It wasn’t much, the collection of items spread out on the frozen bed.

There was a lighter that barely worked anymore, the receipt from the café, an old copper coin and a lot of lint. All items had come from his leather jacket, and due to the recent events he’d been through, he’d completely forgotten he even had them.

Although they seemed useless at first glance, Anton felt the need to hold on to the, just in case. The lighter could be used as illumination, or start a couple of fires if they needed to. The receipt wasn’t much to work with, but it could at least serve as a last resort for tinder.

But the copper coin, on the other hand…

A faint blue aura enveloped it, and it levitated off the bed. Lilly looked at it with wondering eyes.

“What’s this?” She asked. “Doesn’t look like any coin I’ve ever seen.” She flipped it around in the air in front of her, studying both sides of it.

Anton grabbed the coin between his thumb and index finger, pulled it too himself. He felt a tingly sensation across his fingers as they came into contact with the magical aura.

“It’s nothing much, really.” He said, as he let it rest against the palm of his hand. “It used to belong to my brother. He called it a lucky charm.”

Lilly’s magic hoisted it back up so she could see it again. Both sides had engravings on them; one bearing the likeness of a devil in red with horns and demonic wings. The other resembled a blue angel, with corresponding halo and heavenly wings.

“Is this what the currency looks like?” Lilly said. “Back where you come from, I mean.”

Anton huffed quietly. “No, it’s, uh… Oh, how do I explain this? It’s a sort of… collector’s item, I guess. It came with a… video game.”

“A what?” Lilly asked, tilting her head.

“Well, a game is like… You play it on a TV, which is like a moving picture, I guess? Man, that sounds stupid. Never mind, it’s not important. Let’s just say my brother liked games a lot more than I did, and often spent a little more money on special collector’s editions.”

“Is it worth anything?” Lilly asked. “Oh! Is it magic?”

“No, it’s just a copper coin, zero value except sentimental, I guess.”

“Then why would he pay more money for it if it’s not special?” Lilly wondered.

“Because…” Anton stopped himself. “I don’t know. Still, he liked it a lot; he used it whenever he came across a choice he couldn’t make on his own. Flipped it and let chance decide. Chance’s always fair, he used to say.”

“Chance is never fair.” Lilly said, and then levitated the coin back to Anton. He picked it up, stuffed it back into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Chance is cruel.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Anton responded. “Not sure what to think of it, myself.”

He reached back down, grabbed the lighter. Luckily, it was made out of some sort of see-through plastic, making it possible to see how much was left in it. It wasn’t much, barely a centimeter that sloshed around at the bottom, but it was something, at least.

Neither said anything for a while, and Lilly seemed to be deep in her own mind as she studied the receipt with a concentrated look on her face. Anton couldn’t help but roll her eyes at her, then turned around from the bed, took the few steps needed to get over to the room’s only window.

“We can’t stay here.” He said after a little while

He looked out through the window, gazing out at the frozen, empty city on the other side of the glass. No movements could be seen anywhere, not a trace of life. A small speck of fog appeared on the glass in front of him as he spoke.

He averted his eyes from the outside and spun around to look back into the room. Lilly sat on the bed wrapped in her cloak, her ears flat against her head, her eyes tired and spent. She’d put down the receipt, and her entire demeanor seemed to have changed in an instant. Willow was pacing back and forth in the room, clearly worried.

“Need to find a way out.” Anton said, more to himself than the others, leaned his back against the windowsill, crossed his arms over his chest.

“And we need food.” Lilly continued. “I can’t even keep track on time anymore. How long is it since last time we ate? A day? A Week?”

“I don’t know.” Anton answered. “But it feels like an eternity.”

“My stomach feels like it’s tied itself into a knot.”

Anton could do nothing but agree with her.

After their talk in the library, they had returned to Willow, and quickly decided to head to the kitchens. Unfortunately, every bit of food was frozen, and without fire, impossible to eat. After that, they had decided to return to Anton’s room and devise some sort of plan of action for the future.

“The ice is too strong to break and we can’t open the windows…”

“What about the roof the roof?” Lilly said. “Maybe we could get across to another building.

“No”. Willow’s voice suddenly echoed out, but he didn’t stop his pacing. “There’s none close enough.”

“You sure?” Anton asked. “We could always go and have a look.”

“There’s open street all around us, several meters, way too far to jump.” Willow answered. “I saw it earlier, when Topaz showed me how that magical orb was suspended.”

“Why did she show you that?” Lilly asked before Anton could say anything.

Willow stopped his pacing, and then drew a heavy sigh. “In case I stayed here. She said that every pony here needed to know the basics of it, at the very least. But that knowledge is completely useless now.”

Anton felt his heart sink, and guilt took its place instead. Guilt and shame, heavy and oppressing. He removed himself from the window, sat down on the bed next to Lilly.

“… I’m sorry.” He said. “All this is my fault.”

He brushed both his hands through his hair; something he often did when he felt stressed or worried. Then he leaned backwards, let himself fall flat on his back on the frozen covers.

“Of course it isn’t your fault.” Lilly said.

“No, it is.” Anton answered. “My brother did all of this… If I had just stopped him, if I just had the courage to stand up to him, I could’ve stopped him, I know I could. Instead I just froze, stood there like a fucking statue as he… killed them all.”

“Don’t blame yourself. Even if that thing is your brother, you’re not responsible for his actions.”

“He’s family.” Anton said. “That makes me accountable for what he does. If I had stopped him, then all those ponies would still be alive, and we wouldn’t be in this damned mess…”

The bed stirred a little, and Lilly’s face came into his view, staring down on him.

“If you did, he would’ve killed you too. He nearly did it anyway! What happened wasn’t your fault and nopony is going to blame you for it.”

Anton sighed, pushed her mane out of his face, stared back up at her.

“Jag är en värdelös jävla fegis.”

”Don’t curse at me when I don’t know what it means!” Lilly said, much louder than now than before.

Anton raised an eyebrow at her.

“Put that down.” Lilly said. “You always curse in Swedish, it isn’t that hard to pick up on.”

“You guys?” Willow suddenly said, causing both of them to flinch. “Could you two stop bickering like an old married couple and actually focus?”

Lilly quickly moved backwards, just then realizing that she was still leaning down over Anton, giving him space to sit back up again. He then sprung back up on his feet.

“Yeah, sorry. You’re right, Willow, there’s more important things to worry about now. And Lilly… I get that you care and I shouldn’t hold myself responsible for what happened, but I have to. It’s my brother, and I won’t stop until I learn the truth about him. Whatever that truth is, I have no choice; he needs to be stopped, no matter what it takes.”

“Wait…” Lilly began. “Are you saying you would… kill your own brother?”

Anton rested his back against the nearest wall, crossed his arms over his chest, something he often did when he felt uncertain.

As Anton stood there, arms crossed over his chest and one foot resting over the other, a thought came to Lilly. It was something that had been lurking in the back of her head for a long time now, but she couldn’t make sense of it.

There was something… off about Anton. Something that she couldn’t quite make out, yet it had been there since…

She noticed it the first time she saw him. She saw it during the incident in the alleyway. She noticed it in the hallways of the hospital. She felt it in the way he moved and acted, in the way he sprung himself out of bed just moments ago, and the way he leaned against the wall now.

It had always been there, but she couldn’t understand it. The way he moved, even when just walking or getting up from the floor of the library, his movements were surprisingly fluid and elegant, almost… feminine.

The thought made her head spin. How could he behave with such body language, such… otherworldliness? While he was obviously a male, something that was made sure by the ponies that took him in when he was injured, nursed him and cleaned him, there was an unmistakable feeling about him.

Lilly couldn’t for the life of her find rhyme or reason behind it.

It would take many years for her to finally understand; many years after her initial realization that day in the frozen hospital, she would finally learn a word that embodied Anton completely.

Androgynous.

Anton was, for all intents and purposes, an androgynous man. Not in the way he looked or talked, but in his behavior, his movements and presence. At the time, Lilly didn’t know that term even existed, and the entire thought process felt incredibly foreign to her.

She could do nothing more than chalk it up to Anton simply being a bit odd, and that strange feeling being amplified by the fact that he was a human. She held him high as a friend, sure, but he was still an alien, in a way, and a very odd one at that.

And despite it all, there was another thought in the back of her head that had refused to leave her alone for the past minute or so. Ludicrous and silly as it may sound, Lilly couldn’t help but think that if there ever was a man who’d be able to make a woman’s dress look good… Anton was that man.

Suddenly, Anton’s voice jerked her out of her wandering thoughts. “No. The mere thought of hurting anyone sickens me, let alone killing someone… but what choice would I have?”

“There’s always a better choice.” Lilly responded. “Death shouldn’t be the answer.”

“I know, but what if I have to?” Anton said back to her. “If it’s the only way to stop him, then… Either way, I need answers, I need to know. My brother was always kind and caring, back home. I can’t imagine what twisted him into this… monster.”

“Ten years after his own death.” Lilly added.

“I don’t want to think about that, right now. I can’t stand the thought of him living and dying here without his family. I guess he started a new one, but I’m sure he always missed us, and I don’t want to imagine what he went through. But I need answers to all those worries, somehow.”

“What about our dreams?” Lilly asked. “The Crystal Empire seems like our best bet to get those answers. There has to be a reason we shared that dream.”

Anton nodded solemnly, and then fell silent for a little while. He still hadn’t told her about the other dream he had earlier, where he ran through the forest towards a meadow, only to find… what he thought was her. The dream unsettled him, made him question himself and Lilly as well, and he wasn’t comfortable enough to tell her about it just yet.

“I got it!”

Willow’s voice suddenly broke the silence and pulled Anton out of his thoughts. The Pegasus had stopped pacing, and sat still on the cold floor.

“Got what?” Lilly asked him.

“A way out!” Willow answered. “I’m so stupid, I had it in the back of my head all the time but couldn’t get it out! Topaz showed it to me when she gave me that tour of the hospital – the cellar!”

“What’s so special about the cellar?” Anton asked. “They wouldn’t lead us out, just down.”

“No, listen, there’s these tunnels underneath the actual cellar itself, Topaz told me. I never went down there, but she said that they sprawl out all under the hospital, and some tunnels lead to the sewers and service tunnels! If we go far enough, we could probably get out!”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea…” Lilly said, cautiously. “We don’t know what’s down there. It could be dangerous.”

“What else can we do?” Anton said to her. “It sounds like our best bet, and if there ever was anything dangerous down there, I’m sure those Stalkers cleared it out a long time ago.”

Lilly didn’t say anything for a while, just looked at the two of them with a worried expression. Finally, she gave in.

“… Fine, let’s try it. But if I see any cobweb down there, I’m not sticking around a second longer.”

“What, afraid of some small spiders?” Willow asked.

Lilly gave him a glare. “No. I’m not scared of spiders. But you should be.”

Willow raised his eyebrows at her, then shrugged off her comment, clearly none the wiser about what she meant.

“So… it’s settled then?” Lilly asked before jumping off of the bed. “We’ll go through the tunnels, and then head for The Crystal Empire?”

Anton nodded. “It’s our only lead. Did any of the books you read say how far away it is from Manehattan?”

“I don’t think so, but I could go back to the library and fetch it, or at the very least a map.”

“Right.” Anton said. “So, you head to the library, and Willow and I will have a look at the cellar. Okay?”

“Sounds like a plan.” The Pegasus said.

Lilly nodded in agreement.

As the three parted, she asked the boys to be careful and not venture too deep down. She headed towards the library, and Willow headed the other way with Anton in tow.

Author's Notes:

Sorry for such a short chapter. If you've read my blog, you probably know what's going on with me and why I just can't write at the moment.

And honestly, I am this close to giving up on this story...