. If I didn’t grow up with my parents, I’d want to know as much as I could about them, too.” The prospect of playing necromancer didn’t sit well with me. I’d have to dig not only into an incredibly painful episode of their pasts, but expose myself to the pain and suffering of not only them, but the Bridle’s other victims as well in that ancient war.
The more I thought about it, though, the more that sounded like a selfish thing. For all their age and wisdom, these were two orphans who had struggled all their lives to keep their parents’ legacy intact. If I could in some way reunite them with an important part of themselves that they’d lost, it would not only bring them long-awaited peace, but putting my powers to such a use would help vindicate my role as intermediary.
“Of course,” I said, offering the royal sisters a small smile. “I’ll help.”
“Thank you,” Celestia said simply.
“Where to begin…” I exhaled to steady myself and cleared my mind, opening it fully. Images began to flood in, strange shapes and figures rippling through the cosmos. I focused on Celestia, and then Luna, absorbing their unique natures and then taking them together, drawing back the veil. I’d looked into the future with Leit Motif, and now I gazed into the past through eyes three thousand years old.
Green mist poured from my horn as I shaped an image with unicorn magic. The color deepened to midnight blue, and Celestia cooed as a tiny Luna formed on the ground between us. The actual Luna blushed as darkly as Leit Motif. Then another shaped form, starting with a dark cerulean tail that flowed around baby Luna like a river in its own current and rising to form a dark silver coat. “Queen Theia,” I whispered. A wing tucked around the tiny foal and her face was awash with motherly grace.
“Mercurial, as changeable as the moon and less predictable,” I said, and the whisper and roar of the sea filled the small room. “She could be as calm as a summer’s day or as fierce as a winter storm.”
Theia, tall and proud, flashed her horn with terrible power and lightning flashed around her. Her wings beat waves into froth and the winds into gales.
“They called her the glittering one, and she outshined her sisters. Whether filled with vim or sunk into melancholy, she was always in motion. She was the child of the sea and to the sea she returned.”
A new sound entered the room, the drumbeat of hooves on stone, the crash of waves against rock. Storm-tossed sea gave way to stony beaches, and then to wild and fertile land, a green place embraced between the hills and vales. “Ox-shouldered, stone-hooved, King Kreios,” I announced, and an auburn stallion strode into view. He surprised me with how bright his colors were, and he gave at once an impression of boundless vitality and life, an impression emphasized by his broad smile.
“Far from being stern like his own father, Kreios was full of mirth. He always had a ready joke, sometimes infuriating others for how unserious he seemed.” The stallion often seemed to forget he had wings, bounding from hilltop-to-hilltop with thunderous impacts. He wandered into a human village as if he belonged there, nosing at fresh apples and commenting on the wine. “He loved nothing so much as new things, be they ideas, inventions, crops, or children. He raised villages, fields, and even the very mountain we’re standing on.” Two girl-children clung to his wings and a gaggle of foals climbed on his back.
“It hurt him terribly when the second War came. He believed until the last that a diplomatic solution could be found, if only they could reach the humans who had caused so much trouble.”
“He was right,” Celestia murmured, “three thousand years late, but he was right.”
“If our mother had not… slain him… do you think he might have succeeded?” Luna asked grimly. “Celestia’s memories were the key in turning Amelia, after all. Surely, somepony such as our father would have had as great an influence.”
I shook my head. “I can’t answer that. Even if I could, I don’t think it would help anypony here. I can say that they were both amazing ponies. They earned the title of King and Queen by bringing the ponies of the world together across cultural boundaries, and it’s thanks to them that anypony escaped at all.”
“What of Pirene?” Celestia asked. “You mentioned our mother having sisters, and, of them all, she’s had such an influence in our lives without our knowing that I find myself quite interested.”
My lips pursed together tightly. For some reason, the question struck me as oddly personal—for me, not just for them. In a strange sense, it felt like they were the ones intruding on my own family.
That was a queer thought all over. Except at the same time it wasn’t. How had Pirene put it? Child of my spirit?
Pirene had a son, Cloud Breaker, the one known to future myth-makers as Pegasus, the first victim of the War. I knew next-to-nothing about Pirene herself, though, and nothing at all about Cloud Breaker. As far as I could tell, she’d had no other children, and I was in a position to know such things. The secret of her influence was quiet and unknown by most, yet it affected me in a deep way that I didn’t understand.
Still, I cleared my mind again, and drew closer to the source, that energy which flowed from some ineffable place above to and through me.
A wing fell across my back, tucking around me much as Celestia’s had the day before, yet infinitely more intimate. Ahead, the room had fallen away to reveal a silver moon which stood above its own rippling reflection in a star-filled ocean. I looked down to find grass beneath my hooves, then up at the sea-green alicorn mare who lived there, in my private island of memory on a sea that never was.
There, in my memory, the buildings were intact. The village below was empty and the palace on the hill had only her, but pristine it stood, perfect in our minds for all time.
She let me contemplate in silence as I looked around at the island. More than just a memory palace, I realized then that it was the very source of my strange nature. The waters that flowed from heaven collected here. That place was profoundly connected to me, which meant that everything had meaning.
“You know,” I said thoughtfully, “the women in my family have always been regarded as strange. Women scholars. Suffragettes. Constantly in trouble with religious and temporal authority. My sister is strangely brilliant for her age. Even Leit Motif, in a way, has a connection to this place. Like sisters. None of that is coincidence, is it?”
“Little in your life is,” Pirene said with a small smile.
“I never understood your place in this.” I frowned. “My birth was engineered, but by what? Chiron, the teacher of heroes, was to train me, but how was I to come about to begin with? It seems like they could pick anyone, unless they had some reason to believe that there would be a chance at something special. Something unique.”
“Go on,” she encouraged, her wing nudging me faintly.
“This is your home, isn’t it?” I asked, and she nodded. “It’s where you raised Cloud Breaker. But you never had another child. I’m not physically descended from you. Even if I was, you must hate humans for what they did to your son, don’t you?”
“I did,” she agreed. “For a long time, I held onto that hatred. All through the War. After they ransacked it and I drove them off, I remained here, isolate, stewing on my own loss and fury.” She rose, and I followed her as she walked off, down the hillside and through the ruined village. “I was never as strong or charismatic as Theia. I didn’t really care to join the fight, anyway, so wrapped up in my grief I was.”
We stopped at a tide pool. It was a great pit set away from the beaches, where mud collected from all over the island and percolated with the stuff of the sea. Right now, at low tide, the pool was mostly exposed, but for a few brave crabs and the bright green algae-crusted remnants of the water below.
Algae, I noticed, the same color as my eyes. My heart pounded.
“In the time of chaos,” Pirene said into my stunned silence, “the first people were shaped from mud.” Her horn lit and a human figure was formed the muck. “And then life was breathed into them by their primordial mother.”
The stars above glittered as Pirene drew primordial strength from her soul and through her lungs, and when she breathed into the figurine’s mouth it warmed and hardened until the clay cracked and fell away to reveal a green-eyed human child. I felt that breath echo down through the ages to enter my lungs like hot bellows air and fill me with strength.
“I wanted to understand them, from the deepest layer. I wanted to know what sort of creature could so deeply destroy my flesh and blood. I made a child. I raised her. I taught her.” She sighed, looking at the silent, curious child. “And I discovered that the evil I’d sought, the sin I’d thought your kind was born with, was no where to be found. I grew to love this strange human child of mine. And, finally, I set her free. She had girl-children of her own in time, and on and on, each bearing a portion of my ichorous essence, and I watched over them all. It took her a very, very long time, but the animating spirit I set within her came back to me at last. She finally came home.”
I covered my face, unable to stop the tears. “What was her name?” I asked, croaking. “What… is my name?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” She nuzzled me gently, drying my eyes with her wing and holding me close. “What sign heralded your return home?”
Sign? Of course, the lights above the sky when I returned to the Island. “Eos,” I said, the Greek coming to me as naturally as anything else. Aurora.
“That’s my girl,” she whispered. “Human with a mare’s soul. That is what the Seer sought; someone to bridge the gap formed by hate with love, a child of both worlds.”
There was no helping it. I had to laugh. “You know, maybe I didn’t fail, then, exactly.”
“Oh?”
“Amelia has a bit of that nature, too, and so does Leit Motif, somehow. I’m not sure how that works.”
“No one ever said souls were simple things.”
“My love for Amelia was a major part of what turned her at the end. Even if I wasn’t entirely there, a part of me was, through them.”
“The bonds of friendship and love are powerful forces.” She laughed and nuzzled at me with fierce affection. “And you could never be a failure in my eyes. Perhaps I’m biased as all mothers should be, but I think you’ve grown to be a beautiful, capable young mare, and I trust you will grow to be worthy of my legacy and my gifts.”
“I don’t know if I will,” I whispered, “but I will try, M-Mother.”
“There, you said it.” She kissed my horn. “Was that so hard?”
“I still have another mother, you know!” I protested, smiling.
“I know, and in a way she’s of me, too.” She chuckled. “My, that makes my family tree very complicated indeed. You are my Aurora, though; the full and complete manifestation. Never sell yourself short, never forget who you are or where you come from. Aurora, Aquarius, Water Bearer. Those names still have meaning in the new Age.”
“I won’t,” I promised. “Thank you. I… thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Now, go. You have a long road ahead today, and I can’t keep you from your friends and other family forever.”
“I’ll see you again?”
“Of course. I love you, Aurora.”
“I love you, too, Mother.”
Her warmth and closeness was replaced with the pillow under my head. I glanced up and found the sun in the sky, freshly raised. Luna returned from the balcony, looking exhausted, and I reminded myself that she’d been taking on the duties of raising both celestial orbs and hardly sleeping between.
Briefly, I wondered what would happen if—or perhaps when—Midgard truly reunited. The sun and moon here operated largely because this was a weird splinter of a greater world. I wondered what that would mean for their cutie marks. Then again, this division had removed much of what was metaphorical and strange from the rest of Midgard, so perhaps the reunification would simply make things weirder for everyone.
“Aurora, is it?” Celestia said into my ear and I jolted.
“What, how did—?”
“Our aunt appeared briefly while you were out,” Luna explained, and a smile crossed her face, one of the few that I’d seen. “She elaborated on some key details.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Celestia said as my face turned bright red. “Your secrets are safe with us. For now.”
“We’ll understand if calling us cousin seems inappropriate. Truly, I think the term is meaningless in your case, but that’s a complicated topic.”
“It does,” I admitted, still beet red. I coughed into a knee. “Uh. No offense. You are and aren’t family.”
“Perhaps time will change that,” Celestia said. “You and your sister have a lot of it ahead of you. Forgive us if we’re a little presumptuous—we’ve spent a great deal of time without anyone to call kin. I’ve come to understand that blood is hardly necessary to be family, but it is still very exciting.”
I frowned. “Speaking of… Celestia, what is it you plan to do with Amelia?”
“Little enough. I don’t think there’s any punishment I can possibly level that would affect her positively—indeed, I think it would only serve to make her feel better in a twisted fashion. In her current state, she’s inclined to self-flagellation, which is never a good impulse to encourage.” She shook her head sadly. “She has to atone for what she did. She will, which is why I’m letting her free, but it has to come from within. She needs to learn that forgiveness isn’t something that’s just given to you, but something you have to work for and earn for yourself.”
“Not to mention to herself,” Luna muttered.
Celestia gave her sister a sympathetic look and reached up to nuzzle at her cheek briefly. “We all forgive you, sister.”
“I know,” Luna said without elaboration.
“That’s still an awful lot of trust, don’t you think?” I said, after the moment had passed.
Celestia nodded. “I lived in her mind, as she did in mine. I know her thoughts and what she intends.”
“All right, fair enough. I will look after her, I promise. That’s something I need to atone for, too.” I rose to my feet. “Well… I should get going. We’re supposed to leave while you’re giving Twilight and Captain Holder the awards ceremony, after all.”
“Perish the thought that you should be honored for your contributions to the kingdom,” she said teasingly.
I stuck my tongue out. “Thank you, but no thank you. Ponies will know who I am soon enough, once the gossip from the Lodestone’s crew and the goblins gets around. Poor Leit Motif would have a heart attack, and Marcus’s and Lyra’s heads are already too swollen as it is. I don’t even want to know what Naomi would do, but it’s probably unseemly and not fit for company.”
“If you insist, then. We’ll be sure to speed you on the way back to your world. I understand you’ll be traveling with the goblins?”
“At least part of the way, yes.” I nodded. “We’ll part in the Everfree. And thank you.”
“Be sure to return to Equestria soon, Daphne. I’m sure your new friends would like to see you again.”
I smiled and nodded again. “Of course.”
The sisters bid me farewell at the door, both in dire need of rest from their respective ordeals. The castle servants hung banners and streamers across the ivory halls as I made my way down to the docks where the others waited. Some of them pointed and stared at me shamelessly, and I wondered briefly how long it took rumors from drunken sailors to get around a place like this. In just a few hours the viewing public would be treated to Twilight Sparkle, her friends, and Captain Holder receiving honors in place of Leit Motif and the others, though. And me, I suppose, though it’s hard to feel like I really had the impact others said I did, if only because I spent most of the final hours of the battle locked in a completely different struggle for survival with only brief signals to the outside.
It was hard not to shudder and become lost in the thoughts of the place the Morgwyn had dragged me into in its last, desperate attempt to complete the derailment of history and time. Even for someone as steeped in dream logic as I am, it’s still nearly impossible to put meaning to the experience. A place where even the slightest thought had real and immediate consequences that were swallowed in a scattering pattern of meaningless chaos. Imposing some manner of sane order on it, enough to maintain my sense of self, had been difficult enough without a monster stalking me like a toothy shadow. Sometimes, as I look back on it, the whole experience seems to encompass little more than a few hectic, bloody minutes where it was purely my will asserting itself, but when I look at it from another angle, it’s as if I spent days conceiving fiendish puzzles and scenarios to entrap and defeat the Morgwyn in an intellectual battle. In some way, it seemed as if every version in my memory was somehow simultaneously and equivalently true.
It was a sobering reminder that creatures like the Morgwyn, with similar designs on the world, lurked and waited for their chance. They’d unleash their creators and return the world to that maddening design if they could.
Such thoughts inevitably led me back to my sister’s most singular act of raw, merciless justice. I cast my gaze out and perceived “Morgan” still lurking in the shadows of the garden. Every so often she’d shift slightly, raising or lowering a wing, her hair shielding her eyes from the sun. I hadn’t asked Celestia about her fate and had little opinion on the matter. We’d had it out, she and I, and I’d proven to my satisfaction who was the better, so as far as I was concerned it was even between us. That she’d become my sister’s dark twin was something I didn’t terribly want to think about.
Perhaps Discord would approach and mock her, or maybe Luna would visit her in her dreams, there in the one place where she could still catch on to the fading tendrils of her memories of true chaos. Regardless, it was hard to see any form of redemption in her future. I’d seen no sign that there was even a chance of her comprehending that what she had done was wrong.
Ah, well. No one ever said that being a better big sister meant agreeing with Amelia on everything she did.
The castle’s docks were a modest affair, a late addition to the thousand year-old structure embedded into the living rock beneath its northern face. The transport Celestia had offered us was a sleek, slender craft with sky-blue wood and a long, sharp prow. Marcus, still a pegasus, was already on board and chatting up the pilot, a young mare who was blushing far too much.
Heaps of luggage were being transported into the vessels by longshoremares, largely souvenirs and other gifts Naomi was bringing back from Equestria. How she’d paid for all of it and how she planned to transport it all back to our side of Midgard was entirely beyond me. Beside the small mountain stood Maille, Twig, and the other goblins. Rose, despite her ferocious attitude, looked mildly upset as she stared at the ground.
They were all facing Flash, who’d assumed her white-maned goblin form once again, and beside her stood the gangly Wire. I smiled as I saw them; I could still remember when they’d first met again after all that time…
* * *
Flash hadn’t so much as limped back from her fight with the maelstrom as been carried. A pegasus had found her collapsed on a cloud and had brought her to the castle, thinking her some strange yellow thestral no doubt. The moment taciturn little Wire had seen her she’d burst into tears and raced to embrace her, babbling incoherently. Flash’s eyes had opened then, and she’d stroked the younger filly’s mane with a hoof. “Ach. Still a crybaby after all these years, bairn?”
“I’m not a crybaby!” Wire protested, her eyes streaming tears. She smacked her sister with her hooves. “You big, stupid mare! Ya go missin’ all this time and when ye’re right there you go and get yourself killed!”
“I’m not dead yet. Oof. Though if’n you keep beatin’ me I might get internal bleedin’ or somethin’. Won’t that just be a tidy way to die.”
“I was so scared without you,” Wire whimpered. Her tail curled up around herself and she buried her face into Flash’s side. “I didn’t know what to do. I was just livin’ day-to-day and then I was a fugitive and, and…”
“Shh, s’all right, Wire. I’m here for ya now,” Flash whispered, her own eyes wet as she drew her sister into her embrace weakly. “I can’t say how much I’m sorry. I was so scared of goin’ back for you, I thought for sure they’d be watchin’... it’s a coward’s excuse, I know. I’ve done a right proper job of bein’ a bloody awful sister.” She cracked an eye open and stared at her. “Wait, a fugitive? How in the Nine Worlds did you get here, anyway?”
“Amelia kinda sorta kidnapped me,” Wire said, sniffling. “And then I, well, I busted the Crusaders out of the Cup Palace and we snuck aboard the Wand Air Fortress and beat up Mister Fetter and took his wand, and then we went up on the mountain and fought the titanspawn…”
“You did all that?” Flash asked wonderingly. “My little scaredy-cat?”
“I was shakin’ in my hooves the whole time!” Wire shuffled her hooves. “I ain’t cut out for this adventurin’ stuff!”
“You’re a little hero is what you are. Ain’t that just the tidiest thing I ever did hear.” She laughed and squeezed Wire against her tightly, and the memory faded back to reality.
* * *
The goblins stood facing one another, and Flash stood with her wing about her sister’s side, holding her as if she never planned to let go. I knew that feeling.
“Cous, it ain’t like the new Wand King is gonna punish you for vanishin’ like you did,” Pinion said. She blew her electric mane out of her face and held a hoof out imploringly. “Come on, Flash! You’re like family—we just found you and everything!”
“I am your family.” Flash rolled her eyes. “I’m serious, though. I already took this up with Princess Twilight forever ago. I don’t belong in the goblin world anymore; I have a life here, a real life on my own terms where who I am matters.”
“You matter to us,” Twig said quietly.
Flash’s ear twitched, and she lowered her gaze slightly. “It ain’t like I won’t be able to see you girls again. With travel openin’ up again, I could come see you whenever the fancy struck. It’s just… I get you, but this is where I belong. That old place I called home? It ain’t home no more, and nothing can change that, because I’ve already changed.”
That one struck a chord. I rubbed my chest, glancing away.
Maille reached down and put a hand on Twig’s shoulder. “It’s all right. She’s made up her mind.” She kneeled and slid her arms around the goblin mare. “You’re always welcome at my place in Mag Mell.”
Rose scuffed at the floor and refused to look up. Flash looked at her sadly, but nothing was said between them.
Marble Stone, who’d also been silent all this time, cleared her throat. “Well. I can certainly sympathize, after what I’ve been through. That’s a tidy little joke, innit? You were born a goblin and now you’re off to become a pony, where I’m goin’ the opposite way.”
“I might want to go travelin’ in Equestria myself,” Pinion said, “Pinkie promised to paint the town pink with me once I got back!”
“You two were clearly meant for one another,” Flash snorted. “Oh, reminds me.” She pulled Wire forward, who cringed automatically. “I’m taking my sister with me. You’ll be sure to tell my folks, right, Pin?”
“Of course! I’m sure they’ll not come after you with axes for abandoning them and returning only long enough to steal their other daughter.”
“Pinion,” Maille said with an exasperated edge, but whatever else she was going to add was lost as a soft clicking of wood and stone drew their attention. Amelia, her long golden hair tied up and her eyes tired, strode in with her white ash staff tapping the ground. She still wore the tunic Maille had given her, though the chain armor was tucked away, for lack of anything else that fit. When the others turned to see her, she stopped as well.
Her eyes searched the faces of the goblins, and she seemed momentarily at a loss. Time and the deep shame which was her constant companion draped from her shoulders like a heavy cloak. Eventually, she broke the silence. “Hello, everyone. I’m glad to see… that you’re all okay.”
There was no answer. Wire stepped forward uncertainly, but she seemed to be having trouble speaking through a throat rendered tight by emotion.
Amelia herself had to pause a moment to gather her courage before speaking. “I want to say that, well… I’m sorry.”
Rose snorted. “Yeah? Why so? We’re the ones who screwed you over.”
Maille and Twig glared at her.
“What?” she shrugged. “It’s true, isn’t it? We lied to her first.” She stepped forward, looking up at Amelia with hard eyes. “Yeah, so you tried to screw everyone in the Worlds, but that wasn’t personal. Everything back on the Fortress was you getting back at us, so as far as I’m concerned we’re even on that score.” She looked back at the others. “It’s not the first time I accepted a King who did things I didn’t exactly agree with, and at least she’s willing to own up to it, unlike Nessus.”
“I’m still sorry,” Amelia insisted, “especially for how I hurt Twig. I mean, sure, she lied to me, too… but come on, that was brutal. And I should have trusted you, Maille. I’m sorry because I didn’t; I knew better, and I did the wrong thing anyway.”
“Mm, yes,” Maille agreed, “and I should have listened to my own conscience long before. We all should have. We, all of us—” she nudged Marble Stone “—had warning signs and uncomfortable moments where we doubted ourselves. We weren’t children anymore, but we still acted like it.”
Marble Stone flicked her glossy tail and grit her teeth. “Yeah,” she said through a clenched jaw, “I was kind of a jerk, too.”
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Amelia said, her shoulders straightening.
Marble looked back at her, her face stony and hard. “I’m sorry you got hurt, and I’m sorry I was wrong, but I’m not going to excuse my actions. Yeah, I shouldn’t have kept you prisoner to begin with, but I was doing my job. I believed, honestly, that I was protecting the goblins I loved by fulfilling our mission.” She frowned, her facade cracking somewhat. “Well, that’s not entirely true. I mean… I screwed up by not listening to my doubts and questioning authority more thoroughly. Fine, so I am sorry about that. But I still think that given what I knew at the time, I did what I had to do. When I opposed you at the Fort, I saw you as a lying little cyth—” she bit off the goblin swear and started again “—cheat, and I did what I could to stop you.”
“I know,” Amelia said with a nod, “and, actually, I agree. You were the only one to see through my lies. And for that…” She reached into her bag and pulled out a long, gnarled length of wood, one that had been burned indelibly into my memory—more thoroughly than most things already are, that is.
“Fetter’s Wand?” Rose asked, startled.
“Not so much anymore.” Amelia shook her head. “After getting smacked around by the Crusaders, he pretty much gave up. I think he was grateful when I asked for his Wand back.” She stepped forward to Marble Stone, and all at once the chamber seemed to have a solemn air as she laid the Wand down before her. “Marble Stone, you have proven that you have a discerning eye, a willingness to act in the best interests of your friends, and the humility to understand your own limitations and work to better yourself. Perhaps as importantly, you opposed me, and it is the duty of a goblin Knight to stand for what is right, even when that decision is unpopular or difficult. Would you do me the honor of becoming that Knight for me?”
Marble Stone rocked back on her heels so far she fell on her rump. Maille laughed and helped her up. “What… me?” Marble Stone asked. “I was terrible to you!”
“And my sister healed you. Can you really say that you’re just Kiln anymore?”
The goblin mare chewed her lip. “You’ll swear it, on the Wand? If I swear to do you service as a loyal Knight, you will listen to my advice and allow me latitude in carrying out the needs of the Court?”
“Done, and done,” Amelia swore, “three times done.”
Sun-bright fire leapt between them, and the lesser Wand rose in the air, connected to the greater by searing flame. Marble Stone reached out a leg and hooked it around the end, and for just an instant they were enveloped in a blinding flash.
Marble Stone slid the Wand reverently into a strap at her side, sighing. “I guess this solidifies it. No going back home for me.”
There’s that twinge again.
Amelia leaned against her staff, exhaling heavily. “Thank you. There is, ah, something I need to do.” She turned, then, and knelt before Wire to put herself at the teenage goblin’s level. “Wire… you… were my most faithful friend, and I abused you every inch of the way. I don’t… I don’t even know how to start making up for that. You were the hero, not me. If I’d listened to you, everything would have worked out better.”
Wire did what she did best: wibbled. She garbled uselessly for a bit, trying to find words. Her tail lashed back and forth. She ran a hoof through her mane and bumped up against her goggles, then peeled them off and fidgeted with them. “Moonlight—I mean, Amy—I mean, King Amy-elia. Ah. Amy. I… well, that is to say… don’t be so hard on yourself. I mean, yeah, you did kidnap me, and then I was terrified out of my skull the entire time, and sparks alive I thought I was going to die, but…” She looked up at her with her eyes shining with tears. “I felt like I mattered. I don’t know if that’s just me being blinkered or what, but…”
“You did matter,” Amy promised. “I went back to the Cup Palace thinking I might be able to save you, but you were already gone.”
“I’m still mad at you,” Wire said in the direction of Amy’s shoes, her ears flat against her skull.
“Yeah. I’m mad at me, too. Can you…?” She trailed off, seemingly unable to bring herself to ask.
“Still be your friend?” Wire looked up at her. Amy nodded, and Wire nosed her. “Okay.”
Amy smiled gratefully. “Thank you. I guess we’re parting, for now, but I hope I can visit you in Equestria, soon. You’ll be happy here; Celestia’s made it a wonderful place.”
Wire laughed nervously, and I saw a young mare putting up Cloudsdale’s first electric lights, a young mother, a burning Cup. Everyone has little images dancing around them when you get right down to it. Interpreting them can be a full-time job in-and-of itself.
Marcus strode up as Amelia got to her feet and eyed the tall woman. “You sure grew up fast, little Anteater. Seems to me you were knee high just a little while ago.”
“And you look fuzzier than before. Forget to shave?” Amelia reached out to ruffle his mane and he danced back with his wings raised protectively.
Trotting in from the entrance came Naomi with a Royal Guardstallion in tow. She paused to give him a rather close goodbye—followed by a flick of her tail—before going the rest of the way to the airship on her own. “We all about set?” she asked brightly. “Oh, I’m going to miss this place.”
“Just about,” I answered, and paused as I saw one of the boxes she’d bought peek open. There were a set of large eyes attached to a brownish-blond mane that quickly vanished out of sight. I smirked and gazed through the outer layer to perceive Patch curled up inside where a sweater used to be. “Resourceful little minx,” I murmured.
“What’s that?” Naomi asked.
“Nothing. So, who was your friend back there?”
“As if you don’t know.” Naomi rolled her eyes. “You can probably tell how many siblings he has and of what gender with a glance.”
“So people keep reminding me. Still, I’d like to hear it from you.”
“Oh,” she said dismissively, “just a friend. We met earlier while I was at the market.”
“Just a friend, eh?” I grinned. “You didn’t promise to come see him later, did you?”
Naomi smiled mysteriously. “Who said anything about a promise?”
There were a lot of things I saw in Naomi’s future, but I think I’ll leave that for a surprise.
As the ship cast off and her engines hummed in their merry quest to take us back to the Everfree, we found Lyra and Leit Motif already on board, the latter crushing the young musician in their tenth consecutive chess match of the hour. Saria hissed and lashed her tail; she’d dispensed with her cloak, her rangy form scarred and sun-tanned. She prodded Lyra in the side. “You would not be losing so if you just took my advice, yes?”
“If I took your advice, I might as well let you play. I’m having fun!” Lyra waved her off.
The Seer, propped up in a cushy wheelchair, looked on with quiet amusement. His eyes turned towards me meaningfully, and Naomi quietly excused herself to go down and check on Hector in the hold. I took the unspoken invitation and walked up to the ancient goblin.
“You and your sister shine like newborn stars, Water Bearer,” he said by way of greeting and took my hoof in hand. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see the like again in the race of Man, bar that old elf lingering around in the underworld.”
My ears perked. “Really? I thought all the other demigods had left.”
“Mm, leaving takes many forms.” He chuckled sadly. “Forgive me for not telling you the full truth about yourself sooner. Much, much sooner, in all respects. I still do not know how the Morgwyn kept you from sight; you were within reach the whole time and we scoured the earth in vain.”
“Hey, now—me, Amelia, and everyone else are already taking the blame for what happened.”
“Then there’s plenty to go around for me, considering I was a part of how it began. Me, and my long departed colleagues.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Perhaps I will yet live to see our vision reimagined. I can hope for that.”
“What was the old world like?” I asked quietly. “I can’t really… well, I don’t see everything.”
“The days before the Bridle came to be? Much as now, there was a real hope for the future.” The wizened goblin looked away, as if he, too, could stare into the distant past. “More mortals were being born, my kind proliferated in the dark spaces of the universe, but we believed we could conquer even that. There was a land where all the kinds came together, regardless of race, clan, or lineage, and worked to create a better world.” He exhaled and closed his eyes. “I was but a child when the War came upon us. So much was lost in so short a time. The land of Shinar burned, and all its marvelous works. There was technology the likes of which even you modern humans cannot yet conceive of, incorporating both the most advanced science and powerful of magic, works of art unparalleled to this day, and more. Its loss was a cataclysm so great that the world itself was reshaped, and we have been living in the Bridle’s shadow ever since.”
I heard Amelia’s hands tighten around her staff. I turned to look at her, but she’d gone over to where Twig was peering longingly over the railing back at the castle. “I have to ask you something.”
“Yes, uhm…”
“Just Amy, please,” she said, going to join her at the railing, “is there any chance that… someone could Produce the Bridle?”
The goblin magician flinched back automatically at the name. “No. I mean, well—no one’s ever been able to Produce something another person Vanished before, and not for lack of trying. It would be the greatest coup in the history of illusion. The key to Production is you have to memorize the thing you Vanish, which you might think someone else could replicate, but I’ve tried it myself. That said, no one’s ever Vanished anything like the Bridle before. It’s divine, and I don’t know what rules apply there.”
“Where do Vanished things go?”
Twig shook her head and ran a hoof through her bristly mane. “I don’t rightly know. No one does. Animals you put away come back as if no time at all had passed for them, so maybe it’s just moved in time somehow. Which of course leads to the question of determinism and whether or not we’re really making decisions instead of just playing out a causal chain of events and—”
“So if I forget about the Bridle sufficiently, it’s gone for good? Even I can’t bring it back?”
Twig deflated slightly. “Ah. Aye, so far as I know. I suppose it’s just as well, I don’t know if any force in the Nine Worlds can destroy it, not unless you unravel the conditions of how it was made.”
“Something to consider for the future,” Amelia said grimly as she watched the great blue mountain recede into the distance.
“I do not see why you play this game if you are doomed to endless failure,” Saria said, her grating tone suggesting that watching Lyra fail so badly caused her physical pain. “You are clearly accomplishing nothing and bringing only disaster onto yourself, yes.”
“That,” Lyra said airily as she moved her queen, “just proves you know nothing about my and Leit Motif’s relationship.”
Leit nodded as she ignored Lyra’s flailing assault and methodically destroyed her defenses. “Yeah, we—hey! Are you implying something? I’m not a disaster!”
I smiled and settled down by her side to watch. The landscape rolled by, hills glistening with fresh white snow and ponds and rivers turned into glassy black mirrors. As we approached the Everfree Forest, Marcus stuck his head off the side and gaped. “What the hell is that?”
“What?” Leit Motif asked, darting to the side. “I don’t see anything.”
“There!” he pointed. There below, the snow line ended abruptly just a few dozen meters from the forest’s entrance.
“I still don’t see anything odd.”
“Pegasi don’t mess around with the Everfree,” Pinion said brightly. “Usually, the cold weather will drop in eventually since it’s surrounding the woods, though there’s always gonna be parts of the Forest that are still way hot, since they’re getting tropical breezes too.”
“That’s just wrong,” Marcus muttered.
“I know, right?” Pinion flapped her wings emphatically and raised up little flurries. “What’s the sense in weather making itself?”
“That’s not—that is literally opposite to what I implied!”
“Oh, well, that’s daft. Imply oppositely next time if you don’t want to confuse folks.”
Per Twig’s direction, the airship set us down on the path leading from the Wand Keep deeper into the Forest, directly towards the Veil and the Way back to our side of earth. Naomi revealed the solution to her luggage dilemma by producing a horse hitch, pulling the whole great pile out herself. Hector, tossing his black mane enthusiastically, ran ahead and practically danced for joy away from the confines of the ship.
“Guess this is farewell for now,” Maille said, standing on the rail above. A warm breeze, still ripe with the scent of autumn, stirred her hair.
“We’ll return soon enough,” I promised, and paused to pay my respects to the Seer before stepping off with the others.
Saria came along as well, throwing her cloak over her shoulders before sauntering down the gangplank. “I will being going ahead. It is easier to get to my home this way, yes?” She turned to Amelia, looking her over thoughtfully. “It is remembered that you defeated our King in fair combat. It is still your wish to return the Sword to her?”
“Even if I wanted it, I can’t have it, and I have no right to dispense with it,” Amelia said sadly. “Also, I reject the idea that the fight was fair. Maybe the Sword itself agreed, but I had the Bridle and a powerful mare to ride with it.”
She smiled a sharp-toothed grin. “I know, but this one had to hear it from your own voice.”
Amelia grunted. “Your King Alisha is a good one. She fought against me even when it was clear I held overwhelming force, and still she nearly won because she was clever and fearless. So, yeah. Please. I want to erase that mistake.”
“Perhaps there is hope for the Wands after all.” She pinched her thumb and forefinger close together as if to emphasize precisely how little hope she held, but without further comment she hitched the box containing the true Sword on her back and marched into the wild at a quick, loping pace.
We found the Veil not too far from where the airship deposited us. What had once been a silvery river, the ancient expression of Theia’s divine will, was already little more than a trickle in its banks. In a few years, it would be little more than a splash. With a gaggle of ponies, a horse, and a goblin, we had no difficulty passing it.
Autumn leaves lay in thick red and gold carpets all across the length and breadth of the Everfree State Park. Birds great and small darted through the air and dove into the needly shelter of pines, while squirrels chased one another across the barren limbs. A gust of cold wind from the Equestrian side stirred the bed of leaves, and we walked through a grove enchanted by their graceful play. An hour or so later, Amelia paused in our passage to stare off at a distant glint, holding a hand up to her hair to keep the wind from blowing it into her face.
“The lantern on the way to Mag Mell,” I said and turned my head to look at her.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Just thinking about the last time I came here.”
“Me, too.” It had been dark, then, and I’d nearly gotten myself killed by running ahead like an idiot. It wasn’t the terrible parts of the journey I thought back on just then, though. “The stars were always so bright here. You could look up at the night sky and see everything. Do you remember that great big moon?”
“Yes, of course. It was the first sign that I’d really hit anything unnatural.” She smiled wanly. “I met the Morgwyn around here. I thought I was so clever.”
“You know, technically, you were so clever you nearly blew the world up,” Lyra reminded her cheerfully, “that’s something, right?”
“Lyra,” Leit Motif said warningly.
“What? It’s really more wisdom that she lacked, or maybe foresight, assuming the two can be clearly distinguished in this—Ow!”
While Lyra nursed the bruise Leit Motif gave her, I found myself getting lost in the woods again.
In a time that seemed forever ago, in an Age now passed, I’d walked into this forest and found myself becoming lost in spite of my explicit refusal to do so. Once again, images came to me, bubbling up like a spring to spill out into the world around me. Every knoll, brook, rock, and tree reminded me in some way of the adventures I’d had here. A spunky blonde and her timid dark-coated friend racing to and fro over stone and soil, laughing and playing.
The little girl skidded to a halt in front of me, looking back at the filly struggling to lower herself down a steep dirt slope. “Come on!” she said. “Just jump!”
“I can’t! I’m going to break my neck!” the filly wailed.
“Seriously? It’s, like, an eight foot drop, max!”
“That’s more than sufficient to cause massive bone damage and break my neck!”
“Oh, for the love of—hold on, I’m coming!” little Daphne said, and ran back, for she never walked when she could run. Just as she reached the slope, though, Leit Motif found enough courage to give a meager hop, and the two of them collided and went bouncing and rolling down the path. I met up with them and watched as they extracted one another from the mud. “Leit?” Daphne asked.
“Uh…” Leit Motif lowered her ears. “Yes?”
“Are any of your bones broken?”
“No?”
“Well, they’re gonna be!” Daphne leapt at her friend and they tussled and play-fought with girlish squeals. Spent, they collapsed in a tangle of limbs.
“It’s a good thing I love you, Leit,” Daphne murmured into her friend’s mane.
“Oh, yeah?” Leit Motif asked, her voice soft and uncertain.
“I might have to let you go if I didn’t.”
Just then, I heard five bars, rising and falling notes. At once, the familiar melody dragged me back, and I turned to find the real, flesh-and-blood, nearly adult Leit Motif standing there beside me. “Oh, hey,” she said, “you’re back with us again.” Her eyes drifted down to the muddy pond below, which had been so much dryer on that day. “You know, I get the strangest impression that I was pummeled here.”
“It was a mutual pummeling,” I assured her. “You gave as good as you got.” I nuzzled at her and she rubbed back just as warmly.
“Girls!” Naomi called from a nearby copse of pines. “Get over here!”
The cart had been left in the shelter of one of the trees, and the others had all gathered up by the time Leit and I joined them.
“We’re going to have to change here,” Naomi said and glanced down at a hoof shyly. She buffed it against her coat. “And I was just getting into it.”
“About time,” Marcus said, stretching. He even stretched his wings, as if giving his tail a swish wasn’t ironic enough.
“Can I pass?” Lyra said, twisting her face in disgust. “I’d like to pass. Oh, or maybe turn me into a sleek, elegant Arabian.”
“Hush,” Naomi said, waving her down. “You wanted to come see, that’s what you’re gonna get. Amy, if you’d be so kind?”
The tip of the Wand lit with an incandescent flare. It was with some amount of shock that I realized this was not so far from the place where I’d been shot the first time; if I strained my pony ears, I could hear the stream where I’d fallen, still merrily rushing along. I got out of the way of the coming blast of magic, slipping into my human form as readily as I might a pair of pants, and turned to watch.
The bright magic from the Wand struck each of my friends in turn. The force of it knocked them back, and I watched as they changed. Seeing it from the outside was rather as alarming as being present in it.
Marcus I didn’t witness; as the only stallion, he’d been banished to the log where I’d hidden to change in a modicrum of privacy and a reasonable expectation that he wouldn’t peek. I declined to spy on him magically.
The others all changed far more reluctantly. I watched as their backs bent and their limbs twisted outward. Hooves gave way to fingers, spreading one-by-one from the solid grip. Each of the young women writhed while their necks shortened and torsos shrank, only to mold and blossom in other ways. I laid out the clothes we’d chosen while they recovered.
Ironically enough, Lyra was the first one to stumble over to get dressed. Her teeth chattered and she shivered with goosebumps as she shrugged first into a pair of blue jeans and a white cotton shirt before throwing on a heavy brown coat, all courtesy of Naomi’s supplies and Rarity’s modifications. Her hair remained a shockingly white-green hue and fell around her shoulders, while her eyes stayed a lovely gold; I noted in passing that a golden lyre tattoo had worked onto her back—my own vase of stars was, like Leit Motif’s notes, seared into my thighs. The lyre she slung on her back—I suspect she failed to notice the hilarity of that act—giving her the look of some post-modern bard. “How do you stand not having a coat? This is murder. I am being murdered in the woods by cold.”
“Crybaby. At least you aren’t struggling with hands.” I pouted. “Actually, you are alarmingly good with those fingers.”
“I practice fine hoof dexterity for a living; cut me some slack.” She focused on her saddlebags, then squinted her eyes in deeper concentration when nothing happened. “Oh, come on! My magic’s off, too? What is this, the dark ages?”
“Oh, quit your moaning,” Leit Motif grumbled, shuffling over with her thick, long hair swaying over her form. “I cut myself to pieces climbing that mountain. The most you’ll have to worry about is hitting your head because you’re too tall.” She began to shrug into a dark skirt and black shirt, because no one ever said Leit was creative with anything other than music and souvenir arrangement.
“I don’t know, I think being stripped of my good looks and forced to parade around as some sort of demented monkey-rabbit is pretty moan-worthy.”
“Can I look, now?” Marcus called.
“No!” The three of us shouted back in unison. Naomi was the last up, and somehow her quiet disappointment was more poignant than any of the whining the other two put up. Still, she brightened after giving her hair a few tugs with her brush; that never failed to cheer her up.
Leit Motif had a go at it as well, possessing as much if not more hair than Naomi did and in dire need of taming. She stroked awkwardly at her inky hair as she glanced around. “Where’d Amy go?”
“Right here,” a piping girl’s voice answered, and we turned in time for my heart to leap into my throat.
There, as if nothing had changed, sat my eight year-old baby sister, with her hair in a long braid and her sneakers beating against the wood. Only three things had changed. One was the ineffable sense of her presence; that now-unmistakable sensation that I was present with another person who possessed the grace of our ancestors. The second was that she carried a curiously white pencil that she toyed with in one hand.
Her eyes were the most telling trait, though. They were not the eyes of a young girl, however energetic they were. They belied her youthful form as thoroughly as gray hair might have.
Naomi scooped her up and swung her around at once, holding her close. “Aww, lookit you! You’re bite-sized again!” She pretend-gnawed at my sister, who squealed appreciatively, all of which made me immediately and foolishly jealous.
“Oh, you can come out, now,” Lyra called to Marcus. She flipped her feet into a pair of sandals and gave them a dissatisfied look; of course, they’d been improvised off a pair of Maille’s, so naturally they were far too bulky even with modifications.
“Not that it will do me any good,” Marcus said, striding back down from behind the log. “I’m still a wanted fugitive. You all need to clear my damned name before I step foot in public.”
“Couldn’t we just leave you with a member of your family while we sort it out?” Leit Motif asked uncertainly. “I mean… I would kind of, you know… like to meet your folks. Maybe.”
Naomi shook her head. “Even a family member may feel compelled to report to the police if he showed up. Daphne mentioned that his family had mostly stood by him, but all it takes is one panicked call to make life very difficult. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it.”
“I owe him that much,” Amy said, dusting herself off.
“As for me,” Naomi said, leading Hector back over to the cart and hitching him in her place. “I really need to get back to the ranch.”
“We could accompany you,” I offered, going to help her with the straps. I gave Hector a pat on the nose and he snuffled at me curiously, perhaps wondering why I smelled like that tiny horse he’d met.
“Nah, it’s fine. That’s almost the opposite direction you need to go, and my family will definitely call the cops and the media and whoever else.”
“Perpendicular, actually, but I get you.” I slid my arms around Naomi and buried my face in her coppery hair. “You… I just want to say, you’re the most incredible person ever.”
“I know.” She rubbed my back and gave me a sisterly peck on the cheek.
“What, no hug and kiss for me?” Marcus complained with his hands in his pockets.
I shared a glance with Naomi and we advanced on him. Before he could flee from the terrible glint in our eyes we seized and tackled him. I planted a kiss on his cheek. “That’s for putting yourself on the line to save me and my sister, you big dumb hero.”
“Okay, okay! Enough already,” he protested, but his arms squeezed the pair of us closely and there was a definite catch in his voice.
Leit Motif and Lyra embraced Naomi then, seeing her off. Then Leit Motif shared a tender hug with Marcus, and Lyra, being who she is, seized him in a bear hug and planted a full kiss right on his mouth. While he recovered from the resulting stun, she grinned. “So, that help rethink your stance on horses at all?”
“Lyra! I will kill you!” Leit Motif fumed and reached for her.
Once again, laughter seized me. I moved forward with a similarly mirthful Naomi to separate the two and, eventually, finally, we found ourselves going our separate ways. Naomi’s horse-drawn cart rumbled one way, Marcus sat on a log and contemplated the strange turns his life had taken him, while Leit Motif, Lyra, Amy, and I all started back the way we’d come.
In broad daylight, the trek back was far easier, and I led them over hiking trails back to the gazebo by the hill and stream. I saw an eight year-old, truly young Amelia running across the dirt tracks, hopping down the steps with both feet at a time, and bugging her big sister. The apathetic, nearly soulless look on my old self took me aback, and I reminded myself that I had changed since then, and for the better in many ways. There were people here today, joggers and parents and couples enjoying the last remaining weeks before the snows fell. Unlike ponies, we didn’t keep rigorously to ancient calendars, and one never knew when the weather would turn.
Lyra and Leit Motif watched the passersby with a sort of hungry curiosity about them. I reminded myself that this world, which was so familiar to me, would be utterly alien to the both of them. Lyra boldly walked up to a young man and snagged his smartphone to have a look, before I dragged her back and apologized profusely.
Amy remained silent throughout the trip. Her eyes, too, flicked from one part of the park to the other, wherever she and I had fought that day. We took the route that went all the way around the edge of the park, pushing through tough terrain at times, until we stood in sight of the colonials.
It was at the edge of the woods that she stopped.
“This is as far as I go,” she announced. “I’m not going back.”
“What?” Leit Motif asked, but Lyra, of all people, shushed her and took her aside.
I turned back to face her, standing on the other side of the line that divided the Everfree State Park from the city lines. My heart thundered in my chest. “Amelia…”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know, Daphne,” she said with low bitterness. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly, “I do.”
“What is it?” Leit Motif asked, unable to help herself. “What’re you two talking about?”
The wind picked up again as I turned to look at my closest friend. It was the awful hard knot of truth which had followed me since yesterday when I first truly contemplated returning. “What my sister means to say is that we can’t go home.” Behind me, cars turned up the road. Just beyond lay a short road and the homes of the people who lived there, all cheerily unaware of the strangeness which lay beyond their porches. It was just a few steps away, and yet it was worlds apart.
“I don’t… that doesn’t make any sense,” Leit Motif said. “Why’d you come all this way? We’re right next to your home, it’s right over… somewhere!” She waved a hand in the general direction of the buildings.
“Daphne hoped it’d get easier the closer we got, because she’s a sap.” Amy put a hand against her head. “I can’t, Daphne. I can’t face this. Why did you do this when you know where it’s going? I don’t have a home anymore. Look at me. I’m a gods-damned lie. I’m three thousand and eight years-old. I’m the bloody King of Wands. I… after everything I’ve done… I’ve changed too much to belong there. You’ve changed too much.”
She looked up at me, her face now streaming tears. “What am I supposed to do, run back in there and hug Mom and Dad and sit down for a bowl of ice cream and cartoon reruns like nothing ever happened? Do you think I can just go to school; or maybe I should go to college. Oh, right, except if I did that it would be to teach because I already know all the subjects now! I guess Mom and Dad won’t have to fret over teaching me the birds and the bees, at least. That’ll console them with the fact that their youngest daughter is now a fully-grown woman—or horse, if her mood strikes her the wrong way and she’s too depressed to stand being human.” She crossed her arms. “Oh, and let’s not forget that I’m not really a human anymore, am I? I can’t do that, Daphne. I can’t watch my parents die inside while I shrivel up inside knowing what a lie I am.”
“And I am what I am,” I said. “I’m… a lot of things. Amelia, it’s not like that, it’s not… I’m not trying to push a lie. I don’t think we can just walk back in there and pretend nothing happened. There’s no version of this that ends that perfectly. We’re not the same people who left that house.” I exhaled and steadied myself. “In a very short while, I’m going to need to leave. There’s whole worlds out there, and I need to be in them. There’s no home for me here, because it’s just a pit stop. You have to go be King of the Wand Goblins, and you won’t shirk your responsibility any more than I will mine.”
“So what are we doing here, Daph?” she asked brokenly. “Why are you doing this?”
The space between us disappeared as I stepped forward, put my hands on her shoulders, and pulled her close. “Because our story isn’t finished until we do.” I looked up to Leit Motif and met her gaze. “All of us. We have lives ahead of us. We’ve all grown up in ways we… that we couldn’t imagine,” I croaked as I ran a hand over my sister’s hair, “and seen incredible things, and we’ve got new stories to live, but this story isn’t over and there’s no closure for any of us until we go back into that house and finish it.”
The old house, the house of my childhood, the house of my past, glittered painfully like some diamond just out of reach. “We need to tell them the truth. If we don’t, they’re forever denied validation. They’ll never understand that I wasn’t actually insane, they’ll never know what happened to us, and we’ll never be able to get over the fact that we… that our lives were truly destroyed. For the rest of our unnatural lives, we’ll be looking back on this house and wondering what we were missing.” I sighed and held Amy tighter, feeling her arms go about me as well. “We’ll stay for a while. We’ll remember that we loved and are loved. And then, when we feel we can’t stay any longer and that our new stories are tugging on us too tightly…
“We need to say goodbye.”
The wind rustling the leaves was the only sound that disturbed us, there at the edge of the universe. We stood at the terminus of our journey only to find the real one stretched on forever and on. What had began in an outing was ending in permanent absence.
“I want to be held again,” Amy whispered brokenly. “Before it’s too late.”
“Me, too,” I said. I looked up to Leit Motif.
She swallowed and ran a hand through her hair. “I’d be lying if I said I haven’t always dreamed about doing this. It seems like I keep waking up before the dream is done, and then you’re not by my side anymore. I mean… obviously they aren’t my family, but… I’m with you to the end, Daphne. I meant it. I want to finish this bad, I want it to be over so I can get on with my new life. I’m good with going, what about you?”
I nodded and closed my eyes. All around me, the world and everyone on it turned. I felt the pulse in my veins and the waters of creation pouring down through me from above to fill the gap torn by hate. There was life and light and color returning to the worlds and I would be there to guide them.
I am Aurora. I am Aquarius. This is my Age.
Before I knew who I was, though, I was a girl from a small town in Massachusetts who liked birds and rocks and a little horse. All of that uncertainty and trepidation and doubt would linger until I’d closed the book of my old life.
Lyra had taken a seat on an old wooden fence by the time I opened my eyes. She rested her lyre on her lap and smiled. “I see you’ve made up your mind, then. Go on, then. Call me when you’re ready for company. And, hey?”
“Yeah?”
“The thing you’re talking about is called love.” She began to tune the lyre, testing each string by ear and working her fingers deftly. “It comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes, different levels of feeling it, but no matter how old you get or far you roam, you’ll carry their voices in you. Where your folks are may not feel like home right now, but when you think back on it far from now, wandering the worlds and facing the challenges of a strange new era, you’ll remember that warmth and the love you gave one another there.” She played a scale and worked it into the start of a new song. “If that isn’t home, then I don’t know what is.”
Leit Motif reached forward and took my hand in hers. “That sounds all right to me.”
My fingers curled around hers and I looked into her eyes again, green-to-green, soul-to-soul, sister-to-sister.
Amelia took my other hand in her deceptively small one. “Sis?”
I glanced down at her.
“Even if it is just for a short while… take me home, please.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Let’s all go home.”
Together, with Lyra’s music behind us, we made our way to the back porch. The bitter fact that we would walk out that door sometime in the next few days, weeks or months again and never return remained in the back of our minds. There was a new Age that beckoned us, the Age of Magic that had been so long promised, and we could not linger long.
Regardless of the future, regardless of what may one day come to pass, we were going home, hand-in-hand.
The door opened, and we stepped inside to write the end of our story.
There were no shackles in Morgan’s prison, no chains to hold her fast. In her chambers, in her tower, none were needed. Luxuries filled her space with a bed fit for the King’s sister and censers hung from the ceiling ready to spill the most exotic and fragrant of incense. There were even some few creature comforts from Midgard, some she recognized or even found herself making use of from time to time. If there was anything the humans learned to do and do well, it was creating distractions. Existence in a world without magic arguably constituted a nightmare, yet somehow they’d survived.
Morgan wasn’t so sure she wanted to. Every breath she took felt like a sin against her true mother, the nameless being that spun her out of smoke and shadows and infused with a tiny fragment of self, connected to all the others of her brood like an intricate spider web glistening with drops of dew. The silence in the wake of that feeling deafened her.
Below, the citizens of Mag Mell scurried about their business. Though distant, Morgan found she could see quite well in the dark, as well as she ever could, making out the distant new freeway with its cars and trucks. With her wings, she could soar down to the world below and mingle to her heart’s content, but she could never hurt anyone, not ever again. Tartarus would have been wasted on one whose wings were clipped as skillfully as hers. The destiny even bound her from ending her own hated misery. A prison of flesh and spirit.
“Morgwyn,” she spoke in a quiet harsh tone. “I was the Morgwyn. I am…”
I did horrible things. The voice came unbidden. I deserve to be alone, I deserve all of this. Morgan whimpered and rubbed at her barrel with a hoof. Too much time alone was almost always worse than time spent mingling. Distraction, distraction is the key. Humans knew that much. She turned to the mirror, her likeness shifting like smoke along its surface until a tall young woman stared back at her with sharp blue-green eyes and long dark hair spilling down her shoulders and back. Raven hair aside, she could be confused for the King’s twin, which in technicality she supposed she must be. Morgan’s throat made a quiet little choking sound before she could turn away. At least her wardrobe allowed for some self-expression, some separation from the overgrown child who cursed her.
And justly so. I owe her my sympathies, I have to make it up to…
Morgan shook her head and growled, adjusting a long sweeping dress of deepest purple before tossing a patterned scarf around herself. The door to her chambers slammed behind her as she made her way out.
* * *
The halls of the castle were busier than usual, and it took Morgan a moment of reflection before she could remember the cause. A few dozen normal Equestrians roaming through the halls quickly shed light on the mystery – Ah yes, Luna and Celestia. Visiting on some shallow diplomatic business, supposedly, but the reality was clear to Morgan and her twin both: they had every reason to check in on her and her… sister, regularly.
To her benefit, much of her powers from her time before remained unquenched. This was true of the ones incapable of doing harm, at least; she had little use for those that could in her present state. Early on, Morgan found to her relief that when she didn’t want to be seen, she wasn’t. She was less relieved to find that the King could draw her forth just by calling her name.
A familiar sense of nausea gripped her, pulling her forward. Morgan made a token show of resistance; it wouldn’t do to come too willingly. Her little shows of defiance were important, to her at least. Amelia couldn’t force her to come, not if she didn’t want to.
Morgan… Morgan, I need you…
The name that defined her, blurring her memories and sense of self. She could remember… growing up, playing with her sisters, an older sister weaving a crown of flowers which always got stuck in her dark mane.
When she opened her eyes, she stood in a dimly lit bedchamber. Amelia sat in a massive chair of petrified wood, a twisted mass of polished opalized oak gifted from the Jotnar of Niefelheim. It wasn’t as imposing as her proper throne, but it served in her more personal quarters. As usual, she was her two-legged self with long golden hair, green feline eyes, and a cat-like manner to her otherwise adult self. One would never believe her to be only fifteen years of age. Well, fifteen summers from her point of birth. To look at her one would think her in her late twenties at least.
Morgan glanced down at herself, noting that she was once more “wearing hooves” as some of the younger goblins were calling it. Her tail twitched and her nostrils flared.
Luna and Celestia stood across the room by the large doors of polished oak. She searched their eyes, always expecting a change of heart, that one day they’d come back and bind them for transit to Tartarus.
Instead, when she looked to Luna she saw mild curiosity tinged with apprehension. Her sister was truly a mystery, because there was no hostility or fear at all. Indeed, Celestia’s expression was downcast, her eyes filled with worry as though she were the one who had wronged them.
“There she is, and here we are,” Amelia said, raising a rose-rimmed goblet to her lips. “If you’re satisfied that we’re all right, we can skip dinner and you can go back home.”
“If it’s all the same, we’d wish to stay for some time.” Luna frowned, her eyes narrowed. Her ear twitched at Amelia’s dismissive tone.
“The weekend,” Celestia cut in quickly. “Just for the weekend. We beg your hospitality.”
Amelia’s cheeks darkened. “I’m not interested in playing princess with you, Celestia.” Her eyes had a curious glow to them, like little embers dancing inside. “If you want to stay, one sovereign to another, then I suppose there’s little I can do about that. Queen Stylus will see to your accommodations, but they’ll be the same as last time.”
Luna seemed satisfied for her part and began to make for the door. Celestia followed, then lingered. If Amelia’s comment cut her, she gave little sign, offering a smooth face.
“Your mother and father are in Equestria, now. They signed their papers and moved into their new home in Hollow Shades earlier this week.” Her stoic disposition was interrupted by a nervous, rhythmic twitch of her ear. It was like watching ripples form in a pond.
“Good for them? I’m sure they’ll both be much happier there.” She finished whatever was left in her goblet it had a sweet smell like strawberries or crushed dates. “Why are you telling me?”
Celestia paused before adding, “Your sister worries for you. She says you haven’t visited in—”
“If she’s worried about me she can come herself, instead of sending her favorite cousin.” Amelia looked away, setting the goblet down on a table. The longer she lingered in Celestia’s company, the more uncomfortable she grew. The King of Wands began to twiddle her thumbs anxiously, and her left foot began to dance skittishly about the floor before she consciously willed it to stop.
Celestia watched on for a bit longer, and for a moment, Morgan thought she saw the hint of a tear. But why would she be crying? She honestly didn’t know that spectrum of emotion terribly well.
“Your…” She huffed, dissatisfied with herself. “Amelia, I… I’m sorry,” she murmured at last, leaving the two sisters behind in their large accommodations. The door closed with a hollowed out thump. Amelia waved her hand and a lock clicked into place.
The young woman shivered, as pale as if she’d seen a ghost.
Morgan flicked her tail and felt some curiosity of her own take root.
“Is everything okay?” she asked after an extended pause, though on reflection the answer seemed obvious. Seeing Amelia like this hurt her somehow in a way she didn’t quite understand, and she didn’t understand how to fix it. It felt proper to ask anyway.
“I’m fine,” Amelia whispered. She looked angry, but she didn’t order Morgan out. She did that very infrequently.
Morgan stood at the center of the room, her head tilted to the side. She weighed her words and thoughts carefully, wondering where to start. “Your parents would probably be equines now,” she whispered, her deep voice filling the room. Once it had been a sibilant whisper, felt more than heard, but now it had the timber of a full-throated mare. “Physically, I mean. Your line always—”
“Ponies, you mean.” Amelia shifted, crossing her legs. “I guess they would be.”
“Ponies,” Morgan repeated. “If you like. We called them equines before…” She paused and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
So the subject makes her uncomfortable, but why? Morgan’s brow furrowed. Daphne and her line had been of that nature since the first whether they realized it consciously or not; if anything this was a homecoming, but one Amelia hadn’t truly taken part in. She remembered vividly the raw joy Amelia had experienced at putting on hooves for the first time as a child, but so rarely since her coronation.
“You… wear your human form a bit compulsively, do you not?” Morgan said, trying her best to sound considerate, and doing a poor job of it.
“So what if I do? This is as much me as is… that.” Amelia squirmed even more than before.
Morgan crossed the room followed by the soft sound of her hooves tapping against hardwood and muffled carpet. She hesitated, then nosed at the girl’s side. Amelia shivered, her long mane growing out and falling around her even as she slid forward to land on four hooves. Her eyes squeezed shut, and wetness gleamed at the corner of the lids. In size and grace, she was equal to Celestia, but in color and mannerism, she was still herself, still very much Amelia. Morgan pressed in against her side, her tail shifting with anxious movements.
“What’s wrong?” Morgan asked, and her tone was more urgent than she had intended, almost pleading.
“You almost sound like you care,” Amelia said, burying her face in her twin’s mane.
A silence lingered for some time before Amelia broke it again.
“I can feel it sometimes, you know? Brushing my mind?”
“The Bridle,” Morgan snorted. “It… was good of you to forget it. It’s a tool of absolute order and no good would have come from it. I just wish you could forget everything else, surrounding it.” Recognizing the apparent hypocrisy of such a statement given her own role in pushing Amelia to its possession, she sighed, then added, “I just wanted to go home so badly. The home I remembered.”
Chaos.
Amelia took a deep breath and then shook herself. Soft cream-colored hair faded away, and her mane became much shorter as she rose to stand on two legs.
“I’ll be fine, I’ve got it.” She wiped at her eyes. “I don’t need help.”
Morgan watched her leave the bedroom, wishing suddenly and profoundly she knew the proper way to respond to such an obvious fiction, and experienced another wave of nausea. This time, it wasn’t followed by the telltale tug of a summoning. She felt something else. She’d heard some of the human goblins refer to it as “deja vu.”
Shifting her wings, the King’s dark twin made her way out after her sister, stalking the halls silently, and unseen.
* * *
“Sister,” Luna began, her mind wandering back to Morgan and her well-concealed turmoil. “I’m not sure I understand…” As they were in public – in theory – Luna composed herself with the air of a regal figure, but inside she felt tired and confused.
Celestia craned her neck, glancing back to her sister. “What are you having trouble understanding?” Her eyes were still a bit misty.
“If you care for her so much, if you feel she should come back to Equestria, why don’t we invite her back to the castle? Why aren’t we taking her home?” She glanced around the large halls of the castle, where goblins skittered about preparing the place as though tonight’s dinner would be the introduction to some festival. Many of them were singing lewd songs, or laughing about subjects that made her feel uncomfortable. There was even a song about her, once; she’d heard snippets of it and been filled with pride. When Naomi explained that she was essentially the devil, in context, she had felt rather more uncomfortable about it.
“This is no place for a filly,” Luna pressed.
“King Amelia isn’t a child. Not anymore, at least. And even if we did ask, her contrition has left her deferential, not obedient.” She considered her sister’s words. “That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, merely…” She shook her head. “Such an invitation shouldn’t – no, cannot come from me.”
Luna’s eyes brightened. “Are you asking me to speak with the little King privately?” She asked with a conspiratorial grin.
“I’m asking you to do what you feel in your heart is right,” Celestia said, pushing aside the double doors leading into their mutual guest room. “Stars, I shouldn’t even be here.”
The suspicion that her sister wasn’t giving her the full story only deepened, but Luna kept quiet, testing her mattress with a hoof. Delightfully springy and covered in fresh, silken sheets of midnight blue, despite Amelia’s cold welcome. Queen Stylus would never let any guest go untended, particularly not heads of state, demigods, nor in that rare occasion exemplified by their visit, both.
“I’ll see what can be done, then. Fear thee not.”
* * *
The reception feast was held in one of the grander halls of the Old Wand Castle, so-called for its use in antiquity before Nessus’ coming had forced the capital to move to Equestria. High above from vaulted ceilings, chandeliers glowed with countless candles that filled the room with golden light and cast soft-edged shadows across tapestries that shifted in subtle animation. Amelia’s subjects formed a neat little trapeze act in order to light each and every one. The eccentricity never failed to move Princess Luna’s heart as she glanced up, her eyes filled with wonderment. After the performance was finished the performers descended on narrow ladders. Winged goblins and ponies were on hoof to relight any that might be extinguished.
Amelia sat at the head of the table, with Morgan at her left hand and Marble Stone beside her. Celestia and her sister sat at the King’s right as the guests of honor. Under ordinary circumstances, Luna and Celestia would be pressured into amiable conversation, but tonight was different. Any attempt Luna made at conversation was politely responded to, but it was clear neither Amelia nor Morgan had any interest in fostering the exchange. The blue tablecloth between them might as well have been a storm-wracked sea for all the distance between them, measured in tension rather than miles.
Celestia took to the food with far less enthusiasm than Luna. Equestria was growing so rapidly, and after her extended visit beyond the barrier that divided Midgard, she’d adapted to more modern cuisine in a hurry. Luna appreciated the goblins and their thirst for tradition. Helping herself to glazed roast duck and all manner of exotic dishes including jellied eels, apples swimming in sugary glaze, and savory lentil stew, she felt as though the clock had been wound back a thousand years, back to a time when ponies still lived in fortified cities and strongholds.
Amelia didn’t seem enthusiastic about the food either.
“I was never big on Medieval Times.” She replied to Luna after an idle remark about the quality of the food. “Never seem to get around to changing it, though.
“I don’t understand,” Luna frowned. “Wasn’t that age hundreds of years prior in the land where you grew up?”
Amelia snorted. “It’s a restaurant, ’couz.”
Luna stared at her a moment longer, then leaned closer to her sister. “What is a ‘’couz’?”
Celestia stared at her plate quietly, barely touching anything, and replied with a whisper. “She means cousin, Sister.”
The King’s subjects were always a bit crestfallen when she ended things after the fourth course. If they’d had their way, Luna considered, it would be closer to sixty, maybe more. Certainly the goblins in the kitchens seem to love these events, and took them as an opportunity to express themselves. It seemed almost a crime to leave a sugar statuette Luna untouched, morbid as the thought of devouring a confectionary version of herself was, and she settled for breaking off the mare’s tail of spun blue sugar off and letting it dissolve on her tongue. She and her sister weren’t the only guests, however, and a detachment of Sword goblins feasted further down the table. After the final course had been delivered, a woman with bronze skin and fire in her eyes rose from the table and gestured to one of the servants, calling over a pair of goblins carrying a large chest fashioned from reeds woven together.
Amelia stared at the offering skeptically.
“King Amelia of the Wand,” a sharp-eyed woman with dark skin and frosted hair said through a thick accent, loud enough for those gathered to hear. “We have not journeyed all the way from Midgard to enjoy your hospitality alone. I come bearing a gift from my own King Alisha. We pray you take it with her blessing, and apologize that she was not able to come in person.”
“Why am I getting presents now?” Amelia propped her chin up with a hand. “I’m hardly on speaking terms with your King. As I seem to recall, our last meeting was a little contentious.”
The captain smiled, as though she’d expected suspicion. “The work you do with the Hippocrene has lifted a significant burden from my Liege’s shoulders, and the land she seeks to reclaim. Though your aid may have been unintentional, we ask you receive this with our thanks.”
Amelia stared at the chest a moment longer before gesturing to have it opened.
Luna finished chewing a last mouthful of food and swallowed, her eyes sparkling.
“Now that is a royal gift,” she whispered to her sister, tail swishing.
Cradled on a soft velvet cushion of emerald green lies an elegantly fashioned peytral of pure gold and set with a stone of moss agate, the hue of which matched Amelia’s eyes perfectly.
Amelia let out a sharp startled cry and tumbled out of her chair, her form changing even as she struggled to right herself, hooves striking the stone and shoving her heavy chair over with her widening sides. Luna’s breath caught in her throat at the panicked look in her cousin’s eyes. She looked like a caged animal. Sparks leapt along the length of Amelia’s horn, before snapping with a tiny contained explosion; when the light faded, she was gone.
The Sword captain blinked, then set her jaw. “If your King didn’t appreciate the gift, she could simply have refused,” she said, glaring at Morgan. With Amelia gone her soul’s twin had become the focus of all attention. Luna’s heart went out to her as the mare’s entire body tensed and withdrew within herself.
“I’m… I’m sure it wasn’t that,” Morgan murmured like a chastened child. “My… the King has been under a lot of stress lately.” She shifted her wings. “I would love to accept this gift on her behalf and deliver it to her quarters.”
Morgan seized the parcel by a long leather strap clenched between her teeth, and nearly galloped out of the hall, sweat beading on her brow. While the Sword goblins continued eating in grim silence, the rest of the Wand court seemed to take their King’s faux pas in stride. As far as they were concerned, it seemed this was a common occurrence.
Celestia nosed at Luna’s side, she didn’t need to speak for her little sister to get the message.
“I’ll check in on them, then,” Luna said, her voice catching slightly as she turned from the table. She dropped it to a low murmur for her sister’s ears. “Though I can’t say I understand your concern. Is it not right that they should suffer for the same deeds that our people are still recovering from?”
Celestia’s eyes had a strange deep orange cast to them in the lighting, and for a moment Luna thought she was looking at someone else.
“You weren’t there, Luna. You don’t understand, and I hope you won’t have to.” Celestia left the table, likely to seek the solitude of their rooms, Luna concluded.
Luna flared her nostrils and huffed.
“The things I do for family,” she muttered, wandering off down the halls in the direction of Morgan’s departure.
In the cacophony following Amelia’s incident, she even had hopes of evading attention on her way out, but was stopped by a brash little goblin in the seeming of a pony, her coat and mane elegant works of art, as though artfully crafted and fired in the finest of kilns yet still as supple as any. Her hooves had the heavy weight of stone absent no measure of elegance. The most telling identifier would have to be the ornate wand slung along her side in a leather harness.
“Princess,” Marble Stone greeted the taller mare. Her appearance was a poor match for her rough voice. If she wasn’t speaking in a fast-paced Wand accent, she drawled in a country manner that Luna had grown familiar with since her return home.
“Knight,” Luna said, continuing their rather impersonal address. “You wish to speak with me? I’m on errand per my sister.”
Her smile faltered at that, but she pressed on. “I’d speak to you someplace more private if ya would?”
Luna hesitated, then nodded her consent. “I can spare some time for a citizen of Equestria.”
Marble Stone faltered mid-step, and glanced behind her. “I belong to the Wand.”
“You will always have a place, a home,” Luna asserted, following the goblin mare into a side room.
The chamber was incredibly crowded with pots, vases, and other works of sculpted clay. A wheel sat at the center, and a kiln nestled outside on a balcony with a low arch. There was a bed, but the place felt more like a workshop than a place of residence.
“I note that you’ve taken to your special talent,” Luna pointed out with a glance around the room.
“I made my choice.” Marble frowned up at the princess of the night. “I ain’t one of your foals to spirit away; we tidy?”
“We are tidy.” Luna tilted her ears back. “So what did you wish to speak to me about?”
“We’re headin’ out for the Hippocrene again tomorrow,” Marble said. “Only I don’t feel comfortable leavin’ things as they are. The King is weirder than usual. Been gettin’ weirder over the past couple years, and people are startin’ to notice it. I’m sure you have.”
“As I understand it, managing her fits was something she hired you for.”
Marble Stone frowned. “Aye, only I won’t be here, you ken?”
“What are you asking me to do?” Luna pressed.
Marble Stone moved over to her pottery wheel, beside which sat a large secured crate, likely filled with bits of unshaped clay.
“You’re a dreamweaver, so they say. You’ve got that rare gift certain gobs got.”
“I am princess of the night,” Luna said with a twitch of her tail, “if that’s what you mean.”
“Yeah, sure, that.” Marble Stone waved a hoof. “I want ya to steal into the King’s dreams, find whatever’s off, and fix her.”
“Fix her?” Luna frowned, tilting her head. “In what sense? I can’t make Amelia anyone she isn’t.”
“You can polish her, can’t ya? It worked for me. Staff and Sword, I’d expected that sister of hers to make her whole, but here I am, still waiting.”
Luna considered the large goblin mare a few moment before continuing. “As it happens, my sister already made such a request of me. I can’t promise you that King Amelia will become the King you desire, but I can promise that I am keeping my eye on her.”
“Suits me, all I want is the King she can be; wanna swear on it?”
Luna lingered in the doorway. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” she said. “Where I come from, we trust in our friends and loved ones.”
She left a red-faced Marble Stone, closing the door behind her.
* * *
Morgan…
Morgan’s hooves carried her away from the dining hall in a staccato thunder that warned servants and guests alike to duck aside in her charge. Though surpassingly rude, she found she could bear the gaze of the royal sisters no longer. Her cheeks burned with a shame she barely understood, and some terror clenched her heart that she could not put a name to.
Morgan… come, please…
There were no shackles upon her, and yet the ones within were more insidious than any she’d known.
A passage of scarlet-draped windows spaced by columns of golden wood, Amelia’s colors, wound ahead in a gentle curve to her suite. Maple doors stood ajar, freeing the sound of muffled sobs. Past her sister’s audience chamber with its petrified throne, Morgan lingered paralyzed before the blue steel-bound door to the bedroom. Her golden twin’s cries vibrated the wood under her hoof as she slid it against the surface of the door. With a sigh and an effort of will, she pushed herself back onto two feet and raised her hand to knock.
“Come in,” Amelia moaned through the door, as Morgan rather suspected she might. They always knew when the other was near.
Pushing it open, she found herself in a red-and-gold silk-draped enclosure, with the crescent moon a silver sliver through the open balcony. A pale equine shadow lurked among the gauzy hangings, far from the pillow-strewn bed and the far more practical wing of her bedroom, where she kept her computer and her reference books.
Leaving the offering by the door, Morgan walked in, her velvet dress rustling about her heels, and looked down at the shadow. Here lay the creature she’d made, the little girl she’d tortured until she could be a child no longer. Yet, no matter how often she reminded Amelia of that fact, she kept drawing her back to her side. What purpose could she have to maintain her here? What more could she take from her?
Doesn’t it pain her to have me near?
She turned and placed her hands on the balcony’s marble railing to gaze out at the moon with an anxious fist clenching her heart. The fingers of her left hand brushed at the smooth stone restlessly, and she was heedless of her long hair tossing about in the breeze from outside. Mag Mell’s raucous chorus of light and sound was far removed from the Wand Palace, and only the sounds of the palace reach her ear, however dimly. The bright slice of the moon’s sharp point drew her gaze, admiring the subtle precision of the curve; would that it could pierce her now and send her away from this place.
Arms slid around Morgan’s waist from behind, and she looked down to find herself smaller, a girl-child instead of a grown woman. Amelia’s face pressed against her shoulder, and their tails, one gold and one black, twined about each other as the girls took on the aspect of the felines they’d become. As if to spite all of her unspoken desires, she leaned back against her and they cradled one another in the dark of a nearly moonless night.
“What happened down there?” Morgan asked after some time had passed. “I’ve never seen you like that. You’ve seen Celestia before, and this is hardly the first diplomatic gift you’ve received.” Her ears twitched and she turned her head back to look at her silent partner. “What’s changed?”
Why do you seek comfort in me?
Amelia shook her head and pressed against Morgan more tightly still.
Turning, Morgan squirmed in her grasp until she could slide her arms around her as well. “I don’t get you at all. You certainly never tell me, so I don’t know how I could.” She sighed. “I don’t understand why I’m here still.”
“I want you here.”
“So I’ve seen, but as long as I’ve been here, you’ve never gloated, even though you and your sister beat me soundly. You never try to lecture me, even though it’s your responsibility to see me rehabilitated. You don’t have me do hardly anything except stand around.”
“I need you.” Amelia squeezed her eyes shut. “Morgan…”
“Damn it,” Morgan snapped, but couldn’t muster much force into it, not with Amelia’s presence weakening her, drilling into her resolve. “You know who I am. You know what I am.” Fighting against the wave of contentment, she pushed Amelia back, gently but firmly. “I’m not your sister. I’m the Morgwyn!” Her voice rose to a shout before lapsing into a sibilant whisper that spoke of shadows and whispers.
Amelia opened her eyes and met Morgan’s, algae green gazing into blue-green. “You’re all I have left.”
Morgan shuddered and pulled away, walking back over to the gift. She wanted nothing better than to melt into the shadows and become formless mist, a mote of blue fire drifting between the worlds, but no matter how she strained and begged the universe to release her, her body of meat and bone would not come undone. All trying managed to do was give her a cramp.
“I don’t understand. I don’t.” She let go of a breath held tight in her chest and brushed back her long hair from her face, staring down at the package quietly. “Why are you so afraid of this thing, anyway? It’s just a hunk of metal. If the Sword King wanted a rematch, she’d come herself; she’s no coward.”
“I know,” Amelia called back, her voice calm, but with a tremulous edge that skittered like water on a hot plate. “Honestly, I’d be surprised if she knew how much it hurt.”
“And why is that?” Morgan asked, turning her head back to look at the waif curled up by the window.
A breeze stirred the becalmed hangings, and Amelia’s ears flattened against her skull. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Temper flared, itself something new and strange to Morgan, whose passions had run cold and diffuse before she had alien blood to set alight. “First, you say you need me, then you won’t tell me what’s troubling you! What am I to you?”
Amelia narrowed her eyes back at her, arms tightening on her seat. “Figure it out!” she bit back. “I’ve done everything but wave a flag! Don’t you get snippy with me, when all you do is mope around and wish you were dead!”
“I do wish I were dead! Every single day of this life you foisted on me, I want to be free! I’d pray for death, but there’s no one to hear me! We’re in a cold, bleak universe and no one cares!”
Regret flashed across Amy’s face and she softened. “Morgan, I know. I’m sorry–”
“Don’t! Just – don’t!”
With her tail lashing and her ears pinned back, Morgan stalked out of the King’s suite and stormed down the tower. A pair of goat-faced goblin janitors pressed against a wall, eyes shut, terrified that the bad old days of King Nessus were back – or worse, the Morgwyn come to eviscerate them and take their hearts – and stayed that way until she had gone. It stuck in her throat, the looks on their faces. It only incensed her further.
“They’re supposed to fear me!” she hissed aloud as she made her way across the wide hall connecting Amelia’s tower to her own, heedless of who might hear her. “I spent every moment making such a nightmare of myself that Order-born would weep to hear my name!”
Yet, no matter how she protested, she couldn’t help but cringe inside at the thought of opening them up with her radiant claws of fire, to see their guts and sear their innards, to look into their very soul before it flies free to Helheim.
She stopped, her heart pounding. For five years now, she had only barely flirted with such thoughts, not daring to crack open that door and see what awaits her in the halls of her titanic memory. The scent of ash and blood filled her nostrils, and she leaned against a sandstone pillar for support as the world dropped out beneath her to a burning city, where slaughter the likes of which few mortals have ever paid witness to spill out before her. The screams of the dying and damned filled her ears, and her heart thundered like a mad drum in her ears.
Dinner lurched in her gut and she stumbled on through rolling waves of nausea. The faces of the goblins on her way back to her tower were all the same – masks of civility hiding fear, none daring to speak aloud to the King’s dark shadow what their eyes belied. She made it to a higher balcony before she had to lurch to a railing and gag over the side, again and again as her traitorous body seized her. Each rolling lurch paralyzed her until the smell of burning corpses again came to her nose and forced her to heave the remains of the evening’s meal onto a rooftop below, startling a flight of seabirds blown in from the Mother Ocean.
Falling back, she slumped against the pocked stone of the railing and rubbed her sore limbs. A tug at her side revealed a small goblin filly, her blue eyes afraid at just the sight of her, yet still she approached with a handkerchief held in her mouth solicitously. Morgan nodded her head in silent thanks and dabbed at her eyes and nose and mouth. The filly slid a cup of water to her with a feathered wing, and Morgan swished it in her mouth and spat it out over the side.
Without a word exchanged between them, the filly collected the cup, stuffed the handkerchief into it, and slipped away into the shadows, but not before offering Morgan a small smile in sympathy.
It only made things worse.
With a heavy sigh, Morgan slammed the locks shut on her door and tottered forward to throw herself upon her bed, sheltered between silken curtains adorned with stars and moons in silver thread. Each of these she pulled closed until she curled up among her pillows in a warm, dark cavern pierced by the starry night.
“The Morgwyn never felt safe or warm anywhere,” she whispered to herself with her arms around a pillow. “The Morgwyn never felt pity or remorse for the slain, it never feared rejection or cringed when people flinched from it. It never…”
Her arms tightened around one of her pillows and she pressed her face into it, whimpering softly. There were no shackles on her skin. Why should there be, when skin itself proved more than sufficient?
Exhaustion, itself alien, dragged her down into sleep. The bed sank beneath her, a tunnel cut through unimaginable space. Green vines, thorny and cutting, snapped around her and she snarled, biting at them and trying to cut loose.
Turning, she found herself gazing down the tunnel to a shining cloud, where Daphne stood with a great vase from which the vines emerged. “So be it,” she growled, her voice turning sexless and sibilant like the whisper of a snake, and turned as insubstantial as mist and shadow to pour back towards the hated Water Child. The fury of fourteen billion years of confinement rippled through the Morgwyn and it howled, becoming a gale of blue fire that whipped about her with black winds.
The vase swelled and Daphne ducked into it as the gale winds shredded the clouds and turned light into dusk. In her protective cover, Daphne rocketed away, turning through time to escape the Morgwyn’s furious assault, in Chaos a task as easy as walking. The demon coalesced and pursued her, following her into labyrinthine corridors of rippling light and spinning galaxies that speed up and fall apart, dissociating into hot gasses that themselves compress further and further together until they formed a singular point at the center of everything.
An ache filled the Morgwyn, knowing that past that point, in the illimitable darkness beyond time, lay its home. If Amelia would just pry open the cracks a little bit, it could slip free, slip away to the eternal freedom that lies outside reality’s grasp.
“It doesn’t end this way, you know,” Daphne said, drawing the creature’s attention back to her. “You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it.”
The Morgwyn snarled and stretched its jaws back, blazing fangs gleaming. It charged, racing for Daphne, and beneath its feet the darkness turned to black soil, and then it was racing on rich green grass beneath a summer sun. When it reached Daphne, though, leaping to pounce on her and devour her heart, the suddenly huge mare caught the Morgwyn in her hooves and spun it about. It found itself pressed to her barrel, and an alien warmth spread through its form.
“What?” it gasped, but its voice came out soft and clear.
The weight of wings settled across her back and Daphne’s hooves pressed her long mane tight against her. She raised an ebony hoof to strike at her, but the limb froze as she met the older mare’s eyes.
“Is it so hard to accept?” she asked, tumbling to the grass with Morgan tucked between her forehooves.
“I didn’t choose this!” Morgan trembled, her filly hooves held close to her body. Sick to her stomach, she recoiled from the sweet scent of crushed grass, the traitorous tremor of her own heart. “I want to be free.”
“Can’t choose your family. Whether or not you can make it work is what counts.” Daphne nuzzled at her poll, working to ease the tension there and send fluttering waves down her spine. “Aren’t you happy? Doesn’t this make you happy?”
“Yes!” Morgan cried hot tears. “That’s why I don’t want it. Can’t you see how it’s poisoning me? I’m not even your real family, I’m not anyone’s family – I’m a prisoner in this body. Let me go!”
“You’re as real as you want to be, Morgan,” Daphne murmured into her ear. “You can have a home here, too.”
“No!” she screamed, thrashing about. Daphne’s wing fell across her and she fought against it. “No, no! I won’t give in! I am the Morgwyn, I’m a destroyer; I’m a reaper!”
Her hooves tore away the wing and she tumbled free of the grass, only to find that it was a blanket that held her, and she’d fallen from her bed to land on her back in the form of a mare. Outside her window, the green star glittered below the moon.
The Morgwyn never referred to itself in the first person, Daphne’s voice whispered. It never knew itself, not really.
Morgan squeezed her eyes shut and covered her ears, pushing Daphne’s presence away. When she opened her eyes, the green star was gone. She pushed herself to her feet and blew her mane out of her face, then trotted over to the balcony and beheld once more the goblin city.
In truth, nothing held her here. Amelia claimed that she needed her for some unfathomable reason, but she’d let her go if it came to it. She could launch from this window right then and fly until her wings ached and she had to curl up just long enough to rest, and then again and again until she was so far she could never find her way back. Maybe she couldn’t deliberately expose herself to inescapable danger with her strictures, but eventually, some monster would get lucky or a freak storm would drown her.
Then she’d be free.
Free from pain, free from love.
Morgan spread her wings, her pegasus magic flowing out and testing the air around her. It was a good night for flying, and the air flowing from the Mother Ocean that touched all worlds was fragrant with the scent of salt and kelp.
It was a long time standing there, thinking about leaving. Once upon a time, she simply would have decided and made it happen, but like so many other things in her life, it became complicated. Her thoughts raced down into black holes of indecision.
A crash behind her startled her out of her reverie and she half-spun to find the goblin filly from earlier picking up a broken plate off the floor near her table, sweeping up denuded grape vines and peach pits. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured, mortified at having been seen, let alone made such a mess. Invisibility is a prized commodity among castle servants.
Morgan let a breath out, her dark mane falling across the side of her face to shadow it. “It’s fine. Just… finish up and show yourself out.”
She brushed the shards into a bin and shut it soundlessly. As she turned to go, she paused and looked back at the mare. “Uhm… Miss Morgan? What were you doing just now?” She blushed and ducked her head. “If’n you don’t mind me asking.”
Quirking her ears in surprise, Morgan slid off the balcony and walked over to her. The filly flinched as an obsidian hoof touched her side, and Morgan felt a quaver at the thought of her anticipating a beating for the simple act of asking a question. Or does she just fear the Morgwyn?
Definitely the former, she decided as her eyes opened wide and curious and so painfully trusting.
“I thought about leaving,” she answered quietly, “and never coming back.”
“Oh.” The filly lowered her tufted ears flat against her skull. “I’m sorry.”
Morgan couldn’t help but smile. “Why’s that? It’s not your fault I’m unhappy here.”
“No, but, I feel sorry for you.” She scuffed a hoof along the polished floor. “I ain’t very popular among the other servants, because I’m kinda clumsy, but I don’t really have your problems, miss. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be presumptuous-like.”
Heaving a soft sigh, Morgan gave her a gentle push with her wing. “It’s all right. Tell you what, you can come clean up here whenever I’m not around. You get exclusive access. Just try not to do it while I’m here, I don’t like being interrupted.”
“You ain’t leaving then?” she asked brightly as she tapped over to a wall and pushed open a nearly invisible servants’ entrance.
“Not yet, I ain’t,” she said, offering a smile that evaporated as soon as the filly disappeared, replaced by a sort of bleak indecision.
Why? Why can’t I just leave?
“Hey,” Morgan called just as the filly began to scurry off. “What’s your name? I never got it.”
The filly paused, caught in the middle of slinking off to a servant entrance. “Oh, it’s nothing special miss. Queen. Miss queen’s sister?” She fumbled for a proper title, briefly reminding Morgan how inconsistent her presence was with how life is supposed to be in the castle.
“I’d like to hear it anyway if it’s all the same,” Morgan answered.
The filly trembled for a moment before responding. “It’s Dewdrop Dazzle, your highness.” She settled for a general honorific.
“That’s a traditional Equestrian name,” Morgan said.
“Yes’m.” The filly nodded, fidgeting. “May I leave now?”
Morgan considered that development in silence before nodding. “You may.”
Sighing heavily, she turned back to her bed and fell into it. Stubbornly, she forced her limbs back into human shape, working them one at a time against her tired, sluggish mind, until she’d assumed the form she felt the least discomfort with. At last, she snapped the curtains shut about the bed and laid back as her thoughts and limbs grew heavier and heavier, and watched the play of the stars on her curtains as they rustled in the breeze.
* * *
Banging her head against her bed would accomplish very little, Amelia decided from where she lay against it, no matter how much of an idiot she felt. She scrubbed her face with her hands and rolled to her feet in a smooth motion. The ever-burning ichor in her veins pulsed with heat and life, but it increasingly gave her little comfort. Instead, she felt restless, forever unable to pinpoint the cause.
She passed over the ragged cloak she wore in the guise of a goblin child; on another night, she might have worn that shape into town, seeing the world from the perspective of those who still remained at the bottom of the heap in spite of her efforts. She paused at her desk, where a few hundred emails had piled up since this morning, let alone the hand-written notes from Stylus. Her eyes swam as she tried to read the reports, and the words vanished into the pounding of her skull. Feeling peckish, she lifted her hand and called her staff of white ash from the corner of the room and ignited a block of wood she used for carving, converting it in a flash of divine magic into a juicy apple, but it proved as impossible to keep down as dinner had been.
For a moment, she considered trying to call Morgan back, but the haste of her departure gave her pause.
Amelia leaned against the Wand by a window, as though unable to bear her own weight, and gazed out over the city. Seven years, not even half her natural life and just a blip on Celestia’s. The job of managing the fractious goblin factions was demanding, certainly, but could she be this badly burned already? It seemed unlikely, and, unable to find answers staring into the star-filled night, she returned to her bed and shrugged off her rich red robes.
With her clothing gone, the mark on her shoulder stood out clearly. A five-pointed, green-tinged star that could have been rising or sinking against a blue mountain. There wasn’t much of a mystery as to its meaning – she’d thought herself a goblin, but it had appeared on her shortly after her escapades in Equestria and she had hidden it since. The Morning Star, the planet that precedes the light of the new dawn, stealing some part of its glory. Her sister’s glory.
What, do I have to be fighting against destiny to be happy? Where would I even begin, now? I’m where I have to be, doing what I have to do, and my company is exactly what I deserve.
All she ever wanted was to be free, happy, and loved, and then she was none of those things.
Closing her eyes, she sank away reluctantly, wishing she could curl against someone and shivered as though cold. Deeper and deeper she went, retreating from the waking world, and finally found herself drifting in darkness.
Something warm touched her hair, soft and comforting as it stroked it down her neck and back. She murmured weakly as sleep sloughed off her, wondering if Morgan had returned, or even if Daphne had portaled into her room. Worming closer towards the source, she heard a woman’s voice whisper to her, “There you are, Amelia.”
She moaned softly and pressed closer.
“My little girl… don’t feel bad. You aren’t a monster. You were just a scared child trying to do what you thought was right.”
“I am a monster…” Amelia mumbled back. “Mom… please, I can’t go. I have to fix things.”
“Shh.” Hooves tucked around her, holding her close.
In spite of her feelings, a more alert – and more innately suspicious – part of her mind caught on that detail. Indeed, her mother sounded not at all like this mare.
Her eyes snapped open and she found herself in a white-stone ruin. Hooves held her tenderly, lovingly against a mare’s barrel. When she lifted her head, the sight froze her guts to ice. It was far from the first time she’d had this nightmare, but she’d never hooked her between her hooves like this.
Celestia lay there, her mane living flame, her eyes pits of light, her coat frosted with red. Squirming free of her embrace, she scrambled away and her eyes caught a flash of gold. The terrible Bridle glowed like molten metal from where it sat atop a shattered pillar. If anything, it terrified her far more than Celestia’s nightmare form, but it would protect her until she could get rid of it. Again, the suspicious part of her wondered how it could possibly be here when even she had forgotten how to bring it forth, but blind panic, that awful determination to survive that had carried her for so long, drove her on. Reaching for it, she snared the smooth unblemished metal and thrust it forward like a ward against evil.
It hurt to watch the light fade from the mare’s eyes, even as a nightmare, but what hurt the most was seeing the love that was there sink away as well. It reminded Amelia of her mother, of what she could never have again.
* * *
Dream boundaries as insubstantial as soap bubbles rippled faintly in Luna’s passage. Like a silvery blue aurora, she graced the nighttime fancies of goblins of every walk of life, from the lowest, scum-filled alleys to the gold-encrusted drakes of the highest towers. When they woke they would remember little more than a bright flash or a glimpse of a starry mane, but the encounter would touch them forever on a deep layer, coloring their dreams for the remainder of their minds.
When her search brought her to Amelia’s dreams, she laid her hooves on the surface testingly. It felt like nothing so much as the surface of a storm, a feeling any pegasus became familiar with early in life, for their hooves stretch the cloud’s substance into a nearly insubstantial film like the skin of a drum. To a land-walker she would describe it as not so different from an earthquake distantly felt, a tremor rather than a full buck. The sharp percussion of a sudden close strike intermingled with the subtle rolling growl of distant bolts.
Taking a deep breath, Luna steadied herself. This was far from the worst dream she’d ever encountered – that dubious honor went to the invasion of the oneirophage. The titanspawn existed only in dreams, burrowing from one to the other and devouring choice bits, leaving its victims devoid of anything but their darkest dreams. Its death at her hooves had given Luna her horn, and thus forever demarcated her appearance from that of mortal ponies.
That aside, this still felt like a fairly bad nightmare as far as they went.
Closing her eyes, Luna faded into the dream like a breath of mist and stardust. It resolved around her, taking shape into a ruin of cracked white stone and shattered arches. She vaguely recognized its layout in a hazy memory of some unicorn kingdom lost so long ago that only Celestia and herself would remember it, though the details of its inhabitants, even their name and banner, slipped her grasp like smoke cupped between her hooves. The sky roiled with distant thunder, but the air above was calm, deceptively so. She turned, and found herself face-to-face with a sight that bit directly into her heart – a white mare ablaze like the sun, her eyes, mane, and tail scorching coronas. Light flashed and Luna felt herself flung away with incredible force. She felt her senses dull, and her mind fog.
Beating at her pillows with her hooves, Luna gasped awake, struggling for air and casting about in terror. Finding the room as cool and dark as a cave, no matter that the summer air of Mag Mell sweltered, she stilled her heart with practiced breathing.
Perhaps the dream wasn’t the worst she’d ever seen, but its content was as nightmarish to the visitor as it undoubtedly was proving for the owner.
Rising to her feet, she padded out of her room, nodded to her Night Guard in her suite’s receiving room, and crossed the short hall straight to the opposite door. Like hers, this one was flanked by smooth columns of white granite, but had been recently redecorated with the sun half of the coat of arms of Equestria, whose sister was mirrored on her door. Inside, two stout Royal Guards in gold-plated armor glanced up at the squeak of the hinges and stood up suspiciously. As well they should – a gifted goblin could very well impersonate her.
To the highest-ranking of the pair, she raised a hoof in greeting and lit her horn, showing first that she was no goblin by its hue and second by the coded spell she cast. The broad-shouldered unicorn mare saluted sharply and smiled. “Princess. Your sister is asleep. Would you like me to wake her?” she offered.
Luna shook her head, not that the soldier anticipated anything less. “I might be a while. Thank you, please return to your posts.” She paused as slid the door to the bedroom open, revealing hints of yellow patterned tiles on the ceiling. “Are your shifts over soon?”
“Yes, Highness.” The mare glanced at a watch. “It’s 0340, we’ll turn over to the morning watch in twenty.”
“Sweet dreams, then.”
Shutting the door with a click, Luna turned to find her beloved older sister curled about a long pillow on her side, tucked into it like a lover’s embrace with her mane flowing across her body. For a moment she couldn’t help but watch the rise and fall of her barrel, her thoughts peeling back the eons until they were foals once more, Luna wild and untamed and Celestia miserable and lonely. In chronological terms, they wouldn’t be very far apart in age in a relative sense, but for whatever reason, it seemed Luna could never stop feeling the younger by far. She would blame her imprisonment halting her progression, but she knew it had persisted long before, even when they were merely a thousand years apiece.
With a soft murmur, her sister stirred, and Luna wondered awfully if her sister had shared her dream with Amelia, but if so she showed no sign of it as she slid languidly from sleep to wakefulness. “Luna? Is that you?” she called, not in modern Equestrian, but in the ancient tongue that only they now shared.
“It’s me,” Luna murmured. “It’s just me, Sister.”
Yawning, Celestia beckoned her near and Luna slid in next to her. Sensing her sister’s tension, as usual, Celestia set about preening Luna’s feathers, nosing them back into place. Luna lifted her wing and submitted to the attention, sighing softly.
“Amelia is having nightmares.”
Celestia paused momentarily before returning to her task. “She wouldn’t appreciate you intruding on them.”
“Perhaps not, but Marble Stone asked me to look into it. She’s grown increasingly erratic of late, she says, and you and I both know that she’s becoming more isolated. When she started here, she reformed criminal justice, banned slavery, even made peace with those giants of Niefelheim that she could. If it weren’t for her, goblins and ponies wouldn’t be getting along half as well as they are, and Mag Mell not nearly so safe a city.” She took a deep breath. “She’s been dreaming of you, as a nightmare.”
Luna turned her head as her sister froze again, and felt a familiar pang at the uncertainty in her sister’s eyes. “It wasn’t your fault,” she murmured.
“Neither was it entirely yours, but…” Celestia sighed and nosed at her side tenderly. “Can you help her, Luna? I would, but… but it is like that any attempt of mine to reach out would only serve to harm her, particularly if she is indeed dreaming of me in that fashion.”
“I think I can.” Luna shifted her legs and rose to her feet. “Do you have any idea why she could be having such dreams?” Her breath caught and she glanced at the other mare. “You don’t think you might be sharing dreams with her, do you?”
“None, and I wouldn’t know. It might be worth looking into,” Celestia said sadly. “Perhaps someone here might have some insight on what’s troubling the King? Have you spoken to the Queen, perhaps? Queens are the traditional administrators of the goblin courts, and she has a formidable reputation.”
Trotting over to the balcony, Luna scanned the towers until she found the tall, pointed, iron-set glass windows of Queen Stylus’ tower. Even at this late hour, they glowed from within with a golden light. It was said that the Wand Queen rarely, if ever, slept. “No, but I can try.” She slipped over to her sister and wrapped her up in her midnight wings. “Sleep well, Sister.”
“I will try,” Celestia murmured and embraced her tightly.
Launching herself out into the air, Luna glanced back at her sister’s window with her hair streaming behind her and across her vision. Perhaps I must needs take a glimpse into Celestia’s dreams as well, indeed.
With her wings filling with powerful updrafts from the castle roof, she glided higher among the confusing warren of keeps and buildings. Unlike Morgan and Amelia, Stylus lived in the heart of the castle, at the top of the main keep that looked down over the urban sprawl below. She picked an upper-level arcade that looked over an elevated courtyard. A chipped-stone fountain bubbled away languidly in the center and she skirted it on her way to a pair of heavy wooden doors guarded by stone gargoyles to either side.
Luna approached them and cleared her throat politely. “I am Princess Luna of Equestria, here to see Stylus, the Queen of Wands.”
No answer came from the statues, pocked by the constant low-level wind. Blushing, Luna stepped forward and knocked. “Well, I thought it was a reasonable assumption around here,” she muttered, ruffling her feathers.
The door slid open to allow a slot of golden light to fall over the gray courtyard. A raven as big as a cat hopped out on its little legs and stared up at her with one bead-like eye. It quorked at her and hopped back inside. Taking it for an invitation, Luna set her hoof to the heavy door and slid it open, scraping it along the flags until it stuck. She frowned and squeezed through as best she could, grateful for once that she didn’t quite have her sister’s generous hips, and passed into a large library of books and scrolls that overflowed their shelves and formed towering stacks across the floor.
“Sorry about that,” a voice called, as dry and papery as the yellowing leather-bound tomes themselves, “haven’t gotten around to properly fixing those hinges since Nessus broke them. They’re a bit off-center.”
“It’s quite all right,” Luna called back as she trotted about in search of the source. Ravens, crows, and sparrows eyed her skeptically from atop shelves and books, and Luna wondered for a moment if one of them might be the legendarily reclusive Queen. How much of that is the long imprisonment forced by Nessus, and how much inclination, I wonder?
Her question answered itself when she turned around a pile of ancient maps to find a reed-thin woman sitting atop a levitating volume. The floor was covered in old owl feathers shed from her molting wings, and her stick-like legs looked as though they could no longer support even her minimal weight. Though her sharp face, focused on her work, remained smooth, her stiff hair was pale and translucent.
It was a strange thing for Luna to encounter someone near as old as herself. The thought of her cooped up in this little room, dutifully completing her tasks while imprisoned by the last King of Wands for the last several centuries, reminded her uncomfortably of her own imprisonment – though at least for her, she had been too diffuse to really remember it in any substantial fashion, and a thousand years had slipped by in a dreamy haze.
With her gaze intent on her work, a scroll floating before her, Luna waited patiently for the Queen to finish her work. A smooth black rod beside her seared letters onto the page, almost certainly her rod. Idly, she wondered whether or not Stylus had learned how to use computers yet, not that she herself had taken on more than the basics. After finishing her sentence, Stylus turned to regard Luna with eyes as cool and dark as the raven’s.
“Welcome to my humble home, Princess of the Night. Forgive me if I won’t curtsey.” She tilted her head inquisitively. “Is it that you are here for my King then?”
Luna waved a hoof. “It’s fine, and… yes. Yes, I am here for Amelia. My sister and some other interested parties are surpassingly worried about her.”
“Yet you are not?”
Frowning, Luna shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that I’m not worried about her. Indeed, if anything, I’m probably one of the few who can sympathize with the trials of being someone who has a great deal to answer for, as I told her in person years ago.”
“So you would say that you are concerned for the King, but not with a strong personal interest.”
“Yes, then,” she said quietly, “if we must be legalistic about it.”
“We must – if we are to determine how well you can help the King with her concerns,” Stylus said, twirling her rod of office in midair. “Yes, I have noticed that the King is ailing, and perhaps your special gifts might help her. She is resilient, though, and not inclined to accept help, so you must be cautious if you will at all.”
“Can you tell me what’s bothering her?”
Stylus shrugged. “I know as much as the castle knows, for everyone in the castle speaks to me. They tell me that the King is given to temperamental moods and fiercer silences. In the wee hours of the night she can be heard crying out, but when asked she refuses any help and denies any harm. Doctors and psychologists are turned aside at the door.”
“What do you recommend, then?”
“While I support this measure, Princess, for it seems that violating the King’s private dreams are the only option remaining to us, I don’t think that you can do it alone.” She floated over to her desk and used her arms to push herself onto her chair. Luna winced in sympathy – the idea of growing so old that one’s wings would no longer support her was worthy of a nightmare in itself, and she was glad she would never suffer it herself. “There’s someone else who might be able to help, however. Someone much closer to her.”
“Maille? Wire? She lives in Equestria with her daughter now, but I could summon her. Or Marcus, I suppose, assuming he’s even near Midgard. Or Daphne, of course, I’m sure she can hear us.”
Stylus shot her a bemused look. “No. Morgan, the King’s shadow.”
“Morgan?” She lifted a hoof, startled. “She’s the very reason your King is here in the first place! Theirs is a history of pain and torment. Why would she be any help at all, particularly since Amelia imprisoned her?”
“Her imprisonment is precisely why I suggest it, Princess Luna.” Stylus folded her sharp-fingered hands and smiled tightly. “You of all people should understand what it’s like?”
“How do you mean by that?” Luna asked, flaring her nostrils. She had a fair idea.
“Merely reframing how you consider the two of them. Whether or not Morgan will consent… well, that is entirely up to her. I would try very hard, though – you may well be our court’s last hope of having a good King.”
Feeling almost more confused than when she entered, Luna nodded her dubious thanks and left without further entangling herself. Truthfully, she wondered why she bothered. Amelia was no child, not even by her birth age, and it seemed as if the entire city had simply decided to lump the task on Luna’s shoulders – someone whom, as she had pointed out, had little direct interest.
And yet Luna found the task hard to put aside, as she spread her wings and lifted off towards Morgan’s tower. Even if Marble Stone and Stylus had not asked on behalf of their court, or Celestia on behalf of her own troubled conscience, Luna found it difficult not to empathize with this strange, lonely monarch high on her throne. If her sister had not have been there for Luna’s own return from her Nightmare status, she, too, might well have withered away in darkness.
In all respects, Morgan’s tower was far more to her liking than Amelia’s with its dark velvet drapes and cool colors, though she chafed at any comparison Stylus might draw between the two pairs. The creature known as the Morgwyn was as unrepentant as a serpent striking a mare’s heel and far more dangerous. Shouldering through an open balcony portal, she knocked at the entrance to the suite.
Briefly, she wondered why Amelia had given her such luxurious accommodations. Even the guest suites that housed Luna and herself were neither so spacious nor furnished. It defied the somewhat drafty image of Stylus’ library with its smooth, plastered walls painted in midnight blue and its carved pillars of horses and celestial bodies. With a start, she realized that the audience chamber she sat beside greatly resembled her own in some details, and wondered how much Celestia’s memories had influenced it.
A horrifying thought insinuated itself, and she folded her wings at her sides and frowned. No… could it be that she’s come to regard Morgan as a replacement for me, somehow? Someone to fill Celestia’s need for a sister to watch over?
The lacquered door slid open to reveal Morgan’s humanoid features, with long dark hair spilling down her back and framing her pale face and her bloodshot, green-blue eyes glowing like a cat’s in the dim light.
If Luna was right, it represented a twisted sort of liability, and perhaps the most ill-placed familial affection she’d ever seen. Yet, as Stylus had said, it may be her critical path in.
“Oh. You.” She leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms over her chest and sighing. “What do you want? It’s pretty late. Not that I was able to sleep anyway.”
Luna lifted a hoof, considering for a moment turning and dropping the entire thing before grabbing her sister and fleeing this unhappy house, but she pushed through her reluctance. “I need your help. Or, more accurately, Amelia does.”
“Amelia? I think if Amelia, of all people, needed help, she’d say so.”
“Curious, considering her behavior the last time she was in Equestria that would seem to be the precise opposite conclusion I’d draw,” Luna said with some repressed heat.
Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “If you’ve come to beat on me, I don’t really think either of us really need help with that. Maybe I can’t throw you out, but I don’t need to sit here and take it.”
Sighing, Luna shook her head apologetically. “No, no. I just mean to say that she’s very good at suffering in silence, though I think you’ve noticed that she’s not doing well. Everyone in the castle has.”
Mollified, Morgan stood up straight, regarding Luna quietly. “Yeah. I have. She’s been weird to me, too. What’s this got to do with you?”
“I tried peeking into her dreams, but…” She sighed. “My sister was there, as a nightmare, and for me that is in itself a nightmare. I was told that you could help, that you’re the best person who could help Amelia.”
“So, you want me to dreamwalk into her private mental space and play psychiatrist?”
“Basically.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Look,” Luna said, spreading her wings slightly and lifting a hoof imploringly, “my sister, Marble Stone, and Stylus have all asked me personally to look into this. They feel that I can help her with my special talents, and Stylus at least is convinced that you’re key to that.”
“Why not Daphne?” Morgan asked acidly. “The great Aquarius should be here for her baby sister.”
Trotting over to a window, Luna stuck her head out and scanned the sky until she found a green star gazing watchfully over the castle, almost directly ahead. “At times closeness is keenly felt by absence, and arguments best made when you allow the one you care about to reach the conclusion themselves.”
Luna pushed her hair back from her face where it had fallen. Morgan’s lips were pursed, and after a moment of parsing human facial expressions, Luna decided that it was definitely a pout. “I think Daphne would come if she felt she could be of help, don’t you?”
For an answer, Morgan turned and walked back toward her bed. Luna followed her, listening to the swish of her silken skirts. Morgan’s four-poster bed bore an uncanny resemblance to Luna’s own, its sheets tangled into the geography of an alien planet in their owner’s futile attempts to get comfortable.
“There’s a large cushion by the balcony,” Morgan said, pointing over to a large half-sphere of bound together branches and wood looking over the city, draped through it was an elegant velvet cushion of shimmering indigo and blue. “You can use that, if you’d like, or fly back to your room or whatever you need to do.”
“I have your consent, then?” Luna asked. At Morgan’s grudging silence, she pressed delicately. “May I ask why? I don’t really understand what you want out of helping her.” Or out of anything, for that matter. “You two, well… don’t need me to remind you of your history.”
Morgan stared at a detail on a carved bedpost. “It’s that, or wither into an empty shell.”
Luna shared the silence that followed for a minute before sliding onto the cushion by the window. “Do you need help sleeping?”
“It’s not that I can’t sleep as much as I don’t want to sleep.” She shook her head and climbed into bed. “I can manage on my own.”
Nodding, Luna laid her head down. For the Princess of the Night, falling into sleep was as easy as stepping off a ledge, once one developed the courage to manage it, and down she went.
* * *
Morgan awoke bound in iron, her limbs lashed to geometric perfection. She thrashed and shook, as helpless as the bound titans undergirding reality, and screamed. She could feel Daphne’s vines constricting around her, crushing her, swallowing her freedom. “Let me go!” she hollered into the darkness.
“Jeeze, fine. Don’t throw a fit, Morgan; all you had to do was say so,” Amelia’s voice said as she pulled off the blindfold over her eyes and untied her legs from the posts. Blinking at the sudden sunlight, she found herself staring down at an audience full of giggling foals and her stomach crunched in on itself. Amelia, herself, and the other fillies and colts on stage all wore costumes of the pre-Equestrian era, and they stared at her as if she’d grown a second head.
A blush crept up her neck and she fled, her hooves thumping across the wooden flooring as she galloped backstage. A pair of hooves caught her and she panicked again, struggling for a moment until she felt the mare’s hooves stroking her wings and mane, whispering comforting words. In spite of herself, she buried her face in the mare’s mane and trembled. “It’s okay, honey,” she murmured. “You don’t have to go out there if you don’t want to. I won’t let anyone make fun of you.”
Morgan sniffed and moaned fitfully against her, a word bubbling up from the back of her throat. A whimper escaped her lips, “Mama…”
New hoofsteps trotted near, and the mare lifted her head slightly. “Oh, hello Princess Luna.”
Freezing, a mortified Morgan held still, hoping she’d disappear into oblivion. When that failed to happen, she slowly turned her head and stared at the Princess of the Night, their faces mirrors of shock. It dawned on her that she’d fallen into another lucid, gripping dream.
Delilah, the mother of Daphne and Amelia, faded away like dust in the wind, while the stars pricked into being around them. Princess Luna’s hoof was pressed firmly to her mouth, her eyes shining with tears.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Morgan turned her face away. “I didn’t ask for this!”
Throat dry, Luna licked her lips a few times. “I’m… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. I had no idea.”
“It’s not me! They’re making me think these things, feel these things!” Her tail lashed, her muscles bunched up all across her tiny filly’s body. “I don’t want them. Maybe I should let Amelia rot. It’s the only revenge I have left, not acting. She did this to me. She made me this.”
“And you made her,” Luna countered. “Is this not what you would consider justice? The Morgwyn had no notion of revenge, no knowledge of justice. It had only its own selfish ends.”
The dream faded away, leaving them surrounded by a swirling nothingness that reminded Morgan so much of the primordial chaos she can barely remember in faint snatches.
“You are no titanspawn, not any longer,” Luna pressed, wrapping her wing around the filly. She pulled them back from a grown mare with a coat like ashes and a mane black as night. “You are the most responsible for your existence of any being I’ve met in this world – or any other – so hold yourself accountable. Do you care for Amelia?”
Morgan stared at the darkness, her eyes uncertain. Images of her golden-haired twin flashed through her mind, and in spite of all of her standoffish sarcasm, she found she couldn’t help warming at the sight of her.
It was all Luna needed to see. She nodded definitively and raised a hoof. “Then defend your sister as you must, or lose her.”
“But I…” Morgan flinched away, shielding her eyes with her hooves. “No one ever talks to me like this.”
Luna folded her legs, lying at rest in a small patch of purple grass woven from nothing but dream stuff. “How do they speak to you, ordinarily?”
“Afraid,” Morgan started, trotting over and reclining across from her. “Of me, or of saying the wrong thing. Afraid I’ll have one of my fits, like King Amelia.”
“But you’ve never suffered such a thing, have you?”
Morgan thought back, surely there must be some time when she stormed off to her room, breaking something in the process, but she couldn’t think of a single time. Certainly, there were times she’d found herself overwhelmed, but never in an explosive tantrum.
“You’re afraid of your emotions,” Luna said. “You have as of yet never let them get the better of you in public, you would never suffer that. It’s not a wise course to adhere to at all times.”
“And how would you know?” Morgan snapped, her eyes stinging.
Luna paused, considering her words carefully. “Celestia was not always as sweet and well-mannered as she is now. I am certain my absence forced her to temper her fire into something calm and nurturing. When we first formed the kingdom that became Equestria, she was as wild at the sun, and prone to days of sweltering emotion. It would be foolish to claim either of us have ever been what you might call ‘okay.’ She lost her mother and father when she was very young, an event that shaped her entire life. For my part, I cannot remember them.
“She was the golden child; I the wild pegasus from the swamp who stank of sweat and mud. While her exploits were well documented, my own were not. I did not enjoy the same respect she had earned. While our ponies would overlook an outburst from Princess Celestia, an outburst from myself would be less easily ignored. I… I did not wish to be her poor idiot sister. I wanted to be accepted like her. I wanted ponies to understand me.”
Luna licked her lips. “So I fought harder than she ever did at formalities. I learned from servants how to set tables, and how to make use of each tool laid out. In private I would have them teach me manners and etiquette: how to talk, but more importantly when to talk. I learned how to groom myself, and grew my mane out like to be more like hers. When some pony offended me I buried it down deep, smiled pleasantly, and often laughed as though to dismiss it. I had the respect of our rapidly developing noble class, if not their love.
“But I felt, Morgan. I felt so strongly. I was but a pegasus and my moods came upon me like summer storms. During the day, when they grew terrible enough, I would hide away in my tower. I would shut myself away from my sister and ponies. It hurt, it hurt to feel so… alone.”
Morgan’s ears twitched as she considered the story quietly.
“I trust you know how this story ends,” Luna spoke, conjuring a tea kettle and pouring herself a cup.
“Did she create me to be you, then?” Morgan asked, not looking up.
Luna paused before sipping. “I’m suspicious of that myself, but you are different enough, I think. You won’t make the same mistakes; you are still you. For all that you also play the role of sister to the queen, you are the actor within that role. Many lives are like that, actors playing roles foisted on them by the outside world.”
She nosed at Morgan’s mane. “So, if the role doesn’t suit the actor, I would advise finding a new one. It is your choice.”
Morgan considered that in silence, lowering her head and munching at the grass, which tasted of black licorice. She stood again at a precipice, considering whether to take flight or return to her sister’s house. Swallowing, she lifted her head and met Luna’s eyes.
“How do I help her?”
* * *
Morgan navigated the swirling eddies of dream with an ease that impressed her tutor and astonished even herself. Indeed, Luna had very little in the way of basic instruction for her, though she proved an invaluable mine of training in the intricacies of dreamwalking. How many times had she slipped into the dreams of others, simply from a desire to wander beyond the confines of her own self? It was too easy to get lost and immersed in the feelings and resonance of each dream world she passed through, but for once she had purpose and meaning.
Amelia’s dreams loomed large over all others in the castle, a foreboding storm cloud at the peak of a mountain whose slopes were formed by the myriad dream worlds of the castle’s inhabitants. They were, many of them, far calmer and more stable than Amelia’s. Morgan passed through them with an ease that could only be practiced in other mares slipping from one to another as she made her way up the slope.
Finally, she stood before the swirling edge of her sister’s mind, wings held up to shield her eyes. Piercing this would be far more difficult than anything Morgan had ever experienced. Instinctively, she understood why: Amelia didn’t want anyone coming in, and Amelia’s mind was a powerful thing.
“You’re such a hassle.” Morgan’s eyes were wet from irritants and the wind and surely nothing else. “I don’t know how I ever thought I could control someone who cannot control herself…”
With that, she lowered her horn and pressed on. Her magic crawled up along the surface, shining from the tip like a beacon, a ship seeking safe harbor, but the storm only raged the more for her presence as she pushed through the barrier. Luna tried to follow, but the force that threatened to repel Morgan multiplied in strength at Luna’s presence and shut her out firmly.
“You are the filly I always waited for.” A voice carried over the wind, rich with emotion and echoing with power. “Oh, Amelia… you can never know how many I adopted into my care, how many students I taught, waiting for you.”
Morgan set her jaw and pressed on, striving further and taking larger steps, her wings held at an angle to help the wind whistle down along her sides, rather than buffet her. Her thoughts fled, and her mind became fuzzy, heavy like her head had been stuffed with cotton. The wind died down, or else she lost track of it. She could feel herself slipping away.
“No…” A golden-maned unicorn filly murmured, refusing to look up at the nightmare. “I’m not you, I’m not a pony; it was all a big lie! Don’t you understand?”
“Shhh… Shhh…” The nightmare cooed. “Hist, little one; I understand more than you can know. Don’t you see? Your soul was always equine.” She ran a hoof through the filly’s mane. “You betrayed your own people.”
Amelia’s green eyes widened in shock, then narrowed. “No! You’re lying, I…” She looked to the Bridle and shook her head. “I can use the Bridle, so I must be human!”
“A passing formality. One that has come to an end.” The magic burned forth from the mare’s horn, scorching the dark sand in the gloomy world they’d found themselves in, turning it into shiny, reflective glass.
Amelia could hide from the truth, but not her reflection.
“You betrayed your people, but selflessly so! It’s not easy being a ruler, being in charge of so many people who look to you to keep the heavens and earth stable.”
Morgan squirmed through the dream, fighting her way through the black wind.
“Stay with me. Be my student, be my child, and you won’t have to bear that burden all alone. Never again.”
Morgan crashed through clouds of haze and smoke, too familiar smoke, tumbling to the ground with her hooves in the air. The fumes and embers swirling around her filled her lungs and haunted her thoughts as she came within sight of Amelia and her captor.
This is a dream. It’s a dream. I can’t die here, this shouldn’t hurt…
But it did, Morgan of all people understood that dreams can hurt more than reality.
“I never need to be alone again!” The nightmare roared, stomping her great hoof and flaring her corona. Above, the sky was an ugly orange, sweltering with heat distortions, and an angry sun sat at the center of it all.
Amelia’s body trembled, her eyes wide, and in her world, all that lay before her was the nightmare. The creature she’d created. Morgan could feel the waves of fear and uncertainty rolling off her, taste her thoughts in the air. She couldn’t understand how this had happened. She had the Bridle, that meant that she was human, that she should have been preserved from this fate.
She’d taken a beautiful goddess, a benevolent mother to an entire kingdom, and turned her into something terrible. Morgan didn’t think it could be her fault, all of this pain, all of this anger; it had to exist in the first place for her to call it forth.
Unless it was as much hers as Celestia’s, unless her pain made it all possible. Through the connection they shared by the Bridle, Amelia’s helplessness, her pain, how alone she felt, had transferred into the princess of the sun. She was insidious, she could see that now, how she wormed into the most sacred of things and tarnished them forever. It was her special talent, the eternal gift of the thief of destiny. For all of Amelia’s fear, she knew one thing.
She didn’t want to be alone anymore.
“You don’t have to be,” Morgan managed at last, stumbling over. Her form awkward and small, a coltish pegasus filly, the dark mirror of the unicorn across from her with her golden mane and pale coat. Amelia’s eyes widened. “Amy, you don’t have to be alone,” she said again, worried that she hadn’t heard her.
“Leave us at once!” The demon hissed.
“No!” Morgan called back, legs tensing as she moved to stand between the nightmare and her twin. “I won’t let you hurt her anymore.”
“It is because of you that she came down this path at all! You will not take her from me. I will not be alone again! Not now, not ever again!”
But Morgan stood defiantly, her wings raised. Never mind that the nightmare towered over her tiny form, she would not move. “No, this is not the true Celestia. The Bridle is gone and forgotten. Your freedom is restored.” Her body slumped as she struggled for breath against the fire and heat, her heart pounded with the implications of her actions. “You are healed, nightmare! Go, seek out your sister.”
“My… sister? Luna? She’s here?”
Morgan nodded. “She is; go and find her. She’s waiting for you.”
The mare’s eyes narrowed dangerously, before her body collapsed into smoke and cinders, swirling away. Morgan couldn’t be certain, but she hoped they’d seek out Luna at the borderlands of Amelia’s consciousness, and that with Luna’s help, the nightmare could be laid to rest forever.
Her attention was drawn back when a small form pressed close against her, sobbing bitterly.
“Hey…” Morgan nosed at her, the sensation calming her. “Hush, everything’s alright now.”
Amelia looked up, her green eyes ringed in red from her tears. “I ruin everything. I’m not fit to be a king, I’m not fit to be a pony; I’m not fit to be anyone.”
It took Morgan a long time to digest that as her hooves wrapped around Amelia. The silence was punctuated by sobs and tears, and it was only when Morgan answered that she realized they were shared by both.
“I think… you’re a survivor,” she says at last. “It’s hard to keep on after something traumatic changes you. Makes you do things you later regret.”
Amelia looked up, ears alert, and Morgan considered how to continue.
“I’d like to be a survivor, too. It’s hard, and I don’t…” She shook her head and sighed.
“You’re better adjusted than I am,” Amelia spoke up. “You don’t have outbursts, you don’t send the castle into chaos.”
Morgan snorted in reply. “Yes, I do. Servants keep things to themselves.” When Amelia’s eyes widened with concern, Morgan elaborated. “Never any harm, but I have outbursts, I cry and people see. Besides that, I lock myself away in a tower, far from everyone. I wasn’t the one who fixed Mag Mell, who even now is making it a better place. That’s you, it’s all you, and right now everyone is worried for their king. They love you, Amelia, you’re their last chance for a good king.”
“Maybe,” Amelia conceded. “I know you don’t like it here.”
“I’m adjusting,” Morgan frowned. “It is what it is.”
“I’m releasing you,” Amelia said. “You can leave at your leisure. Go make a home for yourself wherever you wish.”
Morgan stared down at her, blinking.
“No.”
“No?” Amelia squirmed, pulling free from her hooves. “What do you mean? This is what you wanted. Permission.”
Morgan shook her head and pressed her face into Amelia’s mane, mumbling something inaudible.
“What was that?” Amelia asked, frowning.
“No, I want to stay here. I don’t want to be alone.” She pulled Amelia in again, hugging her tightly and resting her head on the filly’s withers. Amelia trembled, looking at her with wide eyes, and, ever so slowly, settled against her.
“I don’t have to wake up now, do I?” Amelia whispered, her voice hoarse.
“Not until you’re ready,” Morgan replied, equally thick. “Though we really should see Celestia and Luna off, I guess, and thank them for their help. Especially Luna, I would not be here without her.”
Amelia nodded. “Yeah, eventually anyway.” She rubbed at her eyes and let out a high laugh. It had been decades since Morgan heard her sister laugh with that voice. “Hey, you got your butt stamp!”
Morgan frowned. “What?”
Across her flank, set in her coat as much her skin, was a dark red moon shrouded in silvery mist. The moon eclipsed, a shadow. The Moon Reversed.
“I guess this is who I am,” she murmured, sinking down to the ground.
Amelia curled up there, just breathing, before twitching her tail and asking, “Is that okay? You having a mark and all?”
Morgan weighed her answer carefully. “It’s just one more thing, you know? I want to be a survivor like you. I want to learn how to adapt.”
For a moment, Morgan was certain her twin would press the issue. Instead, they both curled up, waiting quietly for the dream to pass into dust, and drift off wherever dreams go.
* * *
Another long night and Morgan was no closer to sleep. Not only did she have to stomach congratulations from goblins of the equine persuasion, she had to wrestle with the reality that even as a human, her soul was laid bare on her skin. She could cover it of course, but the marks were there, always reminding her. Reminding her that she was absolutely part of this world now. There were no chains to hold her fast, none but the ones on her own heart and soul – chains of love, hope, and desire.
She tossed endlessly, and was considering descending on the city below to seek mischief where she could find it when the door at the end of her room creaked open, and a silent figure made her way inside, her gold mane reflecting the light from outside faintly.
No words passed between them as Amelia settled onto the bed beside Morgan, hooves curled amidst the sheets, none need be spoken. Amelia wormed in beneath Morgan’s wing, her hooves tucked against her side, and Morgan slid her head under her sister’s. They settled down into sleep, and eventually, dreams. Morgan found herself outside a cottage door edged in golden light, the sounds of laughter echoing from within. She placed her hoof to the door, pushed it open, and stepped inside.
