While Whooves’ coltfriend steered them resolutely eastward, and the others gradually dozed off, Octavia stayed up with Whooves and listened to him ramble. He started with their route. They would travel all the way to Hoofington, drop off their supplies, and turn around, leaving the Elements of Harmony stranded in the city—better than the middle of nowhere, they both agreed. He spoke of Applewood, his birthplace, and they exchanged stories of the tourism capital of Equestria. When he asked her about Hoofington, she prompted him to speak more of his time on the coast. He fell asleep complaining of the tension between him and his coltfriend.

The following morning, Rainbow and Big Mac took turns explaining to Whooves the nature of their journey, and what had brought them to the coast, omitting Spike’s death and little else. Twilight offered no explanation when Whooves inquired about the specifics of the spells they were casting, and they had to settle for a weak “we’re not sure, but they work.” All throughout, Applejack never took her eyes off the doctor.

“Yer the pony whose house we tried to rebuild back home,” she finally interjected. “Ah knew you were familiar.”

Inside their compartment, there was little room for Whooves to escape the scrutiny of six more pairs of eyes.

“That’s what it is!” Rarity cried. “I’ve been trying to place your face forever. You ran away from home all the way to the coast?”

“Why?” Applejack demanded.

“And how?”

“No, no, reasons first,” Rainbow said, standing to extend her wings before sitting awkwardly back down.

“Runaway!” Pinkie screeched, and Rarity flinched.

“Right in my ear, Pinkie. Don’t do that.”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“Ya didn’t even say goodbye in person,” Big Mac said.

“Wait, who even are you?” Whooves asked. “I get that you’re Applejack’s brother, but, well, who are you?”

“Ah was there at yer house, helpin’ move lumber. Ah offered a space in the barn fer you to sleep, Ah think.”

“That was me,” Applejack said.

“I’m surprised it wasn’t Rarity,” Pinkie said.

“My boutique fell off, remember?” Rarity said, and paused. “Hm. That memory hardly hurts at all now.”

“We have been away from things for a long time now,” Octavia said.

“You can say that again,” Whooves said.

“You’re not wiggling out of this,” Rainbow said, looking askance as Pinkie started writhing in her place.

“Wiggling!”

“Dear, can you stop? You’re on my tail,” Rarity said.

“Why did you abandon us?” Applejack asked loudly. “Those two spa ponies were devastated.”

Whooves looked down slightly. “Er, quite. Yes, a regrettable decision on my part, but I can explain.”

“You’d better.”

“I had to. Leave, that is.”

“Is that right?”

“We need more information than that, darling,” Rarity said.

“Why is it even important? I’m here now, aren’t I?” Whooves asked. “It’s not like I’m one of your add-ons.” He looked at Octavia. “I’m just the pony who got you an airship. No one important.”

“Do not be like that,” Octavia said. “Please, just answer the questions. We are curious.”

“Octavia, you missed it,” Rainbow said. “We were—”

“I have gathered what happened.”

Whooves cleared his throat. “I had no choice, okay? Please believe that. I had every intention of staying and helping all you kind ponies—sorry for forgetting you, Mac, by the way. Er, I had a lot on my mind. It, well, it hasn’t changed much.” He chuckled nervously. “Anyhoo, I was going to stay, but… It’s the darndest thing, I couldn’t.”

“What does that mean?” Fluttershy asked. She was right beside him, and he jumped a little. “Sorry. I thought you knew I was here.”

“Quite all right, my dear. You’re so quiet, it was hardly more than a—”

“Get to it,” Big Mac said.

He waited a minute, ear up; their pilot was still outside, whistling to himself. Whooves’ voice was quieter. “Just the thought of getting up and facing all your happy, charitable faces filled me with something. I don’t know what to call it, exactly. It was more profound than shame, I can tell you that much right here.”

“Why?” Rarity asked.

“I can’t say. It was just a feeling. Everyone in town banding together to help me, and I didn’t even ask for it… it made me feel almost empty inside.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Rainbow said.

“I can’t explain it. It’s just how I felt.”

“Fergive me,” Applejack said, “but Ah somehow doubt you can’t explain it. You seem pretty smart.”

“It’s got nothing to do with intelligence,” Whooves said. “If there’s one thing I learned in this life, it’s that the mind has no say in affairs of the heart.”

“Oh, gimme a break,” Rainbow said.

“I’m afraid I don’t know why I felt the way I did. I’m no psychologist. For what it’s worth, though, I’m quite sorry about leaving you all in the twist.”

“So you felt uncomfortable accepting our charity, and ran away. That’s what I’m hearing,” Rarity said.

“Yyyyyes, perhaps.”

“But why?” Pinkie asked. “What’s so bad about letting us help?”

“I said I don’t know. I don’t know now, I didn’t know then, and I’m not going to know ten seconds from now.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, Mr. Grumpy.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to come across as the bad guy here, or like I’m hiding anything, but I honestly don’t know what to say. Whatever it was, it wasn’t something I ever explored.”

“How did you get here, then?” Rarity asked. “How did you get from Ponyville to the coastline?”

“Now, that is a story more worth telling. So much more interesting than groundless psychological pontification, self-gratifying tautologies based in—”

“Get to it,” Applejack grumbled.

“Er, yes. Indeed. Sorry. I can get caught up in talking too much from time to time. It’s—”

“Today, please.”

“Right. Right.”

He told himself jokingly that half the town would be there to help reconstruct his house, and his proximity to the truth was the first shock. The second was that the illustrious Elements of Harmony, still fresh from horrors he couldn’t imagine on the mountainside, had numbered among them. The third was the presence of his ex-marefriend, Colgate, who, in his experience, hadn’t the heart for a project of that type, and should have been indissociable from the hospital anyway.

It was she who had inspired his first egress from the Ponyville oasis. Earlier, she had caught him nervously hanging around the hospital, afraid to ask for help with a hurt pastern, but not too afraid to make an imposition of himself. She assured him it wasn’t broken, talking all the while of the issues the hospital was facing in the aftermath of the yet undefined disaster. They had a couple backup generators in case of temporary power failure, but not enough to last the whole facility indefinitely, so many non-emergency procedures were taking place in the ICU, the only area with electricity. Tensions were high among the staff, dealing with both power shortages and freaked out, injured ponies, and, Colgate said, she and the other surgeons could eventually be forced into an uncomfortable reliance on Zecora for medical supplies.

A day later, when he met everyone at the ruins of his former house, he knew then and there that he would not be happy. The pity, the pressure, and the responsibility of gracefully accepting alms paralyzed him, and he wrote his goodbye note without thinking that feverish night of broken sleep on Aloe and Lotus’ couch. He left it outside his old house before dawn and escaped into the forest, where he found Zecora’s hovel empty.

When a kind, but wary, voice woke him from his spot napping in the crotch of a tree, he thought Zecora had found him, but he did not recognize the zebra that stood a distance away. On her back, she carried a large wooden construction that, despite its loose appearance, did not rattle when she moved, and her mane was cropped so short that he at first thought her bald. She brought him to Zecora’s hut, where she had returned earlier that day, and went in herself first, leaving Whooves to watch with wonder as they spoke quietly.

Perhaps it was his frazzled mind, he would later speculate, but the significance of a second zebra eluded him, and he could only tie the stranger’s presence, somewhat obliquely, to the world’s recent unfolding. Their conversation that morning, in his mind, took on grave importance, and it was reluctantly that he entered Zecora’s sanctum while the stranger departed. He watched her from Zecora’s window, uncertain whether he would choose to follow at the conversation’s end.

His impulsivity did not fail him. After a brief, perfunctory exchange of pleasantries and news from the town, none of which seemed to surprise Zecora, he invented a poor excuse and took off, trying to track the other zebra through underbrush and pieces of the forest’s fallen canopy.

He found her disappearing between two beeches, her gray tail a mottled swish of shadow that he almost missed against the gray bark, on the other side of a chasm. He had seen them earlier in town, but the magnitude, in the wilderness, seemed doubled. Pure blue sky cut through sylvan grays and greens like a crystal shard, and he was so awed at its sinister majesty that, for the first several minutes, it did not occur to him that the earth-bound zebra had managed to traverse an open-air canyon of nearly ten feet with no visible bridge or jumping point.

He returned to Zecora and spent the day in her home, alternately helping her with menial chores and getting in the way. He was able to get no information about Zecora’s friend, but she, after a lot of prodding, revealed to him her own method of moving across gaps: a simple potion, made in fifteen minutes by her expert hooves, that could teleport a pony a predetermined distance in the direction they faced. It was an extremely dangerous method of movement in the forest, where the slightest miscalculation of distance or orientation could leave a pony half inside a tree, or knees deep in the ground. There were clearings specifically divested of shrubbery for the exact purpose of teleporting safely, and Whooves assumed that it was the strange zebra he saw that was responsible for them, but could not get Zecora to speak of it.

She was gone the next morning, and he searched the gap’s edge for clearings, finding only one, with no parallel. Confused, he kept walking, and found a second on the other side close to a half-mile away, by the bare cross-section of mysterious, hanging river. As he moved deeper into the wood, he found other clearings, but never next to each other, and returned to Zecora’s in the afternoon more perplexed than ever.

After lunch, during which he pestered her more about the gaps, she agreed to take him somewhere else. Her agreement was short, and she hardly spoke as they moved through the forest, which was beginning to feel comfortable for him. She turned him bodily in the first clearing, facing him directly into a hanging cluster of white flowers, and the potion ripped him along the gap to leave him beside a narrow trench of fallen branches. He sidestepped, per her instruction, as she flashed into existence right after. As they continued, he realized the purpose of separating the clearings: to not arouse suspicion among any wanderers, such as himself. Two parallel clearings were already a coincidence, but a chain of them was too much.

She took him on a route lateral to a widening, segmented river, and left him with one more potion outside a wide down, guarded in the distance by a line of silos and barns, some tilted and a couple reduced to splintered silhouettes. Cloudsdale Farms was not what he had expected, he realized, and, walking alone into the sudden pastoralism, he realized too that he had not thought of where he might end up at all. He had wanted out and away, and, possessed in the nameless certainty of the need to escape, did not consider anything for the future.

He crossed into a large disc of earth on which stood, at the far edge, two houses, cut off from their neighbors. It was there that he found more permanent lodging with the ponies who lived there, trading him between houses as space allotted while they, and those within shouting distance on the other side, worked to construct a bridge. There were pegasi on the farm, but nowhere near Whooves’ tenants, and so they were frequently without air support.

Well away from Ponyville, he was able to settle in and let his memories bury themselves in his subconscious. Colgate had been his longest-lasting romantic partner, and it was the end of that relationship, he deduced later, that likely caused him to switch back to stallions. A mare had failed him, in his mind, so it was time to return to the other sex.

His name was Copper, and he was, like Whooves, a clueless interloper. He was walking between Ponyville, where he sometimes did business, and a no-name farm somewhere to the southwest when the cataclysm struck, and he was caught. A split had opened up right next to him, he said, and almost swallowed him. Since, he’d been forced to make do and live with the farmers he was stuck with.

After nearly a month, a system of ramshackle bridges had been set up across the farm, and Whooves’ relationship was souring. Neither stallion was who he thought the other had been at first, and Whooves was growing restless once again. So, late one balmy evening, he walked across the farm to where he had seen an airship land earlier that day, and begged his way on board. He didn’t care where it would take him, as long as he could escape the plodding routine of farm life and his own romantic grievances—the latter of which he did not mention to the reluctant airship pilot.

They left at dawn, he and several others, heading for the northern coast, where Celestia had ordered the construction of a massive siphoning station to supply the country with more water. He thought of Copper all day, hoping he would understand and move on.

When, nearly two weeks later, they had their final stop at the coast, they did so on a tight schedule of drop-ships and supply cruisers, all lined up to deposit or pick up goods and ponies at one of three way stations on the eroded beach. The siphoning station, approaching completion, was all Whooves could look at that day and those following. Even growing up in Applewood, he had never seen something so incredible. The hydroelectric dam that powered his hometown was one thing, but was to him a joke compared to the floating castle Celestia’s best and brightest had put together: a sky-dominating juggernaut of protruding wheels, iron gray scaffolds, and snowy smokestacks—and nearly all of it made from cloud.

The first day it turned on, he went out with his new, rough-cut laborer friends to watch the ocean rise. It was the first time of his life that he felt he shared a world with flesh-and-blood divinity. A shining tube extruded down to the still, gray waters, its tip clouded in a flock of pegasus technicians, and produced the softest, most sinister scream he had heard, like a pneumatic drill far underground. The cold air seemed to suck away from him as he watched, waiting for the spectacle he had expected.

When, an hour later, a white skirt of foam crashed off the tube’s top, he thought something had gone horribly wrong. What he saw, he would later find, was nearly seventy thousand gallons of ocean runoff per second, an expected by-product of internal pumping mechanisms he could not begin to comprehend.

Then, he was put to work. Sharing a rattling tuck bed with the pony who would later become his most recent coltfriend, they were shunted miles down the coast to gather grasses and other natural supplies from the already over-harvested fields to the south. The other pony was training to fly airships, and hoped to be able to pilot one soon.

“And that’s about it. Rain, work, a dinky house, and… him, until you eight came along,” Whooves said.

“You do get around,” Rarity said.

“So you went from Colgate to some stallion?” Rainbow asked. “Wasn’t that weird?”

“Who doesn’t like a little variety in his life?” Whooves asked. “Colgate was nice, but she’s no stallion.”

“Was?” Pinkie repeated.

“Sometimes things don’t work out, that’s all.” He looked back to the door. “And it happens with some more than others.”

“What’s wrong between you two?” Fluttershy asked. “Um, if you don’t mind.” She paused. “If you’re uncomfortable—”

“No no, my dear, just thinking. How to start? Where?”

“From the beginnin’ might be nice,” Applejack said.

He chuckled. “You have no patience for me, do you, Applejack?”

“Ah got no patience fer those that beat ‘round the bush.”

“Aw, let him do his thing,” Pinkie said. “It’s not like we have anything else to do!”

“Yeah, certainly no Elements to find,” Fluttershy breathed.

“What was that?” Whooves asked.

“Nothing.” She looked at Octavia for a second. “Proceed.”

“Well, as you know, I am a pony of the mind. My dream, even as a youngster, was to graduate from a prestigious college, magnum cum laude, even. I did graduate, and with high honors.”

“You’re a mathematician, right?” Twilight asked. Everyone paused to glance at her.

“I have a degree in mathematics,” Whooves said. “But that stallion behind me… he has no such aspirations. Can you believe what he told me one day? He’s content to just stay where he is. He doesn’t want to advance at all.”

“So?” Rainbow asked.

“So? Young lady, we are looking at a poor roughneck with no desire for higher education. Even exposed to what he could be, he spurns the very idea.”

“Again, so?”

“I understand,” Octavia said. “Willful blindness is a vice that I see far too often.”

“Thank you,” Whooves said. “Willful blindness! Why didn’t I think of that? And frankly, he’s a bit of a brute when he gets his back up.”

“The uneducated often can be.”

“You went to college, Ah assume?” Applejack said.

“Of course,” Octavia said, narrowing her eyes a fraction. “I graduated from Grace Notes Artistic University in Hoofington. It has a very strict curriculum.”

“Did you go in to be a cellist, or is that just what you wound up selecting?” Whooves asked.

“I did not choose an instrument for a long time. I wanted to be a composer up until midway through my third year. I remember one of my professors meeting me in her office and advising me to change my focus of study. She did not see much potential in me as a composer.”

“That’s rather prescriptive, don’t you think?”

“It is, but she was right. I could arrange notes correctly, but never with much creativity. I graduated instead with a major in professional music, and a concentration in instrument repair.”

“Instrument repair? Really?”

“By that time, I was proficient with many instruments, and I wanted to be able to take care of them on my own.”

“What’s Hoofington like, anyway?” Twilight asked. “That is where we’re going, right?”

“Yep, that’s the destination,” Whooves said. “Personally, I can’t wait. I’ve never been.”

“Octavia has! She lived there for years!” Pinkie said. “I wanted to visit her, but I never knew until later.”

“So how is it there?” Big Mac asked.

“The city is fine,” Octavia said.

“Fine? Just fine?” Pinkie asked.

“I was not finished. I am choosing my words.” She spent a minute in watched silence. “It is the smallest paved city in Equestria, which I know has led to some difficulties. It is still small enough that some ponies are comfortable walking everywhere, but there are cars too. You will need me to get around efficiently, more than in other places; the hoofpaths deviate from the roads quite frequently.”

“It’s a maze,” Big Mac said.

“There is plenty of signage for tourists, but, yes, it can be a maze at times.”

“How close is it to a river?” Twilight asked. “What sort of water situation will we be dealing with?”

“It should be fine,” Whooves interjected. “It’s the closest city to the coast, so it was the first to get its own cloud relay station.”

“That is true,” Octavia said. “It is also near a river besides. The wealthiest ponies live right on its banks. It is generally a quiet city, though there are large events every now and again. There is a three-day garden party every spring.”

“That sounds lovely,” Fluttershy said.

“I would not know. The only time I attended, I was performing. The weather and architecture are both beautiful, though there are certain parts of town that are less savory than others, as with anywhere.”

“Not Ponyville!” Pinkie said.

“Ponyville’s too small,” Whooves said.

“What about your house?” Rainbow asked. “You said you lived there. Were you on the rich side by the river?”

“I lived in a mansion on a ridge overlooking the river, yes. The largest.”

“Really? Like, the biggest?”

“In Hoofington, yes.”

She whistled appreciatively. “I thought you said you didn’t have much money.”

“I do not, now. Much of what I made went to its purchase.”

“Can we stay there still? Instead of a hotel?” Pinkie asked.

“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Rarity said.

“We cannot do that,” Octavia said.

“Why ever not?”

Octavia frowned. “I do not know how to explain myself, but we cannot go there. I certainly will not.”

“Does this got to do anythin’ with yer…” Applejack glanced at Whooves. “Well, Ah think ya know what Ah wanna ask.”

“I lived there for many years.”

“So that’s a yes,” Rainbow said. “Figures.”

“What am I missing?” Whooves asked.

“It is nothing,” Octavia said. “Do not concern yourself.”

“Let me ask this,” Rarity said. “Is this… reason that we shouldn’t go there, is it actually dangerous, or do you simply not want to return?”

Octavia sighed, thinking, and finally turned to Whooves. “I am sorry for this, but will you please leave us? This will be much easier if we can speak in private.”

“Say no more, Madam Octavia,” Whooves said, standing awkwardly, his legs bent oddly to avoid leaning him into anyone. “I’ll make myself scarcer than a four-leaf clover.” He shuffled around Fluttershy to the door, pausing for a second to look back at them. “I’ll, uh, I’ll be around.”

“Thank you for understanding,” Octavia said without looking. When the door was shut, she scooted forward, and the others did as well, as they were able. “There was some legal trouble regarding the house shortly before the disaster, and I am afraid to return there now. I do not know what kind of trouble I could be in.”

“That wouldn’t stop us from stayin’ there, though, would it?” Big Mac asked.

“It could. It depends on whether the house is foreclosed.”

“Termites, too,” Applejack said.

“I am sorry?”

“It’s infested with termites,” Rarity said. She sighed. “Right. Never mind. Again. I forgot that part.”

“Why do you think that I have termites?”

“You told us,” Fluttershy said. “The first time we were on the coast.”

Octavia felt the blood drain out of her face. “Ah, yes. I did.”

“Octavia,” Applejack said. “Sugarcube.”

“I do not want to go back there. There are many things that are wrong with that house, and I do not want to return.”

“But it’s your house,” Rainbow said.

“She doesn’t have to go back if she doesn’t want to,” Rarity said. “It’s not our place to try to make her. We’ll just stay in a hotel. I’m sure there’s something nice in all of Hoofington.”

“There are plenty of hotel options,” Octavia said.

“I wanna see her mansion, though,” Pinkie said.

“We can go without her. We can, right?” Rarity asked.

Octavia frowned. “As I said, it is dangerous. But, I suppose I cannot stop you.”

They stopped at the sound of raised voices outside.

“Some couple they are,” Rarity whispered.

Spike was reduced to a heavy pearl of slick scarlet, depressing the grass where he imploded two days ago, and Ponyville wore black. A few woodworkers banded together to create a casket befitting Ponyville’s only dragon resident, past or present, and the mayor delivered a mostly-improvised speech that grim night, urging the citizens to remain calm and remember that the threat was transitory. Most were too subdued to require her soothing rhetoric.

The Daturas—Foxglove, Flitter, Cloudchaser, Allie Way, and Colgate—met in the spa’s underground portion, its sign flipped to “closed.” One of Zecora’s zebras met them inside, strolling naturally out of the steam room as if there all along, and revealed to Colgate, the only one with energy to be curious, a semi-permanent teleportation sigil on the underside of the room’s floorboards, to be flipped over as needed.

“It is a grave event,” Foxglove said from an empty massage table, “but we can’t let this setback keep us from our task.” Flitter and Cloudchaser listened with glazed expressions, Flitter still with tears occasionally standing in her eyes. Allie had hardly said a word since his death, and Colgate donned a respectful demeanor as well. “I’m not saying don’t grieve; that would be inequine. Just remember that, even though a dear friend has been taken, we still have a job to do, and Discord won’t wait for us. The fact of the matter is we’re in the very beginning stages of preparing an approach on a Tartarus gateway.”

“We will be helping,” the zebra said. “The rest of us are scoping out the area right now, and clearing it as much as we can, but you need to be the ones to shut it down.”

“Exactly. This isn’t the only gateway that’s opened up recently, but it’s the closest one to us, and the only one we’re dealing with at this time.”

“Why are they being opened?” Cloudchaser asked.

“Discord has a subordinate moving around and opening them for him. The Datura is assuming they’re setting up for a synchronous attack on Canterlot.”

“Shouldn’t we be going after the subordinate, then?”

“We don’t have the resources to handle something that involved. We don’t even fully understand what this being is; chasing after him would be useless.”

“I thought we dealt with exactly this kind of magic,” Allie said. “How can the Datura not know what it’s facing?”

“It’s not something we encounter very often, and the specific magic that it’s composed of is tricky. It doesn’t help that none of us have been able to meet him, or that our Information Handler is engaged with something more immediately important.”

“What’s that?” Colgate asked.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Okay, so we take care of the gateways, and who takes care of this subordinate? Do we go to him after this?” Cloudchaser asked.

“We’re playing it by ear. He has contact with the Elements of Harmony, but, so far, all their biggest obstacles are coming from elsewhere. It might not be wise to interfere with their relationship at all,” Foxglove said.

“One of the Datura’s biggest jobs is to make things easier for the Elements,” the zebra said. “But also slowing Discord’s progress.”

“Which, at this point, means closing the gateways he’s opening. Now, the good news is that the gateway is only forty-eight miles away, which is about two days of walking. Even more, closing it is pretty simple in theory; we just need to neutralize whatever’s holding it open.”

“Gateways,” the zebra interrupted, “follow a very simple rule. Natural gateways will stay open unless a force is applied to close them; as soon as that force goes away, the gateway opens again. The opposite is true of unnatural ones.”

“So we just need to knock out whatever’s holding this one open,” Allie said.

“Exactly.”

“You said that was the good news. What’s the bad news?” Colgate asked.

“Except for Allie, this is the most dangerous assignment you’ve seen, and you’re too inexperienced for it. If I had the choice, I would leave you here, but, frankly, I’m up against a wall. We all are.”

“That’s not comforting to hear,” Cloudchaser said.

“The truth hurts,” Foxglove said with a shrug. “We’re going to have our meetings here from now on. It’s indoors, it’s hidden, and this building makes a nice base of operations. All these underground areas would be great for defense.”

“We’re not going to need to do that, though. Right?”

“Who’s to say? Better to have a fortress you never use, though.”

“You speak like you’re preparing for something serious,” the zebra said.

Foxglove sighed and nodded. “Every town is gearing up for a battle to be brought to them, and, if nothing changes, exactly that will happen. Discord will envelope the country in a few months if we let him.”

“Won’t he overextend himself?” Allie asked. “There are Datura colonies all over the country, not even including Canterlot.”

“It’s not overextension, though. It’s dividing and conquering.”

“Keep in mind that Trottingham is already a ghost town,” Colgate said. “Did anyone do anything about all the unused airships there, or are they all still lying around for Discord to take?”

“Luna hoof-picked a team to protect Trottingham, all its precious ships included.”

“I don’t think taking over Equestria as easy as you made it sound,” Allie said.

“I didn’t try to make it sound easy,” Foxglove said. “It’s hard to divide up a country and take it over piecemeal, even for someone with much more focus and discipline than Discord, and we’re not going to make anything easy for him.”

“We might,” Flitter said. “We don’t know hardly anything.”

“Of course you don’t. That’s the purpose of these meetings.” She slid off her table. “Allie, I want you to show Colgate some basic defensive spells. I’m going to coach the pegasi on flying techniques.” Foxglove smiled at Cloudchaser’s bafflement.

Colgate got into bed mentally exhausted, and in better shape than Flitter and Cloudchaser, for whom the training had been as difficult as it had been humiliating. Foxglove, an earth pony, was able to explain and correct aerial techniques that were beyond them, and Flitter looked close to defeated weeping for the final hours when Colgate saw her.

Their plight, however, was not her concern. All day, Allie showed her spells she knew of, but had never practiced, with a stiff and serious demeanor that put Colgate on edge. It was clear to her that Allie was preoccupied, but Colgate could think of only one reason.

Since discovering her initial deception, Colgate knew Allie had been looking for ways to hurt her, and Spike’s death presented another perfect opportunity. With no clueless pawn between them, the distance was suddenly closed, and Allie had no reason to attempt discretion or subtlety. For their first day of training, Colgate imagined, Allie was sizing her up.

She would need to act first, while Allie was still forming her plan, but she would have to be careful. They were teammates, and anything crippling would leave the Ponyville Datura down its second most experienced member.

“It’s not fair,” she murmured. She wasn’t important enough to use the Datura to protect herself as Allie was, so, though she expected something devastating and direct for herself, she had to find a way to hurt Allie obliquely, and fast.

She fell asleep full of potential plans to shut Allie down, at least for a time.

They congregated in the spa as normal and waited restlessly for ten o’ clock, the hour of Spike’s burial. Foxglove tried to rouse them with talk of training, but a somber pall kept them from taking to anything with much vigor, and she eventually let them alone.

When the hour came to depart, they did so in a thin line, leaving the spa and circling north around the mayor’s office. Flitter led them slowly, and they could see other small groups of ponies plodding through the streets. Pegasi, out of respect, walked with everyone else, their wings folded at their sides. The cemetery was on the northern border of the town, shaded under a big windmill.

Half the town had set up by a simple gravesite, and as Flitter and her crew joined, Berry Punch approached them, dewy-eyed. They exchanged no words, but hugged each other lightly; they only knew each other through Spike, but, in that moment, it didn’t matter. Berry led them to a spot in the back, and they stood with her and Derpy, a shivering, gray wreck.

There was no conversation as the three funeral directresses, the same from Lyra’s funeral, helped set up. It had been the mayor’s decision that Spike should be seen to quickly, to give Discord’s move as little dignity as possible, and—though she was not aware of it—to give the resident Daturas the closure they would need to not be distracted in their coming task.

The lack of preparation time showed clearly. While the undertaker made final adjustments to the floral arrangements and the tables that held them, the directresses spoke in hushed voices with the priest. Most Ponyville funerals were secular, but Spike was no pony; it was Derpy, who had known him the longest after the Elements left, who was the deciding voice behind whether to give him a religious burial.

When the music began, Flitter fell to pieces. Berry and Derpy had put together a small slideshow of Spike and his friends on Twilight’s ancient projector, pictures of things Flitter had heard about, but seldom seen. Weekly poker games that stopped for the Datura, walks in the park, a picture of him enthusiastically riding on Allie’s back that incited a few stifled chuckles from the crowd. Colgate did not appear.

When the music stopped, leaving the pictures to endlessly cycle, the priest delivered his eulogy, a warm rendition of Spike’s short life, beginning with his hatching, an occasion worthy of celebration in its own right.

“Our goddess and ruler, Princess Celestia, has graced this world with the ability to celebrate those we love,” the priest said softly, but not sadly. “And the ability to graciously depart. From her Edicts on the Nature of Things, she writes, ‘We cannot know when our time will come, so we must choose. Fear, or life.’ Let us choose life this day, in the name of Celestia, our goddess.”

Derpy sobbed, and he looked at the casket for a moment before stepping aside. He regarded her with patience as she shakily made her way to the podium, her muzzle dripping.

“I-I-I don’t really know w-what to say up h-here. I d-d-d-don’t even know why I did it. I don’t have any… anything prepared. I g-guess I just wanted to say goodbye one last time.” She closed her eyes and collected herself. “So, goodbye, Spike. You were the best anyone’s ever been to me. You were… you were patient, and brave, and kind. Guess hanging out with the Elements of Harmony really rubbed off on you. I…” She looked at the audience, watching her politely, and teared afresh. Without another word, she ran from the podium and out into the field back towards town.

Flitter’s eyes cleared briefly, and then snapped open at the sight of the next pony at the lectern.

“Spike was probably one of the best friends I’ve had, and without a doubt the best friend I’ve had in Ponyville,” Colgate said. She stood stiff and straight, as composed as Flitter had ever seen her, as she surveyed the crowd, looking through each and every one of them. “I’ll never forget his loyalty. He stood by me, never once believing ill of me, even when he should have. Through every tribulation, he trusted in my intentions. He had the peculiar ability to see a pony’s core character without trying, and I think that must be why he was able to be my rock. Whatever the reason, a friend like that is hard to come by, and even harder to lose. I actually considered not coming up to speak, but I think his memory deserves my words, and my thanks.” She sighed. “The most trustworthy pony, or dragon, I’ve ever met in my life. In my darkest hours, all of them, I knew he would be there to support me.” She took a moment to look at the open casket and the heavy, crystalline vial within. “And I know it wasn’t just me. Thank you.”

Many ponies clapped, many others cried, and Flitter only watched, speechless. So she remained for the final words, the benediction, the blessing, and the Daturas' departure past an informal reception.

“There isn’t enough time in the day for me to tell you how much, and in how many ways, I hate you,” Allie said over a late lunch.

Colgate looked through her and nodded. She had already anticipated Allie’s reaction.

“You have a sick, sick mind, Colgate, and it honestly freaks me the hell out at how easy you make it look.”

“You could have offered a counter-eulogy,” Colgate said. “You chose not to. Face it, Allie, the only pony with a hoof in her mouth here is you.”

“It takes real evil for someone to use their friend’s funeral like a bargaining chip.”

“My point exactly.”

“You don’t see it. You just don’t see it.”

“I see you.”

Allie rose, her horn glowing for a second, but then sat back down. “Believe it or not, this isn’t why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Really?”

She looked at her plate of food for a long time before continuing. “I don’t know what I did to you. I know what happened later, but not what got me here in the first place. That doesn’t matter, though. Life is so short, and there’s a chance it’s about to get shorter for us in particular. It’s not just you, Colgate; it’s this. This whole messed up situation, I hate it. I hate it every day of my life, and I’m sorry.”

Colgate looked at her, concealing her surprise.

“I don’t want to butt heads with you anymore. I’m tired of worrying and second-guessing myself trying to figure you out, and I’m tired of… I’m just tired. I’m sorry for whatever it is I did to you.”

Colgate waited nearly a full minute before speaking, her words chosen with great care. “I know what I’m supposed to say here. I can practically hear my therapist urging me to say I forgive you.” She averted her eyes for a moment. “Allie, I can’t forgive you. But…” She took a deep breath. “I would be comfortable with this being the last exchange between us.”

“Non-aggression,” Allie said.

“Non-aggression. I won’t touch you, and you won’t touch me. We’ll do our jobs, we’ll work together, and that’ll be it. Professional mares, like we’re supposed to be.”

Allie smiled. “I like that.”

They shook hooves.

Hoofington was in sight, but about a day away, and the arguments hadn’t stopped. Whooves spoke with tense, excruciating civility in the Elements’ company, but the ship was too small to hide all of his conflicts, and they sometimes heard single bellows from his coltfriend, met with measured derision.

So it had been for the entire short trip, and while tensions mounted within earshot, but never in front of them, Twilight could feel her own atrophying grief give way to new indignation.

The wave broke at eleven o’ clock, the night before touching down in a new city.

“Rainbow Dash, can we talk?” Twilight asked. The group had spread as best they could in their storage space, and Twilight and Rainbow had to cross the deck, a recently-emptied shouting arena, for a more private hold. Among tight bundles of grasses and flowers, stacked floor to ceiling along each wall, they sat, waiting for the other to say something.

“I had a flashback that day we were captured.”

Rainbow nodded.

“And when we went aboard, I felt like I was ready to die.”

“Wait, why are you telling me this now? I mean, no offense, but why now? Why not earlier?”

“Rainbow Dash, I was lying on the floor. I let myself fall over, because there was nothing left. The ship was—is—gone, and we were prisoners. Everyone was trying to figure something out, and you said I’d probably had a flashback, which I had. Then you said—I remember it well—‘Good timing, Twilight. It’s not like we need you or anything’.”

Rainbow paused. “Uh…”

Twilight held up a hoof. “Do you know why it’s not nice of somepony to be sarcastic about somepony else’s traumas, Rainbow Dash?”

“Hey.”

“When somepony typically suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, has a flashback, they’re often at their most vulnerable in the few minutes to hours after the episode. They’re often left shaken to their core, because they just relived something that they cannot, cannot forget, that they would like to.”

“Okay, I get it,” Rainbow said. “Let’s not make this a lesson, all right?”

“I thought you might need it, though, considering how incredibly, amazingly insensitive you were.” She chuckled and shook her head. “And you forgot it right after. It didn’t even register with that brain of yours what you were saying. Just some automatic response, to berate my problems.”

“Twilight, I get it.”

“No, no, I don’t think you do,” Twilight said, hopping up and grabbing a bundle of white flowers. “I… I think…” She stopped, and crumpled the flowers up. “I don’t really know what else to say, actually.”

“Can I talk now? Are you done being condescending?”

“Go ahead and defend yourself.”

Rainbow frowned, thought for a moment, and sighed. “No, I think I’ll go flying instead. Or maybe I’ll go to bed. I can do those things, Twilight, because I don’t have my head wedged up my butt.” She went to the door, not turning around, and her words faded up to the deck. “I’ve been thinking the marefriend I cheated on is gonna die sometime soon, and you don’t hear me freaking out about it.”

They landed in the late morning on a sprawling, full airship lot, the first sign, Octavia said, that her town was prospering. It was no surprise. The cloud convoy had rejuvenated Hoofington first, and, without the concerns for water that metropolises like Manehattan and Applewood faced, its ponies and government had time to erect solid bridges, repair buildings and monuments, and reinvent the sewer system.

Their first view was the crowded, turreted government quarter, its multi-point buildings rising like unicorn horns in a crowd of lesser domes and minarets to catch the early sun. Behind, the broken, pale river marked the wealthy portion of town, sprouting with ornate chimneys and cruciform weathervanes, black stars atop clay red roofs. A blue brick clock tower tilted on one corner, webbed with cables to an idle crane.

Toward the center, opulence surrendered to a florid puddle of grass, spindled with pathways and speckled with flower gardens. Fountains and statues shone like waypoints for ponies on their morning walks, some dressed up and some in just their fur, occasional parasols moving like poppies on their own tiny currents. Outside, like a wart inside the park’s concavity, a dark purple lemniscate sat alone at the epicenter of rippling tiers of houses, both sides with iris windows to stare back at the clear sky.

“That is the museum,” Octavia had said as they passed over.

“You said your friend was the curator, right?” Fluttershy asked.

“Lumb, yes. I wonder what happened to him.”

While they stretched their legs on the tarmac, Whooves and his coltfriend stepped off, ice palpable between.

“Thanks for the ride,” Whooves said without looking. Rarity tried to supplement his words with a grateful smile of her own, but the stallion just grunted, opening a hatch on the ship’s side.

“We will find a hotel first,” Octavia said.

“I want to at least see your house,” Rainbow said. “Like, from a distance or something.”

“If it will stop you all from pestering me about it, I will walk you to the beginning of my grounds. Any further incursion will be yours alone.”

“You really have a chip on your shoulder, don’t you?” Whooves asked.

“Ah thought Ah saw you walkin’ away,” Applejack said.

He chuckled. “We see what we want to, eh, Applejack?”

“Ah don’t dislike ya, Doctor,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Just find ya a little tirin’.”

“Some ponies call it ‘engaging’.”

“What do you want?” Octavia asked.

“Ouch, my heart, Miss Octavia.” Seeing their unamused expressions, he cleared his throat. “I was hoping I could get a little tour as well, that’s all it is. I’ve not been here before.”

“What about your coltfriend?” Rarity asked. Lowering her voice, she added to Fluttershy, “as if I can’t tell already.”

“Done and dusted. I’ve said what I need to say, and there’s nothing more to it. That brute will return to his life of salty air and hard labor, free to pursue the obsolescence he craves without me.”

“Now who has the chip on his shoulder?” Big Mac asked.

“Great minds, brother Apple. Come, why tarry on this old lot, when there’s a new city to be explored!”

Rarity had never told a taxi to follow another one before, and she did so with queer excitement, like she was a character in a mystery novel. They traveled the main roads to the hotel, ignoring for the time the branching rivulets of hoofpaths, around the government area and down a steep thoroughfare into a paved valley.

Their hotel dominated its corner beside the river, a four-story gingerbread-colored keystone to upscale restaurants, bookstores, and nondescript office buildings. Balconies covered the outer walls under crowning arches, decorated with modest stone swirls and separated by hanging lantern brackets. Through a frosted glass revolving door, they entered into a bright and spotless vestibule, their hooves clicking on the tile aspect of a massive compass rose. Some ponies looked up from their newspapers, many not stifling the recognition that broke onto their faces.

They checked in with Celestia’s bank note, reluctantly deciding on three rooms, and for Whooves to stay with them until he found his own lodging. On the second floor, up a dark green stairwell and down a wide corridor, their rooms were not together, and they crowded into the first one they reached for Twilight to deposit their bags, which she’d been holding in limbo since they were captured. She sighed and slumped to the ground as she released her holding spell, and Pinkie rubbed her back affectionately while the others gathered at the window to gaze upon a sparkling, empty pool.

“So, house?” Rarity asked.

“We may as well get it out of the way,” Octavia said.

The river was only a block away, down a set of crooked stone stairs built into the sloping ground. They took a cobbled hoofpath between a set of august buildings and an empty street, the smell of the river hanging in the air thickly. On the other side, a dark, spiked chapel threw twin spires into the sky, Luna and her moon intermingled in the stained glass windows.

The river was widest where they were, and they had to cross a threadlike bridge beside a slow moving stream of traffic, cars and carts both. On each stanchion, there glistened, half submerged, pastel pink designs that Twilight identified as repellent sigils. By the bridge’s end, she had realized their function: likely, she said, to keep mosquitoes and other insects from breeding in the standing river water.

On the other side, they walked on a slanted sidewalk past the spiked chapel and through a twisting network of smaller roads into a lightly wooded neighborhood. Mansions crowded their backs to them outside the trees’ cover, and they were able to move directly through a wedge of untended lawn between two metal latticeworks until reaching a different, clearer path.

“I see what you mean about getting around here,” Rainbow said.

“The main road would eventually lead to my house, but we would have needed to go around several more residences first,” Octavia said, not looking back. Her head was fixed forward, and her steps did not falter or waver, even as they crossed a shorter bridge of wood and rope over a narrow gap of fifteen feet. Along its length, they could see a patch of discolored ground.

“What do you make of that?” Applejack asked. “Clearin’ space fer another sigil maybe?”

“I remember there being a house there. It probably fell through.”

Rarity moaned sympathetically.

“What is this?” Octavia stopped, and they followed her eyes to a parked limousine, unfamiliar to all but herself and Rarity. Spotless black windows gleamed in a black shell over silver wheel arches, and a golden butterfly perched gently on the license plate.