A Beginner's Guide to Heroism

by LoyalLiar

First published 6th of May, 2016

A unicorn wizard must come to terms with what it means to be a hero, and whether that choice is worth abandoning his magical mentor's teachings.

I hope that you’ve opened this particular tome looking for a guide to the life of a traveling hero, presented through the story of a young unicorn rising up to defeat the disembodied spirit of a powerful and evil archmage.

If you’re not interested, you’re in the wrong section of the library for cookbooks, and for the record, I’m very sorry for the life you must live.

My name is Mortal Coil, and this is the beginning of the most important story in the history of Equestria.

A Price of Loyalty story.

Foreword

Greetings.

The book you hold in your hooves, wings, mouth, magic, non-Euclidean tentacles, or sundry gripping appendages contains the story of a young unicorn framed for murder and driven from his home rising up to defeat the disembodied spirit of a powerful and cruel nemesis. If you picked this tome up by mistake, I would encourage you to stay anyway. This story is more interesting than whatever you were actually looking for. I guarantee it.

Just make a note to have a strongly-worded conversation with the nearest librarian once you’re done.

Those of you who did come looking for my story deliberately may be aware that I have something of a reputation as a wizard. That being said, this little tome of mine is not titled A Beginner’s Guide To Wizardry. It is not an arcane treatise or, Celestia forbid, a textbook—I don't measure the quality of my work by the frequency of readers falling asleep, nor the physical mass of this book for use as “Exhibit B” in a murder trial. As a result, I’ve tried my best to keep my rote explanations of magical theory to the strictly narratively necessary. If you are in search of vast arcane power, I would encourage you to seek out a mentor like Celestia, rather than a book.

I should also tell you before I begin that what you are about to read is not meant to be a perfectly accurate record. I don't remember exactly every word spoken all those years ago. What I did capture accurately are the broad events and the mood. I might not have said exactly what you are about to read, but I was just as suave and charismatic as I seem.

Now that we’ve gotten all that tedious dithering out of the way, allow me to introduce myself. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, and the very real risk of running out of ink, I will refrain from listing my titles, save one. I was, and remain, a necromancer. If the concept of such a pony fulfilling a title like ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Heroism’ is beyond your imagination, I implore you to read further; after all, how else can I be expected to change your mind?

My name is Mortal Coil, and this is my story.

I - The Would-Be-Hero

I was born the year Equestria was founded. I’m not sure of the exact day since the Crystal Calendar uses a different length year. Just as you likely did, I grew up hearing stories about Hurricane and Star Swirl and Platinum. The difference is that in my case they were all still alive, albeit getting older and a not insubstantial distance away. As I mentioned, I was born far to the north of Equestria in a place called the Crystal Union; a place that sounds beautiful on paper, but absolutely does not live up to what ponies imagine.

The crystal ponies may not have paved their streets with gold (which is good, because as any alchemist worth their salt lick will remind you, gold is extremely soft), but diamond and amethyst put the Union in a close second place for the title of ‘imaginary paradise’. Far up in the frozen north, protected by a shield of powerful weather magic, ponies with glittering coats just as shiny as the road made for a beautiful sight, wandering around a city surrounded by ice. At its center, a mighty spire of diamond cast its shadow over the various districts of my lifelong home, at once a shining beacon of opulence and the gnomon on the world’s most glorious sundial.

I’m certain that all sounds breathtaking, but it was also excruciatingly painful to look at in broad daylight, which did a great job of ruining the effect. Crystal ponies invented sunglasses for exactly this reason.

While we are on the topic of things that ruin the image of a utopian city built almost entirely of precious gems, imagine a group of crooked city guards shaking down ponies to line their own pockets. Union City, the visually glorious jewel I’ve been describing, had a real problem with corruption. Walk the streets any day of the year and you could likely find a bunch of young guards functioning more like members of a street gang than soldiers without much trouble, collecting ‘taxes’ and riotously wasting their ill-gotten income.

My story begins with three such unpleasant wastes of breath, whom I encountered while they were shaking down a filly just old enough to be working her family’s stall in the big market square surrounding the base of the Crystal Spire. Halfway through some veiled threat about ‘not wanting something bad to be happening to her family business,’ their ears perked at an unexpected, suave voice addressing them.

“Guardsponies,” said the interloper. He was tall for a unicorn, but with a slender physique. His steady gaze meant business. A fitted black coat covered his naturally pale blue fur, its raised collar and red trim dancing ever so slightly in the magically warmed breeze of Union City. A rough forward-styled mane of an icy blue brought out the determined focus in his eyes, which in turn accentuated his every firm step. Even to a laypony, it was clear he was a wizard, and the way he carried himself made it clear he was one of some talent. The guardsponies, however, knew him better than that. The undeniably handsome stallion of seventeen was the personal apprentice of Union City’s irascible archmage, and a rapidly rising power in the city. He was also known for his benevolence, and his sometimes aggressive disapproval of police corruption.

I am being entirely serious. I looked good, and I wouldn’t emphasize it so much if it didn’t matter to the story.

Once I had the corrupt guards’ attention, I offered them the most sarcastic smile I could possibly muster. It was a good entrance, if the way their heads whipped around wearing shocked and worried expressions was anything to go by. The filly they’d been extorting quivered behind them, not yet realizing that her ‘glorious savior’ and ‘hero’, as I liked to style myself, had arrived.

Her focus remained on the bullies: Iconoclast, Emerald, and—I’m really not kidding—Side Effect. Much like yours truly, her parents had followed the proud Crystal tradition of giving half-breed non-crystal foals really awful names, though I still had her beat. Speaking of which…

“Mortal Coil. Funny we should run into you here.” Iconoclast was a dim-witted mass of crystal pony crammed roughly into the shape of a ball who thought I hadn’t figured out what they were up to. He had a ratty mane—something of an achievement, given it was made of stone—and when he spoke, he sounded not unlike a normal pony who had been punched hard enough to turn his muzzle concave.

“I don’t think you understand what funny means, Iconoclast. Would you like me to explain? Out of all the ponies in the square you could shake down, you decided to go for the most innocent helpless filly. What are you, filly? Six? Seven?” She didn’t answer me, and as self-absorbed as my younger self was, I carried straight on in my monologue without even so much as noticing the lack of a reply.

I’m sorry you have to put up with him, by the way; I swear he gets better.

“I doubt she has any meaningful money on her right now, since her parents aren’t here to look out for it. If you had chosen to be quiet and find some other merchant, you’d probably have the shards you want and be gone by now. But instead you decided to ‘take candy from a baby’, almost literally, and now you’ve run into me. How does that make you feel? Sad? Terrified?”

“We’re not afraid of you, Mortal,” Emerald responded in the utmost of eloquence, sneering as he spoke.

As if a button had been pressed, a layer of sarcastic mirth fell away from my face. “Don’t call me that.”

“Mortal. Coil.”

I forced myself to take a moment and control my expression at the use of my full, given name. ‘Mortal Coil’ wasn’t a name my parents gave me out of endearment. Once my face was back to calm confidence, I continued. “I’d love to educate you on proper manners, but I don’t have time to hurl you through any walls today. So can we skip to the part where you stop harassing foals and go home?”

Thinking back, I probably told them that a lot—not just ‘them’ as in these three particular ponies, but the lot of the Union Militia. Every one of them was corrupt (the decent ones having been shown the door fairly quickly), and I saw that corruption as the ideal opportunity for me to earn a reputation as a heroic defender of the downtrodden masses.

The three I faced that day were nothing special; just recurring rivals for a part of my life story that, frankly, isn’t as interesting as what I’m beginning now. Suffice it to say they were villains that I’d already surpassed, and they were just too stupid to realize it. I’m absolutely certain of the latter fact because I wasn’t joking in the threat I recorded above. On more than one occasion, I had hurled one of them through a solid wall. On one particular occasion, I also managed to topple the attached building.

Equestrian architecture may not be as shiny as the crystal style, but its stability lets it easily look down on the competition. The sword of Damulecles has nothing on the stress caused by the collapse of the average crystal roof.

In spite of my threats, Iconoclast stepped toward me. “Wintershimmer isn’t here to save you, Mortal. And you’re only good for, what, two spells today? Three? You can’t take all of us. I bet you’ve got a lot more money in those saddlebags than the kid does.”

Wintershimmer the Complacent, the stallion so bravely being alluded to was, in order of ascending importance: my mentor, the seated archmage of the Crystal Union, and the de facto ruler of the same nation by virtue of the fear he held over the rest of the ruling council. It didn’t hurt that, as perhaps the strongest mage in the world, his magic was indisposable to Queen Jade.

I was carrying a few thousand shards (the ‘bits’ of the Crystal Union) in magical supplies that rightfully belonged to the aforementioned ninety-seven-year-old stallion. If I showed up late, he was not likely to be happy. And when an archmage—particularly one with a reputation as the evil archmage of the modern era—isn’t happy, the unpleasant things that start cropping up can be… creative.

Tragically, that concern barely crossed my mind. At that moment, I was more concerned with the fact that these three bullies were afraid of Wintershimmer, and not of me. For a mage, reputation is the most powerful magic. I didn’t like mine being ignored.

I lowered my head, glaring at them along the point of my horn. “Just let the kid the go and walk away.”

Side Effect walked up to me, reaching up to press a hoof against my chest. She was strong, but between unicorns, brute force wasn’t exactly an intimidating concern. “Aww, we only want to talk. Why don’t you make some time for us, Mortal? You know, old friends and all.”

“Last chance, Side Effect.”

She ignored me, tracing her hoof partway up my neck and onto my jawline, before I swatted it away. “That’s no fun,” she pouted. “Take a load off. It looks like those bags are heavy. We just wanted to hear about what you were studying under Wintershimmer. You know, since you stole my apprenticeship?” The feigned coyness dissolved rapidly into bitterness, like herbs for indigestion in an otherwise perfect glass of crystal berry wine. I still don’t get why the geezer chose you. You can’t be a wizard if you can only cast three spells.”

“I only need one.” I let the threat hang as my temper brought a light on my horn. It took a carefully sucked down breath and a lot of willpower to prevent my magic from bursting into the unwanted spell.

Taking a brief aside from the excitement of what was about to become an outright street brawl, something you need to know about magic is that it works exactly the opposite of almost every other physical phenomenon in the world. In matter, opposites attract. But in magic, like attracts like. Once a unicorn gets a spell to start casting, the actual challenge is stopping it. For most unicorns, whose horns coil with a pretty big space between the grooves, that isn’t a problem. There’s lots of space that isn’t filled with mana to insulate the power flowing through the grooves. Spells are sometimes less powerful if your groove is at eighteen or twenty degrees up from the slope of your forehead. At fifteen, you’re a little stronger, but from time to time, you might ‘flare up’ and put too much energy in a spell. It leaves you feeling physically drained, it makes you really hungry, and if it happens too much, you’ll pass out.

At nine degrees, I flared with every spell beyond extremely basic telekinesis: lifting teacups and books, opening doors, that sort of thing. It meant that, at least in theory, I was the strongest unicorn of my generation. It also meant that I got to be the strongest unicorn for all of three spells a day, before whoever happened to be next in line took that title over my unconscious body.

After one spell, I had that sort of sluggish feeling in my legs that you get when you’re midway through a cold. Two left me feeling like I’d won a championship game of hoofball while under the effects of said cold. And, as I mentioned, the third spell usually only resulted in a mild throbbing headache. The problem was that said headache was felt several hours later, when I woke up from a sudden nap.

Since she was right about my inability to waste a spell, I offered a smile in return. “Okay, first of all, your boss does the creepy feigned sexual attention thing a lot better than you. Leave that routine to ponies who are actually attractive. Secondly, we’ve been having this stupid argument for fourteen years. Being a wizard isn’t about brute force, it’s about quick thinking. Cunning. Solving problems that other ponies can’t. That’s why it’s called magic, and not just arcana. And frankly, it’s why I’m a wizard, and you’re…” I waved a hoof at them as I tried to think of a word. “Part of a pathetic excuse for a street gang? The beginning of one of those circuses foals talk about running away to join? Although you might make a good bearded mare, Side—”

Iconoclast stomped his hoof. Of the group, he was the only one big enough to actually intimidate me. Believe it or not, being punched in the face by a crystal pony hurts a lot more than the same hit from the squishier kind of pony. Or at least, that’s what I thought before I learned about pegasus magic, but that’s another story. In Iconoclast’s case, I let my pale blue magic accumulate on my horn and shook my head. “Uh-uh.” To the credit of his determination, he kept trying to get closer. To the credit of his friends, both Side Effect and Emerald grabbed his shoulders to hold him back.

“He can’t take all three of us!” the trio’s leader wheezed.

I forced in another slow breath, guessing that the luxuries of slow breathing and calm thought were about to disappear. I had something to prove, and I had too much pride to walk away. Unfortunately, what I didn’t yet have was a plan. Nevertheless, I decided to open my mouth. “Wanna bet?”

If I made a list statements that have caused me the physical pain in my life, those words would be third, behind ‘I didn’t do it’ and ‘who asked you, geezer’. Unlike both of those statements, however, the pain here was thankfully immediate. Iconoclast roared, pushed past his lankier crystal friend and his vaguely feminine companion, and lunged at me with his hoof.

The spell I chose to respond with was a simple stunning charm, Numbskull’s Neural Narcolepsy. My horn flared up, making my eyes water with its sheer power, and I felt the familiar tug on my forelegs as my magic gathered. Then the roaring beam—which other ponies would probably cast as a single truncated bolt, apathetic to the idea of making magic look magical—slammed into Iconoclast. Exactly as intended, the spell overloaded his control over his limbs, leaving him effectively paralyzed and flailing.

What I had not accounted for was his momentum. Neural Narcolepsy was designed by a pacifist, so it exerted no physical force whatsoever. The result was that instead of being punched by a bulky, slightly-overweight crystal unicorn, I was tackled.

Not exactly my shining moment of glory.

If I hadn’t just cast a spell, I probably would have pushed him off me without too much trouble. It wouldn’t be too hard for a decently fit unicorn my age. Unfortunately, I’d just cast a spell. And dramatically more unfortunately, I had cast that spell with a horn whose coiling was only inclined at nine degrees.

My mind leapt into a shrewd and rather urgent analysis of my situation. I’d taken down the biggest physical threat, but I was down a spell. Falling unconscious in the street would get me in trouble with Wintershimmer for being late, but the Crystal Guard would probably beat him to it, and unlike the three cronies I was facing, Commander Silhouette was somepony I didn’t want to pick a fight with. Hopefully they didn’t know that... The point is that it left me with one spell for two ponies. Direct stunning wouldn’t cut it. Plus I was pinned, and a sitting duck.

“Looks like he’s stuck, Emerald,” Side Effect observed, smiling the way a cat does when it sees a mouse.

Emerald shrugged, speaking with the remotest amount of eloquence. “I dunno. He could probably get up if he wanted to. But it seems Mortal is better as a cushion than a wizard.” Of the two, he was the bigger threat and the bigger priority. For one thing, he knew how to cast a shield. “What do you wanna do, Side Effect?”

“Eh, let’s knock him out and drag him back to the garrison. He started the fight, and I’m sure the Commander would be happy to see him.”

Crap, I thought to myself, probably in stronger words.

“Yeah, after he blew up the wall of the palace, he’s got what’s coming to him.”

That time, my thoughts were definitely in stronger words. Out loud, I protested “It was an alchemy accident! They happen!”

Emerald’s raised hoof glistened the color of his namesake in the overhead sun, which only added to the repetitive appearance of his coat, mane, eyes, and because of his crystal body, shadow. “I agree, Mortal. Accidents do happen.”

My horn flared again. One advantage of the nine-degree coiling beyond brute force was that I could cast fast, as the magic already in the horn would actively help to pull more magic out of my skull. In this case, the spell wouldn’t have taken a long time to cast anyway. There weren’t any complicated pieces of magic to assemble, only a need for brute force.

For the second time that day, Iconoclast’s paralyzed body managed to bull rush an unsuspecting pony.

Pleasantly lightened from the burden of a fairly large crystal pony, I stood up onto unpleasantly shaky and fatigued legs. The edges of my vision blurred from some combination of exhaustion and a splitting headache. My horn throbbed with my heartbeat. And, perhaps worst of all, liquid was spilling from my saddlebags down the the sides of my coat.

I don’t remember exactly what I said to Side Effect, but it didn’t really matter. I started to scamper upright. She had the upper hoof, which lasted for almost two full steps toward me before she brought it down from its raised position on the crown of my skull, just narrowly missing my horn. I collapsed to the ground again.

“You going to come easily, Mortal, or am I gonna have to bash you into the street and carry you?”

I hardly paid any attention to the question. As I lay on the gemstone street, my eyes caught a set of hooves that seemed strangely close by. Each set of their steps was accompanied by a clack of bone on the glittering pavement, as the end of a severed spine was used as a walking stick.

“Do you feel that, guardsmare?” a rather harsh, wheezing, elderly voice asked. “The chill on your neck? Inside your bones?” Three hooves stepped forward, and then the bone struck again. “Do you know what it means?”

“W-W-Wintershimmer…”

My mentor stopped his approach standing beside me with his horn flaring gold just below his receding hairline. Its vibrant glow accentuated the shadow cast by his prominent brow, leaving his eyes radiating a similar molten yellow in the midst of a shadowed face, and only serving to highlight the gaunt cavities of his ancient cheeks. In summary, his face looked like a skull—only without the perpetual smile. “That feeling is my magic wrapped very tightly around your soul.”

“Sir, I was only—”

“If you have to beg for mercy, you aren’t worth it.” The glow on his horn extinguished, and I half expected Side Effect to fall over—effectively dead despite a still-beating heart. Instead, her hooves lurched to her chest, and apparently satisfied at her survival, she rushed over to Emerald, hoping to drag him away.

Wintershimmer the Complacent lifted his left leg, directing the severed dragon spine that he used as both a staff and a walking stick in her direction. The dragon’s skull on its head opened wide and roared at her; Side Effect froze in her tracks and turned.

“He came at us!” Tears of utter terror accompanied the desperate plea. “He wanted to play hero!”

“You should be grateful to him, then,” Wintershimmer replied calmly. “If he had half as much punctuality or respect as he has a craving for praise, he would have the decency to kill you and prevent any further delays to my schedule.”

Side Effect swallowed, and stumbled backward as the old mage paced toward her, leaning forward to look her tightly in the eye. “Coil’s business is my business. Do not disrupt me again.”

Side Effect nodded, stepped backwards outside of Wintershimmer’s reach, and ran.

And then he turned on me.

“Hello, Master.”

“Apprentice.”

If his speech to Side Effect hadn’t made his mood clear, that single word dispelled any hopes I may have held. He only called me that when he was in a worse-than-usual mood.

“I can’t help but notice you’ve sullied your jacket,” he observed, rather flatly. With the forehoof not dedicated to holding his staff, Wintershimmer smoothed the lapel of his nearly identical garment: pure black silk with a red stripe slightly thicker than my own tracing all the hems. It had a collar we usually worn up to shield the icy winds of Union City, and long sleeves for the forelegs, but a short end that only partially concealed our flanks and cutie marks—my seven-pointed star, and his seven-pointed snowflake.

And they were absolutely not robes, because unlike some wizards, we maintained enough professionalism not to confuse our work apparel with our bedclothes.

“Yes, Wintershimmer. I…” In the process of raising my hoof to gesticulate, I found that the fatigue and the mental drain of two flared spells had not yet settled. I stumbled, and only managed to catch myself when my muzzle had fallen to mere inches from the street. “I’m sorry.”

His withered yellow gaze was never exactly sympathetic, but in typical Wintershimmer fashion, he refrained from raising his voice. “You cast a spell?” If you didn’t know him, you might make the mistake of thinking he was sympathetic to my dizziness.

I briefly considered telling him the truth. I followed that up by considering just how much I liked having my soul still attached to my body. “Yeah.”

The old stallion deepened his perpetual frown for a few moments before offering me a hoof. His coat was well cleaned, smooth and nicely trimmed, but it didn’t do much to hide the frailty I felt beneath his skin. When I’d balanced myself against his weight, he released me to stand on my own again. “You tax my patience making me repeat myself, but I will do so again because it seems you have not learned this basic lesson. Ignore them or kill them, either way stop allowing the guards to delay you.”

“What?” I shook my head firmly. “They’re annoying, stupid, and admittedly sleazy, but not evil. Everypony’s short on money; the guards are just—”

Wintershimmer seemed uninterested in hearing my logic. “Evil is the monster under an adult’s bed, Coil.” That was one of his favorite quotes, which I suspect he coined himself, and in retrospect it does an excellent job of describing the way he looked at the world. “Behavior like theirs is a burden on society. If the Union ever wants to surpass Equestria, we can’t tolerate encumbrance. Walk with me; I would rather not continue our discussion in the middle of the street, and we have more important things to pursue.”

“Right behind—” I glanced back to the filly cowering next to her little market stall. “Actually, can you give me just one minute?” I didn’t really give him the chance to answer, instead slowly approaching the filly. “Hey, kid, are you alright?”

“...mhm.” She still seemed nervous of me, hiding her shiny coated chin against her shoulder.

“I’m not going to hurt you. It’s okay now. Here, look,” I reached into the lapel of my jacket with my magic, and after a moment of disorientation from my previous casting, I pulled out a few hundred shards of pocket change. For the little filly, it was enough money to eat for weeks, though it meant little to an archmage’s apprentice. I counted out two hundred shards worth of the little gems and pressed the money toward her. “That should more than make up for whatever those guards took.” She stared at the money in awe, and I waited with a smile on my muzzle until she looked up at me.

“Thank you so much!”

“Just be sure to tell your parents that Coil the Wizard helped you out. That’s all the thanks I need.”

I adjusted my saddlebags, tightening the straps to keep whatever vessel had broken inside from spilling further. The pause also gave me a few much-needed seconds to collect my balance. When I finally looked up, Wintershimmer was already a few dozen strides up the street. The few crystal ponies still on the street after my confrontation with Iconoclast gave him a massive berth, fearful of his short temper and powerful magic. I rushed to follow as the gap behind him began to close.

“Must you nurse your reputation so shamelessly?”

“It’s no different than you ripping out souls. You saw how Side Effect nearly pissed herself when you showed up. I just happen to prefer being a ‘hero’ instead of ‘the evil archmage’.”

Wintershimmer sighed. “You can act whatever part in the grand play you want, Coil. That is your right as a mage. I only warn you not to let the morality that comes with being a ‘hero’ interfere with your reason. It is far better to be feared than loved.”

I coughed pointedly, and offered a slightly over-exaggerated gesture to my saddlebags. “So what do we need all this stuff for?”

Wintershimmer shook his head. “A discussion for more private quarters. Let’s review. What are the three cantrips of necromancy?”

I remember that question being the first sign that the day held something different. Wintershimmer occasionally quizzed me on basic thaumaturgy or divination, but I hadn’t heard a question that simple on Necromancy in going-on ten years. There just wasn’t any point.

“Come on, Wintershimmer. I’m not a foal anymore. Ask me about a compound spell or something, not basic cantrips—”

“You have already tried my patience once today.” His own impatience was made clear by his refusal to so much as let me finish my protest. “Do you think it wise to do so again?”

“Sorry…” I bit my cheek. “Seance is the magic of retrieving a dead soul from the afterlife, whether it be the Summer Lands, Tartarus, or a spirit loose in the greater Between. Animus is the magic of creating an artificial soul.” I swallowed once. “And Binding is, well, binding a soul into something in the physical world.”

Wintershimmer gave me no nod or affirmation, but it didn’t matter. We both knew I was right. “Describe the three Equine afterlives.”

That was a bit better. None of the hedge mages or self-taught unicorns in Union City could answer a question like that. And if what Wintershimmer had told me about the other archmages in Equestria was true, they probably couldn’t either.

“The Between is the magical counterpart to our physical world; a place comprised of pure mana. Souls don’t naturally travel to the Between. It takes magical interference like misapplication of a seance to leave somepony there.”

As I prepared to continue, we rounded the old cooper’s shop on the corner of Garnet Way. If you hadn’t seen the Crystal Spire in all its majestic glory, you might think it was the most amazing thing ever created, with its spire reaching up until it looked like it could touch the sun in the sky at high noon. You might be impressed by its massive sheets of flawless diamond, able to store more magical energy than any other single gemstone in the world. Or perhaps you’d be fascinated by the intricate crystal carvings on its underside, looking up from the open space between the massive legs that supported the building to see the recorded history of an ancient and proud civilization.

Poets would probably tell you that a sight like that never gets old, but since you aren’t a mare I’m trying to woo, I’m not going to pretend. I lived in that building for thirteen years. It got old.

“The Summer Lands is an enchanted region of the Between that reads the minds of its inhabitants and does its best to make them happy until they naturally fade away. Tartarus is functionally the opposite: a sort-of prison plane located deep underground in the area where the physical world and the Between overlap.”

Wintershimmer nodded. “If I wanted to go to the Summer Lands without dying, where would I go?”

At that, I smiled a little. “You can’t. It’s not like Tartarus. It isn’t a ‘place’. It doesn’t overlap the physical world.”

Wintershimmer turned to me with a deadly serious expression. Even to this this day I still see it sometimes in my dreams. “Nothing is ever impossible with magic. Only very difficult.”

“That’s the Journeymage’s Law,” I observed, guessing that he wanted me to keep up our usual walking ‘lectures’. “Though I’m inclined to call up the Master’s Corollary.”

The little snort that escaped Wintershimmer’s nostrils was among the old stallion’s most natural expressions of amusement. Like all such expressions, it was truncated and subdued, quickly giving way to his standard state of grim academic focus. “‘Many things are not worth doing.’ Well remembered. However, I disagree. Would you say that traveling bodily to the afterlife without the need for death is a worthless exercise?”

Mid-step, I froze. “This is hypothetical, isn’t it?” He didn’t answer me, at least not at first. I had to rush to catch up as he continued his surprisingly brisk arthritic pace. “Wintershimmer? Are we going to open the Between? Physically?”

I could hardly believe it. This kind of magic was unheard of. If Wintershimmer’s spell worked, he would be redefining necromancy as we knew it. Perhaps he’d even be redefining magic. My thoughts cascaded as months of my recent lessons on obscure portal theory and gravitation and necromancy all clicked into place.

When this spell was done, we were going to be legends.

By this time, Wintershimmer had reached one of the four enormous diamond legs that led up into the Crystal Spire—Union City’s ‘palace’, and the home of my mentor’s quarters and laboratories. Without particular note, he pressed his spinal staff against the doors, and they swung open. His weary knees began the long trek up the spiral stairs, and it wasn’t long before he spoke up again just to take his mind off the obvious pain. Ninety-seven years aren’t kind to a body.

“No, Coil. We are not going to open the Between.” When he said those words, I sighed a little in disappointment. Then he continued. “We are going to open the Summer Lands.”

II - Rogue's Gallery

“So, Wintershimmer,” I asked, striding through endless crystal hallways that sparkled like the innermost circle of Tartarus,“why do we want to open the Summer Lands? I understand the research potential, but… are you expecting to meet somepony famous?"

“Though I have no doubt speaking to my mentor will be just as amusing as it was when I taught you the art of seance, Coil, my interest is in something subtler."

The irony of what I said next isn’t lost on me now, but without the benefit of hindsight, I opened my mouth.“We’re a little short an audience for the heavy-hoofed foreshadowing. You can skip to the important bit."

He stopped, turned, and looked squarely at me. That might sound just a bit trite, but Wintershimmer wasn’t exactly good at making time for other ponies… or, for that matter, most of the other ways you’d usually express ‘common courtesy’.

"What is the natural lifespan of a unicorn?"

"Eighty years, usually."

"In three years, I will be one hundred,” he told me. “Draught of Phoenixblood and the Embryonic Fluid of Dragons can sustain a body only so long. Alchemy is a poor substitute for necromancy.” Then he smiled—which sent a shiver down my spine—turned back to his stride, and continued down the irritatingly shiny hallway. “Also, I have to imagine such a development will encourage the Queen that I am making progress on healing Smart Cookie."

Before you ask, yes, that Smart Cookie. But we’ll get to that at the proper time.

"If you’re going to become immortal, why do you even care about the Queen? Seems like you’d have a better time avoiding those stupid council meetings and working on research."

My mentor glanced back to me with sunken yellow eyes—did I mention his tight-skinned face bore more than a passing resemblance to a skull?—and frowned. “Stupid? You disappoint me. Three words, now."

It was almost an instinct. “Insignificant, petty, useless."

"Better words, but short-sighted.” Wintershimmer pivoted heavily, leaning into his dragon-spine staff to turn along the nearly indistinguishable hallways of the Crystal Spire. “You ought to be grateful that we have the opportunity to influence the Queen through her council. As I’m certain I’ve told you before, doing our work amongst the Crystals affords us a luxury we could never have under Hurricane or King Lapis."

"Who?"

Wintershimmer snorted. “That would be Queen Platinum’s late father, and I am certain the insufferable filly shares all her father’s shortcomings. You’ve learned the mage’s trade in luxury, Coil. In River Rock, the monarchy looked over my shoulder constantly. Leaving those fools behind was the best decision—” Mid-sentence, Wintershimmer found himself interrupted at an intersection of hallways when two of the Spire's maids pushed a trolley of small tarts and wine into his flank.

"Oh!” The one actually holding the cart’s handles first looked down at her little array of snacks.“I'm so sorry, I didn't—Archmage?!"

And there was the fear. She threw herself to the ground. “Please, forgive me, my lord. I'll be out of your way—"

Wintershimmer seemed inclined to forgive her without comment, judging by the fact that he moved his staff forward to support another step. However, in that moment, the other mare rushed up in front of him. “She's really sorry, Archmage. Please don't hurt her. She's got a little foal at home, and you'd crush her husband. She just wasn't looking. I know I was distracting her—"

Wintershimmer’s golden aura wrapped around that mare’s throat, picking her up off the ground even as he choked her. Her hooves grasped at the golden magic to no avail, and her hind legs fumbled for support, knocking over the trolley of snacks.

"I have already forgiven her,” Wintershimmer began, his even measured speech hiding a hint of rare anger that surpassed his usual irritation.“I don't expect perfection from a palace servant, and the cost of such a mistake is trivial. But you had the audacity to block my path and steal my attention with your hollow, useless words, when circumstances have already made me late. I would like to continue, but now I'm obligated to set an example, so that I can ensure this does not happen again. Pay attention, Coil.”

I swallowed hard; Wintershimmer hadn’t even turned as he spoke, and yet I sensed that his anger was directed just as much at me as it was this poor mare who wanted to protect her friend. "My time is more valuable than yours, maid. Infinitely so. In many mere minutes of my life, I've accomplished more than your entire existence is capable of amounting to. Do you understand that?"

Gasping for air, the maid nodded.

"Good.” He dropped her, her shimmering coat clinking against the floor. She gasped for air as he finished his point. “I have no intention of killing you; your life still has some value. I only need ensure that everypony else on the castle staff learns that lesson as well. I'm certain you will make excellent evidence.” And with that, he turned and walked away.

I watched, for just a moment. She seemed grateful, but I knew Wintershimmer too well to imagine 'evidence' was just a poorly chosen word for testimony. She gasped on the floor a few moments more, and then when she'd recovered, turned to ask her friend for help standing.

Her mouth moved without noise.

Horror filled her eyes as she tried to scream, but nothing emerged. Silently, beginning to shed tears, she turned to me.

"Coil, don’t tarry.” Wintershimmer scolded, tapping his spinal staff twice on the floor to ensure my attention. “She’s no more worth your time than mine."

I stomped my hoof. “No! You can’t just do that to somepony over talking too much!"

Rather than reply, Wintershimmer grabbed me by the lapel of my beautiful silk jacket and pulled me down the hall with his magic, growling as he went. Only when we were well out of earshot of the maids did he finally release his thoughts.

"I tolerate your foalish dream of popularity, Coil, because to this point it has not inconvenienced me. Now, however, you’re pushing dangerously close to a boundary that you do not want to cross. My reputation hinges on not showing that mare mercy over the pleadings of a colt with delusions of grandeur. So if you had chosen to continue your line of objection, I would have had to choose between my reputation and my legacy."

"Your legacy…?"

Wintershimmer rolled his sunken eyes. “As it seems I must remind you, you are my only apprentice, Coil. Unlike Star Swirl, I believe in quality over quantity. That is the only reason I tolerate your moralizing. That does not, however, mean that I will allow it to trot over my work. So if you think that mare deserves mercy, rather than suffering the humiliation of trying to oppose me directly, I think it would serve your desired reputation better to restore her ‘behind my back’. In the meantime, she’ll serve my purposes; how long that lasts is entirely in your hooves."

I sighed. “So you’re playing it for both our benefits?"

"Typical, Coil.” Wintershimmer set about walking further toward our magical objective. “You fight the battles of discourse well, but you must learn to see the greater war."

I suppressed a yawn at the growing presence of politics in our discussion. “So how do I dispel what you did to her? Was that just a transmutation on the vocal chords, or—?"

"You think I’m just going to tell you?” Wintershimmer offered a wheezing chuckle to indicate his amusement. “No, Coil, if you really want to be a hero, you’ll have to earn it.”

Perhaps to your disappointment, and certainly to my own, I followed after him without pressing further. In some sense, it was the reasonable choice; I had no more chance of undoing Wintershimmer’s curse without time to gather tools and do research than a snowball would of making a cross-country journey in the height of summer.

In a volcano.

In Tartarus.

Despite that rather harsh reality, however, I have to imagine you see the hypocrisy of my borderline-vigilantism when I followed a pony like Wintershimmer the Complacent, the literal embodiment of the ‘evil wizard’ from your favorite foal’s story. I certainly do as well, in retrospect, writing this story for you. But at the time, I saw the world through a very different set of lenses.

As you’ve likely gathered, and as Wintershimmer certainly believed, my actions weren’t really motivated by a desire to help ponies. What I wanted out of being a ‘hero’ was the fame and glory that came from it; in short, I wanted ponies to tell stories about me to their foals. If that seems pathetic, in some sense, that’s because it is. It does provide us, however, with evidence toward one very important lesson: heroes are not born. They are made.

We walked forward in that hallway in complete silence, save the tapping of his grisly staff and the click of our hooves (shod in steel—a wizard must be ready for travel in any environment at a moment’s notice). There were leagues of corridors in the Crystal Spire, but our path was short. It ended where the crystal ended, and polished red wood began. I called it ‘Home’.

Wintershimmer was the closest thing I ever had to a real ‘family’. I’m not about to waste your time with some sob story about my past and how I was mistreated as a foal, because I’m not the kind of necromancer who dyes their mane tips black and writes poetry about the miasma in their soul. I had a mother and father out somewhere in Union City, and a half-sister, but since my family named me ‘Mortal Coil’, I think you can infer pretty clearly how they felt about me.

Or to put it another way, Wintershimmer was the reason I don’t have a terrible, tragic past to complain about. When I became his apprentice I got a room in the palace, complete with a heated bathtub, a postered bed, and more magical goodies than it would be useful or prudent to list here. I had great food, fulfilling work, and somepony who legitimately cared about me.

It is worth pointing out that I did not claim my mentor ‘loved’ me. He cared about me in the same detached way I had ‘cared’ about the filly in the street or the maid in the hall. Remember, I was to be his ‘legacy’.

The private quarters I just mentioned were located directly opposite the Archmage’s own, in a relatively quiet hallway of polished wood and carpet that stood out substantially from the omnipresent glimmer of gemstones everywhere else inside the Spire. Wintershimmer wasted no time giving me directions before he vanished into his private chambers, and with nothing better to do, I decided to take a moment and freshen my appearance for the hitherto unprecedented feat of magic we were about to accomplish.

My magic gripped lightly around the handle of my own personal door—as I mentioned, I’d figured out how to wield basic telekinesis without my horn flaring up—and a dozen charms I had worked weeks on silently scanned the unique hoofprint of my magic. Of course, I felt nothing—if I had, somepony trying to break in would have had the same advantage in figuring out how a door with no keyhole was locked. And I wasn’t that sloppy.

I mention all this so that you can imagine my surprise when, upon opening the door to my quarters, I found a mare lying in my bed.

Not that I was incapable of getting a mare into my bed; as I mentioned, I was an exceptionally handsome and well-groomed young stallion. However, I was also a normal unicorn stallion surrounded by mares literally made of crystal. And… suffice it to say here that certain parts of a stallion are sometimes called ‘tenders’ for a very legitimate reason.

"You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Mortal. Or am I just that stunning?” She even had the gall to wink at me.

"I…” I began, stuttering for just a moment not in nervousness at talking to an attractive mare, but legitimate surprise. “You…"

"Oh, come on. You may be a pain in my flank, but you’re suave enough not to stutter at me."

Yes, she really said that.

"What are you doing in my room?” I finally spat out. “Tartarus, Silhouette, how are you in my room?"

Properly, Commander Silhouette of the Crystal Union Army, the young mare and I had a longstanding relationship. Formerly my peer, she had been another apprentice to a member of the Crystal Union Council tasked with advising Queen Jade on the management of her considerable lands. When her predecessor went to his grave, his power went to her head. And, apparently, certain choice other parts of her as well. Generally slim and lithe, but curved in all the right places, she only helped her cause by being clad in a rather tightly fit uniform of boiled charcoal-gray leather. She was easily among the most attractive mares I’d ever met, and carried all of the confidence (pronounced ‘ego’) that it took to wear that beauty on her sleeves.

That physical beauty aside, I loathed her with a fire that was slowly melting the glaciers of nearby Yakyakistan. And despite what her flirtatious tone might seem to imply, the feeling was reciprocated. As you may have gathered, Silhouette’s position as the Union’s foremost military commander (behind Queen Jade herself) meant that she was responsible for the city’s guards. Guards whom you may recall from the previous chapter functioned as a state-sanctioned street gang literally stealing lollipops from foals on the street and getting away with it except when I personally found the time to step in and humiliate them.

"I heard you had a run in with some old friends,” Silhouette told me, smiling.

"I intervened in an extortion racket,” I snapped back. “Also, how could you possibly know that? That can’t have been twenty minutes ago; Wintershimmer and I walked straight here from there."

"Oh, a mare never tells.” She rolled over on my bed, rumpling my comforter, and landed deftly on her hooves. “The reports I heard didn’t say anything about an extortionist. They only mentioned a renegade apprentice wizard wantonly attacking guardsponies. Anything to say in your defense, Mortal?"

I wandered over to my desk, making sure to keep the crystal earth pony in my peripheral vision—when she pounced, it tended not to be in the fun sort of way. “Well, to start with, it’s ‘Coil’. And in my defense, your guardsponies are paid out of the treasury, so any money you try to collect as taxes is extortion and—"

I would have stopped recording my somewhat long-winded dialogue in the interest of sparing you boring politics, but in this case, Silhouette beat me to the punch. Literally, with an even jab that left a little cut just under my right eye and toppled me to the floor. “Caught you monologuing."

"So you punched… mmmpfh!” That strange final word, which I’m not entirely confident I’ve recorded correctly, was the result of her kissing me squarely on the lips, pushing her tongue (thankfully not made of crystals) into my mouth, and then pulling away before I had even recovered my sense of balance from the punch.

"Ahhhh.” She made it sound like a refreshing drink from a mountain spring, which seems about right for my mouth. Hers, in contrast, reminded me of a kitten: hairy, intrinsically evil, and ambitious beyond its station. As she walked toward my door, she glanced back over her shoulder. “Right now, I’m not going to do anything about your little hero complex, Mortal. I just wanted to warn you. The Crystal Guard has a long memory. And Wintershimmer is getting pretty old. See you later."

"How…” My door slammed shut before I could even finish the thought. I uttered a few choice words, and pulled the door open with my own horn. Of course, Silhouette had vanished—a casual trick for a wizard like myself, but I never figured out how she managed it as a glittery earth pony. In her place, Wintershimmer was idly tapping his spinal staff on the ground, looking as impatient as ever.

In the short time since we parted ways, Wintershimmer had found four… well, things. Not ponies, though they were pony-shaped. The technical term is ‘golems’, but mages in the audience would probably visualize ponies made of stone or iron. These were wax—not molten, but not quite solid either, their only features consisting of two eye sockets filled with the glow of open flame, and a single candle sitting in the middle of their respective brows, casting tiny lights. Globs of their flesh, wet and dribbling, ran down their faces as they stood motionless, watching me.

"Do we really need the candlecorns?”

"One never knows when Star Swirl might be listening,” Wintershimmer answered with a completely straight face.

Despite what his words might have implied, Wintershimmer and I both knew that Star Swirl the Bearded and his apprentices were never going to spend their time staring into crystal balls as a way to spy on the Crystal Union’s archmage, nor its council meetings. That would be a spectacular waste of time, particularly for a pony already a few years older than Wintershimmer.

However, what we knew wasn’t terribly relevant. What mattered was what the Queen knew. And what she knew amounted to three things. Fact the first: Wintershimmer always brought the four waxy golems with him to the council. Fact the second: From time to time during council meetings, perhaps one in a month or two, a magical aura would build up around the ‘horns’ of the four candlecorns. When that happened, Wintershimmer made a point of grumbling under his breath, and made certain the words ‘Star Swirl’ were audible to her ears—a quiet whisper usually sufficed, as she sat immediately to his left. Finally, fact the third: matters sensitive to the running of the Crystal Union could only be spoken about freely if Wintershimmer were present.

If you’re able to see where this is going, then congratulations! You’ve got a bright future ahead of you in the soul-crushing Tartarean pit that some unnaturally optimistic ponies refer to as “politics". For those of you who have not yet abandoned all hope, the above fact meant that Wintershimmer knew everything that mattered in the Crystal Union. He was guaranteed to; other ponies would seek him out to tell him, of their own accord. And, as they say, knowing is half the battle.

As my narrative has already demonstrated, he was also quite proficient at the brutal, unrestricted violence that makes up the metaphorical other half.

Secure in a bluff that no other pony in the Crystal Union had the magical knowledge to call, Wintershimmer began the short walk to the third room in our decidedly less sparkly portion of the Crystal Spire: our arcane laboratory. Flanked by two of the wax ‘ponies’ capable of wielding a considerable amount of Wintershimmer’s terrible power, I followed, hiding nervousness that would shortly prove entirely justified.

III - The Only Certainty

When we reached Wintershimmer’s laboratory, we found yet another unexpected guest waiting for us. I found myself briefly admiring Wintershimmer’s cool, as he handled her presence with a far more even face than I did for the equivalent mare unexpectedly in my quarters.

Queen Jade loomed in the middle of my mentor’s relatively small sitting room, quietly waiting. I took note of her green crystalline hoof tapping on the carpet, betraying irritation despite her straight face. Her expression only darkened when Wintershimmer directed his candlecorns though the doors on the far wall leading into our ‘practice chamber’, and then began his arthritic walk over to the elaborate wooden rack where he usually rested his traveling coat and his signature staff.

Of course, if I hadn’t read Jade’s anger off her face, I also probably could have guessed she was irritated by the fact that she was wearing her full armor and carrying her sword, despite the apparent peace one would usually be afforded inside one’s own palace. I admit I didn’t see the point; a scarred, piercing-gazed alicorn queen doesn’t really need armor to look dangerous. It didn’t hurt that she was generally considered to be at least slightly insane.

The mare in question directed her attention to Wintershimmer. “Have you made any progress?”

“I’ve only just arrived in my laboratory, and haven’t even changed my coat. I’m certain you have at least one working eye to observe these facts, Your Majesty. Please do take care to exercise the brain that organ is ostensibly attached to.”

Only Wintershimmer would dare talk to a sitting monarch that way. Some ponies might call it bravery, and some might call it foolishness, but I tended to think it wasn’t either. For Wintershimmer, it was about reputation. He had made himself indispensable to Jade in no small part because he was the only other mage of Star Swirl the Bearded’s caliber in the world, and thus the only suitable archmage for Equestria’s foremost political rival. Also, it didn’t hurt that he’d convinced the Queen that his magic was the only way to revive her husband from his coma of fifteen years.

Jade shook her head, clearly hearing me. “I don’t care what it takes; I just want Smart Cookie healed.”

As I mentioned, the ‘Smart Cookie’ in question was exactly the same one famously misattributed with a leading role in driving away the windigos that haunted what would become Equestria. After the nation was founded, eighteen-ish years before my confrontation with Jade in Wintershimmer’s quarters, Smart Cookie was chosen as their diplomatic envoy to the Crystal Union.

He was also pretty much the only choice: the unicorns of the Diamond Kingdoms had been at war with the crystal ponies for decades, so that ruled out Princess Platinum or Clover. And Commander Hurricane killed Queen Jade’s father, which as you can imagine, makes for phenomenal friendships. That left the earth ponies, and of the two who mattered, Puddinghead was about as politically appropriate as a whoopie cushion on the witness stand at a murder trial. Even had Puddinghead not been a universal punchline, Cookie was the natural choice since he had already established ‘personal relations’ with Jade.

‘Personal relations’ led to marriage, and then as it so often does for significant political figures, marriage led to heart-rending tragedy. In this particular case, seventeen years before the day we’ve been talking about, Smart Cookie, Jade, and Wintershimmer had all traveled to Everfree City to meet with the Equestrians. At the time I knew nothing of what exactly transpired on that fateful day in Equestria, but I had seen the consequences firsthoof. Jade lost a wing, and Cookie fell into a twenty-five-foot-deep pit and a coma. One was far easier to extract him from than the other.

In contrast, Wintershimmer escaped unharmed, killing at least a few of the rebels himself. Anything you can infer from that statement about the distribution of power in the Crystal Union is almost certainly correct.

Since decades-old politics is only slightly more fun than putting rocks into the frog of your hoof and going for a cross-Equestrian sprint, I promise there isn’t going to be a quiz. All you really need to understand is Smart Cookie was in a coma, and Queen Jade wanted Wintershimmer to fix it.

“Are you certain your research is the fastest way to help him?” When I write that question, it probably sounds like a really caring, desperate question. It wasn’t. If anything, it was a threat.

Wintershimmer groaned, focusing on the queen with unsettling yellow eyes. “It seems today will continue to be defined by a need to repeat myself. What Coil and I are doing here is not trivial.” He looked up at her, and spoke to her with a bluntness that would probably have gotten anypony else in the world decapitated (in case it wasn’t clear that I’m serious about her being crazy). “Under normal circumstances, arcana—or what the unwashed masses call unicorn magic—does not heal wounds. That magic belongs to the earth ponies, and their so-called endura. What I am working towards is not some simple charm or petty parlor trick like Star Swirl and his imbecilic apprentices play at in Everfree City. This magic will change the course of history. However, if I am forced to rush it because of political obligations or inconvenient pressures, it will kill me, and with my death, all hope of returning your beloved to you will be gone. Do you understand?”

Jade glared. “I do not appreciate—”

“Come back in an hour’s time. Whether this first attempt succeeds or fails, I will have far more to tell you.” Wintershimmer’s magic opened the doors out of his quarters, and he gestured pointedly with his billowing horn. “Thank you for your visit, Your Majesty,” he added, as she stormed out of the room.

I waited for the doors to close before I spoke up. “You have such a way with mares, Wintershimmer.”

Wintershimmer replied by looking at me flatly. “Coil, I am ninety-seven years old. Are you certain that is a line of logic you wish to begin pursuing with me?”

“Tell me more about the Summer Lands spell,” I said, perhaps a little too quickly.

“Threshold of Summer,” Wintershimmer noted.

I frowned. “Isn’t it bad luck to name a spell before you’ve actually cast it?”

“Luck is a word the weak use to describe their lack of control over their own lives. It does not apply to wizards.” Wintershimmer frowned. “Now, listen closely.”

I’ll spare you the density of our discussion of magical theory, and summarize in a couple of simple points—the actual spell is in my grimoire if you’re interested in that, though as you’ll shortly learn, I can’t exactly recommend using it. The premise is somewhat simple. The Summer Lands do not exist in physical space. In contrast, ponies do take up physical space. Thus, you need to map some real piece of land to a given portion of the Summer Lands if you want to be able to travel there with your physical body. This is exactly the same idea as making a bag bigger on the inside than the outside, or as some ponies like to do, make a broom closet-sized room into a palace.

Once you’ve got a piece of space folded up enough to serve your purposes, you need to actually map it to ‘space’ in the Summer Lands. That’s the hard part; it’s necromancy, and not of the Foal’s First Seance variety. You’re reaching into the land of the dead, effectively blind, and grabbing the end of an infinite space, then dragging that end back into the real world and attaching it to an existing spell.

Complicating that is Haversack’s Law of Nested Auras: ‘the magical flux of a closed aura must be zero, or the spell will enter an entropic, self-consuming state’. In laymare’s terms, if the horn casting a spell is completely enclosed by a spell, that spell isn’t going to last long. That’s why it’s really hard for a unicorn to ‘fly’ with telekinesis, and it’s also one of the reasons Threshold of Summer requires two skilled necromancers to cast. One holds the spell open from the outside, and the other is able to enter.

As we were having the conversation I just summarized, we stepped through a subtle archway and into a chamber adjacent to Wintershimmer’s library, consisting of a floor of heavy gray flagstones that stood out against the usual sapphire flooring present in the Spire or the wooden boards of the preceding room. It was utterly empty, though the scorch marks and cracks in the boring stone told more than a few stories about the room. As we continued our discussion of the magic involved, I retrieved a protractor, some powdered diamonds, and a bit of dragon bone marrow that had remained relatively undisturbed by my earlier encounters with Union City’s finest from my bags, and set about drawing the angle-perfect diagrams necessary for the spell. The candlecorns, who had entered the ‘pratice room’ ahead of us, watched me work. I was grateful they didn’t try to help. Their expressionless attention was unsettling enough at a distance.

What many ponies do not appreciate about the process of magical research is that ninety-nine and a half times out of a hundred, it is mind-numbingly dull. There’s a lot more measuring angles and drawing perfect circles and measuring out exact amounts of alchemical components than there are legendary duels and daring adventures and heroics.

At least, if you’re not me.

Once we had the rather foul-smelling and dusty circle set up, there was only one more step. I whistled once sharply, and was rewarded with a sort of droll humming coming from the library. Then something glass cracked. Three heavy things fell from a substantial height. Or maybe it was four. I remember there being a long pause before the last one. I know I winced at the noises as Wintershimmer glared at me. I think I smiled back at him. Not like a ‘real’ smile, but the sort of awkward guilty expression a little foal gets when they’ve been caught with their magic around the cookie jar. I’m sure you get the point.

Then the doors flew open. What entered, however, was not a pony; in its shortest description, it was a flying rock surrounded by a pair of golden halos.

“Master, you called!” Its voice was tinny and inequine, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re synthesizing speech using a vibrating rock and two discs. “It’s been years since—”

“Angel, shut up.”

The rock in question was a golem, which I had named Guardian Angel. In a sense, it was my pride and joy: a truly sentient golem. Wintershimmer and I had toiled on it for months when I was younger, trying to replicate the work of the ancient necromancer Ouija the Whisperer, who first managed the feat of creating an artificial soul capable of learning, growth, and change. What we discovered was that there was a reason nopony had bothered repeating Ouija’s research before us.

Angel was capable of learning, but it wasn’t terribly good at it. Whether it was just stupid by lack of experience or I had made an error in its creation, I could only guess. My best hypothesis was that it had an extremely finite memory, as we discovered when my attempts to teach it how to serve tea caused it to forget how to fly.

As you might have gathered, it was literally as dumb as a rock. I frequently told it so, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it took no offense.

“Master, I observe that I have been shut up for some seventeen seconds now. Perhaps there is some purpose to your summons that I can perform simultaneous to my state of up-shuttedness. Thus, the efficiency of my service will increase.”

I sometimes still regret giving it my full vocabulary during its creation.

I took a deep breath and rubbed my temple. “Angel, I just want your stored magic. Then you can go.” That was Angel’s real purpose, once we figured out that it’s intelligence made it about as useful a servant as an unenchanted rock. I’d set it up with a few decently sized diamonds inside the rings of gold that let it fly, and whenever I had a day that ended with mana left over, I’d store it in those gems. They helped me get at least a little way around my casting problem; I could store an extra spell or two’s worth of magic in Angel, and then pull it out when I really needed not to pass out. The mana refill didn’t do much to make my legs feel any less woozy, or make my headache any better, but that was the cost of magical education.

“Of course, sir.” The stone at the center of angel hovered at about my eye level, and the two golden rings flanking it rotated, creating what you might imagine to be the shape of a gigantic bowtie. Wisps of blue arcana flew from my creation directly to my horn. The feeling was electric and exhilarating, like the tingle on your coat standing on a mountaintop in a thunderstorm—an experience I highly recommend. Contrary to popular belief, a bolt of lightning isn’t very likely to kill you at all. It’s much safer than many things an aspiring archmage will do in their career, such as wandering bodily into the Summer Lands.

“Thank you, Angel,” I told my pet rock. “Rest for today, and find me tomorrow to see if I have mana to spare to start refilling you. And bring the grimoire; you need work on your right halo.” Without further word, Guardian Angel resumed its normal configuration of halos and rock, and floated out of the magical testing room.

Only then did Wintershimmer speak up again. “Ready to begin?”

“Let’s change the world.”

No, I didn’t really say that, but for want of a perfect memory of my exact words, I figure it must have been close enough—the part of the young hero does involve a certain ‘seat-of-the-coat’ dialogue, and the cost of not always having a plan is sometimes coming up cheesy (or more often, narcissistic).

The beginning of the spell was slow. We started a magical current through the chalky diamond dust and bone marrow on the floor, and walked slowly around the circle opposite one another. At times, one of us would stop to put a precisely timed surge of magic into some part of the glyph. In the course of an hour, we’d built up a fourteenfold collapse in a Tourmaline Valley—basic magic for anypony who would even call themselves apprentice mages, albeit a lot faster than most such ponies could manage. Even with my problem, the little surges were simple enough not to leave me flaring up, since the amount of magic necessary was so trivial. Once the air between us in the glyph started rippling, like the hot air in a desert, we stopped. Walking around the circle was a distance of about three strides, but it would have taken me the better part of an hour to reach Wintershimmer if I sprinted straight through it.

The setup was ready.

Wintershimmer turned his head, shouting around the glyph to avoid his voice being lost in the huge distance directly between us. “Coil, begin Veil’s Procedure whenever you’re ready.”

I deliberately let my horn flare up; I wasn’t actually using the mana for anything just yet, but I knew the surge of darkness around the edges of my vision might spoil the spell. I stumbled when it swept over me; only in that moment did I realize how close I’d come to passing out dealing with Iconoclast and his lackeys.

Still, I had a job to do.

I turned my icy blue magic on the arcane circle, and focused on my favorite spell: the classic seance. Within the bounds of the innermost circle drawn on the floor, a star began to trace itself in a glow of pure blue magic. One point, then two, three, and on and on to seven. In the end, it matched my cutie mark. Then it shimmered, and burst. A void of darkness filled with blue stars filled the circle.

Darkness was lingering on the edges of my vision, like swimming too long without getting a fresh breath. I squinted to push it away and redoubled my attention. I was better than some feeling of fatigue, I told myself.

I was an idiot.

With the surge of my magic, the white circles rose up off the ground. One by one they stopped, creating an ethereal telescope of powdered diamond and bone marrow held in place only by the strength of the magical circuit we’d already set up. A perfect void within a perfect circle stopped at our eye level.

My hooves started to feel numb.

The circle shifted in place, rotating. It took only a moment, but it felt like forever, twisting until it hovered between us like a mirror, perpendicular to the floor.

“Ready, Wintershimmer? I’m not sure this is going to last long.”

“I’ll only need a minute,” the old stallion told me.

I lowered my head, pointing my horn directly at the hole we’d carved in space. What I got back was a burst of blinding light that I could still see burnt into my eyes even after I closed them and turned my head away. It felt like I’d summoned the sun into the middle of the room, but I couldn’t look. All I heard was the whoosh of a vacuum breaking. A warm, summer breeze swept through my mane in open spite of my being inside a closed room located in a city far into the frozen north of the world around the end of winter.

“It’s perfect!” Wintershimmer shouted. That was the last I heard of him, before he took a step towards me and we were suddenly the better part of a mile away from one another. The only sounds left were the mild breeze in my coat, and the ambient hum of magic.

The light finally faded from my eyelids, and I peeled them open to find the darkness I’d noticed earlier was closing in rather uncomfortably quickly.

“Wintershimmer! You might want to hurry up!”

It was a stupid thing to shout, but it was the best I could come up with. When I didn’t get a response, I walked slowly around the portal hanging in the air, looking at what was visible on Wintershimmer’s side.

The Summer Lands were… disappointing, if I’m being brutally honest. Just a sky with huge puffy clouds. Inside, Wintershimmer was walking on the surface of the clouds like a pegasus. His coat rippled in a wind far stronger than the breeze I barely felt. Around him, slightly transparent ponies had gathered, gawking at his presence and reaching out as if testing if he were really there.

“Wintershimmer, I’m not sure I can hold this!” I shouted at him.

He turned back to me, and for what I would later learn was only the second time in his entire life, he genuinely smiled. “I won’t be long, Coil. Just a few seconds.”

My horn sparked, and I know he heard it. My magic sounded like a crack of thunder. The smile on his face froze.

The Summer Lands disappeared. Folded space burst. Light and wind were gone, leaving Wintershimmer standing in the middle of what was left of our ritual circles.

Then he collapsed in the middle of a pile of inert diamond dust, coating his fallen body like snowflakes.

I fell to my knees, clutching the base of my horn; there was a long crack running down the side of it that throbbed and ached with every beat of my heart. Darkness swept over my vision for a few seconds, and without any sense of the world around me, I shouted, “Wintershimmer!”

When the world came back to me, I felt myself breathe in a wheeze. The pain in my horn had only grown stronger, and my hooves were shaking too much to stand.

I hardly noticed any of it. Wintershimmer hadn’t moved; he still lay on his side in the remnants of our short-lived spell, his back toward me.

With all the strength I could muster, I pulled myself toward him. My muscles were screaming at me, but I had to check on him. When I reached his side, I saw him breathing, and I joined him in a sigh of relief.

“Wintershimmer…” His name ended as more of a groan of pain in my abdomen—a sort of ‘Wintershimmuuugh,’ or something similar. I was slightly worried when he didn’t answer, but figured he’d been knocked out by the magical surge.

That was fine. We had smelling salts in the same field bag I’d used to fetch the diamond dust, and the other experimental materials Wintershimmer had requested of me, even if the spell hadn’t lasted long enough for them to be of use. I spared myself a minute or two to catch my breath, and then limped my way up and across the room to where my bag sat. I grabbed the tin of salts, dragged myself back to Wintershimmer, and dropped them in front of his nose.

As expected, his face wrinkled up in disgust, and his eyes flittered. I think I gagged too; wyvern guano is foul stuff. But despite the expression I smiled. “Rise and shine, old timer. Sorry if that hurt a little.”

He didn’t answer me, which would have been fine, but he also didn’t even bother to glare at me. He just stared forward, vacantly, watching the wall.

My heart skipped a beat. I’d seen ponies like this before, and every single time it was a deliberate act on Wintershimmer’s part. Testing my theory was as simple as putting my hoof in front of his mouth.

Wintershimmer the Complacent may not have been the equal of Star Swirl as a magical teacher or theorist, but he was, without question, the greatest magical duelist of his lifetime. This ability centered around a single terrible spell; the same one with which he had threatened Emerald earlier that morning. I never knew if he gave it a name; only its purpose. The spell acted precisely as a simple seance cantrip, conjuring a soul from beyond the pale, save with one change. Wintershimmer did not reach into the next life.

He reached into his enemy’s body.

What he left behind when he finished was a husk. A hollow corpse that breathed, and ate and drank on simple instinct, but without the remotest shred of motivation or comprehension. The hoof was how he’d taught me to recognize a body stripped of its soul.

That day, on the cold flagstones of the magical practice chamber, Wintershimmer’s withered lips parted, and without focusing his eyes, he tried to bite my hoof. In that moment, I knew exactly what I’d done.

In a small stone room deep within the Crystal Spire, I killed Wintershimmer the Complacent, Archmage of the Crystal Union.

Only moments later, the candles of his four candlecorns ignited with raw power, ready to avenge their fallen master. The first blast of magic stole my consciousness outright.

IV - The Trial and Execution of the Traitor, Mortal Coil

“I didn’t do it.”

As I mentioned before, those words were the second most physically painful I ever uttered in my life. Unfortunately for those of you who find yourselves amused by my suffering, that pain was fairly drawn out. In the moment, the only injury I got was a rather strong-hoofed body blow from Silhouette.

“Save your breath, Mortal,” she told me, just as her punch was stealing it away. “You’re gonna need it for later.”

I sucked down two breaths, trying to ignore the pain in my abdomen, and then looked square at Silhouette. “Are you… really hitting on me? Now?”

“Well, I don’t exactly have a lot of time left.” She slapped my cheek. I think she wanted it to be a sort of cutesy pat, but her coat was made of solid gemstones, so it hurt. A lot. “You’ve been playing hard-to-get all these years.”

“You’re disgusting, Silhouette” With my forehooves bound above my head, my best option for an ‘attack’ was to spit on her face.

She bucked me in the jaw, and smiled about it. Creepy smiling, to the degree that I wondered if she was getting off on it, just a little. “Commander Silhouette.”

As a younger stallion, I really didn’t know when to shut up. So instead of realizing that there was literally nothing to do to stop her from punching me as much as she wanted and holding my tongue, I grinned back. “Oh! Oh, I finally get it. Commander like Hurricane the Butcher! That’s why! You must have won so many battles!”

I knew the number, of course. Silhouette was only a few years older than I was, and the Union hadn’t been in a war in over twenty years. She had never had the opportunity to prove herself.

I also knew I’d hit a nerve. As you might expect, she hit back. After three or four blows, including one that cut my cheek, her hoof was stopped midway to my throat by a glow of green magic. The little black void crystal Silhouette wore around her neck quickly ate the arcana, exactly as it was intended to do, but it had been enough to stop the blow and that was all that mattered to me.

“Thanks, Your Majesty.”

The crystalline alicorn walked slowly into my cell, flanked by guardsponies, offering me a glare of unbridled fury, which surprised me given the rumors I’d heard about how she dealt with her enemies.

Not that I was hoping for any more pain. Four hours of on-and-off napping in a dungeon cell under the Crystal Spire weren’t exactly my idea of a comfortable night, but I understood well enough how it must have looked to walk in and find Wintershimmer comatose and me laying unconscious over him. I was grateful the candlecorns hadn’t killed me outright, and only wished that Silhouette hadn’t had her chance to bludgeon me to the verge of nausea before I explained my innocence.

In addition to my assorted bruises and cuts, my head was throbbing as magic slowly and forcefully drained out of my horn. I’d built up enough mana back into my system in those few hours to stand on my own (though I didn’t have much choice in the matter, as manacles around my forelegs held my hooves over my head on a chain run up to the ceiling. A suppressing ring of void crystal screwed into the enamel of my horn made sure I wasn’t about to use that spell any time soon. It also served a wonderful second purpose: stinging to the high heavens, like a cactus dipped in lemon juice and wrapped loosely in poison ivy being slowly rubbed over an open wound.

“You killed Wintershimmer,” Jade observed, standing next to me with her judgemental eyes.

I sighed. “The spell went wrong, Your Majesty. But I wasn’t trying to kill him. And in my defense, he technically isn’t dead.” The furrow in her brow grew deeper. “Just comatose… forever. Because his soul is gone. But I can fix that.”

Silhouette and one of Jade’s personal bodyguards laughed at me. Another smiled sarcastically as he drew his hoof across his neck. They were really great ponies, those three. Just classy in every imaginable way.

Jade herself leaned forward. “What game are you playing, Coil?”

“I’m a necromancer. Maybe I’m the best alive in the world, for the moment. I can put a soul back into a living body easy. Since he’s still biologically alive, it will be like nothing went wrong in the first place.”

“Do you honestly expect to feign innocence?” Jade asked, gritting her teeth at me. They glowed in the reflection of her sparkling green coat, and attached to a happier face, they might have looked quite fetching. The way she emphasized that sentence, though, offered no boon to her appearance. A sinking feeling in my gut shouted to me that I was missing something.

I swallowed, tilting my neck up to accommodate the bobbing of my throat. “What’s wrong?”

Silhouette stepped forward, and reached into a pouch strapped over her back. Out of it came a short blade. It rang in the crystal room as it clattered on the floor, dropped at Jade’s hooves. “Did you think we wouldn’t find the knife?”

I recognized the short blade; as much as it belonged to anypony it was mine. I used it to prepare the trivial collection of potions we used to preserve Smart Cookie while waiting for Wintershimmer’s magic to restore him.

I had no explanation for the bloodstain on its leading edge.

“The candle ponies came to find me,” Queen Jade explained.

“Candlecorns,” I corrected, once more demonstrating my younger self’s painful lack of restraint.

Silhouette punched me in the gut, winding me, before Jade continued. “You were slumped over Wintershimmer, apparently restrained by the three golems. Wintershimmer was dead. You had slit his throat.”

I swallowed.

“Do you have anything to say in your defence?”

Silhouette chuckled. “What could he possibly say? He already tried to cover it up.”

“I didn’t do anything!” I told them. “I mean, I made a mistake with the spell we were working on, and that ripped out his soul, but I didn’t stab him!”

“Then who did?” Silhouette asked, leaning forward to dominate my entire field of view. “Nopony else would have known Wintershimmer was vulnerable, and nopony is stupid enough to try and kill him while he’s awake.”

“I don’t know,” I protested, though my gut reaction was that I was staring the mare in the face at that very moment. Silhouette had every motivation to frame me for murder, and her freakish ability to sneak into sealed places and disappear in plain sight made me suspect it was well within her power to have done the deed. I just needed evidence.

I smiled, picking up my prior thought. “But I have an idea how to find out.”

Silhouette raised a brow that I took as subdued worry. It was Queen Jade, though, who spoke up. “What do you propose?”

“Just ask Wintershimmer.” Jade blinked in incredulity as I continued. “He might not have actually seen the killing blow, but he can tell you what happened with me was an accident. I had nothing to do with murder.”

The response I got from the Queen settled slowly from shock into a scowl. “Need I remind you that you are accused of his murder?”

I shrugged—an impressive feat with your forelegs bound over your head. “So there’s a minor inconvenience. Just seance him; it isn’t even hard. His soul is in the Summer Lands.”

“You said that before. The ‘Summer Lands’. What do you mean?”

I rolled my eyes in yet another progression down the long road of increasingly flagrant displays of my lack of personal restraint. “That’s the ‘Gallery’, if you’re still clinging to ‘the Artist’ as a real god. But seeing as the Equestrians have actually met their gods in the flesh—”

I don’t recall who slapped me in the face, but judging by the fact that the force picked me up off the ground, I suspect it had to have been Queen Jade herself.

“Blasphemy in the face of death?” For just a moment, she looked like she pitied me. “Well, it isn’t as if the Artist would ever forgive murder anyway—even of a pony with a past like Wintershimmer’s.”

Jade’s horn burst into green flame—literal flame, not the usual glow of a unicorn’s magic. It wouldn’t be until years later that I learned it was simply a sign of her anger overflowing through her pegasus magic. All I knew in the moment was that it was unknown, and powerful, and thus equal parts entrancing and terrifying.

Compared to that awesome sight, the smell of mild ozone and the simple pop of an apprentice’s unpracticed seance were, frankly, a disappointment.

Wintershimmer looked at Jade, and then turned to me, halfway transparent. The shape of his soul was a lot younger than I’d ever known him to be; probably forty or so, with enough of a mane to actually conceal the base of his horn, and devoid of three quarters of the wrinkles that usually lined his face. He stood upright fully, not relying on a staff to brace arthritic knees.

I struggled to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, Master.”

He smiled. “There’s no need to apologize. I’m proud of you, Coil.”

The words were like a slap in the face. “What? Master, I’m not sure—”

“I didn’t think you had it in you,” he continued, pacing around me. “It’s been at least two hundred years since an apprentice managed to usurp an archmage’s title. It occurred to me that I’d be putting my life in your hooves, but with all your playing at being ‘a hero’, I never thought you’d be able to do the deed.”

Silhouette clapped hooves against the floor in mock applause. “Oh, I can’t believe it… For a second, I was worried you actually hadn’t done it, Mortal.”

“I didn’t! It was an accident!”

Wintershimmer sighed. “You have very little ground left at this point; I doubt there is any use in denial. If you’re going to call yourself the Archmage of the Crystal Union, you need to live up to the title. I’m assuming from the ring on your horn that Jade walked in while you were still recovering from the assassination?”

“Wintershimmer, please! Listen! I was trying to warn you! You remember, I said I couldn’t hold the spell any longer?”

“I seem to remember somewhat different words.”

The tone of those words was different from whatever else he’d said. It was subtle, the rise in pitch, like the words were coming out tilted. His words were speaking to Jade, but his tone was saying something different.

He continued with words that sent ice down my back. “You said there wasn't anything left for me to teach you. That I didn’t mean anything to you anymore.”

“I’ve heard enough,” Jade growled. Turning her attention fully to Wintershimmer. “I’m sorry to have lost you.”

Wintershimmer’s ghost shrugged. “Don’t pretend to shed tears for me. Coil and I were poisoning Cookie so you’d rely on us. Feed him plain bread and water, and he will recover, Jade. His own magic can do that much. You’ll only be waiting a few months at most.”

I hope you trust me enough reading this to understand that I had no idea of Wintershimmer’s ploy. It didn’t surprise me much, granted, but I certainly wasn’t a conspirator.

“Wintershimmer!”

Setting his withered lips together, he spoke to her firmly. “You ought to let Coil go. Banish him, if you want, but don’t dishonor our traditions as mages for an admirable display of ambition.”

“He is a murderer,” Jade countered. “And he hurt Cookie. Our laws are perfectly clear.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t have expected you to understand.” Wintershimmer turned to me. “At least you can call yourself ‘Archmage’ for a few hours. Do you know what you want your epithet to be?”

Jade dismissed him before I could answer. I was a little angry about that, so I turned to look her square in the eye and answered the question anyway.

“Coil the Immortal.”

She scoffed. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

The other guards left after their leader, but Silhouette stayed behind for a moment. “You want a kiss, Coil? Last chance.”

“What, and contract something terminal?”

She slammed the door on the way out.

At this point, there’s something you need to understand about me. I wasn’t insane; I didn’t think I was going to survive the anger of a vengeful alicorn and her army of magically resistant soldiers. At the time, all the bravado and the talk were a coping mechanism I’d learned from Wintershimmer. Focusing my attention on the next bit of wit I could spit in my opponent’s faces kept me from paying too much attention to my impending death.

Once I was left alone in that small, damp stone room, illuminated only by the light between cell bars, cut off from every drop of my magic, I panicked for nearly an hour.

When I came out of the Spire’s dungeons, and emerged onto glimmering crystal streets, I paid close attention to what the ponies who I had formerly considered my neighbors saw. I walked with my head high, ignoring their jibes as they mocked the pony they expected to soon see swaying in the wind. I even smiled at them, deliberately not in a friendly way, but cocky. I wanted them to know I wasn’t afraid.

And I wasn’t. ‘Afraid’ didn’t do my feelings any kind of justice. I was terrified. I felt like my teeth were rattling in my skull. The ‘plan’ I had come up with, if one could even call it that, was reliant on a completely untested magic trick: not a spell, but the kind of ‘illusion’ you see from grifters on street corners. And I was not a magician. If my sleight of hoof screwed up even slightly, I was going to wind up slight of neck. I was certain I couldn’t be any more afraid.

At this point, reading my memoir, some readers may be comforting themselves thinking ‘oh, but he went on to write this whole story, so obviously he doesn’t just die at the beginning’, or something like that. Let me remind you that not a dozen paragraphs ago, you saw a murdered stallion literally summoned from the Summer Lands to tell a story not terribly unlike this one.

Besides, what good is a hanging without at least a little bit of suspense?

Ahead of me were the gallows, raised tall enough that all of Union City could gather in the big square and look up at me. Enough rope that the platform under my hooves wouldn’t block their view of the swaying or squirming stallion. Basically, a fun time for the whole family. Bring your foals.

Jade was already up there, tying the knot herself. That Silhouette was nowhere to be seen surprised me. The only explanation I could think of was that the allegation of poisoning Smart Cookie had made my offenses ‘personal’ to her. Jade was in her full armor, painted a rather muted turquoise that only drew further attention to the spaces where her glimmering green coat sparkled through. As I reached the base of the stairs, she finished her work and turned to the crowd. Magic carried her voice amongst the masses.

“Crystal ponies! Look here.” Her long, slender alicorn hoof gestured in my direction. “You know his name. Mortal Coil, formerly the apprentice to our Archmage, Wintershimmer.”

The masses booed, and I was honestly unsure whether they liked me more or less than my former mentor. Wintershimmer’s particular brand of morality left him fairly low on most ponies lists of ‘favorite ponies’; usually only slightly above the universally despised Hurricane the Butcher.

Queen Jade appeared not to care who the crowd actually hated. “Earlier today, Mortal betrayed Wintershimmer, and murdered him in cold blood.”

Stepping up onto the podium, I hissed at Jade. “Don’t call me that.”

In typical monarchical fashion, she ignored me. “His actions have not only taken a life, but betrayed our nation. The Crystal Union is less for the loss of our archmage. Our laws our clear. We will not allow a traitor or a murderer to live among us.”

At that point in her speech, I puffed up my cheeks, scrunched my eyes together, and let the slightest trickle of magic move up into my horn. As I had expected, the magic was quickly eaten by the ring suppressing my power. I hadn’t quite expected the little spark of feedback that shot through the crack in my horn’s enamel left over from my failure with Wintershimmer, but the surge of light it offered me actually helped my plan.

Every pony in the crowd saw me struggling and failing to remove the ring on my horn. A couple laughed. Jade looked at me with malice.

“Any last words, Mortal?”

“I’ll…” I wheezed a little, out of breath. “…let you know in… fifty years.”

A few ponies in the front rows of the audience, close enough to hear my unamplified wheezing, laughed at my open spite of my impending death.

The crystal guards nudged me toward the noose, their lances pointed in my direction with substantial prejudice. I managed two steps before my tired legs gave out, and I fell to a knee. I was hoping the motion would garner me a bit of sympathy, but instead, it got me a jab in the flank from an impatient guard. “Keep moving, traitor.”

“Fine… fine.” I pushed myself forward, stepped up, and stuck my own head through the noose.

Turns out, you can always be more afraid.

My right leg twitched in exhaustion, and slipped on the still-closed trapdoor. Leaning heavily into it, I felt the noose tighten around my neck; certainly not fatally, nor even particularly dangerously, but enough to leave me more than a bit short of breath. As my tired legs cried out, I leaned my head against the rope, feeling the thirteen loops press against the side of my muzzle, and lip around the middle of my horn.

I focused everything I had into what might be the hardest spell I knew how to cast, knowing that the magic was going to be wasted into the ring on my brow.

Magic surged from my horn, visibly. The ponies in the crowd called me a coward, laughing and pointing.

Jade nodded. Her guard pulled a lever.

I felt the world shift as my heart flew into my neck and the world spun.

And then, before their eyes, the noose clamped shut on empty air.

The thing about a hangmare’s noose is that it can ultimately be reduced to a series of slipknots chained together ad nauseum. If you leave slack in one of the loops up the series, that loop is going to pull tight first, and the one on the very end, where an unfortunate neck is placed, is only going to snap shut after all the slack in the other loops are pulled taught. I’m exceptionally glad that’s the way they work, but on that unfortunate day, I was just sort of guessing.

To emphasize the important part, if you loosen one of the loops, even just a little, it will pull tight first.

My second proposition that I wasn’t actually sure about, since I didn’t have the luxury of testing it, comes as follows: the body weight of an adult unicorn applied in a sudden burst is enough force to yank screws out of the enamel of a horn.

All the show of wheezing and being tired was just an act. Well… sort of just an act. Really, I was about to pass out from all the mana I’d spent that day, but it was more important that everypony watching knew that was how I felt. That way, they wouldn’t think twice when I leaned into the rope, and pointed my horn directly against one of the loops on the hangmare’s knot. Once I found a loop with the tip of my horn, I let my leg give out even more, and actually pierced the knot with my horn so that the rope would slide down to where the guards had fastened the void crystal ring.

Once all that was set up, all I had to do was start casting a teleportation spell, and hope I didn’t run out of mana before Jade decided to let me drop. If I had run out, I would have popped the ring off my horn, and then promptly died anyway. But since Jade was kind enough to stop me from ‘humiliating’ myself by looking like a coward (in addition to a murderer and a traitor), I still had mana going when the ring ripped off. As soon as it was gone, the spell flared up and fired—just in time to keep the loop around my neck from getting tight. Instead, the ponies of the Crystal Union got a crack of thunder and a work of magic to tell stories about.

In turn, I got a rope burn on my neck and four long gouges in the enamel of my horn that would take a week to grow back. I also won a crippling migraine that haunted me for the entirety of the next day. But that’s not all! My final prizes were a nice fall into a snowbank some distance outside the walls of the city and blissful, precious unconsciousness as the last of my mana fled from my body.

V - A Bear-Faced Lie

It was late when I woke up buried to my neck in the endless tundra that surrounded the Crystal Union, and for the first and only time in my life, I briefly regretted not having allowed myself to be hung. On that day, I lost my last shred of sympathy for my future foals complaining to me that I woke up too early, or that breakfast wasn’t ready yet. For reiteration, the enamel of my horn was cracked and torn in five places (one from casting with Wintershimmer, four from the screws in my horn, for those of you interested in keeping track). In the event that there are any non-unicorns reading this, let me be entirely clear: a single crack in the enamel of a horn tends to constantly burn, all the while throbbing with the heartbeat like the sting of a hornet that happens to be on fire at the time. Try and use magic, though, and the feeling is magnified a dozen fold—usually resulting in the loss of the spell in question, and a persistent migraine of the kind produced by a marching band the morning after an earth pony wedding.

I had five of these things. Five. Tartarus doesn’t scare me anymore.

Of course, the whole ‘giant spiders’ thing also helps with managing fear, but that’s a story for another sizeable tome.

When the motion of sitting up ceased its attempts to kill me, I looked around. To my left were the mountains that barred the way to the uncivilized lands of the Yaks. Nothing to be gained up there, even further north of the part of the world that mattered, since the Crystal Union was already a backwater compared to Equestria. However, the mountains did tell me something useful: that I was staring to the east.

I shivered; a fashionable black mage’s coat might have been appropriate apparel within the magical wards of Union City, but it didn’t do much for somepony outside. I briefly considered going to fetch my traveling cloak, before remembering that Queen Jade and a few thousand crystal guards stood between me and my belongings.

That recollection made the next set of decisions fairly obvious. As long as I stayed anywhere in the Crystal Union, I was a wanted stallion. That left only two places for a practicing mage to work his craft with any respect anywhere in the civilized world: River Rock, and Everfree City. Both lay far to the south; much farther than I had ever traveled in my studies with Wintershimmer.

Both also were devoid of murderous crystal soldiers, so the distance really seemed like a perk.

I walked for miles that night, wearing out my legs without working down my horn, for a change. I won’t lie to you and claim it was a pleasant experience; I was more-or-less freezing the entire time, and I had to frequently stop and wrap my hooves together inside my balled up jacket to make sure I was keeping them from freezing solid in the cold. Still, I encountered not a single one of Jade’s soldiers, which was not terribly surprising in the dark, but also not unwelcome.

The sun was just beginning to rise when I reached the edge of the Frosted Forest, named for its evergreen trees, and their ever-white caps. Of course, ‘ever white’ really meant three quarters of the year, since we still had something resembling a summer up in the Union (a season that I was missing rather badly in the blankets of snow). Still, despite a poorly-chosen name, the forest was delightful in the morning. Hibernating animals made no noise, and all the birds had migrated south for the winter, so the forest was quiet. Peaceful. Even beautiful.

I admit I wasn’t paying terribly much attention to the sights, though. My mind was elsewhere, trying to figure out my next move. Who had actually killed Wintershimmer? I knew I’d ripped out his soul, but I could have fixed that with a simple spell. Who had used the knife? And why hadn’t the candlecorns turned on them, like they had on me? Whoever had done it, Wintershimmer himself didn’t seem to care. What had he been trying to tell me when Jade conjured him? On the surface it seemed fairly obvious: move on. Find a new mentor. But was there something more to the message? Who did I turn to?

I bit my lip, trying to remember the magical history lessons that I so frequently blew off from Wintershimmer; I was always more concerned with becoming a better wizard myself than hearing about some former researcher. It was the truly ancient archmagi—the ones who won their titles in duels, and their fame in defending the Diamond Kingdoms from monsters and evil spirits, and who were archaic enough be referenced in plural as ‘archmagi’—who really interested me. Unfortunately, they had all kicked the bucket long ago, and now some less-than-memorable mages had taken their places.

I scratched my chin as I tried to remember. There were… eight archmage seats? Or were there just eight archmages, and a bunch of the seats were empty because of the Windigos and the wars with the old crystal ponies? When I couldn’t figure that out, I tried coming up with names. Some of them were easy: Postulate the Warrior was always fun to hear about for his battles with Queen Jade’s predecessor, Warlord Halite. And Grindstone the Short and Fennel the Suffixless were always good for a laugh on account of their terrible epithets. (I’d been told Grindstone’s was intended to refer to his temper. That his actual height-impairment was an unfortunate coincidence only made me laugh harder as a foal.)

But I didn’t want to learn from any of those ponies anyway; they were second-rate archmages; the sort of unicorns that Wintershimmer loved to use as examples of the inexorable progress of the Diamond Kingdoms—that is, the unicorn nation that preceded Equestria—toward ‘barbarism and ruin’. No, on reflection, there were only two other archmages I knew of worthy of sharing that title with Wintershimmer: Star Swirl the Bearded, and his former apprentice, Clover the Cruel.

Just as Wintershimmer held the title ‘Archmage of the Crystal Union’, Star Swirl still held the formal title over River Rock, the old capital of the Diamond Kingdoms, now frozen in eternal winter—supposing the hundred year old stallion hadn’t died of old-age or disease in the seventeen years since he and Wintershimmer last spoke. If he was still alive, Clover might be holding the title of Archmage over Everfree City, the Equestrian capital. But if he’d died, she would probably prefer the more prestigious title in River Rock.

Most ponies would probably consider those two options, and immediately leap at the location that was physically closer, dramatically more inhabited, and not trapped under the curse of an ancient ice spirit. My mind approached the problem a different way: both cities were still inhabited, and thus it stood to reason that both required an archmage to protect the citizens. Given the choice between the two, I was more likely to find a better mage (and thus, a better mentor) in River Rock. That meant heading east as well as south, and I adjusted my heading accordingly.

After another hour of walking, and a sparse but pleasant breakfast of raspberries and loose foliage eaten right off the tree (only slightly preferable to death by starvation), I found myself looking down at the massive chasm known as Grievous Gorge. It cut northwest-southeast, eventually joining the river valley between Mount Peridot and Mount Garnet that marked the border between the Crystal Union and Equestria. I could see the mountain peaks in question ahead… at least three days’ hike away. I might have sat there, thinking about what to eat and how to stay warm, had my ears not perked up at the sound of an unexpected but familiar noise.

It rang through the quiet forest, humming like the rattling of crystal on crystal that happened fairly often during magical experiments. Or, you know, everywhere in a city literally constructed out of crystals. I turned toward the source of the sound and found my pet rock floating forward, a leather-bound spellbook pinned tightly between its luminescent gilded halos. Despite the fact that it was a rock and two discs, literally faceless, I knew the stupid golem well enough to tell that Guardian Angel was beaming with pride.

“Oh, my hunch was right. Thank goodness I found you, master. I searched all through the palace, but the guards merely laughed at me when I inquired as to your whereabouts and refused to explain.”

“Yeah, I’m not exactly the most popular pony in the Union right now, Angel.” I took Wintershimmer’s spellbook gingerly from the golem’s grip. The belt attached to its seasoned carrying satchel fit nicely over my jacket, though it took some work to get the belt cinched and tightened without using my magic.

It’s halos now freed, Angel spun in a circle—its equivalent of a pony shaking their head. “Oh, I quite disagree, Master. I dare say you’ve never been more popular in your life. Positively everypony is talking about you, and near to everypony is looking for you. Why, if it wasn’t for Queen Jade advising me that you teleported out of the city, I might never have—”

“Wait!” I held up a hoof to stop the golem’s blathering and scanned the forest. There was nopony in sight for the moment, though that did little to quell my concern. “Queen Jade told you to look for me here?”

“Well, not here precisely, sir. But outside the city. Once I knew where I was searching, I was able to pick up on your magical trail without too much trouble. That is, after all, how you taught me to answer summons.”

I think I growled at him; not a metaphorical growl, but like an angry dog. “I know, you stupid rock! I put you together! And, go figure, that means you’ve led Jade to me.”

As if on cue—and you have no idea how much I loathe that phrase—the sound of metal scraping against wood caught my attention off to my right side. When I turned in that direction, I saw her. Jade, carrying her sword in green magic, clad in full armor, glaring at me not with hatred, but determination. A cat’s glare, staring at a mouse.

You wouldn’t think somepony that big and that armored could be that quiet. She was only a few strides away.

“...Your Majesty.”

Then I started running; specifically, I aimed myself inland, away from the cliff.

Trees whooshed past my ears: real, bulky trees; not the kind that whiz when you run through them, like those sticks down in southern Equestria. I ducked between them, deliberately choosing a zig-zagging lightning bolt route. Every time I felt one of Jade’s spells make the hair of my mane stand up, only a few inches from a killing blow, I knew I’d made the right decision in that crazy path, slipping on snowy ground and sliding around the trunks of the broad trees that shattered in splinters under the force of Jade’s attacks.

“Sir,” Angel called to me, keeping up with ease due to his ability to fly. “I understand if this is—”

“Get out of here, you stupid rock!” I shouted between pants.

Glancing back, I saw the golem fly away without a reply. I barely registered the departure, though. Jade was gaining on me; alicorn legs will do that. I distinctly remember being grateful to whatever warrior had cost her a wing years ago; it was the only reason I was still alive in that moment, even if I only had a few seconds left to spare before I’d be in reach of her much more accurate sword.

In what would later come to be called ‘true young Coil fashion’, I braced against a tree and pivoted into a sharp turn to my right, straight toward Grievous Gorge.

As you might have guessed, ‘true young Coil fashion’ was a euphemism for ‘stupidity, excused by occasional magical brilliance.’

As you imagine my heart rising into my throat and the feeling of vertigo ripping through my ears yet again, let’s take a moment of calm to pause and consider an important phenomenon of magical physics: namely, gravity.

The teleportation you’re probably familiar with… isn’t. Real teleportation is a cantrip—what we consider to be a fundamental spell, not made up of any lower-level logical units of magic, just like the seance spell I’ve described. All it does is move something, in its exact state, from one place to another.

If there’s something in the place you’re going to, the spell doesn’t care. Your blood vessels and organs and any tiny holes in your anatomy conveniently fill up with whatever you’ve teleported into, and the rest of you gets shunted apart in various directions to make room. In short, you just die, with the promise of a closed casket funeral… supposing enough of you is left solid that you do not require the use of an urn instead..

The teleportation most ponies use is a compound spell, made up of a few cantrips put together. It works by checking to make sure the target location is safe—and there are fun variations that check for things like whether or not the target area is on fire, in addition to being occupied by something solid—before allowing you to teleport. They also don’t use teleportation; they use another cantrip called ‘summoning’, which gets rid of things like your momentum, and most ambient magical auras around you. It’s a lot harder to cast and takes a lot more mana, but when that spell was developed, a lot less apprentice wizards wound up effectively taxidermized, with their heads sticking out of their mentors’ walls.

In case you’re about to throw up, that was a joke. I promise.

There’d be nothing holding the head to the wall, so it would just fall off immediately.

If you are brave enough—and I do not recommend trying this for fun under any circumstance—it is possible to rotate oneself while teleporting. The interesting quality of this motion is that the momentum you build up while falling, such as the momentum of a young mage falling off a cliff into a gorge hundreds of strides deep for example, can be reoriented so that you’re actually ‘falling’ up. Gravity is forced to slow you down, and then start you back downwards again.

Of course, if you point yourself straight up, you’ll still die from the fall; it will just happen later, after you’ve flown upward, turned around, and fallen back down. However, if you’re clever, you can orient yourself upward at an angle, and turn all of that falling momentum into speed going in a useful direction, like heading down a canyon just over the surface of…

And it was in that moment of falling that I realized the probably-fatal flaw in my plan. Namely, that the water at the bottom was the delightful combination of rapids over sharp rocks, icy from the chill of February in the frozen north of the Crystal Union, and leading directly to a waterfall.

Fortunately, though already midway through a deadly fall, and also midway through the immense physical agony of casting a true teleportation spell that would drain me of my only partially restored mana, and knock me unconscious yet again, I realized my mistake. Even more fortunately, perhaps a result of the adrenaline pushing back some of the pain my my horn, I remembered a very interesting compound spell I'd developed in my youth, when walking on the ceiling seemed funny instead of the source of yet another headache.

By adding just a bit of ‘evocative reapplication’ (the act of transmuting energy, instead of matter), my spell not only hurled me downstream, but also reoriented gravity to ensure that I would eventually ‘fall’ onto shore. With gravity pointing down at an angle for me, towards the southern bank of the river and the matching canyon wall, my soon-to-be unconscious form would stand a much better chance of making it to dry land alive.

That is to say, I casually redefined a universal constant for the convenience of not getting quite as wet. Remember that next time you admire a smug roguish type over a wizard: they might break the laws of personal property, but it takes a genius like me to bend the law of gravity.

Before we continue, I should promise you that this particular series of events was a blemish in an otherwise excellent record of not draining myself to unconsciousness as a result of my magical condition. If the impression that you get from my story thus far is that I ran from all my conflicts by hurling myself blindly into the distance, I’m hoping that you will continue reading if only to dispel that notion. I promise, I didn’t live a life worth writing about by warping from one end of the known world to the other, knocking myself unconscious as I went.

The next time I came to, I found myself in a cave next to a crackling fire. The realization of waking up relatively comfortable kept me from remembering events that, for you, occurred mere paragraphs ago. After shaking off the last vestiges of slumber, I sat bolt-upright in the realization of what had happened. The act rattled no chains, resulted in no crystal guards pointing spears at me, and apart from a brief moment of vertigo at my sudden shift in equilibrium, passed painlessly. That was very good. Before even looking around, my mind raced through a few mental checks.

Firstly, I probably wasn’t dead. This cave certainly didn’t look like the Summer Lands, and I at least quietly hoped that if I had died, the Sisters would recognize that I hadn’t really murdered Wintershimmer in cold blood, and would reward me for a life of “heroism” and ambition—that is to say, I was expecting the cave not to be some dreary corner of Tartarus.

I also wasn’t falling sideways; gravity was affecting the pile of branches and pine needles in the fire the same direction it was affecting me. That meant my spell had worn off on its own, so at least eight hours had passed; a previous run-in with Iconoclast and a few other corrupt guardsponies had proven that duration, much to their fury and my amusement.

“You awake!” The voice startled me, and I jumped a good half-stride into the air. The acrobatic feat nearly set my leg on fire, but when my motion settled, I finally set eyes on my rescuer.

He was a foal. An earth pony foal, with a brown coat, a darker brown mane, and huge black dots for eyes that reminded me of a puppy. When I got past my surprise at his miniscule size and age, I noted that I could clearly see his ribs.

“Hey… um… little guy?”

“Am,” he stated, before roaring at me.

I’m not making that up. That was his response. Naturally, I was slightly confused. “Uh… do you speak Equiish?”

“Am,” he said again, and again he roared at me.

I swallowed. “Ooookay. Um… A ty, um, goovorish’... po draconski?” I knew my draconic was miserable at best, but if he spoke the language he’d get the picture. It was my best guess for a language heavy on roaring noises.

The colt slapped his face with a hoof. Thanks, kid. “Am,” he stated again, following it up with another roar. As he did so, he held a hoof to his chest. Then, gesturing in my direction, he said “You?”

“Oh!” I realized what he was saying, and then shook my head as I tried to wrap my head around the absurdity of what he meant. “Your name is… Groooaaagah?”

He shook his head, and then roared again. Only on that fourth noise did it occur to me that a tiny colt should not have been able to make such a noise. It didn’t sound like ‘a little colt roaring’. It sounded like a bear.

“Um… Gurrraaarrrguh?” He slapped his face with his hoof again. “Look, I’m trying. I don’t speak roar.”

He roared again.

“Real helpful, Graargh.” I shrugged. “Well, I’m Mortal Coil. Just call me Coil.”

“Yes, Coil,” the colt said, before pointing with a hoof toward the exit to the cave. “You bad swim. Catch on rocks with fish.”

I snorted in laughter. “Well, I was kind of unconscious at the time.”

“I good fish,” he answered, thumping his chest proudly.

For what seemed like the dozenth time in my spare few minutes of being awake, I shook my head. “You… do you mean ‘swim’? You're a good swimmer?”

Graaaagh (or whatever) shook his head. “No. Not swim. It cold. Catch sick if swim. I fish.”

I winced. “You eat meat, Graargh?” I decided I liked that name; it didn’t seem to piss him off, and in a vague sense, it was loosely pronounceable.

Graargh nodded proudly. “Good fish. I feed you many.”

My stomach promptly offered a performance of the Crystal Flugelwaltz. Ponies weren’t supposed to eat meat. It was disgusting. It was unnatural. Only the Cirran pegasi ate meat, and growing up as a crystal foal, I knew enough stories about Hurricane the Butcher to know that pony meat wasn’t exactly off the list for them either. I didn’t want to be like that. I was supposed to be a hero, not some… monster.

Having spectacularly failed to vomit, I decided to tactfully change the subject. “Where are your parents, Graargh?”

Naturally, he responded by bursting into tears.

I hate kids. And, as demonstrated, the feeling was generally mutual. “Look, uh, Graargh… I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just—”

“Gone!” he wailed. “They gone! Left behind! I was bad. Bad bear!”

I swallowed hard. Had his parents been eaten by a bear? “Um… Graargh, uh… it’ll…” I stretched out a hoof to comfort him, and then hesitated. Was that the right move, hugging some colt I didn’t even know? After waiting for a moment, I wrapped a leg over his shoulders and held him tight. “Look, um, Graargh… it’ll be okay.” To my amazement, it actually worked… sort of. He was still crying, but after a few seconds held against my bare pale blue coat—and only then did I realize he’d removed my jacket—he stopped wailing. Tears still poured from his eyes, though, and he looked up at me with far more similarity to a puppy than my previous metaphor might have led you to believe. With nothing better to do, I continued talking to him. “I’m sure they’re still alive somewhere.”

He rubbed his tears on my coat, nuzzling my side in the process. When his face was relatively less wet, he spoke up with a wavering tone. “Yes. I know. They not hurt. Left me behind. Bad… bad bear.”

“They ran away from a bear and left you behind?” I decided I didn’t like his parents much.

Despite his distraught state, he looked at me with a sort of pitying expression, like I was the one in need of sympathy. “No. You not think right. Like fish.” He pounded his hoof against his gaunt chest yet again. “I bear. They bear. But I bad. Left behind.”

“You…” I couldn’t help it. A little hint of a laugh slipped out of my chest. “You think you’re a bear?”

“Am bear!” He shouted indignantly. “Am! Am! Am!” And then he ended the pronouncement with a roar.

“Alright. Wow. Play pretend if you want; it’s no fur off my back.” Those words seemed to satisfy the little would-be bear. He curled up next to me, put his jaw on his forelegs, and in short order, fell asleep.

In the newfound quiet of the cave, tinted only by the crackling fire leaking smoke out along the sloped ceiling, I took a moment to reflect. It didn’t last long when I realized I was missing my coat. Fortunately, it was right on the other side of the fire, propped up on a stick to dry, next to the case containing Wintershimmer’s personal spellbook. I levitated both over to myself… and then realized what I was doing.

Namely, levitating two objects without excruciating pain from the cracks on my horn. Once I’d released the spell, I slid a hoof up and down my horn. To my joy and also confusion, the cracks I had been enduring since my attempted execution were altogether absent. In their place, I felt my whole, though still overly spiraled horn. But those injuries would have taken days to heal...

Had Graargh been watching me for a whole week?

Where was I?

There was only one way to find out, but I hesitated after only a single stride. Leaving Graargh behind seemed… frankly, wrong.

A rational part of my mind reminded me that he could take care of himself: he could apparently fish, and he had more than the talents necessary to survive…

Except those gaunt ribs. Had he been giving me his food? If so, I needed to repay him. And even if it was something else causing his clearly frail state, I couldn’t just leave some foal who’d lost his parents to live out his days in a cave, completely alone.

I settled on letting a discussion with the colt rest until I’d had another nap. Whether through legitimate fatigue or the lingering effects of some head trauma I won in the process of a substantial fall into a canyon, I was beginning to feel tired again. As I faded off, I thought about what it would take to find Graargh’s family.

It might not have been the slaying of some monster of legend, or saving a nation from the wrath of some icy spirit, but you’ve gotta start being a hero somewhere. I was at rock-bottom, both literally and metaphorically. With my exile from the Crystal Union, I’d left behind my reputation, my titles, all my worldly belongings that didn’t happen to be in the breast pockets of my jacket, and my mentor. For some reason I still don’t fully fathom, the feeling was freeing. I was ready to tell my own story, and Graargh was going to be the first pony I helped on my way to fame.

If only I had noticed that in the mere few minutes since I first spoke to him, his gaunt ribs had begun to fill out.

VI - The Pale Master

Graargh woke up while I was drawing on the ground with my hoof. It wasn’t a complicated sigil, but to a little earth pony colt (or a little ‘bear’), it probably represented the greatest magic he’d ever seen. A septagram inlaid within a circle inlaid within yet another septagram, inlaid within yet another circle… I’d been doing it for almost three hours when he woke up, so you can imagine how long that sentence could go. I’d covered almost three square strides of soil in the complex symbols.

“What shape?” the little colt asked me, both signaling that he had finally woken up and reminding me of his curious grammar.

“It’s called a septagram,” I explained to him. “It represents unicorn magic, because there are seven schools. It’s useful for organizing complex spells.”

Without putting too blunt a point on it, if you ascribe to the six-pointed understanding of magic—what we traditionally call being a ‘six-schooler’—then you may as well give up the study of magic.

He cocked his head. “Spells? Do they taste like snails?” He scrunched his nose at the thought. “They don’t taste good.”

I must have squinted down my muzzle at him when I asked my next, fundamentally stupid question. “Were you born in a cave or something?”

“Yes,” Graargh said proudly. “This one.”

The sound of a hoof slapping on a face echoes quite well in a cave.

“Right… Look,” I pointed my horn over to Wintershimmer’s spellbook, resting at my side. In a pale blue glow, it rose up into the air.

Graargh took it about as well as one could imagine. When the screaming stopped ringing in my ears, I walked over to the rock he was huddled behind. “Graargh, I promise I’m not going to hurt you. Okay? It’s completely natural.”

“No!” He shouted, covering his ears. “Is bad! Like green fire bad!”

“Green fire?” I rolled my eyes and shrugged. “I don’t know what green fire is, but there’s no such thing as good or bad magic. What’s good or ev—” I caught myself on that. “...or bad is how you use it. Do you understand?”

Graargh didn’t seem to be inclined to listen to me. Instead, he covered his head with his hooves, tucked his tail against his side, and shivered. “Go! Bad leave!”

Now, for just a moment, I entertained the idea of leaving him behind to go on my way before Silhouette’s scouts—or Sisters forbid, Queen Jade herself—showed up tracking me. At first, my thoughts of heroism from the previous night died in the face of just how annoyed I was with Graargh’s reaction to basic magic. Besides, a colt would slow me down…

But was that really the right thing to do? Would I ever be able to tell the true story of my adventures if I left a poor orphaned colt alone to starve to death in a cave… somewhere? As brutally self-centered as my logic was at the time, it did produce what I would argue is the moral outcome. So instead of leaving, I grabbed onto Graargh with my telekinesis and prepared to put him onto my back.

For the second time in recent memory, everything in my life went terribly wrong. Within my arcane grip, Graargh screamed, and then roared unnaturally again. Then he burst into flame.

Green flame.

My magic was blue, and it takes pegasus magic to make real fire anyway, so as you can imagine, I dropped him in shock. What hit the ground, though, was definitely not the little colt I had been expecting. Little colts don’t weigh dozens of stone, or have massive claws on the ends of their legs, or… well, my point is that they aren’t bears. Especially not grizzly bears, if my guess was correct.

Although, once my shock had time to turn to amusement, I realized Graargh was still a young grizzly bear. He looked small and cuddly and adorable, and if I brought him into any civilized town in Equestria I would probably be swimming in mares in under three minutes—an absolutely desirable quality for a young mage like I was at the time, lacking hard-earned wisdom on the subject. The only thing that really stood out to me were his solid turquoise eyes—and when I say solid, I mean no pupils, no whites, just smooth turquoise. I probably would have stared at him for a good few minutes trying to figure out what that meant, had I not been clawed across the brow by the incongruous grizzly bear I was now dealing with.

“Ah!” I clutched my bleeding cheek with a hoof as I backed away. “Graargh! What in Tartarus?”

“Bad!” he shouted. I discovered I hadn’t yet run out of the potential to be surprised, as my eyes widened at his clearly still-Equine voice. “Not fire! Not green! Am bear!”

“Yeah, you’ve made that pretty obvious. But… what are you? Some kind of lycanthrope?”

I don’t know why I asked that question but I got the exact answer I should have expected. “Am bear!”

“At the moment…” I rolled my eyes. “Forget it. I’ll ask somepony who actually knows. Are you done trying to maul me?”

Graargh contemplated that question, and then nodded eagerly. A wide smile crossed his… is it still called a muzzle on a bear? We’ll go with ‘maw’ for now. “Yes! Am bear!”

“Oooo-kay.” I sat down next to my drawing again, pulled my hoof away from my face, and let a few drops of blood fall in the center of the crude nested septagrams. “Graargh, I’m about to do more magic. Please don’t panic, and also please don’t kill me. I would really appreciate both of those things. Can I trust you?”

Graargh nodded again, hesitantly, so I closed my eyes and let familiar magic draw into my horn.

Reaching from the physical world into the Between was easy; mana wanted to go to its natural resting place, even without my encouragement. But finding the Summer Lands with the tendril of magic I wielded wasn’t easy. At least, not in general. Necromancy was long held to be the hardest (and most dangerous, for reasons that will become even more apparent as we continue) of the seven schools of magic. But a lifetime of practice specializing in the pale school had made me a practiced expert.

But at times, even an expert had to refer to the Pale Master.

In this case, in addition to being the chapter title, that honorific also refers to the greatest living practitioner of necromancy.

Only halfway down writing this page does it occur to me that since Wintershimmer was now dead, that title no longer applied; as I mentioned, one must be alive to be considered the master of one of the seven schools. I confess, the only reason I haven’t ripped out this page and started over is that it took me a very long time to get my sketch of Graargh right, up above.

Returning to the story and away from my poor choice in titling, my septagrams lit up in blue, and my blood spread out to color the surrounding concentric circles in red. Brilliant light flooded the mouth of Graargh’s cave, and the little… cub, I guess… withdrew a few steps. Unlike Queen Jade’s rudimentary seance, my work was both elegant and suitably visually impressive to represent the incredible feat I was achieving: namely, taking the soul of a dead pony and rendering it back into a demi-solid material state.

All thoughts of technical terms and visual emphases left my mind, however, when a ghost sat down just in front of me.

“Coil.”

“M— Wintershimmer.”

My mentor’s ghost was younger, just as he’d appeared before Jade: with a mane full of hair that actually touched his horn, and a healthy dose of muscle filling in cheeks that I had always known in life as gaunt, skull-like cavities. His expression was still ancient, though: firmly set lips, and a low brow that constantly judged everything that passed by his gaze.

“Do not pretend that losing your grip on a simple spell has made you my equal, Coil. I’m still your Master. And despite my jest for Jade’s benefit, you are no archmage. Not yet.”

“Who—? What—?” Graargh’s truncated vocabulary failed him in an almost impressive way.

I waved a hoof between the small bear cub and the ghost of my mentor. “Graargh, this is Wintershimmer the Complacent, formerly Archmage of Union City, and the Pale Master.” Wintershimmer always insisted on his full title when being introduced to a new pony. I briefly entertained the same practice myself, until I got to the point where ponies ran out of breath on mine. “Wintershimmer, this is Graargh.”

“A bear cub? In a cave? You’ve certainly fallen in the world.”

“Yes. Literally. Grievous Gorge is quite deep.” I made a show out of putting my hoof in the middle of my chest. “You’ll have to forgive me, Wintershimmer. You see, I was unjustly accused of murder and politically motivated poisoning, and it cost me most of my worldly possessions. And, for that matter, very nearly my life. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“It was the right decision for me to make as your mentor,” Wintershimmer replied, as if casually observing the weather or his estimation of the worthlessness of some passing earth pony.

Yeah, Wintershimmer was exceptionally racist. After the whole ‘ripping out souls’ bit, the permanent muting of an innocent mare, and insulting the Queen to her face, I figure that isn’t much of a surprise.

“The right decision?!” I roared (like a pony, for a change). The events of the past… week, or however long it had been, had finally pushed me just a little too far.

It took only a raised brow from Wintershimmer to draw my attention to my attitude. The old wizard had a way about that sort of thing. I swallowed heavily, and forced down two breaths—they did absolutely nothing to make me less justifiably angry, but they did put me in control of my tone. I continued with a forced icy smile. “How in Tartarus can you possibly claim that trying to get me hung was the right decision?”

“I had the utmost confidence you would escape. If you couldn’t defeat Jade’s paranoia and Silhouette’s tiny imagination, you would have proven me a failure of a mentor, and I would have no further use for you. But, as you are currently alive, I would say that you’ve proven yourself well. I admit, I was expecting a seance sooner. Ten days was quite the wait.”

That confirmed my suspicions about Graargh taking care of me, at least. “Jade got a few good hits on me when I was on my way out of Union City,” I told him, carefully omitting the canyon-diving portion of my adventure. “I needed to let my horn heal.”

“Reasonable. Well, since you have clearly failed to grasp the blunt message I was conveying to you in Union City, allow me to beat it through your skull, Coil. With my death, had you not been exiled, you would have inherited the title Archmage of Union City. Without an arcane thesis, or even time as a journeystallion, you would not be properly eligible, but Jade and her lackeys know nothing of our rules. You could have had it if I hadn't interfered. Do you think you deserve that?”

“I—”

He didn’t bother letting me actually answer. “I know you would have stayed, Coil. I know your ego. You would have smiled and picked up my staff and sat down at the Council, and then fundamentally humiliated yourself when the Union inevitably came into conflict with Equestria. Star Swirl and his lackeys would have destroyed you. You might have been doomed to be one of Clover the Cruel’s projects, or you might have had the great fortune of living out your days in self-importance. In either case, you are not ready to take an apprentice. You are not ready to pass on my legacy, let alone your own. I shudder to imagine what your legacy would be if I let you believe your education was completed today.”

It’s hard to have something witty to say when the person insulting you is absolutely right, so I held my tongue.

“I assume by now that you’ve realized your options in mentorship are limited.”

“Star Swirl and Clover,” I replied. “I was planning on going to River Rock; I’m not sure which one I’ll meet there, but it’s a sure bet that I’ll find one of them.”

Wintershimmer made a show of sighing. “You can’t study under Clover.”

That commandment, couched though it was in caution, confused me. “I don’t have a lot of other options. Isn’t Star Swirl over a hundred years old? I wouldn’t want him to just keel over in the middle of a lesson.”

Wintershimmer snorted through ethereal nostrils. “My ill-groomed counterpart has no doubt extended his life just as I did. And nature granted him a body of far greater durability than my own. You’ll find he has little sympathy for the condition of your horn. But despite all that, the choice of his mentorship is the only one you have. I would as soon expect Clover to kill you as to accept you.”

“What?”

Wintershimmer nodded. “There is a reason she is called Clover the Cruel, Coil. Most in Equestria use ‘Clever’ to her face. She has a reputation not unlike my own…save in how we earned them.”

“So are you finally going to tell me this story, then? Why she’s called ‘the Cruel’? Am I ‘ready’?”

He frowned, more pointedly than even his usual self. “No. But my death has forced both our hooves. I had hoped to wait until you were ready to face her.”

That was a terrifying thought. “Face her? What, like… duel her?”

“Preferably lethally. Better yet, assassinate her, if you can stomach the thought. It would be safer.”

“I… Why would I do that? Why would I want to do that?”

“A talk for another day. For now, focus on your survival. I’ve already lost myself; I would hate to lose you too.”

I drew in a deep breath, and remembered my place in the cave. “So… I guess I’m going to keep learning from you, at least for the time being?”

“Once you’ve found more suitable environs.” Wintershimmer glanced around the cave, and out its mouth, where his vision was quickly cut off by a tree and a trickling stream. “Are you still within the borders of the Union?”

“Well…” I turned. “Um, Graaargh, where are we?”

“Cave,” he answered helpfully, giving me a look like I was the one being ridiculous.

Wintershimmer leaned forward in my elaborate runes. “Your name is Gur-arg?”

“No,” Graargh replied firmly. “Am,” and then he roared.

Curious transparent yellow eyes widened. “Guhrooragh?”

“Oh, Sun and Stars!” I stomped my hoof. “You’re not going to get it right, Wintershimmer. Just call him Graargh, it’s close enough. But he’s not going to know.”

“I know!” Graargh interrupted petulantly. “Shiny ponies not far.” He furiously pointed out. “I see them, fishing.”

Wintershimmer’s muzzle wrinkled at the mention of eating meat, though his only comment came in my direction. “I see you continue to maintain a high standard of company. It appears you’re still near Union City.”

Graargh continued, oblivious to my mentor’s roundabout insult. “Parents go many times.”

At that revelation, the dead member of our little trio very nearly emulated the whip of a bear-tamer with his spectral neck.

Aside: even though seanced ponies tend to look like themselves when they come back, they aren’t bound by usual rules of anatomy. If you’ve ever heard of a soul turning its head around in a full circle, I can tell you personally that they’re true.

“I’m certain I would remember if two bears had come wandering into Union City.”

I leaned toward Wintershimmer. “They might not have been bears.”

“Beg pardon?”

“He’s… Well, I don’t know what he is, but he was an earth pony colt when I first met him. All I know is that he’s not ‘just’ a bear..”

“No!” Graargh protested. “Am bear! Always bear!”

Wintershimmer turned to me, glanced at Graaaagh, and then nodded. “You suspect shapeshifting might reside amidst his repertoire?”

Graaaagh cocked his head, confused by the twenty-bit words Wintershimmer was wielding. I caught on immediately, and picked up the role in kind.

“I've borne witness to it myself,” I retorted. “When my magic graced his form—” Wintershimmer’s eye twitched, probably resisting the urge to snort out something resembling a laugh. “—he was engulfed in an emerald inferno, and the corporeal being you witness found its genesis. I had suspicions that his nature might be that of the lycanthrope; perchance some mutation upon that most ancient of curses grants him sway to take his form free of Luna’s influence.”

“I see.” Wintershimmer shrugged, shaking away momentary amusement. “Curious, but it isn't a mystery worth solving at the moment; not so long as you’re still fleeing Jade’s forces. For now, he is only a distraction. Go about your business. Contact me again when you reach the snow of the old Diamond Kingdoms.”

I offered a nod of acquiescence and ended my spell, though the back of my mind bristled with irresistible temptation. Wintershimmer might have offered me what I thought was sound advice, but I still wasn’t happy with being betrayed in front of Jade and Silhouette. Further, I confess that the idea of figuring out just what Graargh actually was as a way to bolster my reputation as a mage was an almost irresistible tug.

“What speak?” Graaaagh asked me, once Wintershimmer’s shade had vanished. “I not know that speak.”

“Don't worry about it,” I told him. “Just… If you need to gather anything, you should probably do it now. We're going to try and find your parents.”

VII - The Mare with the Leaden Tongue

It turns out Graargh’s cave was well past the border of the Crystal Union, and his definition of “close” was utterly wrong. I wish that would have meant Jade wasn’t following me, but as I’ve stated before, she wasn’t the kind of pony who frequently acted rationally.

We wandered out of Grievous Gorge together, although most of the time Graargh rode on my shoulders. I didn’t mind that much; even as spring began to set in, the chill still meant that a warm-blooded scarf was a welcome addition to my otherwise thin garb. He didn’t talk much, which was fine by me. Butchered Equiish and bear games weren’t exactly my idea of a good time.

In fact, the only notable development with Graaaagh was that the next morning, when I woke up, he was a colt again… and exceedingly disappointed about it. I did my best to console him, but at least in this case, my efforts were far from good enough to stop him crying. My only option was to wait it out, grinding my teeth into dust as I walked.

We stumbled onto a rough dirt road, and some time later in the day, I entered with somewhat more grace and class than the word ‘stumble’ can accurately convey into a small town utterly lacking in my aforementioned two qualities. Were I to describe it in a single word, that word would be ‘hodunk’. The town consisted of four, maybe five dozen thatched-roof cottages and exactly one larger structure that loomed like a fat six-year-old bully over a runty four-year-old. I had no idea where they had found the stone, let alone the engineering skill necessary to support a two-story building in a place like this. From the picture of a bed carved into the hanging wooden sign, I assumed it was an inn of some kind. There were no obvious shops, no visible square or garden on the main street to even host a market, and no other conveniently illustrated wooden signs.

What I did see were workers. Earth ponies milled around, carrying satchels of grain and stone and whatever-else on their backs and in carts. Their eyes mostly stayed on the road, downcast and focused on the task at hoof (whatever that might be for each pony). They seemed so focused, in fact, that I—an outstandingly handsome young unicorn (‘outstanding’ in this case meaning that the fact made me stand out)—walked all the way from the first break in the woods where the cottages began up to the door of the inn without so much as a ‘Hello’, or even a ‘Get off my lawn, whippersnapper!’

At this point, I feel it prudent to provide a very brief lesson. I had a grandiose metaphor for this lined up, but upon recording it and discovering it was over a page long, I realized that it would not be appreciated. Thus, without further ado, I present Coil’s First Law of Heroism: The answer to any factual question can, given time and effort, be found in a library somewhere. The answer to any useful question can, given much less time and effort, be found in a tavern.

This particular tavern’s single common room was well lit from an ample collection of glassless windows (or, for the more literal-minded of you, ‘holes in the wall’), to say nothing of the candles mounted to support beams in the center of the room, or the roaring fireplace set off to one side. Utilitarian wooden furniture, cut smooth by careful carpentry but lacking in lacquer or polish, filled the otherwise mostly open space. Off to my left as I entered the door lay a likewise unvarnished bar, and a set of stairs which, on reflection, must have been the architectural pride of the village.

Oh, and the room was also full of ponies. I took notice of the innkeep, a stout balding stallion with a clipped ear and a dense bar moustache, first. He was pouring a purple unicorn mare a drink—her horn was what really stood out to me in the sea of earth pony laborers. As my eyes swept over the room, I found literally nopony else worth remembering for the purpose of inclusion in a record of the adventures of my youth some time after the fact.

Thus, I approached the innkeep. The purple mare slid to the side, staring at me for just a few seconds before returning to her drink.

“Three new vis’tors all in a day,” the innkeep grumbled to himself. “Roads must finaly be seein’ travel again. Whore you?” he asked me, in a rather peculiar accent.

I did not omit an apostrophe.

“Umm… no, actually, I tend not to pay for my romantic liaisons.” The mare beside me briefly choked on her drink holding back a laugh, even as the innkeep glared. “I’m just looking for a meal. And then maybe a room for me and my…” I glanced back at Graargh, whose wide puppy-like eyes were failing to instill any more sympathy in me than his previous hours of whining about his shape had. “...friend.”

The innkeep’s eyes narrowed. “‘Friend. Right. I’ll scoop you two some stew. Gimme a minute.” He turned back to the purple mare, gesturing down to her drink. “You wan’ another one a them?”

I tuned out what she said in response, instead laying my jaw down flat onto the bar, and allowing myself to breathe. Only, in that moment, after weeks of constant running from the spectre of Jade’s vengeance, did I realize just how utterly tired I felt. And, if I’m forced to be honest with myself, just how far I’d fallen. Sure, I’d felt the aches in my shoulders after days of walking and in my back from sleeping on hard earth; it’s just that until I sat down on a real stool inside something resembling a real building, that some sense of adrenaline and adventure had pushed all those feelings down.

I was tired. I was effectively alone, save for some… thing that mostly looked like a young colt. I was sore, hungry, thirsty, and above all of it, lost. I didn’t even know the name of Hodunk (not that knowing the name would help me find it on a map, which was yet one more thing I didn’t have).

I might have fallen asleep if it weren’t for a piece of wood pressing up against my cheek. I opened my eyes to find a tall tankard forcefully nudging my raised, elegant right cheekbone, its handle wrapped in a magenta magical glow.

“What…?” I managed to groan.

“Have a drink, and stop being such a…”

Ahem. Apologies; it wasn’t that her words trailed off. I just feel the need to give you a warning. See, this particular mare had a certain way with words, and I have far too much respect for her to misrepresent those words. So instead, I’m going to trust that, if you’ve made it past my discourse on topics like necromancy, being framed for murder and government conspiracy, you can handle a little bit of language.

If not, as she would put it, grow a pair.

Continuing where I left off, she told me “Have a drink and stop being such a fucking pussy. Or at least give some to your kid; he looks like he’s about to keel over.”

Pulling myself up into a slightly more dignified slouch, I allowed myself to take a better look at the mare. She was a unicorn of reasonably average height for a mare, with magenta eyes and a dirty blonde mane. Both meanings of the former description are true: her mane was a dirty blonde, and it was also dirty, with rough pine needles and the remains of at least one maple leaf helping to accentuate the complete lack of any recognizable style. Her tail was in similar disarray, and trimmed shorter than was probably socially acceptable, given the sort of view it would offer to anypony standing behind her—and dirty or not, at that age I envied the stallion lucky enough to be in that position. Her cutie mark, helpfully left unobscured by the lack of reasonable tail, depicted a glittering tiara framed around a slender rapier—a set of symbols that seemed starkly at odds with the rough-and-tumble pony who had just cursed at me while she offered me an ale.

More than any of that though, my eyes caught on her sword. She was wearing a few saddlebags that mostly concealed the weapon from the door, but up close, it was unmistakeable: a blade most of the length of her torso, with a gilded crossguard and a sizeable amethyst set in the pommel.

“You might be cute, but I don’t fuck stupid, so you can stop staring at my ass.”

“Not your…” I rolled my eyes. “I was more interested in why you have such an—”

My honest thought, ‘Expensive sword’, was truncated by the arrival of the innkeep with two bowls of some thick, golden-brown stew.

“‘s apple-cabbage stew,” he told us, setting one down in front of me, and one in front of Graargh, whose efforts to climb onto a barstool clearly demonstrated that he was unfamiliar with the idea of ‘furniture’. “Enjoy.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’ mention it. Good to be cookin for ponies who aren’t from town again.”

The bowl that I’d lifted halfway to my lips (for want of a spoon) slowly returned to the bar. “Hold on; shouldn’t this town be full of merchants and travelers? You’re sitting on the road between the Union and River Rock, right?”

“Lübuck is the city that matters;” Gale cut in. “Economically speaking. Fucking Horseatic League banks are where all of Equestria’s money is sitting these days.”

“Aye, but the colt’s right;” the innkeep nodded to me. “Lübuck’s where you’d go to catch a boat to River Rock, if ye were really dead set on freezing to death. And we are sittin’ on what oughta be the main road here. But we’ve a problem with bandits.”

“Bandits?” I asked, suddenly more interested in the problems of the small town of Hodunk.

“Ol’ barbarians, we think. Crystals from back before Hurricane killed off all the warlords.” The reference to a far darker time in the history of the Crystal Union wasn’t lost on me, but I pushed down recollections of history, both then in order to focus, and now, so that the narrative flow might not be interrupted for your sake.

The innkeep continued. “They attack ponies in the wood. ‘N they steal foals from the town. Slavers, we figure. Selling ‘em off to somepony in Lübuck or one o’ the pirates who sail the waters past it.”

“Stealing foals?” Gale asked, her brow rising. She too leaned forward. “Have you contacted the Legion?”

The stallion nodded to her. “Aye. A full squad o’ ‘em showed up. Went into the woods. None o’ em came out.” The innkeep sighed. “We asked again, an’ they said we were gonna get some old veteran. But the stallion never showed. Been near two months now.” A pained sigh emerged from the stallion’s lips. “An’ I only go through the trouble of tellin’ the two of you that so you know to be careful. Only way out of town is the wood. An’ if you’re smart, you don’ come back when you go. Now eat up. Stew’s coolin’.”

I have yet to meet a bad earth pony cook; I theorize it is part of their magic. After my first few sips of the stew proved it was boiled in pure ambrosia, I tipped half the bowl back into my mouth. It was only then that the ‘boiled’ part of the above overrode the ‘ambrosia’ portion. Desperate for something even relatively cool, I grabbed the purple mare’s offered ale with both hooves, downing three sizeable swigs.

The ale was everything that the stew was not: reminiscent of used socks, imbued with a fundamental hatred of equine physiology, and possessing a mildly nutty aftertaste only in the sense that anypony who drank it willingly had to be at least mildly nutty.

“Heh.” The barkeep chuckled as I put on a face, trying to swallow the bitter ale to save myself from death. “Told ya unicorns can’t stomach an Old Cirran, Gale.”

The mare, Gale, rolled her eyes. “I drank three quarters of that piss—and frankly, I can’t fucking blame him, since that’s clearly ground-aged.”

The innkeep snorted. “Do I look like I’m about to fly up in the sky and grab some clouds for barrels? We’re all earth ponies here; what were you expectin’ ordering an Old Cirran?”

“Well, if that’s how we’re gonna play, do you know how to mix Luna’s Cunt?”

Throughout the whole conversation, I’d been struggling to force down the ale and failing. At the name of that drink, I released my stored arsenal; the stallion behind the bar dodged deftly to the side, wincing alongside my reaction.

“Young lady, we’ve got plenty of gods-fearing ponies in these parts; ‘round here, we call that a ‘Luna’s Blessing’.”

“Fine, whatever;” Gale rolled her eyes. “As long as it tastes good, I don’t give a shit what you call it. I’ll take one.”

“I try too?” Graargh asked me, leaning forward.

The old earth pony leaned forward, chuckling. “Probably too strong for you, kid. But you two seem to need drinks. What can I get ‘ya? I got near about everything.”

Graargh leaned forward, almost stepping up onto the bar to be seen past my shoulder. “Honey!”

“I’ve got mead…” the stallion answered.

“Water’s fine.” Graargh frowned at my interruption, but the bartender left all the same. Not two seconds after the innkeep left, my curiosity got the better of me. “What’s in a ‘Luna’s…?”

“Cunt?” Gale seemed proud of herself for her vulgarity. “Whisky, blackberries or blueberries or whatever you can find, some henbane to make it really kick, and an oyster, plus the mother-of-pearl scraped off the inside. Y’know, cause all of Luna’s hair has stars in it, and they figure that’s got to include—”

I coughed heavily. “Right. That sounds absolutely disgusting.”

“You’re not supposed to really taste it; you just shoot it.” Gale smiled. “Though with the oyster and the whisky, it pretty much does taste like taking a good long lick. The fun’s in what happens after. Whisky’s whisky, of course, hensbane makes that even more fun—”

“It’s a nightshade.” I nodded. “Strong hallucinogen, but it’s poisonous if you have too much.”

Gale chuckled. “One lick of Luna’s Cunt is always enough. Oyster’s an aphrodisiac.”

“And the berries?”

“Luna’s dark blue,” Gale offered, with a shrug.

“That’ll be quite enough blasphemy in m’ inn, thank you kindly.” The innkeep set down Gale’s Blessing and two tankards of water. “That’ll be four silvers, all told. An’ six more if you want a room for you ‘n your colt.”

It was as if the word were magic. “Not colt!” Graargh screamed.

“Beg yer’ pardon,” the barkeep muttered. “Don’t sound too much like a filly to me, but…”

“No! Am—” Graargh’s words were cut off by a simple stunning charm, and my telekinesis caught him gently before he slumped off the bar stool.

I very quickly realized that everypony in the bar was suddenly staring at me. I scratched the back of my neck. “Uh… look, it’s a game he tries to play sometimes. He claims he’s some sort of wild animal, and gets very… shall we say ‘insistent’, that he be referred to as that animal. I didn’t want to cause a scene.”

“Well then maybe you shouldn’t go around fucking stunning small children.” Gale reached out a hoof, slapping me across the ears.

Given her demeanor, I’d expected some strength to the blow. What I got was an unholy force capable of shearing a tectonic plate in twain; not only did my ears ring, but the bar actually rotated in my vision from the force of the blow.

“Ow! What in Tartarus was that for?”

“Somepony’s got to stand up for the colt,” she answered.

I rubbed my ear with a groan. “He’s fine. I’m a trained wizard, not some colt throwing around his first spells.” I made a point of rubbing a hoof on my jacket to draw attention to it, before sliding the same hoof into the breast of the coat. What came out were a few long, thin rubies of standardized size: crystal shards. I dropped them onto the bar.

“What’s a silver bit in shards these days?”

“Beg pardon?”

I took a moment to roll my eyes before gesturing to the money. “That is enough money in shards to purchase this entire town.” Sensing my disdain, the bartender frowned. “Obviously, I’m not paying that much for a bowl of soup and a bed. So I’m asking you what the exchange rate is.”

“Nothing.”

I raised a brow. “Beg pardon, what?”

“Crystal money’s no good out here. Only ponies that carry it are the bankers in Lübuck, and the bandits we sometimes get down from the Union; foalnappers and whatever. If we had any trade from th’ Crystal’s, I might take it, but the road’s dead. An’ I only take bits.”

I slapped a hoof to my brow (and almost immediately regretted it, given the welt from Gale’s previous blow). “Well, I don’t have any bits, so right now, your options are my shards, or giving out a free meal.”

“Sound’s like you’re gonna be working for me…”

I chuckled. “Yeah, about that… I can’t exactly stay in one place for a while.”

The bartender leaned forward, his brow forming a veritable cliff that shadowed his eyes. “Don’t make me get the Cirrans.”

“Are you hoping I’ll be afraid of a bunch of ponies who brew that vomit-water you’re serving? I don’t know who you think you’re dealing with, old stallion, but you’re going to have a hard time intimidating me. I studied under Wintershimmer the Complacent.”

“Who?”

I admit, in full honesty, that his response left me speechless, my mouth hanging open, for at least a dozen seconds. “You… you’ve never heard of Wintershimmer?” He shook his head. “The greatest magical duelist of the past thousand years?” Shake. “The Pale Master?” Again, ignorance. “Archmage to Queen Jade of the Crystal Union?”

He held up a hoof at me. “Cute ‘n all, kid, but I don’t give a damn about your mentor. ‘I’m a bloody wizard’ goes by a lot faster. I don’t need forty titles to tell you I’m an innkeep.”

I dropped a hoof on his bar and leaned forward; the earth pony was taller than me, but his lazy slouching posture gave me the upper hoof in the ‘looming’ department (the looming department: your source for all your discount needles, threads, and cursed spinning wheels! Half-off today only!) “Forty titles don’t tell you that I’m ‘a wizard’. They tell you I’m the best wizard. If I had forty titles as, I don’t know, an inn keeper, you’d know I was offering down-stuffed beds and exotic wines fit for royalty, instead of maintaining a run-down, dimly-lit, manure-smelling inn for some hodunk farming village where the beds are stuffed with moldy straw and there’s only three choices of drinks, served fresh from a grimy glass that I’m sweating into.” I gestured downward at his idle polishing. “You know, for that salt-of-the-earth flavor everypony asks for.”

My tirade resulted in more than a few chairs sliding out from tables, and tankards being set down heavily onto tables. The purple mare took two solid scoots away from me, becoming extremely focused in her drink.

“Mares, stallions, siddown!” bellowed the innkeep. “I can ‘andle this.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself, and my mood didn’t dampen in the slightest when he leaned down to glare at me. “Yer not sleeping here, colt. Not drinking here, not making friends here, not nothin’. Go find summer else for the night;” (that would be an accented ‘somewhere’.) “I recommend the bottom of the lake.”

“I wasn’t planning on it. The grass outside is probably cleaner. Care to join me, Gale?”

The young mare rolled her eyes. “You’ve been jacking yourself off all night, asshole. I don’t give a shit if you can’t finish on your own.” Pushing herself away from the bar, Gale’s magic brought her lick of Luna’s Blessing to her lips. When the glass came to rest on the bar, it was joined by three gold bits. “That should cover Mr. Wizard’s dinner. I’m going to bed before my lick kicks in.” With that, she wandered across the room to Hodunk’s aforementioned legendary stairs, and successfully exited the scene.

“You don’t know what you’re missing…” was the best I could come up with, and even that pathetic rebuttal was offered far too late to be of any use. The simple truth is that I had never been shut down so bluntly before. Whatever origins might have explained Gale’s strangely ornate sword and her dispensation for powerful alcohol, it was the fact that she could match me word for word that cemented the conversation in my memory. Before meeting her, Wintershimmer had been my only verbal peer, and between the two, I far preferred the young and attractive mare.

As silence settled over the common room, my gaze fell to the not-inconsiderable sum of money Gale had set down upon her departure; evidently, the bartender was intrigued too. “Are those… How much is a gold bit worth?”

“That right there is three hundred silvers…” The balding stallion muttered, sliding the money into his pocket. “I was only gonna’ charge her eight.”

“So the sword’s real…” I scratched my chin, and then looked down at my water and stew. “Right, well… I’d say pleasure doing business with you, but if I tried to lie through my teeth that boldly, I’d probably ruin my smile.” Flashing my immaculate whites at the old stallion, I picked up Graargh and walked away. “Tell Gale I appreciated dinner. We’ll sleep outside.”

VIII - A Name That Shall Live In Infamy

We left Hodunk the following morning, Graargh and I, and wandered on. Without a map, compass, or signpost, I listed lazily to the southwest, orienting myself by the sun. The journey went slowly, with meals coming in the form of whatever we could gather off the trees and prairies we found along what barely passed for Equestria’s roads.

For the first two days, the only other pony I saw was Graargh, who proved quite useful at scrounging up breakfast in the form of the berries and apples and other miscellaneous fruits that I could never seem to locate. He frequently offered me fish as well, but I held firm to my belief that carnivory was an unforgivable abomination.

In response to those claims, Graargh seemed to subscribe to the Wintershimmer school of morality; namely, not caring whatsoever. In a similar vein, he also didn’t seem to care much about giving up his cave. He was singularly obsessed with his parents, and the one time the topic came up he broke his impressively stoic silence to tell me all about their claws, and how loud his father could roar, and how strong…

That was the last time I mentioned his parents.

Around the second day of our journey out of Hodunk, we stumbled onto a ‘real road’—by which I mean a decently wide path through the forest marked by the parallel grooves that proved the passage of heavily laden wagons. There was no paving; no stone or crystal. Just dirt. Still, as flimsy as it was, I wasn’t going to be picky about the telltale sign of civilization. We followed the road due east that day, and when the sun set, Graargh and I made camp and laid down.

The following morning was… interesting. Most notably, I woke up with a sword at my throat. I remember groggily thinking that the feeling was weird, and that there wasn’t much use in a razor when I hadn’t yet started growing enough of a facial mane to bother shaving.

“Give up and I might not kill you, you fucking bandit scum.”

The voice was a mare’s and it startled me out of my sleep with enough shock that I very nearly decapitated myself on her steadied blade. It was also familiar, in a groggy sort of way. Only in my sleepy state did I not immediately recognize Gale’s word choice, though I see no reason to hold onto false suspense while recording this tale after the fact. I couldn’t see her, only her weapon, wrapped in a vibrant pink aura.

“Um… hello?” If there was some sort of eloquent way to greet somepony holding a knife to your throat, nopony had bothered telling me. As an afterthought, I added “I’m not a bandit.”

“Don’t waste your time, shitstain. I’ve heard about all the raids, and the kidnappings in these woods. You’re loaded with crystal money even though we’re on Equestrian soil, you’re dressed like you’re taking it in the ass from Wintershit, or whatever his name was, and there’s no way you’re old enough to have squirted the colt out.”

At those words, and the sheer idiocy of the logical leap behind them, I took a step back from the hovering sword and spun around to at least face the mare addressing me. I had a whole witty retort lined up, and I was ready to use it.

“Look, Gale…” I took a slight breath, adjusting my dialogue on the fly as one must when being held at swordpoint. “Ma’am…”

“Fuck you! I’m not old enough to be anybody’s ‘ma’am.’” Her sword danced through the air, returning it’s sharpened point to hover a hair’s width from the apple of my throat. “You want me to shove your stallionhood down your throat?”

I looked down at the sword nearly in my throat, and then back up at her.

“On the one hoof, not really. I don’t know if my mouth can stretch that wide. On the other hoof, I would love to see you try.”

Clearly, she wasn’t expecting that answer, nor the sudden burst of magic which followed, picking her up off her hooves and slamming her into a tree hard enough that the bark shattered. Naturally, a blow like that made her drop her sword, so once my head cleared from the magic, I reached down and picked it up in my teeth.

The blade was curved on its leading edge—an almost sure sign of pegasus make, since arcana was more efficient at stabbing with a hard point and straight blades. A huge notch let me see the ground through the middle of the blade, which seemed like a really obvious source of weakness in metal… but then, I didn’t know a lot about skysteel. What I did know is that the gold and amethysts that made up the weapon’s guard were dramatically more expensive than some wandering unicorn could reasonably afford; they only confirmed my suspicions developed when I watched her pay for her meal at the inn in Hodunk.

“You know,” I said to the groaning mare resting at the base of the tree trunk. “Accusing a pony of being a slaver and then threatening them with a stolen sword doesn’t seem like a great strategy. Were you hoping I’d offer you money to let me walk away?”

“I don’t want your blood money, you sick fuck!” she shouted at me, her horn bursting to life. “I want you to let that foal go!”

I shook my head. “He’s lost, crazy filly. I’m taking him to find his parents.”

“Yeah, and I’m the fucking Queen.”

I tsk’d her with my tongue, just to see how she’d react. “Language, Gale. There is a foal present.”

She hurled a spell in my direction—a fairly advanced stunning bolt that implied magical training; not wizard training, but certainly more than even a random bandit was likely to possess. Fortunately, I was able to embrace the most ancient of magical dueling techniques, passed down from master to apprentice since time immemorial.

I casually stepped to my right. The spell missed.

At that point, I considered attacking her. That proved rather unnecessary, however, when a massive brown paw slammed into her side, knocking her to the ground with such force that she bounced up again from the dirt. When she came to rest, blood was dripping from her temple and her eyes fluttered shut.

Of course, I was more concerned by the grizzly bear. The adult grizzly bear.

I started gathering magic into my horn as the creature turned to me and… smiled? Then it roared, with uncomfortable familiarity.

“Graargh?”

A burst of green flame consumed the bear, and when it cleared, my little colt friend stumbled woozily toward me. “Was good?”

“Howargat...” That was not at all what I had intended to say, merely the mangled pieces of several thoughts that all tried to express themselves at once. Words tend to fail in situations like that. I finally settled on feeding him his own words. “Yes, Graargh. Was good.”

“Yay!” The little unidentified shapeshifting cub-colt creature (I know, doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?) smiled, before stretching out his forelegs on the ground and laying down to return to the sleep that the mare next to the tree had interrupted.

“Also, never repeat any of the words she just said. Your parents would kill me.”

Normally, I would have been consumed with curiosity about how Graargh’s magic had changed not only his shape, but also his age. However, in that moment, Gale’s not-insubstantially bleeding brow demanded more immediate attention. It looked like one of Graargh’s claws had gotten deep into her there. I was grateful I only got clawed by Graargh as a colt; my coat had covered up the scabs of my own wounds easily, but the mare’s injuries couldn’t be left on their own. I only had Wintershimmer’s book, though, so I resorted to digging through the mare’s bag for medical supplies. It didn’t seem wrong; I was going to use them on her anyway.

After ripping a few bags of hardtack and dried fruit out of her backs, and pulling what looked to be a bedroll from the ropes holding it onto her saddlebags, I removed a heavy bag that clicked and jangled as I moved it. A brief glance inside confirmed my suspicion: they were coins. More specifically, Equestrian bits. Solid gold bits, not the silver kind that most ponies used to buy bread and corn and whatnot. Given how much she’d overpaid for our meals back in Hodunk, she probably had enough money to buy a small castle. Tragically, however, there weren’t any castle salesponies nearby, and castles tend not to be very effective at treating head trauma; they’re more of a ‘prevention’ type solution. Thus, I set the bag aside and kept digging.

Near the very bottom of the bag, where I supposed it wouldn’t be terribly useful in a pinch, I found a pack of medical supplies: mostly balms and herbs I didn’t recognize, but a needle and thread and more than a bit of some potent alcohol as well. The herbs weren’t labeled, but I was a decent enough alchemist to identify them by smell and taste. Without seeing any better solution than using her limited supplies, I set to work.

“Who’re you?”

Those were the first words she said to me when she woke up. I was paying attention to the potato soup I was mixing (in a pot I also found in Gale’s pack) with some food Graargh brought me from the forest, so I didn’t notice her waking up until she sat down next to me.

“Hmm?”

In apparent thanks for my medical treatment, and for sparing her life, Gale slapped me behind my ears. After I shook off the momentary pain, I found her offering me a disgruntled look. “What am I supposed to call you?”

“Mortal Coil,” I told her somewhat mournfully.

She gave me an altogether familiar look. “Yeah fucking right.”

I drew in a deep breath for my usual explanation, and then realized she wasn’t from the Union, and probably wouldn’t immediately understand. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“I’ve got time, Mortal Coil.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t call me that.”

“You just told me it was your name.”

“That’s what I’ve been told, too, and I’ve yet to find evidence to the contrary. Just ‘Coil’ works.” She rolled her eyes at my suggestion. “I take it since you didn’t stab me in the back while I wasn’t looking, you’ve come around to the thought that a single young, attractive unicorn carrying no chains or shackles couldn’t possibly be a slave-taking bandit. Or was it just my charm?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, that’s definitely it.” She rolled her eyes again, and I remember wondering why the action hadn’t started to give her a headache. “You took care of me while I was knocked out. Thanks.” I offered her a nod in reply. “Also, I don't know what you did with my sword.”

So she had looked.

“Oh, and you fought off a damn bear. I’d at least wait until the world stops spinning before I took a stab at you—pun not intended,” she hastily amended. Not wanting to linger on that poor choice of words, she steered the conversation back to its original topic. “Who in Tartarus are you?”

“Archmage-in-Exile Coil the Immortal, formerly of the Crystal Empire, reigning Pale Master, at your service.” In retrospect, I wouldn’t have believed me… But she did.

“So you really are part of an evil Celestia-damned cult?” And then she glanced around for her stolen sword, which was nowhere to be found. (For the record, I had given it to Graaaagh to sleep on. It seemed like the best option at the time.)

“Evil cult? What… That doesn't even make any sense.”

“You're wearing black and red robes!” She protested, grabbing the lapel of my jacket.

“It's my favorite jacket!” I told her. “And it’s absolutely not a robe, since its hem doesn’t even cover my hind legs. And before you say something equally idiotic, it isn’t a cloak either; it doesn't even have a hood. And what's wrong with red and black?”

“Everypony knows evil ponies wear red and black, dipshit. I bet you've got a weird twisty dagger somewhere in there too…”. When her horn started trying to dig around in the lapels of my jacket, I decided I'd had enough. Flicking the tip of her horn produced a gasp, and cost her the focus she needed for her spell.

Then she flat-out punched me in the muzzle. “Don't touch my horn, pervert!”

I staggered back a step—something of an athletic feat, given that I’d been seated. She punched hard. “You were the one trying to get inside my jacket.” Against a future Mortal Coil’s better judgement, I returned to my seat beside her, and then crossed my forelegs over my chest. “The colors have nothing to do with good or evil. It’s the formal attire of my order.”

“Ha, I knew it! You are part of a cult!”

I groaned. “A wizard order. Not… I don't know, Tartaran summoners or something? Do you not know what an order is?”

Gale scoffed. “Why should I? Do I look like I was born with a silver spoon up my ass?”

“You’ve gone a long way to hide it, Gale, but I know you’re a noble-born unicorn.”

She winced. “How—”

“That stunning spell you slung at me, rather unwisely I might add, was Frail’s Fundamental Three—notable for the fact that it overrides the subjects control of their body by illusion instead of by the brute force of evocation.” I smiled at her with half my muzzle, not bothering to turn my head as I continued. “Common-born unicorns, like merchants, and even most hedge mages, don’t know illusion magic. It’s particularly difficult to learn. If you aren’t a traveling mage or a noble, that kind of magic is only good for parlor tricks and crimes. And while I gave thought to the possibility that you might be some sort of illusionist-thief, hiding in plain sight so you could steal all that gold you’re hiding in your bag—” that produced another wince, “—if being a crass, dirty traveler who drinks too much were just an act, you would have been more subtle in attacking me, now that we’re out here by ourselves and not in front of an audience.”

Gale slapped me across the face.

After a moment of forced calm as I let the throbbing in my cheek fade—she really didn’t pull her punches—I forced a smile. “Now, if I had to guess, I’d say you’re an estranged noble or something. That would explain the chip on your shoulder—which, I should warn you, is at risk of taking your foreleg off. You fight just a bit like you’ve received dueling training… though you shouldn’t quit your day job.”

This time, when she swung at me, I caught her foreleg in my telekinesis. “Uh, uh. One of those was quite enough.”

“Yeah? Well, fuck you, Mortal.”

All my amusement at our little game vanished, and with probably more force than was necessary, I flung her foreleg back to her side.

I say ‘probably more force than necessary’ because the telekinetic thrust spun her around twice, tossing her back a good few feet onto the forest floor.

“Don’t call me that.”

Gale growled. “Well, if you’re gonna be a huge ass about it, fine. I didn’t ask you to play twenty-fucking-questions with my past.”

“I’m afraid that the act of holding a pony at swordpoint and accusing them of foalnapping doesn’t exactly give you a lot of ground to stand on.”

“You’ve got to be joking.” Gale growled. “Look, I wasn’t the only one thinking it, okay? You stunned out some little colt right in the middle of him telling everypony why he was with you! So what was I supposed to think? What fucking reason could you—a stallion in evil robes who explicitly told us he was from the Crystal Union—have for running around out here with some colt?”

I bit my cheek. “As I just explained, it isn’t a cult; it is an order. My late mentor and I wore jackets like this to show we belonged to the Order of Unhesitating Force. But since he is my late mentor,and it's awful hard to have a cult when you're just one pony, I'd say you can probably calm down.”

Whether it was my impeccable logic or my charming demeanor, my request was granted. Gale stared at me for a few moments, took a deep breath, and wandered over next to me—mostly to find a comfortable seat on the rather small log I was using for a bench. “You didn’t answer my question at all, dipshit. Why are you out here with some colt?”

“I just told you I wasn’t in a…” I coughed, in realization. “That would be ‘colt’ as in ‘young stallion’, wouldn’t it?”

She nodded, snickering. “Well, I should fucking hope so. If you were about to tell me that you were ‘in a colt’, I’d probably kill you.”

“As delightful as that thought is, Gale, and as much as I agree with you, you have about as much chance of killing me as an earth pony does of growing a horn.”

Gale rolled her eyes. “You’re such an tool, Mortal.”

I stomped heavily on the soil, and I felt my ears fall back against my scalp. “Do you understand how terrible that name is?”

“Yeah.” Gale turned to me, donning what she would surely refer to as a ‘shit-eating grin’. “It fits you pretty damn well. Were your parents just fucking clueless or something?”

“I'd say it's none of your business.”

She gave me a look that told me she wasn’t going to stop pressing. And, to be entirely fair to myself, it was a really cute look. Not like a puppy with wide eyes; she wasn’t pleading. What convinced me was the genuine intrigue, the unmistakeable curiosity of a pony who wanted to learn.

It didn’t hurt that she wanted to learn about me. “Alright, fine. You want a terrible story, we can make a trade. When I’m done, you have to tell me what you’re doing out here with a stolen sword.”

She bit her cheek, and her eyes wandered to sky, thinking. “Deal,” she finally decided.

“Okay. So thirty years ago, before Queen Jade, the ruler of most of the crystal ponies was Warlord Halite.” She looked at me with confusion, and I motioned her not to interrupt. “Before Commander Hurricane showed up from the east, Halite led a huge army of barbarians who attacked the Diamond Kingdoms for resources, and sometimes prisoners. My mother was one of those barbarians.”

“Sounds like a bitch,” said Gale.

“She’s not the nicest pony in the world, no. But she was a crystal pony—a crystal earth pony, I should clarify, even though almost all of them are. My dad, on the other hoof, was a Diamond Guard. A regular, non-shiny unicorn. He served under King Lapis, Queen Platinum’s father.” Gale seemed riveted by my story, and I continued.

“The crystal barbarians liked taking Diamond Guards prisoner, but as I’m sure you’re aware—” I paused for a moment to give her a slightly smug smile, “—taking a unicorn by force is a dangerous prospect. Like I said, the crystals didn’t have many unicorns, and all the Diamond Guards were. In the short term, you could use a suppressor ring, but if you wear one of those too long, it starts to poison your horn, and eventually, it’ll kill you. So instead…”

“Instead what?”

I yanked Gale’s stolen sword out from beneath Graaaagh with telekinesis; her eyes widened at where I’d hid it, though I quickly retrieved her attention. I tapped the blade twice with a hoof, and then drew that same hoof in a straight line down from the tip of my horn to the base of my skull.

She gasped. “No shit?”

“Yeah,” I told her. “It makes even basic magic excruciatingly painful. Stronger, if you can manage to hold the spell, but most ponies can’t. They pass out just trying to use silverware. Well, as you can guess, Dad doesn’t like the crystal ponies too much. And since that’s where I came from, he doesn’t like me a ton either. As for mom… when a crystal pony has a non-crystal foal, it's a sign of shame. It means your blood is weak or something stupid like that. So being born a unicorn and not sparkly, I was an embarrassment to her too.”

“And they named you after somepony dying because they were hoping you’d kick the bucket?”

“That’s the short of it.” I forced a kooky grin onto my face, hoping it would lighten the mood. Mostly, I think it made her suspect I was insane, but she did chuckle. “At least they didn’t call me ‘Bucket Punt’ or something.” The comment earned yet another little laugh. “Well, now that we’ve talked about that delightful subject, you want some soup? I’m not much of a cook, but it’s fairly hard to screw up potatoes and leeks.”

Gale’s magic took hold of the spoon and brought a sizeable taste to her mouth. “Hmm…” I noticed her frown and wrinkle her nose, though her ensuing commentary made those signs entirely unnecessary. “How the honest-to-Celestia fuck did you manage to screw up potatoes and leeks?”

“...Magic?” I shrugged. “Whatever, you don’t have to like it; just eat enough that you don’t get sick. Remember, you got mauled by a grizzly bear.” I briefly glanced over to Graargh, still sleeping away; he’d managed to roll over onto his back when I removed the sword from beneath him. “Your turn: where’s the sword from?”

She took a deep breath. “My dad’s a pegasus. It’s his sword.”

“Ah, so you’re a half-breed too?” I observed. “A unicorn mare and a pegasus stallion; think of the scandal! Guess that explains why you turned into a criminal.”

“I’m not a fucking criminal!”

“The sword at my throat a few hours ago told a different story. And for the record, I’ve never heard of a pegasus that rich.” I twisted my horn toward the weapon. “That’s a lot of gold and amethysts for a sword somepony actually expects to be swinging around in a fight. It looks ornamental.”

“No, it’s real,” she told me. “Dad fought against Halite’s army with this, like you were talking about. He was in the Legion.”

“And your huge bag of gold?”

Gale swallowed heavily, and her eyes flashed back to her bag. “I only promised I’d tell you about the sword.”

“Fair enough.” That response surprised her; she shook her head as if trying to clear her ears. When I didn’t press her further, she seemed happy.

Gale tapped her hoof on the dirt for a few seconds. “So… if you don’t like your name, what do your friends call you?”

I looked sideways at her. “Wintershimmer called me Coil; that was the best I ever got.”

“Wow.” She looked square in my eyes. “Do you not have a nickname? What did your friends call you?”

“What friends?” Gale reacted to that comment more than I expected. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, ponies loved me back in the Union.” I hoped the pain I suffered from using the past tense in that sentence didn’t show on my muzzle. “I just didn’t have a lot of time for sitting around drinking or what have you. I was an apprentice to an archmage.”

“Hmm…” She tapped her chin, thinking. “What do we do with ‘Mortal’?”

I promptly stopped listening to Gale mumbling to herself, instead sampling a bit of my own stew. True to Gale’s vulgarity, the stuff was nightmarish; I may have inadvertently proven myself the world’s greatest poisoner, having constructed a near-lethal concoction out of common vegetables and water alone. I gagged down a few gulps of the substance before I could no longer take it.

Fortunately, my attention was stolen from my culinary torture by Gale thrusting her hoof toward me. “I got it! I’m gonna call you Morty.”

“Morty?” I cocked a brow. “A donkey name?”

“Better than ‘Bucket Punt’, like you said.” I snorted, and coughed up a mouthful of potato soup; that reaction put a broad smile on her face. I only later realized I had laughed at my own joke. “It’s a donkey name, which fits you perfectly because you’re a huge ass, it’s easy to say, and honestly, it sounds more like a real name than what you’ve got.”

“Like it.” Gale and I both turned to where Graargh was rolling over, watching us with his dark puppy dog eyes. “Better name. Morty.”

“Look what you’ve done, Gale.” I rubbed a hoof over my face. “If I have to put up with being called that all the way to River Rock, I’m going to go legitimately mad.”

“You’re going to River Rock too?” Gale let one of her brows rise on her face. “What’s in River Rock for you?”

“I’m looking for an archmage.”

“I’m going to meet Cyclone,” Gale told me, as if that name were expected to be intimately familiar to a pony raised in the Crystal Union.

“Huh… Well…” I took a slow breath. She swore a lot, and I didn’t know enough to really claim I could trust her.

On the other hoof, she was really hot.

I was, after all, seventeen.

“You want to travel together?”

Gale stared at me for a second. Then she grinned, and laughed just a little bit.

“You know what, Morty?”

I smiled back.

“I’d rather get mauled by the fucking grizzly.”

IX - Any Storm in Port

Graargh and I traveled onward for the better part of two weeks. Along the way, we encountered a few wandering monsters, which I dispatched rather easily. I omit those encounters in their entirety from the narrative for two reasons. Firstly, ‘I dispersed it with a single spell’ is an extremely boring description of an encounter. Secondly, it offers very little by way of a lesson on heroism. Despite what some unicorn nobles might tell you, ‘be born with a better horn’ is not a very useful piece of advice to anypony, save perhaps a master of time travel.

Partway through our journey I lost some fundamental part of my sanity. Personally, I hypothesize it disappeared in the course of learning the fine art of rock arrangement needed to achieve a state of blissful fang shui in a cave. All I knew, though, was that for the first time in my life, Wintershimmer’s brand of amorality was starting to be really tempting.

Only one other topic of our discussions while traveling is worth repeating. It began with a frankly unexpected question from Graargh. “You like Gale?”

“Hmm?” It wasn’t so much that the question caught me completely off-guard for its contents, but rather that Graargh would have even had the understanding of romance necessary to ask that question. “What makes you think that?”

“She is pretty.”

“Graargh, let me explain something. You see, Gale may be a very beautiful mare. I’m not going to deny that. More than that, she’s interesting. If nothing else, I really would love to know just where she got her money and her fancy sword. At the end of the day, though, she’s just too rough around the edges for me. I proposed traveling with her because her bag of stolen gold would have been convenient. And, if I’m being honest, because I was curious about her story.”

I deliberately neglected to mention my third reason: that in a conflict with Silhouette or Jade, a mare with a talent for stunning spells and a fancy pegasus sword would likely come in very handy.

“So you not like?”

I shrugged. “No, I suppose not. I wasn’t looking forward to hearing her say words I won’t repeat twice every sentence. Had she come with us, honestly, I would have probably let you tell her all about your rock arrangements.”

It isn’t that I wanted to do anything untoward to Graargh. I merely felt that foisting his lectures on somepony else—literally anypony else—would do just fine.

The two weeks I allude to ended at the Equestrian port city of Lübuck. Before I offer any description, let me make a simple oath here. Someday, I will find the pony who put the two dots above the ‘u’, even if I have to use time travel. And when I do, I will force that mälignänt little töäd to carry around a set of stüpid döts over his heäd all day. Then we’ll see if he thinks that guttural noise and the irritation of having to add unnecessary dots is so funny.

Apologies. It appears a pet peeve of mine escaped its leash there.

As I was describing, we reached the city of Lübuck. Though technically a part of the Equestrian government, Lübuck wasn’t really ruled by the Triumvirate of Hurricane, Platinum, and Puddinghead. Instead, its meaningful government was the Horseatic League: a bunch of merchant ponies who basically ruled by right of their wallets. They’d chosen Lübuck as the seat of their power because it was a thriving port and the booming center of a developing timber industry (in some contrast to the struggling, gem-oversaturated economy of Everfree City itself). The former fact, Lübuck’s port, was obvious because I could see the masts of countless ships in the harbor over the tops of the city’s mostly squat buildings. The latter I gathered from the deforestation surrounding the walls of the city for the better part of a mile in every direction. As we got closer to the city, we started passing traders and travellers of all breeds. A huge, burly earth pony sailor with tattoos bursting through his coat. A unicorn noble in a heavy fur jacket, twirling a walking stick that was clearly more for show than any arthritic dependency. A pegasus with an eyepatch and a missing ear, wearing no less than four swords under his wings; I had no idea what the three that wouldn’t fit in his mouth were for, but I had the sense to steer to the other side of the road from that one.

Best of all, there wasn’t a crystal in sight. For the first time in my life, I was experiencing a real city made of something other than glimmering rocks. I felt like I was in the Summer Lands. Everything was brick and mortar, wood and stone. It felt so physical, so real, so… decadently not shiny. The Crystal Union may have been many things, but most of them were unpleasant to look at directly.

The gates were guarded, but wide open, and with all the carts of vegetables and fish (please forgive any vomit left on this page, either by myself or readers who precede you) I passed by with nothing more than a nod from one of the two spear-wielding pegasi flanking the entrance.

The cobblestone streets of Lübuck were nothing short of spectacular.The ever-present smell of salt hung in the air, and wood groaned from some passing cart or towering windmill at every corner we passed. I barely paid attention to where we were going, too focused on the city at large. At least twice I bumped into ponies going about their working days. Both times, they swore at me in an incomprehensible accent that I won’t try to recreate.

Where I was struck with awe at the sheer life of the ‘big city’ (remember, at this point I’d never seen Everfree City) Graargh seemed perturbed by civilization. Again and again, Graargh tugged me to the side of the street, away from wagon wheels and ponies carrying barrels on their shoulders and all manner of travel and trade and… well, the point was, it was intoxicating.

Finally, however, Graargh’s fears won some small sympathy from me, and I decided to pull him aside into a inn. Hopefully, he could rest in a rented room while I explored the city. The first likely candidate I saw had a wooden sign depicting a frothing mug in the eye of a stylized hurricane (a symbol I ought to have considered ominous). Given that I had no real contacts to ask about which lodgings in the city were the cleanest, and being fully aware that my immaculate hygiene and attractive appearance tend to linger in the mind, I decided that my first option was probably my best. That way, if Silhouette or Jade came asking around, at least only a few ponies would remember me.

As advertised, the building was an inn. And like all good inns, that meant its bottom floor was dedicated to a public house. This one was dimly lit, musty, and smelled strongly of some horrible alcohol that didn’t at all resemble the wine Wintershimmer and I used to take with our dinner. Thus, in every respect, it was superior to the sad little excuse for a tavern I’d found in Hodunk. All around me, sailors and traders caroused, tossing carved bones and sharing rowdy stories and half-remembered songs as they went. Moving from table to table, a stallion younger than I struggled to keep everypony fed and—presumably more importantly—inebriated. I suspect that the multitude of… let’s call them “mares of negotiable affection” were doing a better job at that second bit, however.

The bartender, whom I thankfully do not remember with the clarity of his Hodunkian predecessor, was glad to accept my crystal shards in exchange for lodging and… well, something loosely resembling food.

“Two grogs,” was what he told me, slapping two mugs full of some thick substance down on the bar.

“Not eat me!” Graargh called up to him defensively.

I shuffled the little colt away before he could draw attention to us, and we found a shady corner in which to sit, undisturbed by the rest of the tavern’s occupants. Only in retrospect does the significance of my being the shady, dark-jacketed stallion in the corner of the rough-and-tumble tavern stand out to me. Don’t worry, though. Even without knowing, I still lived up to my narrative duties.

For those of you who haven’t had the joy, what I now refer to as ‘grog’ consists of kelp and some other aquatic foods served in lukewarm ale. Thank Celestia the name was applied incorrectly (real grog being watered-down rum), but nevertheless, somepony thought it was a good idea to put seawater, along with all the flotsam and jetsam that implied, into a tankard of beer. Even more disgustingly, other ponies paid for the stuff. I was hesitant to call it food, and even more hesitant to call the ale ‘drink’, but I was also hungry enough to at least try.

To put the result of that experience in words Graargh would understand, “Grog bad.” I must have turned a bit visibly green at the taste, as a nearby patron felt the need to slide over to our table. He was a weary old stallion with a bum leg and a missing eye. Even his pegasus wings seemed misaligned on his back. When he fell off the stool he was attempting to slide over from his table, he was forced to limp his way over to us. Without asking, he pulled out a seat with a mustard yellow wing and flopped down into it. As a result of this process, I estimated that roughly half the blood in his veins was alcohol.

“Not a fan of Commander’s Quarters grog, son?”

I looked at my own mug. “Honestly? I think I’d rather die.”

“More for me then.” With a flick of his wing, he snatched my grog and dropped down a half-eaten piece of stale bread in its place. I didn’t feel like I’d lost anything in the trade, but I hadn’t gained much either. “I’m assuming it’s ‘cause of the fish?”

I took a brief moment to lean under the table and… shall we say unburden my stomach? When I came back up, hitting my head on the table along the way, Graargh was laughing hard enough that he struggled to breathe.

“That’s not funny, Graargh. That’s disgusting. It’s meat.”

The old stallion joined in on the laugher at that pronouncement, banging a hoof on the table loud enough to gather the attention of others in the room. I glared at him, but the unspoken message was clearly lost in translation. “Not sure what you were expecting, son. It’s a Cirran tavern. Why do you think they called it ‘the Commander’s Quarters’?”

“How was I supposed to know the name?”

He smacked his forehead. “It was right there on the sign outside. I swear, son, not much slips by you. Anyway, yeah, this is a Cirran tavern—that means pegasi, in case you didn’t know—so they serve fish. Beef too, somedays.”

“Beef? You eat a sentient species?”

“Grow a spine. It tastes pretty good.”

Images of a stallion clad in jet black armor, glaring with fires in his eyes flashed through my imagination. “So I have to imagine if I sat down to dinner with the Butcher, I’d wind up eating another pony?”

The old stallion took a long sip of grog before cocking his head. “Is that some sort of strange god?”

I shook my head. “Hurricane the Butcher. You know, the pegasus—”

My comment died like a knock-knock joke at a funeral when I realized everypony in the tavern was staring at us.

It was almost six seconds later, in total silence, that he spoke to us with a raspy voice. “Badmouthing the Commander is a bad move in these parts, little pony.”

I held up my hooves. “I didn’t mean any harm. That’s what everypony calls, um, Commander Hurricane up in the Crystal Empire.”

“Oh, that’s no joke.” The mustard pegasus growled back. “The Commander wasn’t kind to the barbarians.” At that, he focused his single eye properly onto me, gazing deep into my soul. “See, back when us pegasi first flew in from the old lands—from Old Cirra, across the sea—the Commander made a deal with the other tribes. They’d give us food and land so we could recover from the thrashing the griffons gave us, and in exchange, we’d do two things. Work the weather, and fight the crystals.”

I felt like his eye was somehow going to snatch my heart out of my chest.

“The crystals were good at fighting unicorns; they had these black rocks that ate magic…” His mention of void crystals made me think of Silhouette, who was probably still following me somewhere. “…and they had big ol’ catapults that took down walls real fast. But against a pegasus… well, those catapults weren’t much good at hitting a flying target, and we were fast enough that we’d get behind their lines and cut down their archers before they could take more than a few of us down. And when they tried to run away, the Commander made it snow on ‘em, everywhere they went. They froze to death, got sick… we made Hell for ‘em right here on this earth.”

“Hell?” I asked.

The old-timer leaned forward across the table to recapture our attention. “Old Cirran name for Tartarus, son. Hurricane deserved to be called a butcher by the crystals. But he saved us. And not just pegasi; the unicorns and the earth ponies too. He’s a hero to us. You better watch your back, unless you’re wanting to end up as a red star.”

“Sorry, a what?” I asked, halfway worried that not to ask would cause trouble in the tavern.

The pegasus leaned forward further still. “See, years ago once, there was this pony name of Red Star. They say he was in basic with the Commander, back before he was Commander; like they knew each other for a long time. Maybe even friends, the way some tell it. But one day, after the Commander got to be the Commander, Red Star takes a swipe at the Commander’s sister, Twister. It was just an argument over politics or something small like that, but he leaves a shiner right on Twister’s eye. And when the Commander sees it, he gets Red Star in front of him. And he asks ‘Red Star, how high up off the ground is Cloudsdale, you think?’ And Red Star says to him, says ‘I dunno. I’d have to measure it, Commander’. Well, the Commander, he says ‘Gimme your best guess,’ and Red Star says some number; let’s say thirty furlongs. So the Commander, he turns to his assistant, and he says ‘Go get me thirty furlongs of rope.’ And then he takes steel binders, and he clamps ‘em on Red Star’s wings so the poor sod can’t fly. And the Commander ties a noose in all that rope, and he puts the top of it on Cloudsdale. And he tosses it on Red Star’s neck.”

I shook my head, gathering where the story was going. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that wouldn’t hurt at all, would it? You’d fall a lot, but then the force would… well, it would be over really fast.”

“Right,” the old stallion replied. “But that weren’t the point. The Commander didn’t want to torture Red Star. He wanted to make a point. See, if the rope’s too long, then the end is… messy. And of course if it’s too short, still messy. Either way, there’s a message. Everypony knows what happens now, if you hurt the Commander’s family. Everypony knows, on account of there’s a big red star on the ground under Cloudsdale.”

The stallion nodded slowly to me. “I hope you remember that story next time you’re thinking of disrespecting the Commander in Equestria. We’re not Crystals here. You and your shiny friend best remember that.” Partway through standing up, he muttered “And above all else, ya don’t ever, ever touch his family. Nihil post legionem.” At the time, I didn’t recognize the strange language, nor the famous statement it contained. Instead, I was more concerned with two facts. Firstly, I was getting very nervous at the number of ponies who’d been convinced to pay very close attention to me. Secondly, he’d mentioned a ‘shiny friend’. As I looked across those eyes, the swivel of my head stopped cold at an uncomfortably familiar glint. At a table not far from the door, drinking alone, I saw a decidedly unpleasant face staring back at me. Silhouette smiled, raised a mug to her lips, and drank. I watched for a moment, until a colt with a tray full of drinks walked between us. In the mere few seconds of distraction and cover the server offered, Silhouette had disappeared.

And, for the record, I didn’t just leave it at that; every few seconds from then on that I spent in the tavern, my eyes would jump around, searching for the crystal mare.

“Graargh, we’re leaving.”

“Not sleep here?” Graargh asked. “But you said to big pony that—”

“I know what I said. But we’ve got to get going. Keep close to me.”

I stood up, turning toward the door… and then immediately set my eyes on another familiar face.

Before I continue, let me remind you that it had been two weeks since I’d last seen head or negligible tail of Gale. I merely omit boring travel for your benefit. Thus, when the naturally crass young mare entered the bar, every single fragment of instinct and insight I’d gained in my studies as a mage screamed at me that forcing my way past her to leave the bar was going to lead to trouble—from her, from Silhouette, or from literally anypony else, I couldn’t yet tell.

For her part, Gale didn’t bother looking at the shadowy corner of the tavern (rookie mistake). Without so much as a lick of hesitation, she moved toward the bar. Her journey, however, was short-lived When a particularly inebriated sailor reached out and brushed her flank with a hoof, she bucked him square in the jaw hard enough to flip him over the bench he was resting on and onto the table of another group of patrons.

You may notice that nopony ever has a proper one-on-one duel inside a tavern. The reason for this is a natural law I discovered with the aid of a particularly alcoholic pegasus named Pathfinder well after these events. I mention him so that you understand this law's name: the Finder-Coil Law of Brawling Constancy. I’ll present it with a proof by induction.

First, our base case. As I’ve presented above, every proper brawl starts with a single blow between two parties and a matter which only involves them. Ours is between Gale and her particularly forward admirer.

However, as you may notice, those two ponies were not the only ones involved. In flipping the stallion with her buck, Gale caused his body to spill several drinks of otherwise uninvolved ponies. This may have been an accident on her part, but it was also strictly guaranteed by the fact that taverns serve as a common meeting ground. There’s always a third party. Usually a fourth, fifth, and sixth party too. In every case, because the room is likely to be crowded, and because fights are violent, a third party will always be wronged.

The third party, four musclebound porters who didn’t like having their ale and ‘grog’ spilled over their chests, stood up from their table and rolled their necks and shoulders, readying to throw blows at Gale. You may notice that this returns us to our base case.

Thus, we reach our conclusion: any private fight that takes place in a tavern will not stay private for very long. Q.E.D.

Forgive me for a brief distraction from your daily dose of banal alcoholic violence. My former editor, Pedantic Whim, informed me at the time of my presentation of a first draft, that a proof-by-induction does not belong in a narrative of high adventure. He also argued that Wintershimmer, for example, could have a private fight in a public tavern by simply ripping out his opponent’s soul in an evil, but admittedly hygienic and controlled fashion.

Consequently, this text is presented without the unnecessary and unhelpful purview of ponies who would probably know more about being a traveling hero if they:
1) bothered to remove their muzzle from a dictionary for the span of seven minutes at once,
2) possessed the charisma not to drive away potential romantic interests by criticizing their misuse of ‘the Oxfjord comma’, and
3) would listen to the authoritative figure on the subject, instead of pedantically attempting to rewrite his life story for the benefit of ‘textual standardization’.

I should also mention that, at least for the foreseeable future as of the time of writing, the tome you hold in your hooves/feathers/magical grasp/talons/manipulatory limbs of choice is likely to be the sole copy currently in existence. This record contains some information that Celestia and Luna have requested I keep under careful control. I trust that if the sisters do eventually allow my narrative here to be reprinted, they’ll have the decency to edit out my chapter titling gaffe from a few chapters back… and also this paragraph. Actually, Celestia, if you’re having this transcribed, just go to town taking out whichever of my asides don’t seem to belong.

And more importantly, Luna I expect you to have the maturity not to tamper with the narrative outside of those necessary technical edits. After all, mine massively swollen ego verily depends upon this this narcissistic endeavor to cast me in a perfect light, lest I should crumble into existential dread and sob like a filly newly born unto our nation.

Back to violence. The porters lunged at Gale in a sizeable rush. Gale responded by leaping atop another nearby table and blasting the oncoming ponies with her simple stunning charm. Two crumpled, but the remaining heavyset earth ponies upended her high ground onto a small cluster of blood merchants fishmongers. And from there… chaos ensued. Ponies rose and fell, lost teeth rained like hail, and beer mixed with little stains of blood from broken noses as both liquids spilled freely, creating a foamy tide across the floor.

I was content to keep Graargh out of the brawl, more for the safety of others than his own. Further, as an aspiring archmage, at the time I believed myself above bar brawls. My militant talents lay in the field of formal unicorn dueling, a topic that I promise will be covered before this tale’s end. Untempted to join, I settled back to paranoidly sweep the room for Silhouette, and to watch Gale. For her part, the latter was brilliant. Not only in the literally ‘bright from glowing arcana’ sense, but jumping from table to table, tossing stunning spells every which way like the mad lovechild of a hurricane and the sun.

The violence continued for several minutes; near its end, most of the tavern was lying stunned or unconscious on the floor, spread about between broken wooden furniture and discarded tankards. Gale’s head pivoted slowly between two mares and a particularly irate stallion holding a table leg in his teeth. My acquaintance seemed unperturbed, and her horn glowed as bright as ever despite her extensive use of magic.

The impending threat never came, however. Instead, what I can only assume was a huge gust of wind blew the tavern door wide open. On a perfectly clear day, a mighty squall howled at us, around the shoulders of a group of pegasi who walked into the room in a perfect diamond formation. All were in armor. With swords. Drawn.

Trouble seemed the appropriate word.

Their leader was a pale blue stallion—though far bluer and less white than myself—with an icy white mane and a prominent tuft of scruff dusting the bottom of his chin. Little red bands decorated the collar of his light leather armor. When he entered the tavern, those ponies still well enough to stand stopped what they were doing.

“Alright, who started this?” He spoke rather cleanly, with a warm timbre that seemed to match his laid back expression.

Literally the entire tavern turned toward Gale. I was surprised at just how many hooves rose from the ground to point in her direction.

Sighing audibly, Gale stood up. “Hi, Tempest.”

“Gale!” Despite the friendly greeting, this ‘Tempest’ gave a slight gesture with his wing, and his three subordinates started to spread slowly throughout the room, blocking off any obvious exit. “You know what’s hilarious? I didn’t actually come here looking for you. I just heard about the bar brawl. Your mom is going to be pissed.”

“Maybe she should pull her horn out of her fucking flank,” Gale shouted back, ensuring I couldn’t possibly forget her choice of vocabulary. “And since you’re here instead of Pathfinder, I’m guessing that nopony thinks it’s that big of a deal.”

“Hey!” Tempest sounded wounded. “I’m a scout-centurion, Gale. I worked for this!”

“You’ve never worked a day in your damn life, Tempest. Is your mom outside to kiss you better when I buck you into next week?”

Tempest’s wings flared wide, and I felt a sudden warm wind flow through the room. “You’re playing with fire, Gale. Come with me peacefully.”

“Hold on.” That was me, stepping up from my shadowy corner and fulfilling the narrative obligation of my seat. Unlike the earlier brawl, this conflict had a party clearly in the right. And, loathe as I was to admit it, that party was Gale. “Scout… century-something, was it?”

“What the fuck? Morty?” Gale slapped a hoof against her brow, demonstrating her immense gratitude for my assistance..

Tempest didn’t seem to care that I’d butchered his title. In honesty, something about the way he stood and the way he shaved suggested he didn’t care about anything very much.

“Gale didn’t start this fight,” I explained calmly. “She was assaulted by a very drunk, very stupid stallion. And she rightly defended herself. I understand what it looks like, but—”

“Shut up, colt.” Tempest rolled his eyes. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“Colt?” I felt my eye twitch.

Gale stepped off the table she was standing on, moving to face Tempest and I properly. “Seriously, Morty, go jerk your ego off somewhere else. This doesn’t concern you.”

“I’ll give you that it didn’t before,” I replied. “But a seated archmage doesn’t get called ‘colt’ by someone his own age and just walk away.” The statement was strictly true, even if I didn’t happen to be a seated archmage at the time. Despite being ignorant of my slight falsehood, Gale rolled her eyes.

Tempest grumbled under his breath “I’m at least a few years older than you.”

I ignored him. “My name is Coil the Undying of the Crystal Union, Pale Master, the As-Yet-Unkindling, Guardian of the Amethyst Sea, Grandmaster of the Order of—”

Gale slapped me across the face. “Are you seriously not going to go away? Are you that fucking thick?” She turned toward the soldiers. “And over here, you’re full of hot air, Tempest.” In a pop of magic, Gale produced her sword, pointing it in Tempest’s direction. Not only the four active legionaries, but the better part of the remaining conscious members of the tavern scampered backward, upending tables as they dived backward in fear that a mere sword ought not to have inspired.

“Whoa… okay.” Despite his nervousness, Tempest dared to walk forward. “Gale, let’s be careful with that—”

“Walk away,” she told him. “You know I can fucking take care of myself. I don’t need foalsitting,” she turned toward me “and I especially don’t need some jackass wizard stalking me everywhere. Even if you and your squad can take me, I’m not going to let this go without a fight. Both of you should just go away and let me go to Cyclone.”

Ponies in the tavern gasped at the name. A few pegasi amongst the group drew some symbol on their chests with their wings. In the middle of all of it, I felt like a feather in a snowstorm. That is to say, completely lost.

“Gale…” Tempest drew in a slow breath, visibly filling up his chest and raising his shoulders with the air it provided. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“It’s your funeral.” Gale sighed. “Morty, if we’re really going to do this, I guess you can help.”

“Wait, what?” The reversal of her position confused me for just a moment, and once I pieced its cause together, it worried me. If my read on Gale was right, she was too proud to accept help she didn’t need.

Which meant that I was entering into battle against four armed pegasi, at least one of whom was an aeromancer of unknown skill. Before I could get a satisfactory read on how Tempest’s squad was likely to attack us—or indeed, any read at all—Gale was hurling a flurry of her pink magic at the legionaries.

By the time I adopted my favored dueling stance (Sovereign Aggression, for those readers with knowledge of magical dueling theory), two of Tempest’s soldiers were unconscious on the floor, and Gale had leapt her way to the top of the bar, still hurling spells as she went. One flew past my face, aimed squarely for Tempest’s brow.

Some days, when I was younger, I would wake up in the middle of the night, and the only thought on my mind was envy that I would never be as sure of myself as Tempest was in the moment. His lip twitched up in a smile as he watched the bolt coming, almost in slow motion. Instead of making any effort to dodge, his wings snapped out to his sides, and to my amazement, an even stronger wind than we’d felt earlier filled the room. It was an obvious display of pegasus magic, but nevertheless, I found myself impressed. The flurry picked up a table knocked over in the conflict, bouncing it up into the path of Gale’s oncoming spell. Rose magic dissipated across rough wood.

“Do we really have to do this again, Gale? Can’t we just go home? Peacefully? It’s not like there’s anything for you to prove here. I always win.”

So my read was right. Gale was outmatched even against just Tempest. What had I done?

Letting my opponent know my worries would hardly do in the middle of our fight, though, so instead I addressed Tempest firmly. “I wouldn’t count on it,” I told the stallion only two strides away. That felt good. He wasn’t looking at me, I’m not sure he was actually aware I was in on the fight, and to top it all off, I didn’t even feel that drained when I hurled Foghorn’s Frightful Force in his direction.

It felt somewhat less good when he casually dodged to the side of the point-blank attack, and my spell blew a circle in the far wall of the tavern about three pony lengths in diameter. I admit, though, I got some satisfaction back when he glanced over his shoulder to see what the terrible sound had been, and some of the color drained from his face.

“Okay…” Tempest frowned around the handle of his sword. “I don’t know what Gale’s told you, but you don’t want to get tangled up with her. And you definitely don’t want to dance with me. I’m not going to hold back.” The eloquence of his speech, unimpeded by the hilt of the sword in his mouth, should have been impressive to me, but the adrenaline of an impending battle mostly overrode that feeling.

I turned my attention to Gale, and saw her crossing blades with with the remaining conscious soldier in Tempest’s entourage. If anything, she seemed like she was having fun, so I nodded to Tempest. “Let’s dance.”

I started with a favorite trick; something Wintershimmer had taught me from the days of his own youth, before he learned to snuff out his opponents with a thought (which, in retrospect, takes all the fun out of a good duel). I lowered my horn, lit it up to glowing with magical energy, and charged straight at Tempest.

Of course he had no idea what I was going to cast; he was a pegasus. So all he could do was brace himself, or pull back. It was a game of chicken, but he didn’t even know the stakes. To his credit, he stood his ground for a very long time; longer than Iconoclast or Emerald had ever dared to back in Union City. But when I was a stride away, he pumped his wings to dodge whatever spell was going to fly out of my horn.

To his disappointment, there wasn’t any spell. I was just tossing mana on my horn for the sake of keeping his attention. Fighting a unicorn, nopony really expects to just get punched in the face.

What I hadn’t considered until my blow utterly failed to phase him was that I was a tall, lanky wizard student who went out of his way to avoid heavy lifting, and he was a trained soldier. Then he punched me back.

You may recall, earlier in my story, that I used to think a crystal pony’s rocky coat was the most painful punching implement. You may also recall my note that I was wrong in that belief. It was Tempest who corrected me. As his hoof struck my jaw, air sucked in against its surface, forming a tight and visible vacuum that only released when the blow connected fully. The result was an explosion of pure force, as the compressed air shot out against my chin, already rippling from the force of his foreleg. It sounded like a crack of thunder, which left my ears ringing and only served to confuse my sense of balance further; I say further because I was picked up off of all my hooves and flipped over in the air several times before I fell onto my back on a broad circular table that split cleanly in half under the weight of my landing.

This is yet another experience I can’t really recommend. I was alive and conscious (for a change), but in enough pain to regret that state of existence.

Tempest walked forward slowly, still holding his sword between his teeth. “That was your warning shot, colt. You’re interfering in Legion business.”

“Colt? Again?!” I braced myself on a piece of the broken table and pulled myself up to my hooves. Tempest seemed nothing so much as amused that I had bothered to get up. Then I said the four words that would linger with me for the rest of my life.

“My name is Morty.”

The scoff on his face didn’t look so smug when I hit him with a half-empty mug of that ‘grog’ stuff—a light enough weight that it didn’t cause me to flare up. As he struggled to wipe the filthy, meaty substance off his face, I broke into a sprint and rushed straight past him. Subsequently, I found myself out the hole I’d blasted in the wall and onto the streets of Lübuck. To my left was the busy main thoroughfare, crowded with carts of timber and ponies watching our battle in a mixture of awe and horror. To my right, the crowded harbor.

“Gale, get out here! I’ve got a plan!”

I felt my coat flapping against my sides as I ran, and the salty air burned in my nostrils, but compared to the brutal tempo of my heartbeat, they barely registered. I turned out onto a thick wooden dock, and in my peripheral vision, saw Gale come charging out of the hole in the Commander’s Quarters. Both Tempest and his conscious lackey were on her tail, only kept from physically tackling her by the sword she still waved wildly in her magical grip.

“Over here, Gale!” I shouted. To my disappointment, despite her lit horn, she turned on her hooves toward me. “Teleport!”

“I’m not a wizard!” she shouted back, as if that were any sort of explanation for not knowing basic teleportation. Rolling my eyes, I took quick survey of my surroundings. Mostly, they consisted of ropes, barrels, and water.

I could work with that.

When my magic tore open a barrel, I found it filled to the brimming with more dead fish. “Really?” I shouted. “And you call Crystals barbarians…” Without actually waiting for a reply, I grabbed a half-dozen of the unfortunate creatures in my own arcana, and turned toward the two pegasi rapidly approaching. I admit, holding the fish aloft really didn’t have quite the same effect as a classical duelist wielding a unicorn’s rapier, but I was working with what I had.

And, to be fair, it was quite effective. A fish may not be a terribly lethal weapon, but they are quite distracting. At least, that’s what I have to assume from the fact that my first slap knocked Tempest’s lackey out of the sky. For the leader of the small group, though, a sword proved to be the better of the two weapons. Trying not to gag, I dropped the half-fish I was holding and readied the remaining five.

I can't claim my fight with Tempest was one of the greatest swordfights in all of pony history… but only because I wasn’t technically holding a sword. He dove and twisted between my blows with agility that could only have come from his pegasus wind magic. I slapped him with a trout. He tried to close with me in hopes of ending my assault. I jumped onto a boat and knocked him over the brow with an eel.

“Gale! Get moving!” When my companion looked over at me from the pony she was dueling, I added “I can take that one. I’ve got lots of fish.” Admittedly, the weapons were disgusting, but even my necromancy wasn’t just going to bring the poor creatures back to conventional life.

Gale leapt onto the boat I was standing on, and from there, took a running jump onto yet another sailing ship docked beside it. Meanwhile, my claim to ‘lots of fish’ was mostly disproven when Tempest bisected three of the late creatures in a single slash. It seemed merciful, at least, that they were already dead.

“I’ve had enough, ‘Morty’,” he told me with a glare, lunging forward at me. “Give up and save us both the trouble. I really don’t want to hurt you.”

There was a certain irony to asking for surrender mid-lunge. Regardless, the rope I’d looped around his hoof while he was distracted by the fish turned out to have been a wise decision. His sword clattered onto the wooden deck in front of me, and dropping the remaining fish-bits in my grip, I reached out for it.

Tempest flapped a wing and a burst of wind caught the sail of my ship. It lurched to the side, and I fell onto my muzzle not more than a stride from Tempest. His sword rolled along the deck, stopping close enough that he grabbed it casually in his teeth before standing up.

He didn’t say anything more. He just stormed toward me (a description for walking that I would come to learn utterly infuriated him), visibly compressing air on the blade of his sword in the same way he formerly had on his hoof.

“Uh, Morty…” The fact that Gale was standing right behind me, and not seven ships away, was another really bad sign.

When I turned back, I found her facing down not the one remaining member of Tempest’s forces, but all three. “I thought you stunned them.”

“I did. It doesn’t last that long.”

“That long?” I rolled my eyes. “It’s barely been five minutes.”

She snorted through her nose. “Yeah, well how long can you stun somepony, Morty?”

“Day and a half.”

Tempest took a threatening step forward. “Do you two ever shut up?” His attention turned to his soldiers. “Kill the stallion if he tries to cast anything.” Then he turned to us—really, to Gale. “Drop Procellarum, Gale. It’s over.”

I remember completely losing track of our conflict in that moment. Gale’s sword had a name? For the sake of historical understanding, I obviously have no idea if the cultural practice of naming weapons will suddenly take major surge, and they’ll be available at every corner apothecary. However, at the time of these events, they were a little hard to come by. Even as a trained mage, well-versed in unicorn history, I could only name perhaps a dozen such weapons.

The plot thickened.

Of course, to sate my curiosity, I’d have to somehow get Gale away from Tempest and his mooks. That process began by looking up into his eyes and smiling. “You think we’ve lost? Just because there’s four of you and two of us?” I shook my head. “Ready, Gale?”

The response I got was the sound of metal bouncing on wood.

“Gale?”

“Fine, Tempest. Let’s go.”

At those words, Tempest sheathed his sword and started walking toward the strangely named weapon Gale had dropped.

I’m sure he felt dumb about three seconds later, when my horn flared up and both Gale and her sword vanished before his eyes. The pop of distinct teleportation made it clear exactly what had happened.

“Morty!”

“Yes?” I replied, doing my best to sound innocent.

Tempest drew his sword and held it to my throat. “Where. Is. She?”

“No need for swords,” I told him. “If I weren’t willing to tell you, I’d have teleported myself instead of just sending her.”

“What?” One of Tempest’s companions asked.

In response, I took a small step back to remove Tempest’s blade from direct contact with my throat, and ran a hoof through my mane to fix its appearance. My sweat from having surged on two fairly complicated and potent spells was likely to give me an appearance of being worn out, and my plan relied on seeming fresh.

“It’s fairly simple. As I attempted to explain inside the tavern, I’m a mage. In point of fact, I’m the best mage any of you have likely ever met in your lives. I assume I’ve demonstrated at least my sheer strength suitably either by the hole I blew in the tavern wall, or by the distance I just teleported Gale. Now, it’s at least ostensibly possible that the four of you could apprehend me, or as you so pointedly order, try to remove my horn. However, it would take all four of you, and I’m ancillary to your mission. You could also, in theory, arrest me and then try to drag me along with you. However, as you’re all pegasi and I am a unicorn, the delay of making me travel with you would mean the huge lead I’ve already given Gale—”

“I don’t care about you, Morty,” Tempest grumbled, visibly irate at the soundness of my strategy. “Just shut up and tell me where Gale is.”

I smiled at my victory, and then pointed a hoof southward, along the coast. “I didn’t want to have her show up halfway embedded in a tree, so I chose the beach. Just follow the coastline, and look for hoofprints in the sand.”

Tempest frowned at me. I made a show of smiling back. “Nice to meet you, legionary.”

“I think I’ll take a page out of Gale’s book. Fuck you.”

I chuckled. “Since we’re being crass and honest, Gale’s more my type. I am flattered, though.”

Pegasus eyes rolled. “Squad, we’re flying.” As the other legionaries in his company spread their wings, Tempest looked straight at me once more. “One last thing, ‘Morty’. If you want to live to be thirty, never touch Gale.”

I waited for Tempest’s squad to disappear beyond the walls of the city before turning toward the mast of the ship I whose deck I was standing on. Sighing from the fatigue of even a minor spell after two full surges, I unsealed the potent work of deception I’d created. In an utterly disinteresting lack of flashes and smoke, Gale appeared seemingly out of thin air—even though in my memory, she’d never disappeared in the first place.

“Morty!” Gale shouted, leaping onto my neck and hugging me tightly. “You crazy stupid fucking genius!”

“I appreciate at least one of those titles, Gale,” I told her back, before helping her off my neck. “And at least one of them is demonstrably wrong right now.”

She turned to the south, where Tempest’s forces had disappeared.. “How did you do that?”

I smiled. “Magic.”

“No, I mean… turning somepony invisible is impossible.”

I brushed a hoof against the lapel of my coat. “Gale, when I tell somepony I have a list of titles six breaths long, it’s not because I’m getting paid by the word. I am probably the third best mage in the world right now, assuming Star Swirl hasn’t keeled over from old age yet.”

Part of Gale’s joy disappeared. But only a bit of it. “There’s that fucking ego again.”

“Well, if I’m full of hot air, why don’t you tell me how I did it?”

She opened her mouth to spit back and answer, and looked like she caught it halfway up her throat. Rubbing one hoof against her other foreleg’s fetlock, she avoided my gaze. “It should be impossible.”

I nickered, a response which seemed to irritate my friend. “Gale, what’s the difference between arcana and magic?”

“Do you think I’m some kind of dipshit, Morty? Because I’m not a fancy trained wizard like you? Arcana is just unicorn magic. It’s a category.”

“That’s the rigid way to look at the world. It’s the kind of thinking that says things like ‘some things are just impossible’.” I was quoting Wintershimmer shamelessly, but the words were good enough that I wasn’t going to try and rephrase them. “What’s magic to a foal, Gale? Pulling a rabbit out of a hat? Snapping a coin out from behind your ear, maybe?”

“That’s stupid magic; any unicorn can do that.”

“But it’s magic to a foal nonetheless. And it’s exactly the same kind of magic I just did to Tempest. At least, it is to you. Because you don’t know how it’s done.” I couldn’t help breaking into a wide smile. “Real magic has nothing to do with mana or horns or fancy tricks. Magic is ignoring what’s supposed to be impossible and doing it anyway. That’s what I do, Gale. It’s what makes me a wizard instead of just a book-smart unicorn.”

“Huh…” Gale seemed enraptured, if her pause from swearing was any indication. “So how’d you do it?”

I shook my head. “Then it wouldn’t be magic anymore. I don’t want to spoil it.”

“Fuck you, Morty.”

Unable to resist the sarcastic quip, I nodded back to the massive hole I’d blasted in the wall of the Commander’s Quarters. “At least wait until we’re inside, Gale.”

X - The Butcher's Knife

For what I hope are fairly obvious reasons, Gale and I only returned to the Commander’s Quarters long enough to retrieve Graargh. Ponies looked at me—and the massive hole I’d rather casually blown in the wall—with notable fear. And, being completely honest, it felt great. For once, I had the respect of the ponies around me, even if it did ultimately come from fear.

With Graargh in tow, Gale led our newly minted trio down a series of dark alleyways and crooked sideroads, until we came upon a three-story lopsided brick shack that I feared would collapse into the street at any moment. Next to its rough wooden door, a beam supported a wooden carving of a bed with some sort of writing on it. Only one of the two chains holding up the sign was connected, so even that minor weight hung off-balance and misaligned with the ground.

“You want us to stay here?” I asked Gale. “I hope nopony has to sneeze.”

Gale rolled her eyes. “It’s a shitty boarding house—exactly what we want.”

“Boarding house?” Graargh asked.

I couldn’t help but notice that Gale gave the little werebear creature a wide berth, preferring to keep my body between them. “An inn without a bar. It might not be fancy, but Tempest couldn’t find the place before the whole problem at the Commander’s Quarters, so I doubt he’ll manage it now. That, and I’ve got the old mare who runs the place in my pocket.”

I couldn’t help but turn to Gale with a raised brow.

“Don’t stand around in the street like a two-bit whorse, Morty. Let’s get up to my room.”

Inside the doors of the leaning tower, a visibly blind old earth pony mare raised her head from work cleaning a sheet. “Gale, you’re back fast. Glad you listened to me and didn’t stay up all night drinking again.”

“It wasn’t exactly my fucking choice,” Gale growled back. “We’ll be in my room.”

“Oh, you brought friends?” The old mare smiled in completely the wrong direction to be looking at either Graargh or I. “Well, you fillies have fun.”

Gale snorted back a laugh.

Up a spiraling set of lopsided stairs, Gale brought us to a crooked door in an equally uneven frame. Producing a key with an unusually not-straight… well, you get the point. She unlocked and opened the door, revealing a room with a pair of beds, greasy walls, a crumbling ceiling, a stained and unfinished floor, and a window.

The description you read above is the most thorough I have provided thus far in my story. It contains, without exception, everything I saw in that room.

Gale shrugged off the satchel on her back onto the floor beside the door, and then leapt onto the bed on my right with a running jump, spinning in midair to land on her back facing me. A bit of straw slipped out of the mattress from the tackle.

“Okay, Morty, let’s get a couple of things straight. You helped me out back there, and I guess at the end of the day, I’m grateful. We’re both heading to River Rock, but your little stunt earlier means that the Legion will be looking for you as much as me. So, you can stay with me for now, and I’ll charter a boat for us in the morning. But that’s it. If you get anywhere near my bed, I will geld you. Got it?”

Before I could even offer a witty remark, Graargh cocked his head toward Gale in the fashion of a lost dog. “What is ‘geld’?”

Gale chuckled, and opened her mouth to answer. I thought it prudent not to let the dark mistress of all cursing convey such a lesson on Graargh’s young mind, and clamped her muzzle shut with a quick flash of telekinesis before she could begin her explanation. “It’s a very painful punishment for when a pony is bad.”

Thank Celestia, Graargh seemed to accept that explanation. Even Gale’s ire was worth not having the little bear-creature repeat a thousand explicit descriptions of maimed genitalia as we continued our journey.

“To answer your question, Gale, yes. I ‘got it’. However, before I sign up to traveling with you—”

“What the fuck?” She interrupted. “Hold on… Now you’re not in on this? When we were in the woods outside Manehattan, sticking together was your idea.”

“Manehattan?” It took me more than a few seconds to put together she was referring to the town I’d labeled Hodunk. In the same moment, I forgot the name, certain it would never matter in the future. “Whatever. Look, Gale, at the time I was under the impression that you were just a noble born unicorn who ran off with some money. Maybe some Equestrian’s illegitimate foal or something.” I took quiet note that Gale winced at the accusation. “However, I now know two things that worry me.”

“Let’s just skip to the big one instead of beating around the fucking bush.” Gale rolled her eyes. “Yes, Tempest is after me. I know he’s kind of a big name, but you don’t need to worry. Even if he does catch us, he’s not really gonna hurt you. He’s too damn lazy to deal with the paperwork.”

“He seemed pretty content to try and stab me.”

Gale coughed into her hoof. “Says the pony who tried to hit him with a spell that blew a six foot hole in a brick wall! And even after that, I can guarantee you he wasn’t really trying.”

I rolled my eyes. “Is this going to be one of those ‘because I’m still alive’ things? Because if it is, let’s just skip to the part that matters. I’m probably the third best mage alive right now, assuming Star Swirl hasn’t keeled over from a cold since we started talking. And unlike my peers, I’ve spent my entire life being trained to kill monsters way scarier than some pegasus. I’m extremely good at my job.”

This would normally be an excellent place to comment on how much I’ve grown from the colt who felt the need to explain his magical supremacy. However, I find that such a commentary would be inappropriate in this instance, because I was absolutely right.

Gale made a big show of rolling her eyes. “I am not going to help you have some stupid dick measuring contest with him. Do it on your own. All I’m trying to say is that he’s probably afraid of getting chewed out by his mom if somepony gets hurt.”

I paced across the room, testing the cushion of the other mattress. For the cheap and gritty feel of the room, the hay stuffed inside at least seemed fresh. Content, I sat down before returning my focus to Gale. “You mentioned his mother before. Should I have heard of Tempest or his family before?”

Gale’s eyes widened, and then she laughed. “Right. You’re a crystal. Tempest’s mom is Commander Typhoon.”

I cocked my head. “I recognize the title there, at least. So she’s one of Commander Hurricane’s soldiers?”

In response to my perfectly natural inquiry, Gale’s mouth fell wide open. She blinked heavily twice, and struggled to come up with words. “You… Holy shit, you seriously don’t…” Finally, the mare shook her head and found her words. “Morty, Hurricane is retired. He’s sixty-two. That’s like eighty for a unicorn. Typhoon is his daughter. She’s in charge of the… Are you okay?”

What Gale’s question alluded to was a growing feeling of pure dread. My mind had put a number of pieces of information together faster than Gale seemed to have expected. I answered slowly, with a hollow voice that echoed the pit in my stomach.

“I… hit Commander Hurricane’s grandson in the face with an eel.”

“Wait, really?” Gale asked, not exactly helping my mortified worry. “I only saw the carp you used toward the end.”

“Not carp,” Graargh announced. “Was trout. Rainbow belly.” When we both turned to him in confusion, he smiled. “Watched from window. Was funny.” That seemed to be the thing that finally broke the dumbfounded unicorn. Gale burst out laughing so hard she nearly fell off her bed.

I held my head in my hooves. “It’s not going to be funny when I’m hanging from thirty furlongs of rope off the side of Cloudsdale!”

Gale ran a hoof down her face, still laughing. “Hurricane would be laughing—” she choked on her own laughter before she could finish the sentence. “Can you imagine his report? ‘Dear Mom, I got my ass handed to me by some asshole with an eel—’” Her last sentence devolved back into a fit of hysterics.

“Okay…” I took a deep breath. “Right. I’ll just avoid the Butcher and… you said her name was Typhoon?”

Gale nodded, her prior fit of giggling finally beginning to subside. “She’s—” One last chuckle snuck out. “She’s easy to recognize. She’s got a fake hoof made of skysteel, and a stick so far up her ass I’m surprised it isn’t coming out her mouth.”

I swallowed hard. “Please tell me you don’t know her personally. I’m not going to wake up in the night with Commander Hurricane’s daughter standing over me?”

Gale laughed again for some reason I couldn't follow. “I can't make any promises. But seriously. You're not that important. How the fuck do you support your head when it’s so swollen up?”

“A hearty spine and a strong heart.”

Gale got up, slowly walked over to the side of my bed, slapped me across the face, turned, paced back, and calmly sat back down again. A moment later, she collapsed onto her side, staring at me under her dirty blonde mane with a fierce scowl. “Sweet fuck, you actually think that’s suave, don’t you? I’m going to sleep before I have to hear any more of your storybook bullshit.” To finalize the thought, she rolled over, turning her back to me.

“Gale, why hit Morty?” Graargh asked, from his place curled into a ball in the corner of the room.

“Because he was making an ass of himself,” Gale replied, clearly through gritted teeth.

Despite the fact that she hadn’t unsettled it, I took a moment to readjust my jacket’s collar and lapels. The accompanying lack of any groan of pain or obvious hatred made it clear I was above her petty methods. Once I was certain I’d established I was the emotionally (as well as physically) bigger pony, I looked her squarely in the eye once more. “Actually, Gale, there is something else.”

I gave her a few good seconds to roll back over and glare at me before I explained my thoughts. “You were wrong in assuming Tempest was the bigger one of my two issues.”

“Oh yeah?” She asked with bitter sarcasm. “What’s a bigger deal than being chased by the Cirran Legion?”

I tilted my head toward her bag. “Your stolen sword has a name.”

Gale sat upright and let one brow slide up her head. “Okay, so?”

“Gale, most weapons don’t have names. Let me name a few. The Silvered Tongue of Hematite. Malachite’s Conquest. Silver’s Beauty. The Blade of the Mind’s Eye. Do you notice something they all have in common?”

Gale shrugged. “They’ve killed some arbitrary number of ponies?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at that. “Likely true, not that I have a specific number for you. My point is moreso about their wielders. King Malachite the Titan. Queen Silver. Electrum the Omniscient—”

“All-seer,” Gale corrected me, giving me notable pause.

A long silence settled in the room as Gale’s eyes widened, realizing that she’d just confirmed a major suspicion of mine.

“That’s fascinating, Gale. You’re right. As a monarch, King Electrum is referred to as the ‘All-Seer’. Omniscient was his title as an archmage… or back then, archmagus. Very few ponies would have been brought up pedantic enough to know the difference.”

“Says the pony who pointed out the difference.” Gale huffed once out her nose. “So what if I’m a noble. I don’t see how that’s any of your fucking business,” She turned her head toward the window, refusing to meet my gaze. I very nearly abandoned the conversation in favor of laying back for a nap when she spoke up again. “I'm half pegasus. My dad was…” She took a deep breath, and she turned her head away from me as she finished. “He was a legion officer.”

I felt my ears perk of their own accord. An interracial marriage would certainly explain Gale’s estrangement from the traditional behavior of nobility, especially if her birth was illegitimate. In a mere instant, almost every question I had about the mare answered itself. Still, I gave the pronouncement a few moments to sink in before saying anything myself.

“Was?”

Gale bunched her shoulders; though the show off looking tough seemed awkward, it also told me what I needed to know.

“I'm sorry.”

Gale looked at me with wide eyes and a raised brow, as if my comment was somehow unusual. In the back of my mind I made a note that whoever he was, Gale's father might not have been very well liked. For her sake, though, I approached the question more delicately. A roundabout lead-in seemed like the right move.

“So is it your father’s sword?” When Gale made no move to answer, I lit my horn gently (I was still feeling the fatigue of two earlier spells, after all) and pulled the weapon toward myself. I wasn’t even up to lifting the ornate weapon, but it dragged along the floor just fine until it was close enough for me to lift with my forehooves. While I had expected some heft, I was frankly stunned by the weapon’s mass. “What did Tempest say its name was? Prochuhlarrum?”

“Procellarum,” Gale corrected, emphasizing a distinctly pegasus accent on the word. “Technically it’s full name is the Gladius Procellarum. It means ‘the Sword of Storms’ in Equiish.” Then, as casually as if she were commenting on the weather outside the window that still dominated her attention, she added “It’s Hurricane’s.”

To say that I reacted emotionally would be accurate, though it perhaps might not convey the full magnitude of my response. Almost on reflex, I flung the legendary sword as far from myself as I could. Its notched blade slid free of its sheath in midair, spinning twice before impaling straight through the floorboards, roughly three inches from Graargh’s muzzle. To my astonishment, and some significant fear, the blade kept going. Either through magic or simply a legendary sharpness, its own weight drove the weapon straight into the floor, stopping only when the crossguard touched rough wooden beams.

I hadn’t thrown it downward particularly. It seemed Procellarum didn’t require a terribly strong grip from the pony wielding it.

Gale made a large show of groaning aloud before she wrapped her magic around the hilt, pulling the blade out of the floor with a certain irreverence toward the weapon’s owner. Her rose arcana likewise lifted the sheath, and then brought the two together, stowing the sword once more.

“It’s not a toy.”

“I agree,” I observed. “It’s a death sentence. No wonder his grandson is chasing you; are you insane? You stole from Hurricane?”

Gale shrugged. “It's not like I stole it off him. I had to break in and avoid getting caught, but once I got to his office, it was just hanging on a rack by the wall.”

“You just ‘broke in’?” I scoffed. “Look, Gale, you’re not going to pull one over on me. Are you a lady-in-waiting to somepony? A courtier? Or are you actually a career thief?”

The mare turned an adorable shade of red, glancing away from me for just a second. “I didn’t steal the gold. I spent my time in court… Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I left for a reason.”

I took a deep breath. “Do you know Hurricane? Personally?”

“No…” Gale's eyes momentarily jumped away from me, settling on Graaaagh. Her tail twitched once.

I've seen foals with crumbs on their faces lie better than her attempt in that room. Realistically, though, I already had my suspicions; Gale was obviously well acquainted with the wrong side of the Cirran Legion. If she moved in noble circles, willingly or not, it would have been hard not to encounter the Butcher.

I realized that I had been sitting silently for more than a regular sized pause, and mentally relived the last few words of our conversation before I picked up again. “I'm a little bit worried, Gale, that you seem to think having Hurricane’s soldiers following us is an acceptable state of affairs. Wintershimmer always said Commander Hurricane is the most dangerous pony alive.”

Gale cocked her head; from her quick reaction and the little tug at her cheeks, I gathered she was eager to change the subject. “Wintershimmer? You said that name in Manehattan… Your teacher, or something?”

I nodded. “Wintershimmer was the best duelist in the world. Even Star Swirl didn’t dare try to face him one-on-one, because Wintershimmer knew the secret to severing another pony’s soul using his magic. And yes, the ’was’ there does refer to his death.” I noted that Gale’s eyes widened slightly, though I didn’t let my observation slow my narrative. At least, not back then. “Wintershimmer knew he could best Clover and Star Swirl and Queen Jade, and probably even the Divine Sisters with his spell. There was only one pony he feared.”

Gale’s face lit up with wide eyes, perked ears, and a hint of a smile. Then, arriving at some obvious conclusion, she scoffed. “Because of Hurricane’s armor, right? The black armor that eats magic?”

“Only magic directed at him specifically,” I corrected. “I can still pick up a sizeable rock and throw it at him. Though pegasi are rarely easy targets.” Though it might have seemed pedantic, the fact that Silhouette wore a void crystal around her neck was the primary reason I tended to avoid conflict with her directly. The crystals were extremely rare, even in the Union. I had no idea where Hurricane had found enough to coat an entire suit of armor, but the result was well known. “Against anypony else, Wintershimmer was the greatest necromancer alive. But against Hurricane, he would have been just a hundred-year-old unicorn.”

“Is that how Wintershimmer died?” Gale asked. I deliberately held my tongue,letting Gale’s confirmation bias work. I was a much better liar than her. “I guess that’s not a surprise, if he was one hundred. Is that why you’re traveling to River Rock?”

I nodded again. “The truth is, I didn’t really finish my studies before Wintershimmer… passed.” It was completely clear that Gale took note of my hesitation; I could only quietly hope she accepted it as just a pony mournful from a freshly lost teacher. “I’m hoping to find Star Swirl, or maybe Clover the Cruel—”

“Is that another crystal pony nickname? Like ‘the Butcher’?”

I knew what Gale was referring to; as an Equestrian, she almost certainly knew the mare in question as ‘the Clever’. Thus I nodded, deciding to let the issue slide for the moment, if only to spare a lengthy lecture on the historical accuracy of the Hearth’s Warming Eve pageant.

“Regardless, I was hoping to find one of Equestria’s archmagi, and then finish my education.”

Gale nodded. “Well, Star Swirl is just like your old mentor; he’ll probably kick the bucket any day now. I think he might be past one hundred just like your old guy. But he’s back in Everfree City if you really want to try.” My companion gestured her hoof west, back the direction I had come.

The back of my mind thoroughly objected with traveling back in the direction of Jade’s influence, even if I did stay inside the Equestrian border.

“I think Clover is in River Rock, and she might take you. If not, you could try Diadem.”

“Who?”

“Clover’s apprentice. Though I don’t think Diadem is an apprentice anymore. She’s super-strong, just like you. I’ve seen her pick up a fully loaded wagon and just hold it in the air for a good twenty minutes. It’s honestly pretty cool; and she has this…”

I caught myself grinding my teeth as Gale continued a minor description of Diadem’s sheer power. Of course Clover had already trained an apprentice; that much didn’t surprise me. What frustrated me far more was that, if Gale was to be believed, this Diadem was almost the equal of my strength, but without my harsh limitations on magic.

Finally, hoping to stop the onslaught of this rival mare’s achievements, I pressed a hoof against my brow. “I get the point, Gale. Do you happen to know what her formal rank is? Or the topic of her arcane thesis?”

By way of response, my newest traveling companion offered a lazy shrug. “Like you already figured out, I don’t really do the whole ‘wizard’ thing. I know they call her an Archmage. And I know she spends most of her time working on setting up her wizard school. She doesn’t really get out much.”

At that final straw, I decided the best way to let out my irritation was to slam a hoof into the room’s brick wall. A few clods of loose baked ceramic fell from my blow as I forced myself to slowly breathe in and out.

“Well holy shit, Morty. Did I say something wrong?”

To answer that question, I put on what could only have been an extremely forced smile. “You’re fine, Gale.” I sucked down a very sharp breath. “Why don’t we talk about something else? Why are you traveling to River Rock? You mentioned somepony named Cyclone?”

Gale shrugged. “I mean, it would be cool to meet Cyclone, but that’s not really why I want to go to River Rock. I was just hoping it would scare off Tempest.” Gale shrugged, tweaking her head over to her pack. “You can’t kill a windigo with a regular sword.”

Graargh again interjected in our conversation. “What is windigo?”

“Hmm… I feel like I’m probably gonna sound like a fucking idiot for asking this—”

“Language, Gale. There are foals present.”

“He’s a grizzly bear!” Gale protested, before bashing a hoof against her face. “Whatever. Grog, have you—”

“Graargh,” I corrected as gently as I could.

Graargh roared.

Gale looked slowly between the two of us and sighed, deciding she had clearly had enough of this. “Graaargh, have you seen the Hearth’s Warming Eve play?”

Graargh shook his head. “Not know those words.”

“I didn’t think so.” The mare shook her head. “Well, not long before I was born, the three types of ponies weren’t in a unified country yet. There were three tribes. The Diamond Kingdom for the unicorns, Cirra for the pegasi, and the Low Valleys for the earth ponies. And it was a total shitshow. The pegasi were almost at war with the unicorns, there were a series of really, really brutal winters, and ponies were starving. Then it started snowing during summer, and everypony knew something was up. So each of the three tribes sent a team to go find somewhere warmer to live. The bitchy unicorn princess, Platinum, and the dipshit earth pony chancellor, Puddinghead, got sent off by their tribes hoping that they’d die instead of ruining the government. The pegasus leader, Commander Hurricane, actually just up and went himself instead of delegating. And he brought that sword.” Gale gestured with her horn toward where Procellarum was resting.

“Oh, and all the leaders brought one other pony from their tribe along. Smart Cookie, Clover the Clever, and Pan Sea.”

I held up a hoof to stop her. “Why did you pause in the middle of his name?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s ‘Pansy’, right? Like the flower?”

It seemed Gale couldn’t control her humor, laughing even as she rolled her eyes. “No, Morty. His name is ‘Pan Sea’. Two words. It’s kind of old Cirran; it means ‘all the seas’ or something like that. Hell if I know, doesn’t really matter anyway.” She turned back to Graargh. “Now, according to the play, the cause of the winter were these monsters called Windigoes that feed on hatred, like how the three tribes were feeling toward each other. Then they made the snow and ice and basically ruined everything. There were three of them. And supposedly, the three tribes’ leaders finally made friends and the magic of them having stupid hug-time and stuff saved the tribes.”

I coughed into my hoof to interject. Gale glared at me.

“That is magic,” I explained. “The whole ‘friendship’ thing. Because souls are made of mana, whenever there is a bond between two souls, positive or negative: love, rivalry, hatred, whatever, that bond is a piece of physical mana that you can, theoretically, use to power spells. That’s not to say the play is true, but it’s worth noting.”

“Wow…” Gale muttered, mostly to herself. “You actually take yourself seriously saying shit like that?”

“The idea that friendship is literally magic is an extremely important principle of necromancy,” I countered calmly. “It’s how spirits like windigoes are formed in the first place. I hope you see the irony of mocking it for being a foalish immature-sounding idea when you swear so often that it loses all significance. But don’t let me keep you from your story.”

Gale rotated her entire body to face Graargh and away from me. “So that’s what the play says, but it’s not what actually happened. There weren’t any magic friendship hugs making everything better. Commander Hurricane just stabbed the windigoes. Well, two of them anyway. The third one escaped, and returned to River Rock. That’s why it’s always winter there. Somewhere, that windigo is out there. And I’m gonna kill it.”

I snorted out a little hint of laughter. It must have been audible, as Gale’s ears immediately fell back against her scalp.

“Yeah, jackass, that’s what everypony in Everfree City thought too. But they thought I wouldn’t get out of the city with Procellarum, and look where I am now.”

“I don’t mean to offend.” I smiled to the filly sitting across from me. “I think you have a good idea from the perspective of helping ponies. I just think you ought to at least know how to teleport before you take on something that powerful.” And with that comment, I laid down to sleep off my battle with Tempest. “Gale, get some rest. In the morning, I’m going to teach you magic.”

XI - The Fine Art of Being Over There

“So what are we actually doing out here?” Gale asked. “Most colts would take me to dinner on the water, not to some fucking dead corn field.”

“Oh, so you are interested?” At Gale’s pointed frown, I shrugged and kept walking. “This isn’t a date.” I drew a heavy ‘X’ in the ground, and then walked a solid two dozen strides away before scratching a second mark into the rocky, poorly-tilled soil. “You’re learning to teleport.”

“What good is that gonna do against a Windigo? Last time I checked, in a blizzard, it’s cold everywhere.”

I rolled my eyes. “Gale, you’re not learning teleportation to teleport. You’re learning teleportation so you can learn magic.”

“What the Hell is that supposed—”

I held up a hoof.

“—to mean?” Gale continued, ignoring my gesture. “I know how to do magic; maybe I’m not a fancy wizard with my horn between my legs, but I can use my magic better than most unicorns. You said so yourself!”

“You can use arcana better than most unicorns,” I emphasized. “However, everything you do is a known constant. You lift things with telekinesis. You stun. And I assume you can make a shield. Maybe one or two other minor tricks. As a consequence, you aren’t surprising. Which is unfortunate, because surprise is how you win a magical duel, or a battle against a spirit like a windigo. It was the basis for Wintershimmer’s skill, and it’s how I was able to ultimately help you escape Tempest, even though he is in every measurable way a better physical fighter than I am. The Diamond Kingdom wasn’t the most powerful in the world for a thousand years because unicorns are stronger than anypony else around them. Unicorns ruled because we were smarter.”

“Racist much?”

I shrugged. “Ponies are biologically unequal, let alone comparing us to dragons. I’m not a politician, so I don’t see a reason to play pretend.”

Somewhere in the Summer Lands, I’m certain Wintershimmer was proud of me. The thought still sends a shiver down my spine.

“Regardless,” I continued, sitting down next to my more recently drawn mark and motioning Gale over to sit beside me, “my point is that since you are a unicorn, beating a windigo means you need to be smarter than it, and you need to be surprising.”

“Right…” Gale paced over toward me, and flopped down onto her haunches. “Except that teleportation is pretty much the most stereotyped, obvious trick that everypony knows unicorn wizards do.”

“And everypony uses it precisely because it’s easy to surprise somepony with. No matter how prepared you think you are for somepony to just disappear, it’s hard to deal with them suddenly being right behind you. Let alone what happens if they teleport to somewhere outside your immediate line-of-sight. Most ponies get nervous and irrational when that happens; it becomes even easier to defeat them.”

With that bit of logic, it seemed I was at least approaching some sort of headway with Gale. Her ears perked up slightly, and she stared across the fallow former corn-field, to where I’d drawn the other ‘X’. “So you’re just gonna teach me to teleport? Make me some awesome wizard? No catch?”

The shaking of my head was earnest. “No catch. I get to teach magic, which means I become a better wizard, and I get to live up to being the Archmage of the Crystal Union. You get a master who—”

“There it is. I’m not calling you ‘Master’.”

So that you can believe the rest of the words in my little record here, and so that this can be considered the pinnacle of honest autobiography, I will admit the following two nuggets of truth: first, that I genuinely hadn’t considered that point until she brought it up, and second, that my immediate next thought was Damn. As a substantially smarter-than-average stallion, however, I did not admit my disappointment to the beautiful young mare walking next to me.

Instead, I said “That’s fine.” And then, before she could call my bluff, I continued. “What matters is that you get a mentor who knows enough about magic to explain this. Deal?”

Gale stared at me for a very long time, trying to pull something out of my icy blue eyes. Either that, or she was lost in my smile; she wouldn’t be the first mare. Regardless, she eventually got around to finding whatever she was looking for, and agreed to my mentorship with a single curt nod.

“Great. Now, teleportation is not as hard as ponies claim. It’s one of the twenty-one cantrips: the fundamental spells that all other spells are built upon. I’ll admit that it isn’t the easiest cantrip to master, but it’s also far from the hardest. To begin, I want you to visualize a wine glass.”

“Okay…”

“Now, imagine the lip is around where you’re sitting, like a little circle. You can draw it in the dirt if you want, right around the outside of the ‘X’.”

Gale gave me a very funny look, but her hoof started tracing in the dirt nevertheless. I waited for her to finish and glance back at me before resuming my explanation.

“Okay. Now the destination…” I stood up and walked back to my original mark, sitting down a good few pony lengths to the side. We weren’t far enough to really need to shout, but I did raise my voice a bit. “Imagine this space here is the actual ‘bowl’ of the glass. Got it? Your origin is the opening, your destination is the bottom of the actual container. But right now, they’re separated in space. Specifically, the walls of the glass.”

“Like a wine glass?”

“Not yet. It’s just a tube right now. You’re not going to fold it in on itself and join the ends until you’ve got mana on your horn.”

“What?” Gale took several toward me. “Join the ends? Morty, have you even seen a wine glass before?”

I have to imagine you’re sharing Gale’s thoughts right about now, and the answer to her question was ‘no’. But I thought I had. To understand this principle, you need to understand Wintershimmer the Complacent’s most curious hobby. Namely, the practice of using social conditioning and parenting techniques to set up incredibly elaborate practical jokes substantially at length into my future. Well, either that, or he was actually just as evil to me as he was to everypony else in his life. To be honest, I never bothered to ask what was left of his soul.

In this particular instance, you need to understand that Wintershimmer owned a very peculiar collection of wine glasses, which he had used to train me in the fine arts of teleportation and social drinking (not as the same time, as evidenced by my continued non-dismemberment). These wine glasses were also Klein bottles; the sketch I provided with this chapter depicts one, complete with the glass stem for drinking.

The simple summary is that, like the mechanism of teleportation, a Klein bottle is a four-dimensional construct forced into three-dimensional space such that it creates a two-dimensional manifold without a definable boundary or orientation.

Yes, that really is the simple summary. And on a related topic, I excel at magic.

Without a common item to picture, however, Gale was extremely confused by my description. And, to my frustration, that confusion persisted for some time.

After a partial teleport that saw Gale halfway across the field, upside down, and with static electricity making her mane stand on end, I brought a hoof to my brow and sighed.

We argued over her understanding of folded space, and just what ‘space’ meant in the context of arcane studies. Her insistence that she wasn’t trying to get to the moon, and that there wasn’t any ‘space’ between the two ‘X’s I’d drawn made that conversation more than slightly incendiary.

On another attempt, a few hours later, she teleported herself around in a circle without leaving the ‘X’ she was standing on.

I watched the sun slide across the sky like the hour hoof on a grandfather clock for those excruciating hours, as I desperately tried to explain what I thought of as the most basic premise of magical theory. At the end of four hours, though, I’d had enough. As Gale watched, I paced over to a space well clear of the line between the two marks in the field’s soil, and started tracing another symbol.

“Oh, great,” Gale deadpanned to me, wandering over toward me. “Yeah, that’s definitely gonna help. Another target.”

“This isn’t a target.” My hoof carved a seven-pointed star in the soil, and then dragged a circle around the glyph. “Well, technically, it is a target in a metaphorical sense. But it’s not for you. Watch.”

As you can imagine, I made a show of the seance that followed. The seven points of the star ignited into sparking glory, and the little balls of magic that resembled flame traced out the lines of the symbol, before the entire shape began to glow a brilliant blue.

Wintershimmer faded into being within the circle. The body his soul chose to present was an older one, more familiar to me, though his posture was far stronger than his arthritis had ever allowed him in his living old age. He regarded Gale and I with narrow eyes, although the corners of his mouth remained firmly set, revealing neither approval nor disappointment.

Gale, for her part, watched with widened eyes. “You… you’re dead.”

“An accurate first observation,” Wintershimmer agreed. “Though also a foalish and trite one. I assume you’ve never been privy to a seance before, filly?”

Gale reacted to Wintershimmer’s harsh tone as if he had slapped her across the face; after shaking her head to disperse the last vestiges of surprise from her expression, she glared at the phantom archmage. “It’s ‘Gale’, geezer. Don’t think you can just call me ‘filly’ like I’m some—”

“I’m perfectly aware of what your name is,” Wintershimmer interrupted, emphasizing the otherwise flat comment by raising a single eyebrow. “Would you prefer I used it?” To my surprise, Gale fell immediately silent. I reminded myself that even in death, Wintershimmer knew exactly how to use his power. “Then keep your name, and any other thoughts you might have, to yourself. I need to address my pupil.”

“How do you know that Morty doesn’t—”

“Consider very carefully the question you were about to ask.” I could hear the gears of a clock ticking as Wintershimmer waited for Gale to reply.

One.

Two.

“Wise,” said Wintershimmer. Then, raising a single bushy aged brow, he nodded firmly toward her. “That is why what I spent my life practicing is called ‘magic’.”

And then, not unlike the seconds hoof on the aforementioned metaphorical clock, his head ticked to stare directly at me. “I see that you’ve upgraded the company you keep, Coil. I am curious, though, why you contact me like this. My instructions were to speak to me in River Rock, not… Lübuck, is it? I also don’t see what the filly has to add to our conversation.”

“Gale’s my… um, traveling companion?” I glanced to Gale, who shrugged by way of support. “We needed your help, Master. I’m trying to teach her—”

“Hold a moment, Coil. There is a bit of information I still need. Why are you traveling with this company when I advised you to go on your way alone?”

“She’s providing the bits we need to get passage on a boat to River Rock.”

“Hmm… yes. Reasonable. I imagine she would be useful in that regard.” The sunken eyes of my mentor looked Gale up and down. “No doubt she has other uses as well.”

Gale recoiled, repositioning herself so her flank was far from Wintershimmer’s ethereal form. “You’re a fucking pervert, old stallion!”

Wintershimmer replied with a mild snort through his nostrils. “Gale, I consider myself to be a pragmatist first, and a hedonist very nearly last. If your first thought flies to your genitals when I observe your usefulness to my pupil, I would as soon advise him to abandon you. My reason for abiding your company here is far more political in nature.”

That comment seemed odd to me, as Gale had thus far proven to be nothing but a political liability to me. However, I knew Wintershimmer well enough to know that he was not a pony who used vagueness unintentionally. Whatever it was my mentor was alluding to, he was not going to say it in front of both of us.

Even more importantly, something about the unassuming observation Wintershimmer had delivered resulted in a strange reaction from Gale. My new friend glanced worriedly in my direction, and then slunk her head down and stared off toward the horizon, cutting herself off from the conversation.

Whatever secret it was Wintershimmer had been alluding to, Gale did not want it discussed. And of the three of us in the field, I was the only pony who wasn’t in on the secret. I had my suspicions about her estrangement from some noble family of course, but I couldn’t think of anything about Gale that would make her status an asset to me. I made a mental note to dig further, and then set the thought aside.

“Wintershimmer, I summoned you to help teach Gale how to teleport.”

Wintershimmer’s eyes widened for just a moment, and then a small smile graced his lips. “I see. That request is characteristically benevolent of you, Coil.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Wintershimmer.”

“That was not intended to be a compliment.” I noticed Wintershimmer’s ghostly tail flick back and forth. “In a population of one hundred unicorns, approximately one will hold an occupation directly related to the practice of arcana. Most of these are alchemists, herbalists, street enchanters, entertainers, or apothecaries…”

I rolled my eyes, and picked up the familiar narrative. “There are around forty million unicorns alive in the world today. Thus, we expect that four hundred thousand of them possess some magical training. Of those, only forty thousand are hedge mages—” I glanced over toward Gale “—meaning they can cast at least one cantrip from each of the seven schools of magic. Hedge mages usually find work enchanting commonplace items like axes or candlesticks. Out of their number, a mere eight hundred will be proper mages: ponies who can cast all twenty-one cantrips and who make their living studying magic, breaking curses, and fighting evil spirits.

“Above the common mages, there are twelve—” I turned pointedly toward Wintershimmer and then scratched the back of my head. “Rather, there are eleven archmages in the world.”

Gale nodded. “Alright, the fact that you have all that memorized is a little crazy, but sure. What does that have to do with teleportation?”

Wintershimmer answered the question before I had a chance. “Teleportation is a cantrip, but using that magic in its raw form is dangerous. Teleport into a wall and you’ll be cut in half. A few more than half of the world’s hedge mages know that magic, and for the most part, the twenty-thousand imbeciles use it as a parlor trick. Safely teleporting, using a practice we call a reverse conjuration, is much more complicated magic. Only the eight hundred or so real mages can wield such a spell.”

Wintershimmer coughed heavily, despite his new form not requiring breath. “Now, as your own training has established, Coil, any unicorn can learn higher magic with training, regardless of the state of their horn, or the reserves of mana at their disposal.”

I took quiet notice of Gale’s curious look in my direction, and utterly failed to realize how perfectly the tables had been turned from my quandries about her past.

“So tell me, Gale, why don’t more unicorns know how to safely teleport?”

Gale shrugged. “Because nopony teaches them?”

A slow shake of his head marked Wintershimmer’s response. “On the scale of a single pony, that is true. There are no schools for mages.”

“What about Diadem’s school?”

Wintershimmer winced. I knew him well enough to tell that, rather than shock, the expression primarily stemmed from disgust. “I had hoped Star Swirl and Clover would get their little pet to stop her pet project. It appears that wasn’t the case.”

“Hey, hold on.” Gale shook her head firmly. “Diadem’s a great pony. She might be an annoying-as-fuck egghead, but she’s a super-strong wizard.”

“I chose Coil as my apprentice despite his handicap—” Gale turned to me with a raised brow as Wintershimmer continued his harsh diatribe. “—in no small part to prove to Star Swirl that a great wizard is the result of cunning, ambition, and education, rather than the quality of one’s horn. Diadem was chosen because she was born with a freakishly powerful horn, but in all my dealings with her, she proved herself to be as sharp-witted as brick wall and as ambitious as a goldfish. If she starts a school, it will serve to propagate mediocrity in a generation where Coil is already the only apprentice of any meaningful talent.”

“Damn.” Gale blinked. “Did somepony make you sit in the corner during class when you were a foal?”

“I never attended school; I studied beside Star Swirl under Archmage Comet, and even that education was flawed by class size. Wizards are meant to teach apprentices one at a time. This practice ensures that only the most talented and deserving young unicorns become mages. That culling of candidates is important. Given the choice, almost every unicorn would choose to be either a mage or live in luxury as a member of the nobility, largely dependent on their taste for conflict. However, allowing unicorns to flood en masse to those occupations would starve the populace. Ponies would die by the thousands with no food to eat and no roofs over their heads. That’s why my predecessors, the archmages of old, agreed that magical training would be restricted to a very small number of ponies who demonstrated the skill and cunning to most deserve it. They were performing a public service. That is why, although I know Coil isn’t intending something as imbecilic as to spread my teachings to the population at large, I still have to object to training you.”

The old archmagus adjusted his mane before continuing. “I admit I am curious though. Teleportation is almost exclusively a spell used in dueling. What good would that talent be to you?”

“I’m going to kill the last windigo.”

Wintershimmer was rendered momentarily speechless. His ghostly lips parted, closed, and then parted again. Finally, with a shake of his head, the old wizard seemed to find the words he needed. “You truly are Coil’s match, aren’t you? You’ve set yourself out on a mission that is both impossible and ultimately fruitless, just to develop your own glory?”

“Fuck you, geezer. I’m doing it to—”

Gale’s sentence died when Wintershimmer’s golden magic snapped around her throat. My vision went blurry and my balance surged from the sudden drain I felt in my horn. As the necromancer maintaining the seance, Wintershimmer was using my mana, even though it appeared to come from his horn. His grip took far less energy than one of my flared spells, but the drain was distracting nonetheless. By the time I regained my focus, Wintershimmer had pulled Gale to within a few inches of his ghostly face. “Your disrespect is no longer amusing to me, filly.” Despite not being able to step outside my septagram, the ghost of my mentor leaned forward, hauling Gale upward by her neck until her hind legs dangled shoulder-height above the ground. “Perhaps befriending Coil will finally begin to heal the untold damage your forebearers have done to the study of magic, but understand this: I will not lose my legacy on an idiotic quest with no hope of success. If Coil tolerates your presence, you would be wiser helping him to kill Clover the Cruel.”

Despite being choked, Gale’s eyes widened at Wintershimmer’s words. Though I did honestly want to help Gale, logic told me that Wintershimmer had no intention of strangling her; he was only making a point. Despite that knowledge, I chose to end his efforts prematurely, so that I could have his undivided attention.

I saw Gale’s body began to shake as she struggled for breath, and after a quick glance to aim, I surged magic through my horn. The ‘spell’, for any unicorns reading, did nothing save to flush my horn with magic. In death, tapped into my natural strength, Wintershimmer’s raw power was greater than it had been in life, but that meant little when my flare of raw power disrupted his access to my mana.

Brute force means next-to-nothing when comparing the strength of trained mages, but to Gale, it meant the world. As she collapsed from the loss of a grip holding up her neck, I turned back to Wintershimmer. Fatigue swept through my body like icy water, but my mind was already beyond that concern; talking to Wintershimmer wasn’t something that usually required me to cast a considerable number of spells.

Gale coughed and wheezed and then looked up.

“You want us to assassinate Clover the Clever?”

Wintershimmer’s scowl-creased lips tilted upward at their corners. “How pragmatic of you, Gale. I assume Coil would prefer to challenge her to a duel to the death, face-to-face. You might yet teach him something useful.”

“Why—” Gale’s hoarse gasp ceased in the face of a desperate gasp for air. “Why the hell would you want us to kill Clover?”

“She slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent ponies,” Wintershimmer replied in a distinctly disinterested, matter-of-fact tone. “In an act of pure ambition and spite, she destroyed the Diamond Kingdom—and don’t dare doubt for a moment that she did more harm to our race than Cyclone ever could have. But, perhaps most importantly, it is because I have reason to believe she will do worse than this again.” The ghost of the archmage rolled his shoulders and neck, preparing to no doubt offer the full story of his plans. His words never escaped his mind. Any chance of a continued lecture was overridden by a harsher, stonier voice from over my shoulder.

“Master Coil! Master Wintershimmer! Unknown mare! Oh, I’m so glad to have found you!”

I whirled in place, verifying with my eyes exactly what my ears had heard. “Angel?”

“In the stone, Master Coil, and oh, it is so good to be back against company that has greater respect for my body. I dare say Silhouette has dinged my halos in more places than I am comfortable considering. Fortunately, as you mentioned when last we—”

“Shut up, Angel.” My demand was granted immediately, and I lifted a hoof to my brow in hopes of somehow comforting the headache building there. “Gale, this is my golem, Guardian Angel. Angel, meet Gale.” I gave the two no chance to greet one another. “You said Silhouette is here; is she here here? About to come running out of the corn or something?”

Wintershimmer released an amused snort. “Bold—she’s followed you onto Equestrian soil?”

“Yes, Master Wintershimmer. No, Master Coil, she isn’t here. Merely in Lübuck. She said she was going to visit one of your friends—”

Gale and I immediately glanced toward one another. “Graargh,” she told me, and then glanced back toward Angel. “Is this ‘Silhouette’ pony dangerous?”

Wintershimmer chuckled. “Coil could kill her with a single spell; simply hurling her upward with his full strength and letting gravity do the work would probably be the most efficient approach. For the record, he ought to.”

“I’m not interested in just murdering her.” It took a hoof rubbed at the middle of my brow to take my mind off of a growing irritation with Wintershimmer, and to focus on the task at hoof. “She’s probably going to try and hold him hostage. She wants me to go back to the Crystal Union and face execution.”

Gale scoffed. “Execution? For what?”

“Killing me,” Wintershimmer concluded with contextually appropriate finality. “Since you seem troubled, Gale, allow me to simply state that Coil was the cause of my death, but not over anything so dramatic as murder. I’m certain my student can explain it to you later. Now, however, I should warn you. Coil, Silhouette is tempting you into a trap.”

“I figured that much out already, Master.”

“And yet you still traveled with the tiny lycanthrope, despite my warnings?” Yellowed, transparent eyes narrowed. “Silhouette will not harm the creature. Whatever he is, he appears to be a non-crystal earth pony colt. And, more importantly, as far as anypony knows, he is an Equestrian citizen. In contrast, she is an officer of the Crystal Union’s military, performing a foalnapping on foreign soil. The Equestrian pegasi will destroy her, and if we have any luck, Jade’s paranoia and her vendetta with Hurricane and Platinum will lead to a war that destroys the Union.”

Gale gasped, her eyes widened. “You want a war?”

“Only as a means to greater political stability,” Wintershimmer answered calmly. “Given your unique position, you might do well to understand this. Jade, like Warlord Halite whom I served before her, is a powder keg. It would take only a spark to send her back into insanity, waging war with more reasonable pony civilizations. Now that I am no longer present to control her—or extinguish her, if need be—there is nothing stopping the mare’s next idle whim of fury from costing thousands of lives. Better to cut her down now on Equestria’s terms, with minimal bloodshed.”

Gale scowled, and her horn ignited. Wintershimmer only lifted a brow as she drew Procellarum. “I’m gonna go stop a war, then. Even if that does mean walking into a trap and not asking for help from the guards. Morty, come with me, unless you honestly think this asshole has a point.”

For a moment, I hesitated, glancing back and forth between Wintershimmer’s ghost and Gale, who had turned and started to sprint toward the walls of Lübuck proper.

“Go with her,” Wintershimmer grumbled.

“What?” I turned back to the old stallion. “You just said—”

“Jade’s downfall is inevitable. Clover’s is much less so; unlike Jade, she is troublingly sane. If stopping Silhouette from starting a war between Equestria and the Union is what it takes for you to get to River Rock more safely and more swiftly, then that is a trade we are wise to make. This also gives you an opportunity to kill Silhouette and spare yourself her continued pursuit.”

“I’m not going to kill her, Wintershimmer. She might be corrupt and, well, an awful pony. But she thinks I really am some murderer. She has every reason to be chasing me. You should know; it’s your fault.”

“I am perfectly aware.” Wintershimmer spared a moment to sigh. “Throughout your training, Coil, I’ve endeavored to teach you why I went to so much effort to be portrayed as callous, uncaring, and even evil. That perception gives me power, and it liberates me. You’ve chosen the role of a foalish storybook hero. I was hoping this lesson would teach you the value of pragmaticism, but if you truly would rather play the hero, at least now it serves you some purpose.”

“Wait, what purpose?”

“That mare you’ve stumbled onto is a truly unique asset to you. Live up to your image with her. Keep her close. Express disgust with me, if need be. My reputation makes me a convenient villain to oppose, and I won’t hold such comments against you in private. Whatever you do, win her over. It will serve you well to have the—”

“Don’t tell me.”

Wintershimmer raised a brow. “Ignorance is the most refined form of weakness.”

“Not when I choose it deliberately.” Wintershimmer’s ghostly brow rose in intrigue, and I sensed the slightest hint of approval in his expression. I swallowed heavily. “Whatever it is Gale’s going so far out of her way to keep secret from me—even if it seems like everypony else in the world knows—is her business.”

A scoff slipped past Wintershimmer’s ghostly lips. “Idealism.”

I shrugged. “It also means that when I treat her exactly like the pony she’s pretending to be, I’m being honest. And, apparently, she prefers that treatment.”

Wintershimmer’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and he drew in a single unnecessary breath. For just a sliver of a moment, I dared wonder if I was actually seeing unbridled pride in his expression. “You’ve grown, Coil. I’ll trust your judgement in this. Seance me again when you can, and I will explain the entirety of my claims about Clover.” The old mage drew in a breath (despite not technically needing to breathe) and cocked his head toward where Gale had nearly disappeared into the surrounding corn and wheat.

I dismissed the seance holding Wintershimmer in place without answering his final orders. As I broke off into a gallop, ears pinned back in the wind, squinting to keep track of Gale’s path, I felt fear. In some part, it was the fear of wondering what I would do if I beat Silhouette. For all the years that he had raised me I often disagreed with Wintershimmer’s morals, but his ruthless logic and uncanny ability to read other ponies both had an uncomfortable habit of proving correct.

Worse, though, was the fear that we wouldn’t be able to beat Silhouette. Gale had her magic sword and considerable agility, but that wouldn’t count for much unless Silhouette really had come alone. Still, she was more useful than I could hope to be.

I had already cast two spells.

XII - For Whom the Bell Tolls

A cathedral sat on a hill overlooking Lübuck, its steeple dominating the deforested horizon like a solemn monument to the greed of the city’s lumber industry. Though it almost looked like it was made of clouds, the marble I rapped my hoof against was altogether solid. Rising up from where I’d struck the stone was a dome that would have only barely fit between the legs of the Crystal Spire. At its north and south ends, two tall circular belltowers rose up into the sky. Running from the east to the west where we were standing, the roof of the structure was divided by a stripe of stained glass depicting scenes from old unicorn myths that predated the physical arrival of Celestia and Luna to Equestria.

“This is the place.”

“Assuming Granny Sweets isn’t as senile as she’s blind.” Gale drew Procellarum and held it in front of her. “I don’t get why this ‘Silhouette’ asked us to come here, though; it’s a shitty spot for an ambush. The old cathedrals all have great lines of sight and tons of open space. Is Silhouette another wizard I need to be worried about?”

“I can report with confidence that Silhouette is not a mage,” Guardian Angel chimed in, to my irritation.

For my part, I shook my head. “She’s a crystal earth pony. But—”

“An earth pony?” Gale’s hoof moved to her muzzle, failing to control her laughter.

“Gale, that’s not…” I let my warning trail off; it was obvious she wasn’t hearing me.

Her eyes were watered to the verge of crying before she finally got herself under control. “Sorry, I probably sound really racist.”

Gale, if you’re reading this, I knew that isn’t how you meant it. And as if for the benefit of other readers, I indicated that knowledge by replying, “I understand. Magic and flight are big advantages in combat. But don’t underestimate Silhouette. She knows how to hide in plain sight, for lack of a better term. I have no idea how she does it. And she wears a void crystal, so we won’t be able to just blast her with magic.”

“A void crystal?” Gale cocked her head.

I nodded. “You know how lodestone works? How it ‘eats’ magic? Well, a void crystal about the size of a bit eats about the same amount of magic as a cottage made of lodestone.”

Gale’s eyes widened. “Alright… Well, I guess just stunning her is out of the question then. New plan: you blow a hole in the wall and we’ll catch her by surprise. I’ll get Procellarum up to her throat, you grab Graargh, and teleport out. Then we’ll all meet up by the docks.”

I shook my head. “Gale… how do I put this? I don’t have a lot of magic left over. See—”

As I write this, I scream in exceptionally articulate fury at my younger self. Understand this, hero of tomorrow: pride is never worth dying over. I can at least live with the fact that I gave Gale some manner of warning, but this story could have ended much worse because of my proud choice not to explain how my next spell would function for me similarly to a healthy cocktail of whisky and opium.

Gale lifted a hoof to the door, and then paused. “I don’t want some long-ass explanation like I seem to get every time I ask you a question. Scrap blowing in the wall. I’ll deal with Silhouette. You grab Graargh and teleport as far as you can. Is the rock any good in a fight?”

“I am not equipped to engage in violence, Lady Gale. I merely supplement Master Coil’s mana supply. Or, at least, I do so when not already emptied of my mana stores.”

“Not a big deal. Good to know. Follow me.” And with that, my traveling companion lowered her shoulder and ignited her horn. With the considerable combined effort of her body weight and telekinesis, we entered the cathedral of Lübuck.

The cathedral began with a small entry room filled with features far less extravagant than the structure itself: a few sturdy wooden benches, a musty tapestry, two candelabras, a pair of doors into the cathedral proper, and the unconscious body of some elderly priest. Gale gave the unfortunate stallion a glance with a raised brow, but otherwise just stepped over him.

I gave the stallion more attention. He looked a bit like a peach at a farmer’s market, if it were a balding gray-coated earth pony stallion of about a hundred years old. That is to say, he was unbruised and unblemished.

“Gale,” I called out. “Hold on. Something’s wrong here.”

Gale shrugged. “He was in the way, she knocked him out.”

“Without punching him? Where’s the bruise?”

“Well, I’m not going digging around through his cassock. Stay close.” Still holding Procellarum close, Gale flung open the cathedral’s main doors with her hooves.

Inside, easily a hundred rows of wooden pews flanked a wide pathway between the entrance and an elaborate three-stage dais at the far side of the room. Overhead, through the ribbon of stained glass that divided the white marble dome, the setting sun painted a glimmering portrait on the far wall of Celestia and Luna vanquishing some serpentine horror I didn’t recognize. Somehow sleeping, or more likely unconscious, Graargh rested in the form of a rather large grizzly bear. His rough brown fur was cast in the flickering lights of easily a hundred dribbly wax candles in addition to the sunlight streaming through the stained glass.

Silhouette sat calmly over Graargh. She was just as deliberately beautiful as she’d been for the years I’d known her. Her carefully hoof-polished coat glittered in the immense light of the room, emphasizing the stark lines where her fitted leather armor clung to her form.

I followed Gale’s tentative stride with more hesitant steps, letting my eyes sweep the room for some sign of Silhouette’s subordinates or some kind of trap. All I saw were worn pews and half-spent candles dominating a chamber otherwise defined by its enormous open space.

“You’re the bitch who took Graargh?”

Silhouette gave a smooth gesture toward the grizzly bear at her hooves, like a maitre’d proffering an elaborate dish. “I thought Coil would choose to hang around smarter ponies.” Graceful slow steps on slender legs saw Silhouette prance down off the dais toward us, sparkling with every pace. “Oh, but that’s right. You call him… Morty, is it?” She shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to match up with such a handsome stallion.”

Yes, really.

“Hey!” Gale stomped a hoof. “Look, bitch—”

“Commander Silhouette,” my nemesis gently corrected.

Gale slashed Procellarum across the marble floor. Stone melted and cracked with a sound like an earthquake in a thunderstorm. I took a small moment of joy from Silhouette’s concerned expression. “Do I look like I give a fuck what your name is? Just get the hell away from Graargh, and I won’t have to kick your ass.”

Silhouette raised a brow. “Gale, has Coil told you why I went through all this trouble to bring you here?”

“He killed Wintershimmer. He told me.”

“Coil told you? He admitted it?”

“No, the geezer did.”

I held up a defensive hoof. “Hold on with those claims. I only ripped out his soul; I could have fixed that. Silhouette’s the one who stabbed him!”

“How, exactly, are you proposing I got past all the magic and golems he protected himself with?” Silhouette asked, sitting down just to free her forelegs for folding sternly across her chest.

“The same way you used to break into my room that’s locked with magic.”

Silhouette sighed. “Morty, you had a window.”

“Over a seventy foot sheer crystal wall!”

“Because of course you can raise the dead and make rocks come to life, but my being halfway good at climbing is somehow impossible.”

“Will you two just shut up and fuck?!” Gale rolled her eyes. “I honest-to-Celestia could not give less of a shit who killed that old asshole right now. If you’re not going to give up Graargh, we might as well stop wasting time and I’ll shove this sword up your ass.”

I watched Silhouette nod, and then calmly unfold her forehooves and clap once. Her confidence could have been intimidating to a pony of lesser will, but what most concerned me was the potential meaning of the motion. Immediately, I cast my eyes to looking for some Crystal ambush or some mercenary company leaping out from behind pews. Instead, I saw something infinitely more worrying.

Behind us, the candles began to melt. Pooling together, the dribbling wax gathered into four distinct puddles, separating us from the door.

“Uh… ahem. Gale?”

“What the fuck is it, Morty?”

“A problem.”

By the time I got Gale to turn around, the waxy puddles were visibly rising from the floor, well on their way to recognizable equine forms. Without real faces, they stared at us. As I watched, slender horns of wax emerged from their foreheads, and on the tip of each, a tiny wick appeared before sparking into a tiny flame.

Gale took two steps toward them, Procellarum raised, before Silhouette cleared her throat. “That’s far enough. I don't want anypony except Coil getting hurt." She tilted her head slightly and a little clue to a grin emerged at the corner of her cheek, reminding me just how uncomfortable it looks to observe a crystal pony with dimples. "And even in his case, I'd prefer we both had some fun with it."

"Silhouette, I'm still not interested in being your coltfriend."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't flatter yourself, Coil. Every time you start talking, I get sick. I only want you for your body, while it's still warm and in one piece. So let's lay this out simple; I know how much you love 'pure logic'. You've been running from Jade and I for long enough, and neither of us can really keep up with your teleportation. I can't really stop you, even now that I've got you exactly where I want you. However..." She took a moment to pause for effect.

"However, if I don't come quietly, you're going to murder an Equestrian?" I made a show of shaking my head. "A nine-ish-year-old colt?"

Gale coughed into her hoof. "Morty... she might not know that."

"Oh!" With grandiose showponyship, I sat down on my flank, picked up my forehooves, and clapped heavily for her. "Well, Silhouette, in that case, you had a great plan. Honestly, if he really were a grizzly bear, this would have worked perfectly. Wintershimmer might have even admired it." Silhouette spat on the ground in disgust, which gave me a little surge of joy that almost, almost pierced through my ever growing nervousness. "Unfortunately for you, the little guy you've got on the altar isn't some rampaging grizzly bear I recruited. He's actually a little colt. Nine years old, or so. If I was actually right that I saw you just before the brawl in the tavern yesterday, you'd have seen him with me. You see, Graargh's a werebear."

Silhouette blinked twice. Through both laborious motions, her mouth hung wide open. "A... werebear?"

I nodded. "Magical disease, runs in the blood."

"What matters," Gale picked up, "is that you're a soldier for the Crystal Union, and you're threatening an Equestrian civilian's life on Equestrian soil. So when Morty teleports out of here and runs down into the city, you and your stupid wax ponies are just gonna let me take Graargh and leave."

Gale turned to me. After a good few seconds of total silence, she nodded. "Well?"

"Well, Gale, that would be a bad idea. I’d pass out."

Silhouette chose that moment to break out into laughter. "Really, Coil? You came here without any spells left?"

I ground my teeth together at her mockery.

Gale sputtered. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You're the one talking about how you're this super unicorn. Teleport!"

"He actually can't!" Silhouette managed to bark out. "Oh, this is fantastic. You came in here talking about how close my plan was, and..." Her words devolved into a rich, honestly somewhat pleasant laughter that echoed around the room.

"Gale, I can only cast three spells in a day. Well, more-or-less; picking up my silverware doesn't count. But today I already seanced Wintershimmer, and then I broke his spell when he was choking you."

"And you waited until now to tell me this?"

I snapped at Gale. "First off, I don't like to talk about it, okay? I don't spend my whole day asking you about your secret family issues!"

Everypony has memories they regret, or so I’m told. I imagine an entrepreneurial wizard could make quite a living getting rid of them. For my actions above, I’d certainly be a paying customer.

"My secret family issues aren't going to get us fucking killed!" Gale shouted back. "Fine! How do I kill the wax things?"

"...with my magic," I told her. "You can't stab them to death. They don't have a core like Angel. The magic is in the wax. Unless you can melt them all at once, you need necromancy. I'd need to rip out the artificial soul, or override it with something more powerful."

"Basically, you lose." Silhouette added. "Soldiers, move them to the wall. If the filly tries something, stun her. If Coil tries something, just kill him."

Gale and I paced backward toward a sheer wall, hedged in by the four Candlecorns. Gale insisted on a ponderous pace, and stored Procellarum in her mouth as she walked. At first, I thought she intended to fight that way. Then I heard her whisper around the sword.

"If your enemy isn't making mistakes, induce emotion..."

"Hmm?" I whispered back, keeping my lips sealed through the noise.

"What pisses her off?"

I let my closed lips slip just a bit to make my point in the harshest and most forceful whisper my throat could muster. "We're being held up by four golems made by the best necromancer who's lived for a thousand years. You want to piss off the pony controlling them on purpose?"

"If you've got a better plan, now's the fucking time."

I snorted my disapproval. "Compare her to Hurricane."

"Why?"

"She's never been in a war."

My flanks hit the cold marble. I felt a chill run up my back beneath my jacket.

Gale pulled Procellarum out from between her teeth and glared at Silhouette. "So that's it? Kidnap somepony's friend and hold them hostage?"

"Don't be a little filly, Equestrian. This way, nopony has to get hurt. Well, except Coil, but that's sort of the point."

My friend gave a little nod. "I guess I'm just surprised the 'Commander' of the Crystal Union can't fight one apprentice wizard face-to-face."

Silhouette shook her head. "You and I both know the adorable stallion to your left there isn't just 'some apprentice wizard'."

"No," Gale answered. "But I'm sure Typhoon could take him in a fight. Let alone fucking Hurricane."

I watched Silhouette's expression darken. "I prefer a little bit of subtlety to brute force."

"I guess that works for you too, sometimes. But Morty and I kicked another sneaky little shit's ass just yesterday. Tempest's only a scout, though. Not the Commander of an entire nation’s military."

Sihlouette rolled her eyes and let her ears fall back against her mane. "So Coil told you how to get on my nerves. Cute. What's your game? You want me to beat you down one-on-one? Do you think Coil will think it's romantic that you're fighting for his life?"

Gale's tail whipped back and forth, making it obvious that her plan was backfiring. "I'm here for the colt! I don't give a fuck how hot he is! I'm not doing this because I'm horny!"

"So you do admit I look good?"

Gale actually turned away from the impending battle for the sole purpose of looking me squarely in the eyes as she slapped me across the face.

"You're not so bad looking yourself," I grumbled sarcastically, rubbing my bruised cheek as I spoke.

Silhouette rolled her neck, producing the sound of stones grating together, and a series of earthquake-like pops that echoed around the room. "Alright, Gale. Let's play. Golems, if Coil's horn lights up, kill him. Leave the filly to me."

"Alright, bitch, let's dance." Without anything remotely resembling patience, Gale rushed forward.

At first, I was astounded that Gale's plan had somehow succeeded. That fact was especially surprising given that Silhouette had even called out the fact that she was being goaded.

When Silhouette reached out with her naked hoof and slapped aside a slash from Procellarum, I started to see where my logic had failed.

Standing a good two strides away from the actual action, Gale guided Hurricane's sword in three more rapid slashes. Silhouette jumped back from the first two, then slapped away the sword with the back of her hoof and rolled beneath the misaligned weapon.

In mere seconds, Gale was struggling to hold back Silhouette's onslaught of jabs and swipes. Their imbalance was immediately obvious. Silhouette was bigger, stronger, faster, and had the immense advantage of a gemstone coat that let her outright ignore the hardest of Gale's punches. As I watched, Silhouette's hooves met Gale's brow and put a bleeding cut on her shoulder in the time that it took the unicorn mare to even get a hoof up in her own defense.

Gale finally managed to dodge an incoming jab, and then swung around her left foreleg with a blow that would have knocked me out cold.

Silhouette didn't even bother blocking. Gale's hoof made a little 'click' and visibly bounced off of her opponent. In the opening the failed blow had left, Silhouette delivered an uppercut that picked Gale's forelegs up off of the floor.

When Gale landed, it was in a rolling, crumpled heap of limbs that only came to a stop when her back smacked into a wooden pew. To my surprise, and obviously to Silhouette's, through the whole vicious blow Gale had maintained her telekinetic grip on Procellarum.

The infamous sword dug into Silhouette's back. It wasn't a particularly deep wound, but the fact that the crystal mare gasped in pain at all was a surprise to me. I knew how hard it was to leave a meaningful scar on the young soldier. It took nothing less than Wintershimmer's magic to place the cracks that dominated her muzzle.

Despite the blow, though, Silhouette seemed unimpeded. With speed that made her look more like a post-impressionistic paint blur than a living rock, Silhouette rounded on the floating sword. As she began what I can only describe as boxing the weapon, I set my mind to work. I was used to working with limited magic, and defeating Silhouette and four immensely powerful golems that I had crafted alongside Wintershimmer didn't seem outside the realm of my considerable talents. Doing so with zero spells, however, presented a challenge. Though I had one spell left in me, I had no doubt the candlecorns would not hesitate to kill me the second I passed out, supposing I even got my spell off before their lethal magic hit me.

As I fought a battle of wits with four opponents that quite literally had none, Gale continued her battle of 'throwing random objects one finds in an elaborate but largely abandoned cathedral at the mare with the magic-eating necklace'. Silhouette's exposure of her back in the process of protecting herself from Procellarum left her quite open to Gale's assaults with whatever she could find in the immediate vicinity. As I watched, Silhouette was struck with a series of increasingly elaborate candelabras, a chandelier, and then finally an entire wooden pew. Only the last blow seemed to faze her, and even that was more of a physical shift to her posture than any sign of an actual wound.

Silhouette rounded on Gale. In two almost feline leaps she closed what should have been a dozen strides of distance. Gale hopped backward too late, and took another blow to the face. The jab left her wavering in place, and by the time she seemed to recover her balance, she'd taken another two blows to the chest.

This time, Gale had braced herself for the onslaught. Without hesitation, she brought Procellarum back into the fray. Silhouette knew the weapon was dangerous, and devoted the lion's share of her attention to it. Yet even as she focused on the sword and Gale struck at her exposed side, I knew where the fight was headed.

"Angel," I hissed.

My golem floated over to me. "Master Coil? It appears that I've been most unhelpful to you in leading--"

"Not the time!" I snapped in a hoarse whisper. "Listen very closely..."

As I issued my instructions, I watched Gale and Silhouette for the opportune moment. The tide of the battle, however, ensured that my moment never arrived. As Silhouette faced off against Procellarum, Gale delivered a fierce blow to the open wound the sword had left on the crystal mare's back.

With a howl of audible pain, Silhouette planted both her forelegs on the ground. Procellarum was swinging down for her brow, but she didn't seem to care. Both her hind legs rose up together, reared up and tensed. Even with her crystal coat, the power of the taut muscles beneath could not have been missed.

The two-hoofed buck straight to Gale's chin was more than enough to shatter her grip on her floating sword. For the moment, at least, I feared it was enough to shatter her entire jaw as well. Gale flipped backwards through the air, and the heavy thud of her body smacking against the marble floor held a fine contrast to the clattering of Procellarum's blade as it rattled to a stop.

Before Gale could stand, Silhouette reached up to her neck. A violent tug snapped the leather cord holding her void crystal amulet around her throat. With deft hooves, she wrapped the thin leather and the dark gemstone around the handle of Hurricane's sword. The result was obvious: Gale could no longer lift it. The fight was over.

"Now," I whispered to Angel, and with a steady hoof, I took hold of his halos. Rendered no more than a unusually smooth igneous stone, my hoof-crafted golem flew straight toward the closest candlecorn. With an audible 'plop', it sunk into the wet wax.

Silhouette turned her head from Gale's direction, and took immediate notice that I was holding the metal rings that formerly signified Angel's presence. "Soldiers! Kill him!"

I braced myself with a single breath and smirked as three vibrant bolts of magic flew my way. A little too close to my face, the fire-colored spells dissipated against a similarly fire-colored shield.

"Master Coil, this is fantastic! I had no idea having so much power could feel so... exhilarating!" Angel's voice emerged from within the fourth Candlecorn in a tone that was bubbly and swampy, a far cry from his usual tinny ring.

"Gale!" I shouted. "Angel! Both of you, get over here!"

Since my orders were hardly secret, it comes as no surprise that the Candlecorns turned their attention to my companions. Angel's wax body simply ignored the two magical blasts that tore through it, and at an almost leisurely pace, he stepped inside the shield his own horn-like candle was creating.

Gale faced a harder challenge. As yet another fiery spell soared across the cathedral, I was amazed to see Gale throw up a sturdy rose-colored shield of her own. For a mare who didn't know how to teleport, she had an excellent grasp of the fairly complex systems necessary to disperse the raw energy of the golem's magic. Still, she wasted no time getting inside our shield as well.

Outside, Silhouette paced like a cat. "Keep casting," she calmly ordered her three remaining golems. "Let Coil's pet keep its attention on its shield." After a few moments of watching us, she turned back to where Procellarum was resting.

"Gale, do you still have some telekinesis in you?" I asked hurriedly.

"Yeah, I'm..." For a moment, I saw her wince in some leftover pain. "It's just bruises," she explained before I could ask. "Why?"

"Pick up a pew with your magic. Use the other end to pick up your sword, like the pew is a giant spoon. That way, your magic should be far enough away that her void crystal can't eat it."

Silhouette must have heard me, as she broke into a run. However, even at a sprint, she couldn't outrun Gale's magic. A pew flew across the room, smacking Silhouette across the back of the head as it moved, before lowering down to Procellarum and lifting it high above Silhouette's reach.

"Clever," Silhouette deadpanned. "Alright, Coil, now I have to wait slightly longer to grab you. I imagine you'll teleport away at the last second too?"

"No point," I told her. "I taught the Candlecorns how to track teleportation."

She smiled. "That must really feel awful. Putting so much work into a project and having it turn against you. You know, I wonder if that was how Wintershimmer felt."

"He didn't kill Wintershimmer on purpose, you stupid bitch!" Gale shouted.

Silhouette shrugged. "Wintershimmer's ghost said he did to my face. But honestly, I don't really care either way. See, with Wintershimmer out of the way, bringing you in is going to make me look great in front of Queen Jade."

"Of course it's about fucking politics." Gale made an elaborate show of groaning and rolling her eyes.

I felt an uncomfortably hot and decidedly wet hoof touch my shoulder, and turned to see the blank face of Angel's new body staring back at me with a complete lack of facial features. "Er... Master Coil. I'm afraid I'm beginning to feel something of a drain..."

"I know. I'm still thinking. Sorry, Angel. Um..." I coughed into my hoof.

"It's hopeless." Silhouette taunted. "But by all means, take your time. I've got nowhere better to be."

"Start walking toward Graargh, maybe?" Gale asked.

I nodded, and the three of us made our slow progression toward the unconscious grizzly bear. To my surprise, Silhouette didn't even bother trying to stop us. She merely watched, enjoying my growing desperation and the continued rhythm of powerful magic flashing against the outside of the shield.

Not moments after we took hold of Graargh and pulled him through the dancing orange magic of the shield, one of the other candlecorns' spells sent a jittering crack through the magic of the shield. Then a second blast spread it.

"Gale, put a shield up!"

Only three seconds before the orange shield shattered, a smaller dome of Gale's rose magic surrounded us. Immediately, I saw the strain that the magic was putting on her. Gale's eyes lost focus, her shoulders sagged, and her ears drooped. "I don't know how long..."

Nearby, a floating pew smacked against the ground. Silhouette smiled, walking over to where Procellarum was now finally in her reach. "Looks like that's the game, Coil. I'll admit you and your friends worked well."

Silhouette was standing between us and the doors, brandishing her void crystal. With a simple touch, Gale's shield would shatter, and that would be the end of us. I glanced around the room, but I saw no sign of other exits. The stained glass windows were too high off the ground to jump through, and the only other features in the walls were the two insets that sat beneath the cathedral's bell towers.

One of the candlecorns was standing near the nearer of the two bell-tower slots in the wall. Its hollow burning eyes watched me as it cast an unrelenting barrage of spells against Gale’s shield, but I noticed something entirely subtle. To my eye, it seemed like the golem winked at me. A moment later, it nodded its head toward the space beneath the belltower. The motion was so subtle that, at the time, I thought nothing of it. It was only later I would remember the subtle cue.

"Angel, help me with Graargh. Gale, walk that way." I pointed toward the nearer of the two bell towers, and together we started a slow limp. "I don't want you out in the open when I finish this."

"Oh, so you are actually going to try and go out in a blaze of glory. For a moment, I was worried you'd forgotten about being a storybook 'good guy'. You do know you aren't sacrificing yourself for anything, right? I'm not gonna kill your friends either way."

"I know..." I grunted under Graargh's unconscious weight. As Gale's now lightly cracking magic settled into the space beneath the belltower, I lowered Graargh to the floor and turned to look Silhouette square in the eyes. "I was just worried that if you thought I had a plan that involved standing in this exact spot, you'd have rushed forward with the void crystal and broken our shield."

"What--?"

"Angel, Gale, catch this as low to the floor as you can. And please try not to get us crushed."

Tilting my head so that my horn was aligned straight upward, I let my magic surge. As darkness swam into my vision at the use of my third and final spell for that day--and perhaps forever, if my plan went horribly wrong--I grabbed onto the largest bell I could see far overhead. In a surge of brute telekinesis, I ripped the titanic dome of metal off of its beam. As the last of my consciousness faded, I guided it toward us, keeping its open end facing straight downward and hoping desperately that its walls wouldn't land on top of Gale, Graargh, or myself.

The darkness of unconsciousness left me with a sickening cliffhanger.

XIII - The Lübuck Prison Job

Waking up in a jail cell isn’t something I did with terrible frequency in my youth. In fact, the first time I had the pleasure was at least a month prior to my battle in Lübuck, during a period of strife and political upheaval which you probably remember as ‘Chapter Four’. Comparatively, I dramatically preferred my second experience.

After the throbbing in my forehead from yet another magic-induced slumber finally settled, I opened my eyes to a room with heavy wooden beams supporting a wooden roof overhead and thick stone blocks for walls. Combined with the bars mounted in the openings through the walls and iron-framed oak door, I gathered I was in prison. The weight of a void crystal ring on my horn confirmed the suspicion. My jacket had been taken from me, though that was more a matter of pride than restraint of the tools available to me; even I can’t do much with pocket lint. The total absence of Gale and Graargh was more worrying. Why had I been singled out? Looking for more information, I sat upright on the mat of straw that had been provided for my bed.

“Well, well. Sleeping beauty managed to wake up.”

I jumped at Silhouette’s voice. It was an impressive feat, given that I had been sitting before I leapt. When I landed, I found her staring at me through the bars of a cell opposite mine, separated by a sizeable hallway.

“Silhouette. Since you’re locked up too, I’m guessing this is Lübuck’s city jail?”

The soldier rolled her eyes. “Don’t act so smug; you aren’t clever for figuring that out.”

“You’re right. I’m not clever for that. I’m clever for tricking you into letting me stand underneath an enormous bell, and then using it both to protect my friends and make a noise loud enough that the city guard would come running.”

“Yeah, thanks for that by the way; I think you actually might have cracked my coat with that noise.”

I smiled. “My pleasure.”

Silhouette winked. “I like it when you smile, Coil.”

“Nope. No, we are not doing this. Ask me again when you learn what fundamental equine decency is.” I lay back on my mat again, trying not to let my irritation put permanent wrinkles in my forehead.. “Besides, I’ve been on the road for weeks now; bathing in rivers can only do so much. If you’re honestly looking for a roll in the hay, why not try to seduce one of the guardsponies who locked us up?”

“I doubt they’d go for it; they were real gentlecolts. Not like that filly you’ve been dragging along with you.” Silhouette seemed amused, tapping her chin with a glittering crystalline hoof. “Coil, clue me in. What do you see in her? I know with her tail cut that short, you can literally see into her, but is that it?”

“It’s not so much her as it is not you. How do I put this?” I made a point of lifting a hoof and rapping it against the stone wall beside me. “Once a mineshaft has been tapped dry, the safest thing to do is collapse it. I’m sure you’ve helped plenty of miners strike it rich down there, but the gold rush is over.”

Silhouette winced.

“Let me ask you something more serious, Silhouette. Do you really think I murdered Wintershimmer?”

She snorted. “I haven’t even really thought about it.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Like I said, ‘Morty’, I haven’t thought about it. I really don’t care. Either way, I get you out of my mane, and that’s what really matters to me. Now that the old stallion is dead, Jade needs somepony new to do the thinking in the Union, since she’s a few shards short of a cluster.”

“And chasing after me is just your way of getting on her good side?”

Silhouette suppressed a small laugh. “I think you’re underestimating how pissed she is at you. What Wintershimmer said about poisoning Smart Cookie sent her right over the edge, even by her standards.”

“So I’m just—”

I let the thought die when I heard a door creak open in the hallway outside our cell. It took a few seconds for the audible strikes of hooves to travel down the hall. Not more than a few moments later, a unicorn mare entered my line of sight.

“Good evening,” said the middle-aged mare, clad in a what looked to my eyes like a formal ball gown. Its brilliant white fabric was spotted with tiny amethysts, giving her a scaled appearance that almost resembled a dragon. She spoke with a terse accent, emphasizing a businesslike efficiency in her actions. In a rich purple arcane aura, she held a small stack of parchment and a single white-feathered quill, which she much preferred as an alternative to meeting my gaze. “You may call me Travail. From the report I have here, your name is ‘Morty’.”

“Mortal Coil is my full name, but I guess you might as well use the nickname.”

Travail slowly raised a single brow. “I see…” Her quill danced, never stopping for want of ink. “And are you the owner of the stolen robes of—”

“Jacket,” I corrected almost on instinct. “And I’ll have you know I earned that jacket, which I trust will be returned undamaged.”

The mood of the mare changed instantly. Her eyes locked firmly onto me, her ears perked up, and the slight swaying of her tail hanging out of the back of her gown ceased completely. “Wintershimmer doesn’t take apprentices…” It sounded to me like she was trying to convince herself. “And he’s the only living member of Order of Unhesitating Force.”

At that observation, I couldn’t help but raise a brow of my own. I sat upright.

To my surprise, Travail shuffled half a step back.

I smiled, calmly resting my forehooves together. “Let’s dispense with dancing around the point. You came here thinking I was a thief or an impostor. Or perhaps somepony with immaculate fashion taste who has no idea what an arcane order is. That was an unfortunate assumption. I am Wintershimmer’s apprentice.”

Travail swallowed heavily. “You c-can’t possibly be Wintershimmer’s student. He doesn’t… I-I’ve heard the stories. Not since what happened in Everfree…”

I quietly pocketed that protest, but unfortunately, I needed to carry momentum in dialogue more than I needed to know exactly what had happened in Everfree City. Intimidation and academic curiosity rarely go hoof-in-hoof. “You’re arguing from a false premise,” I observed. “Ask yourself this: I’m currently imprisoned for fighting with the leader of the Crystal Union military. During that battle, I lifted a bell weighing several tons. You also know that I created a Ouijan learning golem, since I assume you have to have confiscated him.” I held out a hoof, as if proffering a plate of hors d'oeuvres. “That means I’m capable of replicating the thesis of the Father of Necromancy. From that, you can be certain I am a real mage, and not a thief or a fashionably oblivious noblepony.”

Travail took a small step back. I matched it forward.

“I think that’s enough about my achievements, though. Let’s talk about you. Wintershimmer’s predecessor died seventy years ago, and you aren’t old enough to have met her. Since you know that information without having met Archmage Comet, you have to be at least reasonably well-versed in modern magical history. You’re also dressed in formal garb, rather than armor, so I have every reason to assume you’re not a soldier. Putting those pieces together, I presume, would make you Archmage Travail of Lübuck, successor to Grindstone the Short.”

“C-Correct.”

“You had access to all of that information before you came to talk to me. Did you just ignore it? Or did you assume you could try and talk to me as some sort of petty criminal, instead of a peer?”

“I’m n-not afraid of you.”

Rather than call her bluff, I decided to use her position to my advantage. “Good.” I let myself slip into a more comfortable grin. “I’m glad. Generally, I’ve been going out of my way to be a nicer pony than the old stallion, but some ponies just can’t see past the jacket. So let me introduce myself, Archmage: I’m Mortal Coil, until recently the apprentice to the late Wintershimmer the Complacent. That makes me Grandmaster of the Order of Unhesitating Force.”

Travail’s breath caught in her throat. “Wintershimmer the Complacent is dead?”

Silhouette called over through the barred window. “Mortal over there killed him; that’s why I’m here. Queen Jade wants him executed.”

As I watched, Travail’s eyes widened. In that moment, I briefly found myself actually thankful to Silhouette.

“In a strictly technical sense, what Silhouette just told you is true. I am responsible for the death of Wintershimmer the Complacent.” I paused there, giving her a moment to let the words sink in. “As I’m sure you’re aware, wizards killing one another is a proud tradition, especially in my order. However, I’m only here in Lübuck because I’m interested in preserving my own life instead of being executed for murder, which I did not commit.”

I tapped gently on the void crystal ring around my horn. “So that brings us to present circumstances. My friends and I have no intention of hurting any of the citizens of Lübuck. If you need compensation for the bell, we can pay for that. Otherwise, I see no reason for you to continue detaining me. Is there anything else we can do for you?”

“Mortal, you’re being an idiot again,” Silhouette called from her cell. “I bet Queen Jade is on her way here now. They’re not just going to let you walk away.”

Travail nodded at the crystal mare’s claim. When she directed her attention back to me, she swallowed once, heavily. It seemed that small motion was enough to steel her nerves. “Her Majesty has been summoned, as well as a representative from the Equestrian Triumvirate. Once they arrive, the three of us will decide your fate.”

Something about the way she delivered that statement left me with an irritated twitch under my right eye. I stood up, walking forward until I was close enough to reach out and touch her through the bars, had I wanted to. “Alright, I tried to be nice. Didn’t work. Let’s try being realistic. I’m not going to sit around her and wait for you to judge me guilty merely because I learned from the ‘evil’ wizard.”

Travail leaned backward. “Y-you’ll only be j-judged on the merit—”

“You lied to me earlier. I know you’re absolutely terrified of me. Do you realize how ridiculous that is? You’re a sixty-something-year-old archmage. I’m a seventeen-year-old journeymage with a void crystal ring on his horn.”

“I’m f-forty-eight!”

That admission momentarily prevented me from thinking. “You’ve aged horribly,” I remarked almost instinctually after regaining my senses, “but that’s beside the point. You ought to have all the power in this discussion, but you don’t. There are only really two possible reasons for that. The first is that you’re terrified of Wintershimmer’s reputation, which, to be fair, would be wise if he were still alive. You’ve heard all the stories about grafting horns onto earth ponies and ripping out souls; why wouldn’t you assume I’m the same sort of pony?”

“I-I n-never s-said—”

“You’ve barely said anything, though if you get any more nervous, you’re going to do a great job teaching foals their ‘ABC’s. What matters is what you’re thinking. And I know that if those thoughts are the reason you’re terrified of me, I’ll never get a fair trial.”

“A-As I was trying t-to say—”

I wasn’t interested in yielding my momentum, so I placed a hoof on the older mare’s shoulder through the bars of the cell. She jumped at the touch, huddling back against Silhouette’s door. I restrained a chuckle. “The second possibility is that on some instinctual level, you recognize the truth. Despite your greater experience, and despite the fact that you hold an archmage seat, you know that I’m the better wizard between the two of us. Maybe my charisma is what’s intimidating you, or maybe it’s the fact that you are actually the party of lesser power, and you’ve put yourself in line of sight of a pony whose power you have absolutely no measure of, who you’re quietly praying isn’t going to take advantage of your fundamentally idiotic decision. Congratulations on winning the lottery, Travail. I like to consider myself a hero.”

“So are you expecting me t-to—”

I offered a broad smile. “Oh, you almost managed a full sentence that time. I’m so proud of the progress you’re making!” I set aside my sarcasm. “If you really have the level-headedness not to judge me for Wintershimmer, you also know that I’m perfectly capable of leaving any time I choose. I’ve only remained here as long as I have because I wanted to show you that I was being cooperative. However, no matter how uncooperative it might look, I’m not putting my life in other ponies’ hooves. You’re welcome to try and kill me now, but you should know that I already walked away from a noose once. I’m called Coil the Immortal for a reason.”

“You called yourself that!” Silhouette unhelpfully interjected.

I ignored her. “So what’s it going to be, Archmage? Should we walk out of here as friends, with appropriate payment for the damage to the bell tower? Or should I blow out the wall to the cell?”

The voice that answered my question wasn’t Travail’s. Instead of a stuttering, gibbering mess it was firm, but at the same time almost lackadaisical. It came from a young stallion, somewhere down the cell block hall. I recognized it instantly. “You really love property damage, don’t you, Morty?”

“Tempest?”

Sure enough, the sky blue soldier made his appearance between my cell and Silhouette’s moments later. I took note of a wide smile on Silhouette’s face as he stepped into view; guessing what was going through her mind was not exactly a difficult task.

Wanting for a better place to start, I coughed into my hoof. “Tempest, for the record, I’m sorry about the eel.”

He twisted up the corner of his lip into a half-hearted grin. “I’ve been in real battle, Morty. The fish was preferable.” He turned to Travail. “Archmage, why don’t you leave this to me. Go home, get some rest. Maybe prepare somewhere for Queen Jade and Grandfather to stay.”

“O-oh. Are you sure, Centurion?”

“Absolutely.”

I watched Travail leave, at least as far as the layout of my cell would allow. Once she was properly out of view, I turned my back to Tempest and returned to my seat on the sorry excuse for my bed, took a single deep breath, and let my aggression settle. The back of my mind quietly replayed Tempest’s short directions to the Archmage. At the very last few seconds, I entered what I can only really describe as a state of perfect panic.

“Your Grandfather… is coming here?” I asked, hesitantly.

Tempest nodded, though he waited for the creak of the door at the end of the hall before he actually opened his mouth. “Yeah…” Sky blue feathers ran their way through the stallion’s pale mane. “I thought Gale was making my life a huge pain.”

“Yeah… about that.” I scratched the back of my own neck. “At the time, I didn’t know you were after her over Commander Hurricane’s sword—”

“What?!” Silhouette shrieked. “You mean that crazy sword was Commander Hurricane’s?”

Tempest responded by lifting his left wing, where we could both see the legendary weapon hanging. “Procellarum. You’re lucky Gale’s a unicorn, miss; if a pegasus were using it, you’d probably be dead.”

At that revelation, I couldn’t help but cock my head. “It seemed perfectly effective to me.”

I suspect that in sighing so heavily, Tempest actually shed a small portion of his soul. “It’s a sword of pure skysteel, so it has a little built-in magic. But if you’re a pegasus, you can send your magic through it. If I put any of my wind magic into it, it gets lighter in my grip, but it doesn’t actually lose any of its weight behind a swing.”

“So you’re chasing Gale because you’re worried something that powerful would fall into the wrong hooves?”

For that observation, I got a shrug. “I probably would have been after her even if she didn’t have the sword. Grandpa mostly just wanted to make sure she didn’t get herself killed using it to fight something stupid.” As I watched, Tempest’s shoulders sagged low. “So much rushing around. And you certainly didn’t help. I flew all the way to Platinum’s Landing and back. You know how far that is?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Six hundred miles.”

“...Sorry?”

“That’s a start.” Tempest leaned on the bars of my cell. “What I’d really like is for you to stop making extra work for me.”

“Well, I’m sitting in a prison cell now.”

Tempest sighed again. “And that’s the real problem here.”

Silhouette decided that was the moment to interject. “Did I just hear you right?”

“Look, miss crystal, I think my job would be a whole lot easier if Morty just sat down in jail for a few weeks. Unfortunately, that’s not how the politicians feel.”

“You’re going to let him go?”

Tempest frowned as he turned around. “It’s Silhouette, right?”

“Depends. Is this professional? Or are you asking personally?” The falling pitch of Silhouette’s voice made her intentions perfectly obvious, though what she saw in Tempest’s scruffy jawline and mediocre grooming, I couldn’t tell.

“You’re in a jail cell,” he observed flatly. “Doesn’t that make it obvious?”

“Some ponies are into that…”

I coughed heavily. “Tempest, let me help you out here. That particular claim has already been prospected dry. You’re better off getting to your point.”

“I don’t need your advice dealing with mares, Morty,” the pegasus replied flatly as he turned back to me.

The absolute, unshakeable, and perfectly emotionless confidence with which Tempest delivered that simple sentence was stunning. Literally. I can think of dozens of fantastic replies to a line that open, but in that moment in the Lübuck jail, my mind failed to deliver even a juvenile quip.

Then he turned around to Silhouette again (somehow avoiding becoming dizzy from what was quickly becoming a very rapid process of turning back and forth). “That’s not my preference, Silhouette. I especially don’t want to be here in about twenty minutes.” I quirked a brow. “But I’m sure we can figure something out once I’m off duty and you’re out of here.”

“Wait, you’re letting both of us go?” I asked.

“Of course not.” Tempest rolled his eyes as he turned to me. From inside the breast of his leather armor, he produced a small folded letter. “You want to see it, or—?”

“Just read it,” I told him.

Tempest shrugged. “‘It is the official stance of the Triumvirate of Equestria that the unidentified rogue mage and the Crystal Union military officer detained in the city of Lübuck, as reported by Archmage Travail of the same city, be held until such a time as a representative of our government can meet with a representative from the Union to discuss their fates. This discussion will include a trial for the aforementioned mage, as well as compensation for the property damage inflicted during his time on Equestrian soil.

“‘Under the advisement of Commander Typhoon, in light of both his personal investment in other parties to the reported rampage in Lübuck and his capability to disarm the potential for a tense situation, it is the decision of this council that Commander Emeritus Hurricane ‘Storm Blade’ be dispatched as our representative.’”

“What about Gale?” I asked, shortly after Tempest tucked the letter into his armor.

In reply, the stallion waved a wing. “She’s an Equestrian. Not really your concern. I’m sure Grandpa will have something strong to say to her.” As he spoke, Tempest’s wing moved to the neck of his armor. With surprising dexterity, his feathers seemed to pinch around a thin chain, and when he pulled it up, he revealed a half-dozen keys. “There’s more, but it isn’t written down. Gods, I hate politics.”

He coughed to clear his throat, and then subtly tweaked his pitch. I got the sense he was trying to emulate a more formal voice, though who the original speaker had been, I couldn’t say. “Equestria has to send a significant military officer to make it clear to Jade that her choice of sending a clandestine agent instead of contacting us directly is unacceptable. However, Jade’s psyche is fragile on a good day, and we believe it would be better if she was never actually in the same room as Hurricane. Especially since he killed her father. As a consequence, several days before Jade’s arrival Lübuck, both of the prisoners will conspire to escape.”

Tempest paused to drop the keys through the bars of my cell. “It seems likely the rogue mage already had contacts in Lübuck, as he was able to book passage aboard the Little Conqueror bound for Neighvgorod, continuing on his route to River Rock. By the time we realize his absence, he will already be well out to sea and beyond any practical ability to track. Meanwhile, it seems that the Union military agent will take her knowledge of the mage’s new destination to her queen, and the two will redirect their course. Once the crystal ponies pass the Equestrian border and reach the former Compact Lands, the legality, and consequences, of their actions will be Cyclone’s problem.”

Finally, Tempest looked at me pointedly. “The mage should be aware that he is no longer welcome on Equestrian soil. Should he be detained again, he will be summarily handed over to Jade, rather than given a trial under our supervision, as the benefits of improving relations with the Crystal Union will then outweigh the value of his life.” Tempest coughed into his hoof again, and let his voice return to his usual lackadaisical tempo and pitch. “Queen Platinum also said to wish you ‘good luck.’”

I stared down at the keys for a second, and then looked up at Tempest. “Okay. So where are Gale and Graargh? And for that matter, where’s my jacket?”

Tempest rolled his eyes. “Gale is going to wait here until Grandpa gets here, and then the three of us are going to walk back to Everfree City. I guess the idea is to save us dedicating even more soldiers to watching her, but it’s going to be... awkward.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Graargh is the little colt, right? Is he yours?”

“What? No! He’s an orphan or something. All I know is that he’s a lycanthrope.”

“A what?”

I caught myself grinding my teeth. “He turns into a bear, sometimes. Full moons, if you piss him off… It’s a magical disease, is the point. He needs a wizard to watch over him.”

“I’ll bring him to Star Swirl, then.” Tempest frowned. “And I’m not giving you your jacket back. I can’t let it look like I’m helping you escape. And it’s not thick enough to keep you warm in Neighvgorod anyway.” He awkwardly forced another cough into his hoof, this time obviously for dramatic effect. “In casual conversation, I guess I accidentally mentioned that the Little Conqueror is docked until dawn on the Antler Pier. If you happened to blow up the back wall of your cell, you’d need to turn left on the first street, go down that until you see a sort of street market, and then turn right and go down the hill until you reach the sea. Then the ship should be in sight on your left.”

I chuckled. “You might be the worst spy ever, Tempest.”

He snorted, flaring his nostrils. “Like I said, I hate politics. I’m just a scout.” He turned toward the door. “Silhouette, I’m staying at a little tavern outside the north gate of the city. If you happened to drop by after your unexpected escape, I just might be able to provide a warm meal, and a bed more comfortable than that prison mat.”

Silhouette responded by wolf-whistling.

I slapped a hoof against my brow, but didn’t bother to say anything.

“Now, I’m gonna start walking that way. If there’s going to be a violent explosion blowing out the wall of a prison cell, I certainly hope it happens before I manage to get comfortable in bed, since I will have to get up and respond to it.”

I tried to picked up the keys that had been inadvertently dropped as Tempest let the distant door swing shut. Unfortunately, as a unicorn, my hooves tended to be pretty much the last things I used for picking up objects. It took me no less than three minutes to get the keys pinned between my hooves and up to my horn. Once they were steady, I needed a bit of fiddling and a mild headache from going crosseyed trying to look up at the ring on my horn before I finally found the right key on the ring and managed to get my magic released. Once that was done, I sat back against the wall and closed my eyes.

“Hey! Coil!” Silhouette rattled a hoof on the bars of her cage. The sound was… irritating. “You gonna toss me those keys, or what?”

“Shut up, Silhouette. I’m thinking.”

“What in Tartarus is there worth thinking about? He spelled it out for you completely.”

I did my best to ignore her, placing a forehoof on my temple.

“Coil! Don’t be an idiot! The plan he laid out is great! Look, I won’t even follow you immediately! I’m gonna go find Jade and make sure she doesn’t completely lose it. All you’ve gotta do is—”

“I’m not leaving Gale,” I growled. In the ensuing silence, I made a point of looking up at Silhouette, watching the walls of her cell glisten in the starlight that refracted through her body from the cell window. “She doesn’t deserve to get dragged back and tossed in jail for this.”

“Oh, come on! You just want to be storybook hero and go save the princess, don’t you?” Silhouette growled in her throat and smacked her forehead on the bars of her cell. “She’s not special! You heard the way she talks; you’ve seen the way she dresses. She’s just some hooker!”

I offered Silhouette a cold glare. “You asked earlier what I saw in her. Let me explain. Gale ran off with Hurricane’s sword because she had decided she wanted to kill the last windigo. It was probably a stupid goal, but I admire it anyway.”

“So you like that she’s a dumb would-be-hero too?”

“Your level of incomprehension is truly breathtaking.” I slumped back against the wall.

The prison was quiet. For almost ten seconds, I tried to force myself to think of where Gale might be. My thoughts always turned to Gale. More in the interest of clearing my focus than actually enlightening Silhouette, I spoke up again. “When I was competing to be Wintershimmer’s apprentice, my father told me that I’d never be able to be a wizard with my horn the way it is. He refused to even talk to me about telekinesis. With his horn split, he couldn’t do magic on his own, and he didn’t think it was worth the pain of trying to teach me. Wintershimmer had to walk me through it during the first trial.” I dragged a hoof along the grout between the flagstones that made up the cell’s floor. “Everything about where I came from said I’d never be a wizard. My horn. My family. Being born in the Crystal Union instead of literally anywhere in Equestria, where there are tons of mages looking for apprentices.

“I fought past that. I worked my flanks off for fifteen years. And through all that, I didn’t really care about all that crap I mentioned. It felt great to shove it in my father’s face when I won the apprenticeship. All the stupid crystals who hated me for not being a rock got what was coming to them. No, what pissed me off were the nicer ponies. The unicorns who understood how hard it was for me. All that… cheap pity. Because at the end of the day, they’re making the same assumption: that I could never be a wizard. But instead of challenging me, and letting me prove them wrong, they’d say ‘it’s okay’. ‘You don’t have to be a real wizard.’ They encouraged me to give up. They tried to make it easier.”

Silhouette was totally silent. I glanced over, and noticed just how closely she was watching me.

“Gale’s like that. I don’t even know what it is that’s holding her back. I mean, I can guess. But I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be one of those ponies. I don’t want to tell her she can’t do what she wants or give her that cheap pity.”

I leaned forward, stood up on my hooves, and picked up the keys in my telekinesis. Then, using my hooves, I placed my discarded horn ring into the crook of my shoulder. I felt the sting of it eating my magic, but the drain was minimal as long as it wasn’t near my horn. Without further word, my arcane grip guided my ‘stolen’ keys into the keyhole on the outside of the cell. Once I’d stepped out fully, I shut and locked the door.

“You’re not just going to be able to walk out the front door, you know.”

“Really? Watch me.” Finally able to get a good look down the hall in both directions, I took notice that the only exit to the cell block was the door Tempest had left through, off to my right side. The other end of the hallway terminated in the same stout brick wall that had made up my cell. Given that the four other cells between me and the wall had their doors open, I confirmed my suspicion that Tempest hadn’t shared Equestria’s political secrets with the ears of random criminals.

With that matter settled, I turned around and pointed my horn at the back wall of my own cell, just below the window.

The explosion was quite loud, and a huge cloud of dust expanded around the hole. Inside the prison, I heard ponies shouting. Without wasting a second, I sprinted down the hall, ducking inside the farthest cell and leaning against the inside wall. Moments later, I heard voices shouting, and the door into the rest of the prison slammed against its wall.

“What was that?” Tempest shouted, sounding dramatically more convincing than his feigned ignorance had earlier.

“I-I think Morty escaped.”

“I figured that much out.” Tempest made a show of growling. “Alright, he’s out in the city somewhere. You see if you can track him with magic or something. I’ll rally the guard and start searching the city.”

Heavy wingflaps told me Tempest had left. I didn’t wait any longer.

Travail had her horn lit, fiddling with the cell door I’d locked. Slowly, her magic was bending the iron bars. By the standards of the average unicorn, she had power, even if I hesitated to say she was worthy of being called an archmage.

“Hello, Travail.”

“W-W-What?!” The middle aged mare spun and let off a stunning bolt in the same fluid motion. I didn’t even bother jumping to the side; her surprise had ruined her aim. I took notice that her horn was lit with magic, readying another spell. Exactly as planned.

With my hoof, rather than my magic, I hurled the void crystal ring toward her head. Hungry for her power, it corrected for my less-than-perfect throw. With a sudden spark and then a drawn out fizzle, the magic around her horn faded away. Rather than horror, her face simply spasmed, twitching near the eye and at the corner of her slightly-open jaw as she struggled and utterly failed to justify the complete shift in power between us. With a slight push of telekinesis, I helped the squeaky door at the other end of the hallway slide shut. An audible click I hadn’t been completely expecting lent the motion a surprising finality. The message seemed to get across clear enough, if the shuddering of Travail’s shoulders was anything to go by.

I tossed the keys into Silhouette’s cell. “You’d be surprised how easy those were to steal,” I lied, looking Travail square in the eye Then, to clarify her position, I stepped forward until I was looming over the older mare. “Where’s Gale?”

Travail stumbled backward. “W-Who?”

“Gale,” I told her calmly. “The unicorn who was with me earlier.”

Travail stumbled backward, though I quickly closed the distance. “Y-Y-You mean Her Highness? What do you want with her?”

XIV - In Her Secret Majesty's Service

“Platinum’s daughter?” I finally managed to sputter out. “Gale is Queen Platinum’s daughter?”

Despite my overriding shock, Travail was still obviously nervous around me. She trembled in the hallway, her gaze jumping between my face and Silhouette’s cell, where my crystal nemesis was slowly trying to find which of the six keys I’d thrown her actually opened it. “I d-don’t know a ‘Gale’. But the u-unicorn you were with w-w-was Princess P-Platinum the Third.” She slowly held up a placative hoof. “Y-you really d-didn’t know?”

“I knew she was a noble,” I muttered back. “But not that noble. Where is she?” A loud thud against the door out of the hallway signaled two concerns to me. “More guards… Silhouette, you’d better get out of there now.”

I heard the soldier scoff. “You think I’m helping you, Coil?”

“Me or Hurricane,” I told her. “Take your pick.”

Silhouette’s fiddling with the door grew faster. Another heavy blow slammed against the locked hallway door. The guards on the other side must have been doing their best to beat it down.

I returned my attention to Travail, lowering my voice for the sake of intimidation. The resulting gruff “Where is she?!” sounded ridiculous to my ears, but it seemed to have the desired effect on Travail.

“The T-T-Tagfahrt Chambers… W-Where the ruling c-council meets. G-Governor Tough S-Smith has her.”

I suppressed a snort of laughter at the stallion’s name. “Thank you very much, Archmage. Since you seem to have decided that I’m the ‘bad guy’ in this story, I suppose there’s only one thing left to do.” I glanced back to Silhouette. “I’m going to go kidnap a princess. Feel free to use that against me when you talk to the Equestrians.”

Silhouette rolled her eyes just as she finally got the lock on her cell to click. “If you keep up that fairy tale trash, I’ll turn us both in to the Butcher.” Stepping out, she hoofed me the keys, and then wrapped a foreleg around Travail’s neck. For what it’s worth, the mare who ostensibly could be called an ‘archmage’ resisted, though she stood no chance against an earth pony half her age and nearly twice her muscle mass. The simple pressure of the chokehold persisted for several seconds, until the middle-aged mare collapsed.

“Was that really necessary?”

“I was tired of hearing her stutter,” Silhouette grumbled, before rolling her neck and turning her attention to the door at the end of the hall. The wood was visibly warped, beginning to splinter from the blows it was taking. It lasted only two more. When the wood gave way, three ponies rushed in carrying padded clubs, obviously designed to take criminals alive and relatively uninjured.

They weren’t terribly effective against Silhouette’s stone body.

Her hooves, in contrast, were extremely effective against their bodies. In about ten seconds of what I’m inclined to call industrial disassembly, the three Lübuck guardsponies were rolling on the floor, moaning in agony and clutching various parts of their bodies.

“That was… fun,” I observed. “Alright, Silhouette, here’s the way the cards are falling. Right now, I’ve got spells to spare and you don’t have your void crystal. So I’m sure you understand why you aren’t going to follow me.”

She turned back to me and rolled her neck. “A little advice, Coil: never call a fight before it’s over.”

“It’s not a fight if I’m the only one who lands a blow.” I shrugged. “Go to Queen Jade and stop her from doing something even more stupid than what she already has. Or go to Tempest, if your urges are really that irresistible.”

The thought seemed to amuse her. “That sounds like a plan. He’s cute.”

I arched a brow.

Silhouette sighed. “Of course, you’re a stallion. You don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“For a mare, sex is a weapon. Some ponies are too stupid to think of it that way, or too ‘noble’ to use the advantage they’ve got. They don’t want to be called ‘sluts’ or mocked for their ‘mineshafts’.” She glared at me pointedly. “Any mare who wants it can find a stallion. But a stallion has to put in a lot of effort to seduce a mare, because the stakes are a lot higher for us. So if I offer myself, you’d be surprised how many stallions can’t resist. And once you’ve got somepony interested in you, you’ve got a way to control them.” She flicked her tail once. “Who knows? If you’d ever given in, maybe we wouldn’t have been enemies like this.”

“So it’s just another form of extortion?”

Silhouette shrugged. “Pretty much. But when you call it ‘love’, you’d be surprised how much control you get over somepony.” Then she flicked her tail again, and glanced at the hole I’d blown in the wall. “And no, I’m not going to try and follow you. Are you leaving?”

I gave her a little nod, and then to her considerable surprise, walked through the door leading further into the prison building.

Finally alone and no longer putting on the airs of perfect calm that I needed to portray myself in a position of strength over Travail and Silhouette, I let my shoulder’s slump. After a moment to catch a couple of deep breaths, I analyzed my surroundings. The guard post or prison or whatever it was promised to be a smaller structure than I would have guessed. For one thing, I could clearly see the doors leading out. For another, it seemed that the three guardsponies who had rushed Silhouette were the only ponies in the building, other than the now unconscious excuse for an Archmage. They’d left behind a small lunch table, a single desk in the corner, and one other meaningful door set next to an interior window. Behind the barred glass I saw another room containing countless racks of weapons and armor, but they weren’t the only treasures of note.

“Master Coil! Oh, thank goodness you’re alright! Are you well, Master Coil?” Angel shouted at me in his tinny rasp from the other side of the glass. The rock in question was rather amusing. Without his golden halos to let him fly, angel was literally just a hoof-sized stone who happened to be able to speak, laying flat on a shelf near-ish the door. All around the golem were the confiscated ‘treasures’ of Lübuck’s criminal underworld: knives, bottles of exotic alcohols and poisons, a sizeable pile of scrolls, and more than a few heavy winter coats.

I barged into the room, whose door was fortunately unlocked, and set about gathering my things. “I’m doing quite well, Angel, thank you for asking.” I paused for a moment in the act of donning my jacket. “You know, you were fantastic in the cathedral. I don’t know if we would have made it without you.”

“Oh, you needn’t thank me, Sir. It is my pleasure to serve.”

“I know; I made you that way. Don’t let the praise go to your core.” He had meant the comment more literally than the idiom would imply; the artificial soul of the golem defined service as a form of joy. “Letting others know when they’ve done a job well is still a matter of common courtesy.”

“Why, thank you, Sir. Might I ask what your plan is now? Do you intend to take me with you when we run this time?”

I nodded. “It wasn’t exactly the plan to leave you behind the first time. And for the record, it should be enough for you to trust my planning without my spelling it all out for you. I was desperately busy trying not to wind up cornered by Jade. Did she treat you alright?”

“Better than I expected,” came his cheerful reply. As he continued speaking, I hefted his golden halos and held them aloft on either side of his central body. Slowly, the small stone rose into the air between the two magical rings. “Of course, had I known she intended to use me as a way to track you, I might not have been so grateful.”

I shrugged. “That doesn’t matter now. You look for Wintershimmer’s grimoire.”

“What do you intend to do, Master Coil?”

Rather than answer him directly, I wandered over to the suits of armor, stored on roughly equine wooden models against the wall. Though it took a little bit of effort, I soon appeared as one of Lübuck’s finest—which is to say ‘considerably less fine than my usual appearance’. A little bit of my jacket was visible between the pauldrons of the steel armor and the bracers of the same, though I doubted that slight slip in formal uniform would give me any trouble. With virtually no knowledge of swords or guard batons, I chose one of each completely at random from the shelves and slung their belts over my withers, one on each side.

“Now, Angel, I want you to follow at about the roofline. Try and stay under eaves and awnings so you aren’t obvious from the sky, but more importantly don’t come down into view of ponies walking on the streets.”

“Where do you intend to escape to, Sir?”

I smiled. “Well, first thing to do is kidnap—” I held my tongue abruptly; Angel was many things, but foremost amongst them was a rock. Subtlety was not his strong suit. “That is to say, we have to go rescue Gale and Graargh.”

“I see. Well, Sir, lead the way.”

My disguise worked more effectively than it had any right to. Civilians not paying attention to me had been the goal, but when I crossed paths with another guard patrol, even they offered me unquestioning nods before going about their business. Only in retrospect did it occur to me how small the population of Union City was, that virtually every guardspony knew one another. Thankfully, Lübuck was much larger.

The Council Chambers belonged to a group known as the Tagfahrt, or something similarly unpronounceable and flatulatory. They were housed in an enormous structure that I was able to identify from a distance simply by looking at the two buildings of governmental size on the hills overlooking the city, and then choosing the one that wasn’t the cathedral.

When I reached the doors, two earth pony guards in far more sizeable and formal armor were standing in wait. Each carried a spear, which were rested together to form a larger-than-life ‘X’ across the entrance to the structure.

“Constable,” one of the guards grumbled, looking down on me in more ways than altitude. “What’s your name, kid? And what are you doing here?”

I nodded up at the building. “Um… Tempest.”

“Tempest?”

I shook my head. “Oh, uh, no. My name’s Brick.” Clearly, amongst my many talents, I am the best improvisationalist who ever lived. “Tempest is the other answer. You know, Centurion Tempest? Commander Hurricane’s grandson?”

The two guards glanced at one another, and then back to me in sync. “Well, I assume you have a message, colt.”

“Yeah. The wizard escaped.” It was the first thought that came to mind, and I immediately regretted it.

“The wizard?”

I nodded, even if in my mind I was wielding more than a bit of Gale’s vocabulary at myself for my choice of ‘message’. “The crystal pony wizard. You see, the Centurion is concerned that he’ll try to come for her majesty.”

“He knows…” The as-yet-silent guard whispered.

The one who’d been speaking rolled his eyes. “Of course the ‘fancy’ pegasus sends some rookie who can’t even wear his uniform right to deliver messages. Well, ‘Brick’, apart from keeping our eyes open, what does he intend us to do about it?”

A hint of a plan came to mind. “He—that is, Centurion Tempest—said the wizard might try to do something sneaky and warp past you, or he might blow a hole in the wall. You’re to stand guard outside her majesty’s room, instead of at the front gates. That way, maybe Lübuck will finally manage to maintain control over one single prisoner, for a change.”

They glared at me for my slip. I made a show of coughing embarrassedly into my hoof. “Um, those were his words.”

“Hmph.” The guards glanced at each other, and the primary speaker rolled his eyes. “Typical Cirran pride. Well, we’ll show him.”

“I’ll need to see the Princess before I can return to the Centurion.” A special emphasis went into rolling my eyes as the two guards looked at me questioningly. “He insisted. Apparently, he’s worried she might have tried to sneak out already.”

“Through a locked door? Or out a fifth story window?”

I shrugged. “You know how it is with Cirrans.” Of course, I had no idea ‘how it is with Cirrans’, but that didn’t seem to matter to ponies who understood ‘typical Cirran pride’ as a familiar occupational irritation.

The doors opened moments later on an opulent forechamber with an elaborate carpet, polished marble columns, rich red wood, and the stench of politics. Unfortunately, like so many large buildings built to display the wealth of the exceptionally arrogant, the aforementioned qualities continued to describe all the further halls and rooms we traveled through. Eventually, even plush carpets and marble pillars become a tedious drudgery.

We stopped somewhere on the fifth floor, as the guard had mentioned earlier, in front of a stout wooden door with a sizeable lock. “Chancellor Puddinghead’s quarters, when he visits,” the more vocal of my escorts explained while fiddling with the lock and key. The door swung open with a creak. “Here she is.”

I reached out a hoof, holding open the door as the guard reached to close it again. I needed a moment’s thought. Gale was laying upside down on the chamber’s bed with her head aligned toward the door, so that her face wasn’t really visible. The act of not addressing the ponies at the door was clearly deliberate, as if the silent treatment would somehow let her continue in her journey. Still, there was no mistaking her. “There was a foal as well?” I asked the guards.

“Next room over,” the speaker answered, tweaking his head to indicate the direction. “Do you need to see him?”

“No, gentlestallions. You are dismissed.”

The brief moment of confusion that played across the faces of the less-than-gifted guards was absolutely priceless. The more vocal of the pair opened his mouth to speak, right as I allowed mana to flood my horn. A moment later, both guards found themselves on the roof of the Council Chambers.

As promised, I don’t always teleport myself away from problems. And I still hold that to be a more elegant solution than my original plan of bludgeoning them into unconsciousness with one another.

“Sorry it took me a while, Gale. I’m here to kidnap you.”

The purple mare on the bed didn’t seem to believe my voice. She turned her head slowly, eyes widened, until they settled on me properly.

“Morty?”

“Don’t recognize me? Is it the armor?”

“Holy shit!” Springing off the bed, Gale wrapped me in an enthusiastic (if platonic) hug. “Why are you here? How are you here?”

“‘How’ is a long story.” I pulled back from the embrace and looked her in the eyes. “But I wasn’t going to let you get dragged back to Everfree City for trying to do something good.”

Gale scoffed. “So I’m some sort of damsel in distress to you, is that it?” Her voice carried hints of sarcasm, in the same sense that bread carries hints of wheat. Her smile also helped clue me in about her genuine feelings.

Still, I shook my head for an honest reply. “Gale, I’ve seen you in two fights now. I know you can take care of yourself.” I shrugged. “Plus, after you held off Silhouette in the cathedral, I figured I owe you. Now come on. Let’s go get Graargh, and then I’ve got a ship waiting.”

“You… How? You don’t have any real money!”

“Wizard!” I replied enthusiastically, embracing an ancient and proud wizarding tradition. Namely, the ancient and proud wizarding tradition of being pedantic and deliberately unhelpful.

Gale slapped me across the top of my head, tweaking an ear. Despite the pain, I couldn’t help but smile. “Come on.” As we started walking, I shouted up toward the ceiling of the hallway. “Angel, you still here?”

“As ever, sir,” the golem replied, floating down into view. “It is good to see you again, Mistress Gale.”

“It's just Gale.”

“A thousand apologies, Mistress Gale the Just. Master Coil would have me for a door jam if he heard I'd failed to title a friend of his.”

Gale groaned aloud; she only refrained from what was certain to be a vibrantly worded diatribe when we arrived at another heavy door. Only in that moment did I realize that I’d also teleported the keys onto the roof.

Fortunately, to my surprise, Gale proved more than capable of bucking down a wooden door. The act took her more than a few good kicks, but soon, we had a pile of sawdust falling on a little green colt.

“Morty!” There were tears in Graargh’s eyes as he lunged at me through the broken door. I backed away just one step before I felt the weight of his forelegs around my neck, not angry but desperately terrified, seeking comfort in my embrace. After my momentary shock, I wrapped my forelegs tight around his little body. He nuzzled into my neck, only to be thwarted by my helmet. With a casual jolt of telekinesis, I tossed it to the side; that seemed to cheer him up. Half-dried tears matted my mane as he pulled closer into me, almost as if he wanted to bury himself in my neck.

I took silent notice of the fact that he felt thin in my forelegs. As I ran my hoof down his back, I could feel the spurs of his spine and nearly every rib around his barrel. He must have been even more malnourished than he had seemed when I first met him.

“Are you okay, Graargh?”

He nodded into my neck.

“Alright. Good. You’re alright; we’re all here now. See, Gale’s here?” I gestured over. “And my friend Angel, whom you haven’t really met yet. You two can talk later, okay? For now, we need to get going.”

Graargh shook his head. “Not leave!”

“We’re not leaving you, kid,” I told him. “You’re coming with us.”

“Here,” Gale offered stepping forward. “You wanna ride on my back, Graargh? It’ll be fun.”

That offer was apparently close enough to the group and a tempting enough chance for fun that Graargh finally released his frail grip on my neck. I sighed a little breath and helped the colt climb onto Gale’s withers. Though he wasn’t quite a perfect substitute for her pack of medical supplies and golden bits, the replacement didn’t seem to bother Gale.

The rest of our trip was unremarkable; apparently, Gale was no more recognizable to the public as the crown princess of Equestria than she had been to me before I knew that particular secret. Between her anonymity and my disguise, it wasn’t hard to reach the docks. And, as frantic life and an even more frantic pony hunt swept the streets of Lübuck, my group of friends and I finally found our way to the gangplank of The Little Conqueror.

Sitting on the edge of the railing with his hind legs dangling down toward the sea, a pegasus with a coat startlingly similar to my own looked up at our approaching group. “I thought there was only going to be one of you. You took long enough.” His restrained, salty voice matched his apparent irritation.

“Plan changed,” I told him. “You still going to carry us, or—?”

“Heh. I can’t exactly decline a royal commission, can I? I’m Winterspell. This is the Little Conqueror. Hurry aboard.” He turned back over his shoulder to a group of other ponies mulling about the deck. “Mr. Signal! We’ve a tide to catch!”

XV - The Prosecution of Clover the Clever

Captain Winterspell seemed to have a telepathic command of his crew. Never in my life have I seen a group of ponies exercise tighter coordination, yet Winterspell himself hardly spoke. He issued an order perhaps twice to the crew as he watched them set about their work. Instead, his focus was on the hospitality for our little trio. At his offer, Gale and Graargh were shown to the cramped space of the crew quarters to catch up on the sleep my rescue had interrupted. I, however, was in no fit state to sleep.

It had only been a few hours since I woke up in a Lübuck jail cell, and the ensuing intrigue had gotten my blood pumping. Instead, with the blessing of the captain, I wandered up to the front of the ship and leaned against the railing, well out of the way of any of the sailors dealing with riggings and anchors and whatever other nautical terms your imagination feels the need to insert here.

Angel hovered by my side, but for perhaps the first time in his existence, he didn’t feel the need to speak up. Content with the quiet, I rolled over onto my back and rested my head on the bowsprit, just above the figurehead of the Little Conqueror. Though the wooden beam made for a hard pillow, I was left with an amazing view of the stars. I whispered the names of the stars and constellations under my breath, hoping the rote memory would help me think.

“Amethyst the Lightbringer, who gave us civilization.” The first king, writ large across the night sky by the grace of the Lady of the Night.

I could almost hear Wintershimmer’s derisive snort.

I felt the ship rock gently and listened as it creaked underneath me. The sea carried a gentle foam, but my mind was roaring. There was the oppressive fear that Tempest would somehow realize I’d made off with Gale, and show up at sea any minute. As the hours passed, that fear grew less pressing. I knew he wouldn’t try to organize a search for a boat three hours out to sea, where a bad turn of the weather could kill his fellow scouts. But as that worry vanished, others rose up in my mind.

Desperation for a moment of calm turned my eyes skyward once more. “Tourmaline, the first Archmage.” My mental recitation of the great wizard’s accolades did not last long against the turmoil of my present state.

I’d kidnapped Princess Platinum’s daughter. It felt so right in the spur of the moment, when I hadn’t let myself take the time to sit and think for fear of losing my chance. And it still felt right, even if I couldn’t put my hoof on why. My mind jumped back to Gale’s rushed hug over and over again, only leaving my thoughts more muddled.

Another constellation, I forced myself. Another lesson. “Electrum the Omniscient.”

The name tripped up my thoughts, finally providing my blessed relief. Electrum had been one of the ancient unicorn kings, before ponies stopped expecting the royalty to also be wizards. The legends said he’d brought a curse on The Diamond Throne, sent by Lady Luna for the pride of looking too far into the future. I knew the disease was real; the ‘scourge of kings’ haunted the royal bloodline. Queen Platinum’s father, King Lapis, was dying of it even before the Windigoes attacked. I’d heard the Queen had it as well, although it hadn’t yet set into her horn. Did Gale have it?

Or was that the point of the Queen choosing a pegasus for a husband? Trying to spare Gale the disease? I had no real way of knowing, but the question lingered in my mind regardless, and it only led to further questions. Who was her father?

I let my eyes roll to the moon. Ponies said that if you whispered a question to the moon, you’d get an answer in exchange for a favor that Luna would some day come to collect. Under Wintershimmer it had always seemed like a pointless bit of superstition attached to a terrible deal. Without a place to call home or even a country to protect me from the ponies chasing me, suddenly the deal seemed a lot more reasonable.

I shook my head. Reasonable or not, Gale’s parentage wasn’t any kind of a question worth asking. I almost certainly didn’t know the pony, so a name wouldn’t do me any good. At best, I could guess it was the infamous Private Pansy—assuming he was younger than the Butcher, and thus even remotely close to the Queen’s age.

I set aside the question and turned back to the stars.

“Cunning Cap, of…” The title wouldn’t come. Something far more pressing had entered my mind.

Wintershimmer claimed that Clover had killed a hundred thousand ponies?

I knew basically nothing about Clover beyond the popular fable you almost certainly have enough about Clover to know that Wintershimmer knew something I didn’t, but nothing I did know of the mare would justify murder. Without considerably more divination magic than anypony alive could cast, or a direction interrogation of Wintershimmer, I had no way of getting an answer out at sea.

I set my mind to the task of sleeping, but putting my mind to sleep took far longer.

The next morning, Gale and Graargh rejoined me on deck. We were treated to the first of a great many identical meals of thick, sticky gruel and stone-like biscuit. Graargh made quite a show of protesting; fortunately, as a nine-ish year old colt, that was mostly to be expected by the crew. An adult bear making the same protest would probably have been much more inconvenient. I found myself hoping that we didn’t need to explain his “condition” to the whole crew, though I resolved to tell Winterspell the next time I had a chance to quietly pull him aside.

After breakfast, we sat and talked. There really wasn’t anything else to do. Gale took every opportunity to volunteer her services to the crew, and from time to time they let her up in the rigging to undo some knot or fiddle with a stubborn bit of sail. Largely, however, the ship was simply too well organized for even her to have much work. She and I worked together teaching Graargh Equiish, quickly producing wonderful results in the forms of the words ‘I’ and ‘A’. The sentence ‘Am bear’ was given a lavish burial at sea, if only in my mind.

By the time the sun sat directly above the mast, I was feeling enough energy back in my horn that I was ready to talk to my mentor. The captain was comfortable enough letting me down into the belly of the ship with the cargo, so long as I refrained from helping myself to any of it—not that I was about to try. It is annoyingly difficult to escape the scene of a crime when one is already on a ship at sea.

When I actually descended the narrow stairway into the cargo hold, I found the place decidedly unhappy. The air was hot, thick, moist, and stank to the high heavens. The rocking of the ship felt stronger here, and the creaking of wooden beams was an almost deafening companion, despite Angel’s presence. I resolved to keep our discussion as brief as possible.

The chalk circles and septagrams you may recall from my previous seances were a showy touch, intended both to make the process easier for me through focus and stability, and to impress uneducated ponies far more than a simple flared horn usually would. Alone and consumed by curiosity, I couldn’t bring myself to bother. It took only a single flash of my horn for Wintershimmer to fade into translucent being, no more than a stride in front of me.

“Coil,” he greeted flatly. “I’m glad you contacted me again quickly. I was beginning to get worried, since I’ve seen neither Silhouette nor yourself here in the Summer Lands.”

“I couldn’t kill her,” I told him in a brief, factual tone. “She had your candlecorns with her.” I deliberately refrained from mentioning to him that I still had no intention of killing Silhouette outright, or that I had at least one perfectly solid opportunity to crush her with a church bell instead of using it as a shield.

“At least you survived that encounter. Is the filly I advised you about still traveling with you?”

“Princess Platinum, you mean?” I asked.

Wintershimmer smiled, though he cocked a brow. “You discovered that yourself? I thought your strategy was deliberately not knowing.”

I shrugged. “I stumbled into knowing. I’m not going to tell her I know though, since that seems to make her happy.”

My mentor turned around for a moment, taking in the surroundings. “On a ship, I see. Are you bound for Starport?”

“Neighvgorod. It’s a little bit of a longer journey to get to River Rock from there, but it’s what I could manage on short notice. I didn’t want to spend any more time in Lübuck.”

“Wise. A ship is sooner than I had requested you contact me, but it will suffice for now. It seems as though this time you have your affairs well in order, Coil. That is good. This next lesson will require your total focus.”

I shook my head firmly. “I didn’t seance you for a lesson, Wintershimmer. I called you because I need to know why you think I need to kill Clover. And, for that matter, how you think I’m supposed to manage that.”

The ghostly spirit of my mentor cocked a brow. “And you believe that answering those questions will not provide a lesson? As your road grows increasingly more treacherous, Coil, I cannot refrain from giving you this power any longer. I was saving it for the day you showed that you could act above your foalish impulses of fairy-tale glory, and it seems this journey has at least taught you something. So today, my student, you are going to become the most powerful unicorn alive.”

I cocked a brow. “Is Star Swirl dead then? Have you seen him on the other side?”

Wintershimmer shook his spectral head with visible irritation. “Star Swirl continues his life for the moment, and I suspect it will be a lifetime yet before you can claim to be his equal in knowledge. But power only exists when it is used—whether as a threat, or in actual exercise. Unlike Star Swirl, I do not expect you to sit idly on your knowledge waiting for death to take you. Even your ‘heroism’ is better than his idleness. And yet I am called ‘the Complacent’.” A snort escaped ethereal nostrils. “I assume you have already gathered, but to begin formally, I am going to teach you my greatest work of magic: how to rip the soul out of a living body.”

I nodded grimly. “And you want me to use it on Clover the Cruel?”

Rather than explain his motivation, Wintershimmer interpreted my concern as being focused on tactics. “Star Swirl knows how to defend against my spell. However, to my understanding he has not taught it to either Clover or his more recent pupil, Diadem. They are both incompetent necromancers, and I doubt they could learn this magic even if instructed. But beyond that issue of talent, my old rival has a strong motivation not to teach my spell to a new generation, or to write it down. He does not know about your existence, Coil, so he assumes my spell will die with me. He would rather live in a world where my power was lost.”

I nodded my understanding. “So you think whatever Clover did was bad enough that it’s worth letting Star Swirl know about me?”

“Yes. And patience, Coil. I do not expect you to deal with Clover on blind faith. I will explain after you learn. Let us begin simply. What cantrips do you believe go into my thesis spell?”

The question he asked aloud was one I had been pondering for years, even if I never dared ask it. After all, ‘please teach me to rip out the souls of my enemies’ is a sentence with some fairly conclusive moral implications.

Well, the obvious first step is necromantic binding.” The old stallion’s eyebrow piqued, though he held his tongue. “We can’t directly affect the soul from the physical world while the bond between body and soul is still intact—I believe that’s Morbid’s Law?” I received no correction, and thus continued. “If you used Torque’s Principle of Supplementative Disenchanting, then casting a binding cantrip should

My little pony, first let me apologize for interrupting Morty’s narrative. The page you see ripped out immediately opposite this one was torn by my horn. You see, in recording this portion of his story, Morty did feel the need to be very, very thorough. While the formula for Wintershimmer’s thesis was not written down as formal instructions, at least one reader of this text was able to piece together enough of the spell to produce a working (if crude) facsimile.

I hope I do not need to explain why the ability to sever the soul of another pony from their body is forbidden magic. I do not teach it to the Royal Guard. Even my personal students are forbidden to learn this spell. Both Star Swirl and later Morty himself agreed that it was best to keep this knowledge under tight control.

I apologize for denying you a piece of the narrative. If it is of any consolation, I promise you that Morty refrained from any amusing insults or jokes at Wintershimmer’s expense, and that the dialogue you are missing is an exceptionally dry piece of discussion on high-level magical theory.

The next page should start you off with enough of an understanding for Morty’s subsequent dialogue to make sense.

Please enjoy the rest of Morty’s story.

— Celestia

hasn’t been an archmage in six hundred years gifted enough at sympathy to gain anything useful out of it during a duel. Reading a mind is a slow process, and dedicating mana to guarding against it is an intrinsically taxing proposition. Thus, most ponies who would think to enter into a duel with me would fear my reputation, and dedicate themselves to some foolish attempt at guarding against my necromancy at the expense of guarding their minds. And even if somepony knows the principle, like my hairy Equestrian rival, I can still pick at their defense. Remember Estoc’s third principle of dueling?”

I nodded curtly before reciting the ancient theory. “To be effective, a sword must only be present at the moment of the strike. In contrast, a shield cannot ever be lowered or it ceases to serve a purpose.”

“The spell I’ve just taught you, Coil, is the most powerful ‘sword’ in the world. If somepony defends against it, you’ve forced them to carry an extremely heavy shield. Don’t test that shield; simply attack them more traditionally. No mage alive can defend both fronts at once. I suspect even the so-called ‘Divine Sisters’ would fall before such a strategy. The moment they drop their defense of their mind in the interest of saving their body, you snatch out their soul.” Wintershimmer nodded slowly. “That is how you will kill Clover.”

I sat back onto my flanks on the creaking beams of the solid cog. “Which only leaves your explanation of why I should approach a pony who has never attempted to hurt me personally, and kill her in cold blood.”

Wintershimmer’s ghostly form snorted. “Foals these days… No proper wizard ever needed a moral excuse to kill off a rival…”

I should clarify here that Wintershimmer was not making a self-aware joke about his own age or perspective; the ghost of the old stallion was entirely serious in his irritation.

“The last time we discussed this, Wintershimmer, you avoided the question. Do you have a good reason why I should kill Clover? Or any reason at all, for that matter?”

Wintershimmer glared at me in reply. “Do not presume to question me so casually, Coil. Or do you think that knowing my spell would let you best me? Do not forget, my soul is already unshackled from a living body.”

“It’s a little hard to forget, to be honest.” I smiled, and let my grip on the seance spell weaken just enough that Wintershimmer’s form rippled in the air. He scowled at me, to which I nodded. “Now, can we get on with this?”

“Very well…” Wintershimmer took a completely unnecessary breath. “As I explained previously, Clover is responsible for the permanent loss of the ancient capital of River Rock. She’s the reason River Rock is still a frozen wasteland, and its Windigo is still alive. And I have every reason to believe that she has exerted control over the creature as a means to wield it further in achieving her goals.”

“With apologies for the trite reaction, what?! How can you possibly claim Clover is responsible for the windigoes?”

“I did not claim that, Coil.” Wintershimmer sat and steepled his hooves. “Only that she is responsible for the one of them that still remains alive. I know you haven’t suffered through the Equestrian ‘pageant’ on the subject of the Windigoes, but you are most likely still aware of the narrative it suggests. That the three tribes somehow united and vanquished the Windigoes through friendship. This is, in a sense, a lie.”

“I know enough magic to know a fairy tale when I see one, Wintershimmer.”

“Save when you look in a mirror?” The ghost chuckled as he shook his head. “Clover wrote that pageant. Specifically, she wrote it to deceive the public about what actually happened in that cave. There was a magic of ‘friendship’ in a sense. The bonds between the ponies—most especially Hurricane’s secretary, Smart Cookie, and Clover—contained enough magic to free them from the Windigoes’ ice. However, on its own, friendship is just a source of mana. It would still need a horn to disperse the Windigoes, and in that regard their friendship went to waste. It was the pegasus leader Hurricane and his enchanted sword that slew two of the spirits, not some glowing magical heart.”

“...and this condemns Clover because…” I drew a circle with my hoof in the air as I let the question hang.

“Clover stopped Hurricane from dispersing the third windigo. She spared its existence.”

I actually felt my jaw go slack—and believe me when I say that in my life, I’d experienced more than enough insanity to be a difficult pony to surprise. “You’ve got to be mistaken. She’s a trained archmage, isn’t she?”

“She is.”

“And she knows that Windigoes are evil spirits? Intrinsically evil?”

“I have every reason to believe she does.”

I frowned. “How could you possibly know this? You’d need something as powerful as Electrum’s Orb to look back in time that far, to say nothing of the magical interference that the windigoes’ blizzard would cause.”

“I needed nothing of the sort. I had an eyewitness.”

“An… eyewitness? You’ve spoken to one of them?”

Wintershimmer snorted. “No speech was involved, nor was there any risk that I was lied to. Have you forgotten Smart Cookie?”

I blinked. “You read his mind?”

“Saying that I read his soul might be a more accurate description, but the premise is the same in the end. Truly formative memories are engraved on the soul, and that day was as imprortant as any to Smart Cookie. I’ve seen what happened in that cave. I know Clover lied to Hurricane to save that Windigo.”

“Lied to him?”

Rather than answering with a nod or a terse ‘yes’, Wintershimmer rose once more to his ethereal hooves on the ship’s wooden planks. “Coil, may I use some of your mana?”

“If that’s what you need to do to answer my question, sure.” I sat down, bracing myself against the dizzying drain of my seance spell growing harder to maintain. “It would have been nice if you had asked when you choked Gale too, you know.”

Wintershimmer sighed for what was obviously dramatic effect. “Apprentice, may I borrow some of your mana, so that I can telekinetically choke your romantic companion? I was establishing my reputation, Coil. I could neither afford to ask you politely, nor to delay my response. Besides, compared to the mana you use flaring a spell, I doubt you noticed my drain.”

He was right; in the heat of the moment, I hadn’t. “Then why ask now?”

“Courtesy among necromancers,” he replied, as the magic on his horn grew more pronounced. “In case you have forgotten, Coil, the dead cannot cast magic alone. We need a physical horn. Thus, you are providing me a service.”

Wintershimmer’s horn ignited fully, and then the drain from my spell faded away into a dull throbbing in the back of my mind. As my attention returned to my mentor, an orb of magic appeared before him. Unlike his usual sickly golden yellow or my pale blue, the sphere was a dusty red, visibly oozing raw mana. “I appreciate your academic skepticism regarding Clover, but it grows tiring. Obviously, I did not carry Smart Cookie’s memories with me into the Summer Lands, but what I’ve given you here are mine. You are welcome to inspect them as you see fit, to do whatever tests you feel necessary to ensure I am not deceiving you. Whatever it takes, Coil, realize the truth. When you have, conjure me once more.”

Wintershimmer vanished. I stared at the orb of memories he’d left behind, floating in the air. It would be a project, testing his claim that he hadn’t tampered with it. Something to distract my racing mind as the Little Conqueror sailed along toward the icy wastes of Neighvgorod.

But for now, I simply wanted to see.

There they were. The windigoes that had frozen him solid. The demons that had killed thousands, tens of thousands, a million ponies with their cold and cruel winter. They were weak, helpless, and whimpering as they lay against the far walls.

Before my eyes—or rather, before Smart Cookie’s—I saw a glint of black. Hurricane’s armor, beneath which I saw the honed bloodlust of a stallion just beginning to show the signs of age. He drew his sword and drove it straight through the heart of the first windigo, all in a single fluid motion. The creature writhed in pain, but Hurricane’s motion was graceful.

Only a moment later the windigo dissipated into an ethereal mist and a shower of cold water. The other two windigoes saw this, and they struggled backwards in response.

As Hurricane marched over to the second, I saw a mare who could only be Clover. Clad in a rough cloak, the green-on-green young mare took her attention away from the mostly freed Chancellor Puddinghead and galloped over towards the Commander.

“Stop!” she shouted, even as Hurricane impaled the second windigo. “Commander, stop!”
As Hurricane pulled the sword from the mist of what was previously another demon, Clover tackled him (or tried to) and struggled to wrestle the sword from his grasp with her hooves. With an expert roll and a kick, Hurricane easily rebounded from the grapple and turned to face her, the sword still in his mouth.

“What the hell?!” he shouted at her. “Clover, what are you doing?!”

Clover placed herself between Hurricane and the last windigo. “They don’t need to die, Commander! They’ve learned their lesson! Can’t you see?!”

I couldn’t believe my ears. No mage would ever say that.

The windigo behind her whimpered and scooted backwards several inches. I’d been raised on stories of the beasts as powerful, near-deific fiends. Compared to those stories, the spirit seemed so helpless, so petty.

Hurricane advanced towards it until he was nose to nose with Clover. “They have learned nothing. They are demons, spawns of Grabacr himself, and they must die. They have killed too many. Who knows how many more will die if we let it live.” Lowering his sword so that the tip brushed against Clover’s shoulder, he hardened his stare and leaned closer. “Stand aside, and let me finish it off.”

I knew next-to-nothing of the legends of the pegasi, but it seemed that Hurricane knew more about fighting spirits than Clover did. Either that, or Wintershimmer had been telling me the truth.

Clover gulped and put a hoof to Hurricane’s chest. “You will not kill it. It’s not a demon, it’s a living thing, just like us. Every life is precious. Don’t take another when nopony else needs to die.”

A living thing?! I think those were the words that made Wintershimmer’s story finally set in. To claim that the spirits had learned was foolish. To claim that they were living beings deserving of mercy was beyond reason. There could be no mistake. Clover was lying. But why?

“It’s not a pony!” Hurricane snarled. “And how many lives did you take in Onyx Ridge?!”

“None!” Clover protested. “I simply loaded the ballista! I killed nopony!”

“You still put rounds into a machine that killed others!” Oratory, it seemed, was not Hurricane’s strong suit. The black armor clearly was.

“I tried to save whom I could! When I broke out of my cell, I could have killed the guard that was there! Instead, I spared his life!”

“Enough of this!” With an angry hoof, Hurricane practically threw Clover to the side. The strength conveyed in the motion was impressive; Hurricane may have been tall for a pegasus, but the hollow boned tribe generally lacked the strength to pick up an hurl another pony. His path unblocked, the soldier advanced on the windigo, his sword raised to deal the deathblow. Or rather, the dispersing blow; dealing with spirits really does interfere with so many idioms.

It was too late.

With a scream of anger and fright, the windigo dispersed into mist and fog that simply slid past Hurricane and flowed upwards. The stone ceiling hissed, and the windigo returned to its equine shape. With one final howl of anger, it fled through the rock towards the east.

Hurricane watched the spot where it disappeared for several long seconds. During that time, Clover slowly backed away towards myself (Smart Cookie), Pan Sea, and the mostly freed Chancellor Puddinghead. They were all quiet when Hurricane screeched in rage and slammed his sword into the ground.

A gash of bedrock nearly a foot long surrendered to the familiar blade of Procellarum.

Clover took a cautious step closer to Hurricane and raised a pleading hoof as a desperate apology. “Commander Hurricane, I—”

“Damn it, Clover,” Hurricane whispered. The tension and emotion in his voice was so powerful that it immediately silenced the mare. “We could have ended this. Right here. The blizzard over the Compact Lands would have been gone. And we wouldn’t have had to leave after all.” When he looked back at her, his eyes were haunted and angry. “The pegasi wouldn’t have had to run. Not now. Not later. Never again.”

Clover’s ears flattened against her skull and she lowered her neck in shame. Was it real? I didn’t know the mare well enough to read her, but the emotion seemed sincere. “Please, Commander, I’m sorry—”

“You know nothing. You couldn’t have. But it’s okay. Soon, you’ll find out. You’ll know what it feels like.” Then he turned his face away and sighed. “Remember this, years from now. There’s a price we pay for mercy. There’s a price we pay for loyalty.” He looked at her one last time before moving towards the frozen mouth of the cave. “In a few months, ask yourself if it was really worth it. Ask yourself if you still would have stopped me from killing the demon.”

With a flick of his wings, Hurricane summoned sobering flames across his wings and leaned against the ice wall covering the exit to the cave. Clover, meanwhile, collapsed onto the floor and stared into space.

XVI - Blizzards, Traitors, and Bears! Oh My!

Neighvgorod was a city built into a natural harbor surrounded by mountains. It would have been a beautiful place for a summer vacation. Unfortunately, Clover’s helpfully-provided eternal winter hadn’t been kind to the trading port. Huge chunks of ice bobbed in the harbor, forcing the Little Conqueror’s crew to break out a set of hooked poles and try to push the bigger blocks out of the way. As they worked, Gale, Graargh, Angel, and I all watched the city ahead. It certainly wasn’t Lübuck; where the lumber port had been lively, with coin and ponies flowing through the streets in equal measures, Neighvgorod was a kind of ghost town. I saw the occasional sailor or fishermare (barbarians) on the docks, but for the wealth of houses and structures, few ponies seemed to be interested in going outside.

When the gangplank was down, a few minutes later, a pegasus stallion in a heavy brown cloak boarded the vessel, carrying a scroll and a quill. After briefly speaking with the captain, he approached my little group. “I understand you young ponies are not merely delivering lumber. What is your business in Neighvgorod?”

“Who’s asking?” Gale snapped back at him, before I could respond with a slightly more diplomatic tone.

He frowned, and glanced back over his shoulder nervously before answering. “I represent Archmage-Governor Forthright, under the legion of Cyclone Haysar.”

I scratched my chin. “Who’s that?”

“Forthright rules Neighvgorod.” The stallion waved a hoof toward the city. “His lordship graciously elected to remain after the exodus to Equestria with the townsfolk who weren’t in good enough health to make the trip. He—”

I held up a hoof to interrupt what was sure to be a long and ingratiating speech. “Not what I meant. Who is ‘Cyclone Haysar’?”

Both Gale and the stallion with the scroll stared at me in awe. Almost thirty seconds passed in stunned silence.

“Cyclone the Betrayer?” the stallion—who clearly didn’t have a great deal of respect for his indirect employer—asked.

“You’ve never heard of Cyclone?” Gale prompted. “Honestly?”

I shrugged. “Crystal Union, remember? Wintershimmer never thought it was important for me to learn pegasus politics, and since ‘Cyclone’ is a weather name, I assume we’re talking about a pegasus. Now can I get a straight answer? Who’s Cyclone? And what’s a Haysar?”

Gale rolled her eyes, and then leaned forward and whispered something in the stallion’s ear. His eyes widened—not just ‘your wife gave birth to triplets’ wide, but ‘your wife gave birth to triplet dragons’ wide—and he scurried away. Before I could ask what she’d said, Gale turned to me. “Haysar’s just a dumb title from the Cirran Pegasi. It’s what they called their emperors, until…” she shook her head, pausing mid phrase. “Until Commander Hurricane decided not to be called ‘Emperor’. After he lost the Red Cloud War. I think it’s pretty fucking sarcastic with Cyclone, since he failed so badly trying to become Emperor.”

“So he was a would-be usurper?” I pressed. “And Hurricane didn’t just kill him?”

Gale shook her head. “He’s Hurricane’s eldest. He used to be one of Cirra’s top commanders, before Equestria was founded. Kind of young, but some kind of military genius, and a badass with fire magic. They say he could actually melt the crystals on the outside of a crystal pony. Cyclone was young, and ambitious, and I really want to get the fuck off of this cramped, smelly ship before I hurl.” Midway through her story, Gale darted down the gangplank and up the dock toward Neighvgorod. I had to rush to catch up to her, but thankfully, she picked up her story. “I guess you wouldn’t really know much about this, so let me take a step back. You know what the Red Cloud War was?”

“Vaguely. The pegasi had a big war with… some kind of monsters on some other continent out east?”

Gale slapped a hoof to her head. “Griffons aren’t a monster race, Morty. At least, not how something like a cragodile is. They can talk, and they build cities and shit. Just, instead of ponies, they’re giant birds with giant cat asses.”

Though strictly true, the phrasing Gale employed made her description sound somewhat less than credible.

Oblivious to my doubt, she continued. “Cirra—the old pegasus empire—got in a huge war with the griffons. The old emperor died, and Commander Hurricane took over. And, well, the war was pretty much already fucked at that point; they’d lost like half their cities. So he just flew away with all the pegasi he could save. But what matters is that he was terrified of going back. Some ponies say it’s cause of this giant griffon who has powers like Celestia and Luna; others—”

“Wait, what?” I distinctly remember grabbing Gale on the shoulder, putting a hoof to her cheek, and turning her head to look me square in the eyes. “There are other gods?”

“How the fuck should I know? Do I look like an eighty-year-old pegasus? Does it even matter anyway? Hurricane thought they'd lose again if they went back to Dioda—that's the continent old Cirra was on—and that's all that you need to know for Cyclone to make sense. Hurricane thought that they'd all die, but Cyclone didn't. Cyclone wanted to take a bunch of unicorns with his pegasi and get back all of Cirra’s old cities. I guess he wanted to prove he was better than his dad or something. He was basically in line to take over when Hurricane died, and he was mostly willing to wait. But when the whole shit show with the windigoes went down, Hurricane flew off himself instead of delegating to a scout team or something. When he didn't come back for a few weeks, Cyclone assumed the old stallion was dead and made his move. That wouldn’t have been a problem, except he needed unicorns to help with his attack on Dioda. The unicorns weren’t really into the idea. Cyclone knocked off Queen Platinum's dad, King Lapis, and he probably would have won, if it weren't for Typhoon.”

“Hurricane’s daughter?”

She nodded. “Cyclone's little sister. Tempest’s mom. And a huge bitch too, though I sometimes hear she wasn't like that before she fought Cyclone. They went at it. Her ice, his fire. They fucked each other up. Typhoon almost lost an eye, and she's got this huge scar on her face. I've heard Cyclone can't fly anymore. Of course, Hurricane showed up right at the very end, just in time to watch both his foals bleeding out.”

I winced. “But Cyclone survived?”

“Yeah. And Hurricane spared him. Instead of execution, he's banished; he can't ever come to Equestria, or the legions will kill him. So he stayed here, ruling a bunch of traitors, and all the elderly ponies and stubborn dipshits who didn't want to move to Equestria. That's why they call him ‘Haysar’—it's making fun of him because he wanted to remake Cirra, and if he hadn’t fucked it up, that would have been his title..”

“Ouch.” I chuckled. “I guess he deserved it though.”

“We’ll see.” I must have shown some sort of blatantly obvious confusion or surprise at the comment; she grinned. “He rules from River Rock. One way or another, we both need to meet him.”

“How far is River Rock?”

Gale genuinely smiled as she delivered the following words: “The sailors said five hundred or so Cirran miles. First we’ve got to get over these mountains,” she indicated to the sheer cliffs surrounding the natural harbor. “Then it’s Sibearia until we hit the Volgallop. If we’re lucky, we catch a barge or something. If not, we walk on the shore; either way, that’s why they call it ‘River Rock’. It’s a long hike, so I figure we spend two, maybe three days here getting all the crap we need.”

“You’ve got this plan all figured out.”

Gale shrugged. “When I left Everfree, I was hoping to catch a boat straight to River Rock. But ‘plans don’t survive’ and all that shit. Let’s find somewhere to sleep. I can’t wait to lay down in a bed that isn’t moving.” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye and scowled. “Alone.”

“I didn’t say anything,” I protested in the direction of her back.

With that decision, we wandered into Neighvgorod proper, with its flagstones buried under an ankle’s worth of snow and its roofs sloped steep enough to make a canyon jealous. We passed a few ponies who watched us out of the corner of their eyes—actually, they mostly watched Angel, given that a flying rock is a lot more surprising than three normal ponies.

It didn’t take long for us to spot an inn, as indicated by a two-dimensional wooden bed hanging loosely on one chain from a pole near the door; something was scrawled under the image, but I couldn’t read it. We were halfway up the street when Graargh bit me squarely on the leg.

“Ow!” I yelped, quite justifiably. “What, Graargh?”

He gestured across the street, toward a squat little house with a massive front door and a lean-to workshop set against its side. At first, I didn’t recognize anything of note; it wasn’t until I followed Graargh’s little hoof that I realized what he was indicating to: a bear.

A full-grown, brown-furred bear, wearing a scarlet leather vest covered in pockets, alternately working a drawknife and a carpenter’s plane along a half-shaven log.

“Do you know him?” I asked.

Graargh shook his head. “Bears not all same. But he bear. I talk.”

“Is that quite wise?” Angel helpfully asked. “He might be dangerous.”

Graargh and I both turned toward my rock. “Angel…” I told him. “He’s a carpenter. Look. He’s got all the tools.”

“A carpenter bear,” Angel emphasized.

Graargh growled.

“Colts.” Gale rolled her eyes. “I’m going to get us two bedrooms. Morty, make sure your rock and Graargh don’t start a fight.” She started walking, and then glanced over her shoulder. “And I’m not coming to save you if you get in a fight with another bitchy ex-marefriend.”

“I’ll offer you the same support for the brawl you start at the inn, then.”

“Smartass.”

“‘You’re the one who gave me a donkey nickname.”

Gale slapped me across the face. “Goodnight, dipshit,” she told me, walking away.

Having charmed my way even deeper into Gale’s heart, and feeling the sting of her hoof pale against the omnipresent sting of Neighvgorod’s biting cold, I gestured to Graargh. “Alright. Let’s talk to your friend.”

As we approached, the grizzled grizzly offered only a glance out of the corner of his eye. “What’s your deal, colts? Never seen a bear before?”

Graargh roared.

The carpenter bear blinked twice. Then, he set down his tools and stood up.

I demonstrated an unusual amount of foresight when I covered my ears. To exactly no one’s surprise, when the adult grizzly roared, it was loud. Several echoes later, I removed my hooves from my ears and listened to snow tumble off some of the steeply sloped rooftops nearby. A sizeable clod slid under the collar of my jacket, making me shiver and jump.

“It’s been a very long time since I’ve gotten to do that,” the carpenter announced. Then he turned to look at me. “I’m guessing you’re not the kind to give a roar, colt. What do I call you?”

“Morty,” I told him. “And that’s Angel.”

“The rock?” The carpenter let his brow rise into the distinct shape of a tilde. For some reason I can’t quite put my hoof on, I disliked the expression.

“Technically speaking, sir, I’m what is called a golem. Master Coil created a soul for me, and bound it to this physical form.”

“Right… Well, like I said, I’m” and then, rather predictably, he roared directly into my face.

Just as loud.

He stopped after just a second, but it took three or four for my hearing to return.

I coughed into my hoof, just to make sure I could hear that noise in the ensuing silence. “Alright… Roar. Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Before I continue, I just want to make sure I’m speaking at an audible volume for an individual of your substantial magnitude.”

“You and your rock are throwing around big words. Are you some kind of prince?”

At that, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Wizard, traveling hero, necromancer…”

“Bad cook,” Graaargh helpfully added. “And good at fight with fish.”

The carpenter blinked twice. “I see. Then I assume this little one isn’t actually your colt? How did he learn to roar like that?”

“Not colt!” Graargh interrupted. “Am bear!”

“Ahem,” I cut in, before I could listen to that particular debate yet a third time. “Well, at this point, I guess there’s no point keeping that particular open secret. Graargh is a shapeshifter of some kind; for want of any better explanation, I have to assume it’s some kind of bear magic.” The carpenter absorbed these words without comment, and after a few seconds of total silence, I decided to continue. “I’ve seen him turn into a bear slightly smaller than you on at least two occasions. However, he really is a child. I found him… rather, he found me, not far from Crystal Union City. I brought him here because I’m headed to River Rock, and we were hoping to find his parents in Sibearia along the way.”

“Hmm…” The carpenter’s eyes moved to Graargh. “I’ve never heard of any magic like that. But I was never an herb-master, and I cannot read the skies. I only work with wood.”

“You’re fine, Roar. I’ll take care of Graargh.”

He broke into a smile, turning to Graargh. “You let him call you that?”

“Morty bad roar,” Graargh answered, rather pleasantly. He also stuck his tongue at me, which must have been really funny until my magic grabbed onto it.

“You’re unusually eloquent today, Graargh.”

Angel hovered down to my shoulder. “Well quipped, sir.”

Roar, as I was calling him, gestured with a forepaw, and I released Graargh’s tongue. “I’m sure you’re very capable, Mr. Wizard. But how much do you know about bears?”

“Well, I can’t even pronounce any of your names, so I’d say I’m off to a fantastic start.”

“The roar is more of a title; we bears don’t have permanent names the way ponies do. They change based on the achievements of our lives. For example, my roar says I am what you might call a ‘pony speaker’; it took me near to twenty years to force my tongue to speak your way.”

“So instead of ‘Roar’, I should call you ‘Whinny’?” I asked the red-vested bear. “Fair enough.”

“That wouldn’t be a very good idea,” Whinny pooh-poohed. “The bears who live out in the tundra—particularly the guardians, who you’ll know by their white fur—are distrustful of outsiders. There are many monsters in the wastes. If your little friend can actually shapeshift, I would be cautious as to where he exercises that ability.”

“Pff. I’m not afraid of some guard bears.”

“If you can beat them in battle, that’s impressive. But beating them in battle won’t make them accept him as one of their own. Keep that in mind.” With that, Whinny rolled his shoulders. “I should be back to work. Best of travels, ‘Morty’.”

“You too, Whinny.” I turned to Graargh, and a chill ran down my back. His green eyes, staring back at me, were worried. Perhaps even terrified.

I only had one chance, and I knew I couldn’t fail him.

XVII - Bear With Me

I hate snow.

It’s wet, it’s cold, and it gets everywhere.

I won’t make you suffer through a tortuous narration of the week we spent preparing for our expedition, nor the two-and-a half weeks we traveled through the endless tundra, fighting off giant feral diamond dogs (the locals call them “wargs”) and enduring the constant numbness of our hooves. Angel rambled on and on about nothing. Gale and I danced around stories of our pasts as we had for the preceding weeks. Graargh occasionally butted in, but I could tell he was worried; the little colt who would be a bear just carried himself that way.

Only a day’s travel from the site of whatever was left of White Gate—a forgotten unicorn city, and a truly ironic name, in retrospect—I asked Graargh a question which is worth recording.

“Graargh, tell me something. Whinny back in Neighvgorod said his roar meant something. Does your roar mean something too? Maybe something I can pronounce more easily?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s just a roar?” I pressed.

Graargh fiercely shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

“Wait, which is it? No, it isn’t just a roar? Or yes, it doesn’t mean anything?”

Gale groaned aloud. “You know, Morty, for some genius wizard, sometimes you’re a fucking idiot. He’s saying it means ‘nothing’—not ‘it doesn’t mean anything’.” The quotes in the preceding sentence correspond to directly to sarcastic hoof-gestures that Gale provided me. “And on that topic, Graargh, that’s a crappy name.”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “They say out in the desert south of Equestria, there was an earth pony named Nothing who was some sort of legend at bucking shoes.”

Gale rolled her eyes. “You and your stupid stories, Morty. Was he good or bad?”

“All I know is he was ugly. Squinted constantly, wore a really wide-brimmed hat, like a pointy wizard cap but without the point on top.”

“You’re making this shit up, aren’t you?”

“I’m serious.”

“Not matter!” Graargh shouted, rather abruptly. Gale and I stopped our bickering almost on instinct; Graargh had been so quiet for days that the outburst left us both worried.. “Graargh better name. Not care about story.”

“Hey, easy kiddo.” Gale raised a hoof. “You like ‘Graargh’, that’s gonna be fine by us. You’re not the only pony—”

“Bear!”

Gale sighed. “You’re not the only one in our dumb group with a fucking stupid name.”

“Gale, language? You’re not impressing any of us.”

“You’ve got a problem with how I fucking talk?” She took a swing at me, though it came too slow to avoid a elegant, if simple, burst of telekinesis. Three hooves aren’t very effective at maintaining balance in chest-high snowdrifts. However, as Gale quickly discovered, in the absence of a fourth leg, a face can very easily grant a pony stability.

“While I’ve got you off-balance, Gale, I’ve got a proposal for you. Graargh and I have nicknames; clearly, we should come up with one for you.”

Gale withdrew her face from the snow and bashed off a full beard and sideburns of snow. “Gale’s my middle name.”

“Oh?” I nudged Graargh in the ribs with the knee of my foreleg. “The plot thickens.”

Angel made a coughing noise. “That is a rather lewd comment, Master Coil. And I’m certain she can hear you.”

Gale laughed unreasonably hard at that, though I confess also I chuckled just a bit. “Well played, Angel. But in all seriousness, Gale, what’s your real name?”

All humor died when she glared. “No.” Then, with a huff and a twist, she stormed off into the perpetual snow of River Rock.

“As I warned you, Master Coil, your comment clearly offended her.”

Not three hours after that curious conversation, just as I was beginning to develop the rather painful icicles on my eyelashes that so perfectly complimented my eyes, I caught my first sight of bear society. In turn, bear society caught me completely off-guard.

Recoiling from the sudden lurch of the polar bear holding me down by my throat—a figure who simultaneously appeared beyond my expectations, and who most likely rendered the preceding sentence more literal than you initially assumed—I stared up into a rather even face defined by focused black eyes and the grim line of black lips against a white coat that faded against the similarly white sky. Near as I could tell, it erupted from a snowdrift beside me, though I’d lost most of my sense of direction in the process of being tackled.

I’ll give you three guesses what happened next.

When the roaring stopped echoing in my ears, I smiled. “A pleasure to meet you too. Coil the Immortal, Court Mage-in-Exile of—”

The second roar was slightly more surprising, but no less deafening.

“Graargh, you can speak up any time now.”

A third roar followed in the proud precedent of its forebears. The fourth, issuing from Graargh, was at least farther away from my face.

The bear leaning on me looked up, growled (more quietly, thank Celestia), and released me.

Sitting up painted me a rather frightening story. Gale was holding Procellarum aloft in her magic; Angel hovered beside her. Graargh, though, was the greatest threat. I could see the fur on the back of his neck rising up, spiked almost unnaturally. His eyes were glowing green, not metaphorically. Tension built in his shoulders.

Graargh growled. The polar bear roared. Graargh roared back. This riveting discourse continued for some time, redefining the definition of poetry and wielding brilliant metaphor in a new depth of discussion on the equine condition.

In all seriousness, I tuned it out after the third growl. My focus was on what appeared to be the threat of impending battle—and, perhaps more importantly, my own philosophical question.

Would I be right to kill the bear?

Understand, whether you’re a unicorn mage, a pegasus wielding a sharpened blade, or even an earth pony carrying the strength to break bones and skulls with ease, someday every would-be hero holds in their hooves a frightening power: control over some other creature’s life. Wintershimmer offered it to me when I wasn’t ready, and I had the pride to think I deserved that power. But this bear…

I didn’t want to hurt him, of course. I wasn’t bloodthirsty; I didn’t assume he was out to get me from some savage desire or impulse. My concern came from a more basic fear: I was still well within the reach of his claws, and I knew that if he swung for me, I wouldn’t be able to finish a spell before his paws met my throat, or my skull, or most painfully, my horn.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear; that’s a form of clinical insanity. Courage is not letting that fear control you.

It takes a lot of courage to be a hero.

Now that I’ve satisfied a moment’s quota of ‘heroic advice’, let’s get back to the part you most likely care about: my friends and I in what could loosely be called a debate (the same way I could loosely be called an assassin for killing Wintershimmer—and apparently, judging by my past hanging, that was close enough for government work).

The polar bear standing beside me growled at Graargh, only to stop when the little colt roared and stomped his right forehoof. Sighing with enough shoulder motion that I briefly suspected the bear was performing a spontaneous pushup, he turned his back to us.

“Follow,” Graargh told us.

I was content to follow his instructions; to no great surprise of my own, however, Gale proved less trusting. “Uh… okay, where are we going?”

“Bears,” Graargh replied.

“That is not the answer to every damn question in the Equiish language!”

“Just all the ones you ask him,” I told her, trudging through the snow and trying to ignore the chill in my hooves. “Put up with it for now.”

“Yeah? And what if they try to kill us? That bear jumped you, and you didn’t see shit!”

I rolled my eyes. “Gale, stop.”

“Why?” She protested, jabbing a hoof into my chest. “You’re the one saying we should get surrounded by a ton of bears—”

“Because I don’t want to kill them,” I told her, maybe too bluntly. She stared at me, almost disbelieving. “I would like us to be friends with the bears. That means if one of them speaks Equiish, I’m hoping they don’t think you’re being incredibly rude.”

Gale clearly wasn’t happy, but she nodded in acquiescence nevertheless. To my mild relief, none of them responded to my obvious heavy-hoofed prompt.

The walk to the bear village took no more than half an hour. It sat nestled in a river valley—exactly what we’d been looking for anyway—where tall valley walls supplemented by stacked ice shielded it from the worst of the wind and the snow. The bears lived in a strange mish-mash of homes, running the gamut from caves in cliff walls all the way to carefully assembled oversized pony-style cottages on the banks of the river. A massive lodge of wooden logs dominated the otherwise relatively small shelters and houses, its painted spruce walls and steep roof demanding all attention in the area.

“I must say, after all this cold, this does look rather cozy. Don’t you agree, Master Coil?”

“You can’t feel cold, Angel. Do you even know what ‘cozy’ means?”

My golem spun in place. “I… was endeavoring to raise spirits.”

I spared a long curious glance in Angel’s direction. “You’ve been unusually empathetic recently, Angel.”

“Is that a problem, Master Coil?”

“No, I just… I didn’t think you had it in you.” Though I neglected to mention it aloud, I mentally added literally. Something was changing in Angel during our travels. He had clearly gotten smarter since leaving the Union. I had half a mind to interrogate the golem on that uncharacteristically observant... observation, but my mind was more focused on the city’s denizens: dozens upon dozens of bears, both brown and white, pulling fish out of the river with their claws or working on the streets. Several cubs came up to us, gawking at the ‘misshapen visitors’ (or so I inferred, when one of the cubs attempted to emulate my gait, mocking my proportionally longer legs by standing on the tips of his claws). They only backed away when our guide roared at them.

We were finally deposited beside a wide iron ‘pan’ filled with dead coals and charcoal, resting in front of the face of the lodge I mentioned earlier. We were only there for thirty seconds at most before the lodge’s doors opened, but a wait can seem far longer in the moment.

The bear that emerged was a sort of rusty gray color, clearly old from occupation stress instead of age, if the sheer physicality of her body was anything to judge by. From the doors of the lodge, she took a single leap to land at the far side of the fire pan. Her claw lashed out in a motion I could barely follow; the sparks she left behind gave us precious heat, but they also cast her in a terrifying light.

“Why you have come here?” She asked in surprisingly comprehensible Equiish.

Graargh stood up. “Is home,” he said. “I—” and then he roared out ‘Graargh’, just as he always did. “Cub of,” and then two more roars.

The she-bear staring at us turned to the gathering crowd surrounding us for just a moment, and then turned back toward Graargh. “You are not bear.”

“Am bear!” Graargh shouted. “Am!”

“Stupid pony…” grumbled the adult bear. She turned to me. “Who he? Why he say that he is bear?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Gale beat me to the punch. “He is a bear! Graargh, show them!”

“Gale, wait—!” My words were too slow. Green flames consumed Graargh.

The bears screamed. Several of the cubs who had followed us scattered backward.

In a moment, Graargh was a cub. At first, he wore a smile. That faded quickly, however, with the realization of how the other bears were looking at him.

Horror. Hatred. Confusion. The she-bear strode toward us. “He is skinwalker!”

“What?” Gale shouted. “Look, he’s a bear now! Morty, what’s a skinwalker?”

“Beats me… Some kind of lycanthropy?” I racked my brain for a moment, but none of Wintershimmer’s lessons came to mind. Shapeshifting of Graargh’s magnitude was a nearly impossible magical feat for even an archmage; Star Swirl the Bearded’s Omniomorphism was the only magic I could think of that would equal such power, and there was no way a colt could do that…

My thoughts left such questions when I saw the she-bear approaching. Without really thinking, I cast up a dome-shaped shield. My icy blue magic warded the three of us from the bears.

“You protect him?” the she-bear shouted. “You skinwalkers too?”

“Master Coil, perhaps now is the time to teleport away? Abandon this course?” Angel proposed.

I nodded. “That seems like the best move to make sure nopony gets killed here—”

“No!” Gale shouted. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Morty. This is where Graargh wants to be!”

A bear outside the circle clawed at my shield; I felt my horn spark painfully as my limited mana dwindled away to deflect the force of the blow. “Well, that’s all well and good, but I’d say it’s pretty obvious that here doesn’t exactly like our little friend back. I tried to warn you not to have him transform in front of them.”

“Well, maybe next time, give me five fucking seconds of warning or something, instead of keeping all your plans to yourself so you can feel ‘cool’!”

“I don’t—”

Graargh roared. “Both stop! Not fight!” I turned toward the little cub to find him fighting back tears. “Bears not want me. Morty right. We leave.”

Another strike from a bear, another painful draw of my magic. I took a deep breath. “This is going to be a little disorienting…”

“Hell no!” Gale shouted, stomping her hoof. “Graargh, we’re not giving up on your family just because these bears are making a stupid assumption. Morty, let me out of the stupid bubble. I’m going to fix this.”

I shook my head. “Gale, I’m not letting you go out there—”

Procellarum thrust into my shield; the sheer agony behind the power of the magic sword was more than enough to crack my defense. I felt it in my mind like a branding iron, and my vision flashed white in the pain. Gale slipped out somehow through the narrow crack; I couldn’t see it with the brilliant white dominating my eyesight.

“Gale!” Graargh shouted, rushing over to the side of the bubble, where my magic quickly repaired the hole. When my vision returned in earnest, I saw him pawing at the icy blue wall. On the opposite side stood Gale, thoroughly surrounded by bears easily three times her size.

“You think you fight us, she-pony?” the leader of the bears asked her.

Gale shook her head, and then sheathed Procellarum. “What are you doing?” I shouted at her. “Gale, you’re going to get killed!”

She ignored me, letting her attention sweep across the bears. “I want to talk. Nopony— er, no one has to get hurt today.”

“You bring monster!” the she-bear growled back. “It hurt us!”

Gale straightened her posture in a way I’d never seen before; she brought her hooves together, aligned her shoulders, and stood stall, upright and formal. When she spoke, it was with a different accent than her usual rough language. Each syllable passed her tongue sharp and refined. “I admit that my friend isn’t a bear, just as he isn’t a pony. But does his race make him a monster?”

The bear seemed to freeze, visibly confused. She even rotated her head, like a puppy mystified with the principle of transparency after having run face-first into a freshly cleaned window. “What you mean?”

“I mean that even if Graargh is a ‘skinwalker’, that doesn’t make him evil. I’ve traveled with that child, whatever his shape, for nearly two moons now. And in that time, he has been nothing but well behaved and helpful; even caring, when the situation called for it.” Gale gestured widely with one nearly stiff foreleg; a graceful motion that managed to direct the eyes of all the bears gathered toward Graargh, desperately clawing at my shield to stand by her side. “Even now, he’s worried about me; even at risk to himself.”

A slight wind blew through Gale’s short-cropped hair, and she settled firm focus on the bear leader once more. “Is that not proof enough? And if not, what? What would it take for you to see past the ‘skin’ of this child; to let him prove that he only wants to be accepted?” She drew in a slow breath, which I quickly recognized as more important for its pause than her lungs. “If you can’t see that, you’re letting yourself be deceived by an illusion of skin. And I can’t allow Graargh to suffer for it.”

The bears were stunned silent. Tartarus, I was stunned silent, albeit for a slightly different reason. Had you told me there really was some evil ‘skinwalker’ in our midst, in that moment, I would likely have suspected Gale over Graargh. All semblance of the slouching, slinky, dirty-tongued noble-in-exile I knew had vanished. In her place was a mare who belonged in a throne room, leading and guiding and offering her kind words to help those around her.

Sure, her logic wasn’t perfect, but that wasn’t her weapon. If it were, she would have listened to me and fled. Her deadly blade wasn’t the magic sword at her side either; it was unbridled charisma, in a way I could never match. For all my good looks, compelling demeanor, and undeniable charm, there was some connection she built with the bears present that exceeded any of my magic.

I remind you again, friendship is magic. That it is so much harder to wield than arcana only made her efforts more powerful.

The bear leader spoke first, understandably given her position. “We not hurt. We listen. But watch closely. He not change shape.” She gestured forebodingly to Graargh. “Not hide face.”

Gale—or the strangely eloquent statesmare she had become—offered a curt nod in reply. “Morty, let down the shield.”

“Are you sure we can trust them—”

She turned her neck fully into her right shoulder, glaring back at me. Though she maintained her delicate pronunciation, it was clear the Gale I knew was back from her word choice. “Does it look like I need some jackass questioning me right now?”

I released the shield.

Nothing terrible happened.

Gale and I were escorted to a private room in the lodge, dominated by two sizeable hearths and a set of treated furs on the ground to serve as some semblance of a bed; though the idea of some other creature’s skin was more than slightly uncomfortable, Gale insisted I get over myself, and I reluctantly laid down.

They were cozy.

The she-bear, who I had decided to call Smokey after passing no fewer than four other fireplaces in the mostly wooden lodge, informed us in far fewer words (mostly for want of prepositions) that she needed to speak with Graargh and her elders privately, and that on her honor as a bear, no harm would be done to him so long as he did not break his promise not to shapeshift further. I was against the idea, but Graargh elected to go, and that was the end of the discussion. That left Gale, myself, and Angel alone.

I waited about one second after the door was closed to address Gale alone.

“What in Tartarus was that? Where’d you learn to talk that way?”

Gale rolled her eyes. “Morty, you’re really fucking stupid sometimes, you know? I do not want to talk about it. Can’t we just accept that we got Graargh past his whole trial thing, and focus on the Windigo?”

I laid back. “Alright. That sounds good. So we head down to River Rock and talk to Cyclone; is he gonna know where to find the Windigo?”

“I’m hoping so.” Gale shrugged. “But mostly, I’m hoping he’ll join us.”

“Hold on. Cyclone the Traitor? Or Betrayer, or whatever the title was. That’s who you want to join us?” I coughed heavily into my hoof. “You don’t get an epithet like that for being the kind of pony other ponies want around.”

Gale shrugged. “Maybe not. But he’s the best fire-using pegasus in the world. They say he can just stand in the middle of a dragon’s breath and not get burnt.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, that’s made up.”

“How would you know? You hadn’t even heard of Cyclone before we got to Neighvgorod.”

“No, but I know how dragons work. When a dragon breathes fire, it’s not just fire empatha like a pegasus can use. The empatha is mixed with arcana—our unicorn magic. That’s why their breath can teleport things. And it’s also why a pegasus can’t survive it.”

“Huh.” Gale shrugged. “Okay. Doesn’t really matter, though, does it? He’s still a great fire empath. I’ll convince him to join us, we take him and kill the Windigo, and we’re done.”

“Oh… about that. Timing, I mean.” I breathed in slowly. “There’s something I need to take care of in River Rock first. Alone.”

Gale shrugged. “Sure, whatever. As long as you're in, Morty, I don’t care if I have to wait a little. Do what you’ve gotta do.”

As I laid down to sleep, though, a question sat in my mind like an obese noble in the middle seat of a three-seat wagon: firmly rooted and spilling over into all other concerns.

Did I have to?

XVIII - Family Matters

“Morty! Morty, wake!” growled a deep voice. Due to the limits of ink, quill, and parchment, you probably suspect I was implying that Graargh woke me up the next morning, when in fact, the voice was far deeper than Graargh’s. I opened an eye, observed the bear leader ‘Smokey’ no more than three inches from the tip of my muzzle, and emitted an entirely justified and masculine expression of shock.

“Why scream?” she asked a mere two seconds later, when I was standing on my hooves and halfway to the door.

“You… startled me,” I explained. “Good morning. I think. Is it morning?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Good morning. How can I be of service?”

The bear sat up onto her haunches. “Gale, wake? Umm… rock, wake?”

“I am most certainly awake,” Angel pronounced. “I do not sleep.”

Gale groaned. “Uuugh. Yes, I’m awake. Morty’s scream could have woken the fucking dead.”

“Well, almost,” I noted. “It would have needed to be about an octave higher, and I would have needed to attune it to at least a lesser resonant field, but you’ve got a good ear to even come that close.” At her worried expression, I offered a quick bow. “Necromancer.”

“Right.” Gale rose to her hooves. “Well, fuck it, I’m awake now. So, Miss bear, what’s such a big deal that we need to get up at the asscrack of dawn?”

“Your friend. It is… difficult.”

Pregnant silence settled in the room as we waited for further explanation. When none came, I sighed. “Yes…” I prompted, making a sort of pulling motion in the air with my hoof.

Smokey sighed and turned to look straight at me. “His parents skinwalkers. Evil. They kill three bears. We… we drive away.” For just a moment, she hesitated. “Probably, we kill.”

I took a few seconds to parse this before swallowing heavily. “What does Graargh know?”

“Not here,” she answered. “Maybe gone.”

“How did you explain it to him?” Gale asked, and I noted a hint of her unusually formal accent from the previous day’s discourse. “That is very important.”

“Our throat,” she replied. “Different words. And much time. We tell him we knew names he say. Tell him not here. Were here, but gone.”

Gale nodded. I was less forgiving. “It took you all evening and this morning to convey that to him?”

Smokey fervently shook her head. “No. No! We… we worry. Check health. Check body for eggs.”

“Eggs?” At that, I couldn’t help but laugh. “He’s a male... well, whatever he is. He’s a colt, and he turns into a male bear… at least, I think.” Gale snorted. “I’ve never actually checked.”

“Is male body,” Smoke told me. “But skinwalkers not care. They change. We know. We also check Graargh healthy. But well fed. Even fat. You parent well.”

At that I blinked. “Um… Really? I mean, we haven’t mistreated him, but we haven’t exactly been going out to restaurants every day. He must really like hardtack and stew.”

“Morty, there isn’t a creature alive that likes your stew.”

“I happen to like my stew.”

“Well, as you fucking love to say, necromancer.” She added air-quotes with her forehooves. “So maybe I’m still right. Now, Miss bear, why are you telling us this? What are we going to do?”

“Wants leave,” she told us. “Wants family.”

“Graargh still wants to find his parents?” I shrugged. “With what you told him, that sounds about right.”

“No,” we were informed. “Wants you. Family.”

Gale and looked at each other slowly. Our gazes stayed together, faces slack but eyes trembling with worry.

“He… he’s your kid, Morty.”

“My kid? I seem to remember you saying very explicitly that I wasn’t old enough to have ‘squirted him out’.”

“As if I’m older? I’m not some inter-species slut, Morty! And at least you have the freedom to give him time and whatever. Once we’re done with the Windigo, I have to go back to Everfree. Nopony’s going to judge you if you show up wherever you’re headed with a colt. And I’m not exactly trusting that Tempest or Typhoon or whoever wouldn’t just cut his head off the first time they saw him turn into something else!”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

She shrugged. “You’re the one saying you’re the best wizard all the time! Why not figure out what he actually is?”

“He can be bear.” Smokey told us. “Want you, but can keep. If he stay bear, he stay here. We take care. Trust.”

I blinked. “That’s… why you didn’t bring him down?”

She nodded. “You brave. Caring. But young. Not need burden. Pony say ‘takes village’. We village. You alone.”

Everything was quiet in that little room of the lodge while I thought. It must have been a minute before I spoke up. “Not really. I’ve got Angel. For the moment, I’ve got Gale. And when I get where I’m going, I might even have Star Swirl. If he does want to find his parents, I’m best equipped to help him. And if he doesn’t… if he considers us family, I’ll carry that burden.”

Being a hero isn’t always about traveling to the far corners of the world. It is always about doing the right thing. Even if I didn’t know it at the time. I felt like I’d signed one letter of my own death warrant that day—at least until Smokey returned with Graargh, and the little cub outright tackled me with a hug.

The bears gave us a raft, and more edible supplies to supplement our hardtack and root vegetables. They easily lasted our trip down the Volgallop, which we spent talking about bear culture and utterly failing to teach Gale a bit of magic. I won’t pretend she was a fantastic student, any more than I was a cleverly disguised brilliant statespony. Everypony has their talents, after all.

What we guessed was two days out of River Rock, visibility on the Volgallop was bad enough that I could barely see either bank. Gale, Graargh, and I were all huddled together in the center of the little craft, wrapped in a combined bundle of blankets and jackets and whatever other fabric we could pull together. It was perhaps the first time that I felt incredibly grateful to have our little ‘skinwalker’ doing his best to curl up into my side: his coarse bear fur and wide body gave excellent warmth.

I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about; conversations from those long days on the river seem to blur together in my memory. What I do remember is how abruptly we dropped into silence when Angel spoke.

“Sir, I believe somepony is coming.”

Two seconds—literally two seconds—after that delightful warning, four steel-shod hooves planted down on the corner of our raft, causing the vessel to lurch violently. Our fabric huddle quickly became a shared straightjacket as Gale lost her balance and failed to break free of the fabrics’ embrace. Her tumble left all three of us laying on the rough planks of the bear-built raft, looking up at formidable armor and a lazy stance.

“D-do you h-h-have any idea h-how long I-I’ve had to fly around i-in t-this blizzard, G-Gale?” Tempest was much less terrifying when his formerly solid voice was broken up by constant shivering.

Once Gale got loose of the blanket net and up to her hooves, she did something I wouldn’t have expected: she leapt to her feet and threw a heavy winter coat over the soldier’s shoulders. “Holy fuck, Tempest! What are you doing out here?”

“L-looking for y-you!”

“Fish pony!” Graargh shouted exuberantly. “Morty, you need fish?”

I snorted back a laugh. “No, Graargh. He’s not going to hurt us. Not alone, half-frozen.” I adjusted my collar as I turned to look Tempest squarely in the eyes. “Congratulations, you found Gale. However, you’re not exactly about to take her back to your grandfather.” I stopped mid thought. “He’s not standing right behind me or something, is he?”

“You’re being a dipshit, Morty,” Gale informed me gently. “Now get over yourself, shut up, and help me warm up Tempest.” Gale huddled under the frost-covered pegasus’ blanket, pressing their sides together.

“I’ll just sit over here if it’s all the same to you.”

Tempest managed to roll his eyes despite the shivering of his body. “It’s no weirder than— grrrngh!” That last strange noise came from Gale unsubtly delivering a hoof squarely to the scout’s gut… or maybe lower; under the blanket I couldn’t actually see. Regardless, Tempest collapsed fully onto his belly on the raft and groaned quietly for a few solid seconds. Gale reclined beside him.

“Well fuck,” she muttered, mostly to herself. After rubbing a hoof to her face for a few seconds, she looked up at me. “Morty, when we get to River Rock, there are probably going to be ponies waiting for us. Commander Hurricane might be with them. Please, please don’t do anything fucking stupid. Okay?”

“Um… alright.”

“No teleporting away. No trying to kill them.”

“No b-b-blasting holes in-n inn walls,” Tempest added, still shivering.

“Yeah. In fact, just try not to cast any magic at all. That would be great.”

I gave Gale a long stare, waiting for and fully expecting some sign that she didn’t want to discuss the matter further in front of Tempest. I was certain she’d want me to provide some way to escape the stallion’s influence. But it never came. Maybe she was worried he’d notice, even if he wasn’t looking back at her at the moment. Regardless, I obviously wasn’t getting any answers while Tempest was sitting on the raft.

I laid down opposite the soldier, reached over to Graargh, and draped him across my back somewhat akin to a blanket. The tiny bear seemed to enjoy the position, so I then tossed a blanket over both of us, and proceeded to once more let the dips and twists of the Volgallop rock me as our journey went along.

Unfortunately, even without his speaking a word, Tempest’s presence made it very difficult for me to relax. He just sat there next to Gale, shivering and staring me down. I don’t know if my patience even lasted two minutes before I spoke up.

“So, uh, Tempest... no hard feelings?”

His stare deepened into a glare.

“I mean… I did stop the whole war problem for you, right? Just like we talked about?”

His glare deepened to rival Grievous Gorge.

“And now you’ve actually caught up with us and nopony is trying to pick a fight, so this has got to be better than before.”

Twenty Thousand Leagues Beneath Tempest’s Brow, by Mules Verne, became an Equestrian bestseller.

When Tempest finally spoke up, it was to say this: “Morty… the only reason I don’t hate you is that it would probably take even more effort than I’ve already wasted on your bullshit. It just isn’t worth it.”

“That’s wise.” Tempest nodded, before I continued. “If you’re going to invest in a vendetta, it needs to be a substantial priority. If you can only bring yourself to hate somepony on evenings and weekends, it’s easier to just forget about them.”

Tempest stared at me for a few long seconds. “Do you honestly think that way?” he finally asked.

Gale snorted in humor, producing a thick cloud of steam. “He’s crazy, Tempest, but he is pretty fun. You’ll get used to it.”

“Mobius, I hope I don’t.”

I sat back on my flanks. “I’m assuming ‘Mobius’ is a pegasus deity?”

Tempest offered me a tip of his head. “Grandpa’s patron. God of Mercy.”

Gale rolled her eyes. “You still swear by those old gods, Tempest? Even when Celestia and Luna are flesh-and-blood ponies you’ve actually met? Hell, Hurricane himself is more of a god than Mobius or Garuda or whoever.”

Tempest’s wings slid out from under his blanket and covered his face and ears. “Gale, nopony cares about your stupid hero worship.”

“It’s not stupid when he literally saved the world like three fucking times! But no, forgive me for preferring ponies who actually do things. I’m sure made up gods are great for ponies who waste their lives chasing pussy or asking the best pony alive if he wants to go out fucking fishing!”

Tempest buried his face further. Making a show of huffing, Gale stepped away from Tempest and planted down beside me—though facing the opposite direction I was, so as to ensure she wasn’t looking at the frigid scout.

I certainly wasn’t complaining about having her beside me. I could hardly call it silence, but the whistling of the wind was a pleasant break from Gale’s shouting. After a few minutes, Tempest pulled his wings back under his blanket.

“Help me understand something, Tempest. You never really answered my question before. Why come out looking for Gale by yourself instead of with your little team?”

“My orders aren’t to try and bring you back this time,” he explained wielding a scowl that I would describe as akin to a mild sunburn. “Apparently, Mom and Grandpa—sorry, for you that’s the Commander and the Commander Emeritus—decided it wasn’t worth it to keep spending ponies chasing ‘those dumb kids’ halfway across the world. So instead, my job is just to make sure you don’t do something to get yourselves killed on the way to River Rock.”

“...and then they’re just going to let us go?” I glanced over toward Gale, who still stubbornly stared away. “I mean, I know I happen to come with enough political baggage that you’d rather I did just go, but her?”

Tempest shrugged. “Once you get to River Rock, it’s not my problem anymore.”

River Rock was dead, and it would take a necromancer better than me to revive it.

Exactly zero of those have or ever will exist.

Ponies moved inside the ancient capital’s walls, and more than a few flew above them, but the city simply didn’t seem alive. Perhaps one in two-dozen windows had even the faintest glimmer of light within. Gates on both the river and land-based roads had frozen solid or rusted open. Huge gouges from siege engines or magic taken out of some of the larger structures had gone unrepaired long enough to build up natural ‘patches’ from the volume of snow filling the city.

In absolute silence, a group of pegasi approached our craft as the river Volgallop—now thick with ice—approached the city. Apart from a nod shared with Tempest, their only action was to guide our raft ashore near one of the city’s gates. There, another group of soldiers were waiting. Instead of armor, all wore heavy fur coats. I only recognized them as soldiers for their plumed helmets and curved swords.

“Welcome to River Rock.”

The soldiers helped us up onto the banks of the former half of River Rock’s namesake, and we set our hooves onto the latter half of the same with no small comfort. From there, the pegasi escorted us on foot up to the castle: Burning Hearth, a towering spire of gray stones decorated in frost and pockmarks. I spent most of the walk wondering what the escort was for; we saw not a single other soul in the streets, equine or otherwise. The city was deserted, as cold and as quiet as the grave… well, probably moreso, since Wintershimmer was more-or-less ‘freshly’ dead.

Burning Hearth was completely unlike the Crystal Spire. Its hallways were filled with ill-maintained suits of armor, faded tapestries, and the occasional mark of a harsh burn cut through the very stones in the walls. The pegasi paid no attention to the marks of war, nor did they comment on the complete lack of servants. We only passed guards garbed identically to our escort, who gave us cautious glances as we passed their checkpoints.

Our route ended at a pair of solid steel doors, easily twice the height of a stallion standing even on his hind hooves, and each nearly as wide. They seemed like a rather poor defense against intruders, however, as an enormous hole had been melted clean through their center; wide enough that Gale and I entered the room beyond shoulder to shoulder, and neither of us brushed our coats (or jackets) against the doors themselves.

The throne room of Burning Hearth, with its stone pillars and raised galleries, was strangely devoid of color. The only tone that survived in the grayscale world was red: the red of the long carpet leading from the doors up to a dais at the far side, the red of the pony resting in it, and the red of what one might ostensibly call a ‘sword’, balanced with its tip on the ground and its hilt held up by his right forehoof.

Cyclone the Betrayer was a giant. Seriously, huge. Sitting upright on his flanks and his hind legs, he was still probably taller than Smokey, who I will remind those of you suffering with the memory span of a goldfish, was an adult polar bear. His coat was a vibrant red that ever-so-slightly evoked an image of blood, and his black mane was beginning to gray from stress. His cheeks and eyes were sunken, both likely from hunger, although his legs and torso still seemed lean and fit despite the relative lack of food apparent in the city. I took particular note of a scar running over his left eye, because it looked like his face was perforated. Not ‘perforated’ as a euphemism for having been stabbed, but in the same sense that one might perforate a scroll or fabric to let it tear easily along a clean line.

Or, to be more blunt, Cyclone’s face looked like a complicated Equestrian government form, although I couldn’t have made such an observation at that time.

In addition to his facial scar, his left wing hung limp, unfolded from his side and draped over his hind leg and flank almost like a blanket. A scar near the shoulder made it clear that the limp appendage wasn’t simply left slack for comfort.

He leaned forward slightly in his seat—the heavily burnt and blackened remains of what had previously been the throne of the Diamond Kingdoms for hundreds of years—and watched us with his tired, sunken eyes. Hidden by a rather dense stub of black beard, I couldn’t make out his expression. All I knew is that suddenly I could feel a cold sweat on the back of my neck.

“Gale,” he began, his deep voice reverberating in the empty stone room. “I’ve been expecting you.”

I leaned over to her. “That is how you know somepony is leading an evil cult.”

XIX - Hall of the Traitor King

“Tempest,” the Betrayer continued, leaning forward in his broken throne. “...you look so much like your mother. I’m glad.” I should note, given how deep and almost growling his voice was, that the preceding comment was not sarcastic in any way. Cyclone seemed genuinely happy.

“Uncle.”

Tempest did not seem happy.

Cyclone ignored the cold reception, swiveling his sunk-eyed gaze toward me. “...and you must be Morty.” For what was already a sarcastic nickname, I was stunned by the sheer amount of disdain that fit into Cyclone’s voice. “I’ll be watching you closely; do not think my city endures the same ambitions as the barbarians do.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added “Welcome to River Rock.”

And then something I could never have predicted happened.

Gale broke into a gallop, charging across the room. I was terrified she was going to outright attack him, although my evil cult comment was intended as a joke. But instead, she lunged at him with her forelegs spread wide…

… and hugged him.

“Gale…” Cyclone growled, wrapping his good wing over her back. “It is good to finally meet you.”

“You too, Cyclone.”

He allowed her to hug him for a few spare moments, before releasing her with his wing. She didn’t seem to want to let go, and he was forced to pull his neck forward. To my immense surprise, his neck and shoulders carried her whole body weight, lifting even her hind hooves off the ground as adjusted his posture.

Think about that: this is a pony who could do a pull up with his neck—or at least, I assumed he could do his own weight, given the lack of apparent effort it took him to lift Gale. I found myself swallowing nervously. Whatever he’d heard about me, he didn’t seem to like me very much.

As Gale hung there for a moment, clearly amused by her new position, Tempest quietly excused himself from the room. None of the guards made any move to stop him.

Gale finally dropped to her hooves just as the throne room’s warped metal doors swung shut. Though she’d cleared the length of the chamber, the near-absolute quiet made it quite easy to make out her not-particularly-restrained voice. “How’d you know we were coming?”

“Tempest didn’t tell you?” He took a moment to glance over Gale’s shoulder, only to notice his nephew’s absence. Cyclone shrugged. “Father came here.”

To this day, I still don’t know if my ears were deceiving me, but the way Cyclone said the word ‘father’ was not cold or hateful, nor even sad or distant as I might have expected. Instead, the word was empty of any emotion at all.

“He stopped to pay his repsects…” There was a wistful pause there. “Then he continued, escorting Clover to the draconic border. He has a chariot with him, so you can make the trip back to Everfree safely.”

“Yeah… fuck that.” Cyclone’s brow rose to a sharp point at Gale’s casual outburst. “Morty and I are going to go slay the Windigo and end winter. We need to know where it is.”

Cyclone glared my direction. “Did you put her up to this idiocy, wizard?”

Almost on instinct, I donned the best smile I could manage—which, as Gale occasionally informs me, actually is rather disarming and debonair—and slowly shook my head in the giant pegasus’ direction. “That was her plan before I even met her. My goal here is to find Clover.”

“And to escape your death sentence with the barbarians…” He scowled. “That is, the ‘Crystal Union’.”

“Ah. So my reputation precedes me.” I swallowed heavily as the onset of fear made my throat feel like it was closing up. “Yes, I admit, not being decapitated or hung is amongst the nicer perks of my journey. I’m glad to offer my services to your court…” I glanced around the empty room, and then coughed into my hoof. “…to you, for the duration of my stay.”

“Hhmph.” The snort from Cyclone’s nostrils made visible steam in the chilly (though far from outright frozen) throne room. “I may just take you up on that offer, ‘Morty’. But that is a discussion for some other time.” His attention returned to my sole unicorn companion.

“Gale, I’m glad to finally meet you, but I have to ask: what possessed you to set about trying to kill the Windigo?”

Do you know how a dog looks at its master when it has successfully accomplished that rare and brilliant canine maneuver known to the old masters of their breeds as a ‘fetch’? That look of unbridled, unsubtle expectation of praise, head raised up to look into the master’s eyes, offering some stick or ball as though it were one of the Lost Tomes of Tourmaline?

Gale looked up at Cyclone that way before she answered her question.

“I’m tired of sitting around in Everfree. Killing that Windigo would fix the whole Compact Lands, way more than some bullshit parliament meeting or whatever.”

Cyclone blinked. Then he blinked again. His body seemed to lock up, his mind refreshing itself like a pony recovering from being bashed in the face by a bear—yes, personal experience, thank you for asking—before finally locating his tongue. “Your goal is to prove that executive military action makes better leadership than Equestria’s triumvirate system? And you intend to prove this by killing the last windigo?”

Gale nodded, obviously oblivious to the implications of what she had just said. I could nearly visualize her lowering her muzzle to push the metaphorical stick and/or ball forward, drawing attention to the sheer glory and magnificence of the offered proposal.

“You are being an idiot.”

Gale’s face fell like a hound smacked on the muzzle with a scroll.

Now looking like a disappointed, though still perfectly beautiful young unicorn mare, Gale offered a defiant voice. “I’m not afraid of getting hurt.”

Cyclone snorted, gesturing to his crippled wing. “Do you honestly think I haven’t tried to finish what Father started? I’ve been out hunting the spirit twice. With the death of its two siblings, it has grown to fear ponies. Now it hides in the blizzard it has created, somewhere in the mountains. I have most of a legion of skilled warriors for such a battle, but even with Clover’s magic, we couldn’t find the monster.”

At that little explanation, I couldn’t help but cut in. “Clover helped you hunt the windigo? It’s her fault the thing is still here in the first place. Why would she want to kill it now?”

A flash of anger crossed Cyclone’s face for just a moment. He spoke slowly. “From experience, I think she wanted to correct her mistake.”

“Mistake,” I countered. Hoof quotes: check. Sarcasm-laden voice: check. Slow eye-roll: check.

Remotest amount of self-awareness in regards to the pony I was speaking to, and how my commentary might reflect on him: Not-so-check.

Large flames from Cyclone’s good wing: check.

“Whoa!” Gale had to jump back from the surge of flame. I did the same, stumbling backward despite being well outside the range of being burnt.

Cyclone just stood there, on fire; apart from the wrinkles in his flesh at the base of his muzzle, and hint of his bared teeth visible through his beard, he seemed quite calm for a pony who was literally on fire.

It took me a few seconds of relative calm (relative calm here being defined as ‘he made no move to try and light me on fire) to remember that his specialization in pegasus magic was fire, and that pegasi tended not to kill themselves with their own favored element.

Thus, he was intending to intimidate me. Wintershimmer had taught me exactly what to do; the only trick was applying it to the exact situation.

I made a deliberate show of shivering, rubbing one forehoof along the length of the other leg. Then I walked forward to Cyclone, approaching as close as I could comfortably get. There, I sat down on my haunches, extended my forehooves, and warmed myself, as one might about a campfire.

This particular campfire was not amused. Cyclone opened his mouth, and not at all unlike a dragon, exhaled a single fireball in my direction. Quite unlike what unicorns call a “fireball”, this literal orb of flame struck me on the tip of my horn before I really had a chance to react. It burnt, certainly, but the flames dissipated before any real damage was done. Its only effect was to see me cover my face with my forelegs—a defense completely unhelpful against him if he continued to use fire, as I realized only moments later.

Instead, however, the fire vanished as quickly as it had come, and Cyclone snorted once from his nose—an action I would much later learn was as close as the behemoth allowed himself to go towards a real laugh.

Gale rushed over to my side—yes!—and threw herself around me. “Are you alright?”

“It just stings,” I told her.

“I’ll kiss it better later.” she told me, pointedly avoiding the flaming pegasus’ gaze. I noted Cyclone’s eyebrow reach as-yet-unexplored heights (which, given its earlier altitude, was impressive indeed), in time with the echoing of offering around the empty chamber.

I waited a few seconds for his eyebrow to yield to the inexorable tug of gravity, then nodded. “Okay, Cyclone. Point taken. For what it’s worth, I didn’t mean anything about you. I just don’t trust Clover.”

Cyclone did not loosen his scowl. “If that is your belief. Leave us, wizard. I would speak to Gale privately.”

The hallway outside the throne room wasn’t exactly ‘private’ from the throne room, given that the historic burning of the solid iron doors had left a pony-sized hole squarely in their center. As a consequence of this, I wandered my way down the central hall of Burning Hearth Castle. That passageway led me to a grandiosely sized gallery, with three tiers of colonnaded balconies looking down on a bland stone-floored central plaza, and an almost distracting lack of any decorations whatsoever. I could see gouges in the woodwork and cracks in the stone where beautiful portraits and tapestries presumably once hung.

Amidst all the gray and brown, a sky blue stood out fairly quickly. Tempest somehow managed the feat of both looming and moping as he hung his forelegs off the railing of one of the ornate railings above me.

I couldn’t resist sweeping a foreleg over my chest. “But soft! what light, through yonder window breaks?”

Tempest rolled his eyes. “What do you want, Morty?”

I shrugged, and then lit my horn. With a crisp pop, I found myself at a much better speaking distance to the pegasus, two floors up from where I had been standing. After recoiling for just a moment from the mana my spell took, I turned to face Tempest. “Cyclone wanted to talk to Gale alone. I just figured I’d find Graargh or my rock. Maybe a fireplace, too, so I don’t freeze to death.”

That comment earned me a raised brow. “Aren’t you from the Crystal Union?”

I nodded. “It’s cold as Tartarus up there in winter, sure, but the city has magic to keep out the snow. And we still have warm summers.” I leaned against the railing. “How does Everfree City compare to the snow?”

Tempest shrugged. “Warmer. You wanted to find a fireplace?”

How Tempest knew or guessed the location of a fireplace is something I can still only guess. Regardless, a mere two doors later, I was sitting down in front of the hearth as Tempest stuck his wing onto the logs. Moments later, a fire was crackling, and the pegasus was busily preening charcoal and ash out of his feathers.

I let about thirty seconds pass, warming myself, in silence. It was only when Tempest stood to leave that I realized just how strong my curiosity had become. “Why do you hate your uncle so much?”

Tempest abruptly froze in place. A short pause preceded his words. “I don’t hate him.”

“You certainly didn’t want to be in a room with him any longer than you have to. I’d say you were afraid of him, but he seemed happy enough to see you.”

Tempest turned back toward me and glared. “It’s a family thing.”

The casual thought brought back memory of a peculiar phrase from the throne room. “Is he your father?” I asked bluntly. In the ensuing silence, under the burden of Tempest’s flat glare, I shrugged. “I mean, he said he was glad you looked like your mom, and—”

“My dad is dead, Morty.” Tempest frowned, and then took a seat. “If I give you the history lesson, will you stop bothering me?”

“I’ll do my best,” I told him.

Tempest rolled his eyes. “My father sided with Uncle Cyclone in the rebellion. Mom killed him.”

“Wait, your mom killed her own… oh.” I managed to hold my tongue just in time. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Tempest went back to preening, burying his face behind his wing. I turned to stare at the crackling fire—ever a pleasant source of visual distraction to let one’s thoughts flow freely.

I hardly expected to be interrupted by Tempest’s voice. “What would you think if I was afraid of him?”

Tempest hadn’t taken his head out from behind his wing, so I had no way of gauging if there was some answer to that he was looking for. Was he hoping I’d expect him to be a proud soldier like his family? Or was there something else?

“I guess I wouldn’t really care,” I told him honestly. “I mean, to some extent he scared me. He has an established reputation for killing unicorns.”

Tempest snorted into his wing. “Yeah. I guess so.” Then, with an almost feline stretch of his spine, he stood up. “Enjoy the fire.”

XX - Crying over Spilled Secrets

“Please wake up. Um... sir, could you… could you please?”

I let out a small groan and a yawn, both quiet enough to have to fight with the crackling of the fireplace to be heard. “Mortal Coil,” I mumbled out, as my vision wormed its way into something resembling focus.

The mare who had spoken to me was a silken white pegasus, with a face that was at once strikingly beautiful and piercingly sharp. I’m sure you’ve met the type—there’s a certain degree of ‘no nonsense’ personality that starts to show in lowered brow lines and tight lips. Most such ponies tend to be short-tempered and aggressively postured, but the mare who stood in the doorway waking me struck me mostly as melancholy. Her eyes barely met mine, but it didn’t seem to be out of shyness; she didn’t retreat when I stood up or walked toward her. Instead, she seemed distant, absorbed in thought as her eyes drilled down onto whatever particular secrets were held in the heavy stone bricks beneath her hooves.

I took the liberty of extending a hoof to the beautiful mare; the motion seemed to finally shake her from her stupor, and she stared at the proffered appendage. “Yes?”

“Forgive me.” I swept my foreleg across my own chest, doing my best to gracefully recover from the lack of her own hoof. I gave a short, sharp bow. “Like I said, I’m Mortal Coil. You can call me Morty; all of my friends do.”

“Morty?” She cocked her head for a moment, and then nodded. “You’re the wizard Gale mentioned. I see. Blizzard.”

“Is that your name?”

The young mare nodded shortly. “It is. Oh, um, I don’t have a nickname. I’m sorry.”

That struck me as an odd thing to say, but I shrugged it off. “Believe me, Blizzard is a beautiful name—and in that way, it fits you.”

Blizzard seemed to lock up. At first, I was afraid I had somehow offended her—though I really did mean the compliment. It took me only a few moments, however, to realize something perhaps far worse. Blizzard had no idea how to reply to such a comment, as made clear by the obvious blush spreading over her cheeks, standing out from her pale coat like rose petals on snow.

“I’m sorry, Blizzard; I—”

My speaking seemed to have broken the spell. She shook her head as she interrupted me. “Don’t be. It was… nice.”

I gave her a genuine smile and warned myself not to offer further compliments if they were likely to make her so obviously uncomfortable. “Well, I’m curious, Blizzard. What got you looking for me?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes. Breakfast.”

The word conjured a rumbling in my belly, clearly indicating just how tired I had grown of bear hardtack and potatoes. A castle’s breakfast seemed like just the solution. “Please, Blizzard, lead the way.”

Her wing draped over my back came as an unexpected, if pleasant, surprise.

A nearly empty throne room often has an imposing or reverent quality. The same, however, cannot really be said for a dining room.

Burning Hearth’s grand dining room had a beautifully polished wooden table built to seat at least two hundred ponies. Near the head of the elaborate furniture, something like twelve ponies were eating. The huge majority of them were foals, all younger than Gale and myself. I took note that somepony had found Graargh a seat, and that Angel was living up to his name, hovering over the little cub’s shoulder as he played with a similarly aged pegasus.

I took a quick count of the five foals, and then turned to Blizzard. “Are they all your siblings?”

She nodded tersely. “Maelstrom, Sirocco—”

“I hope I don’t sound rude, Blizzard, but you can save your breath. I won’t remember, and I’m terrible with foals anyway.”

“Oh.” Blizzard led me toward a pair of empty seats near the head of the table, where Cyclone sat beside Gale and Tempest. “But you get along fine with the bear cub?”

“That’s…” I hesitated for a moment. “Graargh is complicated.”

Blizzard seemed content to leave it at that. As we approached our seats, I watched Gale’s magic drag over a plate of fruit and sweetbreads. Within a second she attacked the bounty.

Further to her right, Tempest quietly and hesitantly consumed his own breakfast, though I suspect his focus on the food was less for fear of arsenic syrup, and more because it meant he wasn’t looking up at his uncle.

As I slid into my seat, Cyclone looked up from his plate of some dish I didn’t recognize, smelling of salt and a dozen scents I couldn’t recall. “Good morning, Morty. I see Blizzard was able to track you down. Good morning, daughter.”

“Good morning, Father.”

Blizzard’s reply wasn’t any more forceful than the rest of her quiet words, but somehow the room briefly felt colder than the eternal blizzard roaring outside the castle.

I coughed heavily into my hoof mostly for show, and then put on my best charming diplomatic smile. “Thank you for your hospitality… um…” I took a few good seconds to think, and then finally admitted defeat. “Forgive me, Cyclone, I’m afraid I don’t know what you use for a title.”

On my left side, Blizzard whispered to me. “It’s Tsar.”

“Ah. Then you’ll have to forgive me again, as I don’t speak Cirran. What’s a ‘tsar’?”

Cyclone growled, and then sat upright in his chair. “Hold your tongue, Blizzard.”

Blizzard turned her head away from her father and lowered her gaze. Apparently satisfied, Cyclone returned his attention to me. “Before Cirra fell to the griffons, we were ruled by a line of emperors. Whenever an emperor ascended the throne in Stratopolis, the old capital, he would take the name ‘Haysar’. When we fought the griffons in the Red Cloud War, that title fell to my father, and he tolerated it for as long as he held Stratopolis. But when we fled Dioda, father left that title behind.”

“Gale actually told me about the ‘Haysar’ title. No emperor without an empire?”

Cyclone cocked his formidably bushy brow. “My father’s words, almost to the letter. He still had an army, but the empire was gone. So when I was old enough to fight to take it back, and stupid enough to believe I was doing the right thing, I called myself Haysar. It was… political. But it stuck, even after I failed. As for the short ‘Tsar’, it comes from the dragons. Their language has no word for ‘emperor’, and ‘tsar’ is what came out of trying to get a reptilian tongue to speak old Cirran.”

Gale looked up from her food opposite me and donned as much of a grin as she could muster. “At least it’s not something dumb like ‘Commander Secundus’ or whatever.”

Cyclone raised a brow. “Cirran titles may lack the distinct touches of unicorn naming, but the army they produce is far more organized. Hasn’t Typhoon ever explained that to you?”

Gale rolled her eyes. “Don’t remind me. I’m going to have to put up with her ranting at me for a year. Hopefully she’ll at least pull the icicle out of her ass first.” My traveling companion rolled her eyes again and drained back a sizeable gulp of water, making a show of washing the bitter thought out of her mouth.

To my amusement, Tempest brought his wing over his mouth, concealing a notable laugh at his mother’s expense. Cyclone, however, seemed nothing so much as confused. The behemoth sat back in his dining chair and cocked a brow. “So Typhoon finally learned some discipline?”

“Learned some discipline?” Tempest swallowed whatever he had been chewing. “Gale’s… kind of right about Mom. Are you saying she didn’t use to be so… rigorous?”

Cyclone snorted another of his muffled laughs. “I was the ‘rigorous’ one when we were foals, Tempest. Your mother had a habit of skipping Father’s lessons on rhetoric to go out stunt flying.”

Gale spit out her drink in shock. My first reaction at being assaulted by a deluge of the covert Equestrian heir’s spit-water was to fling up a dueling shield. And, for want of more time to think, I chose Brineheart’s Buffeting Bulwark. While gathering all distributed attacks against one’s person and flinging them back in a single mass at the assailant is a useful quality in actual combat, I suspect Gale wasn’t terribly appreciative when her water returned in a roughly hoof-sized and hoof-shaped mass that proceeded to punch her in the face with enough force to flip her elaborate dining chair onto its back.

“Gale!” virtually everyone in the room shouted. “I’m so sorry!” I added.

“I’m…” Gale groaned out as we all started awkwardly removing ourselves from the elaborate dining chairs. “I’m fine. Sorry. Ow.” With a hoof, Gale waved away Tempest’s help, and then slowly rose to her hooves. “Seriously, though, what the hell was that?”

I coughed into my hoof. “Brineheart’s Buffeting Bulward. It’s a pretty standard dueling shield for protecting against attacks from acids or alchemical bombs or those sorts of threats. And since you were the source of the ‘attack’, the spell returned your water to you forcefully.”

“Thanks.” Gale groaned as her horn lit up and picked up her chair. I held my tongue at the sight of the sizeable bruise forming over her right eye. “I didn’t need depth perception here anyway.”

Blizzard stretched out a wing to her own goblet of water. Spreading out from where her feather touched the water’s surface, a visible frost appeared. Moments later, upending the goblet, she produced a small block of ice. “Here, Gale. Wrap this in a napkin and hold it over your eye. That should keep the swelling down.”

After a moment or two of silence, the table returned to our respective meals. Cyclone looked up at Gale and Tempest. “As I was saying, when we were foals, Typhoon was a free spirit. Always anxious and energetic; you could hardly get her to sit still. She loved to train at fighting and formations, but any time anypony sat her down with a book or a lecture, she was out the window the second their back was turned. I was the ‘disciplined’ one.”

Tempest looked down at his food. “I wish I could have known Mom back then.”

I placed a hoof as gently as I could on the table while still producing a noise. “If I could make a suggestion, I propose we find a topic other than family history.” Nopony objected, in part because I didn’t give them any time to. “Cyclone, seeing as you’re at least the de facto ruler of River Rock, I feel I should ask: do you have an court mage?”

Cyclone shrugged. “I know very little of unicorn titles. What is a ‘court mage’?”

I smiled. “Mages are trained basically the same as any other artisan trade. Apprentices study under direct mentorship, and are then released as journeymages to travel the world as horns for hire, studying magic and defending cities from magical threats and monsters. When a journeymage has enough reputation, they petition the noble or ruler of their choice for sponsorship, are assigned to a piece of land to guard, and become a fully-fledged mage. Mages are given a small stipend from their sponsor, but mostly make a living producing research and enchanted tools on commission, though they are obligated to answer the call if a monster threatens their lands—that’s the important task a mage performs in society. A mage’s magical research is important to them for one reason, though: their thesis. A mage can submit a thesis to their peers and their archmage, and if the archmage and the majority of peers accept it, the mage earns the title of wizard.”

“So ‘mage’ and ‘wizard’ aren’t just different words for unicorns who study magic?” Tempest asked, leaning forward.

“Even we use the titles interchangeably most of the time.. The difference between a mage and a wizard just isn’t helpful. The only title worth using is archmage.”

Cyclone nodded. “And what does that title imply?”

I smiled. “In simple terms, it’s somepony who leads other mages. An archmage is assigned to what we call a ‘seat’—almost always a major city, whose citizens and surrounding land that pony is responsible for defending magically . There are a finite number of archmage seats. And due to some history we probably don’t care about right now, the rules of being an archmage are simple: you duel for the position.”

Cyclone nodded. “Encouraging combative skill makes sense, given that the position is ultimately for military defense.”

“That’s the general idea. Archmages aren’t allowed to ‘turn down’ a challenge. If you’re challenged, you either fight, or you give up your title to the challenger outright. We call yielding your title ‘the Complacency of the Learned’, because way back when, there were a lot of archmages who got the title of archmage as a means of earning a stipend from the crown. Then they sat back and studied magic instead of making themselves skilled at fighting monsters. When monsters did arrive, those archmages were powerless to defend their wards.”

“Huh.” Tempest nodded. “And you said there was a ‘court mage’ earlier?”

“Yes. A court mage is just the archmage whose seat is the capital of a nation. They usually have more political clout and influence over the other archmages of their kingdom, and they tend to be the absolute best of the best. A long time ago, before the Diamond Kingdom was united in River Rock, there used to be a lot of court mages. One for every kingdom or noble house. In more recent history, we only have two: Star Swirl the Bearded, formerly here but now presumably in Everfree City, and my mentor Wintershimmer the Complacent from Crystal Union City.”

“And now there is only one, if I understand correctly.” Cyclone steepled his hooves. “I met Wintershimmer several times during my father’s campaigns against the crystal barbarians under Halite. Though he was not a pleasant pony, the stability he brought to the crystals will be sorely missed.”

I couldn’t help but cock my head. “You survived meeting Wintershimmer on the battlefield? He didn’t just kill you?”

“I only met him over the negotiating table. He never participated in Halite’s raids on the Diamond Kingdoms. And by the time we met, Star Swirl had fashioned father’s black armor. It is covered in crushed void crystal, which means it made him immune to magic. Wintershimmer knew if he killed me, father would come for him, personally.”

“We know what void crystal is, Cyclone.” Gale rolled her eyes. “Morty’s ex wears one around her neck.”

Blizzard looked at me incredulously. “…Did you really date a crystal pony?”

“That’s where I grew up,” I explained. “There weren’t very many ‘squishy’ mares around. But no, I didn’t actually date her. How do I put this politically?” I didn’t actually pause. “Obviously, I’m incredibly handsome even by normal unicorn standards, but to a crystal, that goes to another level. Having a non-crystal partner is a sort of a status symbol, on account of their cultural…” I let the phrase trail off.

Cyclone was unburdened by anything resembling political tact. “Kidnapping and rape?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to be that blunt, but that is the general idea. The only emotion Silhouette— the mare Gale mentioned—feels for me is loathing. She’s in denial, pretending that we could still someday be ‘nemeses with benefits’.”

“Silhouette?” Cyclone asked, leaning forward. “I feel like I know that name.”

I shrugged. “She’s the leader of the crystal army, but seeing as your family killed the last six or eight of her predecessors, I wouldn’t worry too much. She’s my age, and she’s never led a real battle.”

“I see.” Cyclone nodded.

“You say that, Morty, but she packs a hell of a punch.” Gale rubbed the growing bruise on her brow as if it had come from the crystal mare instead of a spit take gone horribly wrong. “I can see why you wouldn’t want to fuck that.”

Cyclone turned toward Gale in a display of minor disbelief, and Blizzard blushed under her pale coat. I coughed pointedly. “Even violence aside, I don’t want the first thing to do with her. Or any crystal mare, for that matter.” A small silence settled in the room, and it took me a moment to realize that, outside the context of the society I had grown up in, such a statement sounded incredibly racist. “Er, you see, they’re… how do I put this diplomatically?” I tapped a hoof to my chin twice before words came to mind. “Crystal mares aren’t just hard and shiny on the outside.”

To my amusement, Cyclone winced. Blizzard likewise pinched her wings together in visible discomfort.

Tempest, however, rolled his eyes and leaned forward. “You’re exaggerating, Morty.”

I looked him square in the eyes. “Your funeral, Tempest.”

The pegasus donned a lopsided grin and answered me briskly. “I hear there’s a necromancer I can talk to for that.”

“Never in the bedroom.”

Gale helpfully chimed in. “Oh, he’s just trying to be sociable. The truth is, he complains about real mares. He likes it cold, and clammy, and—”

Tempest stood up, flaring his wings in what was clearly a display of shock. “Möbius, you actually slept with her? I tried to warn you.”

“I didn’t—!”

Cyclone rose more slowly, but much more ominously. “That was not wise, necromancer.”

I shrugged slowly, mostly hoping that taking time with the motion would calm the room. “I swear I didn’t, but I understand the concern. I’m well dressed, I’m handsome, I’m cunning… yeah, I could probably find my way into bed with the princess. But that doesn’t mean I actually did. Just that I could.”

I got the silence I wanted, but as it settled across the room, I began to sense something was very wrong. My gaze swept from Cyclone to Tempest to Blizzard, all of whom were staring back in a potent combination of incredulity and shock.

I only realized what I had said when Gale spoke. “You knew?” She sounded hurt. Her words felt hollow, ephemeral.

I realized all at once what was happening. She thought I didn’t know. I tried to protest. To tell her I didn’t know, or maybe that I didn’t care. To tell her about the archmage of Lübuck. To tell her anything. And, in a sense, I did.

The problem was that all those words came out at once. I won’t even try to record the stuttering, incomprehensible mess. I’m sure you were all sixteen or so and romantically confused once.

Gale stared back at me, quietly.

I forced in a slow breath and found my Equiish. “Gale, I didn’t mean… I wasn’t trying to…” I hesitated. “...to sleep with you.”

“Don’t be such a little chicken shit, Morty. You wanted to fuck me because I’m your in to Everfree City, so you can be important again. And if you can’t even look me in the eye to say that, you can fuck right off.”

“I didn’t know, Gale. I swear, I only found out in Lübuck.”

“Is that fucking so?” Gale asked, with more calm than her word choice would otherwise imply. I found myself wishing she would shout.

“Gale, listen to me—”

She spoke over me. “You know, part of me can’t blame you. With all the fucking suitors, I shouldn’t be surprised this is about politics.”

“I thought you were just some noble, not—”

“Celestia, fuck!” Her hoof slammed against the table and her goblet of water spilled. “Do you not fucking get it, asshole?”

I stood up myself. “You honestly think this is about politics? Believe me, Gale, I can do better. If I really wanted to sleep my way into power, I’d go for the seated queen, not some foul-mouthed illegitimate runaway.”

Almost immediately, I realized what I’d spit out, but it was too late to recant. Gale adopted that strange, regal posture I’d seen from her in dealing with the bears.

“Enjoy the rest of your life, Mortal.” The formal accent bit into me, despite the lack of spiteful emphasis or intonation. Without hesitation, she turned away from the table.

I tried to take a step toward her, only for a very heavy hoof to force me down into my seat. I’d forgotten Cyclone was there until I saw him glaring into my eyes. “Leave her be.”

Outside of Cyclone’s reach, several seats down, Graargh outright leapt onto the table. Clumsy paws and heavy claws sent plates and goblets scattering as the little cub rush down the smooth wooden surface. At last, he jumped over an empty chair, just managing to meet Gale at the doors out of the dining room. “Gale, not go!”

I don’t know what Gale said in reply; she spoke in a whisper a room’s length away. All I know is that as the doors closed behind her, Graargh crumpled into tears.

I did my best to stand up, which mattered approximately nothing to Cyclone’s brute strength. His hoof continued to pin me. “Blizzard, take the bear cub to his room.”

“Let me deal with him,” I snapped at Cyclone. “For Celestia’s sake, let me go.”

Blizzard remained seated, listening closely.

Cyclone must have seen in my eyes that I meant to chase after Gale. I doubt it was a hard guess to make. “Gale made it perfectly clear that she no longer wishes you to be present. I’m inclined to agree with her.” I could hear the anger in Cyclone’s almost tectonic voice, crackling like a bonfire. “Leave her be for now. In fact, if you intend to keep your head attached to your shoulders, leave her be forever.”

“Says the pony who killed her grandfather,” I spat back.

“Oh...” Blizzard whispered beside me, barely audibly. When I gave her a short glance, her focus was locked firmly on her father, and she shrunk down in her seat.

My attention was likewise pulled back when Cyclone’s good wing rose from my his chair and burst into flames. “You would be wise to hold your tongue about things you don’t understand, Morty.”

I swallowed hard, but I couldn’t restrain the words that fought their way up through my throat. “You think I should follow your example? Follow up on a mistake by avoiding her the rest of my life instead of fixing it?”

The fire grew taller. “You don’t know me, colt.”

“You’re not complicated, and I’m smart. It’s not hard to put things together. You sit in a huge empty castle, but you haven’t done anything to fix the place. You let ponies call you by a title they meant to make fun of you. Three quarters of our conversation has been comparing you to your father.”

“Morty…” Blizzard told me, tapping me on the shoulder.

“Oh, right. And given that your frankly beautiful daughter was confused by my compliment on her appearance, and didn’t know what to do when I offered her a hoof, I’d say you’re a repressive, if not outright abusive father.”

Cyclone’s anger finally reached its breaking point. Waving his wing in my direction, he sent a wall of fire rolling over the table.

He hadn’t meant to hurt me, even with that. He meant to make me feel threatened. I refused. Somewhat more forcefully than I intended, I leaned back in my chair. The heavy woodwork cracked against the floor and I tumbled to a shaky stand near the dining room wall. My horn ignited in blue. “I’m going to fix this, Cyclone.”

“You are going to leave River Rock and never return,” he answered, standing up to his full, dominating height.

Blizzard rushed to his side, perhaps ready to protest. Without even looking at her, he swatted his daughter aside with a wing. She collapsed painfully when her back struck the table. Tempest briefly moved to help her, but hesitated when he realized how close that would bring him to his uncle.

Cyclone brought his wing forward slowly, building a very visible ball of flame that slowly shifted from an untamed orange toward an almost blinding white. With every step forward, I felt the heat grow.

I gritted my teeth, held my ground, and let the magic in my horn build. The words were familiar, but the sudden rush of power that followed was new. “Do you feel that, Cyclone? That chill at the base of your neck?”

Cyclone stopped abruptly.

“Morty, what are you doing?!” Tempest shouted.

I ignored the protest, keeping my eyes locked on Cyclone’s. “That’s my magic, wrapped around your soul.” There I was, some runaway-turned-vigilante, and I had the conqueror of River Rock at my complete mercy. In the moment, I couldn’t help but grin. “If you threaten me again, I will snuff you like a candle.”

Cyclone was silent, but his enormous shoulders heaved.

“Let’s all just walk away,” Tempest advised, still cautiously keeping his distance from both of us. “Nopony wants to get anypony killed here.”

Cyclone stood, holding his flame and waiting. I quietly wondered if he was honestly going to test me.

Then, to my own dismay, I felt my magical grip failing—partly perhaps from the sheer volume of magic Cyclone himself was using, but mostly due to my own limited mana. There was the twinge in my horn, the familiar pull of fatigue. I could kill Cyclone, easily, but I couldn’t keep up the threat forever. Even in that moment, it was hard to keep my grip. I could feel his magic, scalding to my horn despite the physical distance between the two, rising up from his soul to push me away.

Reluctantly, I let the spell fizzle away.

The flaming behemoth reached out a wing, and just as I feared the white flame would burn me, it vanished with a hiss and a curl of smoke. With heavy steps that rang off the floor, he moved forward to stare down at me.

“You have one hour to leave River Rock alive.”

XXI - Dear Princess...

Graargh and Angel followed me out of the dining room. I shut the door with a hoof and immediately collapsed.

A few dozen pounds of bear cub tackled me before I even had the chance to take a breath.

“Why, Morty? Why mean? Why yell?”

“Graargh, get off me. I need to think.”

“No. Why?”

“Graargh…”

“Why Morty?”

I grabbed Graargh around his waist and flung him off my chest. “I screwed it up, okay? I didn’t think before I opened my mouth.”

Graargh whimpered at the way I’d snapped, and I drew in a regretful breath to my freshly uncompressed lungs. “I don’t have long to fix this, Graargh. But that’s what I’m going to do. Somehow… Angel, you’re holding two spells worth of mana, right?”

“Yes, Master Coil,” my golem replied.

“Give me the mana back now.” As the golem floated closer, I continued my thoughts aloud. “I have to go find Clover. I don’t know what we’re going to do after that…” I briefly entertained the realization that I had made myself an equina non grata in all three of the world’s pony nation-states. But I only had an hour, and dealing with that issue could wait, so I stuffed it away.

Angel’s gift of my stored mana, filled during our long boat ride, came in a rush of blue arcana, sparking through the air between his halos and my horn. Once more, I had my spells… for all the good they would do me fixing my relationship with Gale.

Whatever that relationship was actually supposed to be.

I shook my head. “Okay, Graargh and Angel, I want you two to gather up everything we got from the bears: furs, blankets, packs. If you see anything laying around that’s hoof sized or smaller that has diamonds, emeralds, or amethysts, take that too.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but you want me to steal from this castle?”

“There really many bridges left to burn, short of actually killing Cyclone. Besides, we need them more than he does. He can’t actually use them for anything except decoration, since he’s a pegasus. You go scout some things out, but wait for Graargh to actually carry them. Once you’ve got that, I want you find Graargh and meet me on the eastern battlements in one hour. Now get moving.”

Angel zipped off down the castle hallways.

“Graargh, I have an extremely important job for you. We need to eat.”

“We just eat,” Graargh complained, rolling his eyes. “And Gale more important!”

“I know, but I’m handling her, okay? I don’t mean eating now, I mean eating while we’re traveling. The dragons live in a volcanic wasteland. We can’t pick berries there. So I need you to go get Blizzard. Do you know which one she is? The mare who’s almost my age?” Graargh nodded. “Get her away from her dad.”

“Not want fire pony,” Graargh agreed. “Scary.”

“Says six hundred pounds of grizzly bear,” I muttered into my hoof, feigning a cough. “Tell her we need three weeks worth of food for two ponies. Can you do do that?”

Graargh nodded.

“I’m counting on you, Graargh. Go on back in there, and be strong for me, okay? Once you’ve done that, you’re going to go find Angel and help him carry things. I’ll talk to you in just a little bit.”

Graargh nodded and ventured once more into the disturbingly literal frying pan. Standing alone in the hallway, though, I couldn’t help but feel that I was the pony being roasted.

I lost almost twelve minutes waiting for Blizzard in the hallway, but it was the door finally cracking open again that came closest to killing me. When Blizzard’s white hoof came into view instead of Cyclone’s blood red, I felt my heart restart its beating. Graargh followed after her, and smiled up at me. “Found!”

“Yes, you did good, Graargh. Now, Like I said, I want you to go find Angel and help him. Can you do that?”

Eagerly, the little bear cub dashed off again.

“Alright, Graargh’s gone, Angel is occupied, they’re packing supplies, I have at least three quarters of an hour left… Right.” I heard a disk in my neck pop as I swung my head up to focus on the pegasus before me. “Blizzard, I need your help.”

“I… think I’ve figured that out. You, uh…”

“Not yet,” I told her. “We’ll talk while we’re walking. Kitchens, or storerooms. I need dried foods. Fruits, nuts, hardtack; anything you can offer that will last a week or two.”

“Oh, um…”

“Please forgive me for being a little bit short, but I don’t have a lot of time here, Blizzard. I need you to focus on this.”

“Right, sorry! Uh, this way!” And nervously, she started off down the hallways of Burning Hearth opposite where Graargh had gone. “Where are you going?”

“Dragon lands,” I told her. “I need to… I’ve got business with Clover.”

“Oh, right, you’re a wizard too. I can get you a map to where she and Grandfather went.”

“That would be fantastic, Blizzard, thank you. Now… well, I guess there’s no gentle way to say this. I need your help with Gale.”

Blizzard hung her head, demonstrating an uncanny knowledge of the castle’s layout from a view of only the wooden boards beneath her hooves. "You really hurt her, Morty."

"I know that!” I caught myself before exasperation and impatience boiled over into yet another faux pas. “I need to know how to fix it."

Clearly, I hadn’t concealed my irritation well enough; Blizzard’s potent empathy left her wilting away from me, ears folded down. “I think you probably shouldn’t talk about her mom. Especially not about… sleeping with her.”

"Blizzard, you're not helping here. I can actually hear myself when I talk.". Under my breath I added "I just usually don't process it until after I'm done speaking."

My guide at least regained a bit of her composure at that admission. “You should admit that to her. I think she needs to hear that you weren’t thinking.”

"Well, hold on..."

No, I decided. Time travel was not a solution to this problem. As Wintershimmer used to say, one does not pick up a castle to smash a gnat.

"What are you thinking?" Blizzard cocked her head.

“It was a bad idea. I can fix this without risking a time-travel paradox or getting caught in a stable loop. I know I can. I just don’t know how.”

Blizzard didn't answer, at first. In determined silence, she progressed, until a few minutes later, she stopped abruptly halfway down one of the castle’s featureless hallways and flung open a little door I would have assumed led to a broom closet. “You said you knew who she was in Lübuck? Was that true?”

“That's the truth; I had figured out she was some kind of runaway illegitimate noble, but I hadn't guessed her family was that far up.”

“She's not illegitimate,” Blizzard corrected, to my surprise. “Gale is Queen Platinum’s only living foal.”

“Oh…” There wasn't any point in swearing about how stupid I'd been; that moment had already long since past.

“Why didn't you confront her about it then? Why keep secret that you had found out?”

“Well, at the time, I thought that was what she wanted.” I nibbled gently on my cheek.

“Why?”

I shrugged “Because she didn't tell me to begin with, even once we were actually traveling together. I thought she was worried I would treat her differently, so I just tried to treat her the same.”

Blizzard shook her head. “I think I can understand that guess.”

“Was it something else?” I asked her bluntly.

The question earned me a sigh. “You don't have famous parents, do you, Morty?”

I cocked my head, not quite following her logic. “Well, no. But Wintershimmer was about as infamous as you can be.”

“I don't know who that is.” Blizzard shrugged. “But I doubt it's the same. Take Tempest. You know him a little bit, right? What's he like? How would you describe him?”

“Well, I guess he's kind of lazy. And a flirt. And what does any of this have to do with fixing things with Gale?”

“Because Tempest’s mom is the leader of the entire Equestrian military, to say nothing of the fact that he's actually around Grandfather.”

“So he has great mentors?”

Blizzard sighed again. “That’s why this is hard to understand. Nopony overshadows you, do they? With Tempest and Gale, it's this constant… pressure. Your entire life starts revolving around somepony else. I guarantee you, ponies are expecting Tempest to replace Aunt Typhoon when she retires. Ponies are expecting him to live up to Grandfather's legacy.”

Living up to Commander Hurricane? I almost scoffed aloud. He'd have better luck replacing Celestia, with the way the Equestrians revered the former.

But then, that was exactly what Blizzard meant.

Bitterly, the mare added another thought under her breath. “At least ponies like Aunt Typhoon.”

For a moment, I found it hard to swallow as I realized exactly where Blizzard’s understanding of Gale came from. “Are ponies worried you'll be some sort of tyrant?”

Blizzard briefly started, apparently surprised I had heard her. It took a moment for her to settle her wings and reply. “Either they're afraid of me personally or of Father. When you offered me your hoof earlier… It's not as if I don't know what that sort of greeting is. But you're the first pony who’s ever been that kind to me. Most ponies are too afraid of Father to even talk to me, and I think the brave ones are just hoping to inherit River Rock when Father dies.” I noticed a slight frost building on Blizzard’s wingtips, still folded at her sides. “They're twice my age; sometimes more than that. But at least I'm not alone.”

“Alone?”

“I have six siblings, Morty. Gale is an only foal. And Queen Platinum has that disease…”

“The Scourge of Kings…” It was a hereditary condition, the cost of the throne. It had plagued the unicorn royal family for generations. It often killed young… was Gale running out of time?

“She doesn't want the throne?” I asked.

“I have no idea what she actually wants, Morty. Queen Platinum never let her come here and visit Father.” I had to mentally remind myself that Her Majesty was well within reason, seeing as Cyclone had killed her father—and that only made Gale’s hug for Cyclone stranger, when I remembered that same pony was Gale’s grandfather.

Blizzard felt no need to comment on that mess of a relationship, instead letting her wings slump as she spoke up. “I just think I understand why you talking about her mother hurt her so much. Do you think it was easy for her to run away from Everfree with so many eyes watching her? I doubt it was easy to steal Grandfather’s sword. She finally escaped, if only for a little while. She thought she was away from all of that with you. And you dragged her back.”

I drew in a slow breath and nodded. “I think I understand.”

“I doubt that. But if you at least sympathize, that might be enough.”

“Blizzard,” I put a hoof on the mare’s shoulder. She looked up at me. “How can I thank you?”

She looked me square in the eyes, and I noticed the slightest wetness in her coat, just above her cheekbones.

“Help me do what Gale did. Help me get away.”

Gale was standing on the ramparts of Burning Hearth, frost building in her mane. Her ears perked when I opened the creaky wooden door, but she didn’t bother so much as turning to look at me.

“Gale, I’m sorry.”

“Go to Tartarus, Morty.”

In all honesty, that was a better reply than I was expecting. I walked out onto the wall, and flung my forehooves over the edge two crenellations away from her. The slouch would have been much more comfortable if the wall wasn’t frigid stone.

“Already here, Gale.”

“Okay, maybe I wasn’t clear. Go fuck yourself.”

That was a little closer to my expectation. “Gale, I’m sorry.”

“Save your breath.”

Being reasonable and apologetic was failing quickly, but I was too young, too determined, and honestly, too stupid to give up after just one try.

“Do you want to run away again?”

Gale turned to actually look at me, for a change. At first, she was completely silent, but it wasn’t hard to see the anger in her eyes. “What’s the point?”

“Getting away from your mother? From the expectations?”

Her derisive snort was bitter and blunt. “Even if I really thought running away was a good idea, which it isn’t, where the hell do you think we could go?”

“We shook off the entire Crystal military and Tempest.”

That got me a roll of the eyes. “Sooner or later, they’d just send Luna.”

“The goddess?” I gave up on the thought of a head-on confrontation very quickly. “Okay, I can fake our deaths. It’s not that hard; we’d just need some roughly correctly-shaped corpses, and—”

“You really don’t understand anything, do you, Morty?” Gale brought a hoof to her face slowly and rubbed her brow. “Just go away. At least let me be. Maybe, maybe I’ll be ready to put up with your shit tomorrow.”

“I don’t have that long to wait.” I scratched the back of my right ear with a hoof. “Cyclone and I got into an argument and I threatened to… well, I believe my exact words were ‘snuff him like a candle’. And now, if I don’t want to commit regicide in self-defense, I have to be out of River Rock in about fifteen minutes.”

Gale blinked twice in shock. “You threatened Cyclone’s life?”

I nodded. “Grabbed onto his soul and threatened to rip it out of him.”

There was a distinct pause as Gale processed that. “You know, for somepony who’s supposed to be smart, you’re a massive fucking idiot.”

I shrugged. “I probably deserve that. In my defense, intellect isn’t the opposite of idiocy the way most ponies use the word. Wisdom is. And I never purported to—”

“Can you just shut the fuck up for five seconds?” Gale interrupted, shouting. A few seconds passed as she fought to regain her breath out of the icy air. “Look… Morty, I’m just not ready to forgive you right now, I’m sorry. Not in like five minutes. But I’ll at least say... What are you doing?”

The quandary Gale was raising related to the glow building around my horn. My vision grew fuzzy from my third spell in a day—even with a ‘refill’ of mana drawn from Angel, the focus was hard. Nevertheless, I squeezed the spell out.

Snowflakes slowed in their falls from the stormy sky. Near the horizon, the frigid Volgallop turned from icy rapids to a foamy stream of as much molasses. Even in the streets, Cyclone’s guards lost their stiff pace, slowing to barely more than a crawl.

“Did you slow down time?!”

I drew in a few desperate, panting breaths. The air I flushed out of my lungs slowed to a crawl as it passed my lips. Only when I found my second wind did I answer Gale. “I’m not that good. Time magic is… hard. And dangerous. This is an illusion. Sort of.”

“On the whole city?”

“No, just on us. Time is going just as fast as usual. We’re just thinking faster, and seeing faster. Insight, a few figments, and some magic to strengthen your body so that moving this fast won’t hurt you. It’s… hard to keep up.”

“That’s… Damn!” Gale was silent for the longest time. She just stared off at the snowflakes gently spinning in the air, hanging almost frozen in time. I held my tongue, both from exhaustion at the spell and out of deference to her thoughts. Finally, she spoke a single word. “Why?”

“You said you needed more time.”

It took me another few slow breaths to realize I had Gale’s ear more than I had before. At least, she hadn’t spited the comment. “Gale, look, I like you. Okay? And maybe I sound like a foal, but I’m not talking about love. Don’t get me wrong, you’re beautiful, even as dirty and scruffy as you’ve been on the road… Sorry, that isn’t what I meant.” I stopped for a moment to gather my words. “Gale, I’ve never had a friend like you. In the Union, I only had Wintershimmer, and I had no idea what I was missing out on. And, in the end, I suppose what I actually care about is knowing that I haven’t completely ruined whatever friendship we had. Even if we are about to say goodbye, it’s a terrible ending to our story if I have to walk away knowing I hurt you, and never being able to fix it.”

“Our story?” Gale shook her head. “We’re not married, Morty. We haven’t even gone at it.” She shook her head, and a little hint of a grin showed up on her cheek. “You know, if you hadn’t completely screwed the pooch with Cyclone, we might have had a chance.”

I blinked twice. “Wait, are you honestly—”

“No.” she interrupted, and then rolled her eyes. “I’m still not sure I’m not completely pissed at you right now.” She opened her mouth to say something else, and then closed it and glared off at the horizon. I waited a moment as her brow clenched and loosened, parsing a thought. Instead, I got a protracted groan. “Celestia, fuck, you make everything so damn hard, Morty. You know that, don’t you?” Before I could reply, she shook her head. “What am I saying, you probably get off on it.”

“I don’t—”

“You absolutely do, Morty. Don’t even try to deny it.” She chuckled, and then caught herself, and rolled her eyes.

“I knew you couldn’t stay mad at me—”

When Gale punched me, I found myself lying flat on the stones of the castle wall. The stars in my eyes settled quickly enough to find her once more staring off at the sky.

I brushed myself off, stood up, and walked over to her side again. “I’m sorry. I… Is this where I say ‘fuck’?”

Gale growled. “Don’t. That’s not you.”

“This wasn’t supposed to be about me.”

“Well, big fucking surprise, somehow it is anyway. You’re… I don’t know what I think about you right now. Some slow snowflakes aren’t going to give me enough time to forgive you.”

“Then the best I can offer is ‘I’m sorry’.” I turned to walk away, trembling with some intoxicating mixture of regret, sorrow, pain, and anger at myself.

“Don’t go.”

I stopped.

Gale spoke to me with her other voice. I finally put together in my mind what I had heard among the bears. It wasn’t Gale’s voice, because it didn’t belong to some scrappy mare on a journey with a stolen sword. It was a noble’s voice. Princess Platinum the Third’s voice.

It wasn’t spiteful as it had been before, but some part of it was hollow. And some other part was desperate.

“I have scarce few hours of freedom, left. And in some sense, I owe you the time you gave me. My last spare moments of liberty.”

I turned back. “Gale—”

“Give me this, Morty. I won’t know how I feel about you, or if I can forgive you, but… I don’t want you to leave just yet.”

I moved to her side, slipping a foreleg over her shoulders. “As you wish, Your… Gale.”

We just stood there. We just stared. The icy plains and the snowy streets had become my painting, but the warmth of her coat and the sounds of our breaths were of much more interest to me than a petty trick of world-changing magic.

“What does it feel like, Morty?”

“Hmm?”

She used the voice again. That haunting voice. “The freedom. Going where you will, doing what you will—”

“That isn’t you,” I told her.

Gale hung her head. “I’m not sure I’m just the mare you knew, any more than I am that stiff-backed princess.” Her voice crumbled to its gruffer, faster pace, allegro and scathing. “Fuck, forget you, I don’t even know who I am.”

I held her tighter. “You answered your own question.”

Gale craned her neck, looking up at me in confusion.

“You talked about my ‘freedom’, like it’s about the places you can go. And sure, traveling has been some of the best times of my life, even if it has nearly killed me. But at the end of the day, freedom is about choosing who you are. And your mom can’t take that away. When you want to know who you are, look at the choices you make. And maybe your friends. You gave me my name, after all.”

Gale nodded. “That sounds like something Star Swirl would cough up. Did the old stallion tell you that?”

“No, I literally made it up on the spot.”

We laughed, carefree, and our voices rang out over a world frozen and stopped.

“It’s true, though, I think. And Coil the Wise has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

Gale slapped me across the face. It stung worse in the cold, but I felt a bit better at least, seeing a hint of amusement on the edge of her lips when I found my vision again.

I felt the spell tugging at me, and a bit of a glow built of its own accord on my horn. The magic was dying. Gale must have noticed; she took a step back to more cleanly look me in the eyes. “Come back to Everfree with me, Morty. We can figure things out there.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. I’ve come all this way. I need to at least talk to Clover.”

“Star Swirl is in Everfree. And I’m sure Diadem can teach you, if—”

I held up a hoof. “Gale, we will see each other again, somehow. I mean, Everfree is basically the capital of the world at this point. It’s not as if I’m going to stay with the dragons for twenty years or something similarly profoundly useless.”

I let the last vestiges of magic wisp away from my horn. The wind and the snow rose from the still, whipping my coat behind me.

“This is goodbye, Gale. For now.”

Gale sighed, and then she nodded. “Goodbye, Morty. Don’t get yourself killed. I’ll see you in Everfree.”

I smiled like only an idiot teenager can. She smiled back, infinitely more elegant and more sophisticated than I can even claim I am today.

And then I turned to leave. No kiss, no long last embrace. Just the promise of a tomorrow.

XXII - Do Golems Dream of Magic Sheep?

I arrived on the eastern wall with mere moments to spare. Or, at least, so I assumed. Honestly, it was hard to tell when I wasn’t carrying an hourglass. More importantly than time were the figures present: a small bear, a flying rock, and a pegasus mare in exactly the sort of heavy traveling cloak that would make one appear suspicious, if it weren’t so damn cold outside.

“Blizzard, I hadn’t actually meant for you to leave with me on this trip. I’m going to have to come back through River Rock once I’m done with the dragons and Clover.”

Blizzard’s response was to firmly shake her head. “I don’t mean to sound rude, Morty, but I don’t think I have an option, so I need to leave now. After what you said to Father, I don’t really think you’re going to be able to stop here on the way back. And he’s going to be distracted talking to Gale. I can get out now before he or any of the guards realize I’m gone. Hopefully he won’t notice long enough that the snow will cover our tracks.”

“Hopefully? Where the alternative is that he tracks me down with an army for kidnapping his daughter?”

“Well… also, I know where Clover actually is.” It wasn’t hard to guess that she felt like she was threatening me, or that she felt guilty about it.

I did my best to cheer her up. “You’re right; I really could use your help. Well played.” I wandered over to the very edge of the castle wall, where I looked down on a massive snowbank some thirty feet below. “Shall we head off?”

“We are going to have to sneak down to the gate…”

That was as much of Blizzard’s warning as I heard before I flung myself over the edge of the castle wall and into the snow.

Snow, how do I hate thee? I would count the ways, but as I stated in my introduction, I have no intention of letting this book get big enough to be used as a murder weapon.

“Beaaar!” Graargh shouted, laughing, as he followed my example. I pulled myself from the snow just in time to see the little cub dig his own way out and rush over to me. “Morty, that fun! We do again?”

“Sorry, Graargh, not today.” Or ever, if I could help it. “We need to get moving.” I turned to the east, and immediately felt a prodding at my flank.

“Master Coil, that was most unwise. Being buried so deeply in snow has no doubt put you at risk of freezing.”

“I’m fine, mother,” I answered the rock, before realizing whom I was talking to.

Angel rushed up to my face. “Master, I’m not Miss Scratch. Oh, dear me, the cold has you hallucinating. Here, I’ll fetch help!”

“Angel, get back here and shut up. I’m fine. That was sarcasm, not a hallucination.”

“Sarcasm? Forgive me, but I’m unfamiliar with that condition, Master. Is it serious?”

I barely heard Blizzard’s wings before she landed beside me, delicate as a feather on the surface of the snow. I mean that more literally than the metaphor would imply; she stood evenly on its surface instead of sinking in.

I briefly envied the magic of the pegasi.

Blizzard smiled at my golem and chuckled. “Oh, yes… Angel, was it? I… don’t know much myself, but I have heard… Sarcasm is a horrible disease. I’m afraid if we don’t…” At that point, she had to suppress a giggle with her wing. “We don’t have long to get Morty to the dragons, or he’s not going to make it. Don’t you see how pale he is?”

“It’s a perfectly healthy pale,” I protested, though my words fell on deafened ears.

The reason for the deafening came in the form of Graargh’s abrupt shout. “No wait! We go now! We save Morty!” And, satisfied that he had made his point clear not just for us, but for the whole population of River Rock, the tiny bear broke into an awkward loping sprint across the snow drifts to the east.

“Well… that’s one way to get him moving,” I muttered to Blizzard.

She chuckled. “Now I almost feel bad for misleading him. We should get moving before he gets too far ahead.”

And with that agreement, Blizzard, Angel, and I broke off into the snow and ice.

We made good time on a fairly boring and miserable journey, just talking and tromping through the snowbanks and slowly explaining to Graargh that I wasn’t actually going to die of the obscure disease that sarcasm had become. I told Blizzard about my adventures with Gale thus far, to which she laughed and smiled and nodded along with a sort of empathetic wisdom I’ve since learned is a truly rare gift amongst ponies. Blizzard really listened, breaking focus only when Graargh interrupted to add his own rendition of the events, usually to our amusement.

While sarcasm was no danger of killing me, I very nearly died laughing at the story of ‘fish pony’.

Through the whole story, Blizzard only spoke up once. It was to interrupt me with a hoof against my shoulder. I stopped in place and when I turned, I saw her right wing pointed into the sky. Overhead, amidst the perpetual snowstorm with its howling winds and pelting snow, my squinting eyes caught glimpse of a chariot pulled by two pegasi. Reclining in the back was a single pure black figure.

“Is that…”

“Grandfather,” Blizzard replied with a nod. “Coming back to take Gale home.”

I froze. There he was, just above me. Hurricane the Butcher. The monster under every crystal foal’s bed, wrapped in armor of gleaming black void crystal that would laugh off even the strongest of my spells like as much hot air. I could see the black crest on his helmet, silhouetted against the midday storm above. And as I watched, he turned down at us.

Piercing magenta eyes stared back. I don’t know why they stood out so clearly; I could hardly tell his coat apart from his armor at that distance, but I knew he looked square at me. I felt it. What all Cyclone’s fire and fury couldn’t do a leg’s reach away, the elder pegasus achieved from a mile overhead with nothing more than a cold glance.

It was only a moment, and the chariot didn’t so much as slow, let alone turn toward us. But for the first time in our trip, even under the pile of furs we’d been given and my coat, I felt the cold.

Blizzard’s wing over my back shook me out of my stupor. “Is something wrong?”

When I shook my head to clear my thoughts, a pile of snow toppled off my mane and ears. “I’ll be alright.”

“You’re afraid of Grandfather?” Blizzard asked.

I took a moment to build up the courage to nod.

“Why? He’s much nicer than Father, and you stood up to his fire just fine.”

I gestured forward with my horn, and we all started walking before I spoke up again. “You have to remember, Blizzard, I’m from the Crystal Union.”

“You already told her that in your story, Master Coil.”

I glared at Angel and the flying rock floated over to Graargh.

“Before we were born, back before the eternal storm started,” I glanced up at the stormclouds again, “the crystal ponies were divided into tribes. ‘Barbarians’ is the word you probably hear used; they used to attack and pillage earth pony and unicorn towns.”

“Father told us those stories,” Blizzard nodded. “When Grandfather and the other pegasi escaped the griffons and Emperor Magnus in Cirra, they offered service against the barbarians in exchange for land and food.”

“Well, then, you ought to know why ‘Hurricane the Butcher’ terrifies me.”

“But those were barbarians he was fighting! I mean, not that I think fighting them at all is better than peace, but… well, they weren’t Queen Jade’s tribe, right?”

I stopped mid step. “Blizzard, did you think Queen Jade just slaughtered all of the other tribes that came to her when your grandfather defeated them?”

“That would be horrible!”

“Yes, it would. And to be fair, these days Jade is insane enough that if you told her slaughtering a thousand ponies would cure Smart Cookie, she’d probably do it.” At Blizzard’s incredulous look, I gave a firm nod. “Let me put it this way: if she were just a little bit crazier, and made a little bit less sense, she’d probably be called a prophet. But her present lack of a functioning mind notwithstanding, the Crystal Union is mostly ‘barbarians’, and not Jade’s ‘friendly’ crystal ponies. Nearly every grown pony I ever met as a foal had fought Hurricane’s army some time or other.” I shook my head, discarding a few snowflakes that seemed to have been doing their best to infiltrate my coat and freeze my brain. “And ponies love to claim they survived fighting him one-on-one. Which is, of course, ridiculous.”

“Why would that be ridiculous? He’s just a pony—”

“A pony wearing armor that renders him invulnerable to magic, and who himself wields the ability to buck bolts of real lightning at his enemies? And that’s to say nothing of his magic sword, which he hoof-crafted, that puts even King Malachite’s warhammer to shame…”

“Morty?”

“And now, not only have I attacked his grandson with a fish in public, but I outright foalnapped his granddaughter.”

“Are these the symptoms of sarcasm?” Angel asked, a touch of concern in his artificial voice.

Graargh nodded. “Morty sick. We help!”

“Both of you, he’s going to be fine.” Blizzard rolled her eyes as she approached me, and slung a wing over my shoulders. “Look, Morty, I swear he’s a lot nicer than my dad. Even if he did come down here, which you can see he didn’t, nothing bad would happen.”

I leaned into Blizzard as I watched the silhouette disappear into the gray and snowy sky.

We walked for days, shivering under piles of furs over a sea of white, toward a wall of jagged black thrusting up into a sky of gray. Dialogue mostly died to the chill; Blizzard proved an excellent listener, but not the best at starting conversation. I had no interest in letting the inside of my mouth freeze as much as the outside had. By day, we marched, huddled in a single furry mass. By night, Graargh’s ursine claws dug us shelter under the snow and Blizzard’s ice magic gave us a solid roof to our cramped but pleasantly warm shelter.

I spent those nights preparing for a battle I wasn’t sure I believed in. Angel’s halos filled with my magic. Amethysts set into ancient unicorn candelabras were pried loose. That was one of the few things that broke our silence: Blizzard staring as I destroyed the trappings of her lifelong home.

“Gems hold magic,” I explained, when her raised brow failed to open her mouth. “I can cast spells into these, and if I break the gem, the spell comes out.”

“Why not just cast with your horn?” Blizzard asked.

I tapped my horn with a hoof before continuing my work. “I can only cast a few spells a day before I get worn out. Every unicorn gets tired eventually.” I neglected to mention how harsh my own limit was. “This lets me put in effort ahead of time. I can’t do it often, since getting the magic out destroys the gems, and I have to choose the spell to cast now instead of when I actually want it.”

“Couldn’t you just store your raw magic, without making it a spell?”

Angel elected to field that question, floating slightly closer to Blizzard and orienting his halos to show her their gem-set interiors. “Storing raw mana is not as easy as a formed spell. Master Coil and Master Wintershimmer spent a very long time engraving my halos to be able to maintain magic—otherwise, without the structure of a spell, it would degrade quickly. As Master Coil said, even a formed spell degrades in a gemstone fairly quickly. He has perhaps a week to use those he is making now.”

“Oh…” Blizzard turned from Angel to watch me. “So what are you casting in these? Something to help Clover?”

“Something like that…” I swallowed heavily.

In brutal honesty, my mind wasn’t in my work. As Blizzard settled down to sleep, I kept flitting to the question of whether or not what I was going to do was right. It felt so cold, so calculating, and so utterly unheroic. And yet whenever I came to the point of abandoning my path, I remembered what Wintershimmer had shown me. I remembered that Clover, a trained mage, had lied to Hurricane to spare the windigo. That conclusion was inescapable. Thousands of ponies had frozen to death because of that single choice.

Still, my stomach churned and twisted. Still, I hesitated. And, on the verge of crossing the spine of mountains that separated River Rock from the homeland of the dragons, I stepped away from our shelter on the excuse of needing some space for my work. Once Blizzard closed her eyes again, I gave Angel a silent nod. He seemed to get the message, and followed without speaking.

When I emerged beneath the open sky, looking up at the mountains of the dragons, I spoke to my golem. “What do I do?”

Angel rotated itself slightly, as a dog might cock its head when confused by an elaborate instruction. “Master, are you certain you’re quite well? You’ve never once consulted me for direction—”

“I’m fine… Well, I’m healthy. I don’t know what to do with Clover. Wintershimmer says I should just walk up, challenge her, and then kill her before she gets a spell off.”

“That certainly seems like Master Wintershimmer’s style. Is your concern that it isn’t yours?”

I frowned into the wind. “That’s one way to put it.”

“In that case, Master Coil, I suggest you stop worrying about magic, and focus on finding some clever way to insult Clover to her face.”

“Angel!” I rubbed a hoof at the base of my horn. “That isn’t going to help.”

“No, I suppose not. Your usual bluntness certainly hurt your cause with Gale.”

I raised an eyebrow at Angel. “Really?”

“Is my understanding of events incorrect? My apologies, Master Coil.” Angel sunk slightly in the air. “You know what Master Wintershimmer would want, and what he would do. You’ve followed his directions more or less exactly, even with his passing. Though you have disagreed with him in the past, Master Coil, you have never struck me as terribly disloyal. What has changed?”

It took me a long breath of cold air to find my answer. “He never asked me to do anything I thought was wrong.”

“Hmm… That is not my memory of your relationship.” Angel rotated again, with that curious cock of his ‘head’. “I remember several times you and he fought over whether he was in the right to punish somepony in his way, or rip out the soul of a political rival.”

“Yes, but those were things he did.”

“Does objecting to him not count as doing something? Forgive me again, Master Coil; I believe I again have failed to understand the way you speak.”

“No, Angel. Don’t apologize. That’s surprisingly helpful.”

Angel’s halo’s whirled around his body, a sign of glee at the small praise. “Oh, I’m glad to help however I can. Tell me, is that all you need?”

The question left me with a tired sigh. “I still don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Perhaps it might help to consider why Master Wintershimmer gave you this task in the first place.”

I shivered, and pulled my jacket’s collar closer to my neck. The wind had only grown more fierce, and Angel floated closer to me to more clearly hear.

“She’s the reason for the storm.”

“This storm? The one around us?”

I nodded. “She spared the last Windigo. She tricked Hurricane into letting it go, by claiming it was innocent, and afraid.”

“You intend to kill her for a mistake? Even by Master Wintershimmer’s standards, that seems harsh.”

I shook my head. “A mage’s most important job is protecting against spirits. Every wizard knows spirits can’t change. A windigo is literally made of hatred. And Clover is an archmage. She knows that.”

“So she kept the storm on purpose? I fail to see the point.”

I nodded. “In the past, there have been wizards who went against their duty. Warlocks. Ponies who wanted the power of a spirit and tried to control them. It even works, for a time, but eventually the spirit always wins.”

“Do you believe Clover is a warlock?”

“I can’t think of any other reason to spare the windigo. But for all I know, she had another reason, or it really was just a phenomenally stupid mistake. Walking up and just killing her might be something Wintershimmer was comfortable with, but I don’t know if I can do that.”

“And you can’t trust her enough to ask her?”

I nodded. “If she is a warlock, she would lie to me.”

“And you can’t read her mind to know the truth.”

“Angel, you know I can’t even…” I bit back the last of a shout. “I’m sorry, Angel.”

“It’s quite alright. I had assumed ‘reading the mind’ was an idiom. Are pony dreams usually words? Or images?”

“Thoughts are words. Images usually come out of memories—and that’s more a part of a pony’s soul than their mind.” I rose to my hooves, shivering. “You’ve been very helpful. It’s freezing out here, Angel. Let’s go back to the others.”

“As you wish.”

“And thank you, Angel.”

XXIII - Invitation to a Duel

Crossing the mountains proved incredibly pleasant in spite of the stinking sulfurous air, the rain of char and ash from the sky, and even the harsh rocks beneath my hooves, all for one reason: it doesn’t snow amongst the dragons.

I knew from my studies with Wintershimmer that the dragons controlled miles upon miles of beautiful rocky coastline covered in lush vegetation, but we were bound for perhaps the most iconic of the draconic holdings: the black-sloped and flame-cracked slopes of the mountain called Krennotets. “The Crooked Peak”, as it translates, lived up to its name. The stone spire was remarkably narrow, leaning to the south as it rose toward its peak, culminating in a valley that leaked falls of lava down a mile of open mountainside. The vista was spectacular and terrifying, visible from miles away even with the ash and soot in the air.

In truth, Krennotets wasn’t far from the snowy base of the mountains; it was part of that mountain range after all. That pleasantly meant that our journey didn’t leave any of us dead from poisonous gasses or catching on fire, or even encounters with particularly hungry dragons before we reached the base of Krennotets itself and its signature rivers of lava.

All that changed alarmly rapidly. I first saw the shadow on the ground, and I had no more time than it took to look upward before it landed with a crunch in front of me. Glistening scales of blue guarded the crests of orange wings, and two curved ram-like horns flanked a gullet full of fangs. The dragon was maybe twice my size—formidable, but hardly worth comparing to a fully grown wyrm. In the space of overcoming my shock, three more apparently adolescent dragons swooped down to join the first.

“Ponies! What are you doing here?” To say the drake shouted at me would be an understatement; I had to dig my hooves into the rough volcanic soil just to avoid being swept away by the force of his voice. I’m certain a good half of my nose hairs curled away and died under a similar though far more brutal onslaught.

“We’re here to see Clover the Clever,” I explained, when the foul wind died down. “My companion Blizzard here says we’re looking for her on the summit of Krennotets.”

“You cannot go to the summit!” the dragon shouted back. I dug in my hooves again, and this time held my breath.

“Not need shout!” Graargh bellowed at the dragon, hypocritically adding a bellowing roar that belied his size.

Several of the dragons snorted back laughter, and one just to the left of the apparent leader knelt down (a strange sight indeed on reptilian legs). He spoke in a condescending tone. “Oh, a little bear thinks it can talk that way to dragons. Should we give him a bath?”

“Yeah,” a deep-voiced and full-bodied drake replied. “In some lava.” He laughed at his own joke, and apparently the other dragons were equally amused by the statement of the obvious.

I stepped in front of Graargh, cleared my throat, and spoke up again. “Why can’t we go up to the summit?”

The lead drake rolled his slitted eyes and maintained his deafening volume. “The summit is a protected place. Only the strong may go, if they can earn it.”

That was easy enough. I smiled, and popped my neck in a show of confidence. “My name is Mortal Coil, Court Mage of the Crystal Union. I’m most likely the single strongest mage in our entire species, save the divine sisters. So if you could get out of the way—”

The lead dragon snorted small flames as he and his companions laughed. “You claim strength with words? Hah. You shall not pass.”

I snorted back, albeit less pyrotechnically. “Alright, so you’ve got some sort of test then? Look, I’ll skip to the end of this and save us both some time. Why don’t you go get whatever dragon is actually in charge to come down here and talk to me?”

The dragon glared. “I am Torch. I am the Dragon Lord, as I have been for twelve years.”

Some days I wonder if offending heads of state is my real Cutie Mark talent, and the seven-pointed star is misleading somehow.

“Alright, Torch. You’re the ruler of the dragons. Wonderful. I’m going to assume then that older, smarter dragons don’t want the title.” I earned another glare. “Same question: what do I have to do to pass? Fight you? Do you only respect physical strength, or will hurling you off the mountain suffice?”

Torch laughed. “You? Throw me? You are tiny, pony.”

Behind me, Graargh tugged on my jacket. “Morty, I pretend to be big dragon?”

I glanced briefly back at Graargh and then sighed. “Kid, now is really not the time for us to play pretend. Where did that even come from?” I didn’t waste time waiting for a reply. “Torch, you let Clover up the mountain, right? Sort of a grassy green pony, a lot older than me?”

Torch snorted. “She is strong. Impressed Krenn.” He gestured toward the summit with a claw. “You are not.”

I couldn’t help but let a brow climb my forehead. “She impressed… the mountain? Is that some sort of backwards cultural ritual, or is the mountain literally alive?”

The dragons scowled, some baring their maws of sharp teeth and glowing fiery throats at my blunt (though accurate) assault on their culture. Before Torch could dive onto me, Blizzard walked forward. “Drakes, is there any way we can go up the mountain without violence? That’s all we want.”

“No. We prove strength by size, or by fighting. You are tiny ponies. You can try to fight, but I will eat you. Or you can leave… but you will give us the gems you have when you go.”

I glanced down at the breast of my coat, where I’d stored the gemstone spells I had prepared for my confrontation with Clover, and then up at Torch. “You really don’t want to eat these.”

“No, pony. I want to eat you.” A distinct glow formed behind his teeth as he continued to shout. “They are a consolation. Please choose to fight us, so that I can have both.”

I cocked my head in Blizzard’s direction. “Do you want the big one or the other three?”

“Morty!” Blizzard took a nervous step away from my side. “First, are you seriously going to do this? You aren’t even going to try to find a peaceful solution?”

“Trying to find a peaceful solution was that entire conversation,” I countered, glancing briefly to Torch, who was watching me with unveiled amusement and unsubtle hunger. Licking his lips with a forked tongue made that unnecessarily apparent. “Are you going to help, or not?”

“I don’t know how to fight, Morty.”

“You don’t…” I honestly had to stop speaking to process the statement. “Your father of all ponies never taught you how?”

Blizzard’s wings grew tighter against her body at mention of her father. “Do we have to talk about this right now?”

“That pony is right,” Torch bellowed. “You only have a bear cub and a flying rock, ‘Mortal Coil’. Will you still fight?”

I nodded. “I’ve survived worse.”

“Obviously not true, because you won’t even survive me.”

All four dragons burst into laughter at Torch’s comment. I laughed with him, entirely sarcastically. Torch frowned, his eyes shifting across myself and his three companions. “If I had wanted you to laugh, I would have told you to. That was a fact.”

I replied by lighting my horn. I had no intention of casting a spell yet, but something magical promptly happened nonetheless. Beneath my hooves and the claws of the dragons, the earth began to shake and rumble. In the distance, small cracks in the mountains around us revealed new pools of molten stone and cut off old flows.

“Krenn!” One of the drakes behind Torch shouted.

Another began to quiver. “We should run!”

“You imbeciles! I am the Dragon Lord!” Torch shouted. “You will not fly!” The last sentence carried much less weight, delivered as it was to the tails of three dragons flying off toward the horizon.

I couldn’t help but scoff. “After all that, just lighting my horn was all it took to impress the mountain?”

Torch opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by the heavy thud of iron striking stone, not far behind me.

The voice that followed it could only be described as tectonic. It rumbled like stone scraping stone, and it flowed thick and heavy like magma. “It is only a mountain, unicorn. You cannot impress it.” Far more gently, the voice spoke past me. “Good evening, Lord Torch.”

“Lord Krenn,” Torch replied to what was increasingly obviously a dragon standing behind me. As I turned, Torch widened his stance, almost as if preparing for battle with the other dragon.

The dragon approaching us was in many ways Torch’s opposite: he was calm, he carried himself with considerable poise despite having such a young body, and most notably, he was missing something like a third of his original body mass. Dark purple scales tinged by char covered the lanky lizard from his furrowed brow all the way down to the stump where his right leg should have been. He leaned heavily on a smooth iron shaft that served as a sort of walking stick in place of the missing leg, and occasionally shifted his wings to assist his balance. It was that slight motion that showed me, if only for a moment, that his left wing was similarly crippled with its webbing torn and cut in enough places that the appendage could probably substitute for a doily in the event of a tea-related emergency.

“I have not been Dragon Lord since your grandmother was hatched, Torch. That title is yours now.”

I glanced in Blizzard’s direction in confusion; the dragon in front of us was obviously shorter than Torch, perhaps just a bit taller than me if I stood up on my hind legs. He would never have passed for the wyrms of legend who could easily crush a castle beneath their girth. My pegasus companion only shrugged, as confused as I was.

Torch answered Krenn harshly, shouting at the supposedly older creature. “Dragons should listen to me, not you!”

“I don’t give commands. I only give advice.” Krenn seemed to have forgotten me, limping forward on his iron pole toward the apparently far younger dragon. “For example, in this situation, I advise you to let Clover deal with this pony.”

“He is a puny horse! I do not need some tiny horse’s help—”

“You have forgotten the strength of ponies, haven’t you, Torch?” Krenn stepped well inside Torch’s personal space, and leaned forward. Looking up to meet Torch’s gaze seemed to lose some of the potency of the action, but Krenn spoke firmly nevertheless. “Do you remember what happened to your predecessor?”

Torch turned to me and snorted derisively. A burst of flame escaped his nostrils. “I remember,” he grudgingly admitted. “But the Dragon Lord does not run from a threat. If anything, now I must destroy him.”

“Consider leaving here an act of generosity. To me, if not to Clover. Like leaving meager prey to a younger drake when it is beneath your attention.” Krenn tapped his staff on the ground. “She will kill most likely kill him for you, if that is enough to please you.”

Torch huffed again, and turned directly toward me. “I can take you to the summit, then. But only you.”

“And Angel,” I replied, gesturing to my rock.

Torch cocked his head, and then nodded as he revealed his toothy maw. “Your ‘Angel’ looks delicious.”

“Master Coil, I am suddenly feeling much less comfortable…”

As Angel spoke, the dragon ‘Krenn’ began to walk away from us. After two strides, his long neck turned to glance back at me over his shoulder. “One warning, student of Wintershimmer: if Torch dies because of you, I will lead the dragons against Equestria.”

I swallowed heavily. “I wasn’t planning on hurting him. I’m not the one who wanted a fight at all in the first place.”

Krenn nodded and continued his slow, limping departure. That left Torch standing beside us, idly tapping one of his hind claws on the volcanic stone. The young dragon crossed his forelimbs across his chest. “Right. You and your rock can come. The rest stay.”

“Stay here?” Graargh frowned. “But I want see top of mountain.”

“I’ll come down and get you once it’s safe. But my business with Clover might involve dangerous magic. I really, really don’t want you or Blizzard getting hurt.”

Graargh slapped his own chest. “Am strong! Not hurt!”

“Graargh, the last time I did a dangerous magical experiment, the strongest wizard in the world died. I know you’re strong, but this isn’t about brute strength. Angel and I need to go alone. I promise I’ll come back soon.”

I turned to leave, and found myself pinned under a heavy furry weight. It took me a few moments to work out that my impending death by strangulation was actually Graargh’s way of showing his affection.

“Safe, Morty. Come back.”

“Yes,” Blizzard added somberly. “Please.”

I took little solace knowing that if I turned out to have lied to my friends, at least it would be because I was dead.

The path up the side of the mountain was surprisingly obvious. The whole way, I felt eyes on the back of my neck, but I never saw another dragon. Only Torch led the way, fuming like a petulant teenager with every stride.

What I guessed was most of the way up the side of the volcano, I spoke up. “Torch?”

“Lord Torch,” he corrected with a throaty growl.

I dipped my head. “Apologies. Lord Torch, can you tell me about that other dragon, Krenn? Is he named after this mountain?”

Slitted eyes rolled in their sockets. “No. The mountain is his. It is his name, not the stone’s.”

“His mountain? Like it’s named after him? Or he owns it?”

“Both,” Torch answered. “He made it.” The dragon punctuated the blunt announcement by leaping over a small river of lava trickling across the path. “I see you are surprised. Did you think your sun-horse and moon-horse were the only ones?”

“I… Wait, Krenn is a god?”

Torch shrugged. “I do not know that pony word, ‘god’. Krenn is Krenn. ‘Crooked’, because of his leg and his wing. He is the oldest dragon. At least, the oldest one alive. He is small, but his magic is strong. He tears down mountains and brings fire up from the earth.” Torch gestured up to the summit, which I realized was surprisingly close by. “That is what the other pony wants. Earth-fire, to melt ice and grow plants.”

“Melt ice? Grow plants?”

“In snow on the other side of the mountains.”

I quirked a brow. “The Compact Lands?”

“I do not know that pony name either,” Torch replied.

Angel, helpfully, floated down toward me. “I suspect that is what he is implying, Master Coil.”

I nodded, leaping across the little stream of lava myself and continuing after Torch. “If the ground were heated in the Compact Lands, that might make it possible to grow some crops even despite the windigo and the blizzard. But why Clover? Why not Cyclone?”

Tilting his rings, Angel emulated a shrug. “Perhaps she wants to atone for her mistake?”

“Maybe,” I answered. “Or maybe this is some step to getting control of River Rock back from Cyclone.”

“You are being quite pessimistic, Master. Were you not concerned with giving Clover some sort of a chance? That is what we discussed on the way here.”

“I know… It’s just one more thing that needs an explanation. And I don’t know if I can trust any answer Clover gives me.”

“Then shut up,” Torch interrupted. “You ponies talk too much. You even talk to a rock. Ponies are insane.”

I was left to silently contemplate what to do about Clover, and to doubt my own intuition as I weighed Wintershimmer’s word against a mare I had never met. Mercifully, at least, the road the rest of the way up to the summit was short.

As I described earlier, the side of the mountain curved inward near the peak, meaning that the volcanic glass and stone offered a leaning overhang that the lava of the ever-active volcano could pour down from. To my surprise, the path up to the peak wound its way behind this curtain of molten stone, revealing a substantial cavern of black rock and white ash, worked into an unnatural set of right angles by draconic claws. There was a clear floor to the amphitheater of stone, and a clear ceiling as well. Between them, the rounded wall was covered in arcane writings consisting of blue chalk, ash, powdered gemstones, and a thousand other rare reagents.

Sitting before this wall of scratchings, my eyes settled on a pony.

I recognized Clover in an instant from my glimpse into Smart Cookie’s memories, but the years hadn’t been kind to the ‘Clever’ archmage. Her olive green coat was patchy and thin, and the shadows from her darker green mane only emphasized the creases on her muzzle and the bags under her eyes. For those of you familiar with the Hearth’s Warming Pageant that she wrote, I’ll note that Clover didn’t dress nearly as humbly as the stage notes suggest—which is a shame, since at least a tattered brown cloak would have some measure of narrative potential.

Instead, Clover dressed herself like an uptight librarian, with a pair of gold-rimmed pence-nez and a formal blue robe that dragged on the ground behind her hooves, as evidenced by the thin rim of gray grime that had built up on its hem.

“Lord Torch!” Clover called. “These strata in the mountain are fascinating and—” Clover’s voice fell away as her eyes swept past my escort and onto my delightful visage.

“Hello, Archmage.”

She paused for a moment, unsure of how to address me. Finally, she settled on perhaps the most realistic greeting I’d found in my journey. “Necromancer.”

“So you recognize the coat? Fantastic. That will save time. My name is Mortal Coil, Archmage. And at least for the moment, it remains a pleasure to meet you.”

“Krenn sent this pony to you,” Torch explained. “He said you would want to kill him. I will let you.”

“I think Krenn is assuming a certain amount of hostility that isn’t actually…” Clover’s words trailed away as Torch, apparently apathetic to the correction, turned his back and left us alone. After a moment of awkward silence, Clover took a few steps forward. “Alright, Mortal—”

“Coil, please.”

Clover’s brow fell at the interruption. “I suppose I can see why you might prefer that. Alright, Coil, what brings you so far from the Crystal Union? Did your master send you?”

There was a surprising amount of venom in the way she pronounced the word ‘master’, especially for a mare of her age.

“Wintershimmer encouraged me to come find you, but that isn’t why I left the Union in the first place. Let me summarize a very long story, Clover. Wintershimmer the Complacent is dead, which somewhat ironically makes me the Court Mage-regent to Queen Jade. Unfortunately, the circumstances of Wintershimmer’s death led me to be falsely accused—and let me emphasize falsely—of his murder. Which makes me…” I took a large breath for dramatic effect. “Court-mage-regent-in-exile Mortal Coil. Pale Master, et cetera.”

“I see.” Clover adjusted her glasses yet again. “So what exactly does Wintershimmer want you to do now that you’ve found me? Should I be worried?”

“That depends entirely on your morality.”

Clover frowned. “Congratulations. I’m worried.” The mare’s horn lit, not actively casting a spell but merely readying her mana. “Are you going to dance around your intentions any more?”

“Alright. Archmage Clover the Cruel, according to the Edicts of Pride laid out by King Malachite the Titan, I accuse you of willfully neglecting your post as archmage, of sparing a malicious spirit despite knowledge of the damage it would do, and of conspiring with said spirit for power according to the Forbidden Rites of the Warlock… Well, I could keep going, but I assume you get my point.”

“You think I’m a warlock?” Clover placed a hoof against her chest. “This coming from a student of Wintershimmer the Complacent?”

I cocked my head. “Wintershimmer wasn’t a warlock.”

“No, but your predecessor was.” Clover seemed to catch the slight rise in my brow. “Did Wintershimmer not tell you about Solemn Vow? I would say that was odd, but I’m beginning to see more and more of Wintershimmer’s hoof in this already.”

Of course, knowing Wintershimmer, that wasn’t really a massive surprise. Moreso, I was intrigued because I’d never heard of this other pony, and I wanted to know why Wintershimmer had denied him. But that was another question that I needed to trust Clover before I had an answer to. “I don’t know if I ever had a predecessor, but that’s beside the point for the moment. How do you answer your charges.”

Clover sighed to herself. “I’m not a warlock.”

“You understand I can’t just take your word for it.”

“I know. But I don’t have any reasonable way to disprove your accusations. I can’t prove what my motives were, and honestly, I doubt you would believe me if I explained myself. Wintershimmer didn’t.”

“Try me.”

“Your understanding of spirits is wrong. Spirits do have free will, and they can change. I’ve seen it.”

I chuckled to myself. “Well, you were right. I don’t believe you. You’ll have to forgive me, Archmage, but I tend to hold the writings of Electrum the Omniscient above a pony who thinks there are only six schools of magic. A spirit can no more change its behavior than a pony can change their cutie mark. ”

Something about that comment got under Clover’s skin, if the slight bulge of a vein on her temple was anything to judge by. “If you aren’t willing to take my word for it, I have to accept your challenge, as disappointing as that is. I knew Wintershimmer was a despicable pony for taunting me about my mistake, but I must have overestimated him. I never thought he would try to use his claims as an excuse to have me assassinated.”

Clover adjusted her robes, tightening the brooch that held them closed across her chest. With a slight burst of telekinesis, she affixed a small golden chain to her glasses, wrapping it around her neck to keep them from getting lost. Only when her preparations were ready did she look up, staring me directly in the eye. “I’m not going to kill you, Coil, but I can’t promise that this will be completely painless. Are you certain you want to duel me? If so, I’d like you to promise that you will yield when I render you unconscious.”

“You’re welcome to try,” I told the archmage. “I’ll give you my word, if you somehow manage to beat me. For the sake of fairness, will you yield if I render you dead?”

Clover rolled her eyes behind her elaborate glasses. “Very well, Coil. Can I assume your mentor taught you the traditions of a wizard’s duel? Or is your training limited to obscure magical history and unicorn law?”

I replied by extending my right forehoof directly ahead of me, then sweeping it down so scuffed lightly against the volcanic rock, before folding it slowly against my chest. “My name is Mortal Coil, called the Undying, Court Mage-in-Exile of the Crystal Union, Pale Master, the As-Yet-Unkindling, Guardian of the Amethyst Sea, Grandmaster of the Order of Unhesitating Force—”

Clover held up her own hoof. “Who calls you ‘the Undying’?”

“...well, I do.”

“You’re not an archmage yet.”

“No, but I am the Court Mage of the Crystal Union.”

Clover cocked a brow. “Coil, while it may be technically true that you inherit those titles with Wintershimmer’s death, you probably shouldn’t be wearing them all so brazenly. You haven’t actually earned any of them, have you?”

“In a few minutes, I’ll have beaten a seated archmage in a duel.”

That taunt earned a tired sigh from the archmage. “I doubt that, but let’s presume you somehow do. You’re seventeen. What are you hoping to prove here?”

“It’s not so much that I want to prove anything, Clover. I’m here to save the world. Do you have any more philosophical questions, or are you ready to do this?”

Clover’s left hooves slid out to her side, lowering her stance. “Killing me isn’t going to make you a hero, Coil.”

“Of course not. I already am a hero.” I shifted my stance and nodded. “Shall we?”

XXIV - Rumble in the Volcano

Now, a lot of things went through my mind as I stared down Clover. Wintershimmer had trained me extensively in the art of magical dueling, so I gleaned more than a bit of information just from the way Clover stood and angled her horn. She had a counter-clockwise coiling on her horn, likely favoring her left side, for example. However, at the time, I didn’t think any of that mattered. I knew Wintershimmer’s spell, and she couldn’t defend against it.

“Angel, please stay back.”

Though I did have some small concern for my golem, my gut told me Clover wouldn’t actually attack him so long as he stayed on the sidelines. But there was another reason for the comment: giving the impression I my attention had left her. Thus, when my horn lit up, Clover might be delayed by just a moment. The coiling of my horn made me fast enough that just a moment was all the lead I needed.

I knew Clover felt it: that oft-mentioned chill at the base of the skull. Her eyes widened. But I couldn’t do it. I hesitated. And in that pause, her horn lit up in reply and flung a spell at me, wild and almost on instinct.

I admit, I’d never seen anypony hurl a spell so quickly; I barely had time to even start dodging before it hit me, square in the right leg. It tingled and then went numb, but it was the sudden weight pulling down my leap to the side that gave me the first sickening realization of what had happened. My grasp on Wintershimmer’s spell fizzled away, the surging light gone with no small part of my precious mana. But that was hardly the worst part..

My leg was stone, from the hoof up nearly to my shoulder. In that regard at least, I have to give Clover credit—she’d gone for a beautiful white marble. In the moment, I wasn’t quite so optimistic, though.

I hefted the heavy leg so it wouldn’t scrape on the ground, and lunged with my three functional legs out of the way of a second spell, and then a third and a fourth. Every lunge left me closer to the sheer cliff that carried Clover’s notes. Thankfully, Clover’s assault halted before my legs grew tired at carrying their new weight. When I glanced up to my opponent, I noted that a slight drop of sweat was worming its way down from her brow.

“I promised I wouldn’t kill you; the petrification isn’t permanent. Just do be careful you don’t break it.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” I called back. “Can you offer any other helpful advice on how best to go about dueling you?”

I realized how blatantly I’d left myself open when the middle-aged mare smiled and replied, “Surrender.”

Hesitantly, I put my marble hoof on the ground. It held my weight, so I lifted my other hoof and dug into my jacket. Out came a ruby, glowing from the mana I’d placed inside. As I had explained to Blizzard and Graargh, it held a pre-cast spell, dramatically weaker and infinitely less flexible than something fresh from my horn, but with the notable advantage of not tiring me out.

Apparently, pulling an unknown item from my jacket had Clover nervous; she hurled a new spell at me, one I didn’t immediately recognize. I responded by hurling the ruby I was holding against the volcanic stone before me.

With a violent crack and a burst of fiery red, the ruby shattered. I felt the ground shift under me, and moved my flesh-and-bone leg back down to stabilize myself. A wall, easily twice my height and width, surged up from the stone in jagged bursts, interrupting the oncoming spell. When Clover’s arc met the stone, shards of the rock broke off, flying every which way like tiny razors.

As soon as it struck, I leapt out from behind the wall, back in the direction I had come—hoping that she would be expecting me to continue my straight dash toward the heavily carved wall of the mountain. For a moment, I even dared to think I was right.

Clover was exactly as good a mage as I had feared. I didn’t even have time to start Wintershimmer’s spell before her magic was flying for me again—the same petrifying bolts she had opened our duel with. As I skidded to a halt on three hooves, I brought up the first shield that came to mind. Pale blue curved before my muzzle, mere moments before her spell would have struck. Instead, with a visible ripple and an ear-piercing crack, I felt my magic redirect hers. The petrifying spell surged back across the mountaintop toward its maker, only for Clover to casually dispel it; the effort seemed not to have bothered her in the slightest.

In contrast, I was fading. I’d used my two spells, and beyond that I was hauling a not-insubstantial amount of solid stone with every step. I could probably still outrun the aging mare, but I was a far cry from outcasting her.

As her horn started lighting up, I grabbed an amethyst from the lining of my jacket. Without hesitation, I smashed it against the closest piece of stone I could find: my marble leg. As purple light arced out from my crippled limb, I shouted upward. “Angel! Try to keep up!”

Clover’s next spell was another of her crescent arcs, whose purpose I still hadn’t identified. It didn’t matter; I hardly intended to let her catch me. Breaking into a full sprint, I headed straight for the cliff wall. As I ran, I rotated the shoulder of my petrified leg.

Clover stumbled. Loose stones slid across the ground, and even the magma flowing off the side of the mountain changed its course.

‘Down’ had changed in my favor.

“Gravity control? That’s impressive evocation, especially to fit into a gemstone.” Clover elected to adapt to the rapidly changing gravity with a casual downhill strolling pace. Even as she spoke, her magical onslaught continued, blasting all around me. Her first four or five blasts missed, but soon it became completely obvious I wasn’t going to keep dodging with three legs. So instead, I used just one.

Turning my stone leg upside down completely was a gut-wrenching experience, as I hung in midair halfway toward freefall. “Angel!”

“Here, Master!” Almost as soon as I heard the words, I fell on top of Angel in the upside-down chunk of the world I’d created. My flying rock couldn’t actually hold up my weight, but he certainly slowed my fall enough for my purposes. Secure for the moment, I glanced over to watch my opponent. Thankfully, Clover was falling as well, flailing her legs wildly.

“Mana,” I ordered the golem, and in a moment, I felt Angel oblige. Sweet energy coursed through me, even if my three good limbs still felt drained from not only the casting, but all the running and jumping I’d already done.

“Master Coil, if I may, perhaps yielding to her—”

“I have to know,” I interrupted, in the midst of our slow fall. “Swing us over that lava.”

“Master Coil?”

“I’m going to need you to be very brave, Angel. Please, trust me.”

As Angel flew us sideways, so that the overhang and the edge of the lava fall were ‘below’ us, I watched Clover catch herself in her own telekinesis and right herself to stand on what had formerly been the roof of the overhang. “Alright, Coil, I’m impressed,” she called out. “But now I’ve only got one question for you.” Her horn ignited with a frankly enormous spire of her purple mana.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Do you feel lucky?”

I watched the last of the purple glow on my marble leg fade, and as Clover’s released a small scream at the shift in gravity, I called out to her. “In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.”

In retrospect, what I really meant was ‘there’s no such thing as good luck.

I was closer to what had formerly been the ceiling, and landed before Clover did. I expected to have an opening when she landed, but when I looked up, I couldn’t believe what I saw. With inequine grace, Clover was somehow running down the loose pieces of volcanic rock that had been flung into the air from my manipulation of gravity, momentarily resting on each one just long enough to slightly arrest her fall. In the shock of her incredible feat, I forgot the shock of my own plan until I saw the orange glow on my marble leg.

“Angel, drop your halos!”

With the golden discs, Angel lost his ability to fly. All that was left behind was a sentient rock. In the pinnacle of bravery, I scooped what was left of Angel out of the air, holding him in the frog of my good hoof, and lifted said leg directly above me.

Just in time to catch a river of falling lava directly atop me.

My horn flared before the molten stone engulfed me completely.

“Are you hoping I’ll assume you’re dead and stop paying attention?” Clover asked. “If that was the plan, you should have at least pretended to look surprised. You posed for the lava. Nopony does something like that unless they already have a plan to survive it.”

Of course, I was busy, so she didn’t get an answer. Clover sighed. “If you’re still alive to hear this, you’re a decent mage. Incredible for being barely a grown stallion.” Then she laughed gently to herself. “I wonder if you can hear me under all that lava. Coil, would you like to continue, or are you ready to concede?”

I answered by walking out of the lava straight toward her. Fire dripped from me and my jacket, completely concealing my horn, my coat, and my clothing alike.

“If you were hoping that coating yourself in lava would protect you from my magic, you haven’t thought through the results.”

“Oh? My apologies, Archmage Clover, but I’m afraid you are going to have to explain that one to me. Lava ought to be quite effective at—”

Clover cocked a brow. “You’re his golem, aren’t you? Angel, right?”

“Oh. Uh, quite, Archmage.”

About that time, I was actually standing about sixty feet behind Clover, where I had teleported after building Angel a body shaped like me out of lava. I had, admittedly, hoped he would have been able to emulate me ever so slightly more effectively. Alas.

I reached into my jacket for my last two gemstones… but my hoof only found one. I ripped it out of my jacket and hurled it at the ground at Clover’s hooves. The ruby shattered.

Nothing happened.

“Bad luck?” Clover shook her head.

I caught the way she said the word. “How could you possibly have…?”

“Wintershimmer sent you to duel me and he didn’t even teach you my thesis?” Clover shook her head, smiling. “If he hadn’t taught you his spell, I would have almost bet he wanted you to lose.”

She wasn’t lighting her horn, so I decided to humor her, and see if I could learn something about magic. “That’s your second quip about luck now. And your name is Clover. You’re doing something here, aren’t you? Messing with luck? Or rather, probability?”

“In the absolute simplest possible terms, yes. But you’re a smart colt, Coil, so I’ll explain a bit more. Three hundred years ago, Archmage Hourglass taught us that time isn’t simply a line; it’s the water in a branching river. Some of the forks in the river are wide, and some are narrow; we most often call their relative sizes ‘probability’. Reality is a leaf floating on the water. When you get pushed down the fork you want, that’s luck. The smaller the fork, the luckier the pony. But until the leaf actually goes down one fork of the river, both forks are possible futures.”

I paced on my three good legs in a wide circle around Clover as she spoke, feeling the drain on my magic. I’d spent my four spells, and letting her talk seemed like my best tactic.

“Hourglass taught us that when we use magic to look downriver, something dangerous can happen: we don’t have good control over which fork we see down, but whichever one we do look down becomes the only fork; it becomes the guaranteed future. And if we don’t look into the future with magic, we only learn what fork of the river we’ve gone down when somepony actually observes the result—like putting your hoof into your jacket to see whether or not all your rolling around and jumping broke one of your gems. Or to put it another way, a tree that falls in the forest cannot have made a noise unless somepony eventually comes by and notices it fell over.”

I nodded. “Most of that is King Electrum’s work on divination. Time works as a quantum wave; until you check where it actually went, it goes both paths. Are you saying you can cheat that, and know which way it’s going to go without looking?”

“No. Manipulating probability of future events with magic always involves observing it. The second you try, you already decide which path is absolutely, certainly going to be the case. That’s what makes looking into the future dangerous. But that’s because King Electrum and Archmage Hourglass actually looked into the future themselves. I don’t actually see what the future holds in my spell. I send a little magic charge down all the possible futures; a spell that would let me see the future, but isn’t strong enough to actually give a vision. Then, in each possible future, my future self adds mana to the spell, based on how good I feel about a particular outcome. Obviously, in the possible futures where you kill me, I can never add any magic to the spell, so present me can never see a vision from those futures. But in the futures where I win, I add magic and send the spell back. Whichever future sends back the most magic ‘wins’, and that’s the future my spell shows. And since I’ve then looked at the future, it becomes almost certain. I don’t know ahead of time exactly what I’ll get, but I can guarantee with almost absolute certainty that something good comes true.” Clover smiled. “Star Swirl and Queen Platinum refuse to let me play bridge with them anymore.”

I nodded. “So you have perfect luck? Is that how you ran down the falling rocks so perfectly?”

“Ah, you did notice. Yes, I just happened to get ‘lucky’ that every rock was in exactly the position I needed to form a safe path down to the ground without falling and hurting myself. Admittedly, the spell is draining even in the present, but at this point you’re looking a lot more tired than I feel. And you now know that I have perfect luck, and that you’re probably out of prepared spells, I feel like I should ask one more time: would you like to yield?”

I gave the only natural response.

Some of you following along in this narrative may be reflecting that my choice of title was odd. I call this little sliver of my life story A Beginner’s Guide to Heroism, yet the best you’ve seen me at is a somewhat egotistical but well-meaning teenager. At worst, I was an unwitting assassin in service to an explicitly evil wizard. But standing near the peak of that leaking volcano, I made a choice to be something better.

I lit up my horn. Clover lit hers. Her spell came first: another petrifying bolt.

I grabbed onto her soul. Her eyes widened behind her gold rimmed glasses in utter shock. And just before her spell struck me square on the muzzle, I pulled.

I don’t know if the drain of my own magic or her spell took my consciousness first.

XXV - Memories of a Clever Soul

There they were. The windigoes that had frozen her solid. The demons that had killed thousands, tens of thousands, a million ponies with their cold and cruel winter. They were weak, helpless, and whimpering as they lay against the far walls.

In Clover’s peripheral vision, I watched her horn struggle with the ice surrounding an earth pony—it could only be Puddinghead, if his hat were anything to go by. But though she struggled to free him, her eyes were focused on the spirits at the far side of the cave, and another of Equestria’s founding figures.

Commander Hurricane seemed less aged in Clover’s memory than what Wintershimmer had shown me of Smart Cookie's. In place of fatigue, he carried vengeance. One of the windigoes dared to try and rush past him, to try and escape to freedom. He drew his sword and drove it straight through the heart of the helpless spirit, all in a single fluid motion. The spirit’s screech of agony was a damning noise, but worse still was Hurricane’s graceful stride past the creature’s dissolving form.

Only a moment later the windigo dissipated into an ethereal mist and a shower of cold water. The other two windigoes saw this, and they struggled backwards in response.

I felt Clover steady herself in the freezing room. Then she turned, leaving Puddinghead’s side. Heavy burlap brushed against her flanks and her hooves slid on icy stone, but she was too late.

“Stop!” I felt her shout, even as Hurricane impaled the second windigo. “Commander, stop!”

As the pegasus warlord pulled the sword from the mist of what was previously another demon, I slid clumsily into his side. Even at that contact, through Clover’s cloak, the pain of his armor eating away her magic was immense. Still, she struggled. Her magic and her hooves grasped for Procellarum. The effort was quickly proven vain. With an expert roll and a kick to her ribs, Hurricane freed himself from the grapple and turned to face her, the sword still in his mouth.

“What are you doing?” he growled, his voice deeper than Smart Cookie’s memories—a difference of perception. I hardly needed the facts; what Clover felt was what would judge her.

Clover felt sympathy.

I felt her overwhelming worry for the ‘innocent’ windigo as she leapt between the demon that was Hurricane and the last of the windigoes. “They don’t need to die, Commander! They’ve learned their lesson! Can’t you see?!”

And in her mind, I heard another word; one she had never spoken, but one I could not have mistaken.

Scorpan.

The windigo behind us whimpered, and Clover hesitated for a moment, glancing back towards it.

My magic twisted Clover’s soul—less in the sense of a corrupting evil like ‘peer pressure’, and more in the sense one might twist a globe to get a better look at the other side. I needed an answer.

What was ‘Scorpan’?

The answer consumed my vision of the cave of the windigoes. Darkness enveloped the cavern, and in its place, I found a hallway of huge stones and brilliant tapestries, lit by orbs of magic floating in glass lanterns.

River Rock, in its heyday.

Clover must have been much younger, both because the castle wasn’t buried in ice, and because my point of view inside her head was substantially lower to the ground. Her well-shod hooves walked a plush carpet, following closely behind a much larger figure who, with every step, emitted a quaint and irritating ‘ring’.

Star Swirl the Bearded had invested a little bit too heavily in his epithet. Huge white whiskers hung from his muzzle down to his hooves, swaying back and forth into and out of Clover’s vision, sometimes blocked by his substantial robe. Utterly unlike Wintershimmer, the Court Mage of the Diamond Kingdoms was stout and firm, with broad shoulders and a powerful brow that occasionally glanced back to check on his young apprentice. As his toned forelegs twitched and his hooves met the floor to achieve sturdy strides, I took note of his robes.

Sun and stars, his robes.

Literally. Rolling waves in shades of blue ran across the back of a hem more than long enough to trip a pony who found the sudden need for a desperate run, or even a relatively reasonable walk up some stairs. At the edge of said hem were a series of enormous, spherical golden bells. Their flashy reflective surfaces were as gaudy and tasteless as their sound was irritating. And in case you think I’m building to a roundabout compliment, let me clarify: said sound was infuriating. Finalizing the perfect masterpiece of poor taste, the garment was covered in a pattern of crescent moons and golden five-pointed ‘stars’ in neither discernable pattern, nor even an accurate representation of a real night sky, with its single moon.

“Master, is something wrong?” Clover asked. “You’re angry.”

“I’m not—” Star Swirl snapped, before catching himself. “Clover, I am not angry. But I am nervous. The stallion we are about to talk to is not a very nice pony. He and I do not get along. But I find myself in the unfortunate situation of needing to ask for his help.”

“Why?”

Star Swirl growled in his throat. “I’m afraid your questions will have to wait until later, Clover. I want you to see what is going to happen in this room, but I’m afraid I will need you not to interrupt. I promise I will see to your questions as soon as we are done. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master Star Swirl.”

“And can you promise that no matter how curious you get, you won’t interrupt unless I address you?”

Clover hung her head a little bit, and in glancing at her hooves, I got the impression she must have been about eight years old. “Yes, Master Star Swirl,” she said, more sheepishly.

“Thank you. I don’t want you to take the wrong lesson from this, Clover. Curiosity isn’t bad; most often, it is very good, and I’m glad you love to ask questions. But in this meeting, curiosity can be dangerous.” At the sound of doors opening, I looked up to find that Clover’s pace had brought us to the end of the hallway her memory began in. As Star Swirl’s golden magic faded from the handles of two enormous wooden doors, I realized the chamber was the throne room of Burning Hearth Castle. Near our entrance was the throne that I had last seen holding the behemoth form of Cyclone—though the throne sat empty in Clover’s memory. And all around the room were brilliant colors, tapestries and treasures befitting the wealth of the Burning Hearth Castle at its height.

At the far side of the room, though, were two figures clad in black, and trimmed in red. Wintershimmer still somehow managed to look old despite Clover’s memory being easily fifty years before the actual present day. In terms of notable differences, I only reflect that his mane line had not yet retreated behind his horn, his forehead was not as visibly wrinkled, and his eyes were not quite so sunken into his skull. He stood tall, and his signature staff was nowhere to be seen.

Beside Wintershimmer was a colt who most certainly wasn’t me, dressed as Wintershimmer’s apprentice. His fur was a muted orange, and his mane and tail were fiery red—both elements accentuated by their somewhat wild, ill-groomed shape. If he really was this predecessor whom Wintershimmer had lied to me about, he wasn’t up to my caliber in either magic or physical appearance.

“Wintershimmer,” Star Swirl called across the room, his voice so businesslike and formal that I don’t think an actual tone of anger could have conveyed a deeper hatred.

“Star Swirl,” Wintershimmer replied, with a calm smile that indicated he knew he had the upper hoof, and that drawing attention to that fact brought him the same personal pleasure that a sadist might gain from the edge of a fine piece of parchment, a gallon of lemon juice, and a pound of rock salt. “This is Solemn Vow, my pupil. Solemn, meet Star Swirl the Bearded, Court Mage to King Lapis.”

Star Swirl nodded to this ‘Solemn Vow’, who I found myself disliking more with every passing moment. I, as in Mortal Coil—Clover hadn’t yet formed an opinion about him. The older archmage likewise refrained from extending his hatred of Wintershimmer to the young colt. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Solemn Vow.”

“I imagine it ought to be,” Vow answered dryly.

In that moment, Clover decided that she, too, did not like this colt.

Star Swirl gestured in my direction. “This is my apprentice, Clover. Clover, as you have likely gathered, this stallion is Wintershimmer the Complacent.”

I heard Clover gasp—clearly, she remembered the title much more than Wintershimmer’s somewhat unusual given name. “You’re the exiled archmage? The barbarians’—”

“Clover,” Star Swirl warned.

Wintershimmer chuckled. “No, it’s quite alright. I wouldn’t want an impressionable mind misled.” If I had to describe the tone of voice my mentor wielded, I would call it ‘serpentine’. “You’re correct, Clover. I protect the crystal barbarians from spirits and magical threats. More specifically, I serve as the court mage to Warlord Halite.”

Star Swirl cocked his brow. “Halite? What happened to Corundum?”

“Corundum decided that he disagreed with my counsel, and after an argument on the matter, that he was no longer in need of a magical advisor or protector. Unfortunately, I’m told, it was only a few moments after I left that he came under attack by a powerful rogue mage. Alas, I wasn’t there to save him, and he quickly found himself rendered into a rather delightful mosaic across the floor of the Crystal Spire.” Wintershimmer actually let himself chuckle at his own comment, and Solemn Vow laughed with substantially less subtlety. “They never caught the killer.”

Clover didn’t seem to understand Wintershimmer’s implication, but I became harshly aware of my inability to wince from behind Clover’s eyes. I was altogether familiar with the idea that my mentor was a brutal pony, but in all the time I had known him he had never done something so… messy.

“Is that necessary? In front of the foals?” Star Swirl asked.

Wintershimmer sighed, smiling and tilting his head toward Solemn Vow. “I did it in front of him. If you’re worried your apprentice is going to be affected by a bit of violence with a barbarian, how is she ever going to stand up against a nightmare? Or a siren? Or, stars forbid, a draconequus?”

Star Swirl’s shoulders tensed, and I watched wrinkles deepen on his brow. “For the moment, I propose that we agree to disagree, then. The fact of the matter is that I need your help.”

Wintershimmer nodded. “You conveyed that much in your message. I’ll go so far as to assume this is either an issue with necromancy, or you’ve become aware of a spirit that’s threatening the kingdoms. And unless King Lapis has finally died of his rotting horn and his daughter decided she wanted to talk to father dearest, the latter seems much more likely to me.”

“You’re right,” Star Swirl replied. “As clever as you ever were. The centaur is coming.”

Never in my life had I seen Wintershimmer that surprised. Old age must have stolen most of the flexibility in his face. “The centaur?”

I should mention that for all my education with Wintershimmer, I was just as lost on the reference as Clover was. All I knew is that whatever the centaur and its definite article name implied, the statement was enough to worry my mentor.

“He’s already manifested. I’ve assembled a team, but we could use you, Wintershimmer. I’m prepared to talk to Lapis and end your exile, and to offer you an archmage seat in Amber Field after—”

“Star Swirl, stop.” Wintershimmer picked up a hoof and rubbed it against his temple. “The earth pony capital? That’s what you’re offering me?”

“It’s the second most prestigious archmage seat…”

“Do you realize how much power I would have to give up to take Amber Field? Don’t insult me, Star Swirl.”

Star Swirl’s voice climbed toward fury. “Is that what it’s about to you, Wintershimmer? Even protecting your wards is about gaining power?”

“I don’t recall having ever claimed otherwise,” Wintershimmer retorted.

“Then enjoy your trip back to the Spire.” Star Swirl whirled, with such a force that the bells on his hellish robe shrieked.

But as the larger and far hairier of the two archmagi walked away, Wintershimmer spoke to him. “I never said I wouldn’t do it.”

A sigh from Star Swirl preceded his question. “What do you want in exchange?”

“The reputation of having done it.” My mentor smiled toward Clover. “We both know that I’m the best duelist alive, so I’ll trust you to give me command of this team you’ve assembled. Beyond that, I don’t need compensation. Only the fact of having done it.”

“Master, you’re doing it for free?” Solemn Vow cocked his head. “Why?”

“A lesson for later. Hold your tongue, Vow. Star Swirl, who is the rest of your team? How many of the other archmagi are with us? I assume Mistmane at least will be joining us?”

Star Swirl turned to face his old rival. “No. None.”

“None? If you’re about to propose leveraging the king’s army, I might as well leave now.” Wintershimmer waited, and after about three seconds of incredible patience, began to tap his hoof. “Well?”

“Scorpan, would you please join us?”

At Star Swirl’s request, a large shadow drifted over the floor of the chamber, and Clover cast her eyes up to see it. The… ‘creature’ that this Scorpan was took the form of a behemoth, shaggy biped with a lion’s mane, batlike wings, and a scorpion’s tail.

I recognized the creature only a moment later, but I could not believe my eyes. Or rather, Clover’s.

A gargoyle hadn’t been seen or fought by a unicorn mage in seven hundred years.

“Greetings… Wintershimmer, was it?” The gargoyle, Scorpan, offered a sizeable claw in what looked like a request for a hoofshake.

Wintershimmer stared down at the apparently offensive limb, and then without addressing Scorpan, turned pointedly back toward Star Swirl. “I’ve always found your personal sense of honor pathetic, Star Swirl, but you cling to it so desperately that I have a hard time believing you’ve let yourself become a warlock. I’m going to give you this one chance to explain why you’ve brought a gargoyle into River Rock.”

Star Swirl shook his head, his looming beard swaying from the force. “I haven’t bound him, Wintershimmer. Scorpan is free. He came here of his own accord to warn us about the centaur.”

“I see.” Wintershimmer closed his eyes and sighed. “Vow, please leave the room.”

“But Master—”

“My attention will be on protecting myself, Vow. If you stay, you will die. Dealing with a spirit is rarely a controlled matter.”

Vow cocked his head. “What about her, then?” And he gestured toward Clover. “Why does she get to stay?”

“She is not my apprentice. I cannot command her to leave. She’s welcome to do so if she is intelligent,” Wintershimmer replied. “But I wouldn’t worry about protecting her, since you’ll be killing her in a duel when you’ve grown.”

Clover winced, and even Vow seemed a bit put off by the blunt comment. He stood there, staring in Clover’s (and my) direction, until Wintershimmer spoke again.

“Go!”

Never had I heard Wintershimmer truly shout before, and apparently Vow hadn’t either, judging by how far up between his legs he stuck his tail while fleeing the room.

Clover, too, moved to run, but she stopped fairly quickly. Star Swirl glanced back to her and shook his head. I felt Clover’s trust in her mentor as it overcame her fear.

I could hardly say the same of myself.

When the heavy iron doors creaked shut at behest of the young colt’s magic, Wintershimmer spoke again. “I should not have to lecture you on this, Star Swirl. Do you remember Emeraldine’s Conclusion?”

“A spirit cannot change its ways, and any spirit that comes to the earth does so to do evil,” Star Swirl quoted.

“The death of Archmage Flare the Illuminated? Or Respite the Despised?”

“Seduced by a siren, and lured into a contract by a djinn, respectively.”

Wintershimmer growled. “And yet you still bring this thing into the throne room? You still trust it?”

“Most of my kind are cruel, as you say, Wintershimmer,” Scorpan told him in a much more convincing growl. “But not all of us.”

Star Swirl nodded. “Scorpan could have killed me in my sleep when he came to River Rock. But instead, he roused me to warn me.”

“Then perhaps he’s telling the truth,” Wintershimmer nodded. “Or perhaps he is playing a long game. Do you have some clever means of telling the difference? Some proof that a spirit of his power could not possibly cheat?”

The question earned a slow grate of Star Swirl’s hoof across the stone floor. “You know I do not.”

“Of course.”

“Then tell me, since you seem to have proven yourself such wise counsel, Wintershimmer, what would you do in my circumstances?”

“Ah, finally, a reasonable question.” Wintershimmer’s horn ignited in golden light. “Hear the gargoyle’s warning, gather the full college of the archmagi, and then disperse it for safety.”

Scorpan, it seems, was smart enough to infer what was coming. His huge leathery wings flapped once, hurling his body out of the way of Wintershimmer’s first beam of magic. The golden light lanced across the room and then carved a long thin arc almost like a sword. One of the stone columns in the room crumbled, though the roof and the gallery overhead stayed upright.

“Wintershimmer!” Star Swirl’s horn ignited only a moment later, and a beam of almost white golden magic flew at my mentor. Wintershimmer’s attack faded and he hurled up a shield to defend against the beam. Behind the brilliant light, I saw him grimace at the force it took him to maintain the shield.

“So disappointing, Star Swirl… still relying on brute force over real cunning after all these years?” Despite holding the shield, Wintershimmer turned to see Scorpan pacing toward him from the corner of the room. In a feat worthy of an archmage, without releasing his shield, he sent another blast of magic flying toward the gargoyle. The relatively simple bolt had no hope of hitting, but it did stop Scorpan’s advance for a moment.

“Brute force is my strength over you, Wintershimmer. Part of me wants to condemn you for attacking an innocent, but tragically, I’m not surprised. I should never have called you here, master duelist or not.”

Wintershimmer smiled. “You’ll find I haven’t yet attacked an innocent. But you do raise a good point.” And then, releasing his shield, the frailer of the two archmagi blinked out of existence mere moments before Star Swirl’s beam of pure power struck him.

Clover’s head searched around the room for Wintershimmer, and in a moment, found him perched atop the back of the throne, balancing carefully on three hooves. His horn was glowing even more brightly than before. “Make your choice, Star Swirl.” And with those words, he flung two of his slicing, blade-like beams out into the room: one aimed at Scorpan and the other straight toward Clover.

I didn’t see what Star Swirl did, as Clover was too concerned with defending herself. She turned away from the oncoming beam and started to gallop away, but on such small legs, I knew something else was due to save her. I half-expected a golden shield from her wooly teacher, but instead my senses were overwhelmed when Clover was covered in what seemed to be a massive mound of hair, all of it tingling with pure magic.

Wintershimmer gasped, and I felt Clover try to tilt her head out of the mound of fur, but a rough and raspy voice convinced her to stop. “Stay here, little Clover. You are safe.”

Scorpan.

Around us, I heard a raging wizard’s duel, so close and yet so tragically far away. Stone cracked, tapestries burnt, and I missed it all.

And then, all at once, it was quiet. I heard a hoof, and then another, limping toward us. Along with them came the jingling of bells. Star Swirl approached.

“I’m sorry, Scorpan. And most of all to you, Clover,” the stallion told us. “He’s gone now.”

“You killed him?” Scorpan asked.

Star Swirl shook his head. “That wasn’t really my old friend; he made a golem of wax to take on his appearance, and guided it from afar. He might still be in the north with the barbarians, for all I know. I fear we would not have fared so well if he present in the flesh, with his real horn.” The old mage took another deep breath, shedding some more of the stress of battle. “I should not have risked bringing him here.”

“You’re trusting,” Scorpan replied, finally standing up from his place covering Clover. “It is an admirable quality.”

“Sometimes a foolish one, but yes. Wintershimmer was my friend, once. I don’t pretend I expected that friendship back today, but I had hoped he might have seen past that. I should never have put you in danger, though.”

Scorpan shook his head. “You were right to call on him, Star Swirl. We do need help. But we will have to do without him. I only fear that you, I, and the sisters may not be enough.”

Clover spoke up at that. “The sisters? Are they other wizards like us, Master Star Swirl?”

Star Swirl chuckled. “I shouldn’t be surprised that your curiosity overpowers a near-death experience, Clover. In a sense, we might call the sisters ‘spirits’. They’re… let’s just say that they are very shy ponies. But I’m certain you’ll meet them some day.”

“Why would a wizard be shy? You always say—”

As a young Clover’s innocent questions continued, the memory began to fade away.

When I ‘awoke,’ the transition came abruptly and was followed by a slow development of horror at my location and my decisions, somewhat like being splashed in the face with a bucket of ice cold liquid while one is sleeping, and then only later learning that said liquid was pure elemental acid.

Clover helped me to my hooves, all of which had returned to being flesh, blood, and elegant jacket. “Steady, your equilibrium is probably off. Lean on me.”

I obliged, and Clover held me upright for a moment as she provided a gentle pressure to my back. Still drowsy, I calmly sat.

“Good. Good, Coil. How are you feeling?”

“Hmm?”

“Talk to me, Coil.”

A tinny, familiar voice erupted near my ear. “Oh, he can speak? Master Coil, please, say something to me—”

“Shut up, Angel,” I managed to drone out, moving a hoof to my brow to try and somehow rub out the now lingering ringing in my skull. “Thank you for your concern, but next time you’re worried, asking my state from a few paces away and at a regular speaking volume will do nicely.”

“Oh. My apologies, Master Coil.” Angel floated backwards—apparently, Clover had replaced his halos for him.

Clover herself slowly lowered her support of my shoulder, and I found myself able to sit upright comfortably. “You seem to be making a swift recovery. Can I say the same?”

I blinked twice in confusion. “I’m sorry?”

Clover lowered her glasses and glared at me over their gilded rims. “What did you do to my soul?”

“I didn’t change anything; I just looked at it.”

Clover sighed. “The cold truth, Coil, is that you’re my better at necromancy, no matter how much older or more experienced a mage I might be in other schools. You’re going to have to explain this a bit more slowly.”

I nodded, sitting a bit more stiffly upright. “Inside every pony, there’s a bundle of magic and memories that make that pony who they are. We call that bundle the ‘soul’. And—”

My explanation earned a cough into Clover’s hoof. “I’m not your apprentice, Coil. Nor am I a foal. I know what a soul is.”

“Wintershimmer taught me to always open a discussion of theory with basic principles. I’m sorry. As pathetic of an excuse as it is, it’s the way I was taught. Let me get to the point. The trick to Wintershimmer’s spell isn’t ripping out a soul; that’s actually just some brute force and a basic seance. The trick to it is that it is normally extremely difficult to grab onto a pony’s soul without also grabbing onto their body. The two are magically linked—that’s the little tingle at the base of your skull. Once I have a grip on a soul, though, there are more ways to use that grasp than just severing it. In your case, I used a grip on your soul to get an objective, impartial look at your memories as you honestly remember them. While the brain holds some memories, the more foundational and deeper ones are imprinted more… I guess you might say more ‘legibly’ on the soul. Of course, I had to hope that the memories that influenced your sparing a windigo were a deeply rooted part of who you are as a pony.”

Clover quirked a brow. “And what did you learn?”

“You were telling me the truth. Spirits can change their ways… or at least, Scorpan got you to believe that when he saved your life. And Wintershimmer knew it too.” I caught my eyes wandering away from Clover’s direct gaze, but I couldn’t bring myself to bring them back. “He lied to me, about your being a warlock. He lied about my being his first student. He lied about why he wanted me to kill you, and I trusted him.”

An olive hoof touched my cheek and pulled me back face to face with her. “No, you didn’t. You could have killed me, but instead you took the time to check.”

I snorted. “Great work, Morty. You only almost murdered a perfectly innocent mare.”

“You can’t fault yourself for the evidence presented to you. If I only knew what you knew, I would be inclined to investigate too.”

“You wouldn’t have if the source was Wintershimmer.” I stood up and turned away from her. Instead, my eyes turned to the sweeping expanse of volcanic hellscape that marked the very core of the draconic lands.

Clover sighed. “I don’t know you, Coil, and I’m sorry that this is the way you feel, but I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong here. If anything, I’d say you deserve credit for not giving in to the temptation to just… well, frankly, to kill me and protect yourself.”

I swallowed, and stared off into the ash and char. I didn’t have an answer; I didn’t know if I even had words. I spoke up anyway. “I wanted to be the hero.”

Clover said nothing. Perhaps her epithet should have been ‘the Wise’ instead.

“I came here ready to kill you because I wanted to be ‘the hero’ and save the world. Slay the warlock, end eternal winter… and I was gullible enough to honestly think murder was going to make ponies feel that way about me. Wintershimmer knew exactly what I wanted.”

“And you feel that you’re guilty, even though you realized it was wrong, and you didn’t finish the job?”

It took me far too long to shake my head, and then I finally managed to say something reasonable. “It was never about actually doing good for me, I think. It was always about the popularity. The story. The fame. The stars-damned image.” I picked up a loose chunk of pocketed black stone with my hoof and hurled it off the cliff in front of me. It shattered as it fell, crumbling into dust at the edge of my vision. “That was what Wintershimmer always taught me. More than magic, perception is power. He would do things to be seen as ‘evil’, just so that ponies would be intimidated by him. They’d give him what he wanted, listen to him, even just get out of his way in the road. And growing up, I told him I was going to be a ‘hero’. I was going to be the ‘good wizard’ and travel around and save ponies from spirits and warlocks.”

“I don’t see how that’s any less valid a dream, Coil.”

“If I’m only doing it for the fame, am I really a decent pony?”

“I think you’re going to have to find that answer for yourself.”

I sighed, and nodded. “Where I’m standing today, that road leads down the same path Wintershimmer followed. If I had killed you, I would have gone on thinking you really were a warlock. I’d have dragged your name through the mud, completely convinced of my own heroism. I can’t be that pony.”. I laughed, bitterly. “Wintershimmer did give me one good piece of advice. I need a new mentor.”

Clover nodded. “I'm afraid I'm out of the teaching game these days, Coil. But my apprentice, Diadem, is setting up a college in Everfree.”

I shook my head. “With as much respect as somepony like me can manage, Archmage, I'd sooner give up magic completely than sit in a classroom learning off a chalkboard alongside a huge mass of foals. I'm beyond the point of lessons that you can learn in a lecture hall.”

Clover shrugged. “You might be surprised, but the choice is yours.”

I stood up. “Thank you, Clover, and I’m sorry for taking your time.”

“Coil, I petrified you for several hours. Please, for your own health, at least stay here a day and—”

“My friends are waiting for me,” I told her. “I promised them we would go to Everfree City. If I get the chance I’ll see to it Wintershimmer’s staff is sent here—or at least as far as River Rock. Hopefully the dragon will forgive you for not killing me along with it.”

Clover nodded. “Safe travels, Coil. I hope you find your answer soon.”

Only one of her parting wishes came true.

XXVI - Father Figures

It almost didn't surprise me when Graaaagh tackled me with a bear hug—though thankfully he wasn't actually a bear at the time. What surprised me far more was Blizzard's show of enthusiasm. “We were worried, Morty.”

“I'm fine,” I answered perhaps a bit flatly.

“Time to head to Everfree City?” she asked. I only nodded back.

“Where Everfree?” Graaaagh asked.

I didn't bother answering, but my pet rock unhelpfully chimed in. “A few weeks hike south of Union City. It's the capital of Equestria.”

Feeling the need to give a remotely useful answer, I added “It's back the way we came. We have to get back to where it isn't snowing.”

Graaaagh frowned. “Not want go back. Not want visit fire pony. Not like.”

Blizzard chuckled at that, but after a moment’s thought, grim realization brought our gazes together. “We have to get through River Rock,” I muttered. “We barely have enough food for the trip back.”

Blizzard nodded. “We should have packed more supplies. We could have gone around.” Her hoof tapped the sack on her side, which was clearly nearly empty. “Could you get some from Clover? Can we go meet her?”

“Better if we don't,” I responded, more out of interest of putting the encounter behind me than anything else. “I doubt Clover has much food to spare, unless the dragons are feeding her meat. And even if she did, we can't carry enough for that long of a trip on hoof.” I scratched at my chin. “Is it possible to take a boat from River Rock and reach the ocean? Or are there rapids or waterfalls in the way?”

Blizzard shook her head. “All the interesting parts of the river are north. Father says the unicorns used to take their big sailing ships up and down the river, because it’s deep enough. Nowadays, with the ice, it’s just barges and little ships, but we could hire one fairly easily going either way. All the settlements actually on the river to the north are abandoned, so nopony sails that way, but south will work just fine.”

“Not abandoned!” Graaaagh announced. “Have bears!”

Blizzard smiled at the colt and ruffled his mane with a wing. “That's true. But for the most part, the bears prefer to be alone. It's nice to actually get to talk to one.”

Graaaagh grinned wide enough I was worried he might somehow rip his cheeks.

I, for one, was satisfied to just start walking. The ash and snow weren’t going away if I waited.

“What did Clover say to you?”

I twitched at the sound. “You’re still up, Blizzard?”

The sun had set almost four hours earlier, though the change in the light was minimal. It was the first night after leaving Clover behind and heading back, and I was sitting on the side of a mountain staring off at nothing in particular.

“Graargh is adorable, but he takes ‘bear hugs’ a bit too much to heart.”

I couldn’t help a chuckle at that. Blizzard smiled, paced forward, and sat down next to me. “Can I ask you something, Morty?”

“You just did, but go ahead.”

“What’s wrong?”

For a two-word question, the phrase left me quiet for some time. It wasn’t that I didn’t know, but finding the words proved a more involved quest than I would have ever expected.

Seeing my quiet as hesitance, I assume, Blizzard patted a wing on my back. “You’ve been quiet since you talked to Clover.”

“I was quiet almost the entire way here.”

“You were working then. Making those gemstones.” Blizzard smiled softly. “There’s a big difference between being focused and seeming lost.”

“It’s hard to explain.”

She hesitated before adding her next though. “Feelings often can be.”

“No, I mean… it’s about magic.”

That got Blizzard to quirk a brow. “Did Clover do something to your emotions?”

“No, no.” I shook my head earnestly. “It’s about the practice of magic. Let me ask… Nevermind.”

“Ask what?”

“Don’t do that,” I scolded. “Wintershimmer always used to do that. He could never drop anything.” When I said his name, I didn’t realize that I scowled or glared or something, but whatever I did, Blizzard’s focused eyes locked onto it. Still, she said nothing. “Sorry. I’ll just tell you plainly. I need a new mentor.”

“So that’s why you came to Clover?”

I shook my head. “I came to Clover because Wintershimmer wanted me to kill her.”

Blizzard gasped, and all I could bring myself to offer was a short sigh. “I didn’t hurt her. Well, beyond maybe some singed fur from the lava or a few cuts from the volcanic rock. The point is, she’s fine. We’re all fine. Everything’s peachy.”

“But why would you want to kill her?”

That garnered a sigh. “Wintershimmer told me she that she was the reason one of the windigos from the long winter survived. Hurricane was going to kill it, but she stopped him. Wintershimmer said Clover let the windigo go on purpose. And he was… convincing.”

The pegasus mare beside me shivered despite the volcanic heat. “Had he made a mistake, or—?”

I scoffed at the idea. “Wintershimmer had every intention of getting me to kill Clover. He wanted that a long time before I was even born. As for the claim about the windigo… He’s right about that. It’s absolutely true she spared it. But on her side, it was on honest mistake. Or rather, mercy. I have no idea if Wintershimmer actually knows that. Honestly, I doubt he cared. Saying she’d made a deliberate choice was just his way of convincing me.”

“You’re sure?” I nodded. “Why would he want something like that?”

“Because he’s evil!” I snapped.

To her credit, though she recoiled, Blizzard stayed seated beside me. “Did he hurt you? Did he… take advantage of you?”

I waved away the question with a hoof. “Nothing like that. Wintershimmer was amoral. I think that was the problem. He always used to tell me that the idea of ‘evil’ was the monster under an adult’s bed. That the idea of being ‘good’ or ‘evil’ was just a way that ponies tried to scare other ponies into acting the way society wanted.”

“I don’t understand…” Blizzard told me. “You said he was evil, but that just sounds like stuff a grumpy old pony would say.”

I swallowed back the bitter words that first came to mind. “Let me tell you a story, Blizzard. A long time ago, way before either of us was born, Wintershimmer got kicked out of the Diamond Kingdoms for trying to turn an earth pony into a unicorn.”

“Why would they kick him out for that? Couldn’t he just wave his horn and undo it?”

“He didn’t use a spell,” I explained. “Magic doesn’t work that way. He snapped the horn off of his teacher’s corpse when she died and used some thread and a small saw—”

I stopped when Blizzard cringed next to me, squeezing her eyes closed. “Why would he do something like that?!”

I turned to stare off into space again. “The way he tells it, he wanted to cure the unicorn king’s disease. Queen Platinum’s father had the Scourge of Kings. ‘Horn Rot’. It runs in the unicorn royal family.”

“So Gale…” Just her name stung in that moment, and Blizzard’s seemingly preternatural empathy stopped her thought in its tracks.

I carried on before my mind had a chance to dwell further. “Wintershimmer thought that if he could get a new horn onto the king, that might save him before the disease moved down into his skull. Or, failing that, an earth pony might be able to use a horn to take their magic that makes them healthier and slower aging, and give it to the king.” I shrugged. “The method is horrible, but he didn’t just get off on torturing random ponies. But the important point is that he was banished.”

Blizzard nodded. “And?”

“At that point, Commander Hurricane and the pegasi hadn’t come across the ocean yet. So after being exiled, the only civilization Wintershimmer could go to was the crystal ponies, who at the time were a bunch of barbarian tribes trying to conquer the Diamond Kingdoms.”

I cast my gaze a little bit northward, knowing that somewhere on the far side of mountain and sea, my old home was still sitting in the snow.

“Everypony treated Wintershimmer like he was ‘the evil wizard’. Star Swirl, Archmage Mistmane, the Diamond Guard… so he decided to embrace it. He was spiteful, cruel, and nasty to anypony who happened to inconvenience him. He ripped out some poor dragon’s spine to use as a staff, as much for how it made him frightening as for how the dragon’s bones made his magic stronger. And he used his magic to torment and kill anypony who crossed him… not because he liked it, but because eventually ponies stopped crossing him at all. Nopony was brave enough to get in his way. He could do whatever he wanted.”

“He was evil… on purpose? For its own sake?”

“For the sake of reputation. That’s how everypony looked at him… except me.”

I blinked twice, fighting back the threat of tears. I felt Blizzard’s wing tighten its embrace on my back.

“My father was a unicorn soldier who got taken captive by the crystal barbarians. My mother was the pony who captured him. She split father’s horn—” at Blizzard’s shock, I sighed. “That’s what the Crystals used to do, before Queen Jade. Capture unicorns of the other sex, maim them so they couldn’t escape…” I let my voice trail off for a few seconds, sure that Blizzard’s imagination would fill in for me. “The foals were almost always crystals, like my brother and sister.”

“You have siblings?”

“No,” I snapped. “But my parents do have other foals. I was born last, and as you can see from looking at me, I’m a perfectly normal unicorn. No crystal. The old crystals say that’s embarrassing. It means your blood is weaker than the unicorn parent. So mother hated me. My father ran away from the Union when I was a foal, when Warlord Halite died, and Queen Jade stopped the barbarian raids and the maimings. He’s somewhere in Equestria, I’d guess. But I didn’t have any support from either of them. And with my horn the way it’s shaped—”

“What do you mean?”

I sighed, and then lowered my head. “Look at it. See the way it coils? How does it compare to other unicorns?”

“It’s very… tight.”

I nodded, and lifted my head. It felt heavy. “It’s a birth defect. My magic is very strong, but I use too much when I cast. I’m wasteful, and I can’t fix it. If I use three spells without sleeping, I’ll pass out.”

“Is that not very many?”

“Most unicorns can use telekinesis all day. Most wizards my age can do twenty or thirty really powerful spells. And somepony like Star Swirl or Wintershimmer… Well, hundreds aren’t out of the question. Nopony thought I was ever going to be anything. But when I was a foal, Wintershimmer chose me for a student.

“He took me in—literally; I lived in a spare room in his quarters of the palace. I always thought of him as more family than my parents or my sister or anypony else in the Crystal Union. He taught me magic. He gave me this…” I swiped a hoof over my jacket.

“The jacket?”

“My life,” I answered her bitterly. “The jacket, the title that goes with it. The duties it implies. Protecting ponies with my magic. He was the one standing there, guiding me the day I got my cutie mark. And it matched his more than anything my family ever had.”

“That must mean a lot to you.”

“It did before yesterday.” I found myself staring at the ground, avoiding Blizzard’s gaze. “I took him at his word when he told me it was all an act. I took him on faith that being ‘evil’ was a means to an end. I just decided a long time ago I was going to do the opposite.” I scoffed. “I used to tell him I was going to be a ‘hero’ instead. I was going to have statues, and ponies would write down the things I said and quote them, and…”

Blizzard held me while I cried. Her wings held back the searing wind until I found my words again. I don’t know how long I sat there before I spoke.

“He betrayed me, Blizzard. He said killing Clover would make me a hero. He just wanted to use me to murder a mare he knew was innocent, to get revenge for what happened to him seventy years ago. And I trusted him enough that almost did it.”

“Mortal Coil, you are not Wintershimmer.” Blizzard held me close.

I buried my eyes in her shoulder and asked what was weighing on my heart. “But who am I going to be without him?”

The journey back to River Rock was… harder. I had thought in my travels over the icy plains that the return trip would be devoid of overbearing existential malaise, once I had finished my business with Clover. Instead, in every passing moment, I found myself wondering what I was going to do. As much as I lied to myself—a practice that was beginning to border on pathological—deep down I knew that I wasn’t yet ready to call myself a trained wizard. For all the power and the theory I’d gained from Wintershimmer, and for all my own cunning, I had put my skills to virtually no actual practice. Even if I didn’t need a lecturer or a teacher in the classroom sense, I still needed a mentor. And having been turned down by Clover, the number of eligible ponies in the world had grown very small indeed.

Thankfully, at least, the journey was less quiet than it had been traveling the opposite direction. Blizzard shared stories of her siblings, and I entertained our little group with the more interesting of my little ‘duels’ with Silhouette and her goons in the streets of Union City. Graargh exhibited the remarkable insight to try and have me explain what Angel actually was, though I confess that the explanation I provided mostly served to put the bear cub to sleep. Most interesting to me, though, were Blizzard’s memories of meeting the goddess Luna, who by Blizzard’s account would openly visit River Rock just for the sake of stretching her wings and getting out of the business and hubbub of Everfree City.

Despite my interrogations, unfortunately, the goddess had not spent much time talking to my traveling companion. At most, Luna spent a few hours each visit talking to Cyclone before flitting off on some trip, and usually, those discussions were about how best to keep a population fed in constant snow and winter.

Though it would take a miracle, I dared to dream that the goddess might let me accompany her on her journeys. I mean that former phrase literally; on the first night after we crossed the mountains and reach the snow drifts of the former Diamond Kingdoms, lying in a cave burrowed in the snow, I dozed off to sleep dreaming of the goddess.

If you, knowing more of Luna’s powers than I did at the time, assumed that this paragraph was the beginning of a powerful dream sequence, I have only two words for you.

Got ya.

I had heard rumors of Luna’s dreamwalking, but despite my active attempts, she deigned not to visit me in the nights of that frigid journey. I slept peacefully only by virtue of the fact that spending every waking hour on hoof for weeks on end tends to wear one out extremely efficiently.

As we neared River Rock, I set about a task that I had been postponing for too long.

“Graargh, come here.”

“Morty? What want?”

“Ah. Today, Graargh, I’m going to teach you something. It’s a new word.”

“New word?’

“Yes. A very helpful word. Repeat after me. ‘Do.’”

“Do?” Graargh asked. When I gave him a nod, he smiled. “What ‘do’?”

“It’s…” My error came crashing down around my ears. “Um… Well, you see, ‘do’ is a word we use between other words to indicate that—”

“Indicate?”

I briefly bit my lip, thinking. “To tell somepony else that—?”

“So bear not ‘do’?”

“No, sorry, not just somepony; any someone.”

“Okay. So bear is do. Good.”

“No, you aren’t ‘do’. It’s not a ‘thing’ you can hold in your hooves.”

“Claws?”

“Yes, claws, whatever. Look, ‘do’ is an action. Like running, or walking.”

“So, Graargh do?” The little bear cub pantomimed an exaggerated walking motion.

I nodded. “Yes, but you can ‘do’ any action.”

Graargh seemed to think about this for several seconds before smiling. “Understand! Graargh do do!”

Blizzard snickered and I barely resisted the urge to groan.

“Yes, Graargh. I’ll tell you what; you can ignore that word. Just do you.”

“Do you?” Graargh cocked his head. “‘You’ action?”

My subsequent scream echoed over the plains.

River Rock came into view at precious last, and though it signaled the warmth of physical walls against the wind, and maybe even food that hadn’t been kept in a bag for weeks on end, it was also a site of not inconsiderable risk. Blizzard stopped our walking with a raised hoof.

“Alright, let’s figure this out for a minute, Morty.”

I shrugged, almost apathetic. “You’re the one who knows the city. Sneak us past the guards.”

Blizzard shook her head. “Father doesn’t keep the guards on a very reliable rotation, exactly so that doesn’t work.”

“Then we try and sneak in, and if something goes wrong, I’ll teleport us out.”

My calm (and admittedly disinterested) demeanor seemed to put worry on Blizzard’s face. “Morty, when you first showed up here, Gale told me all about the kinds of things you did in Lübuck. With the guards and stuff. I really don’t want to get Father involved in this. Can you do some sort of magic? Please?”

I gave myself a few moments, before answering with a tired sigh. “Graargh, please build the biggest snowpony you can.”

Blizzard looked at me like I had gone completely unhinged, but being a reasonably young foal/cub/whatever, Graargh hardly needed to be asked twice.

“Blizzard, your father is going to escort you back into the castle. Once there, you and he will gather whatever supplies you need and meet Graargh and I at the docks. Angel, could you join us?”

“I’ve been well within hearing distance this entire time, Master Coil. What can I do?”

“Just a bit of acting. I know it was unfair of me to put you on the spot with Clover, and my wit probably makes that a difficult role. Cyclone should be easier. Gruff, direct, short-spoken. Do you think you can do that?”

Graargh turned back from the first ball of what would soon be a ‘snow warlord’. “Ooh! I play pretend fire pony?”

I glanced over to the young bear-thing, confused. “Graargh, first off, Cyclone speaks in complete Equiish sentences. Probably more importantly, you playing this role would kill you. I would have to literally rip out your soul.”

Graargh hung his head slightly and went back to the process of building a snowpony replica of Cyclone.

Once that discussion was handled, my golem spoke up. “I suppose I can try to emulate Cyclone, Master, but I’m hardly a good match.” Angel spun in place, still hovering at about head level. “He is quite a large stallion, and as you are so quick to remind those around us, I am a flying rock.”

I tilted my horn in Graargh’s direction. “That can be fixed easily.”

“I… see.”

Blizzard wasn’t quite so trusting. “You’re going to turn Angel and a snowpony into my dad?!”

I answered with a short nod. “Angel is an ‘animus’, which is a fancy way of saying an artificial soul. But whether a soul is from a living creature or made by magic, they act mostly the same. If I bind a soul to a body that’s capable of movement, the result is what we call a ‘golem’. I have to do a little bit of magic to make inanimate snow into a valid ‘body’, but that’s a basic part of necromancy, and I’m the best necromancer alive. To answer the inevitable question, if the ‘body’ is a literal corpse, you get a zombie or something similar. Do you follow?”

“I think so…” Blizzard nodded. “That might work on the guards, but what happens if we actually run into my father?”

I shrugged. “Fly away. His wing doesn’t work, right?”

“But if he can’t fly, the snowpony body can’t either.”

I nodded. “If you get caught, there won’t be much point maintaining the body. Plus, it’s still going to be made of snow. Transforming it into flesh would be… well, to say the very least, I believe Star Swirl the Bearded is the only pony able to do something like that. So if you run into Cyclone, it’s probably going to melt fairly quickly.”

“Won’t that be dangerous for Angel?”

I shook my head. “We’ll put his core—the rock—inside the snow. If it melts, he can just fly away.”

Blizzard was quiet for a very long time, and then cocked her head. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but is that your whole plan?”

“I’m worried Gale may have given you the wrong impression, Blizzard. If you hadn’t asked for a plan, I probably would have just walked into the city and figured things out on the fly.”

To this day, I’m not sure whether to be happy or offended that she responded to my final observation with a silent stare.

XXVII - Plans Fall Apart

Graargh and I walked the streets of River Rock completely uninhibited. It was a pleasant surprise only in as little as it was a surprise at all. For all of how furious Cyclone probably still was at me, Blizzard wasn’t with me to be a recognizable face, and I had only been in the city two days on my last stop.

Not unlike my previous visit, the city felt dead. I crossed nopony while walking the streets. Most of the windows in the brick-and-stone buildings were dark, curtained and windowed if not boarded up entirely. The massive width of the streets kept the city from feeling claustrophobic or horrifying, but the space only amplified the surreal quality of the empty streets.

Fortunately for my growing paranoia, that hollow sensation only lasted until we reached what I would call the ‘docks’ district. Graargh and I crossed to the other side of a particularly wide street, and suddenly there were ponies. Certainly, they were dour, frozen ponies in heavy coats with heavy glares, but they were ponies nonetheless. Porters moved large barrels and dragged carts, sailors worked cranes and walked up and down gangplanks. The city lived, even if it was only a tiny spark of the warm glory I had heard of in stories and witnessed at least through windows in Clover's memories.

Graaaagh seemed uneasy with the sudden onset of civilization, and clung close to my side, which certainly made the little guy easier to keep track of in the slight crowd. It also didn’t hurt he had become a little green colt as soon as we entered the city, rather than his much more distracting ursine form. Admittedly, given his attitude, I had a growing suspicion he hadn’t intended to take that form, but if his nervousness at the dead city worked to keep us from getting noticed, I wasn’t going to complain I pushed on, offering a few smiles as I squeezed through the masses toward the river, and getting glares and frowns in return. And then, finally, in place of faces, I found the river.

Which is to say, I put a foreleg forward past a particularly large seaweed merchant, found no surface below said hoof, and scrambled backwards to avoid a quick dive into very cold water.

“Alright, well, here's the river, Graaaagh. We need to pick a ship. Got any favorites?”

“Just want to go,” Graaaagh told me in reply

I donned a little grin and ruffled his mane. “Good use of ‘to’ there. You're learning.”

Graaaagh smiled much more honestly than I could seem to manage. “That boat good?”

“Only one,” the gruff voice of the seaweed merchant I had stepped past interjected. As I turned to catch his eye, he simply nodded toward the ship. “You’re Equestrians, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I lied.

“Stand’s out. Nopony who lives in River Rock dresses like that,” he explained, glancing down at my jacket, before returning a squinting, wrinkled gaze to my eyes. “The River’s narrow, and rapid, and rocky at parts. Bargeponies run up and down the river, but barges won’t cross the sea. Most sea ships are too deep, can’t manage the new ice. Captain of that ship’s a unicorn, breaks the ice with her horn. It’s the only ship that goes straight from River Rock to Platinum’s Landing.”

The vessel in question had three obvious desirable traits apparent to me it a glance. Firstly, unlike so many of the boats visible on the shore, its hull looked genuinely wooden and entirely uncheeselike. Secondly, I could see a few passengers disembarking in addition to crates of cargo, so I could trust the captain to accept passengers. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the vessel was fundamentally boring. Unlike a few brightly painted vessels from the Horseatic League or the Equestrian merchant-marine, the boat I was focused on was just a plain brown ship with blank white sails.

It took a bit of effort, but Graaaagh and I muscled our way through the crowds to that ship’s gangplank, and after a few moments waiting for a clear path, I scampered up on deck.

“Hey, colt, what are you doing?”

“Looking to charter passage,” I told the sailor who addressed me. “Four… Rather, I guess it's really three passengers. No substantial cargo. We're headed to whatever Equestrian port you go to first.”

“Platinum's Landing,” the generic sailor muttered. “Captain's below in the hold; she'll know the price for you.” The sailor tossed his head in the direction of a flight of stairs down, set into the middle of the ship.

“Much appreciated.” Graaaagh and I made our way into the hull of the vessel, where an overpowering stench of salt and sweat accosted us. On the other hoof, though, at least it was warm. We fought our way in cramped hallways toward the rear of the vessel, past ponies carrying barrels and crates, until my shoulder pressed against something decidedly harder. It felt like stone.

In the chaos of the busy ship, the crystal pony beside me didn't even glance in my direction, but I felt a chill in my gut at the familiar glint. I glanced backward over my shoulder to check for any other crystals, and I dared to sigh in relief when the coast was clear. No sooner did I turn around in the narrow hallway, though, before another door opened between me and the stairs up onto the deck.

Silhouette walked out, fully armored in her lithe leather, and glanced at the other crystal pony I'd passed. Only at a second glance did I recognize the mare as another of her military lackeys.

“Are we all disembarked?” Silhouette asked over the general din of the ship.

I wasn't about to stand there and risk being spotted just to eavesdrop, so I ducked into the nearest cabin I could find.

Trust my luck that, only a second later, I found myself face-to-face with an old… well, friend would be a bit disingenuous, and nemesis might be too strong. Perhaps the best metaphor I can offer is a recurring rash, like scabies.

You might recall Side Effect from the first chapter of this narrative, but if you don’t, that’s fine. I had to flip back to that to remember her name while writing, if I’m being honest. However, as a younger stallion, I did at least recognize her as a member of the Crystal Union’s military by her uniform, despite her (like me) not actually having a crystalline coat. In fact, I realized this fact so swiftly that before either of us had a chance to say anything, I delivered a hoof directly to her jaw.

I’ve never been much of a hoof fighter, but the sheer value of surprise from the sudden assault bought me enough time to stun her. The surge of fatigue from my second spell of the day, after turning Angel into a facsimile of Cyclone, left me briefly dizzy and panting for breath.

“Morty, why you hit her?” Graargh asked.

I gestured with a hoof to her cuirass. “She’s a crystal pony soldier. She wants to arrest me, just like Silhouette from Lübuck. Do you remember that?”

“With wax ponies, yes. Remember.”

“Right… she’s out there in the hall. She’ll come in looking for Side Effect in a minute…”

Graargh shrugged. “Magic?”

It was a decent suggestion for the little colt, but I had to shake my head. “If I cast another spell, I’ll pass out. Like her. Even if I disguised myself as her, two unconscious Side Effects is only going to make problems.” I glanced to the small porthole in the wall of the ship’s cabin, but it was far too narrow to accommodate even my skull with its horn still attached.

“I play pretend?”

“Sure, whatever,” was the nicest thing I could think to say in reply. Graargh responded to that by scrunching up his face and bloating up his cheeks with air, for however that was going to possibly help. I considered teleporting out of the room, but the porthole only gave me a view of the river, and I hardly imagined I would be much better off unconscious in the freezing water than I would be just confronting Silhouette directly. Inverting gravity was right out. Perhaps…

My train of thought came to a screeching halt with a hammering on the door. “Effect, get your flank out here right now, or so help me—!” The door started to creak open.

I slammed myself against the door at the sound of Silhouette’s voice, and the full force of my weight was just barely enough to push back the much stronger mare.

“What in Tartarus? Soldier, if you don’t open this door, so help me—”

In a display of absolute brilliance, I did my best to emulate her voice. “I’m changing!”

Clearly, I hadn’t thought that one through, as Silhouette made clear. “You think I care how armored you are? And what’s wrong with your voice?”

“I’m… not feeling great?”

Silhouette responded, after a brief but disconcerting silence, by slamming her weight against the door. I was tossed back a few inches before I pushed myself back into place.

“Open this door, Soldier! That’s an order! The Queen’s furious for waiting as it is!”

That sentence escalated things quite a bit. I swallowed nervously.

And then the impossible happened, in a way that very nearly gave me a heart attack.

“Sorry, Silhouette. Almost ready. Just take second.”

The voice was Side Effect’s, despite the odd grammar, and when I turned around, I very nearly died. Side Effect was conscious, standing immediately behind me, and smiling innocently.

“I do good, Morty?” she whispered. Or, rather, he…?”

“...Graargh?” I whispered back. For that question, I got a nod. I glanced over to the floor, where Side Effect was still lying unconscious from my stunning spell. She still had her armor on, despite Graargh wearing what appeared to be an exact replica. “What did you…?” I realized I was on the verge of revealing myself, and let the question die incomplete.

“Alright, that’s it!” said Silhouette outside. In a move of desperation, I lunged behind the where the door would open… only to realize that the real Side Effect’s body was still right there in the middle of the floor, in plain sight.

To my simultaneous amazement and dread, Graargh resolved the problem in the only way he could: opening the door and walking straight out to join Silhouette.

“Side Effect!” Silhouette shouted at point blank, mere inches from me but hidden from my sight. I clenched my teeth. “What has gotten into you?”

“Sorry,” Graargh offered, hanging his head. Or maybe ‘her’? If it was the same effect he used to turn into a bear, then the form might not be an illusion…

Was Graargh a spirit?

“I don’t have time for apologies. Just get on deck! We’re headed to see Commander Cyclone with the Queen, and she’s pissed as it is.” There was a moment of silence in which I saw Graargh offer a slight nod. “Go!” Silhouette slammed the door shut as Graargh walked away.

Had she honestly not seen Side Effect on the floor? Were we really that lucky?

It didn’t matter, of course. I couldn’t let Graargh’s grammar reveal him—especially if Silhouette decided the little shapeshifter was a monster instead of an innocent young… well, whatever he was. I listed at the door to make sure nopony was still right outside, and then slipped out to follow them. They had already left the ship’s bowels, and by the time I reached the deck between the porters and crew of the ship itself, Silhouette had already gathered a formation on the street beside the river. Queen Jade herself was at its head.

As Graargh Jade, and Silhouette hustled away toward the gray, cloudy sunlight of Stalliongrad, Silhouette’s directions started to sink into my mind.

“Oh no,” I dared to speak aloud.

I don’t know if I have words to describe the rampant paranoia I felt as I tried my best to be nonchalant in trailing a massive group of crystal soldiers through the streets of River Rock. Foremost, I’m terrible at being nonchalant. When you look as good as I do, and have as much awareness as I do about one’s apparel, grooming, and so forth, it tends to be hard to blend into a crowd. Usually, that’s a desirable quality.

Usually.

Thankfully, it’s fairly difficult for any ‘normal’ pony, even one as handsome as yours truly, to garner attention in the presence of an alicorn clad in full battle regalia. Jade looked as ferocious as ever, her crystalline coat glinting beneath her teal-painted suit of barding plate. I recall at the time reflecting that, having set eyes on Cyclone’s enormous oar of a blade, Jade’s weapon seemed wholly reasonable by comparison. Even her stunted wing and cracked horn managed to carry a regal and militant appearance.

All these qualities added to the speed at which the denizens of River Rock who had gathered around the bustling docks to see her subsequently rushed and even dove out of her path. The equine masses then remained parted as Jade’s procession followed her: Silhouette in her stunning leather armor, and at least two dozen other crystal soldiers in proper mail that more closely matched their monarch’s. I could spy Graargh in the middle of that mass, one sentence of mangled Equiish away from giving up an otherwise frighteningly perfect disguise.

Somehow, we made it most of the way to the palace before everything went to Tartarus in a handbasket.

At the end of a long street, the most opulent of River Rock’s homes butted up against the main gate that led into the fortress of Burning Hearth itself. There, two of Cyclone’s armored legionaries carried spears and shields, which they rapidly crossed over the entrance at the sight of an oncoming, and apparently unexpected force.

“Gentlestallions,” Jade greeted them. I used to think her voice was regal despite the obsession that had gripped her throughout my youth. Now, it mostly sounded bitter, but at least it was loud enough for me to hear a building’s length away. “You have my apologies for not coming announced, but I promise I come in peace. I’ve hardly brought an army. Just an escort.”

“Why are you here?” One of the stallions asked in reply.

Silhouette elected to field that question. “We’re looking for a fugitive. Unicorn stallion, about my age. He isn’t actually shiny, and he’s kind of sexy—” I took no small joy at the look Queen Jade gave her military commander upon hearing that comment. Silhouette continued unabated. “But if you’ve met who I’m talking about, you’ll probably know him for being a gigantic prick.”

“Morty not stab anypony with horn!”

I slapped my own temple with a hoof so hard that I briefly worried some of the crystals might have heard the clap it made. Thankfully, they were too distracted by Graargh’s surreal grammar coming out of Side Effect’s mouth to notice the noise.

“Soldier, what is wrong with you?”

Silhouette stepped in front of Jade, holding out a hoof. “Everypony, back! Ring formation, blades on!”

Like a carefully crafted machine, the soldiers slid out into a ring, surrounding Graargh.

“Explain,” Jade ordered firmly.

“Coil has a pet bear. He claimed it was a werebear, whatever that means. I don’t know what he did to Side Effect, but the thing spoke broken Equiish like that when I captured him, back in Lübuck.”

“You believe Coil replaced one of your soldiers?” Jade asked, raising a brow.

“I wouldn’t put that kind of a stupid idea past him. He’s probably close by, though. He cares too much about this… thing. He came and tried to rescue it from me back then, and he was out of spells at the time.” Silhouette chuckled. “Actually, I’ve got an idea.” Then, though I was perfectly close enough to hear her speaking before, she tilted her head back and shouted at the top of her lungs. “Coil, get your flank out here! We’ve got your grizzly bear.”

Remember how this story is titled A Beginner’s Guide to Heroism?

I stepped out from the alleyway. “Hello, Silhouette. Your majesty.”

“Coil.”

“He goes by ‘Morty’ now, your majesty,” Silhouette added. “Apparently he wants to literally make an ass of himself.”

Jade didn’t seem in the mood for humor. Her magic gripped the handle of her sword, drawing it calmly from its sheath. “I’m not waiting for a noose this time.”

I took a step back, and then two, lighting up my horn in preparation to teleport away as I had before.

Silhouette clicked twice with her tongue and walked up to stand next to Graargh. “Are you certain you want to leave her majesty alone with your little friend here, Coil? She seems to need to take her anger out on somepony.”

“...no, Silhouette. I don’t.”

Jade frowned. “Any last words?”

I coughed into a hoof as Jade walked forward, looming over me with all the metaphorical might and literal mass of a crystal alicorn in full armor. “Well, for starters, your majesty, you have a terrible sense of time. The last time you asked that question I told you to wait fifty years. It hasn’t even been fifty days yet.”

Jade raised her sword suddenly, and I admit I winced as I shrunk back. “Also, hold on! I wouldn’t do that here!”

“If you are about to tell me about the mess you are likely to make—”

“I’m talking about politics.”

Jade’s sword swung down, and stopped a hair’s breadth from my coat. I jumped just a little bit—thankfully, away from the blade. As I felt the chill of the metal against me, she leaned forward. “Speak, Coil.”

“Silhouette got into an awful lot of trouble with the Equestrians for trying to capture me on their soil without contacting them first. Are you certain you want to try Cyclone?”

“Cyclone rules a collapsed city. A ghost of what this city once was.”

I nodded very carefully, so as to avoid slicing my neck open. “I’m sure he’d agree with you. But nevertheless, he does rule it. And, perhaps more importantly, he rules it with a bunch of Cirran legionaries who used to specialize in killing crystal barbarians.” Jade winced at the word, and probably foolishly, I grinned back. “Now, I don’t mean to insult your forces… well, no, that isn’t true. I absolutely mean offense when I say that your little force isn’t exactly an army. Instead of Halite or his predecessor that Wintershimmer made into a ‘mosaic’, you’ve got Silhouette, who has literally never led a battle.”

“How do you know that?” Jade asked with a quirked brow.

The question was lost, however, in Silhouette’s self-conscious complaint. “I have led battles!”

I glanced up at the Queen’s cracked horn, and then along her back to her missing wing. “It’s my medical opinion that you should stop while you’ve got a head. See, you’re older than I am, and you were around for these battles before I was even born. But I know enough history to know that apart from the Butcher himself, Cyclone is probably the pony you most need to be afraid of. You absolutely could decapitate me right now, and I really couldn’t stop you.” I paused. “Well, that isn’t quite true. In the time since we last met, I learned how to rip out souls like Wintershimmer, and I could get that spell off before you cut me. But I don’t need to. The problem is that then you’re gambling Cyclone won’t take any sort of offense at you. In his city. Where he has an army, and you barely have a mob.”

Jade raised a brow. “So you want me to go and speak to Cyclone first?”

“I’m quite literally betting my life on it. Cyclone and I have more in common than you might think.”

“You’re both treasonous monsters,” Jade growled.

“Your majesty, he’s bluffing.” Silhouette approached, stopping on Jade’s wingless side. “Just finish him.”

“No,” Jade answered, sheathing her sword. “He is likely bluffing, but after the incident we’ve faced from your actions in Equestria, Silhouette, it would not be wise.” Then, reaching over to Silhouette, the gigantic monarch’s hoof lifted off my nemesis’ void crystal amulet. “I only need to ensure his magic doesn’t spare him another encounter with justice.”

Clearly, my act was getting old; I had absolutely been planning to have Graargh sprint to safety, and then escape Jade exactly as I had in my first flight from the Crystal Union.

A pit formed in the depths of my gut as I realized I was actually going to have to lay my fate at the hooves of Cyclone, a stallion whose daughter I had at least ostensibly foalnapped.

XXVIII - The Trial and Execution of the Traitor, Mortal Coil, Pt. 2

I stood on the threshold of Burning Hearth, flanked by two very familiar and yet entirely unfriendly figures. Jade loomed over me to my right, close enough that the frost on the outside of her armor was making me cold even through my jacket. To my left, Silhouette was pressed tight against me.

Somewhere behind me, in the midst of a throng of of crystal soldiers, Graargh was good for virtually nothing beyond the slightest bit of emotional support. Though he still looked like Side Effect, the value of the disguise was completely lost. A dozen spears pointed in the poor little guy’s direction made that much clear.

Silhouette signaled her desire that we enter Cyclone’s castle by slapping me on my cutie mark. Given her solid steel shoe, the blow hurt quite a bit. “Get moving.”

As my hooves began to carry me into the castle, I glanced over to the leader of the Crystal Union’s armies. “You could’ve just asked.”

“Wouldn’t have been as fun.” Silhouette didn’t seem terribly like she was having fun despite the chance to physically strike me. I caught at least two glances over my head up toward Jade, who for her part was fully distracted with the layout of the palace. “For the sake of small talk, how’s River Rock? Got frostbite anywhere fun?”

“Small talk?” I couldn’t help but scoff. “Silhouette, just because we aren’t literally at blows doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten what’s happening. You’re trying to get me executed for something I didn’t do.”

“Are you honestly trying to pin that on me again?” Silhouette rolled her eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, I love not having to listen to him, but lo and behold another certain ‘necromancer’ won’t stop rambling on even when he’s literally standing on the gallows.”

“Alright, Silhouette. I’ll make you a bet: you admit your guilt, go hang yourself, and survive it somehow, and I’ll swear a vow of silence.”

Silhouette chuckled. “Coil, you’ve been such a pain in my flank that I’m halfway tempted to take up that offer.”

“I’ll remember that.”

I turned my head straight ahead and focused on walking.

“You seem pretty confident Cyclone is gonna let you walk away. I’ll humor you: the way Tempest put it, you aren’t welcome in Equestria anymore. If he does let you walk, are you really just going to stay here? Just freeze to death in the snow?”

“No, I’m taking his daughter to Everfree City.”

“You’re not afraid of the Butcher? Or is she that hot?”

I didn’t feel the need to answer.

“Wait, did you not rescue your marefriend? Is she still in Lübuck”

“Gale went back to Everfree City with the Butcher.”

Silhouette’s eyes went wide for a moment. Then she blinked twice and shook her head. “That your idea of a joke, Coil?”

I took a moment of irritation to glare at her. “Let’s be honest. If I had told a joke, ponies would be pointing at you and laughing. Perhaps not in present company, given you pay them, but at the very least you’d be suitably humiliated.”

“Silhouette, is this ‘Gale’ somepony of importance, to garner Hurricane’s attention? Somepony I should be concerned about you having offended during your earlier pursuit?” Jade’s voice cut into our quiet conversation like a blade.

There was a subtle desperation to the way Silhouette fervently shook her head. Her eyes widened, but her pupils shrunk to pinpricks. “She was just some foul-mouthed thief Coil was rutting. She stole Hurricane’s sword.”

I felt my jaw go slack, right before I started laughing. All the pieces seemed to fit together at once, and the picture this metaphorical puzzle revealed was of a surprising amount of trouble in paradise. “You haven’t told her?”

Jade stopped in her stride, turning toward us. “Is this another of his tricks, Silhouette?”

“I… I assume so,” she lied.

I turned to face Jade. “Your majesty, would you like to hear a joke?” I waited a solid moment out of respect for comedic timing, during which Jade raised a single eyebrow. “The ‘commander’ of your military forces directly attacked Queen Platinum’s only daughter.”

Jade’s face tightened, and her eyes flicked toward Silhouette. “Is this true?”

“Your Majesty, I didn’t know… She was just some random pony trying to help Coil.”

“With Hurricane’s sword. Isn’t that just the best punchline, Your Majesty? The Union could have been at war with Equestria a few weeks ago.” I kept my delivery flat, and I admit it almost certainly came across spiteful.

“That will be quite enough, Coil.” Jade passed a moment to glare at me before turning her attention to Silhouette. “Return to the ship.”

“Your Majesty, it isn’t—”

Jade’s horn ignited, and she picked up Silhouette by her neck. I watched the mare who had long been my antagonizer claw at her throat ineffectually, now no longer protected by the void crystal amulet that now burdened my neck.

“You didn’t feel the need to explain this to me?” Jade shouted, point-blank into Silhouette’s face. “My soldiers, fighting Platinum’s daughter on Equestrian soil?”

“I… I…” I wasn’t sure if Silhouette lacked for words, or if she simply had no breath to wield. Crystalline hooves and steel shoes clicked against her own stone coat to no avail.

“If you’re so desperate for war, I’ll show you one myself!”

I’d seen enough. My hoof moved to my neck, and with a firm (and surprisingly painful) yank, I broke the thin chain holding the void crystal necklace completely. On my bare hoof, rather than my jacket, I felt the stone burning and eating the little mana I had left, but I had no intention of holding it for long. Rearing up, I stood tall enough to place the stone on Silhouette’s neck.

All at once, Jade’s grip vanished, sucked into the stone. Silhouette crumpled out of the air, landing beside me as my balance from rearing up failed. The black gemstone and its broken chain clattered to the stones between us.

“You’d interfere? On her behalf?”

“Believe it or not, Jade, I’m not Wintershimmer. I don’t kill ponies, or let them die, because I happen not to like them.” I caught myself shouting at Jade, and then fairly quickly realized that I didn’t care. “And maybe it’s self-preservation at this point, but right now I’m a pretty big fan of fair trials over somepony getting choked to death in the street. I also have the basic common sense to realize that Silhouette didn’t steal four candlecorns and go completely renegade on Equestrian soil. At the end of the day, she’s a corrupt city guard with delusions of grandeur. You, in contrast, are so damn horny for your precious Smart Cookie that you’re willing to risk your whole damn kingdom getting wiped off the map by the Butcher in exchange for a chance at revenge against somepony you think was a bit player in keeping him in a coma! But here’s the dark secret, Jade: if I were really in on poisoning Smart Cookie, I’d have killed him, so the Union could have a real ruler again!”

Jade’s eloquent, well reasoned response was to slap me across the face with the leading edge of her hoof. Coming as it did from a crystal alicorn, the blow was strong enough to leave me in the dark, seeing only little blots of light that looked like stars. Over the ringing in my ears, clear as day, I heard Jade speak. “Back on the ship, Silhouette. I do not wish to see you until we return to the palace. We won’t be long.” Then she glared down at me, her face the only visible thing in my still-swimming vision. “I’ll bring Coil’s head.”

Outside the warped steel doors of Burning Hearth’s throne room, the substantial force of Jade’s crystal escort ran into two familiar ponies.

Blizzard’s eyes widened at our approach. “Morty? What are you doing here?”

“And Queen Jade!” That voice, disconcertingly well enunciated, spoke with a chipper tone at stark odds with Cyclone’s weary expression and scarred body. “Welcome to River Rock.”

Jade cocked a brow at that. “I’m grateful for the warm welcome… Commander?”

I felt a cold sweat slip down my neck, inside the raised collar of my jacket. Angel was going to get me killed. “I’m surprised you offer her such a warm welcome, Tsar. Have you even met Queen Jade before?”

“Silence, Coil,” Jade snapped. “I won’t take more of your time than necessary, Cyclone. The hour is late. I came here seeking your permission, and perhaps your assistance in apprehending this criminal, who murdered a member of my own court and conspired to poison my husband. It was not my intention to act without consulting you, but when he appeared to us on our way to see you, I took the opportunity to apprehend him. Do I have your blessing to deal with him?”

Blizzard, to her credit, seized the initiative before Angel could give away his pathetic imitation of the fiery warlord of River Rock. “Father, you can’t do that! Morty would never murder somepony.”

“Your daughter speaks on matters she knows very little about.” Jade shook her head. “I called up the victim’s soul, and even he condemned Coil.”

“What?” Blizzard looked at me, wide eyed and disbelieving.

I could only offer a shrug and a nod. “Can I at least make my case, Tsar? I’d love to at least have a trial, even if it is coming after my first execution.”

“That seems like a fair proposal,” Blizzard added. “Father, maybe we should head into the throne room instead of standing here in the hallway where we could get interrupted.”

“Oh? Oh, yes! Quite. We are right here after all.” Angel turned, placed a massive red hoof against an even larger steel plate, and utterly failed to open the door. “Just… give me a moment…”

“You must be tired, Father. Are you feeling ill? Here, let me.” Blizzard stepped in front of Angel’s imitation of her father, and lowering her shoulder, slid open the door.
Burning Hearth’s main throne room was much the same as it had been the last time I’d seen in, accompanied by Tempest and Gale. The only major difference, in fact, was that once Jade’s entourage had filed fully into the room, it proved much more crowded. Angel walked his knock-off Cyclone over to the throne at the far side of the room, and there sat with a stiff posture that in no way resembled a pony that had ever sat in a throne before. Nor, were I being completely honest, did he in any real way resemble how a pony might sit at all. His hind legs hung off the bottom of the seat in an entirely unnatural way, so that his back was completely vertical, in line with the throne’s cushion.

If he’d had a spine, I knew it would have been ruined.

“Now, Your Majesty,” he began with his fierce enthusiasm at being ‘helpful’ shining through his every syllable, “You say that Morty murdered Master Wintershimmer?”

Jade tilted her head with a scowl. “I did… but I don’t recall saying his name...”

“We discussed it earlier,” I cut in briefly. “You recall my explanation? About how it really was an accident, even if Wintershimmer didn’t think so at the time?”

“Oh, of course! Yes, now I remember. Your Majesty, I’m afraid you can’t take him. Coil is free to go.”

Jade took a huge stride forward, fury on her face. “Cyclone, what game are you playing?”

“Father made his decision, Your Majesty,” Blizzard replied.

From somewhere behind me, near the doors of the room, I heard a despair-inducing voice speak up over the rising spirits. “Have I, Blizzard?”

“Father?!”

“Commander Cyclone?” Jade spun around. “What is the meaning of this?”

I, in contrast, took the opportunity to skip shock and confusion and jump to the logical conclusion of the whole scenario. “Shit. Angel, step out of the throne before you drop all the snow. It wouldn’t do to be convicted of murder, impersonation, and upholstery vandalism all in one day.”

Cyclone walked toward the front of the room, brushing heavily against me as he moved. Only in retrospect am I able to find it funny that he was wearing a sleeping cap and bedrobe. At the time, I was merely terrified by his presence as he removed the personal garb. His eyes, scarred though one was, tracked Angel as his stone and golden halos shot out of an identical copy of the stallion’s body, which subsequently collapsed into colorless snow.

Jade growled. “You impersonated Cyclone with your rock?”

“To be entirely fair, that had nothing to do with you, Jade.” I rubbed a hoof against my chest. “And before you ask, Tsar Cyclone, it was just to help Blizzard. We assumed if ‘you’ were already accompanying her, the guards wouldn’t feel the need to go wake you. I was just looking out for your sleep schedule, you understand.”

Cyclone snorted. “I see. Blizzard, I will deal with you later. Guards!” At Cyclone’s bellowed ordered, two soldiers stepped into the already crowded throne chamber. “Escort my daughter to her quarters.”

“Father…” She swallowed, building up her willpower. “I have no intention—”

The conflagration that rose up from the throne made me wince back not only from the flash of light, but from the sheer heat present. Despite his display of magic, Cyclone’s voice walked the thin border between disinterest and outright rage. “I do not care what your intentions are, Blizzard. You abandoned our family and your home. You will remain in your quarters until I summon you.”

Blizzard closed her eyes. In spite of the wrinkling of pure hatred on her brow and muzzle, she only said “Yes, Father.” Her hooves were heavy when they carried her toward the doors out of the throne room. She didn’t even lift her head to look at me. But as she passed by, I felt the need to whisper “I’ll keep my promise.”

The problem is, I didn’t believe myself.

Before she’d left the room completely, I let my eyes slip onto the terrified soldier in the middle of Jade’s entourage, and to the small stone floating near my shoulder. “Graargh, you can drop the illusion I cast on you. Do you understand?” He looked at me with a cocked brow, and I struggled to remember his words. “I want you to stop playing pretend, understand? Then you Angel, please go with Blizzard.”

Angel obeyed my command silently. Graargh was less willing, as Side Effect’s form was consumed by green flame. A moment later, as the crystal guards simultaneously jumped back and pointed their spears closer, the familiar bear cub surrounded by spear points called out. “Bad pony still try take you, Morty!” He roared his own ursine name, and then added “not go!”

“Graargh, Blizzard needs you. Please.” I took a moment to walk toward the the little bear, pushing away a few spear points as I did. One of the crystals glared at me, to which I rolled my eyes. “He’s like a six year old foal, you idiots. You ought to point your spears at me.”

They obliged, and I rolled my eyes. Neverthless, I was allowed to approach Graargh.

My friend—no, if I’m being honest, by that point he was more like a little brother—nuzzled into my neck, but he still hung his head as he left, and lingered just a moment in the doorway to glance back at me. I forced a smile in reply, but it was as hollow as the hole in my gut.

When the doors finally closed, we were left in the silence of a smoky room that seemed dominated more by Cyclone’s silent glare than by any of Jade’s soldiers.

We waited what must have been a minute before the pegasus spoke up. “Why are you here, Jade?”

I actually saw a blood vessel in Jade’s temple pulse. You might think this is a relatively trivial level of stress, so let me remind you that Jade’s skin was made of gemstones. She wasn’t your dad’s ‘pissed off’.

“Do you actually know this unicorn?”

Cyclone leaned back in his throne and nodded, his bum wing sliding over the side of the seat. “He calls himself ‘Morty’. He ran away with my daughter. He also brazenly threatened my life.”

“He killed my court mage. And he poisoned my husband.” Jade frowned. “I came here to ask your permission, and perhaps your help, apprehending him. When we encountered him in the street, though, I felt it was wise not to let the opportunity escape us. I still came here for your blessing, instead of executing justice in the street.”

The red pegasus frowned. “You brought a substantial force onto my land. You should have contacted me first.”

“My apologies, Commander—”

“I’m not interested in apologies.” I dared to let a little smile slip onto my face. Was Cyclone really on my side? “I’ll need reparations. Food, in particular. In exchange, I’ll forgive the offense, and you can keep the colt.”

“What?” I stepped forward. “Hold on, Tsar. With all due respect… which I suppose isn’t that much, given that they call you ‘the Betrayer’… you aren’t even going to ask me if I actually did it?”

Cyclone shook his head. “If you had proof of your innocence, I would have already seen it. It’s your testimony against Jade’s—a Queen against a colt who ran off with my daughter, to say nothing of your treatment of Gale, and the way you dare to speak to my face. Guilty or innocent, your death will save the lives of far more ponies here in River Rock. Guards, restrain him in the dungeon until I can negotiate—”

I lit my horn, not even sure what I was going to cast. Jade’s hoof struck my neck before I could even build up enough magic to make up my mind.

XXIX - Deus Ex Somnia

In the cells under Burning Hearth Castle, the wreck of a handsome pale blue stallion shivered in the center of a nest of itchy woolen blankets, glaring spitefully at a barred window nearby. I knew, loosely, that River Rock had once been quite warm in the summer, so it made sense that open windows would be a pleasant—if not necessary—relief for prisoners.

Now, though, River Rock was going on seventeen or eighteen years since its last real summer, and those open windows were not providing yours truly with anything resembling relief. Instead, they offered me the need to continually check my extremities, and make sure they weren’t about to fall (or snap) off. Beyond that tragically intimate task, however, I was largely left to my own thoughts.

That was the worst of it. For an hour at least, and perhaps even two, I dwelt on Wintershimmer. Despite how brutally he’d betrayed me, my feelings on the stallion remained divided. He was very literally the reason I was at the point in my life I had reached that day, both figuratively as a skilled wizard, and literally in a freezing prison cell. I wanted so desperately to separate the Wintershimmer who’d raised me as a father from the stallion who tried to use me to settle a fifty year vendetta. And yet every time I tried to pull those ponies apart, they stubbornly insisted on remaining the same bitter mentor.

And where did that leave me? In the streets of Union City, I’d called myself a hero as I fought off Silhouette’s thugs. Yet when I came up to join Wintershimmer, I had no doubt I’d taken part in poisoning Smart Cookie—even if I had no idea what I was actually doing to the poor stallion. How much had my work contributed to Jade’s madness? What terrible consequences had followed from my days spent helping Wintershimmer with what I had assumed were simply experiments and lessons?

As you can probably gather, my morale had sunk to an icy grave. I’ll spare you any further summary of dreary thoughts, because nopony in their right mind wants to read that any more than I want to recall it.

After some time of my wallowing, my mind finally managed to find a different trail to chase: I was going to die. As you can imagine, I felt this was a dramatically more pleasant topic for meditation.

The above statement isn’t a reflection on fatalist philosophy. I found it pleasant because it represented a challenge, and nothing consumes my attention quite like a challenge with death in the stakes.

I couldn’t count on Jade trying to hang me again; even if she hadn’t figured out my trick, she wasn’t likely to give me a second chance to perform it. I was spent on spells, again, even if I did somehow get the lodestone cap they’d locked to my head to come off of my horn. I could defeat Jade or Cyclone in battle, but not both, and certainly not Jade’s entourage. Graargh and Angel weren’t accessible, and even if they had been, I wouldn’t want them anywhere near a potential fight that might involve Cyclone. The fire he’d shown in our earlier encounters was simply too massive a force to risk a young… whatever Graargh was… and a golem against. I couldn’t count on Gale’s diplomatic skills or Blizzard’s influence over Cyclone to talk our way out of the issue. And even if I did come up with some masterful argument for my innocence, Cyclone had made it altogether clear that he’d hand me over to Jade for reparations unless I could convince her of my innocence. And that ship had long since sailed.

I was going to die.

Would that be so bad? I admit, even without speaking aloud that I somehow managed to come across sarcastic in asking that question. I could probably have convinced Celestia or Luna that I was innocent and earn myself a place in the Summer Lands…

The idea that followed was fundamentally stupid, felt completely unlikely to succeed, and frankly, was the best hope I had left. Unfortunately, it was also simultaneously my worst idea left, which I feel is an accurate summary of my hopelessness.

I shuffled myself, itchy blankets and all, over to the window. Finally able to see overhead, I caught a glimpse of exactly zero stars, and only the slightest of glows from the moon, obscured beyond meaningful recognition by the thick clouds of the unrelenting snow.

“Luna… Your Holiness, or whatever title it is you desire. Please, forgive my ignorance. And frankly, my impudence trying to contact you like this and expecting your attention. However, I’m about to be unjustly executed for murder in River Rock. And if the stories are true, you might actually hear this because I’m talking toward the moon. If so, please help me. If not… I’ll see you shortly anyway?”

A moment later, in a strange bit of recollection from Wintershimmer’s lessons, I added “Amen.”

I then promptly fled from the freezing window, curled up into a ball as far from the outside cold as I could, and worried myself to sleep. The question that sat in my mind as I waited for sleep to come is whether it would be worse if my request went unanswered. The legends about Luna’s boons varied from cruel and inventive to simply brutal; all stated she required some recompense when she intervened in the lives of mortals.

At best, I could expect something time consuming and seemingly impossible, like building a full-sized palace out of sand on the summit of a mountain. At worse, I’d be asked to give her a century of service after my death before being allowed to flit off to the Summer Lands.

If I had known the truth of where those legends came from, I likely would have died the next morning.

For all its flaws relating to blind hope and stupidity, my plan did have one redeeming quality: it worked.

I dreamt I was being chased by Commander Hurricane, in that odd way that you can know in a dream the identity of something you have never seen nor witnessed, because it came from within your imagination. He took the form of a jet black giant pegasus, with flaming eyes and teeth and other similarly ridiculous eccentricities that seemed completely normal within the scope of dreams.

Just as Hurricane’s serrated teeth were about to settle around my throat, a beam of radiant blue pierced the monster, and he vanished like smoke into the air.

“Let me first say, colt, that you are without exception the worst supplicant I have ever heard speak.”

I looked up at an alicorn, whose description I will now spare you on the assumption that in the ensuing years between my writing and your reading, she has almost certainly survived. I only note the magical quality of her mane, appearing less like hair and more like a slice out of the world that opened into some starry far-away sky, as a contrast to my previous experience with Queen Jade, who was both an alicorn and definitively not immortal.

After a few moments of awe and a split second processing her preceding words, I rose to my hooves and bowed forward. “But you did hear me.”

“Hmmph.” Luna delivered the snort with some small measure of amusement. “What is your name, mortal?”

“Well, you guessed it,” I told her with a smile. Luna, to her credit, only bothered with the effort to slightly lower her brow. “Mortal Coil. My friends call me Morty.”

At that, in a display of recognition that somewhat surprised me, Luna’s brow rose to where it had been before. “I had suspected... The stallion Gale has so often mentioned? Well, now I see what she meant about you.”

Never has a sentence been at once so promising and so troubling.

“You said that you were going to be executed unjustly? Is that correct?”

“That’s what Cyclone and Jade are planning, at least… I’m not dead already, am I?”

Luna shook her head. “You call yourself a necromancer, and yet you cannot tell death from a dream? Or was that meant to be poetic?”

I honestly smiled, despite the finesse and brutality of the insult I’d suffered. Luna spoke with a cunning that rivaled (or more accurately, as I would later learn, far surpassed) my own. “You call yourself the goddess of secrets, don’t you? Why don’t you tell me?”

Luna’s matching smile was somehow far more predatory than mine. “Do you actually wish to play this game, 'Morty?' Or shall we settle the matter of saving your life first?”

“The latter would be preferable.”

“As expected. I will be blunt: I can save your life. In repayment, I require of you a geas.”

I blinked. “You want to magically compel me to serve you? I suppose it’s probably worth not dying. Can I hear the terms before I agree?”

“The service will be short-term,” Luna answered. “Less than a year, and most likely less than a day. However, I have not decided what my demand will be. I much prefer to have those I help in my debt for when a day when they prove to be most useful. Do you agree to these terms?”

“Promise me you won’t obligate me to do evil, and I’ll agree.”

Luna cocked her head with a decidedly philosophical expression. “What is evil, Morty? The monster under an adult’s bed?”

The words sent a chill down my spine, not so much from the morality they implied as that Luna had directly quoted Wintershimmer. To my relief and embarrassment, a moment later she released a soft laugh. “You needn’t worry so visibly, Morty. I give you my word, I will not compel you to evil. Do you agree to my terms?’

I nodded. “You have my word.”

“Then when you are free, you will come to Everfree City and submit yourself to me. I expect you within a month’s time. But before then, expect a rescuer. Farewell.” Luna began to fade into the aether of the dreamscape.

I rose to my hooves. “Who should I be expecting? What’s the actual plan?”

Silence met my question, before the stable island of dreaming consciousness gave way to a peaceful sleep.

“Morty? Did you sleep well, my little pony?”

The voice was musical and gentle but without losing its grounding in reality. Nevertheless, drowsy from my interrupted sleep and the terrible quality of my ‘bed’, I took umbrage at the way I’d been addressed.

“Excuse me? Your little…” On the opposite side of my cell bars, sitting and staring at me with what I can only describe as bemusement at my incomplete reply, was the goddess Celestia. Again, you know what she looks like. I won’t waste your time. She had raised one brow at my irate greeting, much like her sister, but otherwise wore a calm, level expression.

I coughed into my hoof. “Oh. I’m sorry. Please, forgive me, Lady Celestia.”

“No, it’s fine.” Once I had stood up, Celestia extended a wing in a motion of greeting. “You can call me Celestia. I prefer not to bother with titles.”

“Your loss.”

Celestia chuckled at that, which gave me a moment to toss off the furs and adjust my signature jacket. “Well, you certainly live up to Gale’s description, Morty.” As she said those words, Celestia’s eyes swept over my body.

Yes. Really.

Forgive me for interrupting Morty’s narrative, but I feel the need to defend my honor. While I really did say what Morty records, I was referring to what he’d said, and not his body. I can’t deny that Mortal Coil was (and is) a handsome stallion, but at the time, he was seventeen, and I was… older. In looking him over, I was less interested in romance, and more in the substantial bruises and cuts he earned in his journey thus far, such as the sizeable welt on his cheek Queen Jade had given him the previous day.

“I hope ‘Gale’s description’ is at least endearing.”

“Hmm…” Where Luna’s smile had been predatory, Celestia’s was knowing and certainly teasing. “I think it will be more valuable if you hear that from Gale yourself.”

I couldn’t help but cock my head. “More valuable? Are you implying there’s some life lesson I need to learn, or…?”

“There might be, but I meant that it’s more valuable for me as entertainment to leave you wondering.” In that very moment, I began to appreciate the hint of deviousness in Celestia’s slight smile. “Now, as fun as talking like this might be, I didn’t fly all this way overnight just to chat. I understand you’ve been accused of murder. Is that correct?”

I nodded. “I… oh. Wait, hold on. I’m sorry, this must seem obvious from your side, but… Lady Luna sent you?”

“You hadn’t put that together yet?” Celestia’s expression grew only more amused. “Am I that distracting?”

“I don’t often wake up in the company of a goddess. When Luna said she was sending someone, I assumed some sort of subordinate. Maybe a servant or a golem or something. I would assume that isn’t your relation with your sister, though…”

Celestia shook her head, stretching her wings. “I elected to come when Luna described your situation because she has a terrible lack of willpower toward Queen Platinum’s chocolates, and thus cannot beat me in a race by wing even on her best day. Luna is many things, but punctual is rarely one of them. And in this case, it wouldn’t do to be fashionably late.”

“That’s appreciated.”

“I’m glad, Morty. Now, let’s start from the top. Who are you accused of murdering?”

“My mentor. Wintershimmer the Complacent.”

Celestia’s eyes widened, and then she chuckled with that airy, soothing voice. “Well, this will be easier than I was expecting.”

“How so?”

“Wintershimmer isn’t dead.”

It was my turn to express shock. “Um… yes he is. Why would you think otherwise?”

Celestia sat down firmly on the stone floor of the dungeon. “Luna and I judge the souls of the dead. We determine who passes on to the Summer Lands, and who is condemned to Tartarus… or a rare few who meet other fates.”

“What, every single pony?”

“For most, the process is unconscious. Thankfully, ponies truly evil enough to even require consideration are rare. Luna could explain our magic more elegantly than I can, but what matters is that there are a certain few ponies we agree to devote our conscious attention to. Wintershimmer was… is such a pony.”

“Hmph. I’m surprised you don’t just condemn him to Tartarus without wasting your time paying attention.”

Celestia seemed taken aback at my callous observation, and her expression darkened. “We never condemn a pony without hearing them out.” She shook her head, seeming to clear the utter seriousness of the comment. Some of her earlier joviality returned quickly. “If Wintershimmer really had passed, either Luna or I would have intercepted his soul on its way to its final resting place. Please, Morty, tell me: why did you believe he had truly died?”

I felt the jigsaw of the mystery at last click into place in my mind. “Celestia, I know Wintershimmer is dead. And I also know why you didn’t encounter his soul. You see, I didn’t murder him. But I did kill him. And I sent him to the Summer Lands.”

Celestia’s brow rose but she said nothing, leaving me to explain. From my battle with Silhouette’s minions that cost me two spells that morning to the experiment gone wrong, I recited the beginning of my journey. Throughout my story, Celestia was silent, listening intently. At times, she closed her eyes in concentration, especially as my description turned more technical. Even as I finished, recalling the pain of my escape from a noose and a swift death at Jade’s hoof, she held her tongue. Only in the ensuing quiet almost a minute later did Celestia speak up.

“Wintershimmer is in the Summer Lands.”

I nodded. “He doesn’t deserve it, but that’s what happened. I didn’t exactly put him there on purpose.”

“No, I imagine you did not.” Celestia shook her head. “I’m inclined to believe your story, Morty. That would be both the most convoluted and the least subtle strategy for murder I could possibly imagine. I need only one element of evidence, and then I will help you leave this place, even if it means breaking you out of prison myself.”

I admit, the thought amused me. “Alright. What do you need from me?”

“Just a spell.” Celestia’s horn ignited, casting a radiant golden glow around my cell. With a surprising ease, she pulled the lodestone cap off of my horn, almost as if it were a simple piece of cloth instead of a stone known for its magic-resistant properties. “Please let me speak to Wintershimmer.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”

“I give you my word, Morty, it will be fine. Would you like to seance him, or should I?”

Wanting for chalk or even dirt, I wasted no time drawing stabilizing glyphs. It isn’t as if I expected to impress a literal goddess with the time-consuming rituals of preparation anyway. Instead, my horn lit in blue, and the spell was cast.

Wintershimmer stared at me as he first as he faded into view, and then very quickly identified the alicorn in the room.

“Wintershimmer.”

“Lady Celestia.”

I still recall that, unlike with my greeting, she didn’t correct Wintershimmer about his use of a title. That is perhaps all I recall about Celestia’s reaction to my mentor; he dominated my focus. Unadulterated loathing is a glutton of attention. Even holding my seance, all that ran through my mind were the memories of my studies under Wintershimmer. Every time I looked the other way when he performed some act of pure cruelty for its own sake flooded the forefront of my attention. Ignoring them seemed like a brutal condemnation of my own character, somehow made worse by the naive belief that his apparent care for me could even suggest there was a decent pony underneath.

Wintershimmer seemed oblivious to my emotions, perhaps because he remained wholly fixated on Celestia. “Coil, I admit I’m impressed. The company you keep continues to improve with each passing day, it seems. I thought you might have been satisfied with the crown princess.” The ghostly eyes of my mentor swept around my cell. “Though your accommodations leave something to be desired. Still playing the hero, then?”

“I don’t see much point playing anything anymore,” I muttered, focusing most of my effort on resisting the urge to start an argument.

“In any case, I assume you’ve summoned me for a reason. Speak, Coil. Or if you have questions for me, Lady Celestia, I will consider answering them.”

“I only have a few,” Celestia replied harshly. “Firstly, have you been enjoying your time in the Summer Lands?”

Something akin to worry passed over Wintershimmer’s face. “I suppose I have. Why do you ask?”

“Professional curiosity. You were Queen Jade’s archmage, weren’t you? Before your passing?”

“Yes…” Wintershimmer answered with the beginnings of a hint of annoyance. “And there are a thousand living ponies who could have told you that, ‘goddess’. Is there a point to this seance?”

“There is. Did Coil actually murder you?”

Wintershimmer rolled his eyes, and then glared at me. “Of course not. The colt was too wrapped up in his delusions of ‘heroism’ to contemplate something as pragmatic as assuming my title by way of murder. Even if he were willing to take that step, he’s smart enough to know he had too much left to learn from me for it to be worthwhile.” Then Wintershimmer sat down, actually addressing me directly. “Tell me, Coil, has that finally changed?”

“It has,” I answered, giving all the words I could bring myself to speak.

Celestia’s wings shifted slightly upward on her back—a motion I only noticed because of how incredibly still the rest of her body remained. “That’s a shame. The world could use more heroes.”

Wintershimmer scoffed. “Heroes are only good for suffering and failing for a greater ‘good’. Coil would be wasted that way. But I have no interest in debating philosophy with either of you. Let me ask you this, Celestia: what do you intend to do with that information?”

“I came here because I believe in Morty’s innocence. You’ve confirmed that. So now I’m going to ensure he is freed.”

“You may as well leave. Coil can take care of himself.” He glanced over to me briefly. “That nickname may have been a convenient way to earn the crown princess’ favor, but it is no suitable name for a mage.”

To keep from lashing out, I held my tongue completely.

Celestia took some small affront, either to my silence or Wintershimmer’s orders; though her face remained stern and neutral, her eyebrow rose ever so slightly. The motion seemed to somehow indicate very little curiosity, and a surprisingly vast amount of judgement.

“You say I should let Morty deal with this himself?” She put no emphasis on my name, yet the word bit nonetheless. “If he seances you, are you prepared to correct your lie to Jade?”

Wintershimmer answered with a scoff. “What good would that do? Teach him to rely on the mercy of others? Or political manipulation? There is a lesson he needs to learn here.”

I barely found the willpower to contain my words to a whisper. Nevertheless, all the venom I felt toward my mentor seeped into a few truncated syllables. “You want me to kill Jade?”

In the ghost of the archmage’s expression, I knew he detected my hatred. But instead of answering it, he said only one word. “Yes.”

Celestia’s disapproval was clear from the legible ‘V’ formed in her brow. It even had tasteful serifs. “Have you considered, Wintershimmer, what Jade’s death would do to the Crystal Union? Or to Equestria?”

“What difference does it make to me?” Wintershimmer stared up at Celestia, looking all the world like he was unintimidated by the deific alicorn. “I’ve already found my way to the Summer Lands. Here I sit with all the mana in the world, and yet no physical body with which to use more than a trickle of it at a time. If anything, I would love the diversion of watching the Crystal Union tear itself apart.”

“You don’t care about the potential for war?”

“No, I absolutely do. The crystals are barbarian brutes who rape and pillage, and Jade won’t change that nature. Better to let Hurricane’s armies kill them off. If Jade insists on forcing her conflict with Coil, he ought to defend himself, and let the consequences rest on her shoulders. Hers is the head that lies uneasy beneath the crown. In brutal honesty, Celestia, both the Crystal Union and Equestria would be better off if Jade were killed. Then the inevitable war will be in your court, instead of the whims of an insane crystal.”

It took Celestia few moments to find an answer. “Do you honestly believe that, Wintershimmer?”

“I understand you disagree with my methods, and no doubt with my morality. I don’t much care. You were gone from equine civilization for millennia, and in your absence, it was ponies like Coil and I who built the Diamond Kingdoms into their glory. Do what you will, Celestia; break open the wall and let Coil escape if it pleases you to prolong Jade’s life, but know this: Coil is my legacy.”

“Like Solemn Vow was?”

Wintershimmer visibly winced. “Vow was a disgrace who abandoned the rules we stand for, and he mistook political influence for real power. Coil is nothing like him.”

“I agree. Thank you for your time, Wintershimmer.” Before the ghost had a chance to reply, Celestia nodded to me, and I ended my spell. I watched her wings settle down to a more comfortable place on her sides before she turned toward me. “I’m sorry I had to ask you to endure that. Thank you, Morty.”

“He doesn’t matter.” I snorted out. “He’s dead. I’d rather let him be.”

“Luna and I will have to discuss what to do with him. Never before has somepony gone behind our back in sending a soul to the Summer Lands. Will you forgive me for a personal question, Morty?”

I shrugged, still casting away the last vestiges of my momentary fury.

“What did he do to you?”

I turned to face her. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t wish to force my way into your personal affairs, but I can tell you are bottling up your feelings. That isn’t healthy.”

I sighed. “Was I that obvious?”

“More in what you didn’t say than what you did. Ponies don’t often wear masks to bed.” At my raised brow, Celestia continued. “When I first arrived here, I woke you. Within a few startled seconds, you were up to a witty, charming young stallion with no fear whatsoever to speak his mind. In front of Wintershimmer, you remained silent. When you did speak it was constrained. Forced.”

“So I am that easy to read?”

“Don’t give yourself so much credit,” Celestia joked. “That sort of perception comes with wisdom. Or, if we’re both being completely honest, just with being very old. So what is it?”

“He… I almost wound up like him.”

At the time, I thought that was enough of an answer for Celestia to drop her inquiry. Only later would I realized that the immortal’s idea of patience was far different than mine. Celestia’s horn ignited, and in what seemed to be a completely gentle motion, the door to my cell creaked open. “Let’s go see if we can sort this out.”

XXX - Double Jeopardy

The thought of how many soldiers turned spears and swords in my direction as I pushed my way into the throne room of Burning Hearth castle still amuses me to this day. The threat didn’t really last very long, as Celestia’s sheer stature walking nearby quickly put to rest all thoughts that there was a fight to be had—or at least, that there was a fight to be won. Heavily bundled servants of Cyclone and Jade’s crystalline entourage alike stepped aside as Celestia and I approached our host and my monarch.

Was she technically still my monarch? For all the international political fiasco that my false accusation caused, I’ve never bothered getting a deep enough grasp of ‘citizenship’ to wrap my head around whether her attempting to execute me annulled my place in the Union.

Jade and Cyclone were conversing on the dais that held the old unicorn throne, and both figures turned at our approach. Cyclone was silent, only slightly raising his brow at Celestia’s unexpected introduction into his negotiations.

Jade was… less restrained.

“Celestia? Did you let Coil out?!” The harsh yelling of the armored mare set the room on edge, but even amidst so many tense soldiers, Celestia was calm.

“I did, Your Majesty. I have every reason to believe he is innocent. It’s good to see you again, by the way. And you, Cyclone.”

“Lady Celeste,” he greeted.

Celestia didn’t feel the need to correct him either.

Jade took an aggressive step toward Celestia, drawing herself up to her full height—which was an amusing head and a half shorter than the living goddess. “He poisoned Smart Cookie! He killed Wintershimmer.”

“Hmm? Poisoning Smart Cookie? I hadn’t even heard that. Why didn’t you mention it, Morty?”

I blinked twice before I found the words. “Uh… I mean, honestly, I don’t even know if Smart Cookie has been poisoned at all. For all I know, Wintershimmer just made that one up because he was worried you wouldn’t be pissed enough to run me out of the Union if I had just murdered him.”

Jade scoffed. “You’re saying Wintershimmer lied to me, accusing you of those crimes, just so that I would prevent you from assuming his seat on my council?”

“If half the things I’ve heard about Wintershimmer are true, that wouldn’t be very surprising.” For her interjection, Celestia received a cold glare from Jade. “But if you disagree, we can settle the matter by asking the stallion himself.”

Jade’s response was scornful, sarcastic. “What makes you certain he won’t lie again?”

Celestia’s horn ignited. “I hope this doesn’t come across as conceited, but the only answer I can offer is because I’m the pony asking.”

And then there was Wintershimmer, just standing in front of us. I might seem like I’m being flippant, but I really mean that description. Celestia seanced him not only without apparent effort, but almost without apparent thought. The abruptness of her magic seemed on the verge of impossible. I will remind you that as the foremost necromancer in the world, my opinion there suggested less that Celestia was supernaturally swift, and more that there was something deeper going on.

Wintershimmer was unaware of the minor magical miracle that had brought him to the throne room. He looked around the room for a moment before settling on me, and then on Celestia. “I assume you’ve summoned me for a reason?” he asked bluntly.

“We wanted to discuss Morty.” Celestia waved a wing around the room. “As you can see, your accusations against him are beginning to create a problem for Equestria and the Crystal Union alike. Now that Coil has left the Crystal Union, will you rescind your claims?”

Wintershimmer seemed disinterested in Celestia, casting his focus toward Jade. I took note of the strangely familiar way in which he delivered the single syllable of his answer. “Yes.”

If only the crystal alicorn in the room could have shared Celestia’s sense of humor. “What?!” Jade shouted. “You dared to lie to me? About your own death?”

Wintershimmer nodded, almost as if expecting more from his former ‘ruler’. When she balked at his blunt response, he spoke up. “I have no interest in debating philosophy with you.”

I held my tongue as realization of Celestia’s plan dawned.

Celestia, if you’re reading this, I am not sorry for this or any future solar puns.

Jade was taken aback by this new revelation. “And what of Cookie?”

“What difference does it make to me?”

I dared a quick glance at Celestia; that she wasn’t even slightly grinning made it clear to me just how incredible her mastery of the situation was. Wintershimmer glanced back at Celestia, and with another unbelievably casual flash of magic, the seance ended.

It was no more than the space of a breath before Jade roared in fury. “This is a trick. It has to be! Celestia, what did you offer him? He would not have lied to me! Wintershimmer was my most trusted advisor.”

I scoffed—apparently more loudly than I had intended, as Jade’s eyes immediately riveted on me. Never one to recognize the time to shut my mouth, I decided that having seized the floor, it was the appropriate time to continue. “Just like he was the trusted advisor to Halite? Or the warlord before him? Jade, let's be honest: Wintershimmer played you like a violin. I'm inclined to make a chess metaphor, but that would imply you were even a player, and not just a pawn to him. Even in death he’s still got you wrapped around his hoof." Jade took a step forward, but confidence from Celestia's presence kept my mouth running all the same. "Here’s a fun example: Star Swirl has never tried to use a crystal ball and spy on your council meetings. Whenever you saw a Candlecorn flare up, that was completely meaningless magic. Wintershimmer just wanted to convince you not to talk about important matters unless he was present.”

“You lie! You all—”

“Jade, look at me.” Celestia’s voice was calm, spoken at no raised volume and with no unusual force, yet it nevertheless stole the wind from Jade’s shout. If I hadn’t been able to see the lack of magic on her horn, I would have sworn she’d cast a spell. “I have no desire to force you to believe me. I refuse to reach into your mind that way. But I assure you that Morty did not murder Wintershimmer, and he did not poison your husband.”

Jade snarled. “How would you know? Why are you even here?”

Celestia glanced over to me briefly, before turning back to Jade. “I learned of what was happening here from my sister, who spoke to Morty in his dreams. I chose to come personally because my goddaughter asked.”

A teal magic pulled Jade’s sword from its sheath. “First Cookie is attacked on Equestrian soil, and then you take in his poisoner? You even dare interfere in his execution?”

“I don’t represent Equestria,” Celestia rebutted. “I’m not their queen, nor even a princess.”

“You’re their goddess!”

“I am not a god.” Though I wouldn’t call Celestia angry, there was an iron in that thought that I hadn’t heard in her early words. “I may not age, Jade, but I am just a mare.” Her golden magic surged along her horn, and a distinct metallic snap echoed around the chamber. A moment later, it was followed by a ringing clang as the blade of Jade’s weapon rattled on the stone floor, severed cleanly from its hilt. In its own small way, the motion made explicit just how close Celestia was to being a goddess without crossing the line. “Please do not force my hoof. Believe what you wish, but let Morty go.”

“Is that a threat?!”

Celestia hung her head for just a moment, sighing visibly. “I had hoped it would be a calm request. But if a threat is what it takes to make sure everypony leaves this room peacefully, then that’s a cost I’m willing to pay.”

A heavy quiet settled over the throne room. Jade watched Celestia and I. I turned to Celestia and nodded, a quiet acknowledgement of my thanks.

Jade turned to Cyclone. “My offer still stands, Cyclone.”

“I’ve led armies for almost twenty years of my life, Jade. I know an unwinnable battle. And even if we could best the goddess by force, I would not want to. My soul sits heavy enough without committing deicide.”

Celestia rolled her eyes, but followed it up with an appreciative smile. “Thank you, Cyclone.”

Jade turned toward the door, only to fling her head back over her shoulder, still wearing her increasingly more permanent scowl—the sort a grandmother would be inclined to warn about ‘getting stuck like that’. “I’m not going to forget this.”

Celestia replied only with, “I’m sorry.”

It took some time before Jade’s entourage filed out of the room, but in a matter of a few minutes, only three of us remained. Mortal Coil, Cyclone, and Celestia.

The red pegasus spoke up. “Do you believe she will cease her pursuit, Lady Celeste?”

“I don’t know. I can only hope." Celestia's wings fell slack as she sighed, and with that the tension swept out of the room. "I am beginning to remember why I always left politics to Luna. How do you deal with that, Cyclone?"

"In truth?" A bitter chuckle escaped Cyclone's lips. "I'm a tyrant, Celestia." His hoof rapped on the hilt of his preposterous, boat oar of a sword.

Celestia gave a tired nod, glanced at me, and turned back. "I imagine Morty and his friends will want to be on their way soon. Are you able to furnish some supplies for the journey?”

“I can.” The scarred soldier rose from his stolen throne and paced slowly toward us. “Morty, you have my apologies for my condemnation.”

“It’s fine. I didn’t exactly have any evidence, like you said.”

“Nevertheless, I feel I must offer some sort of recompense for coming so close to seeing you killed. Perhaps I can offer--”

Celestia raised a hoof. “Before we deal with that, I’d like to speak to Morty in private now that the affair with Jade is settled. I’m also a bit hungry after the flight from Everfree. Could you lend us a room, and perhaps some breakfast?”

Cyclone nodded. “The castle is yours, Lady Celeste.”

“I appreciate the offer, but breakfast and an hour’s privacy will be just fine.”

Cyclone gave us the main dining hall, which still carried memories of my rather bitter parting with Gale, and the last time I had spoken to Cyclone after threatening his life. This time, it was much quieter. I walked down near the head of the table, finding a sizeable plate of bread, cheese, and fruit waiting alongside goblets for wine. I appreciated what the pegasus was trying to do, but without a dozen-odd young pegasi and servants giving at least some semblance of life to the room, the thirty-six seat table was entirely imposing.

Celestia took the large cushioned seat at the head of the table, and gestured with a wing to the place just to her right. “I hope you’ll forgive me for jumping for the head of the table, but I’m not sure the other seats would support my weight.”

“It’s fine.” I sat down and drew in just a single whiff of the delicious food we’d been given. Weeks on the road left me unable to resist something smelling so delicious; my horn ignited and with gentle telekinesis, I served myself. “What did you want to talk about?”

“You, Morty. Specifically, your future.” Despite the fact she had been the one to request breakfast, Celestia ignored the food.

That left a painful gap in the discussion as I quickly chewed and swallowed a bit of bread and a slice of a rich gouda. “I know being the greatest necromancer in the world at only seventeen makes me about the most interesting pony alive, but I’m not sure the conversation is going to be very interesting.” Celestia concealed a small chuckle behind her wing. “My current plans only go as far as making it to Everfree City.”

“That’s a start, but it doesn’t answer my curiosity, nor the question you didn’t really answer downstairs in the dungeons.” I cocked my head, my mouth otherwise occupied with a tart green apple. “Let me try and start differently. What do you want with your future?”

I swallowed, with the sort of swallowing noise that one can only manage to issue with a slight measure of casual surprise. “I don’t know.”

“You haven’t given the question any thought at all? You’ve been on the road for a month now, haven’t you? Nearly two?”

“I…” I shook my head. “Why do you care?”

I hadn’t asked with any particular aggression, but Celestia’s ears wilted just a bit. “I have two reasons. The first is that you’re an incredibly powerful mage. Unusually powerful, if even half the things Gale and Tempest said about your adventures are true. That isn’t much of a surprise, given your mentor’s—”

Nopony said anything, but I know I must have winced or scowled or something that stopped Celestia’s words. I set down my apple, drew in a breath, and forced myself to look her in the eyes. “I’m not going to keep summoning Wintershimmer, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’d rather everypony just forgot about him.”

“I see.” Celestia offered a surprisingly formal nod, and then sighed. “The Triumvirate are worried you might be a threat. Typhoon in particular wants some assurance that you aren’t going to be dangerous to Equestria.”

I very briefly considered making some snarky reply, and then stopped myself. They had a point. “I give you my word that I’m not interested in… I don’t know, murdering anypony? Trying to seize the throne? If I never get involved in politics again, it will still be too soon.”

“Remember that, Morty. It may very well be the wisest thing you will ever say.” Celestia sighed. “Unfortunately, they wanted more than just your word. Do you intend to continue studying magic?”

I shrugged. “I guess. At least, if Star Swirl will have me.”

“You may not have heard of her, since she isn’t terribly old, but Diadem—”

“The one with the school?” I asked.

Celestia nodded with a bit of optimism. “She’s a bit like you, actually, Morty. She’s a natural at magic, with an incredible level of power, and I understand she’s done some very inventive studies on storing spells in crystals in some new shape…” As she spoke, I felt my expression souring, until finally she just stopped. “You don’t like the idea, I take it?”

“Oh, no, it sounds just like me. Mortal Coil, the avid reader, who emerges once a fortnight from his ivory tower to look down on the uneducated masses below.”

“I don’t think that’s quite fair to Diadem, Morty.” Celestia’s gaze turned disapproving. “She’s a very caring mare.”

“A very caring mare who stays up in her private school training apprentices with books and chalkboards.” I shook my head. “I know Diadem isn’t the kind of wizard I would want to be because if she were, I would have heard of her long before I met Gale.”

“I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, Morty.” Celestia sighed. “But it sounds like you’re saying she isn’t famous enough for you?”

“Fame is a side effect,” I explained. “But yes, I suppose. Fame is an indicator of achievement. Wizards who actually do their jobs do things. They use their magic to protect ponies from magical threats and monsters. And those actions basically guarantee stories being told. Stories like that lead to fame. So when I hear she has a school instead of teaching apprentices one or two at a time, and I’ve never heard of something she’s actually done, that tells me she isn’t the kind of wizard I would want to be.”

Celestia sat back in the seat at the head of the table, grabbing an apple of her own. Before she bit into it, she spoke briefly. “What kind of wizard do you want to be?”

“A he…” I couldn’t even bring myself to say it. The crisp flesh of Celestia’s apple, a glossy red and yellow thing, crunched quite audibly. “I don’t know.”

She swallowed quite silently. “Then how can you say for certain that she isn’t a suitable mentor?”

“I can tell I don’t want to eat a pile of dung without knowing what I want for dinner,” I quipped, almost absentmindedly. “There’s a part of me that still believes in the kind of mage Wintershimmer talked about being. Not the kind he was, but… traveling from place to place, helping ponies and fighting off evil spirits.”

“Being a hero,” Celestia suggested, before taking another bite of her apple.

“Yeah…” It stung coming out. “But Wintershimmer showed me there’s no such thing.”

Celestia swallowed with an audible hint of surprise. “That’s news to me.”

“He almost tricked me into murdering Clover.” At Celestia’s expression of shock, I added “He made the case she was a warlock, and that the windigoes that caused the exodus to Equestria were under her control. I believed every word of it... until I actually looked into her memories.”

“You’re capable of magic like that?”

I shrugged. “Wintershimmer taught me his spell to extract a soul from a living pony. Modifying that magic to inspect the soul without damaging the bond was trivial.”

Celestia blinked, and then shook her head in amusement. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Morty, but Typhoon was right to be concerned…”

I chuckled a bit. “I’m flattered.”

“...which is why the Triumvirate stipulated that you must submit yourself to Diadem’s mentorship in exchange for sanctuary and citizenship in Equestria.”

“I no longer feel flattered,” I observed flatly. “But you can consider the message delivered.”

“Are you going to abide by it?”

“What was it you said downstairs? I believe it will be more valuable if you hear my answer in Everfree City.”

Celestia raised a brow. “Morty… I’m sorry to be the one telling you these things.”

“If you actually agree it’s unfair, and that isn't just a platitude, why not lean on your divinity and actually fix the problem?”

Celestia’s expression grew cold. Even writing this, I’m still nowhere near her equal in the art of diplomacy, but it was obvious in that moment when she put on her armor. “I’m only the messenger, Morty.”

I grabbed another plateful of bread and fruit, avoiding her direct gaze. “I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you” she answered. “You have every right to be angry. I doubt it comes as much consolation, but that message isn’t why I wanted to know about your future.”

She left me with a moment of silence, during which I picked up a speckled apple not unlike the one she had chosen. “Alright, I’ll bite. Why do you want to know?” I followed up the words with a rich bite into the juicy flesh of the fruit.

“When Gale came back to Everfree with Hurricane, she was the happiest that I have ever seen her . Even when Queen Platinum told her she’d be force to attend court for three months, that didn’t dampen her spirits.”

“Being forced to attend court?”

“What sort of punishment would you issue, if you were her parent? Gale loathes the makeup and dresses and sitting still all day.” Celestia’s eyes drifted to the well-frosted windows of the dining room. “In one of the palace hallways, there’s a hilarious portrait of her from when she was four, dressed in a full gown. The artist gave up trying to get her to give a level expression, or even to have her smile, and just painted her pouting. It embarasses her to this day. I’ll have to show you. In any case, I make a point of having lunch with Gale whenever I get the opportunity, and since she’s been back, you and your adventures are all she’s talked about.”

“I see. So Gale wanted you to check up on me?”

“Probably, but she isn’t one to ask for something like that directly. My point, Morty, is that I care for Gale very deeply, and you made her very happy. So, while I have no interest in getting involved with whatever romance you might or might not have decided to pursue, I find myself hoping I can persuade you to come to Everfree, even with what the Triumvirate has asked. For Gale’s sake, if not your own.”

After that, there was quiet. Not silence, if only because the food was delicious, but quiet.

“A bit for your thoughts,” Celestia asked after finishing a particularly icing-heavy sweetroll.

I shrugged. “I have to go to Everfree one way or another. It’s basically the center of the world. I have an obligation to your sister in exchange for answering my plea. And I promised Blizzard I’d take her—”

“Cyclone’s daughter?”

“She wants to get away from him,” I answered briefly, before shaking my head. “When I go to Everfree, I can’t exactly say ‘no’ to the Triumvirate. I don’t have anywhere else to run away to if I get in trouble with them. I’ve pretty much burnt every bridge a pony can at this point. I can give Diadem a chance, but everything I’ve heard about her says that she’s not the kind of mentor I want. I care more about using my magic to go out and do things to help ponies than I do about studying it academically.”

Celestia inclined her head a bit at that. “I’m curious, Morty—how did you come to that conclusion? Was Wintershimmer not an advocate of academic study?”

“Not… It’s a little odd to describe. I learned tons and tons of theories and magical history, but he never had me read it out of books or memorize it by brute force. I always learned by discovering things myself—he and I would actually repeat the experiments that old mages did, and he would only tell me the name of the original pony who invented the spell or figured out the rule after I’d figured it out on my own. He did make me memorize the names and dates and so forth after the fact, but that always seemed easy after working out the initial theory. But more often our lessons were practical. Perhaps weekly, we would be out in the wilds hunting down a cragodiles or bugbears or some other monster threatening the Union.”

“Hmm…” Celestia nodded. “For all his flaws, I can’t deny the quality of your education.”

“You would if you heard him lecture on philosophy.” I coughed twice into my hoof, making my voice as raspy and sunken as I could manage. “Evil is the name of the monster under an adult’s bed. Ponies are afraid of the cold arithmetic, but society is much like a grapevine. Prune the buds that are not yielding fruit, and the whole plant grows stronger.”

“He believed that?”

“He practiced it; it paired nicely with his views about perception—not only was he ‘the evil wizard’, but he went out of his way to make sure he was seen that way in public. That way, ponies would be intimidated enough by his reputation that he would get his way without having to actually use his magic. I let him convince me it was an act that justified the damage… Can we not talk about Wintershimmer?”

“As you wish.” Celestia nodded. “Is there something you’d like to discuss instead?”

That was a surprisingly difficult question; what I wanted was a distraction from our prior topic, more than any active pursuit. Thankfully, my mind quickly provided an answer.

“Why pull your trick in the throne room?”

“Hmm?” Celestia grinned knowingly. “What trick did I pull?”

“You didn’t actually seance… Wintershimmer… a second time. That was an illusion, right?”

“Correct.” She quirked a brow. “Did I give myself away? When did you suspect?”

“Well, I knew something was up with the efficiency of your supposed seance. It was just too efficient. Too fast.”

“That early?” Celestia nodded. “And here I thought the fact that he only spoke sentences lifted directly from our earlier conversation would have been the part that gave it away.”

“The line about ‘debating philosophy’ was when I realized the quotes were word for word. Before that, I assumed it was something more involved. It didn’t seem like how he would reply to Jade; he loved forcing her to acknowledge he was the real power in the Union. But that being the case, I’m curious: why restrict yourself to his exact words? You’d heard his voice, and seen what he looked like. Why not just make it up?”

“Hmm… Every unicorn has their talents, and illusion is not--” Celestia’s partial answer was cut off by the door to the dining room opening. Into our company came Graargh and Angel, escorted by one of Cyclone’s soldiers. Both my companions rushed over to me, with Graargh’s tiny ursine form offering a tight hug around my waist.

“Morty!”

“Master Coil, oh, I’m so glad you’re alright.”

“Me too,” I answered. “Graargh, Angel, this is Celestia.”

“A pleasure.” Celestia dipped her head. “Graargh and Angel; I’ve heard quite a bit about you from Gale.”

“Why is mane magic?” Graargh asked.

Celestia chuckled at the bluntness of my companion. “Before we continue, how do you say your name?”

Graargh roared.

“Well,” Celestia took a short breath and then unleashed an impressively passable imitation of Graargh’s noise. “My mane comes from the same magic that lets me move the sun.”

In response, Graargh stepped toward Celestia, and to my mild concern, gave her a hug. “You say name!” He roared. “Like!”

“Why thank you.” I sighed in relief that he hadn’t offended her, as Celestia reached a wing down to hug him back—a motion whose heartfeltness made up for the awkwardness of maneuvering her considerable size toward a bear cub who was hugging her without falling out of her seat. “Graargh, I hear you have a very special talent.”

“Do?” Graargh asked, turning his head not unlike a puppy.

“You sometimes look like a pony?”

Graargh’s nose wrinkled up with irritation. “Am bear!” he shouted.

“We know, Graargh,” I offered. “Look, like you did on the boat yesterday. What did you say again?” I scratched my chin briefly “Can you play pretend for us?”

“Can try,” Graargh answered cheerfully, his brief irritation flowing away like raindrops down glass.

I smiled. “Actually, there’s something I’d like you to try. Pretend to be Celestia.”

Graargh looked up. “Celestyuh big. Hard pretend. But I try.”

What ensued was about a minute of miniaturized ursine groaning and squinting. I had begun to give up hope when, all at once, there was a flash of green flame. When it cleared as quickly as it had come, standing on the floor beside Celestia was a tiny white alicorn with a static rainbow mane.

“Do good?” he asked, with a voice not unlike I imagined Celestia would possess after sucking down just a bit too many alchemical fumes.

I broke into laughter, and Celestia hid a chuckle behind a wing, but it was clear from the way her ears slid backward that something serious was on her mind.

“Why laugh?” Graargh exclaimed, jumping up and down—and to my amazement, briefly hovering in the air by flapping his miniature Celestial wings. “Am not funny! Not laugh!”

"Graargh..." I whispered. "You just... Celestia, did he just fly?"

Instead of answering me, the immortal smiled at her smaller self. “Apologies, Graargh. I did not mean to laugh at you. That's an excellent impression."

"Graargh," I asked. "Can you use that horn? Can you do magic?"

“How I do magic?” Graargh asked, looking up at me, and then at Celestia.

“He likely can,” Celestia interrupted. “Though it will take some training. Of course, that is only if he is what I believe him to be.”

“Am bear!” tiny, high-pitched Celestia shouted. She then glared at me when I laughed. “No laugh!”

“I’m…” I failed to finish my apology at first, due to my continuing laughter. “I’m sorry.”

“I forgive,” Graargh answered with a pronounced pout, folding Celestia’s forelegs across his chest.

“Celestia, if I might be so bold, how can he use magic? I thought Star Swirl proved that even if you use transmutative magic, you can’t produce magic in new body parts. Isn’t that what he wrote his Omniomorphic Spell to prove?”

“I don’t know,” Celestia replied with a shrug. “I enjoy a discussion of magic with Star Swirl, but I learned magic… well, a very long time ago. All the theories and names he references came about since then, and I haven’t been around equine civilization long enough to pick up on all the formal terminology. What I do know is that a very long time ago, there was a species of creatures who could shapeshift in a way that broke two of the most fundamental rules of unicorn magic. They could use wings and horns that they grew, and they could copy a cutie mark. And as you see on Graargh’s flank…”

I sucked in a breath of pure shock. “That isn’t just an illusion above the surface…”

“If it weren’t my flank, Morty, I might encourage you to feel the coat for yourself.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the corner of Celestia’s mouth curve up as she teased me. “Have you encountered any other creatures like Graargh?”

“No. We’ve been looking for his parents, but they… well, we haven’t found them yet. I admit, I was looking for a pair of bears though.”

“They bears! All are bears!”

“Thank you, Graargh. I understand.” Celestia turned her attention back to me after that minor comfort to her tiny self. “Luna and I will look into the matter of his parents personally.”

“Both of you?” I looked down. “Is Graargh a dangerous spirit?”

“Not a spirit. And Graargh himself is certainly not a danger to you. I would prefer not to go into more detail; the fewer ponies who know that Luna and I are pursuing this matter, the better. For the moment, let Graargh stay a bear cub, since he certainly seems to prefer that, and don’t worry about it further.”

I frowned a bit, fighting between my curiosity and respect for the fact that both immortal alicorns considered the issue important enough to get involved. It wasn’t without disappointment, but I let myself settle with the thought that I had enough issues on my plate without getting involved in some sort of ‘war in heaven’.

If only I had known…

Celestia rose from her seat and stretched her wings. “Well, Morty, it has been a pleasure to speak with you, and I hope to do so again when you reach Everfree City. Pick your battles well; if you irritate Cyclone about taking Blizzard with you, I very much doubt I’ll be able to fly back in time to help.”

On the spur of the moment, I replied with a rather bold offer. “If you wanted, you’d be welcome to join us.”

The proposition earned me a smile. “I appreciate the offer, but I have my reasons for giving you your space.”

“Is this about making me confront whether or not I want to learn from Diadem?”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Celestia asked, though her grin told me I’d hit the point on the head. “For two thousand years I slept in nature, and now there’s a cloud bed with pegasus down pillows waiting for me. Safe travels.”

I nearly jumped a foot in the air when Graargh, still speaking as a tiny squeaky Celestia, shouted beside me. “How do magiiiiiiic?!”

XXXI - Hellfire

“Master Coil, if I may be so bold, why are we not on a boat out of River Rock right now?” Angel floated up to eye level beside me as I made my way back through the increasingly familiar halls of Burning Hearth.

“We don’t have any money to charter a ship. We don’t have any supplies to eat. We don’t even have clothes warm enough for the weather unless I get those furs we had back.” I sighed. “But mostly, we don’t have Blizzard.”

Angel actually sighed, or as close as his magical speech could come to the sound. “Surely you aren’t considering yet another daring escape from authority to rescue a mare.”

I shook my head. “No, I was just going to go talk to Cyclone about it.”

“On second thought, daring escape may be the better part of valor.”

I groaned. “Look, it’ll be fine.”

“Master, Cyclone was quite furious with you before you left River Rock.”

“That’s true,” I replied with a nod. “But now he feels like he owes me for falsely accusing me of murder. And he’s very religiously devoted to Celestia, who took my side.”

“Morty no make fire pony make fire,” Graargh noted. “Graargh not like. Green fire bad, but red fire bad too.”

“It’s more of an orange color for the most part, but I understand where you’re coming from Graargh. I promise, everything will be alright.”

When we arrived at the throne room of Burning Hearth a few minutes later, however, things were most definitely not alright.

The warped metal doors weren’t guarded, and they sat slightly ajar—though given the fire damage they’d endured and the stallion-sized hole in their center, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference if they were completely shut. Looking through the gap, I saw Blizzard standing in front of Cyclone’s throne. Her father, however, was not seated in the chair. Instead, he stood upright on his hind legs so that he loomed over the room. His good wing was extended, and roaring flames already covered from its leading feather to his opposite shoulder. His forelegs were balanced on the guard of an enormous almost rust-colored greatsword, whose blade was as long as its owner’s body. I took worrying note of the fact that where its tip touched the ground, a small but noticeable ring of the stone floor had melted into glowing lava.

“What difference does it make, Father?” Blizzard yelled. “They’re my siblings, not my foals!”

“They are your family!” Cyclone roared. “You may be too young to understand why that matters, but I won’t watch you make the same mistakes I made.”

“It may surprise you, Father, but I’m not planning a coup, and I have no interest in fighting griffons!”

“If that is what you think I meant—” Cyclone caught a glimpse of me as he looked up from his daughter, and I noticed the fire on his back get notably taller. “What are you still doing here, Morty? You have your freedom!”

“That certainly does me a lot of good when there are a hundred miles of tundra and a sea between here and Equestria. I do still need supplies. And more importantly, I want to take Blizzard with me.”

The flames covering the gigantic pony extinguished themselves with a sudden, soft ‘pop’ as I spoke. I can only assume that my statement was such a shock to him that he momentarily forgot how to be angry. Cyclone fell backwards onto his rump before rolling his neck and bringing his massive sword into a better position. All the better to decapitate you with, my dear. When he spoke again a moment later, his voice was alarmingly smooth and soft. His wing began to smolder again. “Are you that determined to die here?”

“See! Even he can see what’s going on!” Blizzard’s shout masked my hooves as I walked once more into the throne room of Burning Hearth Castle. Her wings flared out. “If you want to talk about family, father, what about Typhoon? Or Grandfather? I’ve barely met most of my family!” Clearly she was less affected by my statement.

Blizzard’s words brought the flames on Cyclone’s wings to new heights, but when he spoke again, his tone was subdued. “Your grandfather is the reason I don’t want you going to…” Cyclone winced, catching himself far too late in the thought. “Your grandfather is not family to us.”

“I never did anything to him! I’m tired of being punished for your mistake, Father!”

“If your mother were here she would be able to explain…” The mighty red-coated stallion released a tired sigh, though whatever thought he was saving never escaped his lips.

“Care to take that bet?” I asked, glancing to Blizzard.

Blizzard blinked. “What? What bet?”

I glanced toward the throne, where Cyclone’s narrowed gaze was once more silently preparing to sign my death warrant. “You seem to think Blizzard’s mother could convince her to stay. Now, forgive me if I’m making a logical leap here, but I’m assuming the mare in question has… left us?”

Cyclone nodded, and then frowned. “You intend to raise her? It won’t work.”

“Oh, no! No, no, no!” I waved my hooves emphatically. “Raising the dead is extremely dangerous! I was just going to seance her.”

“Perhaps I fail to understand the difference,” Cyclone observed dryly.

“Raising the dead means taking a soul from its resting place and putting it back into a body. If that’s an actual pony corpse, I would also have to animate it, and we would wind up with an undead. If the body were a statue or a ponyquin or something, we would call that a golem. Either way, we don’t want to do that. It can inflict severe damage on the soul if the body is damaged, or even if the soul in question is just left in that form too long.

“Better not to risk it if we only want information. A seance, like what you saw Lady Celestia do with Wintershimmer, doesn’t put the soul back into a body. It just makes the soul visible in space, so we can talk. As long as you have an experienced necromancer, that process is totally safe, and afterwards the soul goes right back to where it came from.” I extended a hoof to my side and bowed. “And as I believe I’ve mentioned, I am currently the greatest necromancer alive. I don’t even need to have met the mare. All I need is a name.”

Cyclone scowled. “Your magic will fail.”

Blizzard walked over to my side and shook her head. “Do it, Morty. Her name was Aestas Celsus.”

“Aystus?” I asked, cocking my head.

“Old Cirran for Summer… noble? Or lofty…?”

“‘High Summer’, Cyclone explained bitterly from his throne. “I always just called her Summer though.”

“Just you?” I asked. At Cyclone’s raised brow, I continued. “There’s nothing magic about the name your parents pick for you when you’re born, despite all the stories you might hear about not telling spirits your ‘real name’. What matters in identifying a soul is how a pony thought of themselves. If everypony called her ‘Summer’, that’s probably the name of her soul.”

With a bit of telekinesis, far lighter than any risk of flaring up my horn, I rolled up my sleeves. I had no intention of powdering bone or gemstones for this seance, but I did take a candle from a wall-mounted stand and dribble wax into the shape of a septacle. Shortly after, I placed candles on the intersections of the shape. “That should do it. Now…” And with that, I let my horn flare to life. The flames of the candles turned blue and a ghostly wind swept through my coat—far warmer than the chilly ambience of the massive empty hall. My magic felt the heat and the light of the Summer Lands, on the other side of a thin veil that I could neither see nor touch.

But after near a minute of searching, Summer wasn’t there.

I pulled my magic back, but maintained the spell. If Summer had not landed herself in Celestia and Luna’s restricted-entry paradise, there was one other option.

Necromancy is unique amongst the schools of magic in that it shares a certain reputation with professions like gong farmer and lawyer for being slimy and unpleasant. While I firmly dispute the claim that necromancy requires the same moral bankruptcy as the practice of law, the job does have its less pleasant parts. Worst amongst them, by far, is seancing from Tartarus.

The candles turned a blood red. The room darkened. The slight wind in my coat died, giving way to what was somehow a colder sinking chill than even the eternal blizzard outside the walls of the castle.

“What… what’s happening?” Blizzard watched the candles with unease, her wings halfway tensed as if ready to fly away at a moment’s notice.

“Do I really need to explain?” I frowned. “She wasn’t in the Summer Lands.”

Cyclone scowled, but not in my direction. His hatred, it seemed, was directed at the sky.

At least, that’s what I hoped. But it took me nearly a minute of searching to settle on another uncomfortable realization. The candles flared out. Cyclone and Blizzard stared at my circle. But nopony appeared.

“Cyclone… You knew my spell was going to fail. Are you certain Summer is dead?”

“What?” Blizzard demanded. “Morty, do you mean she’s still alive? Father, why keep that secret?”

“I…” Cyclone growled, and then his eyes ran away from mine. “She is dead, Blizzard. I helped to bury her myself.” His expression fell utterly as he continued. “She fought for me against my father. The blade went clear through her breast and out her back.” He set his sights on me, and tongues of flame danced against his seat. “Do you enjoy forcing me to remember these things?”

I swallowed, and hesitated. “Well, no, but… How do I put this gently? There’s only three reasons for a seance to fail. One is if the soul has dispersed, either through long enough spent in death to be forgotten by the living and fade away, or by magical violence. I feel like we can safely rule that out, since you still remember her. The second... Ehh…”

“Spit it out, necromancer.”

I coughed. “I doubt it applies here, Cyclone, but a mage like myself could have captured, or even outright destroyed her soul. The third option, however, is that the soul is still in the living world. Obviously, that can happen if somepony is still alive, but… ”

Blizzard stepped closer to me, her wings half-raised in some mixture of disbelief and worry. “Are you saying somepony raised Mother from the dead? Like you said earlier?”

“Possible, but unlikely. Even Wintershimmer didn’t make undead frequently, and they were always ponies who had wronged him personally. Star Swirl and I might be the only ponies alive who even know that magic now…”

“And Lady Luna,” Cyclone added.

I stopped, glancing over at the old soldier. “I’m going to go out on a limb here, and guess she isn’t doing something that evil. Frankly, I don’t think anypony raised Summer. Look, there’s no gentle way to say this, so I’m sorry in advance. When a pony dies with a lot of unresolved trauma or baggage, they can sometimes slip out of the Summer Lands or Tartarus into a place called the Between. It’s… well, it’s pretty much exactly what the name says. The Between is filled with hungry, tortured, lost spirits, and it’s much harder and more dangerous to seance from.

“Spirits there fight and feed on one another for magical energy, losing bits of their identity until they cease to be recognizable as the souls they once were. What you’re left with is a spirit: an embodiment of some abstract idea that caused the soul in question to break free of its rest in the first place. When they gather enough mana, a spirit can break back into the world of the living and feed on the experiences of the living to grow even stronger.

“Take the windigo that’s giving us the eternal storm. It grew strong because of the hatred between the three races, and it tried to use the storm to further that hatred.” I looked the soldier square in the eyes. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve seen Summer’s ghost, haven’t you, Cyclone?”

“Hhmph.” Cyclone’s lips curled back from his teeth ever so slightly in scorn. “We’ve discussed this enough. Get out of my sight, Mortal Coil.”

“Father! Mother might be out there somewhere! And he’s only telling the truth—”

“I know. That is why I am giving him the chance to leave unharmed.”

I swallowed and turned away, ready to get away from the potentially literal volcano of Cyclone’s rage.

Blizzard stopped me with a wing. I stood, waiting, as she built up the courage to speak. “I’m going to Everfree with Morty, Father. We’re going to find Mother.”

Fires erupted above Cyclone’s face, lifting up and dancing between the pitch black of his mane. “Now is not the time to test me, Blizzard.”

I cowed back at his hatred, but Blizzard stepped forward. She’d seen something in his face, heard it in his growling, crackling voice. “You know something more, don’t you, Father? What’s so secret?”

Cyclone opened his mouth to snap back a response, but it never came. Slowly, the fires on his head grew smaller, and vanished with a hiss. “Blizzard, you aren’t ready for this. I can’t protect you in Everfree.”

“I don’t need protection.”

In response, the traitor king hung his head. “Blizzard… That world won’t accept you. Your grandfather won’t help you. You have no family there.”

“Then it’s no different from here,” Blizzard shot back. Small shards of frost fled from the mare’s hooves, forming tiny shards on the stone floor, spreading from her hooves.

Cyclone rubbed a wing across his brow, refusing to meet his daughter’s gaze. “Father once told me this was how it felt when I went off to war. I cannot convince you. I cannot intimidate you. I cannot even accompany you. Please, Blizzard… just be safe. I love you.” Cyclone stood from his throne, extending a wing in some offer of a hug or a parting embrace.

Living up to her name with a chill I had almost believed impossible for the caring mare I knew, Blizzard turned toward the door without answering the motion. Halfway through the doors she spoke to him, not even looking back. “Farewell, Father.”

Despite the finality of those words, it took us most of the rest of the day to arrange our departure. Blizzard offered her goodbyes to her siblings, the younger of whom collectively cried and clung to her legs trying to weigh her down. Blizzard, however, was determined.

Her experience with the snow and the map of what had once been the Diamond Kingdoms served far better than my limited travel experience. She and I each carried heavy saddlebags and furs for warmth, laden with as much food and cookery as Burning Hearth could spare us. She also gathered for us a small bag of silver coins, which she said would serve to charter us a trip down the Volgallop to Trotsylvania and then across the sea to Platinum’s Landing.

We burnt the first few of those coins in River Rock itself, though, renting a room at an inn near the river’s extensive docks. Blizzard was determined not to spend another night under the roof of her father’s stolen castle.

No sooner had we dropped the bulk and weight of our provisions on the beds than Blizzard turned around and pulled me out of the room again. I saw enough insistence in her tight lipped expression not to question her. As we walked, many of the common ponies of River Rock avoided her. Unlike Gale’s provocative appearance and sometimes violent approach to attention, Blizzard somehow repelled a circle of other ponies, who nevertheless watched her from the corners of their eyes with a notable amount of… concern? Or perhaps it was fear? Sometimes their expressions even bordered on vitriol. The whispered conversations were loud enough to be noticed, but quiet enough not to actually be understood.

Finally, we came to the stout wooden door of a squat shop that smelled of honey and bread. Blizzard stepped aside, gesturing for Graargh, Angel and I to go first. We made our way into the restaurant, where an earth pony mare who couldn’t have been much older than Blizzard used a wide flat wooden board to move lumps of dough into a set of small brick ovens stacked into the wall. The heat of their fires was welcome, and the smell was intoxicating.

“Take a seat, and I’ll be with you in a moment,” the mare said without turning back. Only when she said those words did I realize that the majority of the room, removed from the ovens, was set up as more of a restaurant than a bakery.

“Lefse, it’s me,” Blizzard announced, finally breaking her silence.

The baker mare turned around with a wide grin. “Blizzard—!” Something about the pegasus’ expression quieted Lefse instantly. “Take your usual spot. I’ll get you something soon.”

The usual spot turned out to be a table near the back of the room, underneath a window set high into the wall. The space was as well lit as anything could be through River Rock’s perpetually snowy skies, but without any actual vision of the streets outside.

It was there, sitting with Graargh and Angel and I, that the callous mask she’d put up to deal with her father finally crumbled away. As her shoulders and wings drooped and her eyes sunk to tracing the grain of our table, Blizzard opened. “Thank you, Morty.”

I shrugged. “I did promise you. It’s not a big deal.”

“You stood up to Father,” she answered shaking her head. “And I don’t know if I could have convinced him without your magic.”

“Seances are cheap. You convinced him. Give yourself some credit, Blizzard. I’m not the only pony who ever saves the day. I just do it most of the time.” Blizzard chuckled at that.

When my blatant display of ego settled, I leaned forward onto the table, resting my forelegs. “I imagine this is hard for you.”

That earned a look of curiosity from the mare across the table. “I thought you’d be able to tell me what to expect. Isn’t this like how you left the Crystal Union?”

“Not exactly.” I laughed a bit at that. “I was less fighting for permission to leave, and more just trying not to get hung. That, and at the time, I was still under the delusion that my father-figure was actually a decent pony.”

At that comment, Blizzard’s face sourced, to which I winced. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s alright. And you’re right. Father is…” The rest of her thought refused to emerge.

Perhaps to Blizzard’s benefit, Lefse chose that moment to appear with a steaming plate of bread and roasted carrots. “Here you go, Blizzard. Who’s your cute friend? I haven’t seen him around town before.”

Yes, really. I must admit that the blatantly lascivious way she looked me over wasn’t entirely unwelcome, given everything I’d endured in the recent weeks, either.

With a bit of magic, I pulled some bread and vegetables for Graargh, and as he happily munched them down a seemingly unfillable void in his gut, I took the opportunity to answer the baker’s question.

“Mortal Coil, though you can call me Morty. All my friends do. This little cub is Graargh, and the flying rock is Angel.”

Lefse raised a brow. “Where did Blizzard dig you out of?”

Blizzard chose that moment to speak up. “Morty’s from the Crystal Union. He and I are headed to Everfree City.”

“Wait, what?” Lefse rose up on her hind legs to free her forehooves for a short burst of applause. “You finally got your old stallion to let you get out of this place? How long are you going to be gone? A week? Two?”

“I don’t know…”

Lefse smiled, tossing a foreleg over Blizzard’s shoulders.

“I don’t know if I’m coming back. I’m sorry.”

“Typical Blizzard.” Lefse massaged the other mare’s shoulders with her hooves. “You finally got what you wanted, and you’re worrying about how I’ll feel? I’ll be fine! I’m happy for you!”

Then a warm brown leg wrapped over Blizzard’s shoulders, which seemed to cheer her a bit, and she answered it with a wing of her own.

“I’ll miss you, Lefse.”

“Don’t waste your time feeling down,” the baker mare told her, stepping away from the table. “Sorry, I’ve got to get back to the ovens; one of your dad’s marshals is having a party tonight.” Stepping away from the table, Lefse spoke quite audibly to herself. “Imagine that. Blizzard leaving and with a hot coltfriend in the same day.”

You know I’m not making that up, because if I were, I would have used a more elegant description.

“I’m not…” I called after her, before giving up and shrugging. “Forget it. She seems nice.”

“I’ve known Lefse for a long time; she and her grandfather used to make bread for us up in the castle, before the wheat prices got too high. Speaking of which…” Blizzard’s muzzle ducked into a bag on her side, producing a few silver coins which she placed on the table. “That should cover it.” She took a hesitant bite of her bread, and then barely found the will to chew it. It was obvious her thoughts were elsewhere.

“You… okay, Blizzard?”

“Huh?” She shook her head. “Oh. Morty, are you excited for Everfree? Or are you worried?”

I scratched at the back of my mane. “I have no idea. Celestia said some things—”

“You spoke to Lady Celeste?”

I blinked at the sudden interest, caught completely off guard. “Oh, well, yes. She came to help me with Queen Jade and your father.” I coughed into my hoof. “The point is, apparently I’m going to have to study with this archmage ‘Diadem’ if I want to stay in Equestria. I don’t really know what to do there.” I picked up a carrot, and paused before biting into it. “You’re excited, I assume?”

“Not really.” I crunched into my carrot, and was left only able to raise an eyebrow as a sign of my curiosity. She seemed to catch the clue. “What Father said about Grandfather… now I’m worried. What if Grandfather really does hate me?”

“Because of your Dad? Or your mother?”

“I don’t know why he would. I’ve never really had a good chance to speak to him. Grandfather comes to visit sometimes, but it’s always very short. He talks to Father, and then his soldiers fly him off on his chariot. He’s never even spent the night with us. I wonder if maybe he doesn’t want anything to do with us.”

Graargh shook head. “Is family! Family important! He love!”

Blizzard smiled at the little colt. “I hope so, Graargh.”

The little bear cub might not have appreciated the fear I heard in her voice, but it hung in my mind long after the actual words had faded.

XXXII - Concerning Selfishness

I'll spare you our negotiations and our trip down the Volgallop for want of anything interesting happening on the voyage. For the first time since my journey began, I was confident in not needing to look over my shoulder. Alas, though my literal back was safe, my past with Wintershimmer proved a far more persistent stalker.

The last stop down the icy Volgallop was Trotsylvania, a city that was at once far smaller than River Rock, and yet also far more populated. It sat on the threshold of a natural cove at the mouth of the river, and marked where we would have to exchange our river boat for a more seaworthy ship to make the final jaunt to Equestria. The ship I had originally meant to charter for a non-stop trip to Platinum’s Landing had already sailed by the time my little troupe and I were finally ready to go on our way.

Unlike River Rock’s dead windows, the little glass gaps in the wooden walls of Trotsylvania’s houses flickered with candlelight and turned dark in brief spats of shadow as ponies moved about within.

Finding a ship to take us to Equestria was laughably easy; the huge majority of trade with River Rock took the sea route from Trotsylvania to Platinum’s Landing, and there was always plenty of open space in the ships headed back from Cyclone’s poor and sometimes starving demesne toward the wealthier, sunnier seat of equine civilization. Not five minutes after we set hoof on the docks had passed before Blizzard and I negotiated passage on a ship the following morning. That left only one more evening to pass in the eternal chill before I would once again be able to feel warmth in my extremities.

As we walked up from the docks and into town, the differences from River Rock became clear not just from lit windows but from the ponies milling about the streets. Everything was still gray and dreary, but at least the ponies existed, wearing hoods and focusing on their daily tasks. Most stayed clear of our way as we walked. However, rounding a corner toward the center of town, we were surrounded by a small mob of what I can only assume were either orphans or ambitious young entrepreneurs.

“Ooh, you’re new in town!”

“You’ve got a pretty coat miss!”

“I want a pet bear too!”

“Can you spare some bread? I’m really hungry.”

“Or a coin; we’ve got a baker here. Just need some coin.”

Graargh, not quite tall enough to see over the dozen-or-so colts and fillies, roared at the top of his lungs. Most of the foals scattered at the noise, leaving us standing in the middle of the road as the locals surrounded us. One particular beggar, however, had latched onto my right foreleg, hoping that I would protect her from my fearsome ursine bodyguard.

I picked up my foreleg, and felt my temple throb in irritation as she continued to hang from the now raised limb. “I’m afraid you’ll find, if you take a good look, that I’m not actually a tree.”

“But… but bear…”

“He’s not going to hurt you.” I shook my foreleg until she dropped off of it, tumbling rather adeptly when her hooves landed on the street. That done, I briefly reached back to my pouch for a coin or two. There, my hoof hesitated. I thought back to the little filly I’d saved from Silhouette’s cronies the morning my rather extended journey began.

Frowning, I passed her a single silver coin Cyclone had given us—enough at least for a meal—and turned to go my way. My only pause was to check the contents of my bag, and make sure crowding us hadn’t been a distraction for some clever pickpocketing. Thankfully, in that instance at least, the foals were genuine in their requests.

About halfway across Trotsylvania’s town square, Angel tapped my shoulder. “Master Coil, shouldn’t we wait for Blizzard?”

I glanced back to see that, sure enough, Blizzard was still standing next to the little filly—and now a sizeable crowd of her friends who had returned. Blizzard was counting out coins, handing each little figure a few pieces of the glistening metal. When she was done, at least a few of the colts and fillies hugged her or gave her a quick nuzzle before the mass dispersed into the countless side-streets of the city.

“Sorry about holding us up, Morty.” Blizzard told me as she approached, smiling as wide as the street we were standing on and even skipping a bit. When she reached the rest of our group, though, some portion of that happiness slipped away. “You okay?”

I shrugged. “Fine. Why?”

“Morty lie,” Graargh announced bluntly. “Something wrong. Graargh am see. I am see.”

I chuckled at his correction, realizing that at least some portion of my lessons were beginning to stick. “It’s stupid. Don’t mind me. I’ll get over it.”

That, too, proved to be a lie.

That night I lay staring at a wooden beam above my head. The beady eyes of a mouse stared back down at me, sniffing the air in distrust as if wondering what I was doing in its inn. I ignored the unspoken question, but sleep refused to come. Graargh’s snoring at the foot of the bed did not help. Rolling over as quietly as I could on the hay-stuffed mattress, I slipped past the foot of Blizzard’s bed and out into the inn’s hallway, leaving my signature jacket behind.

The path down the hall and out the front door of the inn was barren, and I soon found myself outside in the snowy streets of Trotsylvania. Wanting for somewhere better to sit and reflect, I made my way back down toward the docks. A few of Cyclone’s guards patrolled the streets, but I avoided them with ease—less out of concern that I might be arrested, and more due to a desire for privacy.

At the docks, I sat down and stared out at the mouth of the icy river. And then, lighting up my horn just a bit, I picked up a bit of the water. The cup’s worth of near-ice held for two seconds or so before it splashed back down into the river, released when I felt my horn near the verge of flaring. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and picked up the water again.

Making a telekinetic grip solid enough to hold water requires incredible magical control. I’d long practiced the trick with Wintershimmer, in hopes that I might prevent my magic from flaring up whenever I cast any meaningful magic. Sometimes, Wintershimmer forced me to use the magic over dinner to drink, instead of lifting my glass to my lips. Most often, I ended up with a soaked chest and a stained jacket. Wintershimmer, in contrast, could hold a glassful worth of wine above the table even as he manipulated silverware with his telekinesis, all-but-eliminating the need for glassware or plates.

I dropped my water again and brought a hoof to my brow in irritation. Gritting my teeth, I lifted the water again.

Wingbeats broke my concentration, and I turned to see Blizzard landing on the lonely dock behind me before I even heard the splash.

“What are you doing out here, Morty?”

“Can’t sleep.” I picked up the water again.

Blizzard sat down next to me. “Is this about those foals? Are you worried about us not having enough money?”

I gritted my teeth, focusing even more on the water in my grip. “I can earn us money anytime.”

“Alright. Well, what’s on your mind then?”

“I thought I told you it was nothing.”

“You did,” Blizzard answered. “And it was such a blatant lie that even Graargh saw through it. Now you’re losing sleep. So I’m worried about you.”

The water fell. A little splash of salt graced my nose, and the chill sent a shiver up my muzzle. “It’s stupid.”

Blizzard shook her head. “Feelings are feelings, Morty. They don’t have to make sense.”

“No. But a wizard ought to be able to control them. Emotion makes focusing on magic harder.”

“That doesn’t seem very healthy,” Blizzard observed. She reached her wing down to the water, and touched just the tip of her leading feather to its surface. With audible cracks, the water froze into a little sphere, which she pulled up out of the mouth of the Volgallop and set between us. “I don’t know much about being a wizard, but pegasus magic feeds on emotions. Father’s anger makes fire. My sadness becomes ice. In the moment, I can use my magic to get rid of the worst of my feelings. But being a pegasus doesn’t mean I’m not still a pony. Magic isn’t meant to take away feeling.”

I picked up the sphere of ice in my magic. Smaller than even a hoof, it nevertheless possessed a sort of beauty—at once too eerily smooth to seem real, and containing ripples and whorls from Blizzard’s magic that gave it a sensation of naturalness and life.

I set the ball down and looked up into Blizzard’s eyes. “I used to think that under Wintershimmer I was going to be some kind of storybook hero. Being welcomed home with parades in the streets, saving the princess, …”

“You came close with Gale.”

“Not really. I mostly got her into more trouble. The only thing I ever saved her from, maybe, was getting pulled back to Everfree with Tempest.” I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “Look, the point is, when I fought Clover, I realized what Wintershimmer really was. And I was his apprentice. That made me realize what I was really doing, calling myself a hero.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wanted attention. Fame. Luxury. Respect. All the things ponies imagine that come with being admired.” I put my hoof down on Blizzard’s sphere and rolled it in a small circle on the beams of the dock. The chill was surreal, at once bringing shivers and yet feeling almost warmer than the surrounding air. “Back then, I was clever enough—or dumb enough—to convince myself I was a good pony for doing those things. But today, when I thought about giving that little filly some money, the first thought in my mind was how many ponies were watching. Then what to say to make myself seem like the hero. And I’m worried that no matter how much I try, that’s never going to change.”

Blizzard extended a wing, but didn’t wrap it over my shoulders. After a moment’s hesitation, I leaned in against her side and she closed the feathery blanket around me. “I don’t know much about being a hero, Morty. But if you want to get away from that feeling, why not try keeping things secret?”

“Hmm?”

“Help somepony without them seeing you. See if that makes you feel better. You’ll know you aren’t getting the fame out of it.”

I swallowed, and then I nodded. “I can try.”

You might be surprised to find out just how easy it is for a pony to find chances to be a decent caring pony, if that is the only thing you’re looking for. In many cities in more modern Equestria, those chances come in the form of old mares who need a shoulder to lean on walking across town, or foals whose kites are stuck in trees. In the frozen wastes of the former Diamond Kingdoms, however, the opportunities were just a bit more savage—thankfully less in the form of extortionist guardsponies, and more in the form of far less violent pickpockets.

Graargh and Blizzard were walking with me down the street, and Angel hovered by my head, when I saw the first one: a lanky yellow stallion whose hoof had just ever so gently found its way into a nearby mare’s coin pouch as he whistled nonchalantly into the air.

I fought back the urge to poke Graargh or Blizzard and point out what I was about to do; even something that small would defeat my point. Instead, I took a single deliberately slow stride, so that the glow on my horn would pass unnoticed by my companions. When neither one turned around I let my horn flare briefly but forcefully, balling up nothing as elaborate or as explanatorily involved as my usual magic. Instead, I just grabbed his rear hooves with my telekinesis and hoisted them above his head, such that the unfortunate pickpocket went diving face-first into his intended prize. Naturally, the weight of a grown stallion is more than enough to get the attention of his victim, and she whirled around in shock, only to shout “Pickpocket” and start slapping the stallion over the brow with her purse, presumably full of weighty coins.

I said nothing as my companions—and everypony else on the street—turned toward the commotion. I resisted the urge to announce myself in any way. I did, however, give into one small indulgence on the grounds that it wouldn’t win me anything even remotely resembling gratitude. As we walked past the pickpocket who was shielding his brow with both his forehooves, I gave the stallion a wink and very deliberately whistled a nonchalant tune. He glared in reply, as if swearing revenge.

I genuinely do not remember a thing about the rest of our walk, though i suspect that Graargh and Blizzard were talking to each other, or possibly to me. My mind, however, was on how I felt about my actions.

Namely, I felt bored. I’d saved a mare from losing her coin to a criminal, but the entire event had passed by in a mere moment. There was no real conflict, no challenge, and certainly no opportunity for clever wordplay.

If anything, it felt to me like a waste of my time.

XXXIII - The Necromancer Is In

We boarded the ship out of Trotsylvania the next morning as scheduled, and without any sort of incident. I’ll spare you a record of our dialogue during the voyage because for the one time in my adolescence, the realization that I was a self-absorbed fraud instead of a genuinely selfless hero had left me taking up the role of the kind of mopey teenage stallion I’m sure you must recall my complaining about in earlier chapters.

You don’t want to read that. Nopony wants to read that. It’s disgusting.

The voyage went on that way for the better part of a week before the stereotypical bandana’d pegasus mare in the crow’s nest of the vessel shouted “land ho!”

I went up on deck to stand next to Blizzard, who stared out at the depressingly gray landscape. It was a cloudy, rainy day on the south-eastern coast of Equestria, and the dense gray ceiling of the world left the air humid and heavy. The warmth, however, was a wonderful change from the better part of a month of eternal winter.

Blizzard fanned herself with a wing, actively panting. “Is it always this hot in Equestria?”

I had to parse the question for more than a few seconds before I realized just what it was implying. “You’ve never left the Diamond Kingdoms? Ever?”

She shook her head. “Father’s banished, remember? He’ll be executed if he tries to come here. Who else was going to take me?”

“Fair enough.” I shrugged. “No, the northern side of Equestria is colder. Nothing like River Rock, except maybe in the dead of winter, but certainly not this hot.”

Angel spun in a circle beside her. “If I may, Master Coil, Miss Blizzard, what exactly is the plan from here? Will we be traveling by hoof, or hiring yet another means of transport?”

I shrugged. “I would prefer to avoid another long trip of camping in the woods like we did with Gale, if we can. Blizzard, can we afford to hire a carriage?”

For that question, Blizzard sighed. “Umm… about that, Morty…”

I quirked a brow. “Now you’re worrying me.”

“Well… I kind of gave away a lot of coin to those orphans in Trotyslvania, and…”

My hoof met my brow. “Tell me you didn’t spend all the money.”

“…but then I would be lying to you.”

I tilted back my head and brought it down on the railing of the ship.

Graargh clutched my right foreleg tight. “Morty, don’t do! Don’t hurt you!” His Equiish was steadily improving. I rewarded the easily recognizable sentences with a scratch behind his ears.

“Honestly, Blizzard…”

“I didn’t mean to. They just all looked so hungry, and I wasn’t actually looking in the bag when I was pulling the coins out, and—” She sighed. “I’m not very good at being out on my own, am I?”

“It’s fine.” I took a short breath and released it as an exasperated sigh. “I’m a wizard. I can make that kind of money in no time.”

That first glimpse at Platinum’s Landing holds a special place in my heart even to this day. Unlike River Rock or Trotsylvania or Lübuck, it felt no need to be a sturdy, reasonable city. Instead, the site of Queen Platinum’s arrival on the Equestrian continent was marked by what looked like a foal’s treehouse taken to its absolute logical extreme.

The city, you see, sits on the mouth of the Maressissippi River, which is so shallow and so wide an area that it can scarcely be called the mouth of a river before one’s tongue or quill rebels against the mind controlling it and instead expresses a blunter word like ‘bayou’ or ‘bog’ or ‘mosquito-ridden cesspool of scum and degradation’. In order to avoid sinking into the swamp like a metaphorical stack of stone castles, the entire city was set up on the ends of tree trunks thrust into the mud and muck below, only occasionally finding sturdier support on the tops of the rare few stones and ‘islands’ that jutted out of the murky, crocodile-infested waters.

In order to accommodate this profound lack of an architectural foundation, the city’s streets were made of wooden slats stretched between buildings, and the buildings themselves sat atop one another in frankly impressive piles—impressive in the fact that despite their very visible swaying, the whole town hadn’t fallen over yet. Somewhere, though, I could almost hear a big bad wolf practicing breathing exercises.

As our chartered ship pulled into dock, my little party and I gathered by where the gangplank would shortly be lowered. As we watched, two pegasi armored in matching steel bands walked down to the end of the dock toward us. One carried a board and a scroll under a wing. Both wore swords.

“Cirran legionaries,” Blizzard whispered. “Aunt Typhoon’s soldiers. Do you think they want me?”

I turned toward her with a raised brow. “You’re being paranoid, Blizzard. You haven’t even done anything wrong. Come on.” As a pair of the ship’s sailors lowered the gangplank down to the dock, I started a jaunty stroll down toward something loosely resembling dry land.

“Halt!” one of the legionaries called to me, holding up a wing.

“Alright,” I offered in return. “Can we help you?”

“This ship came from the Compact Lands, did it not?”

I cocked my head. “Sorry, the what lands?”

“That’s what pegasi call the Diamond Kingdoms, Morty.” Blizzard stepped down next to me, squeezing onto the dock in the small space the two pegasi had oh-so-graciously given us. “Named after the Tri-Pony—”

“Historical name. Understood, got it.” Blizzard gave me a small glare for my blunt interruption. “Yes, stallions, we came from Trotsylvania.”

The one with the scroll and the plank retrieved both items, balancing them on the inside of his wing so that he could clearly read them. “We’re tasked with ensuring none of Cyclone’s traitor-legion come into Equestria in violation of their banishment. To that end, we need to see some manner of identification.”

I opened my mouth to explain why I didn’t have any identification, stopped, and then raised a hoof to gently point at my companions. “Sir, you don’t need to see our identification.”

“I’m afraid I must insist. We must verify—”

“Look up from that scroll for two seconds,” I muttered, reaching up my hoof and pulling the offending distraction down onto the dock ‘floor’. Both pegasi tensed at the motion, but neither drew a weapon. “She’s… what, twenty, Blizzard? Nineteen? I’m younger, and Graargh here is even younger than me. Now, I understand this level of arithmetic might be taxing to the brains of two legion grunts, but, try to follow along—”

“Morty,” Blizzard scolded. “Stop antagonizing them!”

I ignored her. “Cyclone’s rebellion was twenty years ago. Got that number? Twenty. Now, I’m eighteen. Eighteen. At the ripe old age of negative two, I think we’ll all agree that, clearly, I secretly masterminded the entire treasonous affair. Blizzard, having just been born, was an excellent right hoof in my plot to seize the Diamond Throne.”

One of the pegasi tensed. The other calmly picked up his scroll before glaring at me. “‘Morty’, was it? We’re going to have to ask that you come with us, under charges of obstruction of legion business and—”

I rolled my eyes, and then lit up my horn before either soldier had a chance to act. Their eyes shrunk to tiny focused pinpricks as my spell took hold, and I spoke up. “You don’t need to see our identification. You’ll forget about the incredibly handsome stallion and his companions, and you’ll let them go about their business if you encounter them again. You feel strangely resolved to take up a remedial study of arithmetic. You will otherwise have an excellent day.”

The legionary with the scroll mumbled back to me. “I don’t need to see your identification. What handsome stallion? I am bad at math. Move along.”

“Why thank you.” I took a few steps down the docks, and then turned around. “Oh, also, gentlestallions: could I borrow that board you have with you? And a bit of ink?”

A few minutes later, walking into the mass of scruffy, shady looking swamp-dwellers of Platinum’s Landing proper, Blizzard grabbed me by my shoulder with a wing. “What did you do to those guardsponies?”

“Basic mind control by brute force,” I answered. “And in my defense, I tried to reason with them.”

“You called them stupid to their faces,” she observed bitterly.

I shrugged. “That doesn’t make the logic any less sound, does it? We literally could not have been who they were looking for, and I didn’t want any trouble over the fact that none of us have anything remotely resembling proof of identity. For Celestia’s sake, we don’t even know what Graargh’s species is!”

“I am a bear!” Graargh chimed in.

“Yes, we know… Oh, excellent grammar by the way, Graargh.” The little cub smiled, and I returned my attention to Blizzard. “The spell isn’t permanent, it won’t have any adverse effects, and I even had the decency to both improve their moods and give them a mild life benefit. I don’t see what there is to be angry about.”

“You can’t just—”

“Let me stop you there. The word you’re looking for is ‘shouldn’t’, since the fact that I literally just did is perfect evidence that I can in fact override the free will of other ponies, at least if they aren’t particularly strong-willed. And as the student of the pre-eminent evil wizard of our lifetimes, I’m inclined to say that in a debate about magical ethics, we can just skip ahead to the part where I’m proven right. I’m really not in the mood. Now, can I trouble you for a favor?”

Blizzard frowned. “You know, I kind of liked it better when you were quieter, on the way up to see Clover?”

“You mean when I was plotting an assassination? Yes, that’s certainly more ethically pleasant, I agree. Now, write something down for me.”

Necromancy Services

Talk to your lost loved ones, three gold bits for five minutes.

Only three seances a day! First come, first served!

Rules:

- No Resurrections; I don’t make zombies, and you wouldn’t want one if I did. I only offer seances. Please don’t ask.
- The bedroom and the grave do not mix.
- I am not responsible for the immortal judgement of your loved one’s souls. If you are offended somepony is in Tartarus, petition Celestia and or Luna; I am not getting involved.

I sat next to the sign Blizzard had written for me on one of the wooden pathways that served as a street in Platinum’s Landing, under the shade of a mangrove that stuck up through the road and kept me from falling down into swampy waters below. For an hour, or perhaps even two, ponies stopped to read my sign and to slowly gather, waiting for somepony willing to take up my offer, and treating it almost like a street show, throwing much smaller offerings into a bucket I’d placed beside me. Angel hovered beside my head, an obvious testament to my claim of being a mage, and he casually dodged back and forth as curious foals attempted to poke his gem-laden rings. Blizzard and Graargh waited nearby, watching me and the crowd I was slowly gathering.

After I had finished my first seance—refilling from magic I had stored in Angel after getting through the process—a shout came from up the road. “Wait, mage, wait! Are you still casting?” The mare in question slid to a stop next to me, and then held a hoof to her chest, wheezing to catch her breath. “I…”

“I’m not going to sell off my seances while you’re catching your breath. Take a minute.”

“Thank… you…” The mare was… well, barely a mare. She was younger than myself, an earth pony filly with a barrel on her flank and hair that was slicked back from her own sweat in the persistent heat. “I need your help.” She dropped three gold bits into my show bucket, clinking in the pile of smaller change I had accumulated. “Please.”

“Well, you don’t need to beg if you’re paying.” I cocked my head. “What can a wizard do for a mare like you?”

“It’s my mother—”

“I need a name, maybe a little description, and I can pull her right up.”

“What if she isn’t dead?”

The question struck me as strange, but before I had a chance to inquire further, somepony in my audience shouted out. “If she ain’t dead, why’re ya’ wasting the wizard’s time?”

The mare wilted a bit. “Well…”

“Give her a chance to explain.” I nodded to the mare once I’d secured silence. “Firstly, what’s your name?”

“Hare,” the mare answered. “...just Hare, yeah.”

I cocked a brow. “Well, Hare, what happened to your mother?”

“Well, a few days ago, mother heard there was a kelpie living in the swamp with a magic bridle.”

I swallowed heavily, but resisted the urge to comment on her mother’s intelligence. “Go on.”

“And I guess they say that if you steal a bridle from a kelpie, it has to grant you a wish.”

“Not remotely true, but I’m familiar with the stories.” The comment brought a frown to Hare’s face, leaving her ears hanging slack and her gaze on the street at my hooves, and earned me a disapproving shake of the head from Blizzard. “I assume she went missing in the swamps, then?”

Hare nodded. “I’m grown enough to take care of myself, but… well, Ma said she’d be back in a day, and—”

I put a calming hoof on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Hare. I’ll find her, one way or another. Now, can you do me a favor and describe your mother? What did her friends call her? What did she look like?”

Hare nodded. “Her name was— er, is Destiny. But everypony usually calls her ‘Desperate’.”

“Desperate. Got it. And for appearance?”

“She was about your height, sir, on account of being an earth pony.” It took me a moment to realize she was calling me ‘tall’, and not confusing me for another earth pony. “Sort of a gray color. Usually she wore her mane tied in a braid on her, uh…” Hare glanced down at her hooves, and then raised her left. “On this side.”

“I see.” I closed my eyes and reached out with my horn. “I can’t promise you you’ll like the answer, Hare, but it will be the truth.”

There, just beyond the world at present, I found the Summer Lands. The scent of grassy fields slipped into my mind without ever passing my nose. A welcome warmth of sunshine bypassed my coat completely.

And, to my incredible relief, I found nopony.

“Oi, what’s taking so long?” a voice in my crowd called out.

I slid my legs out, catching myself as the third spell of the day left me feeling drained and worn. “She’s not there.” The glow on my horn warbled, but I held the same spell, unwilling to lose another casting to another flare up. “I ought to check…” The infernal chill and the inexplicable vertigo of Tartarus passed quickly; I never felt the need to take my time with that half of the search. “Not there either…”

A voice in the crowd raised a hoof, then spoke without being called on. “What do you mean, Mr. Wizard?”

“Well, nopony likes to admit it, but just because somepony isn’t in the Summer Lands doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t dead. You have to check Tartarus too. Remember the rules.”

Hare slapped me in the shoulder—surprisingly forcefully for a young mare, but less so for an earth pony of any age. “My Ma isn’t—”

“No, you’re right, she is not in Tartarus. But for the record, I don’t appreciate being hit. I don’t have any control over where ponies go when they die.” I briefly bit my cheek, realizing the fact that I had just lied. “Celestia and Luna are the ponies to talk to if you’re worried about that. But right now, that’s…” I shook my head to clear a feeling of dizziness. “That’s not even relevant, Hare, because your mother is almost certainly still alive.”

“Ma’s alive?! I knew it! Where is she?”

I sighed. “Well, that I don’t know.”

Hare’s shoulders slumped and she hung her head.

“...but I can find out.” I swallowed, realizing I was about to get myself into another ‘heroic’ situation. Some sort part of my gut warned that I was going to wind up hurting Hare. “I’m going to need your help though,” I told her, pushing past my doubts if only for the desperate trust I saw in the way Hare looked up at me. I waved over Blizzard and Graargh. “Everypony, these are my associates. The exceptionally beautiful mare is Blizzard, and the bear cub is…” I did my best to imitate Celestia’s perfect roar.

Judging by his sour expression, Graargh was not impressed. It certainly didn’t help when the audience unleashed a bout of laughter.

“I’m afraid that’s all the spells I’m casting today, everypony. If you ever need the services of the world’s greatest necromancer again, ask for Archmage Coil the Immortal in Everfree City.”

My metaphorical title set very literal whispers venting through the crowd as I picked up my bucket of loose change. “Immortal?” “Is he a god, like Celestia?” “Is he actually a kid, or does he just look that way?” I chuckled at the superstitions as Graargh and Blizzard walked forward, joining Angel, Hare and I beneath the mangrove leaves.

“Morty, why did you do that?” Blizzard asked once she was in earshot, wearing a mild frown.

“Do what?” I asked. “Earn us the money we need to get to Everfree? Help ponies talk to their loved ones?”

“Why did you tell them all my name? Or point me out?”

I blinked twice, trying to parse the question. “Umm… why not? Nopony’s going to recognize you, Blizzard; it’s not as if any of these ponies would even know—”

“That’s not the point,” Blizzard snapped, before hanging her head. “Look, nevermind. We should just get the money back to an inn or somewhere and then we can go looking for Hare’s mother.”

“We?” I asked. “I was just going to go with Angel and Hare. A kelpie is a dangerous spirit.”

“Graargh not afraid!” Graargh spoke up. Then, with somewhat decreased intensity, he shook his head. “I… am not afraid.”

Hare smiled. “He’s so cute!”

That earned the mare a glare from Graargh. “I not cute! I am bear!”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive terms, Graargh,” Angel helpfully added.

I coughed twice into my hoof, and then waited for the bickering to end. “Look, everypony… We can all go. That’s really not a problem. However, a kelpie is a type of spirit, meaning it can only be harmed by magic. Unfortunately, since Gale isn’t with us anymore, we don’t have a magic sword, and frankly Blizzard, you said yourself that your magic isn’t honed for combat. So while I don’t mind you tagging along, I do have to insist ahead of time that if we get into a fight, you all leave it to me. Do you all agree to let me handle the heroi…”

Hare cocked her head, Graargh’s beady black eyes widened, and Blizzard opened her mouth, inevitably to worry about me. So, naturally, I picked up before she had a chance.

“...that is, do we all agree to leave the wizard business to me?”

In answer, my companions offered worried nods and hesitant affirmations.

Hare’s route out of Platinum’s Landing led us down the boardwalks and plank pathways to a stretch of ground which I had to consider the main road through the swamp simply because it was less marshy than any of the surrounding land.

“Got to watch out for snakes down here,” Hare warned. “Usually they’re easy to spot, swimming on top of the water. Make sure you know something’s really a log before you touch it, though. Those are the big ones, the pony eaters.”

“You have any hydra problems in land this wet?”

“Used to,” Hare answered. “Back when I was a little foal. Then Commander Typhoon sent us a bunch of soldiers and they mostly drained the swamp. These days the only big things are smart enough to hide or blend in enough to be missed flying overhead.”

“Delightful,” muttered Angel. “Not only is the place utterly filthy, but some of the muck is secretly monsters? Master Coil, I do hope we shan’t be staying longer than absolutely necessary.”

I glanced down at the rolled-up cuffs of my jacket, and tugged up the right sleeve to make sure I didn’t stain the precious garment. “Angel, you can fly. You aren’t even touching any of it.”

“Hhmph. City slickers,” Hare grumbled. “A bit of muck never hurt anypony.”

“Hare right,” Graargh answered, and to my horror, he paused to drink directly out of the murky water. “Much plants in water. Tastes very good.”

Even Hare made a disgusted face at that comment.

“Graargh, you probably… absolutely should not be drinking that,” Blizzard advised.

As we talked about nothing in particular, the ‘road’ through the swamp wound and twisted and rose and fell, sometimes dipping into fetlock-deep water and at other times rising up on pleasantly dry rocky ridges.

Some few minutes after Graargh’s fearless experiment in swamp hydration, I heard a tap in the distance and my head swiveled to my right. The water was still… and then it rippled in a tiny circle, emphasized by a sort of ‘plop’. Not long after, a third raindrop fell. And then the drizzling began.

Blizzard covered her head with her wings, shuddering. “What… Morty, what’s happening?! Is this the kelpie? Is this magic?”

Hare turned to the pegasus with a slack jaw. “It’s just rain, Miss Blizzard. Ain’t you ever been in the rain before?”

“Rain…” Blizzard slowly moved her wings away from her head and stared up into the sparse canopy of cottonwood and birch set against the gray sky. “This is rain…”

“She’s from River Rock,” I explained quietly to Hare, before walking over to Blizzard’s side. “You like it?”

“It’s… strange. It’s so cold.”

I placed a foreleg on her shoulder, careful not to touch her coat with the muddier part of my hoof. “Compared to River Rock’s snow?”

“The snow stays on the outside of your coat. It’s light and powdery; the wind is what gets under your feathers. The rain… raindrops, right?”

I nodded slowly.

“The raindrops are heavy. They get right through my coat.”

“This isn’t very heavy rain,” I told her. “At least, not compared to what we used to get up in the Union around summertime. I don’t know what it’s like in Everfree, but you might need to get used to it. Come on. I’d like to find this kelpie we’re looking for before the rain gets any worse.” I took two steps away from Blizzard, and then paused. With a bit of telekinesis, I pulled the jacket off my back and offered it to her.

“Morty—”

“I don’t want it to get cut or stained if there’s a fight. That’s all. I’ll need it back later.” I tweaked up one side of my lips in a cocky grin, and Blizzard smiled back.

My hooves splashed on into the unmapped wilds, and my friends followed close behind.

XXXIV - Circles in Mud

The rain became a storm as we walked, the wind masking all sounds of an approaching monster, or even one another’s voices. At one point, when the storm first presented howling winds, Blizzard had offered to fly up and disperse it, but I cautioned her against it. This far from civilization, if a monster flew up to claim her as unsuspecting prey, I wouldn’t be able to see to help.

So we pressed on, coats matted down with mud and manes trickling rainwater like downspouts.

“How much further?!” I shouted over the storm to Hare after what seemed like a day’s march into the swamp.

She answered with a disheartening shrug. “I’ve never been to the place before! Ponies call it ‘the grove’—say there’s an enchanted tree or something there with bark that cures pain.”

I cocked my brow. “So just a willow?!”

“Do I look like I know, Mister Wizard?” Hare snapped back.

I sighed, and hung my head, thinking about how embarrassing it would be to die because of some ridiculous superstition.

Maybe three strides down the swampy path, another realization rose to the front of my mind: the rain had gotten colder. Before it felt simply unpleasant, but the water and the wind were starting to pierce through my coat now, chilling my back, and most especially my neck, right at the base of my skull…

My horn flared to life and I stood bolt upright. “Show yourself!” I hadn’t actually cast anything just yet, but the sudden sign of magic stopped whatever was reaching out for my soul from pushing its luck.

“Morty?” Blizzard asked, nervously searching the gray waters and the misty air for any sign of life.

“Is it the kelpie?” Hare asked, stepping closer to me.

I shook my head. “It’s probably a pony. Another wizard.”

“What are you talking about?” Hare watched the horizon. “Out here? I mean, who would even want to live out here?”

“I’ll explain later. For now, stay close to me, keep your eyes open for a pony, and if you start to feel cold on the back of your neck, say something fast.”

“I neck is cold,” Graargh announced. “Rain wet.”

I rolled my eyes, but didn’t spare the time to emit a groan. “More like ice, Graargh. You’ll know if you feel it. Now come on, and stay close.” With that, I broke off into a sprint.

Around every twisting turn and with each muddy step and stumble on an upraised root or a sunken hole, my mind painted Wintershimmer in the mists. To my knowledge, there were only two ponies in the world who had ever known how to rip out a soul, and I was one of them. But as I ran, keeping my horn lit as much as I could without spending another precious spell, my mind drifted to another name: Solemn Vow. My predecessor.

Something moved near my hoof in the murky water. Before I even had time to turn, Graargh pounced on the thing. When he lifted his head, muddy water dripped from between his teeth around the corpse of a frog, its legs hanging limply over my companion’s lips.

I shook my head, catching my breath as my heart pounded from both fear and exertion. “Keep going,” I wheezed, forcing my hooves to move again.

Everything was heavy. Everything was wet. Mud stuck higher and higher on my chest as my hooves splashed, throwing too much force into each time I lifted them from the soggy ground. I wish the threat to my life, and to the lives of my friends, had been enough to push such thoughts from my mind, but somehow they persevered.

Which made the sudden cessation of rain all the more welcome.

I should point out that the storm did not suddenly stop; rather, all at once, I passed some unseen line in the swamp, and entered a sunny day. Behind me, the storm still raged on, but in a visible circle perhaps three dozen strides across, the clouds were parted and the sun shone down. Overhead, I saw no pegasi, nor signs of any magic maintaining the weather. As moments passed and mud dried into my coat, the welcome warmth turned into a foreboding sensation. Somewhere behind me, hidden in the rain, somepony or something had tried to steal my soul. Perhaps it still waited there. Ahead, in the center of the dry clearing, a copse of trees concealed from my view a small area of the clearing that seemed to promise as much danger as potential for answers.

“Is this where the kelpie lives, Mister Morty?” Hare asked.

I shook my head, still catching my breath. “This isn’t a kelpie. There might be one in the swamp, but I doubt it took your mother. Kelpies don’t hunt ponies; they lure them in. Whatever… whatever’s back there is far, far worse.”

The words put an almost broken expression on Hare’s muzzle, and I only realized a moment later what I had implied. “Hare, your mother might not be hurt. We still need to keep looking.”

In part to answer my own question, but almost equally for the sake of relieving the young mare in my company, I started walking toward the copse. Willows and mangroves offered dangling leaves and numerous bushy stalks to block my view, and I had to force my way forward by brute physical force.

One branch gave way to another, and then leaves and stalks gave way to… a foreleg?

Thankfully, mercifully, it wasn’t severed, though the warm limb remained completely still until I pushed past it myself. That gave me a solid view of the center of the trees, and their grisly contents.

At least a half-dozen ponies lay scattered around the space, comatose. Or, as my mind immediately corrected, more likely soulless. They’d been discarded like ragdolls, left in the mud with legs blocking their faces. Mercifully, at least, none were maimed or injured… or even ill. Their bodies were being preserved by somepony, or some creature, though with only the same level of care one might grant a pet and not another pony.

In the center of the copse, I saw something else: a ritual circle. The glyphs and runes were smudged and misshapen by the drying of the mud they had been drawn into, but I could still see the vague shape. A septagram within a septagram, and maybe another still within it.

“Mom!” Hare shouted over my shoulder, and before I even had time to turn, she scampered up my back and leapt into the circle.

“Hare, wait—!” My plea fell on deaf ears, but for once, the sudden action proved harmless. No spell swallowed up the earth pony, no sudden beast emerged from the mud, none of the bodies rose up to attack her. Instead, the filly tromped over the middle of the circle, smudging a minor part of the exterior shape, and bent over one of the bodies. “Mom… it’s me, Hare! Are you… Can you hear me?”

I stepped into the copse, and the rest of our company followed shortly. “Hare, listen to me…”

“She’s not dead!” Hare shouted back. “She’s warm! I can feel it!”

“I know,” I told her. “Hare, please, I want you to listen closely. Before I explain, I want you to know that I might be able to help your mother. Might. But to do that, we’re going to need to find whoever, or whatever, did this to her in the first place.”

“What happened?” Blizzard asked, gently nudging another of the ponies with her wing, and getting no visible response. “They’re alive, but they’re all… comatose?”

I sighed, knowing exactly what response I was going to get. “Their souls are gone.”

“What?!” Hare shouted.

“Please be calm. Remember, whatever attacked your mother is still out there. We saw it.”

“That was what we saw?” Blizzard asked. “Is that why you said that thing about cold on our necks?”

“Yes.” I took a momentary glance around the copse, and then walked over to the ritual circle for a closer look. “Sentient creatures almost all have souls that are magically linked to their physical bodies at the base of the skull. There are other connection points too—horns for unicorns, wings for pegasi, basically anywhere your magic manifests—but those are secondary. They aren’t strong enough to tie the soul to the body. The base of the skull is how the personality of a soul gets into the brain, which is why that’s the main connection point even in dragons and vargr and other species.”

The ritual circle itself was far too smudged to decipher in any meaning, but I did take note of something globby and off-white near the edge of the outer ring. I picked up a piece of it in my magic and held it at eye height; it almost looked like fat, or perhaps tallow or bone marrow. A magical infuser for the circle, maybe? But when I looked down again, I realized that it had scraped out some writing in plain, non-arcane Equiish. I opened my mouth to ask for Blizzard, but Angel spoke up first.

“But, Master Coil, aren’t you and Master Wintershimmer the only ponies able to sever a soul from a living body?”

Blizzard turned on me with widened eyes. “You can do that?”

“Yes,” I admitted with a sigh. “That’s what I threatened your father with. And it was how Wintershimmer wanted me to kill Clover. Even she doesn’t know how to defend against a spell like that. And yes, Angel, to my knowledge he only ever taught me that spell.”

Hare stood up. “Then this Wintershimmer wizard is the pony who did this to my mom?”

“I doubt it,” I answered. “He’s been dead for several weeks now. I killed him.”

Hare winced, and stepped away from me with nervous eyes, but my mind was too busy running with possibilities to console her.

“Then who?” Graargh asked.

I shrugged. “I need to figure that out. Which leads me to this question: Blizzard, can you come over here and read this?” I gestured to the writing I’d found.

Blizzard approached and took note of the writing in the mud. “The hoofwriting is honestly great, Morty; are you having trouble reading it? Do you need glasses?”

“Just…” I shook my head. “What does it say?”

“Well, let’s see. Immersion of that— no, wait thammo…”

“Thaumo… it’s a prefix referring to the relationship between mana and physical matter, or vice-versa.”

“Oh. Immersion of thaumoreactive stabilizers into wa… That last word’s smudged. The next lines says yields receptive to… Blizzard scratched her brow with a wing. “Whatever that is, it isn’t an Equiish letter. Is it some sort of magical notation?”

I glanced at the character, but it wasn’t a glyph I had ever encountered before. “I have no idea.” I traced along more of the Equiish text to see if it was just a placeholder or a variable for some known magical formula, but instead, I only reached a smudged formula for a fairly simple form of seance; even more rudimentary than what I had used in town to earn us change for the road. “This is really fundamental necromancy here; if whoever, or whatever, knows how to use Wintershimmer’s spell, it’s way beyond this. And they screwed the formula up even on something this simple. Half the work is backwards. You’d think finding somepony’s notes on their evil plan would tend to resolve a mystery, but I guess—”

Graargh’s ears perked up, and his throat released a low, heavy vibration.

“Uh… Graargh—”

“Somepony is coming. Two somepony.” His right ear visibly twitched. “One fly.”

“He can tell a single fly, in a swamp?” Hare asked.

“He means flying.” I cast my gaze upward. “Probably a pegasus.”

Graargh confirmed my theory only a moment later, with an exclamation I cannot even pretend to claim I was expecting. “Fish pony!”

Sky blue wings and a stiff Cirran gladius emerged from the surrounding woods, followed by a face I admit I hadn’t missed much. If Tempest’s glare was a healthy dose of surprise and unwelcome, however, I was even more unprepared when the wood nearby cracked away and another familiar face emerged.

“Coil?!”

“Bad mare!” Graargh growled.

I brought a muddy hoof to my brow. “Hello, Silhouette.”

XXXV - Who Needs Enemies

Tempest was the first to force real conversation, exhibiting his uncanny ability to speak around the handle of his sword. “What did you do to these ponies, Morty?”

“On behalf of Master Coil, I resent your accusations! Why—”

“Not helping, Angel.” I lifted a hoof across my chest as if preparing for a small bow. “Tempest, we just got here. We all volunteered to help Hare here look for her mother.”

“Really?” Silhouette took two slinking steps toward me, emphasizing the swaying of the void crystal she wore around her neck once again. “These ponies look an awful lot like what Wintershimmer used to do. You stealing the candlecorns would really fit the bill too…”

“Steal the…?” I shook my head. “Silhouette, if I could command the candlecorns, do you honestly think I wouldn’t have used that against you in Lübuck? I understand that it’s incredibly difficult for you, but can you at least try and think for two seconds before you speak, please.”

I turned to Tempest, who was glancing back and forth between Silhouette and I in either confusion, or some measure of shock at our open hostility toward one another. I briefly clapped my hooves to gather everypony’s attention. “Let’s see if I can spare everypony here a drawn-out summary of what’s going on, since I’m clearly the only pony who has put it all together yet. Blizzard is traveling with me, along with Graargh and Angel, whom you both already know, to Everfree. We heard that Hare’s mother—that mare over there—” I tipped my horn to indicate the pony in question, “—had gone missing in the swamp, so we came to look for her. In the mists out there, I felt a chill on the back of my neck like Wintershimmer’s spell—I know at least you know what I mean, Silhouette. For those who haven’t had that particular pleasure, the spell in question rips out the target’s soul.”

She nodded, but her lowered brow told me she wasn’t yet satisfied.

“You mentioned the candlecorns going rogue,” I continued. “My current suspicion is that what considered attacking us was one of the rogue candlecorns—and it either recognized me as a friend or just knew I could stop the spell and gave up.”

I actually had a much stronger suspicion on exactly what had happened, since unlike Angel, the candlecorns were not free-willed. However, my increasingly nervous gut instinct warned that present company wouldn’t believe my crackpot theory without more concrete proof.

Before anypony could question further, I continued my explanation. “Since I can’t very easily defend this many ponies at once, I had everypony run to try and lose line-of-sight, and we wound up here.”

“That’s the whole truth, Mister Legionary,” Hare confirmed, nodding her head. “Mister wizard isn’t bad.”

Blizzard stepped forward to give a very visible nod, a stark contrast to Graargh who elected to hide behind my legs and glare out silently in Silhouette’s direction

“Just ‘Tempest’ is fine,” the soldier grumbled at Hare, sheathing his sword. “Fair enough, Morty. I wish things were cleaner on our end. After I left River Rock—”

I held up a hoof. “Don’t waste your breath, Tempest. It’s easy enough to guess.” That earned me a glare, which I promptly ignored. “Archmage Travail from back in Lübuck actually was as incompetent as she seemed, and it wasn’t just me intimidating her that put her off her game. She let the candlecorns escape. They bolted from Lübuck and Equestria on whatever commands they last got from Wintershimmer, and somepony in charge decided that sending one frankly under-equipped scout to deal with three golems created by the then-reigning Pale Master was a great idea. You ran into Silhouette when she and the rest of Jade’s lackeys landed in Equestria on their way back to the Union, and you picked her up ostensibly because she knows how to deal with the candlecorns, but in practice because you’re a shameless stallion-whore, or possibly a masochist who doesn’t mind having his tender bits pressed between to sheets of sharp-edged gemstone.”

Silhouetted offered me a slow clap. “I can’t believe it, Coil. All this time away from the Union making new friends and gaining life experience, and you’re still a huge asshole. I guess it’s true what they say about non-crystals.”

“That we aren’t excruciatingly painful to sleep with?”

Tempest snorted in amusement—a truly horrifying noise, in retrospect—and Silhouette shook her head. “You can’t polish a turd.”

“Actually, if you use arcana to grip it, and apply an appropriate helping of quicksilver—”

“You’re going to shut up right now,” Tempest announced firmly. After a moment’s quiet, he rubbed a wing over his face, pinching his brow. “You’re right, though. We’re hunting the candlecorns. Nopony said anything about them ripping out our souls. I assumed it would just be the usual magical blasts and bright lights that I could dodge just fine like when we fought in Lübuck.”

“Yeah,” Silhouette added. “I thought only the old geezer could do that magic.”

“So did I.” I rather selectively forgot to admit my own proficiency with the spell in question. “Tempest, you might be a freakishly good soldier with wind magic that I don’t completely understand, but you’re not equipped to deal with a non-solid enemy like a candlecorn. Do you at least have Procellarum with you? Or is that sword you’re carrying magic?”

Tempest glanced down at the sheath under his wing. “No, it’s standard issue skysteel. Why?”

“Because that means that you literally can’t hurt any of the golems. The wax will just reform behind your blade as it cuts through. I’m going to have to deal with this.”

“Wait, what?” Tempest shook his head. “First off, Morty, you’re a civilian.” I gave him a flat look, to which he shrugged. “I mean, technically at least, that’s true. And as much as I’d love to let you deal with this whole mess, it’s an Equestrian matter.”

“Except when it comes to getting an excuse to go strip-mining?” Silhouette and Tempest both glared, but the best part was that after a few seconds, Hare’s brow rose and she let out a chuckle, staring at the crystal pony in our midst.

“Really, kid?” Silhouette asked.

Cutting into the rising tension with all the subtlety of a minotaur in a tiny porcelain figurine shop and all the elegance of the preceding metaphor, I returned my attention to Tempest. “I’m a wizard, which is absolutely not a category of ‘civilian’. I’m also an Equestrian citizen, courtesy of Celestia.”

“You talked to Lady Celestia, Mister Wizard?” Hare asked, in obvious shock.

Silhouette blinked in roughly equivalent surprise, as if unable to parse the statement. “Wait… the goddess? Coil, you got an audience with the goddess Celestia? Did you manage to piss her off?”

“No, mostly she hit on me.”

A dozen seconds later, somewhere outside the circle of swampy trees, a cricket chirped.

“You’re… you’re kidding me.” Silhouette shook her head. “This is one of your stupid ego-trips, right? You’ve got to be lying. She wouldn’t…”

“You’re not a pegasus,” Tempest muttered in addition.

I glanced at him with a raised brow. “Tempest, your racism is showing.”

“No, I mean… Like, think about the logistics. I guess you could try to use a stool or a stepladder, but that’s not exactly steady. And I don’t really have a great guess of how much she weighs, but if she were on top…”

I coughed heavily into my muddy hoof. “And you didn’t want to know how to polish a turd. Can we please go back to talking about evil golems and stolen souls?”

“For once, I agree,” Silhouette replied.

“Alright,” Tempest affirmed. “So, Morty, you really want to get involved in this? You’ve got a deal. I’ll go report in, and in three or four days, maybe I can have mom come back here with grandpa’s armor and her sword. That should work, right?”

“Just as well as her necklace.” I tilted my head toward Silhouette. “Well, a little better. But I don’t think we can afford to wait half a week. The rogue candlecorn is already making a mess here.” Again, I gestured to the victims around the grotto.

Silhouette sighed. “Okay… so what do you propose?”

“I need Blizzard, Graargh, and Hare out of the swamp. Blizzard, you’re in charge. When you get there find whatever soldiers you can, tell them what happened, fly them back out here, and pick up these ponies. They’ll still need food and water. Tempest, does Platinum’s Landing have a seated archmage?”

Tempest shook his head. “Not that I ever heard of.”

“Figures.” I turned back to Blizzard. “You’ll want to find a doctor, or at least an apothecary to take a look at them and make sure they haven’t picked up any leeches or parasites or whatever while they’ve been lying here in the mud. Whatever rogue candlecorn is out there should leave you alone walking out, since I’m going to paint a massive target on my back—” I caught her eyes widening. “—don’t ask—when you’re flying back in, make sure the soldiers stay above the clouds until they get close to this copse here. Once you’ve got everypony out, find somewhere to rest and wait for us. An inn or something. I’ll find you. If we aren’t back to the city by dawn tomorrow, find…” I glanced over to Tempest. “Your mom’s name is Typhoon?”

“Commander Typhoon to you.”

I shrugged, returning my attention to Blizzard. “Go find your aunt and have her bring Commander Hurricane’s black armor. The magic-proof set.”

Blizzard swallowed, more a show of nervousness than anything else. “You want me to go talk to Aunt Typhoon alone? Why not bring Tempest?”

“I need Silhouette and Tempest here to help me with some history, and a little bit of necromancy.”

“Hold on… You want me to help you?” Silhouette asked.

“You’re the one with a void crystal necklace,” I explained.

“Morty not with bad mare!” Graargh ‘helpfully’ announced. “Graargh stay!”

“Graargh, I need you to help me in a very important way.” I knelt down to look more closely into Graargh’s eyes. “The wax pony wizard isn’t the only scary thing you might find in the swamp. There might be other monsters ,or big snakes, or some other scary things. Blizzard and Hare aren’t any good at fighting. If something happens, I need you to be a big bear for them. Literally. Can you do that?”

“But…”

I placed a hoof on the shoulder of Graargh’s usual messy, muddy form. Then I looked even further down, at how much the swamp had ruined my usually impeccable grooming. Casting aside any remaining worry, I wrapped both my forelegs in a tight hug around the little bear. “Listen to me, Graargh. We’ve been through a whole lot, right? We fought the candlecorns before, in Lübuck. We dealt with the other bears. Plus Cyclone, and then Queen Jade and all her ponies. We’ve been okay through all of that, right?”

Graargh nodded in the form of curling into my neck. “Yes. But how I can know you are going to be okay this time?”

Lighting up my magic, I ruffled the hair atop Graargh’s head, where a mane would usually sit. “Because I’m the greatest necromancer alive, and if I died, this wouldn’t be a very good story, would it? Also, that was an exceptional… er, a very, very good sentence.”

I saw at least three sets of eyes roll in the clearing, but Graargh responded by embracing me tighter. My mind chose that particular moment to remind me how many famous stories of heroic ponies ended in noble self-sacrifice, but I decided that from a perspective of pure storytelling merit, Graargh wasn’t old enough to appreciate a theme like that.

It had nothing to do with growing concern for my own mortality, I swear.

Not a full minute later, I stood with Tempest and Silhouette in the clearing. A few dozen effectively dead ponies lay around us. A floating rock with two golden halos hovered nearby.

“So.” Silhouette began and also bluntly ended.

“Right… Silhouette, I’m sorry for accusing you of killing Wintershimmer. I was wrong.”

“You finally admit it?” she asked, cocking her head. “Did you find some kind of proof?”

I nodded. “There’s only two, or maybe three ponies who have ever known the spell to do this.” I gestured around at the soulless ponies in the ring. “And since I didn’t do it, that only leaves two options.”

“Two?” Angel chimed in. “Master Coil, I gather Master Wintershimmer is one—”

“Don’t call him that anymore, Angel.”

The golem emulated a the sound of a corrective cough. “Just ‘Wintershimmer’ then? Regardless… who is the other?”

“Well, apparently Wintershimmer lied when he told me I was the first apprentice he ever trained. Celestia seemed to think he wasn’t a very nice pony either, but I know he and Wintershimmer didn’t get along. His name was Solemn Vow.”

Immediately, Tempest’s wings tensed and the soldier drew tighter on himself.

“Something wrong, Tempest?” Silhouette asked.

It took a moment for the pegasus to find the words to answer, but when he did he spoke to me. “Morty, you don’t want to talk to him.”

“Do you know Vow?” I asked. “I got the sense he was a lot older than any of us.”

The question got a slow nod. “I was there when he died…I was five. Morty, you seriously do not want to do this. He almost overthrow the Cirran Legion. He’s the worst criminal in Equestrian history.”

“All twenty-whatever years of it?” Silhouette noted quietly.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I see I come from a great pedigree, then. Both of my predecessors were corrupt and evil.” I rolled my neck, eliciting two small pops. “Whatever he may have been in life, Tempest, Vow is just a dead soul now. He can’t do any magic without my permission. And I need to talk to him if I’m going to get to the bottom of what’s going on with the rogue candlecorn that attacked in the swamp.”

“This is a mistake…” the pegasus insisted as I lit my horn.

Reaching into Tartarus was as disgusting and as draining as always, but I found myself hoping I would be lingering longer than a few moments. If I failed to pull out Vow’s soul, that would all but guarantee that whatever deal he had made as a warlock in life was behind the strange events of Wintershimmer’s death.

If the act of recording my own story has taught me anything, it is that I am not a lucky pony.

Solemn Vow was, of course, translucent and tinged in blue from my magic when he appeared in the swamp. Still, it was easy enough to tell what he must have looked like in life. His coat was a muted orange where it was visible, though his formal garb concealed most of it. He wore an almost perfect copy of my jacket, though the collar was folded down, and beneath it, a double-breasted gray vest which was separated from his neck by a scarlet cravat which matched both the trim of our jackets and the fiery red of his mane. His pronounced widow’s peak, just below the base of his horn, had a certain ‘evil’ connotation to it that I couldn’t quite place, but his expression was certainly sociable enough. He smiled genuinely for a moment, though that mirth certainly took on a grim note when he spoke.

“Will you be dispersing me, or binding me?”

I blinked in a bit of shock at the blunt question, and in my confusion, Silhouette spoke up. “What does he mean?”

Vow beat me to an explanation. “I’m assuming by the matching jacket that this young stallion standing in front of me is my successor as Wintershimmer’s apprentice. Wintershimmer and I did not get along well in the past, and he isn’t the kind of pony to leave loose ends lying around. To be honest, I’m surprised I haven’t been seanced sooner. But I can only imagine two uses for my soul. Either I’m a loose end to be cleaned up, or I’m to be reanimated as some sort of undead to serve my successor.”

“Neither,” I told him.

It was Solemn Vow’s turn to raise a brow in surprise, which he followed up by extending an ethereal hoof. “If that’s the truth, then it is absolutely my pleasure to meet you. I assume you already know this, but for the sake of good manners, I’m Solemn Vow.”

“Mortal Coil,” I replied. “My friends call me Morty. For obvious reasons, I can’t actually shake that hoof.”

“Ah. Apologies. When everypony around in Tartarus is a soul, it’s easy to forget things like corporeality.” He turned toward Silhouette and Tempest, offering each a bow. “A pleasure to meet you two as well.” Vow showed no reaction to Tempest’s open hostility.

“I’m Commander Silhouette,” came the first introduction. Silhouette seemed wary of the ghost, but she gave him a calm nod.

Vow nodded. “A military mare; I assume you work for Queen Jade then?”

“I am Angel,” a second voice chimed in, earning a quirk of confusion from the ghost.

“A golem?”

“Angel is a Ouijan learning golem,” I explained. “Wintershimmer and I dug up as much of the old texts as we could, but most of the pages were rotten. I used to think he wasn’t capable of learning very much, but if I’m not mistaken, he’s been getting a lot smarter recently.”

“Why thank you, Master Coil.”

“Don’t let it go to your rock.” I coughed into a hoof. “Since he doesn’t seem to be feeling very social, that’s Tempest.”

That name earned the most obvious reaction from the ghost, who actually winced. “Tempest Stormblade… Damnation. I was hoping the blue color was just a coincidence. Well… you’ve certainly grown up, Tempest.”

Tempest held his tongue, warily watching the spirit I held in my magic.

“You really do know each other?” Silhouette asked. “Tempest, you’re not that much older than Coil. And he never met this guy…”

“I was five,” Tempest explained. “His monsters foalnapped me to get at Mom…”

Vow calmly nodded, and let out a little sigh before speaking. “Since you two don’t know my story, I’ll be blunt. What Tempest said is true. That’s why you found me in Tartarus. I doubt there is anything I can say to repair the damage I did.”

Silhouette stepped forward. “You’re awful candid about being in Tartarus, aren’t you? I was sort of expecting somepony more… Wintershimmer-like.”

Vow gave a small shrug. “I’ll gladly take that as a compliment. Wintershimmer goes out of his way to make the evil in his heart as visible as possible. In life, I thought I was good at hiding my own. Now, though, there’s little point. There are only really two ways to react to damnation. I could swear I was in the moral right and rage until my soul warped into some sort of evil spirit to seek revenge on Equestria, or I could take a step back and admit that wanting to instill unicorn rule for ‘the greater good’ was a lie to myself that I used to justify wanting power and fame.”

The words hit close to my chest, but I did my best to hold an even face.

Vow continued, “I doubt that’s what you summoned me for, though, Morty. I was already in Tartarus, so there isn’t much worse punishment you could give me for what I did.”

“No, you’re right.” I took a short breath. “There’s a long story, but I’ll try and give you a short summary. A short while ago, I killed Wintershimmer in an accident with an experiment.”

“What?” Vow frowned in disbelief. “You expect me to believe that Wintershimmer died because some practice spell went wrong?”

Silhouette nodded. “I saw the body. Stone cold dead. Stabbed in the neck.”

“I didn’t stab him, though. I just sent his soul to the Summer Lands.”

“He taught you his signature spell?” Vow’s eyes widened. “How did you manage to earn his trust?”

I shook my head. “The spell we were working on was a ritual to open up the Summer Lands, and map them onto physical space, so that a living pony could go inside. The spell collapsed while Wintershimmer was studying the effect. His body came out, but his soul didn’t.”

The news put a sour look on Vow’s face. “The Summer Lands is better than he deserves.”

“He saved Grandfather’s life,” Tempest cut in abruptly. As Silhouette and I both turned in confusion toward the angry soldier, Vow hung his head.

“This may be hard to believe, Tempest, but Wintershimmer is—was—a worse pony than I ever was in life.”

“It’s true,” I added.

“Really?” Tempest turned his glare on me. “How many members of your family has Wintershimmer murdered? I lost Aunt Twister to this bastard!”

“He tried to get me to assassinate Clover the Clever,” I answered.

Silence washed over the grove.

“I almost did it,” I continued. “Wintershimmer spun me this story that she was a warlock, and had summoned the windigoes that attacked River Rock. He taught me how to rip out souls specifically so that I could kill Clover. And I walked right up and dueled her… but I couldn’t do it.”

Vow shook his head. “Clover is a morally good mare, but she lacks even half the skill as a mage it would take to bind a windigo as a warlock. I should know.” In a rather unnecessary display, the former warlock coughed into a well trimmed fetlock as if clearing the throat he no longer possessed. “Before I settled for my nightmares, I gave the subject some research. But a windigo is simply too powerful.”

“Right…” I let that word hang in the air awkwardly. “That certainly explains a lot of what Clover told me. Let me get to my point.” I brushed a hoof on my jacket. “Somepony has been ripping souls out of innocent ponies. I didn’t do it. That means the possibilities were you and Wintershimmer. I was honestly hoping I wouldn’t be able to find your soul, because then I would know you had escaped Tartarus as some sort of spirit or undead, and this would be easy. But since you’re right here in front of me, I have a problem.”

“You’re the only pony anypony can point to having done this.” Vow glanced around the swampy circle, as if only just taking in his surroundings. “Was your purpose in seancing me just to verify that I was present in Tartarus?”

“I also told you the story to see if you knew anything. I’ve only known Wintershimmer was working against me for less than a month. You have more experience opposing him than anypony alive.”

Vow scoffed. “Morty… What do you want me to tell you? I tried to kill that wizard with a pair of nightmares and I couldn’t even wound him.”

I gasped slightly, leaving Silhouette obviously confused. Angel, however, spoke up first. “Sir, what is a nightmare?”

I let Vow, the eminent expert, explain. “They aren’t quite as powerful of spirits as Windigoes, but they’re much harder to detect. Shapeshifting shadow spirits that take the form of whatever most terrifies their victims. They have a poisonous bite that can’t be cured by most conventional alchemical antitoxins and actually gets more potent if confronted with magic.”

Silhouette quirked a brow. “And Wintershimmer fought off a bunch of these things?”

I nodded. “He, and Cookie and Jade. That’s why Cookie is still in a coma, and Jade’s wing and horn are so carved up.”

Vow responded with a raised brow. “I never ordered my Nightmares to attack Jade and Cookie. Their only target was Wintershimmer, and he wasn’t anywhere near them when I had him attacked. Wintershimmer had come to Everfree City on some sort of diplomatic visit, and he met with Typhoon—Tempest’s mother if you haven’t met her.” Vow’s eyes glanced aside, and sarcastically, he added “Delightful mare.”

“She’s a better pony than you,” Tempest snapped.

“Tempest, she killed me. I certainly admire her resolve as a single mother, but I can’t pretend there aren’t a few hard feelings.”

I had to wave my hoof between Vow’s ghost and Tempest to recover the attention of the former. “First thing I need to know, Vow. Did Wintershimmer seance you recently?”

Vow shook his head. “How could he? You said he was dead. If he's got no physical body, he's got no horn to cast with.”

“And yet we're surrounded by these ponies who are missing their souls…” I observed.

Vow shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. If you really know how to open the Summer Lands and rip out living souls, you're a better necromancer than I am. I never learned to steal souls from the living; I never had the delusion I was going to kill Wintershimmer in a straight duel. If you need answers about necromancy, I would ask Lady Luna. You and she are the only meaningful necromancers alive.”

Silhouette cut in. “Hold on… Luna brings dead ponies back to life?”

I shook my head. “That's a common misconception. Talking to the dead like we are now, and even making golems like Angel or the Candlecorns are just as much necromancy as the stereotypical evil of raising ponies from the dead to do your bidding. In fact, the word ‘necromancy’ means talking to the dead, not raising them.”

“True,” Vow observed, “but in this case the stereotype has more basis in fact than you would probably believe. Speak to Luna, Morty, but don't trust her.”

Tempest growled. “Morty, he's trying to trick you. Lady Luna is a great mare.”

Vow snorted. “Now you are speaking out of turn, Tempest. For all the wrongs I may have committed in life, I know far more of necromancy than you ever will. Luna may hide behind the title of a goddess, but she is every bit the necromancer Wintershimmer or Morty here have ever been, and then some.” He quirked a brow. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

Tempest spread his wings. “At least she uses it for a good purpose!” Turning toward me, the scout gave a bitter glare. “I'm heading back into town, but you ought to just send him back to Tartarus where he belongs.”

A powerful burst of wind made my jacket flutter as Tempest shot up into the sky. All four of us remaining watched him go in silence.

“I hope he's okay,” Silhouette muttered as the last glimpse of the soldier was lost to the swamp’s thick treeline.

Vow shrugged. “If he's anything like his mother, he'll be fine. Was there anything else I could tell you?”

I nodded. “Vow, do you remember coming to River Rock as a foal? You and Wintershimmer went to speak to Star Swirl and Clover?”

Vow’s eyes widened, but he nodded. “How could you possibly know that? That would have been years before you were born.”

“I saw Clover’s memories,” I told him. “Star Swirl said something after that duel that I didn’t think much about until now… Was Wintershimmer actually with you in River Rock?”

Vow’s nodded, and then paused midway through lifting his head. “I see what you’re asking now. No; he was possessing a candlecorn.”

“What?” Silhouette snapped. “Timeout: Wintershimmer could take over the golems?”

“That’s how he survived my nightmares,” Vow told us. “He had guessed that I would be coming for him, so he put a candlecorn in his bed and waited in the shadows for the attack to come.”

“Are you saying Wintershimmer isn’t dead?” Silhouette turned to me. “Morty, was that dead body actually one of the golems?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “But he is actually in the Summer Lands. If he weren’t, Queen Jade and I wouldn’t have been able to seance him. You’ve seen that; remember when I was first in the dungeons in Union City?”

Silhouette stomped a hoof. “I don’t follow any of this wizard nonsense, Morty. Can you just tell me what that means?”

“I honestly don’t know yet.” I took a deep breath. “You said the Candlecorns ran off recently. I’m guessing that corresponds roughly to Wintershimmer realizing I hadn’t killed Clover, and that I wasn’t doing his dirty work anymore. I don’t know what his end goal is, but stealing all these souls would be a way for him to build up his access to magic… Right now, we need to assume that any candlecorn we encounter is him, capable of ripping out souls and all his other magic.”

“You can’t mean to duel him,” Vow told me. “It would be wiser to go and get the goddesses or Hurricane than to try and fight Wintershimmer yourselves.”

“The candlecorns aren’t going to have nearly as strong of magic as his real body,” I answered. “Silhouette, we’re going to have to trust I can beat him by brute force.”

Silhouette swallowed. “You’re gonna have to forgive me if that doesn’t sound real reassuring.”

“You’ve got the void crystal amulet. If you shove it into the wax of a candlecorn, it should collapse into wax. But don’t take it off your neck until you’re absolutely ready to kill the thing.” I sighed, and felt a lurch in my balance as my ongoing seance drained more of my mana. “Alright, we can talk about this more in town. Vow, thank you very much for your assistance.”

“Can I make a request before you dismiss the spell?” my predecessor asked.

I replied with a shrug of my own. “Quickly, but go ahead.”

“I think this is obvious, but I would like not to be in Tartarus anymore. And you, Morty, are apparently in need of a new mentor.”

I blinked back shock. “You want me to raise you?”

“I don't think it's fair for me to ask you to trust me that much yet. Also, that would most likely end in Typhoon killing both of us. No, I am proposing that you bind my soul to a gem or something similar, and I can train you from there. Perhaps, in time, you could send my soul to the Summer Lands. I'm only begging that you don't send me back to the pit.”

I glanced toward Silhouette, who held up her hooves. “Uh uh. Don't look at me. I'm not going behind any gods’ backs; this is way above my pay grade. Keep your freaky magic to yourself.”

“If you don't mind a thought, Master Coil,” Angel piped up. “You did just go to some lengths to distance yourself from the evil of your previous mentor.”

Vow shot a brief glare toward Angel, but then held up a placating hoof. “I'm not going to encourage you to become a warlock, or anything like that. You can call the shots on what you want to do with your magic. I'm just trying to offer my education, because frankly that’s all I have to offer you. You aren't going to find another seven-school mentor in the world, Morty. It's either me, or abandon what you know and start over.”

I swallowed. Vow seemed to have a point, and the fact that I was beginning to trust him was itself a source of worry, given everything I knew of his life.

“I'll consider it, Vow,” I told him. “I can't do anything now anyway; I don't have any gems that are stable enough to hold a soul, and I can’t afford to spend the magic when I’m about to go out in a swamp where Wintershimmer might be waiting for us.”

“I understand.” Vow nodded. “I'm grateful to have your consideration. Most Equestrians wouldn't have even heard me out. Now, is there anything else I can answer for you?”

“I don't know what questions to ask, Vow. My gut tells me Wintershimmer is behind this, but I have no idea how he's doing it. None of what I’ve found explains how this helps his ‘legacy’.”

Vow chuckled. “Here’s a lesson Wintershimmer could never teach you, Morty. I learned it playing Equestrian politics. Never assume somepony’s motivations, especially if they’ve told you what they want. Words are cheap, actions are everything. What goal have his actions actually led toward? Why would he actually want Clover dead? What does he gain?”

I sat back on the driest piece of grass I could find in the muddy grotto. “Legacy really is the only thing I can think of. He wanted Clover dead since you were a foal; he even told you that when you both went to River Rock.”

“Yes, it's true Wintershimmer wanted me to kill Clover. But what difference does that make to him as now that he's dead?”

“Taking a stab at Star Swirl?” I asked.

Silhouette nodded. “Even I know he was always going on about which one of them was going to be remembered.”

Vow shook his head firmly. “How does your killing Clover enhance his legacy? If you had killed her, Star Swirl or Typhoon would have come after you, and his legacy would have ended completely. He wanted something else. Is Clover an obstacle to some specific goal? I suspect it—What is that?”

Vow’s eyes had locked on something over my shoulder, and both Silhouette and I turned to see what he had feared. My vision, however, gave way to a surge of pain and fatigue that swept down from my horn, and I collapsed onto my side in the mud.

I don’t know how long I lay there, but from what followed I can assume it was only a few seconds. In that time, mud splashed my face as Silhouette’s hooves moved past me. My nostrils were filled with the stench of peat, wet weeds, and stale water.

When my vision cleared a moment later, along with the subsiding of my pain, Silhouette stood over me protectively facing a candlecorn that had emerged from the edge of the clearing. Vow was gone; the glow at the tip of the golem’s wax horn had ended my seance. That much, at least, explained the pain.

Silhouette was unimpressed with its magic. “Wintershimmer… we know you’re in there. Cough it up, or I’ll ram this void crystal down your throat.”

“Very little remains in this world that is dangerous to me, Silhouette, and your trinket is not counted in that exclusive set.” That voice was unmistakable, despite the slight warping in its pitch that gave the impression of bubbling wax. The blank face of the golem shifted before us, swirling until it took on a more familiar appearance. Wintershimmer scowled. “What is your objective in seancing Vow, Coil?”

“No bitter greeting, Wintershimmer? No comment about the degrading quality of the company I keep?” I slowly pushed myself up to my hooves.

“I save pleasantries for ponies I find pleasant.” Wintershimmer was tight with his dribbling tongue, his thoughts curt and pointed. “You no longer consider me a mentor, and I no longer wish to call you my student, so skip your shallow excuse for deception and get to the point. What are you doing here?”

“I came looking for the ponies who went missing in Platinum’s Landing. The ponies whose souls you stole.”

“Hmm… Silhouette, is that why you’re here too? Caught up in Coil’s ongoing delusion?”

“If you really are behind what happened to those ponies, Wintershimmer, then it’s not a delusion.” Silhouette stepped up beside me. “We should have given Coil a medal for killing you.”

“Is there really any doubt? Yes, I eliminated some superstitious peasants. I don’t take any particular joy in it, but my hoof was forced.”

“Forced?” Silhouette’s disbelieving voice replied, curious.

I put a hoof forward not for the sake of a step, but to emphasize that my scorn for my former mentor matched what he wore on his molten visage. “Lie to me again, Wintershimmer. Go on. Was it Clover’s warlock magic that compelled your hoof? Or maybe you’d like to blame Celestia this time.”

Wintershimmer actually growled; deep in his throat, the noise was incendiary and crackling. I didn’t flinch back. “Look in a mirror, Coil. If you had remained my faithful student, those ponies behind you would have been able to continue their little lives uninterrupted.”

“At the price of Clover’s life!”

“Or yours.” The flame on the tip of Wintershimmer’s ‘horn’ danced in the swampy air. “I hope you have no illusions, Coil. You mean nothing to me.”

“I certainly don’t plan wasting spells trying to trick you with an illusion. I was planning to skip ahead to Measure’s Implosion. Or just ripping your head off by brute force telekinesis.”

“Amusing,” Wintershimmer lied, flatly. “Very well. At this point, the choice lies in your hooves, Coil. Even in this makeshift body, I have more than the magic and skill necessary to kill you. However, if you are willing to stay out of my way, I see no need to expend the effort. You have yet to actively cross me; you’ve only failed me thus far. That’s why I offer you this now: I’m willing to let you walk away and live out the life you’ve chosen. Go to Everfree, fight your petty spirits, win the worship of the princess if that’s what you want.”

“While you murder innocent ponies like Clover for the sake of your own legacy? Forgive me if I’m not that heartless.”

“You bought into your own lie? You’re still aiming to be a hero?”

“I’m not…” The rest of my protest died as my mind caught up to my tongue.

The candlecorn chuckled. “Enlightenment so often comes too late. Coil, you will never be the hero you imagine. You’re incapable of it.”

“Because you’re such an authority on the subject?” Silhouette replied. “Coil, I’ve been wanting to punch the old stallion since the day I met him. Can we get on with… Coil?”

Silhouette’s curiosity came as she turned to see my usually firm and noble gaze having slipped to the puddled ground at Wintershimmer’s hooves.

“What are you doing, Coil?”

“Thinking…” I answered. Then I pulled in a breath of stinking swampy air and looked up at Wintershimmer. “You’re right. I’m not that hero.”

“Of course I’m right. I raised you myself.”

“Then you know your point is irrelevant.” I cracked my neck. “Because right now, even without accolades or titles or even pay, I’m going to stop whatever you’re planning just for my own satisfaction.”

Candlecorn eyes glared. “So be it.”

The candle at the tip of Wintershimmer’s horn flared, as did mine. I spared any pretense of subtlety, instead ripping a nearby cypress and turning it on the golem like an enormous club. Ten pony lengths of heavy wood hissed in the air.

Wintershimmer’s fire burst into the light of a heavy torch, and a bolt of golden mana flew for my face. Silhouette tackled me from the side, hurling a few dozen tiny gemstones in Wintershimmer’s direction even as she knocked me into the mud. Her void crystal amulet consumed my former mentor’s attack, bringing the deadly magic uncomfortably close to her glistening coat.

A solid ton of cypress struck the muddy ground like lightning, but the makeshift weapon never met wax or flesh. Wintershimmer had disappeared.

“Where is he?” Silhouette asked, laying atop me as her head swiveled. “What’s the plan, Coil?”

“He’s gone, Silhouette.”

“What? He just ran away? Isn’t he supposed to be some sort of perfect unicorn… murder god?”

“Eloquent as ever.” I brushed a hoof to wipe the mud off the left half of my face, and mostly succeeded in smearing the grime around. “Would you mind getting off me? You’re a bit…”

“If you say heavy, I will break your jaw.”

“Sharp,” I hissed out. “Though if we’re being honest, you’re mostly a rock, so being heavy says nothing bad about your figure.” When Silhouette pushed herself to her hooves I was finally able to catch a real breath, though I noted that she refrained from stepping off of looming over top of me. “Wintershimmer was, and remains, an incredibly dangerous archmage. But in that body, his magic is probably as limited as mine is. Maybe even more so.”

“What, like your three spells a day? I thought that was because of the grooves in your horn—”

“The wax body doesn’t hold magic well. Look, I’m sure you’re planning some sort of fun double entendre and that’s why you’re still standing over me, but can we please start walking back to the city?”

Silhouette sighed, and then stepped aside. “The best I could come up with was ‘how’s the view down there?’”

I chuckled as I stood up. “If our roles were reversed, this would be the time for ‘diamond in the rough’, but I didn’t give it much thought. Regarding Wintershimmer, the trick is that producing mana—magical energy—requires both a soul and a living body.”

“Then how does he have any of this mana stuff at all, if he’s stuck in the candlecorn?”

“That’s what he needed the peasants for. Even though their souls aren’t directly connected to their bodies at the moment, because the bodies are still alive, the souls are still able to produce mana. Unfortunately for him, what he’s got are a bunch of ponies who aren’t mages, or Cirran legionaries with weather magic, or whatever. He’s barely getting a trickle of the kind of mana he had in life. That also explains why he really wanted me to use his spell to sever Clover’s soul, instead of trying to duel her in a fair fight.”

“If we kill the Candlecorn body, will that finish him?”

“It depends on how he put his soul into the golem. I doubt he was stupid enough to risk his own existence just to stop my spell. The reason for that is complicated necromancy; I’ll explain it back in town when everypony is together. For now, let me ask you something: you risked your life for me back there. Why?”

“What do you mean? I have the void crystal—”

“That isn’t nearly as strong a protection as you think it is. If Wintershimmer had been in his original body, the spell he hurled would have been strong enough to fly right past your necklace and hit you square in the chest.”

“Well, I wasn’t really thinking about that at the time… ah, screw it. I’m not some doey-eyed innocent filly who’s in love with your perfect flanks, Coil. I felt like I owed you.”

“Owed me?” I blinked twice in confusion before the thought hit me. “You mean when I stood up for you against Jade? In River Rock?”

“Yeah…”

“Apart from the fact that I went out of my way to get you into that situation in the first place? Telling Jade about Gale and… all of that political garbage we got ourselves into.”

“Yeah, you’re really the best pony who ever walked the earth, huh?” Silhouette rolled her eyes. “I’ll be completely honest, Coil. Your personality is a huge turn off. I think you’re an insufferable pain in my flank, and so do probably three quarters of the other ponies who’ve ever met you. But when somepony feels like their life is on the line, like staring down an angry alicorn queen who isn’t known for her sanity… Turns out, being the kind of pony who stands up to that can make up for a whole lot of being a massive prick.”

“Easy there, or you’ll wind up sounding like Gale,” I snapped, almost on instinct. Then I stopped—not just speaking, but even my hooves froze mid-stride. “Thanks, Silhouette.”

“You know how to say ‘thank you’ sincerely?” Silhouette’s feigned astonishment was accompanied by a ‘friendly’ punch to the shoulder which would later leave a sizeable bruise. “The world must be ending.”

I scoffed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well, if we’ve only got a few hours left to live, you wanna climb up in that tree over there, and—”

“Silhouette, I will throw you through that tree if you finish that thought.”

We stood there silently for a few moments, eyes watching the numerous trees around the copse both for sign of Wintershimmer and to reorient toward Platinum’s Landing. After a few moments of thought, my focus was broken by the sound of crystal scraping against crystal as Silhouette rubbed a hoof against her temple. “You’re the wizard, Coil. Which direction do we go?”

I turned back toward the direction where I had first burst through the trees. “We ran in from there, so I assume that’s where we should start.”

“Is that really all you’ve got? ‘Here’s a direction?’ I was expecting a spell or something.”

“I seanced Vow and used that tree as a club; I have one more, and it will make me pass out.”

“We’ve fought enough times, Coil. I know how to count.”

“Please call me Morty.”

Silhouette cocked her head for a moment, and then shrugged. “Okay, sure. Whatever.”

“Master Coil… would you like the same from me?”

I started to climb my way through the wall of the trees. “Angel, you can use ‘Master Coil’, or ‘Morty’, but don’t ever combine them. ‘Master Morty’ just sounds…”

“I believe I understand. I shall remain with ‘Master Coil’, then.”

Outside, in the swamp, it was still raining. I had spent just enough time in the weird circle of perpetual sunlight within the copse that the chill of the water had become surprisingly unpleasant again. I walked back into the mud and the muck and the mist with clearly visible hesitation. Silhouette said nothing, but she watched me with a hint of schadenfreude as the rain and mud alike washed smoothly off her crystalline coat.

Meandering back through the swamp at a less rapid pace left a great deal of room for paranoia. I watched left and right, keeping my head on a swivel, and occasionally glancing back at Silhouette. We made our way through knee-deep muck and more than a few scratches from twigs that only seemed to affect my fleshy body before she suddenly began to walk closer to me.

“I’m not going to stab you in the back,” she announced.

“What?” I shook my head in a hint of surprise, more that she had spoken than about what she said.

“Don’t act surprised; I know that’s why you keep looking back here. You’re worried I’m gonna try and knock you out or something and take you back to Jade.”

“Well, glad to hear it.” I nodded. “Just gonna shake me down for money?”

“Oh, for… are we honestly going to do this now?”

I wrinkled my nose as the swamp assaulted me with a new and terrible stench. “Well, now I’m honestly curious. Back in Union City, it was easy enough to just write you off as a terrible selfish pony. But you did stand up for me to Wintershimmer, and you aren’t trying to kill me right now.”

Silhouette rolled her eyes. “Maybe you didn’t notice up in Wintershimmer’s private dining room, but there isn’t exactly a lot of money to go around in Union City.”

The claim hit me like one of her gemstone hooves. “Wait… like a famine?”

“No, you idiot, just…” That earned a snort as words failed Silhouette. “You’re a barbarian bastard, right?”

I nodded. “My mother was crystal.”

“Right… well, Jade can pass all the laws she wants, but you can’t take the old ways out of old ponies. More than half the city are ponies who grew up thinking that if you could beat somepony down and take something, that was their right. So I’ve gotta make a better offer if I want the biggest, baddest ponies I can to serve our guard, instead of against it.”

“You’re honestly standing there telling me shaking down everypony in the market was for the greater good?”

“You asked, Coil. Morty. Whatever.” Silhouette hung her head. “I don’t run around pretending to be a hero. I always knew Wintershimmer was trouble, but he was above my pay grade. I like my soul where it is.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m not going to rip out your soul.”

“I know.” Silhouette glanced away, and the mild hesitance in the normally forceful mare got me to stop and turn around. “You might be a total asshole, Morty, but I’m actually not worried you’re gonna turn around and be another Wintershimmer.” Silhouette walked past me, focusing once more on the swamp and our ongoing search for the candlecorns. “Even if it was a stupid accident, I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Me too.”

That answer got Silhouette to turn, eyes slightly widened. “I get that you’re pissed, but wasn’t he basically your family?”

“He’d have to be a pony for that, instead of a monster.” I pulled a hoof up out of the swamp, feeling the strange vacuum of the mud trying to pull it back down, and grimaced as I pushed forward. “For the most part, he let me play hero… probably because he knew he could use it to manipulate me. He usually kept the blatant evil to himself. I think the worst he ever really asked me for was help with research. Remember that poor phoenix?”

“The one that melted a hole through the ceiling and set the bottom of Jade’s wardrobe on fire?” A slight chuckle slipped past Silhouette’s teeth. “What even happened to it?”

“Probably still in a cage in Wintershimmer’s vault. Phoenixes are basically immortal. If I ever get permission to go back, I’ll have to let it out.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Silhouette volunteered. “When I get back to Union City.”

“I wouldn’t try it. The vault isn’t suddenly unlocked and untrapped just because Wintershimmer’s dead. At least, unless you can do your freaky tricks and get in there like you did with my bedroom.”

“A mare doesn’t talk about those sorts of things,” Silhouette answered, batting her eyelids. “Although if you wanted to know a few of my ‘freaky tricks’, you and I and Tempest could—”

“Not in a million years, Silhouette.”

“You sure? He might even be willing to let you be in the middle, and I know how much you love being the center of attention.”

“Silhouette, we can agree that I’m the paragon of the equine form, but I’m afraid you’re just not up to my standards, skintight leather armor or no.”

“Ah yes.” Silhouette held a hoof to her temple. “I forgot. You’d rather slum it with the bandit.”

“You mean the crown princess?”

“I know you’re big on your fairy tales, Morty, so let me remind you that it’s what in the inside that counts.”

“Hmm… You’ve got a point. What counts about you is ‘a collection of assorted cocks’.”

“You used to at least be decent when you insulted me. I see she rubbed off on you.”

“Consider your phrasing. At least I’m deliberate.”

XXXVI - A Leg Up

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m an alcoholic, so I wish to clarify for non-habitual travelers that at least at the time of these events, an inn or hostel which did not also offer an attached bar or tavern was the exception, and not the rule.

In Platinum’s Landing, the establishment in question was simply called ‘the Canteen’. It was a fairly nice place, all things considered. To fight the oppressive swampy humidity, the wall behind the bar was only shoulder high, offering a beautiful view out toward the east and, in theory, a rising sun—had we been the kind of ponies who drank at dawn.

It was weird seeing all my traveling companions and rivals gathered in one place, instead of split up across the countryside. Graargh, Angel, Blizzard, Tempest, Silhouette, and Hare, all sat around a table (somehow) waiting for me to finish a decidedly pleasant glass of pure rainwater midway through my story. Only Gale’s presence was missing, but I felt it every time I glanced to the empty seat opposite me at the far side of the long table.

I sighed, set down my solid wooden tankard, and nodded to the group. “... so I picked up a tree and tried to crush the candlecorn with it.”

“You use a tree as a club, Mister Wizard?” Hare asked. “Wouldn’t that be awful heavy?”

Tempest chuckled nervously, though from the way he watched me from the corner of his eye, it was obvious he still hadn’t quite gotten over my discussions with Solemn Vow. “You should see what he can do to a brick wall. Did you get him?”

“No, he tossed a spell at me and then teleported away.”

“Why?” Graargh asked. “Old ghost pony is very magic, yes?”

I chuckled at the phrasing choice; not bad at all for Graargh’s slowly developing vocabulary. “Not when he’s dead. I think I need to explain this, so everypony please pay attention.”

“Bear!” Graargh roared.

“Yes, and would that include every golem as well, or shall I depart for a moment?”

The table released a dull thud from the impact of my face. “Please… everyone pay attention, okay? Now, basic magical anatomy. Magic energy is called mana. Souls are made of mana, and they exist in a space that’s parallel—” I glanced at Graargh. “That means ‘side-by-side’, with ours. The same way that the body eats food to get energy, the soul feeds on bonds with other souls, like love and friendship and intense personal hatred.”

“And ego, I assume? That explains a lot,” Silhouette muttered, glancing at me wryly out of the corner of her eye.

I chose to ignore the soldier as I continued. “Obviously, though, just having a ton of friends doesn’t make you a better wizard, and that’s because there’s another aspect to it. Just like you have to train yourself to eat a lot of food by exercising and working and building up an appetite, your soul can only ‘eat’ so much friendship and or love or unbridled hatred at a time. And ‘eating’ more is the only way for your soul to produce more magic for your body. A wizard’s soul, like mine or Wintershimmer’s or, I don’t know, Star Swirl or Clover the Clever or whoever—that soul is going to be able to produce a great deal of mana. Here’s the trick, though: unless you can take that mana from the soul and move it over into a physical living body, all the mana in the world is useless.”

“So Wintershimmer moved his soul into the… you said they were called ‘candlecorns’?” Blizzard asked, fanning herself with a wing to deal with the still-alien humidity. “Why would he need to hurt the other ponies then?”

“Because there’s a risk in having your soul attached to a body that firmly. Specifically, it is very risky if a body dies while a soul is attached. At that point… Perhaps I should demonstrate. Angel, please come here.”

“Master Coil, if I may, I’m not certain I like the sound of that request…”

I rolled my eyes and gestured again with my hoof, waving him closer. “Have I ever hurt you before?”

“As you are so fond of reminding me, Master, I am a stone. However, I do recall at least three separate occasions where you stubbed your hoof or bruised a shin in the attempt, sir. As for emotionally, let me count the ways. There was…”

“Not right now, thank you.” Eyes around the table gave me a variety of concerned looks, to which I shrugged. “Wintershimmer had certain ‘opinions’ about how you treat a golem… Anyway, look here.” I set my tankard on the table, and lit my horn with a glow so minor I barely even felt the strain of the day’s continuous tax on my mana. “Just relax, Angel; this is trivial magic, and it won’t take more than…”

Angel’s body abruptly fell from hovering in the air, shaking the table with the impact of a fairly dense stone and two golden rings that spun like discarded coins. The innkeep of The Canteen looked over at us with a disapproving raised brow, and then went back to the business of running his inn.

“What did you do?” Blizzard asked, leaning forward in obvious concern. “Did you just rip out his soul?”

“Nothing so violent; remember, I’m the one who tied it to the rock in the first place. Angel’s fine.” I cast my gaze down at the table. “Aren’t you, Angel?”

“Well, I quite admit that I’m not a fan of these accommodations,” answered my tankard. Hare jumped back in surprise, and even Graargh tensed, but most of the near-adults at the table simply raised a brow or cocked their heads.

“What I’ve just performed is called a ‘binding’ - it’s the third and final cantrip of the school of necromancy.” Blizzard raised a wing like a foal learning the alphabet, and I jumped to the obvious answer. “A cantrip is a basic spell; sort of a building block. You construct more complicated spells by combining and modifying the twenty-one cantrips. But all that is beside the point; what matters here is something important. Right now, if I smashed this tankard, it would literally destroy Angel.”

“Sir?!” my mug-bound golem gasped.

“I don’t understand how that’s any different than killing a pony,” Silhouette grumbled. “Same thing. You just destroy the body.”

“I was referring to his soul.” That got Silhouette’s eyes widened. “When a pony is born, their soul is bound to their body in a natural way that no necromancer in all of history has ever been able to replicate. When we die in our natural bodies, our souls escape; usually, they’re drawn off to judgement by the Sisters, or whatever… I still need to ask Celestia about that in more detail…” I shook away the distraction. “But when I artificially bind a soul, my magic doesn’t know to go away when the body dies. The trauma passes on to the soul. If the wound is minor and surgical like a slit throat or a knife to the heart, the soul will probably be left trapped, immobile in a dysfunctional body, unless somepony animates it into a zombie or something. But if the body is destroyed completely, the soul is destroyed with it. We call that ‘dispersing’ a soul. In a very literal sense, that pony ceases to exist. I can, to a certain extent, ‘raise the dead’ by making corpses walk and putting souls into them. But once a soul is dispersed, even Celestia and Luna can’t change that.”

“And how does this whole ‘binding’ lesson fit in with Wintershimmer?” Tempest asked, before lifting a frothy mug of ale to his muzzle; he’d been nursing the thing since my story began, yet it was still nearly full. “He took a lot more souls than he has candlecorns.”

“He’s probably bound multiple souls to each candlecorn.”

Silhouette cocked her head at me in confusion. “So they’re schizophrenic?”

“Firstly, I’m surprised you know that word, Silhouette.” Her curiosity collapsed into a glare. “Secondly, no. None of those souls is actually controlling the candlecorn. Wintershimmer probably has direct control somehow. But binding so many souls gives him two advantages.”

“Hostages?” Silhouette proposed.

I nodded. “Obviously, we can’t destroy any of the candlecorns as long as innocent souls are still bound to them. As for the second advantage, it’s magic.”

“Whole thing magic,” Graargh observed. “All you say is magic, magic, magic. Not understand!”

I coughed into my hoof. “I mean magical energy. Mana. Wintershimmer is using those souls to give the candlecorns power. That’s also why he left their bodies alive. Once the original body that goes with a soul is gone, the soul will no longer pull magic into the living world.”

Silhouette rolled her neck, producing a surprising array of geologic noises. “Okay, so that all explains why Wintershimmer would be getting magic from the ponies he foalnapped, and why he kept them all alive in the swamp, but I still don’t see how he’s controlling the candlecorns if he’s dead.”

“There is another way to let a soul control a body. One which doesn’t risk being dispersed if the host body dies.” I lit my horn again for another trivial charm. This time, out of my tankard of pure water emerged a swirling cloud of mostly transparent gas and light, which slowly took on the form of Angel—which is to say, a rock and two golden halos.

“Magic?!” Graargh turned to me. “Bad magic?”

“It’s the rock, kid. Calm down.” Silhouette patted the tiny bear cub on the back, which didn’t seem to cheer him any, but did visibly restrain him from attacking the loose soul.

“Master Coil, may I return to my body now?”

“Not quite yet, Angel, though I promise it won’t be long. Now, I need a volunteer.”

The table fell deathly silent. Silhouette and Tempest, both military ponies, had the foresight to slide their chairs backward. A moment later, Graargh followed suit.

“Blizzard, would you be so kind?”

She glanced around the table nervously. “You aren’t going to… take out my soul or anything, are you?”

“I’m not going to cast any magic on you at all, I promise. I just need you to relax, close your eyes, and go out of your way not to move for a minute or so.”

Blizzard glanced around the table for some sign of support, and then hesitantly nodded. “Alright… if you’re sure this is safe.”

I nodded my affirmation, then turned to the ‘ghost’ of my own golem. “Angel, I assume you know what I’m demonstrating.”

“Of course.” Turning toward Blizzard, the golem’s ghostly form floated slowly forward. “I promise, Miss Blizzard, that I will show your body the utmost respect.”

“Is that how you like it in the bedroom?” Silhouette whispered to me, her brow raised. “Certainly explains the way you taught the rock to speak to you.”

I had the wisdom to ignore the taunt; I certainly didn’t threaten Silhouette’s life or state of memberment in public.

After the moment of pronounced, threat-free silence between myself and my former nemesis turned grudging-ally, I turned back toward Blizzard. She smiled at me like a pony who had never before possessed the muscles necessary to offer such an expression. “Master Coil,” she said, her tone formal but her voice still decidedly feminine. “Have I exhibited what you were hoping to get across?”

“You have, Angel. Thank you both. Angel, hop back in your body.”

Angel emerged from Blizzard’s chest, and the grown mare abruptly started running her hooves and wings over her chest and face, as if worried Angel had wandered off with some physical part of her. “The disorientation is normal, Blizzard, but it will pass in a minute or so, I promise. What you all just witnessed was a possession: a soul assuming control of a physical body without being bound into it. Angel was able to control Blizzard’s body. However, I promise you that if Blizzard had been trying, she could have resisted him, and even pushed him out. Obviously, Angel isn’t a terribly powerful necromancer.”

Angel’s body reassembled itself and floated up off of the table top. “Could you perhaps bind me again, Master Coil?”

Silhouette chuckled, winking in my direction. “I had no idea you taught him to be so forward.”

I gritted my teeth and ignored her. I probably would have waved off Angel as well if he hadn’t picked up. “Possessing my own body, rather than actually being attached to it, is a somewhat unwelcome experience.”

“I don’t have the mana for that tonight, Angel. I’ll take care of it once I have the mana, though.” I turned back to my small audience. “Angel would have been able to move Blizzard’s body around even if she were asleep or unconscious. If, Celestia forbid, one of us had killed Blizzard while Angel was possessing her, he would still have been able to control the body… at least, to the extent that the body still functioned.”

“So Wintershimmer is using the other ponies to give him magic?” Blizzard asked, still sounding nervous. “Rather than risk his own life, he uses their magic and just possesses the golem?”

“Precisely. And unlike with Angel and Blizzard, I’m afraid even a hundred magically untrained ponies would ever be able to overpower Wintershimmer’s control of the body. Rather than brute willpower, he’s able to use his magic to guarantee control. And that’s where it gets hard for us.”

“It doesn’t have to be us,” Tempest observed. “I could go back to Everfree. We could have a legion here in less than a week.”

“Yes, Tempest, brilliant idea.” I groaned. “Instead of some peasants from a swamp in the middle of nowhere, we should give him an army of pegasi trained in using their magic for war.”

Tempest placed both his hooves on the table, pushing himself up over me. “So you’d rather ask for a serial killer’s help?”

“If he can actually save lives, I wouldn’t care if it were the draconequus himself!” Despite my snarl, all the eyes at the table gave me blank stares. “The draconequus? The most powerful evil spirit in equine history?” As blank stares continued, I pushed myself back from the table and collapsed into a slouch on my wooden chair, the wood groaning beneath me. “I don’t expect you to understand, Tempest, but this is exactly the situation where we need wizards, and not an army. If we had enough time to wait, I’d send you to go and get Star Swirl the Bearded. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to wait. Who knows what Wintershimmer will do with those ponies if we don’t stop him as soon as we can. And I’m the only pony who can get those souls away from him.”

Silhouette rolled her eyes. “Didn’t you just, not three hours ago, tell Wintershimmer that he was right about all your hero bullshit?”

“I’m not planning on being a hero, Silhouette. I’m being practical. We need somepony who can free bound souls. That somepony also has to be able to not have their own soul ripped out by Wintershimmer while doing it. And, would you look at that, we’ve arrived at a list of ‘just me’.” With that, I stood up from the table.

“So given that we don’t have any other options about who’s going to be the ‘hero’ here, Silhouette, I’d say that all philosophical discussion of that point can be filed next to Wintershimmer’s morality and Jade’s sanity. I’m probably going to die tomorrow, so please feel free not to wake me up if I sleep in.”

I groaned, rolled over, and pulled the hay-stuffed bag that served as my pillow across my face. “I asked for one thing.”

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t realize that the horizontal line I drew just above this text represented a full nine hours of evening and morning in the sweaty, swampy environs of Equestria’s least delightful city.

“Him is here!” Graargh announced, his volume justified by the entirely generous inch he elected to place between my exposed ear and his lips. “Come quick, Morty! Winnershimmer is here!”

Somewhere between the inky oceans of dreamless sleep and the roiling surf of hatred and desperation, there exists a lonely atoll of apathy. Standing atop that metaphorical sand, I sat bolt upright and proclaimed, in the fullness of my heroism and courage, “Oh. Really? I was expecting to have to hunt him down in the swamps...”

“Hurry! We fight!” Tiny bear jaws tugged at my already horribly ripped and mudstained sleeve.

I yawned and swung my legs off of my bed. “No, Graargh, we already discussed this. Silhouette and I are going to—”

“Him not alone! Have many rock pony. Many tree pony.”

“I…” It took me far too many seconds to parse that thought as I stood up and found my balance. “Golems? That doesn’t seem like his style...” I scooped my head underneath the bear cub, rolling him down my neck and onto my shoulders, before breaking into a sprint. Down a rough wooden hallway notable only for its incredible lack of decoration, we sped out through an open doorway and into the common room—giving me just enough time to see a table in my way and dash across it, before arriving at the front door of the inn.

Outside, I saw a storm.

Tragically, the above claim is poetic license; were the threat to Platinum’s Landing to take the form of inclement weather, the two dozen pegasi I immediately found in the streets would have made short work of it. Instead, their foes were more corporeal in nature and more magical in threat: towering golems of stone and mud and cypress wood and stinking tar molded together into the shapes of ponies easily ten feet tall at the shoulder. At least five of the false creatures were standing in the streets, facelessly doing battle with Equestria’s finest.

“Master Coil!” Angel came hurtling toward me, spinning in his halos in obvious perturbment.

“Where is Wintershimmer?” I asked, casting my glance around. For all the golems, their waxy master was nowhere to be seen.

“I’ve not seen him, sir. I followed Tempest and Blizzard; I tried to warn them concerning what Master Wintershimmer—”

“You don’t need to respect him anymore.”

“Ah yes, sir. I do forget. As I was saying, ‘—what that inequine abomination could do to them.’ But they didn’t heed me.”

“Right…” I glanced down. “Graargh, if you want, you can get big and help these ponies, but don’t let yourself get hurt. If you start to get tired, I want you to run back up to the room and hide. Understand?”

“Graargh stay with Morty!”

“I…” I sighed. “Fine. Get big, stay close, let me do the talking. And shout if your neck gets cold.”

Graargh roared quite deeply as green flames engulfed him. I would have been worried about the guardsponies panicking at the sight, but giant golems trying to kill you tend to make for an engrossing distraction.

“Angel, get me to Tempest.”

My golem started to fly into the besieged city. “I very much doubt he will listen to you, Master Coil. He was still very cross—”

“He will. Do you know where Silhouette is?”

“No, Master Coil; the city’s guard captain gave her command of a small team of the city’s soldiers, on Tempest’s recommendation.”

“This city has a guard captain?” I scoffed.

“Er, yes, actually; you convinced him you were quite handsome when our boat docked.”

I winced as I ran, and opened my eyes just in time to see a hoof thrown at me by a titanic pony lunging out of an alleyway it barely fit into. I fell onto my side, sliding under the attack. Behind me, Graargh leapt forward on powerful ursine legs, wrapping his foreclaws around the creature’s neck as the momentum of it’s punch slammed into the building on the opposite side of the street. With a fury I can gratefully say that I had never seen before, Graargh tore into the thing’s neck, ripping off pieces of peat and sticks and stones that together probably equalled my body mass. The golem spasmed and rolled, trying to dislodge the adult grizzly on its back, shortly before my shapeshifting friend managed to claw so hard that he outright decapitated the golem.

I found some minor amusement in the way Graargh’s eyes widened when it kept fighting him.

“Just let it be!” I shouted as Graargh hopped back with all the finesse and dexterity his form provided, knocking over a rain barrel and scattering more than a few loose bricks as he avoided a swipe from the headless creature. “We’ve got to go!”

The lumbering headless form lurched after us as Graargh and I sprinted away, led through the battle-laden streets by Angel’s glimmering disks. All around me, more of the golems fought tiny battles, their mud and brambles spilled over the streets as they fought rather impotently against the guardsponies of Platinum’s Landing.

Why had Wintershimmer even bothered? Though the golems were big and distracting, they weren’t terribly threatening. More to the point, they drew an enormous amount of attention to an existence that only Silhouette and I had otherwise witnessed. Perhaps the distraction was the point… but for what greater plan?

“Where did the golems come from, Angel? Up out of the swamp?”

“I do not know, Master Coil; you will have to ask Tempest or Captain Century.”

The rest of the sprint through the streets was uneventful for us, even if our surroundings were laden with battle; the city guard were keeping the majority of the golems occupied, and those few that had yet to settle into an engagement proved too slow to catch us. I did note with some small concern, though, that the golems all turned to watch me as I ran, tracking me with their eyeless faces and their expressionless muzzles.

Platinum’s Landing didn’t have a single open space that I would call a ‘town square’, but the oblong space preserved in front of a cathedral to Celestia seemed to serve the same purpose. There, no fewer than two dozen soldiers were engaged in a more fierce battle with at least a half dozen of Wintershimmer’s creations, holding a line in front of the sturdy stone edifice. Overhead, Tempest darted here and there, carried on favorable winds almost certainly of his own creation. The sword in his teeth tore the golems, but they cared little for shed mud and broken stones.

“Tempest!”

“Morty?” The stallion flared his wings to slow, spiraled as he turned, and landed in front of me at no insignificant speed. When he finally stopped, his sword was unpleasantly close to my throat, though he quickly sheathed it. “What are you doing back here? And where’s Silhouette?”

“Back? I haven’t…” I swallowed hard. “That is extremely bad.”

“I am not understand,” the huge bear growled. “What happened?”

Tempest’s eyes swung around the clearing before returning to me. “That wasn’t you? Is that magic? Can magic turn you into other ponies?”

I nodded. “That’s what made Star Swirl famous. But if ‘I’ didn’t use any magic when you saw me, Wintershimmer was probably just using a basic glamour. Any wizard worth their salt can cast it. Where did he and Silhouette go?”

Tempest gestured off with his wing. “Silhouette went that way first; you, or I guess Wintershimmer, followed after we spoke.”

“Well, it’s good he didn’t decide to kill you outright. I wonder why; you’ve got strong magic. Maybe he just doesn’t care, and thinks you’re some random soldier.”

“You won’t hear me complaining,” Tempest added with a jaded grin, his scruffy chin fluttering just a bit from the chuckle he released. “Now, help us out with these giant mud things and then we can go find Wintershimmer.”

“Not a good idea.” I shook my head. “I can probably stop him from ripping out your soul, but he has a lot of other ways of killing somepony quickly with magic.”

Tempest nodded, turned toward another of the soldiers in the square, and wordlessly gestured with a wing. Without turning to face me, he picked up. “I can at least help you find him; like you said, he didn’t seem to care about me.”

“I’m not about to take that risk. Graargh will help you with the golems.”

My little companion, the enormous grizzly, loomed forward. “Stay with Morty!”

“Graargh, look at me.” I swallowed nervously as ursine eyes focused on me. “I need you to understand, this isn’t something you can help me with.”

“Not care!” Graargh shouted. “Not leave behind!”

“You’re not leaving me behind, Graargh. I’m the one—”

Ursine paws wrapped around me, threatening to crush my ribs. “No! Family not leave me! Family not leave Graargh!”

“Graargh, I’m not planning on dying! I’ll be back!”

“Promise!” he demanded.

“I promise! Now please, let me go!”

The loss of tension from the full sized bear led to a string of wheezing breaths. I might have stayed there in the middle of the street, if it weren’t for the pitched battle between Tempest’s squad of the city guard and a trio of oversized masses of vaguely equine mud and swamp foliage. At some point in my near-death hugging experience, Tempest himself had rejoined the battle. I shouted to the armored young stallion.

“Tempest! Clear me a path, and I’ll cut them off at the source!”

“That’s great,” Tempest shouted over his shoulder. “But they aren’t dying. We can tear them apart, but they sort of—” His words stopped briefly when a literal tree trunk swung through the air at his side. Folding his wings fully against his side, Tempest dropped out of the sky, letting the log slice over his head before regaining his hover. “—put themselves back together. I think we need magic.”

“Um…” I scratched my temple. “Can any of your ponies do fire magic, like Cyclone?”

Tempest nodded. “Nopony nearly that strong, but we do have a few fire empaths.”

“It shouldn’t take much. Pitch and tar burn easily.”

Tempest gestured around with a wing, raising a brow incredulously. Just a moment later, he lunged aside as another of the golems’ slow clumsy blows attempted to turn him into a thin paste. “It’s a wooden city, Morty.”

“And you’re a bunch of pegasi, Take whoever isn’t making fire and go get rain clouds or something. Or have Blizzard do her ice magic on them once they stop moving. Whatever you have to do. I need to find Wintershimmer. Angel, stay close.”

“Close and quiet, just as you always request in combat. I’ll be here, Master Coil.”

“Good. Graargh… Help Tempest with that one on the right.”

Graargh grinned. “I nom.”

I waited for my opening deliberately, watching as swords and tree limbs and claws and fangs danced at the far side of the boardwalk street. While Graargh was something of a blunt instrument, I had to admire Tempest’s strategy. When our ursine ally tore out one of the golem’s knees, Tempest landed straight in front of the magical monster, slashing furiously in front of its face. With only three legs to stand on, and Tempest hopping backwards from each of its blows, the golem had to lunge forward, sliding on its belly to try and hit the nimble pegasus. Tempest easily dodged by launching into the air, then severed his enemy’s other foreleg before it could stand back up. Laying flat on its chin, the golem wasn’t nearly enough of a threat to keep me from running past. Graargh followed for a few steps, but I shook my head. “Stay with Tempest, Graargh.”

“You promise,” Graargh answered, and then he was quiet for a very long moment as I turned my back. Only as I was just on the precipice of earshot did I hear him cry out.

“Love Morty.”

Silhouette and I stood back to back against a mass of golems, which was pointedly odd given that I was able to stand some twenty feet away and watch them both from around the corner of a building. Wintershimmer’s illusion was excellent, capturing the focused but youthful line of my jaw and the mage’s focus in my piercing blue eyes with focused detail. If I’m being honest, the handsome stallion was just a touch distracting. He gave me too much credit, though, in my fashion; no matter how utterly attuned I might be to fine taste, even I can’t keep a jacket free of scratches and blemishes in a months-long trip on hoof across the known world. In fact, just looking down at my own real foreleg, I could see stitching from a loose branch or rough terrain that was absent on my illusory counterpart’s apparel.

“Alright, Angel, here’s the plan. You’re going to fly over to Wintershimmer, and you’re going to tell him Tempest needs their help or something. Mostly, I just need you floating next to him. I’m going to try and rip out as many of the souls he has stolen as I can using his spell, and put them in your rings where we normally store my mana.”

“Can you bind so many ponies, Master Coil? I thought you only had a few spells…”

“Not binding them; that would be a separate spell for each, and we know he has more than three ponies’ souls trapped. I’m just going to break his bindings to the candlecorn body all in one go, and then let the souls sort of float over to you. You’re going to need to calm them, explain what’s going on, and fly away like you have never flown before. Ideally all at once. Break line of sight so Wintershimmer can’t physically attack you, and then just get lost as fast as you possibly can. Go to Graargh, and when I’m done I’ll find you to put those ponies back.”

“Graargh? Not Miss Blizzard, or…”

“How well do you think Wintershimmer can impersonate Graargh, Angel?”

“…I suppose I see your point. If I may ask, Master Coil, why not rip out Wintershimmer’s soul and leave the other ponies in the candlecorn body?”

“I don’t know how he got into the candlecorn from the Summer Lands in the first place, so I can’t guarantee he won’t just pop back in. Once you’re gone, I’ll try and figure that out.” I glanced around the corner, watching as Silhouette slid under a towering pony, punching into its mucky chest as she avoided its lumbering blow. ‘Morty’ lit his horn and hurled a frankly boring impersonation of an arcane missile made of an insignificant amount of mana. The golem he struck crumpled to the ground, ‘destroyed’.

“Alright… Angel, go.”

To my own self-aware nervousness, the plan began by working perfectly. I built up a powerful glow around my horn, ready to deliberately flare up in a ‘smash-and-grab’ sort of extraction of Wintershimmer’s victims. Angel darted out into the street where Silhouette and Wintershimmer were working together. Silhouette glanced over at the golem, but caught no obvious sight of me. Even Wintershimmer, though somewhat surprised at Angel’s arrival, didn’t appear to have found any concern or any need for a heightened guard at the arrival of the utterly non-threatening flying rock.

“Master Coil!” Angel shouted. “Please, you must come quickly. Tempest needs your help—”

Those two and a half short sentences bought me all the time I needed to step out onto the street and lower my horn. A burst of my blue magic didn’t form a visible beam or a bolt or anything of the sort, but from the shocked and shuddering expression I witnessed on my own face across the way, I knew my blow had landed true.

Angel started screaming, in roughly six tones of voice. That, in particular, I found highly disconcerting, especially combined with the wave of exhaustion I felt sweep through my body from the powerful spell.

Silhouette whirled away from a golem she had decapitated and toward the strange noise. “Morty? What—”

“He’s Wintershimmer!” I shouted, shaking my head and glancing up at myself.

Silhouette’s expression hardened, looking between me and my more cleanly dressed counterpart, then took two swings at Wintershimmer. He jumped back nimbly, and then when she stepped forward again, teleported back about twenty feet with a pop.

In the course of her attack, I ran up to her side. “I just… got a bunch of the souls out. Maybe all of them…” I panted at the exertion of my spell, and forced my eyes to focus on my mentor. His face shifted in front of me, swirling like powdery snow caught in a gale.

Silhouette rushed again at the now visibly waxy, though not yet recognizable figure. With surprising agility for a wizard who I had never before seen need to dodge a spell or blow by physically jumping, the candlecorn flung itself backward far further than any mortal could jump without the aid of magic. He landed with enough momentum that his hooves skidded on the wooden board streets of Platinum’s Landing, scraping off globs of his waxy form in the grain of the wood as he went.

“Here we are at last, Coil.” My mentor, now distinctly wearing a wax version of his distinctly skull-like face, rolled his neck. “Are you prepared to die?”

“I’ll give you a chance to give up, Wintershimmer.” I lifted my head if only for posture, and paced forward. “You’ve lost your source of mana beyond what you already have stored up in that golem, and I still have two spells left. Right now, I’m stronger than you are.”

Wintershimmer shook his head in disappointment. “Star Swirl is stronger than I have ever been. Brute force did not make me the greatest duelist in a thousand years. Will you flee now? Teleport away now that you’ve proven the hero and saved those ‘poor’ peasants?”

I stood defiantly, glaring at him. “Is that your best bait? I taught your candlecorns to trace teleportation. I’d just be out a spell for no benefit.”

“Tragic, putting so much work into a project and having it turn against you. Perhaps you’ve gained a shred of sympathy for me?”

Silhouette glanced over to me with a raised brow like something about the sentence confused her, but I was too busy responding to Wintershimmer to pay it much mind.

“You don’t deserve any sympathy. Attacking innocent ponies with an army of golems only made you more obvious. Even if you kill me, what happens when the Butcher comes after you? Or the Sisters?”

“If you’ve thought to ask that question but you do not know the answer, you have already lost.” Wintershimmer punctuated the finality of his statement by lighting his horn. I felt a chill on my neck, and surged another spell without hesitation. Wintershimmer’s grip on my soul broke as my magic saturated the air, leaving a tingling across my coat. Only a moment too late I felt the cost in the drain in my legs and shoulders.

Wintershimmer smiled, but he didn’t need to say a word.

I elected to fill the silence. “Silhouette, I’ve… He can’t rip out your soul as long as we stay here. Not for a few minutes anyway. I’m only good for one more spell; you might need to take it from here. You can use the amulet to fight him.”

Silhouette smiled at that. “Letting me finish Wintershimmer off?” Her hoof moved up to her neck, and she wound the cord that held the black stone in a tight loop around her forelock. “How very generous of you, Morty.”

“I’m not afraid of an earth pony mare,” Wintershimmer observed, surprisingly genuinely. I wondered if he had a genuine plan, if he was bluffing, or if he was simply too arrogant to recognize his own defeat.

The answer arrived swiftly.

When Silhouette charged, Wintershimmer turned his dribbling horn downward, and fired a spell at the ground. I watched globs of wax drip down his temples, looking to all the world like the sweat of magical exertion as his once great magical reserves stuttered to whatever little supply he had left within the golem’s body. Still, he was strong enough to pick up the wooden beams of the street in Platinum’s landing, turning them into a wall that stopped Silhouette in her tracks, and more importantly, cut off our vision of the old stallion.

“Silhouette, wait!” I shouted, only to realize her momentum wasn’t simply going to stop easily. I say this with certainty because instead of going over or around the wooden planks, Silhouette lowered her shoulder and bull-rushed straight through them in a cloud of splinters, glimmering crystal, and pure, unadulterated badass.

I had shouted in fear for my unexpected ally because of an old wizard’s dueling trick that Wintershimmer was employing. A pony would break line-of-sight with their opponent through a wall or opaque shield, and then teleport to a position where they could strike their enemy, who would be busy trying to overcome the initial defense.

It was thus to my surprise when Wintershimmer was still just standing there on the other side of the wall, his waxy face just waiting for Silhouette’s oncoming hoof. The squelch of wax was satisfying, but I felt myself growing worried. If Wintershimmer had enough mana to make that wall in the first place, he could have just as easily teleported away to gather his strength.

“How’s that taste, old stallion?”

With his mouth smeared into a dozen splotches spread across his neck and the surrounding street, Wintershimmer was in no place to reply. Silhouette chuckled, and rammed the hoof carrying her void crystal straight into his chest.

The result was almost immediate. I caught sight of a visible bubbling and popping of the body, and then it simply collapsed into a puddle of half-molten wax. Silhouette hopped back toward me, flicking her legs out in all directions one at a time, in hopes that the sticky material would fly free of her crystalline coat and her black leather bracers.

“Alright, Morty, we—”

I felt a sudden lurch of the street beneath my hooves; presumably the same that caused Silhouette to lose her thought mid-sentence. Then came the cracking, the thunderous parting of boards like ribs. I jumped when the wood below me splintered, and watched in horror as it parted into a gaping drop to the bog water some twenty feet below.

I barely had time to start screaming. Silhouette spared the need to even shout anything. She pivoted in place on pure instinct, leapt into the air on athletic legs, and tackled into my side. The force carried us both to the edge of the yawning pit, with my body tumbling onto solid wood, and her chest scraping on the broken edge as her hind legs dangled over the side.

“Morty!”

“Silhouette! Crap!” I flung myself at her in turn, hoping to return the favor, and wrapped my forelegs around her shoulders to pull her up.

Something below us pulled down. Silhouette screamed, right next to my ear, in deserved pain and an admirable lack of fear. “Pull!”

“I am!” I hissed in agony as she slipped, and for a moment, I felt a lurch as her shoulders slipped. Quickly, I brought my forelegs together tighter, and I managed to catch her by a single one of her forelegs: the one tightly bound to her void crystal amulet. The magic-eating gem sucked at my skin, and I hissed my teeth at the burn and the drain. Already down two spells, my vision swam and my ears rang.

“I think I’ve…” she hissed through gritted teeth. With a huff of breath, she kicked with her hind legs, but I didn’t feel her meet any resistance. “Wintershimmer was there!”

“What? Of course it’s Wintershimmer!” I snapped at her. “Pull!”

Silhouette’s leg strained in the effort of lifting her body, and slowly, her shoulder rose above the level of the street. As she fought to climb, she spoke through gritted teeth. “What he said! ‘A project turn against you.’ Remember—”

A flash of sickly golden magic beside Silhouette’s head blinded me for a moment, and I blinked at the dots in my eyes.

The weight I felt got lighter, but I still felt myself holding Silhouette’s hoof between mine, and the burn of the void crystal tied around her fetlock. I tugged her up over the lip.

And then I heard her scream of pain.

“Morty!”

Distant, and falling.

“Silhouette!”

I dropped her foreleg on the boards beside me… and only then realized that was all I held. It ended in a clean but bleeding slice, nearly up to her shoulder, and well out of the way of the protection her amulet would have offered.

I leaned forward, into the hole in the street looking down into the darkness below the raised city. The murky water rippled, and a few small bubbles rose as the only signs of Silhouette’s falling.

I narrowed my eyes, watching for some sign of Wintershimmer or Silhouette, but nothing moved. The swamp was as still as the grave.

It took a moment for the weight to hit me. The grief and guilt followed soon after. I was the wizard. I was the one who knew Wintershimmer’s tricks, or at least the way he thought. I knew magic, and the way his mind honed itself toward the singular conquest of his enemies.

I should have known better.

Had I been given a minute more, I might have found tears for the mare I had until so recently considered my oldest enemy. But I never found time for those tears.

Behind me, I heard a pop and smelled a hiss of ozone. Teleportation. As I turned, Silhouette chuckled.

“Had you fallen for her, Coil? She certainly seems to have fallen for you.”

The voice was Silhouette’s, but I knew the speaker better. Wintershimmer made Silhouette’s face smile, even as she bled from the stump of her shoulder. Though my enemy was approaching, I quickly scanned my surroundings. Somewhere, Wintershimmer had another candlecorn or some sort of unicorn help. Silhouette’s body couldn’t have teleported itself.

“Wintershimmer.” I lit my horn, careful not to let it flare and send me into what would surely prove a fatal nap. I needed time to watch for his magic. A taunt was my best option. “Was that what this was all about? You wanted to be a younger mare?”

“Spare me your so-called wit, Coil.” I’d heard a great deal of bile from that tongue, but it was strange hearing Wintershimmer’s harsh, almost over-enunciated unicorn dialect in the normally Crystal-accented soldier’s voice. “I needed to save her. You were right that I needed those souls from the swamp for mana. Silhouette is the first step to replacing what you took from me. I only bring her here to return her to you.” Silhouette’s face smiled, and even let out a small chuckle. “You could kill her, and I would no longer draw her magic. That would weaken me considerably. But I know you won’t. That isn’t what a ‘hero’ would do.”

“I’ll save her,” I told him defiantly, though only in retrospect do I realize how much I must have been playing the part of the petulant foal. “I’ll kill you!”

“Disperse me?” Wintershimmer shook Silhouette’s head. “An amusing fantasy, Coil, but we do not live in a fairy tale. You were expecting my soul to appear when you destroyed that candlecorn, weren’t you? You lack the skill to even find me, much less defeat me.”

“For the pony pointing out that we don’t live in a fairy tale, you’ve gone awfully far out of your way to gloat at me about how incredibly powerful you are. Pride goeth before the fall.”

Wintershimmer snorted in disdain. “Look in a mirror, ‘hero’.” Silhouette’s mouth twisted into a slight grin, and then abruptly fell slack as she collapsed to the street.

A painful thought entered my mind as I nervously searched around the street for any remaining threat, and then struggled to pick up Silhouette’s remains. For all the times in the Union that I had called her an extortionist or a villain or a thug, the pit in the street Wintershimmer had opened wasn’t aimed at her. Silhouette was dead because she’d saved my life.

Silhouette was the hero.

What did that make me?

XXVII - A Hero's Unwelcome

When I limped into the cracked and mud-stained raised platform that served as the ‘town square’ for Platinum’s Landing, I was greeted by the wide eyes of at least six hundred ponies. They poured out of half-ruined buildings and skittered back and forth, doing everything the could to repair the damages of Wintershimmer’s terror. The sky was thick with gray clouds gathered by the city’s soldiers, and the rain struggled to put out burning puddles of pitch and sticks that had once been golems. In other places, Wintershimmer’s golems were frozen solid midway through their assault on the city. A few ponies were being nursed or bandaged from injuries, but I saw no indication that the attack had harmed anypony, save the mare I carried on my back.

That realization niggled at the back of my mind, though I couldn’t explain it. Wintershimmer was never the kind of pony for clumsy attacks like this. If he wanted somepony dead, his strike was most often surgical, and unseen until the moment of truth. I needed to know what he was playing at, but in that moment my mind was too overwhelmed and my body too drained to think further.

“Morty!” Blizzard was the first pony I recognized in the crowd, making herself obvious as she flew forward. The smile she wore seeing me faded quickly when she realized the burden spread across my back. “Is Silhouette okay?” Concern broke into outright fear as I drew closer, and Blizzard rushed forward. “Her leg! What happened?”

I hesitated, for want of the right words. I’d given the entire right sleeve of my jacket, and yet compared to her gift to me, it seemed like nothing. “She’s… still alive,” I finally answered. “But like the others from the swamp. She saved my life. I’ll tell you more when I can sit down. Do you know where the others are? Graargh? Angel?”

Blizzard simply nodded at the question, and though she turned to lead me through the crowd, her eyes kept darting back toward Silhouette’s slack form and the stump that remained of her shoulder. Other ponies noticed the crystal mare as well, though without knowing her, most only offered nods of condolence or sympathy.

Blizzard led me to the cathedral of Celestia where I had parted ways with Tempest. Part of the beautiful stonework had been smashed away, and one of the doors hung loose, but the damage looked like it would be fixed within a week. Without a word, Blizzard and I stepped inside.

The cushioned pews of the main chamber looked up at an enormous stained glass picture of the divine sisters in the traditional unicorn style, lacking accuracy both in absence of wings and in anything even remotely resembling accuracy of color. In the light of midday, the window cast colored light across the dozens of moderately injured soldiers and volunteers who now rested on the long benches.

Wandering among the aisles, I fairly quickly picked out Graagh, for reasons I doubt I need to explain. As I had directed, Angel floated beside the grizzly, and to my convenience, Tempest was not far away. Not wanting to create a large disturbance among the wounded, I lifted a hoof and waved them over.

“Master Coil!”

“Morty! Am back!”

I sighed. So much for avoiding a disturbance. Without speaking up much, and while enduring the glares of the medically minded in the otherwise quiet room, I gestured back to the door. Tempest and Graargh alike seemed perturbed by the sight of Silhouette on my back, three-legged and unconscious. Thankfully, neither elected to interrogate me until we were outside in the open square.

“What in Tartarus happened?” Tempest demanded, surprisingly fiercely. His hoof stung against my chest, though the gesture was more of an accusative point than an actual punch.

“We saved the city, just like we planned; I think that should be obvious. But… it wasn’t without cost.”

A distinct ripping noise told me I’d lost even more of my jacket when Tempest grabbed onto the collar with both his forehooves, nearly smashing his face into mine. “You got her killed!”

“What?” I shoved Tempest back, tearing my jacket further in exchange for the space. “You’re blaming me? I understand being angry, but how is this my fault? She knew exactly what she was getting into.”

“So everything you said about her amulet? That was all just your egotistical bullshit?”

“It’s a hoof-sized rock, not a suit of armor!” I stood up to Tempest—or at least, I did my best to. I was taller than Tempest, but drained from my magic and scrawny compared to the strength of the career soldier, I didn’t feel it. For the first time since I’d met him, the scruffy soldier stood up properly and glared down at me.

“You were supposed to stop him with your magic!”

“I know you probably don’t understand unicorn magic, but it isn’t that simple. Silhouette knew exactly what she was getting into, fighting Wintershimmer. She’d seen him kill dozens of ponies in the Union. Frankly, it’s a miracle she lasted as long—”

Tempest’s uppercut was accompanied by a crack of thunder, picking me up off my hooves just a bit. Silhouette bounced off my back, and a moment later I landed on my mane, with my hooves well above my head.

“Why you hit Morty?” Graargh demanded, lunging up to my side. Angel likewise floated over defensively, though his form seemed far less imposing in comparison to Tempest.

Before he could answer, I reached up a hoof to restrain the cub in a grizzly’s body. “Let him be, Graargh. He’s pissed off.”

“She’s dead!” Tempest yelled, flaring his wings.

“Mostly dead.” I massaged my jaw, where I could already feel a sizeable bruise forming. “I can fix it. I just need to get her soul back. Which is why I came and found all of you in the first place.”

“What?” Tempest blinked. “No, we’re not all going hunting for Wintershimmer. I’m not letting you get anypony else killed for your revenge—”

“Not what I meant.” I shook my head. “All those ponies in the swamp? The ones he took? I rescued their souls. Now I need to put them back.”

“That’s it? You want to run off for those ponies, and—”

I felt my eye twitch as I grabbed onto his muzzle with telekinesis. “Tempest, I know the pegasus mindset is to keep brains small so the energy can go to your other muscles, but please at least make an attempt to shut up and listen so somepony with a functioning cerebral cortex can fix things.” Looking back, I’m honestly surprised Tempest didn’t take another swing at me. “You’ve known Silhouette for a month or two at most, and sleeping with her makes you about as close acquaintances as your jaw and a razor. If you honestly want to help her, get off your soapbox, fly back to Everfree, and bring Star Swirl here. If that’s too complicated, feel free to just do the first part.”

“Morty…” Blizzard whispered over my shoulder.

I let go of Tempest’s muzzle, shoving him backwards with the last of the magic; I nearly surged and passed out from the force of it, and I nearly didn’t care. “I’m about to bring a collection of innocent ponies back from the dead, Blizzard, and the last thing I need is some imbecile guardspony distracting that delicate work. Enjoy your flight.”

Tempest scowled, but he proved control over his emotions when he spread his wings and flew away then and there.

I made more of a show of sighing in relief that was strictly appropriate before turning back to my remaining companions. “Graargh, my back needs you to take Silhouette.”

“Oh!” Graargh nuzzled against her side, and the burden of a mare whose skin was made of gleaming stone finally rose from where I’d dropped her at time of Tempest’s uppercut. “Graargh carry. Take where?”

“Blizzard, can you find somewhere for her? She’ll need to be fed and given water, and all the rest of the necessities for somepony in a coma.”

The mare gave me a firm nod. “I’ll ask the guardsponies.”

I stopped her before she walked off. “We’ll have to take her with us when we leave, at least until I’m able to track down where Wintershimmer ran off to…” That earned a few nervous looks, which I waved away with my hoof. “He’s not coming back tonight. Frankly, I’d be surprised if he came back here ever. He’s got to want something more than just peasant souls to power his magic.” With my back unburdened, I sat down on the planks of the street and sighed. Something at my haunch distinctly clanked against the road. “Oh. Right. I’m not really sure what to do with this…”

Blizzard recoiled when I pulled Silhouette’s severed leg out of where I had stored it in my torn and frankly tattered jacket. Carefully, I unwound the void crystal amulet from the dead limb, and tucked it into a pocket where at least it wouldn’t be touching me directly.

“Can’t you stick it back on with magic?” Blizzard asked.

“Magic doesn’t work that way,” I told her. “At least, not any kind I’ve ever heard of. For now, I guess keep it with her body. If it starts to rot… bury it? You can’t really burn crystal corpses, so that’s the best idea I have.” I set the limb down and waved Blizzard away. My vision swam with the motion, and I quickly forced my own foreleg to the street to steady myself.

Blizzard laid a wing on my shoulder. “Are you okay, Morty? You don’t look hurt, but—”

“I’ll be fine. Just worn out. I need to sit. Just go find somewhere to put her,” I interrupted. “And then come find me. There’s a lot more work to do. Tartarus...”

I watched Blizzard and Graargh as they walked away from the open square. When they passed out of sight, I laid back my head, scrunched up my eyes, and tried to cry for the mare that gave her soul to save mine.

But feeling like I was supposed to be heartbroken didn’t mean that I was. The tears never came.

“Mister Wizard!” I stirred in my nap, feeling my vertebrae shift against my stiff bed of the wooden street, and opened my eyes. Hare was standing over me, looking straight down. “I heard you won!”

“Ah.” I slowly sat up, and realized abruptly that I was surrounded by probably the entire city of Platinum’s Landing. I literally could not see the end of the crowd. “Oh. Wow. Nopony thought to wake me up before that.”

“We try,” Graargh growled, a few feet behind me. I jumped, just a bit. Thankfully, the voice belonged to a far smaller bear since my last sight of my young companion. “You sleep heavy.”

“I took the liberty of informing them, Master Coil, that you need sleep in order to build up your magic reserves.” Angel took to floating beside my head for a moment, and then darted over to the limp bodies of the ponies we had extracted from the swamp. This time, pleasantly, they were spaced out in a line, instead of a single pile of faintly twitching limbs.

“I hope you didn’t explain that in too intimate of detail,” I grumbled. My first action was to wipe the sand of sleep from my eyes. Then I rolled my neck, eliciting a pair of distinct cracks, and muttered a bit more to myself. “Audience. Right. I can do this.”

I didn’t have the magic back that I would have needed to amplify my voice. A few hours of sleep really weren’t enough, especially not on the literal street. I’d have to shout.

“Ponies of Platinum’s Landing, my name is Mortal…” Off to a great start, my introduction trailed off. I coughed into my hoof. “My name is Morty.” More than a few ponies cocked their heads at the nickname, but I ignored them. “First, let me offer you my condolences. What happened here today was not your fault. None of you did anything to provoke this attack. Blame lies solely with one dead stallion. The ghost of an evil wizard, Wintershimmer the Complacent.”

I think two ponies gasped, which to be fair, was two more than I really expected to recognize the name so far from the Crystal Union border.

“Wintershimmer wanted to steal the souls of you and your neighbors to fuel his evil magic.”

At that, everypony gasped.

“Rest assured, I wasn’t about to let that happen. Just a few…” I glanced back to Graargh “How long was I asleep?”

Graargh raised a paw. “Sleep when sun there.”

I blinked twice in surprise, and once more in physical agony when I accidentally looked straight into the sun. “Well, alright. About three hours ago, my associate Silhouette and I fought Wintershimmer.” I swallowed heavily once. “We were victorious, but it was not without cost. Wintershimmer took Silhouette’s soul.”

The crowd turned silent.

“I know most of you have never met her, probably never even heard her name, but Silhouette is the reason I’m standing here in front of you. She saved my life. And she helped me save something else.” I gestured at the ponies laying in the afternoon sun. “We took back what Wintershimmer stole. We’re going to get your families back.”

The crowd roared, and something strange happened within me. Since my duel with Clover, I had felt the rush of adrenaline in battle, the pressure of the threat of death, and the exhilaration of mystery. But none of that compared to the surging warmth in my gut I felt as the ponies of Platinum’s Landing roared and stomped their hooves in a cacophonous cheer.

I waved over Angel. It took only a little verbal guidance to start the souls on the way back to their respective bodies. Ponies gasped in awe at the half-transparent forms of their friends and loved ones as they floated back to where they belonged. And then, after a moment of bated breath, the dead rose.

I raised a hoof, almost without thinking, smiled, and bowed. “For those of you who’ve just returned to life, you’re going to feel somewhat strange at the moment. You might not be able to use your magic immediately. In the next few days, I’ll have a few of you meet with me each morning and we’ll make sure you are back to your old selves. Until then—”

That was as far as I got before the rampage of tearful, happy reunions overtook my ability to shout at the crowd. As I grinned and gave up on issuing my necromantic advice, more than a few ponies swarmed around me. Before I had time to react, I was being carried on a platform of others shoulders.

Not unlike the ponies I’d restored, I felt alive.

I won’t force you to sit through a week and a half of my recounting the celebration, laboriously binding the souls of Wintershimmer’s victims back to their bodies. I could only do two a day, and each spell only took me about two minutes. That left full days of feats, storytelling, and treatment to the finest luxuries Platinum’s Landing could afford a young stallion. I ate with the mayor and slept in a bed stuffed with pegasus down—at that time, far and away the most comfortable night of my life. The motion of the whole thing just swept me away.

It was sometime the next week, when I found myself posing for a marble sculptor, that it all came crumbling down.

My hooves were spread out, one foreleg a step up from the others on a wooden crate that had been provided specifically to accomodate my pose. Some stitching had been afforded to my jacket to at least keep it from falling apart, but it was obvious the shoulder I’d torn away for Silhouette wasn’t quite aligned right, and the collar was on the verge of tatters itself. Still, with my jaw in the air, I convinced myself the resulting statue would convey an air of martial bravery, as though I’d survived the damages to my apparel and come out stronger for it. As I held my posture, listening to the clicking of a chisel on fine marble, I felt a distinctly cold hoof tap me on the shoulder.

The hoof I turned back to look at was metal. Not just a shoe at the end of a flesh-and-blood hoof, mind you, but an entire hoof and foreleg of a dark blue steel like the color of ice in the depths of a frozen lake. It had been attached to the foreleg of a buckwheat mare of no substantial size, but of considerable physical presence.

The gleaming jet black armor certainly helped.

“You’re Mortal Coil.” Though it must have been a question, it didn’t feel that way to me. Her tone was steel made audible, like a blade being unsheathed, and I could practically feel her voice held against my throat.

“Commander!” the sculptor bowed and stepped away from his block of white stone. “Lord Morty, I will leave you to your business.”

I stepped off of the wooden crate I had been balanced on, turned around, and got my first really proper look at the mare… and my first glance at the twelve steel-plated pegasi following her as an escort. They had approached frighteningly quietly, all things considered.

“All my friends call me Morty,” I told the mare. “Judging by the armor, and the fact Dawn Tello called you ‘Commander’, you must be Tempest’s mom.”

“Commander Typhoon,” she completed, with a nod. That reminded me that ‘Tempest’s Mom’ was one third of Equestria’s leadership, and a blatantly deadly mare in her own right. The subtle motion on her face somehow conveyed that she didn’t like me, or at the very least that she did not trust me. “I know about your nickname. Gale’s told the story at length several times since her return.”

“Well, Commander… I thought I told Tempest to send Star Swirl, but in retrospect, you’re probably more helpful anyway. The void crystal armor should keep you safe. I’m assuming you’re here to help me hunt Wintershimmer?”

Typhoon glanced around at the festival going on. “My first concern was for the city’s safety. I see that threat has been dealt with. Beyond that, I’m here to escort you the rest of the way to Everfree City.” She gestured back to her escort. “We have a skywagon waiting.”

“I’ll need to gather my friends,” I told her. “I can meet you here in a few hours, though I’m sure if I asked nicely, I could get the mayor to find you a room, and we can fly off tomorrow morning.”

Typhoon’s brow lowered slightly. “You’ve already kept us waiting. Tempest will arrange safe passage for your friends. My troops have just finished loading up the remains of the Crystal Union's late commander. You and I are leaving now.”

XXXVIII - Making Arraignments

Typhoon’s sky ‘wagon’ was, in truth, a full sized carriage with a roomy interior and two cushioned benches for its riders. I climbed up two sizeable steps to reach the interior, and sat opposite another mare in armor, facing the back of the vehicle.

It was this soldier, a white pegasus with a blue mane that eerily mirrored my own coloring, who first extended a hoof. “I’m Frostfall. Adiutoris to Commander Typhoon. You must be Mortal Coil. Gale’s been talking about you non-stop since she got back.”

“He prefers ‘Morty’,” Typhoon observed flatly as she entered the vehicle with a single flap of her wings, before I even had a chance to interrupt. She turned to close the carriage door, and at almost the very moment I heard it click, the rest of Typhoon’s soldiers began pulling us into the air.

I watched in a fearful reverence as Typhoon maneuvered in her gleaming black armor, defended by a veneer of void crystal that I could almost feel eating magic out of the air. If I had any doubt it was the same suit of armor that had earned her father the title of ‘the Butcher’, that disbelief was washed away when I realized that the armor was ever so slightly loose at her waist, and thus that the suit had originally been sized for a stallion.

If the leader of Equestria’s military noticed my attention, she disregarded it. With calm grace, she shifted the long slender sword she wore on her side so that it would not be in her way, and then reclined onto the cushioned bench beside Frostfall. From how close they sat, I immediately decided they were lovers. Once reclined, Typhoon reached up with her frigid hoof, which I now recognized as a prosthetic ending abruptly in the middle of her formally trimmed fetlock, and removed the gleaming black helmet from her head.

A three-tone mane of brown, blonde, and red slipped out, cut short and styled with military restraint. In all, her face reminded me of autumn. With the cheek guard of the helmet absent, I also took note of the scar around her right eye: a vertical burn that mirrored Cyclone’s perforated scar almost perfectly.

Typhoon wasn’t a particularly beautiful mare, but I realized quickly that wasn’t the look she was going for.

“Do the scars run in the family?” I asked, jokingly. Typhoon raised a brow, and I lifted a hoof to my own right eye, tapping lightly on my cheek. “I noticed Cyclone has one on his left, though it looks more like a shark bit his face, or—”

As soon as I mentioned Cyclone, Frostfall lifted a wing to her neck, rapidly making slashing motions with her leading feathers in an attempt to get me to shut up.

Typhoon’s stern mood did not turn angry, but I felt a notable chill in the air of the cabin. “We fought the day he killed King Lapis.” Gently, she extended a wing, and I took note that its crest was armored in tiny bladed wedges that folded together like scales, giving the limb both thin armor and a cutting edge without being too rigid to fly. After a moment’s reflection, I realized the little blades were just about as far spaced out as the notches on Cyclone’s face.

“Maybe we can talk about something more pleasant,” Frostfall suggested rather forcefully. She then promptly failed to provide any sort of idea or example, though the way she chewed on her lower lip suggested she was feverishly in search of one.

Typhoon leaned back on the bench. “We’ll be stopping in the Hollows on the way to Everfree; our business shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, so I’ll ask you stay in the carriage, Morty.”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” I countered.

Typhoon snorted. “Arrest and attempted hanging in the Crystal Union. Bar brawl in Lübuck. Wizard’s fight in the cathedral. Prison escape, including assaulting Lübuck’s archmage. And an outright siege of Platinum’s Landing. I’m not asking you to stay put for your protection.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Sure, I’ll stay here.”

She didn’t seem particularly pleased, despite my agreement, when she flatly muttered “Thank you.”

We sat in an awkward silence for at least a few minutes after that, until I finally stumbled onto a subject.

“Typhoon, how is Gale doing?”

The response to this question puzzled me for a few seconds. Typhoon held out her remaining original forehoof, and Frostfall grudgingly dropped a couple silver bits onto it. Only after Typhoon had stored the coins in some pouch or pocket on her armor did she answer. “Lady Celestia explicitly said not to tell you.”

I slapped a hoof on the cushion. “You’re serious?!”

“Of course.” Typhoon leaned casually as the carriage shifted, beginning a descent.

I sat back. “Alright something else… Let’s see. How’d you lose your hoof?”

Typhoon lifted the relevant prosthetic. “We were at war with the buffalo.”

“The what?”

“Buffalo,” she repeated.

Frostfall leaned forward to clarify. I wondered if Typhoon had misunderstood my confusion, or if she just couldn’t bring herself to care. “They call themselves ‘bison’. Big huge creatures with massive lumps on their necks, and horns.”

I nodded. “So they do magic?”

“Not like a unicorn,” Typhoon answered. “They have shamans that mix herbs and burn incense to manipulate the weather and heal wounds.”

“Oh, alchemy. That barely counts as real magic, but alright. So do the buffalo have wings or something?”

“No, Morty, I think you’re misunderstanding.” Frostfall sort of waved her wings in the air as if trying to brush away the confusion. “They’re not dragons or griffons. They look like big cows.”

I blinked twice, slowly. “Cows?”

Typhoon nodded.

“You have an army of pegasi, right?”

Typhoon nodded slower, slightly frowning. “They used a smoke that suppressed our magic.”

“Ah, alright. Now, just to make sure I’m understanding: nopony noticed this smoke before it got to you? Nopony thought it would be a good idea to blow it away, or fly slightly to the side so you weren’t downwind?”

Frostfall dawned a frown in emulation of her leader. “Hold on; we didn’t know it was going to do that to us. It just seemed like smoke…”

“Oh, the enemy’s sending smoke at us, and we know they only have alchemists for magic. This is certainly not a threat; we should just stay right in the middle of it…” I put a hoof on my face. “I’m sorry I misunderstood you earlier, Commander. I promise, I’ll stay in the wagon for your safety.”

Frostfall hung her head. “He’s just like Gale…”

“No,” Typhoon corrected. “Gale swears and insults ponies on purpose. She doesn’t want them to think she’s a stuck-up princess, but she’s actually very good at being diplomatic when she wants something. She’s knows when she’s making an ass of herself.”

I chuckled. “I hear much like cows, asses can be very dangerous. You should be careful what you call other ponies. You wouldn’t want to lose a war with the donkeys too, would you Commander?”

Typhoon leaned back, propping her wings behind her head. “I rest my case.”

“As long as you don’t rest it downwind from a fire.”

The Hollow, as I observed from glancing out the window of the carriage, seemed to contain not a single resident. The village sat in the middle of a clearing in the woods, and if I were to describe it in a single word, I would simply call it ‘spooky’. From the rampant cobwebs to the drawn curtains, it was as if the residents—if any truly existed—had gone out of their way to produce the visual effect of a ghost town.

Typhoon donned her void-crystal plated helmet before she stepped out of the carriage, and once free of its cramped confines, immediately drew her sword. It seemed to be made of the same blue steel as her hoof, and its leading edge was shrouded in a visible icy mist.

Frostfall followed, drawing a dramatically less interesting sword of her own.

“Anypony here?” the latter mare shouted. “We’re with the Cirran Legion; nopony is going to get hurt. We would just like a few words.”

Something moved in a window off to their left, before vanishing entirely as the two soldiers approached. Frostfall jumped at it slightly, but Typhoon made no sudden motion. The shadow vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and then the hamlet was once more still.

It was at this point that I decided something was very wrong. That combined with the fact that we had only flown at most half an hour from Platinum’s Landing suggested very strongly what a culprit behind the wrongness might be.

And with that decision, I climbed down out of the carriage.

Neither of the soldiers noticed my disobedience, as they were both absorbed with a door opening on the opposite side of the street, and the young colt who emerged. “Y-you’re here to help?”

“We are.” Typhoon’s voice carried confidence that made it audible even from some distance away, with her head turned away from me. “Where is everypony? We were expecting to pick up some supplies.”

“There was a candle pony,” the colt answered. “He was just here, not ten minutes ago. And everypony started to fall asleep…”

“Wintershimmer,” I announced, and then scowled. Was he following me? Attacking some unprotected hodunk swamp was one thing, but to try and take me on while Typhoon was present seemed completely against the strategic mind of the Wintershimmer I knew.

Frostfall twitched at my sudden proximity. “Mobius, Morty, don’t scare me like that.”

“I told you to stay in the carriage,” Typhoon noted with a hint of annoyance.

“And I just heard Wintershimmer is here. And if he’s been making ponies fall asleep here, you’re going to need me to free them before we get to the part where you start stabbing things with your magic sword.” I glanced toward Frostfall. “You get back in the carriage, and have the ponies who are all harnessed up take off. Take this colt with you.”

“Now, hold on,” Frostfall began. “Commander Typhoon is in charge here, and—”

“He’s right,” Typhoon interrupted. “Loathe as I am to admit it. Go, Frost. Morty and I will deal with this.”

Frostfall sheathed her sword, picked up the colt, and flew the dozen strides’ length to the carriage. Not thirty seconds later, it was a speck in the sky.

Typhoon paced slowly in a circle, her head on a constant swivel within her magically untouchable armor. “Alright, Morty, how does this work?”

“He’ll have the souls he’s stolen bound to the candlecorn body.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Typhoon grumbled.

“Doesn’t really matter. I’ll make it simple. I’m gonna get the souls out and let them possess my body. Don’t mind me if I start screaming with a lot of different voices. Once that’s done, you just stab him. Or if you can, your magic will work too. But it has to be magic; your wing spikes probably won’t do the trick.”

A gloopy hoofstep issued from up the street behind us. Typhoon and I turned at the distinctive noise to find exactly who we would expect.

“Wintershimmer.”

This candlecorn body was indistinguishable from its predecessor. It wore Wintershimmers’ face as well as his jacket, cast into a tone of even wax. “Here we are again, Coil, and once again you’ve found a new companion. Shall I take her soul as well?”

“Wearing that armor? I wish you luck.” I took two calm steps forward, which Typhoon echoed. “Are you that obsessed with this revenge you promised? I would have expected you to run away, now that you’ve stolen the souls you wanted. You’ve had, what, a week?”

That question Wintershimmer refused to answer. And in the silence, I felt a weight in my gut. My instincts warned me that something was horribly wrong, but my mind couldn’t place an explanation.

“What are you doing here, Wintershimmer? Do you deny Morty’s claims about your actions?”

Wintershimmer snorted. “At this stage, I see no reason to pretend.”

“I would not have expected that out of you, Archmage.” Typhoon calmly walked forward, and lowered her wings to the point that they dragged along the ground. “Do you remember what you told me seventeen years ago?”

I glanced nervously between Typhoon and the candlecorn body of my hated mentor as every nerve in my gut shouted that I should teleport away and not look back.

Wintershimmer, strangely, relieved my concerns. “We met seventeen years ago?”

“It wasn’t important. I suppose you just don’t remember. Very well. Give up, and Equestria will promise you a fair trial to—”

Wintershimmer’s candle flared to interrupt Typhoon’s offer, and a boulder roughly two Mortys (Morties?) in diameter rose above his head.

When the rock was sent flying for Typhoon, I realized why she had put her wings on the ground. With the force of all six of her limbs acting in concert, the soldier hurled herself into flight at a speed I had never before even imagined. By the time Wintershimmer’s rock had hit the ground, Typhoon’s sword had slashed through the candle on the stallion’s forehead. I expected the wax to reform around the shallow blow, but instead, Typhoon’s blade left behind a clump of ice that seemed to resist Wintershimmer’s waxy regeneration.

Typhoon landed by lowering all of her hooves at once and sliding to a stop behind Wintershimmer. “Morty, now!”

I hardly needed to be told twice. Without a horn to fight me, reaching into Wintershimmer’s body was easy. I felt the arcane bonds he had made on two… no, three souls. They fell away without much challenge. The spirits I had freed emerged from the candlecorn body, and with the same spell I guided them into my chest.

Their voices appeared suddenly in my head, screaming out in confusion and anguish. Why they demanded, perhaps the only word comprehensible amid the cognitive cacophany. It took more than a bit of my focus to tune them out and repress their battle for control of my limbs, but in the end, they stood little chance against my substantial force of will and my knowledge of necromancy.

Then, with two spells still left for the day, I pressed for Wintershimmer himself. My horn flared with the very spell the stallion had intended me to use as his unwitting assassin. I reached once more beneath the wax and into a hollow space that is not a space.

Despite his face on the golem, Wintershimmer’s soul was nowhere to be found.

“Missing something, Coil?” my mentor’s voice taunted. Wintershimmer reached up to his horn and with a dribbling hoof, he pried off his candle-horn below the line of ice Typhoon had left. A moment later, the threatening horn was remade.

Typhoon flicked out a wing, and I saw three torso-length icicles snap into being from the water in the air, all aimed for Wintershimmer’s core. With obvious strain that left him sweating wax, the dead archmage conjured a wall of magic to deflect them.

Wintershimmer sought to cast another spell, but his drained magic was simply too slow to match Typhoon. Rather than waiting for his shield to falter, she dove straight into it, letting the black void-crystal-plated armor eat the magic out of her way. Wintershimmer’s eyes widened for just a moment before a blue steel blade sunk into his skull. Had the body not been made of wax, the sight would have been altogether gruesome. Instead, more pleasantly, I watched as ice enveloped from the lethal wound, freezing Wintershimmer’s head solid even as his body melted to nothing. As the wax dripped away, the frozen head slipped off of Typhoon’s sword, shattering into several dozen shards on the ground.

The look she gave me as she sheathed her sword threatened to freeze my blood just as solid.

Restoring the citizens of the Hollow, and explaining to them exactly what their restorations entailed about the risk to their souls if they experienced a violent death, took the better part of four hours. Once I’d healed them, the few hundred citizens of the tiny village cheered and chanted for me, following me even up to the steps into Typhoon’s carriage.

The welcome I received once the door closed and the vehicle took off was… different.

“Sit down,” Typhoon demanded, before I’d even really gotten my balance from the sudden takeoff. It took me a moment balancing against the wall of the carriage with my hoof before I found comfort.

I balanced myself on my seat and then turned to Typhoon. “Is something wrong?”

Typhoon answered by running one of her wings up the side of her armor. Surprisingly dextrous feathers unlatched a small pouch against the black gemstone surface of her cuirass, and her wing reached into.

“Are you okay, Commander?” Frostfall asked; it seemed she too noted concern from the stern focus on Typhoon’s features.

A moment later, Typhoon lunged at me. I gasped and slid back, but I was a scrawny, lanky unicorn in a flying box and she was a veteran soldier performing a practiced action.

Her feathers touched my horn, along with a click, and I felt a ring lock into my grooves. I knew enough to recognize the feeling of void crystal sapping my horn after so many encounters in my adventures.

“What?” I shouted. “Time out, what—”

“I have no intention of sitting quietly and listening to you rant,” Typhoon answered me. “Try to mock me like you did Tempest and I will gag you. I know what you’re playing at.”

Frostfall seemed worried as her eyes jumped between her superior (and lover) and I. “Commander, what happened? Did he do something?”

“There is no ‘Wintershimmer’,” Typhoon replied. “I confirmed with Jade that she had his corpse, and Star Swirl told me there was no way for a dead pony to take control of the wax ponies I sent Tempest after in the living world. Somepony here would have to cast that magic. It isn’t a coincidence that the golems came to life and escaped just as Coil was returning to Equestrian soil.”

“You’re saying I made it up?” I asked her. “You honestly think I wanted to go running through a swamp and dragging around all his victims?”

“Solemn Vow used a very similar plan to work his way into Equestrian power,” Typhoon countered. “He took control of two spirits and forced them to attack innocent ponies in Everfree City. Then he fought them off himself, making it look like he was so much more important that the Cirran Legion. Ponies called him a hero.”

I swallowed hard. “A ‘hero’?”

“His word,” Typhoon replied, focusing even harder on my gaze. “We were hosting a delegation from the Crystal Union. Queen Jade, Smart Cookie, and Wintershimmer. Wintershimmer came to talk to me, but before he could say anything, Vow approached us. So in plain earshot, Wintershimmer told me that he had an idea what was behind our murders, but that he wouldn’t be sure until he could get proof the next morning.”

“What proof did he need? Didn’t he recognize Vow?”

“He did, but that wasn’t the point. That night, for the first time, the nightmares attacked the palace. Wintershimmer was expecting them, and killed one, but Jade and Smart Cookie weren’t so lucky.”

Immediately, I remembered Vow’s claim. He hadn’t gone after Jade or Cookie that night; only Wintershimmer. Could I trust him? I couldn’t think of a reason he would lie, but he was a damned dead warlock. I opened my mouth to counter Typhoon’s accusation, and then caught myself. Better I didn’t admit I had spoken to Vow, if she didn’t know already. Instead, I asked a boring question, feigning surprise. “That’s what happened to Smart Cookie?”

In that moment, my mind was racing. Assuming Vow had been telling me the truth, the implication was obvious. What I couldn’t answer was ‘why’?

Typhoon gave my question a slow nod. “Vow was the only pony in earshot who knew Wintershimmer was on the verge of his ‘proof’. He was worried he would be revealed. The fact Wintershimmer was attacked that very night gave me all the proof I needed.”

“Wintershimmer helped you? Selflessly?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Seventeen years ago. Something the real Wintershimmer would have known… but your clone didn’t.”

I winced. “He lied to frame me in the Union! This is exactly the same!”

“And despite going to such great lengths to hide his control over these golems, he made an entirely pointless attack on Platinum’s Landing, drawing attention to his own existence?” Typhoon pressed. “Tempest told me what happened. The golems weren’t a real threat. In the whole attack, the only pony killed was Silhouette… I think it’s a strange coincidence she was the only pony with you in the swamp after Tempest left. The only other pony who supposedly spoke to Wintershimmer, and could identify him from the Crystal Union.”

My mouth hung open as Wintershimmer’s plan fell into place before my eyes. “I swear, this is him doing it! I know it looks bad, but… I give you my word!”

“That seems… unlikely,” Frostfall muttered, her eyes narrowing slightly as well. “You’re saying that despite Star Swirl’s word, he somehow figured out how to cast magic without a real horn, and then he revealed himself in a useless attack?”

“More likely the point of the ‘useless’ attack was to make you a hero. That’s exactly the same ploy Vow used years ago… and I know you’ve spoken to him.”

“I needed his advice on Wintershimmer!”

“Hold on!” Frostfall held up her wings. “Commander, I thought you killed Solemn Vow personally. Are you saying that bastard is still alive?”

“No,” Typhoon corrected. “But like Wintershimmer and Vow, Coil here is a necromancer. No doubt he dragged Vow out of the depths of Hell to help him with his plot.”

“I only talked to him one time!” I told her, but it almost felt like idealism to protest. I knew I wasn’t going to win Typhoon over.

The pegasus commander nodded. “Even with all that evidence, I still wanted to give you a chance. For Lady Celestia’s sake, and for Gale’s. But Wintershimmer’s proof worked just as well on you.”

I felt a ball in my throat as I struggled to swallow. “What do you mean?”

Typhoon glanced out the window of the carriage. “I didn’t tell anypony we were headed to the Hollows until we were all aboard the skywagon.”

XXXIX - Dungeons & Alicorns

Everfree City was a gleaming jewel of civilization. Miles and miles of city sprung from the banks of two rivers that marked the spot like the cartographical ‘X’. Parts of the city had grown so quickly that its walls even enveloped a small forest and a number of sizeable farms. More importantly, even from high overhead, I could see ponies milling about in the streets, minding their day-to-day lives.

As we descended, I was treated to a wonderful view of the city’s skyline. Roofs of baked tiles and thatch and wooden shingles mingled together with stone guard towers, all set beneath a city of marble and clouds. Cloudsdale did not live up to its reputation for beauty; the mere sight of it left its reputation in the dust.

And beyond all those sights was the royal palace, whose architectural glory I lack a suitably topical thesaurus to properly honor. Painted plaster and gold and marble glittered in the evening sun, all sparkling with polished glass windows that looked out over miles of gardens and more fountains than I dared to count.

All my joy at the sight died when Typhoon pulled me back from the window with her frigid prosthetic. “When we land, you’re going to follow me to the dungeons, where you’ll wait pending a trial.”

“Great!” I told her with the most sarcastic grin I could muster. “That will complete the collection. And to think Celestia was worried nopony would arrest me here. Your brother's cells were really impressive, so I hope Everfree brought its A-game.”

Typhoon opened the door to the carriage and stepped out first. Though she turned around to wait for me, she didn’t offer me a hoof or a wing for support. At first, I spitefully told myself I didn’t want one anyway.

Then my hoof missed the step on the outside of the carriage. I landed face-first on the gravel path outside the palace.

“Are you alright?” Frostfall called from behind me. Her hooves crunched on the gravel as she leapt over me, and then bent to offer a hoof. “Let me help you, Morty.”

“No, stand back, Frostfall.” Typhoon paced two steps up to me, grabbed me by the shoulder, and hoisted me to my feet. My jacket gave another painful dying gasp as the stitching below her hoof tore open. “I’ll handle him. Jade said he’s clever at escaping. Somehow he got the ring off his horn in the middle of a hanging. We don’t want him getting any ideas.” Turning to me, she simply added “Do not try to run.”

I raised a brow. “Do you really think you need to say that? You’ve got wings.”

“Good.”

Though I honestly should have known better, I added “I’d just teleport away if I really wanted to leave.”

Typhoon raised a brow under her pitch black helmet, then stretched out her right wing to her side. “Look up the path. Do you see the fountain?”

The garden feature in question was hard to miss, and also hard to mistake even from a good hundred yards away. I could recognize Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie from having met both in real life, so it wasn’t hard to guess at the identity of the infamously cowardly Legionary Pansy. Water gushed from Clover’s horn, Pansy’s wings, and Cookie’s hind hooves as he bucked up at some unseen foe.

“If you’re about lecture me with some sort of story about owning up to your mistakes, you can save—”

The wing Typhoon had extended flicked forward, and five foot-long icicles of glowing blue launched through the air. A few distant ponies wandering the gardens shrieked at the sight, though concern faded quickly. All five icicles struck true. Ice spread to cover the tips of Pansy’s wings, of Clover’s horn, and of both Cookie’s raised hooves.

“That’s your warning,” Typhoon whispered. Then her wing flapped once, and the ice broke before it built up enough pressure to damage the fountain. “Keep walking.”

Our walk from there was fairly direct. We made our way past a number of officials, nobles, and general supplicants with business at the palace. Virtually all of them either ignored me or offered snobbish, raised-muzzle glares in my direction. As I followed Typhoon’s swift military gait, I had to wonder whether they were judging the tattered state of my signature jacket, or the fact that both other owners of similar jackets were serial killers.

I also decided I didn’t like them much. Gale’s distaste for high society was quickly growing on me.

At the doors into the interior of the palace, two unicorn guards with spears flanked a pair of tall doors. Rather than salute, the ponies nervously shuffled out of Typhoon’s way, leaving her to fling open the door herself. Despite its immense size, it took only a shove from her icy prosthetic to create an egress; I quietly filed away the thought that it was most likely enchanted to give her some measure of supernatural strength.

Inside the palace, the first room we entered was a long waiting hall. Virtually the entire space was defined by cushioned benches, alabaster pillars, and surplus of both tiny enchanted lights and gently trickling water features. Overhead, flowers in suspended troughs gave the air a light and floral fragrance that was at an utter mismatch with my current predicament. The ponies in the room would likely have stuck their noses up at me as well, had Typhoon given them the chance. However, within four strides of my first setting foot in the room, Typhoon led me out of it through a side door.

The attached chamber was a spiral staircase, and we followed it down until I found myself growing rather dizzy. I have no concept of how deep we traveled, but at last we came to a long hallway filled with iron-bar doors separated by heavy stone walls.

“C-Commander…”

“At ease, Gaol.” Despite the spelling, I will note this wasn’t pronounced the same as ‘Gale’.

The mare in question sat behind a stout wooden desk covered in reports. She wore banded leather armor that was in every conceivable way a counterpoint to Silhouette’s apparel. To be a touch more direct, Gaol’s armor fit like someone had wrapped a leather grip around an ostrich egg.

With no concern for the mare’s appearance, Typhoon extended a wing. “Keys.” The order was followed swiftly, and Typhoon’s tan wing caught the ringing metal deftly. She also didn’t bother to remind me to follow her, though given her demonstration with the distant fountain, I didn’t feel the need to ask for clarification.

The cell I was given was near the end of the hall farthest from the jailer’s desk, opposite an empty cell. Gruff ponies stared out at me from the intervening spaces, and judging from the myriad collection of scars, squints, and bared teeth I observed, I concluded that the ponies here weren’t likely the innocent, extorted variety I had been likely to find in the Crystal Union. On the one hoof, that seemed to imply that the Equestrians were more fair in their dispensation of justice. On the other hoof, it also made me nervous that the Butcher’s Daughter would be far more efficient, and thus far more difficult to survive, than the mad Queen Jade and her corrupt guard captain.

I walked into my cell without protest, and heard the iron door clank shut behind me. “You do not need to worry about being forgotten down here,” Typhoon told me. “Platinum, Puddinghead, and I will judge you tomorrow.”

“That’s a shame,” I muttered back, not really feeling the strength to emulate the sarcastic tone the line really called for. “The accommodations here seem so relaxing.”

Typhoon afforded me a grunt of irritation before she paced away.

With nothing better to do, I took note of the hay covered slat that would serve as my bed, jutting out of the side of the wall. Compared to the freezing floor of Burning Hearth, I had to imagine this would be more tolerable.

Only as I lay on my back, staring up through the slatted window, did I fully process the time. For how eventful my day had been, between leaving Platinum’s Landing, our battle with Wintershimmer in the Hollows, Typhoon’s accusations, and my arrest, I had assumed it would be nearly time to sleep. Alas, my fatigue stemmed from the spells I’d used against Wintershimmer and the ring on my horn draining my mana.

When I looked up out the barred window, which opened on a vertical shaft up to ground level several floors overhead, I hissed in pain. I’d stared straight up into the sun at high noon.

It’s hard to say exactly how much time passes in a cell, as the overhead sun fairly quickly vanished from direct view, cut off by the long shaft between the depths of the dungeons and the pleasant lights of the gardens high above. I reflected somewhat uselessly on how best I could argue my innocence, but the fact of the matter was that Wintershimmer had played his cards with the surgical precision that defined his every action in life. I simply had no evidence I could present of Wintershimmer’s wrongdoings which could not also be used to indict me. My best option, it seemed, was leaning on Celestia again for her support of my character, though the reliance on the goddesses’ support sat wrong against my sense of pride.

I was so lost in those thoughts that, though another pony approached my cell, I didn’t notice until a hoof rattled on the bars of my cell door.

“Morty, right?”

The voice in question, a creaking but firm masculine timbre, belonged to an ancient and sternly wrinkled pegasus stallion whose nearly black coat was graying considerably with age. He leaned heavily on a wooden cane strapped to his right foreleg near the shoulder, and even standing functionally still, there was a weariness to the motion of keeping his balance. One side of his body was massively scarred where a wing ought to have been, and behind the gouge out of his flesh and coat, I saw some stylistic spiral loop cutie mark whose meaning was lost on me. I didn’t give it much mind, as I was more focused in the keys he held raised on his other wing.

“That’s what my friends call me,” I answered him, sitting up.

“I know. You’ve got friends in high places.” He slid the keys into the lock of the door, and then pulled it open. “My friends call me ‘Cane’.”

As he stepped into the cell, leaning heavily on his namesake, I got a good look at the massive knot of stern wrinkles on his brow and the edges of his lips—signs of stress more than age that certainly matched his salt-and-pepper mane.

As he walked up to me, his feathers deftly flipped to another key on the ring. “Lean your head forward for a second and I’ll get that thing off you.”

“You’re just letting me go?” I asked him.

He chuckled. “Well, hopefully you don’t do something stupid and try to run away. Typhoon probably would kill you.”

“She didn’t leave much of that to the imagination.” I let Cane take the ring off my horn and he casually tossed it in the corner of the cell. “Forgive me for looking a gift pony in the mouth, but are you alright going behind her back like this?”

Cane chuckled and shook his head. “Typhoon is a lot less likely to give Gale the time of day than I am. She and Celestia both vouched for you.”

“Gale knows I’m here?”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Cane warned, shaking his head. “She’s in a lot of trouble with her mother after running off to River Rock. She’ll be in court all day. I imagine you’ll see her tomorrow when you meet with the Triumvirate. But I’m actually here on Celestia’s behalf. She’s summoned you.”

The walk back up out of the dungeons was much more pleasant than the walk down, though Cane’s arthritic pace certainly made it slower. When we reached the waiting room again, Cane led me slowly over to a pair of open doors on the opposite side of the room, leading neither out into the gardens nor forward into what I could only assume was the throne room proper.

The next hallway was light and airy, with a ceiling high enough to support at least a dozen Celestias mounted atop one another’s shoulders. Wispy pillars of spiraled marble were capped and footed with floral patterns of gold leaf, and massive frames held hundreds of windows that showed off the military-maintained blue sky and its puffy white clouds.

The ponies milling about were equally beautiful in attire, though as I quickly learned, less so in personality. Pegasi in red and purple sashes over military uniforms watched me with raised brows, eyes sometimes darting to Cane with an obvious wariness for Celestia’s servant. Earth ponies in furs and epaulets whispered, glancing at me over their shoulders. My own race was the worst by far. Unicorns literally raised their noses, most still being forced to look up at me by virtue of my height, as they wandered in jeweled gowns and quilted tunics.

“Who is this peasant, coming in here in tattered clothes?” I heard somepony mutter without any particular decrease from a speaking volume.

Another scoffed. “Can a peasant even afford those dyes? Perhaps he comes from River Rock.”

“I’m more curious what he could possibly want.” This one actually dared to tap me on the shoulder, though he did so hesitantly as if worried about getting dirt on his hoof. “Excuse me, sir, can I trouble you for—”

“Celestia summoned me,” I interrupted. Glancing forward, I nodded. “Cane, I’ll be right with you. I can catch up.”

Ponies gasped.

“The goddess…?”

“He’s lying.”

“He calls her by her given name? Without title? Does he not fear the gods?”

“Not particularly,” I answered the last surprised pony, snobbishly looking down her muzzle at me. “A word of advice: I’d recommend a visit to an apothecary. Turmeric, olive oil, and mandrake root makes a potent treatment for a stiff neck. Failing that, I understand a stallion can also help.”

“Why, I never!” The unicorn mare picked up her dress in her magic and turned away, walking off in a huff.

I rose up on my hind hooves, placing one forehoof across my belly and extending the other to my right. A full minotaur bow is a rare treat, and I recommend saving it only for the most intense of sarcastic applications. As ponies whispered much more fervently (and much more quietly) around me, I glanced up the hall at where Cane was quietly watching me, and scurried up to meet him.

“Be careful making enemies, Morty,” the elderly stallion warned me.

I shrugged. “I’m not a politician. I’m a wizard. They can’t do anything to me.”

That earned another creaky chuckle from the elderly pegasus. “Just remember that tomorrow when you’re staring down Queen Platinum.”

As we started walking again, I couldn’t help but raise a brow. “What’s Platinum going to do, whine at me? Typhoon’s obviously the real threat, right?”

“Typhoon’s a fair mare who’s just trying to do her job,” Cane answered. “Convince her you aren’t Solemn Vow Jr. and she’ll probably stop suspecting you. Platinum, on the other hoof…” Cane shook his head as he walked. “As far as she is concerned, being a bad influence on Gale is more than worthy of a death sentence.”

Cane led me in limping quiet through more airy palace hallways, galleries of gorgeous portraits and stained glass windows, and huge empty ballrooms and dining chambers in a fairly direct facsimile of an upward diagonal that I frankly couldn’t have traced back at the time, had I even wanted to. Ultimately, our path ended in a rather large bath chamber attached to a similarly oversized walk-in closet. Waiting beside a large tub of steaming water was a stallion in a sleek gray uniform with a high black collar. His lavender face was notable foremost for how much of it was dominated by a curving, almost lyre-shaped moustache.

“Ah, sir, this must be the stallion Her Divinity mentioned,” the stallion noted to Cane, before bowing in my direction. “Can this servant be of assistance to the guest?” he asked.

I stared at the butler for a moment, then glanced back at Cane. “He’s for me?”

“So she wasn’t exaggerating your ego…” Cane muttered, before addressing me more directly. “Not indefinitely, Morty. But Celestia thought after a few months on the road, you might enjoy a chance to clean up.” He lifted his wing and patted it on my back. “Welcome to Everfree City, Morty.”

“Thank you, Cane,” I answered with a smile before the rather amicable old stallion limped out of the room.

A cough escaped the butler behind me, and I turned to find him patiently waiting, his posture upright and formal to the point that it was beginning to make me uncomfortable. “How may this servant be of assistance, sir?”

“Oh… well, I guess I should start with a bath. Could you help me trim my mane?”

The stallion gave me a nod. “Certainly. Shall I take…” He hesitated as his eyes swept up and down my torso. “Shall I take what remains of your coat?”

I nodded. “Thank you. I’d ask you to fix it, but that’s probably more than just an hour’s work, even with magic.” I started taking off the remnants of my signature garment, and only as I slid it off my back did I realize the butler was staring at me with slightly wide eyes. “Do you not like my jacket? I know it’s old, a bit torn up. Or did you know…” I hesitated for my part. “…somepony else who wore one of these?”

That question snapped the butler out of his stupor. “I’m sorry; I was caught off guard. Thank you, sir?”

I cocked my head. “Am I… not supposed to thank you?”

Urgently, the stallion waved a hoof in front of his face as if to ward off the idea. “No, sir, it is most appreciated. The guest merely confused this humble servant. If this servant may be blunt, most ponies one serves in the palace are not mindful of such offerings.”

“Oh.” I shrugged. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, cleanliness is next to godliness. You’ve drawn a bath for me, so at the moment, you’re something of a hero.” I grinned as I fished in the breast pocket of my jacket for Silhouette's void crystal, careful to hold it by the attached chain so that the hungry black stone would not devour my magic. I set it gently aside, though I nearly dropped it when the butler spoke up abruptly.

“Sir!” the butler exclaimed after his prolonged silence, and for a moment I feared I had genuinely offended him. Then, just as abruptly, he hugged me. The contact lasted a mere two seconds, at which time the butler produced a handkerchief and proceeded to dust off his apparel. “You, sir, are an absolute pleasure to encounter. It shall be this one’s privilege, neigh, his honor to assist the esteemed guest. This one understands you are planning to meet with Her Divinity when you are done here?”

I nodded.

“Then it will be this servant’s privilege to ensure you are properly attired and groomed, and to repair your garment in the meantime. Please, make yourself comfortable in the tub, and try to relax.”

As my weary body sunk into the sudsy hot water, knots of tension dissolved into bliss. My earlier statement was proven to be a lie, if only by a small degree. Godliness, at least in that moment, played second fiddle to cleanliness. As my eyes rolled back in my head in delight, the butler worked at a breakneck pace, washing my filthy coat and mane, and then to my surprise but not discomfort, braiding the latter into a fashionable backswept style that clung closely to my neck.

When I emerged from the bath, the butler’s magic dried me swiftly. Once my loosened legs found the strength to stand, I looked up to find my helper standing beside a ponyquin. “If it pleases the guest, this servant taken the liberty of preparing a garment suitable for a meeting with Her Divinity.”

“It does,” I replied, looking carefully over the garment he presented. The base was a simple white shirt of an airy fabric, with long sleeves for the forelegs and a fitted edge just above the cutie mark. Resting atop its chest was a navy blue doublet, quilted with a white-gold thread. “Did you do this while you were working on me in the bath?”

The butler nodded. “This servant is quite gifted at multitasking with his horn.”

I nodded. “Clearly. I’m impressed. Do you think it might be too much blue and white on me?”

“If this humble servant may be so bold, the matter is less about color, and far more about shade. The esteemed guest is a very pale blue, so the richness of the doublet and the absolute white of the shirt should serve to create suitable contrast.”

I nodded. “That certainly makes sense…” I tore my gaze away from the moment to focus on the butler. “I’m not sure if I ever caught your name,”

“This humble servant’s name is ‘Humble Servant’,” Humble announced. “And that is why he refrains from using it in tandem with his title. May I ask the esteemed guest how he refers to himself.”

“Morty,” I answered.

Humble arched a brow. “Praytell, is that a donkey’s name?”

“A nickname. Actually, you might find it funny, but Gale—that is, the Princess gave it to me.”

Humble offered a tasteful chuckle, especially given how obvious it was that he didn’t find the humor I did in the thought. “It is not for this one’s benefit that—”

“I won’t be mad at you for using the first person,” I interrupted.

“Oh, thank the Divine. I cannot stand those western earth pony customs. Where was I? Ah, yes. I do not ask your name for my benefit; I will need to know how you wish to be addressed by the Herald of Arms come tomorrow’s audience with the Triumvirate, Morty.”

“I see. Well, Humble, do you have a quill? You’ll want to take dictation.”

As I slipped into my new garment and tucked Silhouette's void crystal into its waist pocket, Humble approached with a quill held aloft in his magic. I smiled, and took a very deep breath.

After my grooming was finished, Humble led me to a chamber he referred to as the solarium. The enormous chamber was defined almost in entirety by its emptiness and openness. The solarium sat atop one of the smaller towers of the palace, but one with an uninterrupted view both to the east and the west. The north and south were not particularly blocked either; each consisted merely of a series of pillars holding up nearly half a domed glass roof, with just enough space between them that somepony standing in the exact center of the room would always be guaranteed a view of the sun, no matter the time of day. That particular evening, the sun was fading from orange to a rich red on the western horizon, already near to kissing the distant edge of the world.

In case the poetry is lost on any of you, that wasn’t a literal edge of the world. While our world is a disk, contrary to the claims of those round earth conspiracists, the slight curvature of the disk’s surface (not unlike the lens of a telescope) makes it difficult to see the actual edge from long distances such as the heart of Everfree.

In the exact center of the solarium, marked by a sun of solid gold inlaid in the floor, sat Celestia. Her horn glowed as the heavens quite literally heeded her will. Around her, a dozen nobleponies in gilded finery watched in reverence as the sun kissed the horizon, and then slipped below it. I let my eyes slip east, and watched as the moon rose in perfect tandem with its celestial partner.

This feat of unimaginable magic, beyond even my arcane grasp, was met with what I can most accurately describe as a golf clop. Some ponies are truly beyond saving.

Once the ‘tasteful’ applause had stopped, the nobles started to walk toward Celestia. Their approach was stopped, however, when Humble cleared his throat beside me.

“Your Divinity, should it please you—”

Celestia turned, and then promptly cut off the stallion. “Morty?! I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to get here.” Her gentle smile turned to the approaching nobles briefly. “If all of you can forgive me, I would like a moment to speak privately with my friend. You are all welcome to join me tomorrow night.”

For all the poor first impressions I have ever made in my life, I have never felt such a strength of anonymous (and frankly undeserved) hatred as I experienced from those nobleponies who walked back past me to return to the lower parts of the palace. Humble spared the moment it took to pat me on the shoulder before he too vanished, glorious lyre-moustache and all.

That left me standing with Celestia as a the gentle chill of an evening breeze swept through my newly trimmed mane. She smiled and walked over to me before sitting down—not that the motion made it any easier to comfortably look her in the eye, as I’m sure some readers can understand.

“Hello, Morty. How was your trip?”

“Where do I even begin?”

“Normally I would suggest the beginning, but you are a wizard, so I’ll trust your judgement.”

I’d only spoken to the goddess before that one time in River Rock, yet I was already learning to watch her for that little hint of a grin at the corner of her mouth.

“I’ll skip to the important parts. Since you sent Cane to get me out of the dungeons, you probably know Typhoon accused me of making up the whole Wintershimmer… thing.”

“I’ve heard,” Celestia nodded. Then she wrapped a wing over my shoulders. “I can’t blame you for not knowing, but seancing Solemn Vow in front of Tempest was a mistake. I doubt most Equestrians out in the city know much about him, but here in the palace, his scars still run rather deep.”

“Yeah, I figured that out right about the time Typhoon set up a stop on our way here just for the sake of proving I was behind the attack on Platinum’s Landing.”

Celestia’s brow rose, and I set about explaining to Celestia the narrative I have already offered you. Using her frankly legendary powers of attentive listening, she only nodded as I spoke, refraining from even so much as a question until I had summarized my ‘depositing’ in the palace dungeons.

Finally, at the end, she closed her eyes and breathed slowly. I waited for some thought, some word, but she said nothing for long enough that I started to get uncomfortable. When she did open her eyes, her mouth was tightened and her eyes focused with a solid determination. What she ultimately said stunned me.

“You haven’t eaten since you left Platinum’s Landing, have you?”

Celestia proved to have a good motive for her interruption, though I did not recognize it until well after we had maneuvered our way through the palace’s halls and found a small balcony with a table set for three. In the center, a bottle of some red wine, a large bowl of fruit, and the remains of a cooked fish covered in lemons, descaled save its head and tail. I braced my stomach for the revelation that Celestia might be a carnivore, and focused on the more pleasant topic of the third empty seat.

“Is Gale coming?” I asked, as I served myself from a hearty bowl of salad.

Celestia chuckled. “No, I’m afraid her time is rather… well-monitored, at the moment. I did try, if that’s any consolation. Unfortunately, Queen Platinum was very firm that Gale would only be leaving their home to attend court and learn how a princess ‘ought to’ behave.”

“Their home? This is a palace, right?”

Again, I got a little laugh out of Celestia. “Gale has threatened to burn this building down on more than one occasion when Queen Platinum suggested they move in. She spends most nights with her father; he owns a rather beautiful villa on Silver Hill.” Her enormous wing gestured off the balcony to the skyline of Everfree, though I could hardly tell the land apart well enough to recognize the hill in question, much less the home.

I was about to ask about whether or not Gale’s father was actually dead, as she had claimed, when I heard the sound of wingbeats overhead. Before I could track down the source, a blur of deep indigo swept in from the sky and landed on the balcony beside our table.

“What is this, Sister? You summon me with such urgent magic, and yet I find you dining with some… courtesan?”

“Necromancer,” I corrected. “Though I’ll take that as a compliment, Luna. I’m sure I would be successful.”

The divine Luna turned to look at me fully and glared. “Ah. The petitioner. You would address me so casually? Without title or—”

“Luna. We are not gods.”

“We are absolutely gods, and if anypony ever needed the reminder, it is this one. This… ‘Morty’. He is a walking ego.” Luna waited for no further introduction, pulling the third chair out from the table and dropping into it with a grace that seemed to run counter to her lack of actual care about appearing graceful. “What could he possibly need now? He already owes me part of his free will.”

“Luna, consider being just a touch less callous? You remember the effect you had on Hurricane?”

“He turned out fine,” Luna answered dismissively, waving a wing. “Now sit, Sister. And… colt. I’m famished.”

“I’m seventeen,” I insisted as I took my seat. “And a journeymage. I’m not some foal.”

Luna aggressively rolled her eyes. “And I am nearly eight thousand, so you will forgive me if your measly decade doesn’t mean much to me. Now be silent, while my sister explains why I am so urgently required.”

“We need your insight into magic,” Celestia replied, horn igniting. “Would you care for some wine?”

“You forget, Sister, but my stewardship has just begun, not ended. It would ill befit me to be so handicapped.” As she spoke, not so much as glancing in my direction, Luna flicked her wing over the table. Shards of ice dropped somewhat gently into her goblet, and a moment later, melted into chilled water. After a long sip, Luna lifted the fish from the table in her magic, and lacking any sort of restraint, bit off its entire head. I winced and forced back bile as her teeth crunched straight through its spine. “Delectable.”

I leaned toward Celestia. “Do all pegasi…?”

“No, Morty. Just my dearest sister.” I noticed Celestia’s eye twitch as she tried to force a gentle smile.

Luna was grinning when she finally pulled her attention away from the elder alicorn to look in my direction. “Morty, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“You aren’t even going to hear him out?” Celestia asked. "I had hoped you might argue on his behalf that because he wasn't directly controlling the candlecorns from within Typhoon's wagon, we can prove it had to be Wintershimmer..."

Luna shook her head. “Sister, I have every intention of hearing his defense come the morrow. But I’ve already pledged my services elsewhere. As for your theory, Jade was quite explicit in noting that Coil already has one golem capable of following him through a magical bond. He is more than capable of giving instructions in advance. Frankly, even as pathetic as your skills with necromancy are, Celestia, you ought to have seen the hole in that argument.”

I should have probably been scared by the way Celestia’s eyes widened ever so subtly; I did notice them. Having only known her for a few days at the time, however, I didn’t realize the massive threshold it took to really surprise the mare of the sun. So instead, I leaned forward. “I don’t exactly have a lot of time, Luna. I’m facing the Triumvirate tomorrow. Can whoever else you're helping wait?”

“That isn’t what she means, Morty,” Celestia warned.

Luna actually had the gall to grin at me before she gave me a straight answer. “I don’t mean that I’m busy, ‘Morty’. I mean that it would be unethical of me to help you now. You see, Typhoon and Platinum and Puddinghead know very little about necromancy, or unicorn magic in general. Star Swirl has formally recused himself from getting involved in this trial, given his extensive history with Wintershimmer. As the sole remaining necromancer of any notable skill here in Everfree City, I will be serving as the advocate for the crown.”

“Luna!” Celestia demanded, and I heard a crackle of fire in the firmness of her voice. At once, color flooded back into the world where it had been stolen by the ice of Luna’s condemnation, and I gasped for breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding. “You’re going to stand against him? After everything Gale told us—”

“Gale is a foal, Celestia, easily entranced by romance and adventure.”

“She’s smarter than you give her credit for, Luna.”

“Your inclinations blind you, Sister. But is this a conversation you honestly wish to pursue in present company?”

Celestia reacted as if Luna had struck her across the face, shaking her head and pulling back from the table. Luna did not hesitate in pressing her advantage. “The colt is clever, the way you used to be, when we were warriors. Either he will prove his innocence by that cunning, or it will be the noose with which he is hung. He ought to thank me. If he does prove his innocence against me, nopony will doubt it in years to come. Your work to pardon him on trust alone would hang over his head like a shadow for the rest of his life... however short it might be.”

With those words, Luna calmly stepped over the balcony railing and disappeared into the night sky.

As I finally caught my breath, I found a broad white wing wrapped around my shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Morty.”

“I’ll prove it,” I told her. “Somehow.”

But as Celestia led me to a bedroom and I lay on my back staring at the patterned ceiling, nothing came.

XL- A Trial By Ire

About five minutes after the crack of dawn, once she was done arranging it, Celestia knocked on my door. After a sleepless and stressful evening, I responded gracefully by hurling a pillow at the door. “Put it back down… ‘nother three hours.”

“Morty…” Celestia noted chidingly. By sheer force of will, I managed to roll over—and discovered that the pillow I had thrown had not, in fact, struck the door. I know this because it hung impaled on Celestia’s horn, partially covering her muzzle. For her part, the alicorn goddess seemed only marginally irritated. Her horn began to glow, and rather than removing the impaled cushion, she disintegrated the fabric and feathers into a small pile of ash. “The Triumvirate are expecting you in a little over an hour. I’ve brought Humble Servant to help you with whatever you need.”

Sure enough, as I continued my earlier roll to land out of bed on four stiff legs, Humble rolled a cart of grooming accessories and exotic colognes into the bedroom. “Morty, I am sorry about your lack of sleep.”

“What? Why… How did you know?”

“One moment, please.” The stallion brought three jars of cream over to my side, holding each one up just beside my eyes. “Yes, I think this should do to cover up the purple. I fear if you went to court with those bags under your eyes, somepony might fear you were trying to rob the treasury.”

That biting comment heralded the beginning of the worst day of my life, at least as of the time of writing. I stumbled over to a folding stool the stallion had brought, and sat with my eyes closed as he tended to my appearance with quiet professionalism.

“You’ve already met Typhoon,” Celestia began, “so you are beyond the point of first impressions with her. Queen Platinum and Chancellor Puddinghead, though, will be new introductions.”

“Alright,” I replied. “So how do I introduce myself? Prostration? Full formal bow?”

“I have delivered your introduction to the court herald,” Humble offered, before picking up a small brush in his teeth.

“My advice is to act natural, Morty,” Celestia told me. “Better to be yourself than come across like you’re putting on airs. Give whatever bow or form of respect seems appropriate to you in the moment. Queen Platinum will understand you’re from the Crystal Union, and most ponies who petition here don’t fully understand the court rules anyway. As for Puddinghead… I will say that the stallion is more honest to the way he presents himself than any other pony I’ve met in my life. He will appreciate respect in whatever form you can offer it. There’s no need to offer introductions to anypony else present.”

“Alright.” I leaned back. “Just make a good first impression. Got it.”

The doors to the court were latticed in gold and blue, emblazoned with a royal crest depicting the divine sisters orbiting one another. Two of Typhoon’s soldiers clad in glittering gilded armor watched as I approached, and slowly opened the doors for me.

“Commander, Your Majesty, Chancellor, and may it please the court,” began a booming voice to my right as I stepped forward onto a purple velvet carpet that led further into the room. “I present to your attention the mage Mortal Coil...”

The court reminded me of a reverse playhouse, as if the doors opened directly onto the stage and those who entered were forced to look up at the audience. Small round balconies that reminded me of theater booths stuck out of the towering walls, alongside tapestries of legendary events and a number of bubbling fountains. All these decorations were framed in parallel on either side of the carpet beneath my hooves, which led up a number of marble steps before coming to a stop at the foot of a wide dais.

And on that dais, I beheld three thrones.

“…called the Immortal, the Pale Master, disciple of the late Wintershimmer the Complacent, Grandmaster of the Order of Unhesitating force…”

On my left sat Typhoon, clad in the famous black armor of her family. She sat on a block of steel that had been shaped into something loosely resembling a throne, though at least to her mercy, a small cloud had been placed on its seat as a sort of cushion. With magenta eyes she glared at me as I approached.

“…Guardian of the Frozen North, Forger of True Souls…”

Beside her, in the center of the triumvirate, was the so-called Platinum Throne, which seated its namesake. Though a mare of visible age, Queen Platinum the First was nevertheless a strikingly beautiful mare with a pale gray coat and a silvery mane that likewise recalled her name. An opulent fur-lined coat of purple velvet and a similarly decorated crown marked her wardrobe, and she regarded me with a gaze that I cannot even pretend to have been able to read.

“…the Piscine Swashbuckler, Champion of Lübuck, Seer of Souls…”

Chancellor Puddinghead… how do I describe him politely? Foremost, the stallion actually wore a bowl full of chocolate pudding as a hat. I am certain of this fact, and not that it merely resembled such a dessert, because as I entered, the stallion held the bowl in his lap and ate from it. His throne was polished wood, its edges trimmed in gold, and thanks to the unimpeachable resilience of earth ponies, despite being nearly Queen Platinum’s age, he more closely resembled my own. A curly mane of brown hair that had obviously not been combed would have deprived him of the appearance of serious governance, had he not already ruined his own authority by way of his cap.

“…Savior of Platinum’s Landing, and by the Grace of Celestia, would prefer it if you called him ‘Morty’.”

I placed a forehoof below my barrel, extended the other to my side, and bowed. “Your Majesty. Chancellor. Commander.”

Queen Platinum pursed her lips in thought for a moment. “Please, approach, ‘Morty’. There is no need to shout across the chamber.”

I nodded and began a tastefully swift walk forward. As I moved, I let my eyes slip across the other ponies in the room; most were up in the balconies, but a few stood just off to the side of the carpet on the path up to the dais.

Closest to the thrones on Typhoon’s side, I saw Cane leaning on his namesake. I hadn’t expected him to be so close to Typhoon, given his apparent allegiance to Celestia. He gave me a small nod as I walked forward

On the opposite side, just behind Puddinghead, Luna watched me with a predatory interest. I swept my gaze away from her quickly, as much for my own sanity as interest in the rest of the room.

Finally, I arrived at the foot of the dais, just outside of a leg’s reach from Queen Platinum.

“How may I be of service?” I asked, nodding to the unicorn of the trio.

“Well, I’d like a drink,” Chancellor Puddinghead observed. “Can you make me one with magic?”

“Please do not start casting spells,” Queen Platinum rushed to instruct, shooting a glare toward Puddinghead. After a brief breath, the elegant mare returned her attention to me and spoke more gracefully again. “I confess, you defy expectations. My daughter described you somewhat more… ruggedly.”

I offered a polite chuckle. “Months on the road will do that to a pony. I’m very grateful for Equestria’s hospitality.” I gestured to my attire. “Judging by how comfortably you appear to be seated, you defy Gale’s description as well.”

Puddinghead looked like he had swallowed a stone as he choked back a laugh. Queen Platinum herself seemed somewhat less amused, her lips drawing tighter.

“We didn’t summon you here to discuss Gale,” Typhoon cut in harshly. “We’re here to find the truth.”

I swallowed hard, and refrained from saying anything.

Queen Platinum sighed. “Always so direct, Typhoon. I suppose it’s as well. Morty, let us be clear and up front. Lady Luna will represent the triumvirate crowns in arguing that you have, in fact, constructed the attacks on Platinum’s Landing and the Hollows for the sake of your own reputation. Should you be found innocent of the Commander’s charges,” Platinum glanced briefly toward Typhoon, “then you will submit yourself to Diadem’s mentorship and oversight until such a time as she is willing to endorse that you possess the self-control and restraint necessary for your apparent magical talents.”

I frowned, which the Queen must have noticed; she leaned forward on her throne. “I assume for the sake of your continued well being that your objection is to the second part of those terms?”

Platinum had a unique way of turning a turn of phrase into a blade; that one in particular sunk into my back with an icy chill.

But my mind flicked back to Celestia’s advice, and I elected to speak regardless. “My objections are plural, but I’ll start with the one that’s more immediately concerning to me. Commander Typhoon, I cannot disprove your theory by any means short of actually hunting the bastard’s soul down and dispersing him once and for all. He is a better wizard than I am, and frankly, he’s been hiding things behind your back—the ‘your’ there being Equestria, and not just you personally—for longer than I’ve been alive.”

At the edge of the gold lining of her father’s helmet, I saw a vein throb on Typhoon’s temple. “You will not be allowed to wreak havoc across Equestria any further in this supposed ‘hunt’ of yours.”

“In that, the three of us are agreed.” Queen Platinum glanced to Puddinghead, who nodded. Then the mare’s gaze once again settled on me. “We will find the truth our way, here, without any further damage to Equestria’s cities or its citizens. Now, I’ll bite: you mentioned you had further issues with our proposal for you?”

“It’s one thing for you to try and suggest my choice in mentor, Your Majesty—still wholly inappropriate given that despite being so much younger, I know infinitely more about magic than you likely ever will— but understandable.” Platinum showed no reaction to my continuing response. “But trying to tell me to my face that I need a foalsitter? I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but a few dozen of your citizens owe the fact that they still have souls to me!”

“That remains to be seen,” Typhoon replied with a chill that matched her icy magic. “What we know now is that your ongoing rampage through the Equestrian countryside can’t be left to continue. If you object to a foalsitter, I understand some ponies prefer manacles.”

“Well, now I know more about your relationship to your secretary than I ever wanted to.”

Puddinghead really had no restraint; he broke into open laughter, even as Typhoon’s glare deepened. Queen Platinum alone held an even expression, and she picked up the conversation when she felt Puddinghead’s amusement had lived long enough. “Lady Luna,
You may begin.”

“Of course.” Luna stepped toward me, and I stepped away from my place at the immediate hooves of the three thrones. No sooner had I moved aside than the alicorn began to speak. “Mortal Coil is another Solemn Vow.”

That claim alone earned gasps from the gallery.

“He has created a dilemma only he can solve, and casts himself a hero for solving it,” Luna explained, ignoring the crowd. “Unfortunately, he has failed to recognize that Equestria is wise to these tricks now. To be fully clear, Mortal Coil has made these claims to various members of this court, and to the Cirran Legion. First, that the exiled archmage Wintershimmer the Complacent has raised himself from the dead and taken a body of wax. Second, that Wintershimmer was responsible for stealing the souls from several of the citizens of Platinum’s Landing. Third, that Wintershimmer stole the soul of the visiting commander of the Crystal Union’s army and severed her foreleg. And fourth, that Wintershimmer attempted another such attack on the Hollows.” Luna chuckled. “I could ask such questions as Wintershimmer’s motive or how Coil happened to arrive at the Hollows and save the day just as Wintershimmer’s attack was beginning… I have no doubt Coil himself would try to ask other such questions. How did he get a golem to follow Commander Typhoon’s flying wagon on hoof? How did he control a golem in front of her face and not get noticed? But I will spare us all a long debate on such open-ended questions.”

And then something very strange happened: Luna looked straight at me, and she nodded. “Those questions would be a waste of time. There are thousands of ways I could achieve the effects I just listed, and at least a dozen of them are available to this colt. But hanging over all of them are simple facts that will show us the truth:

“First, Mortal Coil and his mentor Wintershimmer are the only two ponies in history who know and are capable of casting Wintershimmer’s spell to tear the soul from a living pony without killing their body. Rather than laboriously prove this and summon Clover here from River Rock, I’ll simply ask: Coil, do you agree that this is true?”

I swallowed, sensing I was helping her case. But at the same time, I could hardly deny the claim. “As far as I know,” I told her with a nod.

‘So there we have our basis,” Luna announced to the court. “Either Wintershimmer is guilty of this crime, or Coil is. Hopefully that is simple enough for the court to follow. Now all I need to prove is that Wintershimmer could not have done it. That will be easy enough. I’ll start with this: whose horn was Wintershimmer using when he raised himself from the dead?”

There was a great deal of whispering around the room, which Typhoon lowered by waving with her wing. Only when she was satisfied with the quiet did she lean forward in her seat. “Lady Luna, not all of us possess magical training; can you explain the significance of the question?”

“Of course.” Luna smiled, obviously basking in the spotlight. “For any pony—earth pony, unicorn, or pegasus—to use magic, they need two things. The first is magical energy, oft called ‘mana’. The second is a living body. The dead, by definition, lack the latter. I do not deny it is possible for a necromancer like Wintershimmer to regain a living body, but to do so he would at least require an accomplice. Namely, somepony to cast the first spell, needed to put his soul into a living body.”

Queen Platinum nodded. “So Coil’s story is true, but the reason Wintershimmer is alive is because Coil revived him?”

“No. Most likely somepony else did. Or, I suspect, something else.” I walked forward, doing my best to emulate the grace with which Gale spoke to the bears. “Wintershimmer’s candlecorns are smart enough to understand orders, and they can cast magic. Binding a soul to a body is a basic spell, what we call a cantrip. It would take some finesse to do so correctly, but I know the candlecorns were capable of it. My best guess is that he ordered the candlecorns to raise him, and put him into one of their bodies.”

“Candy corn?” Puddinghead asked, leaning forward. “Now we’re speaking my language.”

Typhoon groaned at the far side of the three thrones. “Candlecorns. Unicorn bodies made of candle wax and brought to life with magic. Wintershimmer created four of them. All were involved in the Lübuck incident. Tempest reported to me that Morty destroyed one in Lübuck, though I haven’t verified that. I destroyed another one in the Hollows. They are not edible, Chancellor.”

“I dunno, this one time after I had a lot to drink—”

I wish I was making that up.

“Regardless,” Queen Platinum interjected, probably more forcefully than she needed to. “Lady Luna, is it possible Wintershimmer used these wax unicorns to return from the grave?”

“No,” Luna answered. “Queen Jade successfully raised Wintershimmer from the dead to speak with him shortly after his death.”

“She seanced him,” I corrected. “She didn’t resurrect him. And she certainly didn’t bind him to a body.”

“What’s the difference?” Puddinghead asked.

Luna sighed. “Pedantry on the part of a colt who does not realize he is already condemned.” Then she began to pace in front of the thrones, flicking her eyes toward me each time she turned. There was a predatory quality to her gait. “One produces what you would likely call a ghost. The other makes a dead body stand up and live again. I will demonstrate momentarily. What you need to understand is that if Wintershimmer can be seanced at all from the Summer Lands, where Coil put him, then we can conclude he is not wandering the world in some golem.”

A chill ran down my spine. I felt the mane on my neck standing up. She clearly noticed, showing a slight hint of her teeth in my direction. I wouldn’t call it a smile. “What matters is that, regardless of the method she used, Jade was able find Wintershimmer’s soul in the afterlife at all. If he had, say, prepared instructions for his golems to bring him back from the dead, they would most likely have done so immediately.”

I stepped toward the goddess at that. “‘Most likely’, Lady Luna?” Thrusting a hoof out dramatically, I took a bold step toward the alicorn that entirely belied the way my stomach was dancing. “Wintershimmer was the most powerful mage in the world. He would anticipate being summoned back from the dead.”

Luna shook her head slowly. “You should not need to be reminded that Celestia told me what happened in River Rock. I know you seanced him yourself, Coil, weeks after his death, and long after he would have waited to return from the dead.” She shook her head. “But even that is of little relevance to our talk here. Let me prove this point even more definitively.”

Luna stepped away from the center of the room, and her horn began to glow. Swirling winds filled the throne room, and the sensation of a calming summer breeze tied my stomach in knots. “Because I can demonstrate that he is still in the Summer Lands at this very moment.”

It was a simple spell, but it was also the first time I recognized Luna’s unfettered mastery over the pale school of magic, and the artistry with which she practiced the craft. Teal magic flowed from the grooves of her horn like thread, rising in a wavy, enchanting pattern overhead before diving down to the floor. There, with startling efficiency they wound into a hoof, and then another, and a torso, and a coat, until finally the translucent teal figure would could all see standing the center of the room was unmistakable.

“Well,” muttered Wintershimmer, letting his ghostly eyes sweep over the room. “This is unexpected. Does Equestria come begging for my magic advice again? I had thought your ‘goddesses’ would be enough for you not to bother me any more.”

“We are,” Luna answered him, coldly. “Though now I understand where the colt gets his staggering pride. Your presence here was enough to prove my point. Thank you.”

“I see…” He held up his hoof before Luna dismissed him, turned to me, and his scowl deepend. “Coil, now I am curious. You had led me to believe that you defied my instructions and spared Clover’s life. Why are you on trial in Equestria?”

“You know why.”

Wintershimmer did an exceptional job of acting the part, raising one eyebrow. “No, I’m afraid I don’t, Coil. You may be a failure to me, colt, but I will still do you the honor of a defense, if only for the sake of what remains of my legacy.”

“I am not your legacy!”

It took me a few moments of panting to quell my anger. I stood up calmly, wiped my lips with a groomed fetlock, and nodded. “We’re nothing, Wintershimmer. I would rather die than accept your help.”

“Your petulant anger won’t change reality, Coil. Were it not for me, your barbarian mother would have snapped off your horn as a foal, and you’d be starving on the streets of Union City. I cannot make you grateful, but your ingratitude does not rewrite history.” Wintershimmer shook his head. “Enjoy your execution, colt.” Then, turning back to Luna, the ghost nodded. “I apologize for my former student’s outburst. I am done here.”

Luna frowned back at him. “Do not think that your little trick to cheat our judgement has gone unnoticed. Sister and I do not promise you the Summer Lands forever. We may yet have another trial for you soon.”

“I see.” Wintershimmer, somewhat flatly, nodded. “Have Star Swirl provide you with the Tourmaline Grimoire before you seance me. When you see what is written there, I shall make my case with pride.”

Luna scoffed, and then her horn abruptly ceased to glow. Wintershimmer was gone.

I felt myself breathe again, just a moment before I realized that I shouldn’t have stopped holding my breath.

Luna stepped back toward the dais, speaking along with slow strides that emphasized the finality of her explanation. “From here, the argument is simple, rulers of Equestria. Wintershimmer is in the Summer Lands even at this moment. Therefore, he is not wandering the living world, possessing golems and slaughtering innocents. He cannot be behind the crimes in Platinum’s Landing. Those crimes involved the use of Wintershimmer’s infamous spell to remove the soul from a still-living body. The only other pony alive in the world who knows how to cast that spell is Mortal Coil.” She had the gall, then, to sit down, extend a wing away from her oversized torso, then wrap it across her chest and bow.

Queen Platinum glanced to Chancellor Puddinghead, who offered a silent shrug, and then to Commander Typhoon, who offered the slightest hint of a nod. “Very well. Coil, at this time—”

You might understand that, staring up at all three rulers of the most powerful equine civilization in the world, I felt no urgent need to pay attention to the sound of the room’s enormous doors opening behind me. The fact that Queen Platinum’s words abruptly stopped signaled that the interruption was unusual, but I paid it little mind.

That changed with the (now rather hoarse) voice of the herald. “Her Royal Highness, Princess Platinum, the Third of her Name, Counsel to the Accused, Heir to the Platinum Throne and—”

“Save your breath, Herald. I’ve been here since I was a fucking filly. They know who I am.”

Even if she weren’t the only pony I ever met with the audacity to curse so brazenly in the presence of the aforementioned political powers, I would have recognized Gale’s voice anywhere. I turned just in time to get tackled in a hug by a mare who had sprinted fully across the throne room in an impressively short burst.

“Ga—”

In fairness, what happened to interrupt me was surprising, but unlike previous interruptions, there was a far more mechanical reason that I lost my words. Namely, the fact that Gale kissed me.

I should emphasize that this was no chaste peck, nor even a tasteful meeting of two lips in subdued passion. No, I’d had my mouth open trying to greet her, and Gale took the opportunity to stick her tongue fully into the gap I had unintentionally offered.

Our slimy, adolescent passion was interrupted rather harshly. “Princess Platinum the Third!” I heard the elder Platinum shout from her throne.

Gale, to her credit, took the time to roll her eyes with her tongue still well into my mouth before she disentangled herself. “Took you fucking long enough to get here, Morty. Celestia, did you get that lost without me?”

When I stepped away from her, my first proper look at Gale stunned me. The stunningly beautiful mare who stood in front of me wore a massive grin on a face decorated with tasteful touches of makeup: red lips (which I later learned had stained my face), subtle blush, and a dark purple shade on her eyelids that seemed to flow naturally from the color of her coat. Her mane was still cropped short but its rough-cut edges had been evened into a side-swept display that supported a small tiara. Her body was covered by a dress of silvery thread lined with a purple cord that seemed designed to be reminiscent of her mother.

“I got a little tied up on the way.”

“Kinky,” she replied with an overemphasized wink.

I briefly considered hanging myself as I felt the burning gaze of Queen Platinum melting its way through my skull. “You know what I mean. Fighting candlecorns, restoring souls that got stolen from ponies… the usual trouble. I’ll tell you later, if I’m still alive.” I turned back toward the Queen, who I observed had risen from her throne and regally strode a few steps down from the wide dais that held the three thrones. “Forgive me for the interruption, Your Majesty.”

The Queen stifled what I can only call a growl in the depths of her throat. “That’s hardly what you need to apologize for, Mr. Coil. The Princess, on the other hoof, knows far better than to use such crass language and to behave so... brazenly in public. It is one thing to fancy a colt, Gale, but there are appropriate ways and appropriate places to engage in romance. In any case, Coil, I was going to say that this court has all the information it needs.”

Gale leapt forward. “Wait? It’s already over? Where’s Star Swirl? I thought he was arguing for you guys.” Queen Platinum raised a silver brow, and Gale answered by rolling her eyes. When she spoke again, it was with that forced voice I had heard her use with the bears what seemed so long ago now that it might have been another life. “I had been led to believe that Archmage Star Swirl was going to be representing the Triumvirate.”

“He abstained,” Luna clarified, stepping out from beside the thrones. “Evidently, he believed his history of emnity with the late Wintershimmer would cloud his objectivity. I have already played that part, Gale, and the damage is already done. Now silence yourself. You will have plenty of time to say your goodbyes to your… romantic interest.”

“Fuck,” said Gale, quite loudly. Then she frowned. “Seriously, Aunt Luna? I told you, Typhoon’s being a stupid bitch. Morty didn’t—”

“Manners, Princess,” Queen Platinum interrupted. “For the sake of asking, since you seem to have inserted yourself so fully into this conversation, do you know something this court has not yet heard?”

Gale nodded. “I’m late because I was talking to Dia—” She caught herself, took a breath, and adjusted her posture. “I was discussing the bitch commander’s accusations with Archmage Diadem.”

“Language, Gale,” Queen Platinum hissed.

“Well, I used her title,” Gale answered, donning the grin of a pony just taking their seat at the fancy restaurant L’chateau d’ Feces. “Diadem explicitly said that she and Star Swirl needed to talk to Morty before we could come to any kind of a decision.”

Typhoon leaned forward, watching Gale with eyes cold eyes beneath the golden brow of her father’s jet black helmet. “Why?”

Gale just shrugged. “I dunno. Something about magic. I’m not a wizard.”

“Lady Luna was quite persuasive,” Typhoon noted.

Puddinghead, who despite his lack of a functioning brain quickly became one of my favorite ponies, shook his head. “I don’t know how you do things in your pegasusus military courts, but we earth ponies say you have to hear everything before you send somepony to prison.”

“I had intended to behead him,” Typhoon replied rather flatly. Either she had somehow forgotten I was standing right in front of her, or she knew it all too well, but she didn’t deign to give me a wink or a bloodthirsty grin to signal the latter. “Platinum, it seems like this comes to your vote.”

“Very well.” Platinum’s shoulders rose and fell with a calming breath, and her eyes swept the vast crowd of the room. For just a moment, she lingered on Cane, who gave a sort of nod in Gale’s direction. Platinum seemed to trust that. “Guards, please summon the archmagi.”

Gale hopped up just a little bit, then turned to me. A quick peck landed on my lips, and she grinned. “You owe me.”

Queen Platinum coughed heavily from her throne, perhaps not hearing the words Gale had whispered, but obviously catching the motion. “Daughter, dearest, after your earlier show of affection, I would appreciate it if you kept yourself away from the accused’s lips.”

“Oh, sorry Mother. Here, let me try again.”

And then Gale wrapped a hoof around the back of my neck and pulled my head down just a bit. I half suspected she was going to kiss me more tamely, perhaps on the brow or the cheek, which only proves I had been away from Gale for too long. Instead, Gale’s sights were set higher than any of those options.

I felt her tongue at the base of my horn, and I shuddered in the irresistible throes of pleasure. Stars appeared in my eyes as her tongue slid up, dipping at each of the grooves and…

Well, as closely as I cling to my skill with prose, I suspect I’ve said enough that you get the point. A unicorn’s horn is an erogenous zone. For any non-unicorns reading, you now know probably more than you need to about unicorn anatomy.

When I was once more able to see straight again, the room was positively abuzz with whispering among the courtiers. Queen Platinum had daintily stomped her way down from the dais entirely and come to within a hoof’s reach of us. “Platinum Gale Stormblade, I swear by Celestia…”

I wasn’t sure I followed why the Queen’s words had trailed away until I saw Cane walking forward. The wrinkles of his face I’d noticed earlier were exacerbated by his stern expression. The one-winged pegasus wore a piercing glare in Gale’s direction, and stepped forward a short distance. “I’ll deal with this, Platinum. Gale, you’re going to step outside.” When Gale failed to move, his harsh tone gained a restrained urgency. “Now.”

Gale wilted, and without really thinking, I stepped between her and the old pegasus. He’d been my ally in court, but Gale had been the one who saved my life. I acted appropriately. “Who asked you, geezer?”

I didn’t think I had spoken that loud. Literally instantly, however, all whispering in the room stopped. Even Gale’s eyes widened in shock when I glanced back, though it was the slight grin at the corner of Luna’s mouth that worried me most.

Gale coughed into her hoof just beside and slightly behind me. “Um… Morty. Well, this is my dad.”

“Ah.” I nodded to Cane. “Gale led me to believe you were dead.” If he was Gale’s father, that made him Queen Platinum’s husband. I’d called the Prince-Consort a ‘geezer’ to his face. “Well, if your name is anything to go by, sir, now I know why Gale jokes about Queen Platinum having a stiff backside.”

The platinum mare in question turned bright red, fuming silently at me. Cane stepped forward. “Colt, you don’t know what your talking about.”

I shrugged. “Alright. Enlighten me, Prince-Consort. What am I missing?”

“I was doing my best to be friendly to you when I introduced myself. ‘Cane’ is a nickname, just like what you go by.”

“Oh? I just assumed it fit so well, with the leg brace and the crotchety—”

“It’s short for ‘Hurricane’.”

XLI - The Pony Who Does Not Read Good Books

The road to Tartarus is paved with first impressions. Fifty two seconds. That’s how long it took me to find my heartbeat, and then my tongue, and finally, to blink back to my own mind. I coughed into my hoof, then folded it across my chest and bowed. “I’ll offer my apologies, Commander, if they’re worth anything at all.”

To whoever is reading this, please endure my interference; I fear I can no longer leave the story alone in good conscience.

I am the Goddess Luna, in case you are unfamiliar with a script so much more legible than Coil’s almost insulting excuse for Equiish characters.

Some time ago, the Necromancer asked that I insert a small part of this story from my perspective, as he was not actually present. You can enjoy that in a few chapters, when the time is right. Before that, however, I can no longer stand by as Morty’s tale exaggerates away any semblance of truth.

After Morty revealed his ignorance of Hurricane’s obvious identity and the Commander bludgeoned him with the truth, Morty only managed to hold his tongue in stunned in stunned silence for about three seconds. His first words thereafter were to the effect of “I… you… Commander…”

That is to say, rather than the reserved pause and the well thought out diplomatic reply he claims to have made above, Morty reacted almost exactly the way a seventeen year old colt on trial for murder by a living goddess would be expected to react.

Hurricane, ever playing the role of the humble retiree that never really suited him, replied sternly. “I’m not ‘Commander’ anymore,” were his words, I believe, though without Morty’s unsettling mnemonic magic, I don’t claim that my records are exact in any stretch.

Yes, tragically, most of his narrative has been word-for-word the truth. Even Gale’s dialogue.

Hurricane glared down at the colt who had grown up a crystal, and Morty sort of collapsed back on himself, whimpering a little bit and trying to make his tall, lanky form into something resembling a ball. The feeble effort to disappear only earned a curiosity from Hurricane, who asked “Are you afraid I’m going to kill you?” about as dispassionately and professionally as a waiter instructing a patron to ‘enjoy his meal’.

Morty, shuddering in a pile, managed to at least turn his pathetic whimpering into a decent impression of real speech. “Y-yes… I mean, no, but I…” Gone was the bravado with which he had faced down Wintershimmer’s ghost or implied that the seated Queen was suffering a bowel restriction against her throne. Instead, he was obviously feigning a confidence he did not feel to even manage those words. It came across rather like the patron replying to the waiter ‘you too’, and then only moments later realizing his own idiocy.

I regret not cutting in to observe that, as Morty had effectively been condemned, his first answer had been technically correct. Hurricane was far less concerned in teaching the irreverent colt a lesson in respect, and much more in his own reputation. He slowly dragged a hoof through his graying mane and shook his head.

Gale cut in at that point by stepping up to Coil’s side and slapping him across the face hard enough that he fell fully onto his side. “For fu— I mean, for goodness’ sake, Morty.” I am reminded of just how long it took Sister to teach her ‘god daughter’ not to swear by us. “He’s not going to hurt you!”

“I never promised that”, Hurricane replied, a tone of fatherly (or at his age, grandfatherly) wit and displeasure mixing in his voice. “And I told you to leave, Gale.”

Gale spitefully huffed and rolled her eyes, gesturing to her rather slimming and expensive formal outfit. “Yeah, whatever. Not like I spent two hours getting done up like this.” Gale’s imitation of her father was impressive, given the sixty years of age and gender that separated them. “‘Young mare, you’ve got to learn how to interact with ponies.’ I put on the stupid dress and the makeup and—”

Hurricane, for his part, took a single step toward his youngest foal. “There are only two occupations in the world where makeup on a mare is mandatory, Gale, and you have not been acting like royalty today.”

Gale was, blessedly, struck mute by that. After searching desperately around the throne room for where her tongue had vanished, she huffed, turned sharply, and started marching for the doors.

Thankfully, by this point, Morty really had recovered enough of his wits to return to his usually smug, arrogant self. I’ll leave you back with his narrative, though why you’ve read so much already is, frankly, beyond me.

Momentarily spared from the Butcher’s brutal gaze, my thoughts finally began to flow again.

“Gale, where are you going to be when I’m done here?”

Queen Platinum coughed heavily from the dais, where she had returned to her throne. “You will find, young mage, that the princess is not receiving visitors today. Especially not suitors.”

“Suitors?” I scoffed. “Implying there are others? Correct me if I’m wrong but given how ‘the princess’ greeted me, I’d say I’ve already won that competition.”

Unfortunately, turning back toward the now-open throne room doors and Gale meant catching the eyes of Commander Hurricane. And it was then that I first learned just how dramatically the crystal ponies had underemphasized the power of the legendary warrior.

He said nothing. He moved nothing. There was no glow on his wing, no fire, no ice. He just looked at me. Just stared. And suddenly I found I couldn’t breathe. The world was black and white around me, the air turned to lead, and all life froze save the slowly growing frown on Hurricane’s face.

And then, abruptly, it stopped. Hurricane’s eyes jumped suddenly from me to the Queen. “Actually, Platinum, I think it won’t be a problem for them to visit.”

“It won’t?” the Queen asked, behind me.

“No. Morty needs a place to stay here in the city, and Celestia specifically asked me to provide him somewhere other than the dungeons. The villa has plenty of space, and I’d like to get to know him better. I’m sure Gale would be ecstatic if we had him for dinner.”

And then, if there was any doubt as to exactly what was really going on in that conversation, Hurricane turned away from the Queen, stared straight into my eyes, and smiled at me.

I still see his teeth sometimes, when I’m trying to sleep.

The sound of the throne room’s doors shutting served as a sorely needed balm for my quickly fraying sanity. After a few deliberate slow breaths, I turned around again to once more face the triumvirate.

“Well, that was fun!” Chancellor Puddinghead announced. “Now do we talk to the wizards?”

“No, I do not think that will happen today.” The Queen adjusted her shoulders. “Diadem and Star Swirl can deal with Coil at their leisure, at the Commander Emeritus will take responsibility for him from there. This audience is adjourned. Herald, please fetch the next petitioner.” Platinum dramatically flung her fur and velvet cape onto her throne, and then in an elaborate motion belying her age, collapsed across it. “And a brandy.”

Typhoon glanced down the dais to the literal alicorn in the room. “Lady Luna, can you take him to Diadem?”

“Trivially,” Luna answered. Without so much as lifting a hoof, she ignited her horn in starry indigo.

And the world vanished.

Luna’s magic deposited me a good few inches above the floor of our destination, and I landed on my chin with a rather resounding thud. As I groaned and rose to my feet, a new voice spoke up.

“Luna? What are you—oh!” The voice was a mare’s, not high pitched but obviously high strung. “I wish you wouldn’t just pop in on me like that; your presence is always welcome of course, but we are studying magic here, and I’d hate to have you pop into something unstable. Oh, and you’ve brought somepony… This is Mortal Coil… I mean ‘Morty’, right? Sorry about that.”

I recovered from the brief vertigo of the abrupt teleportation and found myself in a sizeable private library, walls covered floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves except for a single door, and a not-insignificant window on the opposite wall. Tables, cushions, and candlesticks were scattered here and there, and just in front of the window I took note of a cleared space on the floor where a ritual circle with a six-pointed star of powdered silver was glistening in the morning light. Not far from that light was the mare who had spoken.
The mare, who I assumed (correctly) was the Archmage Diadem, was younger than I expected. Probably thirty or so unless she had altered her appearance by magic, the grown mare seemed to have gone out of her way to look like the stereotype of a bookish scholar. From her teal mane trimmed into a straight line of bangs out of the way of her eyes and knotted into a firm bun behind her head, to the oval glasses perched precariously on her muzzle, her attire meant business. She wore a full robe that was sure to interfere with her hooves if she ever found need to so much as jog, but at least the garment was devoid of decorative elements beyond a tasteful jade coloration. The only element of her appearance that was obviously disparate from the platonic ideal of a bookworm was her namesake, a diadem set with seven massive aquamarines that matched the color of her coat resting just atop her mane and hooked behind her ears.

“You have guessed correctly,” Luna observed, pacing around the room to stand near Diadem and opposite me. “He has made a most… amusing impression on the court. I wonder which of the Crown Princesses’ parents will kill him first.”

“Hm?” Diadem mercifully seemed confused, instead of somehow inferring my less-than-ideal introduction to Equestria’s power. “Well, the court doesn’t matter for the moment. It’s a pleasure to meet you Morty.” The mare walked over to me and extended a hoof, which I shook rather limply, still trying to recover my bearings. “I’m Diadem, called ‘the Mentor’ if you’re much of one for titles, though please don’t feel obligated. Welcome to my library. Master Star Swirl is actually away from the city, if you were hoping to talk to him. For now, hopefully I can be of some assistance. How are you doing this morning?”

I considered my words carefully. “I… How do I put this? I barely slept last night, trying to figure out how the most powerful archmage of our generation is possessing golems and stealing souls—both effects at a distance—despite the fact that he’s currently dead and therefore short a horn to actually do any magic with. I came up with absolutely no explanation, because he’s a better wizard than I am. If I can’t prove how he’s doing his magic, Typhoon is going to have me executed. Lady Luna seems did an excellent job of explaining all that magical theory to the court, so they’ll probably order my execution tomorrow. And I have this sinking suspicion that I might not even last that long. Commander Hurricane blatantly threatened my life after his daughter gave me a horn job in the middle of court.” I rubbed a hoof down my muzzle. “So basically, I’m doing just fine. How are you?”

Diadem blinked in shock. “Well… I… Umm…” At last, she gave up on the thought that refused to appear and hung her head. “Oh dear. This isn’t at all how I’d imagined meeting a new student.”

“You won’t have to worry about it after tomorrow.” I retorted dryly.

“There’s no need to be so pessimistic, Morty.” Diadem donned a cheerful smile that she obviously didn’t really feel and turned her head slightly. Her voice grew a bit higher, as if trying to comfort me. “I know Queen Platinum and Commander Typhoon can be a bit heavy-hoofed, but that’s what they have to do for the nation.”

I frowned. “You don’t need to use that tone of voice. I’m not a colt with a scraped knee.”

“Oh? I’m sorry if I’ve offended you; I just wanted to help cheer you up…”

“If what Wintershimmer always told me growing up about your skill as a wizard is true, you can’t.” Diadem recoiled at the comment, and I shrugged. “But he’s lied to my face before, so I’ll give you a chance. Like I said, I need to figure out how Wintershimmer is able to control his golems. Either he’s somehow able to create the illusion of being seanced without actually being in the Summer Lands, or he is somehow working magic within the Summer Lands without the use of a physical horn.” I sighed. “Luna, with all the appropriate respect for your tiny role in saving my life in River Rock, you can go to Tartarus now.”

“You would damn a god to her face?” Luna asked, apparently not so much offended as genuinely curious.

“I’d just as soon assume you live there comfortably. Lots of ponies you can get off to condemning and torturing, like your little show in the throne room—”

“Morty!” Diadem coughed into her hoof. “Lady Luna, I hope you can understand, Morty is in a troubling position, and these stresses he’s facing—”

“You do not need to apologize on his behalf,” Luna replied. Then she paced to the corner of the room and sat down. “Wintershimmer taught the colt how to steal a soul, so I do not think I will be leaving you alone with him, Archmage. I will, however, be quiet and let the colt tie his own noose.”

I walked over to the nearest table I could find, and swept my legs over it to clear a surface for work. Diadem very nearly tackled me in a lunge as her horn lit up, catching a single book I hadn’t recognized was near the edge. Swallowing heavily, she seemed to consider rebuking me for a moment, before biting her tongue and turning toward Luna.

“I… I hope I don’t come across as rude, My Lady, but… you sent Wintershimmer to the Summer Lands?”

“I did not—”

“I did,” I interrupted. “Accidentally. We were testing a spell to map physical space to the Summer Lands, and the spell collapsed on Wintershimmer. Ripped out his soul, just like his own spell would. At first, I thought that spell might be how he was getting out of the Summer Lands, but to do that kind of magic takes a huge ritual circle and two extremely gifted necromancers. As far as I know, the only eligible ponies alive are Luna, Star Swirl, and myself.”

Diadem just stopped. She stood there, and blinked, and stared at me. I waited for her to speak for a few moments, and then started looking around the room for a piece of chalk or a quill or something to draw with. It took me only a few moments to gather and inkwell and a piece of parchment, and I was shocked when I found one of Luna’s feathers floating through the air in her telekinetic grasp to serve as a quill.

“Thank you,” I told her as harshly as I could.

“I am intrigued to see you at work. It would be a shame if you did not live up to your ‘legend’, necromancer. And I so look forward to Celestia’s reaction when your deception is revealed.”

Diadem finally spoke just as I was dipping the quill in ink. “You can open a portal to the Summer Lands?”

“Not alone. For one pony the magic is just a gateway, but the other pony has to push their magic into the Summer Lands and open the matching gateway there. I still don’t know what the practical purpose behind it was; there’s no meaningful benefit over a seance if you just want to talk to somepony dead. He said it was going to make him immortal, though obviously that didn’t pan out quite the way he’d hoped.”

My slight chuckle at my own understatement earned me a surprisingly deep scowl from Diadem. “He may have been an evil stallion, Morty, but that doesn’t justify mocking his death.”

There was that tone again. “Alright, Diadem, I’ll take this more seriously. Wintershimmer framed me for murder, nearly had me executed, saw me exiled from the Crystal Union probably forever, tried to trick me into assassinating Clover—” I intercepted Diadem’s reaction. “She’s fine, I promise. After that, he framed me for murder again, tried to steal my soul, and then cut off my friend’s leg and stole her soul when she saved me. So frankly, not only am I glad he’s dead, but if I had the opportunity, I’d either send what’s left of his soul to Tartarus, or just disperse him completely. You’ll forgive me if a little bit of cynical humor slips out every now and again, but I’ve been on the front lines dealing with this bastard long enough that I can’t pretend I have the luxury of false good spirits while I emulate an ostrich on a beach made of books!”

When I stopped, I was panting, and Diadem to her credit stood strong through my tirade. Though at times she winced and frowned, she didn’t shrink back or interrupt, and it wasn’t until I was finished that she took a long slow breath.

“I’m sorry, Morty. I understand that the amount of time you’ve been traveling must have been hard for you. And you have every right in the world to be angry at Wintershimmer. But whatever else has happened, I promise, I want to help you if you’ll let me.”

I took a deep breath of my own, glanced back to the quill in my grip, and set to work. “What I’m drawing now is a ritual formula. It’s necromancy, so it’s based on a seven-school theory. I’ve heard you teach six-school theory, so let me know if any of it doesn’t make sense and I’ll explain.”

I started drawing, circles and lines flowing from Luna’s offered feather with a practiced grace that seemed to slow the passage of time. Diadem occasionally spoke up with a minor question, but the need for explanation was minimal. Despite that flow, it took almost an hour for me to complete the elaborate glyph.

When we were done, Luna spoke from the corner. “Would that work now, if I helped you?”

I shook my head. “Even if we had the two master necromancers the ritual requires, ink isn’t a stable reagent for the glyph. We’re well past Sad Sac’s third threshold. Powdered diamonds and draconic bone marrow were our go to, though pure diamonds should be sufficient.”

“Not tourmaline?” Diadem asked. “I would think the tendency of diamonds to discharge violently would be a big risk in a spell like this.”

Again I was forced to shake my head. “The discharge is part of the goal. The ritual leader casts their spells into the diamond powder, and then the supporting mage discharges them just as the Serpentine Loop on the portal edge is stabilizing. When you tether that to the leader’s horn, you get a Kleine Manifold…”

“...which lets the ritual leader walk into the Summer Lands without their horn being inside the spell effect. And you bypass Haversack’s Limit! That’s quite impressive, Morty.”

All I could offer was a disappointing shrug. “Mostly Wintershimmer’s work. He’d done most of the research before I was even born.”

“Oh?” Some of Diadem’s sudden excitement faded. “Well, still, the fact that you remember all this… Do you have that entire ritual memorized? Or are you using a mnemonic charm to keep it all in your head?”

“I don’t have the kind of magic to waste on a mnemonic charm every morning. By necessity, I’ve gotten rather good at numerical memorization and memory palace theory. But honestly, Wintershimmer usually liked to make lessons involved and dangerous, specifically so they would stand out mentally.”

Diadem grabbed another piece of parchment and laid it down next to my work. “Can you jot down the individual cantrips each of the mages is using at each stage? I’d love to study this. If I can get up to speed casting it, maybe the two of us can work out what Wintershimmer’s goal with the spell actually was.”

In response, I levitated the quill in her direction. “The ritual leader starts with a seance, and—”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Remember Ivory’s Rule. If I write it down, I might misinterpret your notation or intention. You write it.”

I groaned and stepped back. “I’d prefer not to try and write at the same time as I’m talking.”

Diadem replied with what she surely thought was an encouraging pat on my back. “Well, you don’t need to speak aloud. I can just read once you’re done. Go on. We don’t want anypony getting hurt.”

I winced. “I’m sure it will be fine…”

“Is something wrong?” Diadem asked.

Luna broke into the rather frantic conversation with a laugh; I might have called it hearty if it weren’t so bladed. “No. No, I cannot believe it.” Her laughter grew louder, and I glanced away in shame.

Diadem looked up at the alicorn. “Lady Luna, what is so funny?”

“Here.” She grabbed a book at random from the pile I’d pushed to the side of the table, and held it open near my muzzle with her teal magic. “Read me just the first line.”

I swatted the tome away—and Diadem once again lit her horn to save it. The motion barely registered, though, as I turned away from Luna. “Clearly, you know I can’t.”

“Hah! Truly?” She tossed the book aside, and Diadem lunged to catch it. As the archmage fumbled with the tome, Luna paced forward. “Rarer than a four-humped camel. Are you honestly an illiterate wizard?”

The words hung in silence, stinging me. Luna seemed to be waiting, expectantly, for some sort of quip that I was uninclined to deliver. Her amused smile slowly fell, though it stubbornly refused to disappear. Diadem recovered from her dive and turned to me. Behind her glasses her eyes were wide.

I didn’t feel like giving them the honor of saying it.

Diadem set down her book, and then adjusted her glasses. “Did Wintershimmer never teach you?”

I took a deep breath to restrain the first few replies that came to mind—not because they were spiteful and cruel, although they absolutely were, but because they were too lazy to convey how wounded I felt. Instead, I spoke softly, factually. “He taught me arcane notation, like with the glyph. Then he wanted me to learn Equiish on my own. And I never figured it out. Instead, I mastered deliberate memorization.”

“But plain Equiish is so much simpler than magic.” Diadem seemed to realize just a moment too late what she was saying—probably off of my expression. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to—”

“It’s fine.” I shook my head as if the motion would wipe away the lie. “I just never grasped the manifold structure, and without that, I couldn’t wrap my head around the grammar.”

Diadem cocked her head. “Equiish doesn’t have a manifold structure… You just read from left to right…” For just a moment, behind her glasses, Diadem’s eyes searched the library. At last, she produced to heavy brown tomes and set them gingerly on the table next to my copy of the ritual. “I can teach you if you like. And Lady Luna, I am prepared to trust Coil will not harm me. If you would please give us some space, your laughter is not helping this situation.”

Luna ran the ridge of a wing down her muzzle. “All his talk about his mastery of magic… I had hoped to see your ego taken down, Coil, but this! This is priceless.”

I gritted my teeth as Luna walked out of the room, still chuckling to herself. When the library door closed, I felt a warm leg over my shoulders.

“There’s nothing wrong with not knowing. And there’s nothing to be ashamed of in not being able to figure it out yourself, especially when somepony led you to believe that the language is as complex as magic. Given that you’re this developed with magic, I think teaching you won’t take very long.” She gestured down to her books. “Here, let’s start with this.”

“I don’t need to learn to read.” I lifted Diadem’s leg off of my back with my own magic, coming to the verge of flaring my horn even as I stepped away. “I’ve already gotten this good as a wizard without leaning on books, so obviously the skills aren’t correlated. And honestly, I’d rather be out there actually using my magic than in here studying it. Maybe I’m better off the way I am.”

From the way Diadem locked up, you’d think I had rewritten the fabric of the universe so that pi was exactly three.

As a note to any up-and-coming young mages, the above is not nearly as good an idea as it sounds. It may be irritating to deal with an infinite number, but it is absolutely worth the hassle to avoid all those eyes and teeth and tentacles. Trust me.

Nyarly, if you’re reading this… It’s not you. It’s me.

After her mind recovered from what must have been an identity-defining struggle, Diadem adjusted her glasses. “I think you’re very much mistaken, Morty. Books are a treasure. They let us talk to ponies who are long gone and gain insight into things we never imagined.”

“Or I could just talk to them directly,” I countered. “Remember, I’m the greatest necromancer alive?”

“That’s not…” Diadem gesticulated impotently for several seconds, and then groaned when her mind failed to produce a counter-argument. “Look, let me prove it to you. What’s something you’d like to know? Is there some fact or secret that you’ve never found anypony able and willing to explain?”

“Sure. How is Wintershimmer able to be seanced from the Summer Lands, but also able to possess his golems in the physical world?”

“That’s… well, that is an excellent question, but I don’t think—”

“Exactly,” I muttered, utterly disappointed with the fact that I had won our minor debate in a single phrase. “Right now, the imminent threats to my life from Wintershimmer framing me for murder again and Typhoon’s corresponding paranoia are just a tiny bit more pressing to me than learning how to read foal’s stories.” I thrust Luna’s gifted quill and a blank page toward the archmage, and with somewhat widened eyes she took hold of them. “Here’s why I can’t prove my innocence. If you take the notes, you can share them with Star Swirl later, and I won’t have to repeat myself.”

“Alright. Defining one’s problem is an excellent first step toward solving it.” Despite her formal, conciliatory tone, I could tell my impatience and my anger at my own helplessness were grating on the archmage. I saw it in the knot in her muzzle, just above the bridge of her eyeglasses, and the way she avoided my direct gaze as I started to lecture.

“First, Wintershimmer should not be able to cast magic in the Summer Lands. He would need a physical horn, or for somepony to actively seance him, and then to cast through their horn.”

“I heard from the Princess that you seanced him; did he do anything then?”

I shook my head for a moment before pausing. “Well, actually, he did briefly choke Gale telekinetically, before I stopped him. Apparently, her ‘disrespect was no longer amusing’, if I’m remembering correctly.” (I was; Chapter 11 if you don’t believe me.) “But I would have noticed a binding.”

“I see.” The dark blue quill scratched on parchment, apparently devoid of any need for ink. “I assume you know of nopony else who would seance Wintershimmer?”

“Queen Jade, maybe, but given he admitted to poisoning Smart Cookie, I doubt she wanted any more to do with him. The Candlecorns could have done it, if somepony gave them the order, but that wouldn’t get him very far.”

“Why not?”

“Problem two,” I answered. “Wintershimmer is somehow still able to be seanced while he’s controlling the candlecorns.”

Diadem nodded, and began to pace around the shelves of the library as her quill scritched back and forth on her page. “So… He’s in the Summer Lands and in his golems, which are not in the Summer Lands? Simultaneously?”

“How many times to I have to tell you I don’t know how he’s doing it before it sinks in?”

Diadem winced almost as if I’d struck her, though the expression only lasted a moment. “I can see this is a thorny problem…” Diadem’s quill scratched. “Anything else?”

I collapsed beside the table, resting a foreleg on its surface next to Diadem’s basic reading books. “After Typhoon came to get me, she told me we were going to stop in the Hollows because of some story about a monster attack. Wintershimmer was there, waiting for us, but Typhoon and I dealt with the candlecorn easily. Afterwards, Typhoon told me there weren’t any real stories about monster attacks from the Hollows, and since I was the only pony who knew we were heading there, that proved I was controlling the candlecorns and causing the attacks.”

Diadem stopped pacing, and without loosening her grip on quill or parchment, adjusted her glasses. “So then it follows Wintershimmer must have been tracking you somehow, right?”

“Somehow...” I lifted my hoof from the table and pressed it against my forehead. “In Typhoon’s hooves, I’d almost certainly think I was guilty.”

The mage’s quill stopped and she looked up over her parchment. “That doesn’t strike you as oddly… involved?”

I stood there in silence for a moment, before nodding. “You mean ‘why didn’t he just kill me instead of making Typhoon do it?’”

“If Wintershimmer just wanted you dead, what is the advantage of this elaborate deception? Why even approach you at all?”

“Well, I actually found him first. Or rather, the ponies whose souls he stole. So if he hadn’t shown himself, I probably would have kept chasing him.”

“But he didn’t wait for you to be vulnerable?”

“No.” I gritted my teeth. “I have a hard time believing Wintershimmer would leave me to my own devices, giving me time to grow stronger while knowing I was actively out to get him. But what good does that do me? How do I know he didn’t just want revenge for my ‘betrayal’?”

But even as I asked it, a memory leapt to mind.

Never assume somepony’s motivations, especially if they’ve told you what they want. Words are cheap, actions are everything.

Diadem, oblivious to the memory, gave a little shrug. “I hardly knew the stallion, so I can’t say for certain, but let me ask this: was Wintershimmer the kind of pony to raise an army of golems and attack a city? Or would he wait until you were more alone?”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “So I’m special? I’m a threat to him somehow?”

“That would be my strongest guess. What do you know about him that nopony else does?”

“How am I supposed to know?” I slapped my hoof against a table, and the books jumped. “I’m the only good necromancer alive. I’m the only pony who really knew him for the last twenty years… I have his spellbook, too, but—”

“You do?” Diadem practically jumped at me. “An entire lifetime of magical theory from Star Swirl’s only peer, and you’ve had it this whole time? You should have said something!

“Do you honestly think it’s going to have the answers?” I rolled my eyes and adopted as bitter and hollow of a tone as I could manage. “Dear Diary, today I plotted to murder my student. Here’s a comprehensive summary of why. I sure hope nopony reads this.” Then, returning to my more natural and infinitely more pleasant tone, I shook my head. “Besides, I don’t have it on me. It got left in Platinum’s Landing when Typhoon dropped out of the sky and dragged me off. Hopefully Tempest or Blizzard thought to grab it.”

“Hopefully,” Diadem agreed. “Well Morty, you’ve reached the end of my immediate ideas, at least until that book arrives. I don’t know Wintershimmer as well as you did, and my knowledge of what you’ve seen is third-hoof at best. Perhaps the best way to progress from here is to get a full account of what’s happened since his death, from your perspective. Star Swirl and I can go over that when he returns and see if we can make any headway.”

I sighed. “Alright. Well, it started on my way back from the Union Market, with these three idiot guardsponies…”

XLII - A Meal to Die For

Several hours and at least enough pots of ink to draw ironic moustaches on an entire portrait gallery, my ongoing narration to Diadem was interrupted by a knock at the door of the library. When it opened at the faintest tug of the resident archmage’s magic, I was surprised to find Gale waiting there alone.

“How’s it going?” Gale asked, walking in. She still wore the silver dress with the purple lining that I’d seen in the throne room, though her makeup and tiara had vanished in the hours since that fiasco. I’m sure the intervening time has tampered with my perceptions in this regard, but I’ll still make this claim anyway: the young princess was a staggering beauty when she wasn’t going out of her way to seem as rough-and-tumble as possible. I caught myself staring as she approached the owner of the library. “Diadem, did he explain that Typhoon’s an idiot yet?”

“...I don’t consider the Commander unintelligent. And no, we haven’t proven or disproven anything yet. His story certainly checks out with what little I do know, but we can’t refute Typhoon’s claims. And the appearance of a candlecorn in the Hollows is still a somewhat troubling piece of evidence.”

“Who gives a f— excuse me, a flying feather what Typhoon thinks?” As she corrected herself, Gale watched Diadem closely. The archmage raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. “Can we let the record reflect that for Dad’s purposes, I didn’t say anything wrong?” Diadem was still. “Whatever. Tell Star Swirl that Morty’s a great pony, even if he’s sometimes a douchebag—”

“I resent that.”

Gale ignored me. “—and we can all get on with our lives. Morty, we need to leave. Dad’s expecting us at home for dinner.”

“Your dad.” Images of a fanged mouth and huge walls of fire flicked across my mind, before I corrected them with the gentler, wrinkled, grandfatherly expression of the ‘Cane’ who freed me from my cell. “Right… let’s not keep him waiting.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Morty!” Diadem called rather cheerfully as I rose with Gale and left the library. I elected not to answer her.

Given I had been teleported into the library by Luna, I hadn’t actually seen outside its doors. I had assumed I would find a long palace hallway on the other side of the doors. Hence when I walked outside, I was surprised to find Diadem’s library was not attached to the palace at all. I realized this with certainty after a trip through a short hallway and a second door, when Gale and I found ourselves on a stairway winding down around an enormous tower on the outskirts of Everfree City proper. I could see the palace relatively nearby, as well as the citizens of the sprawling metropolis going about their evening work like tiny ants.

I am informed that to distinguish myself from an ‘evil wizard’, I should clarify that the above was a compliment. Ants are industrious and accomplish feats of strength and engineering far above their physical size or apparent capacity. My only intended point is that Diadem’s tower was fairly tall.

Gale sighed as a slight breeze caught us. “So… you look nice in that, Morty. Better than the whole ‘cult robes’ thing.”

“Do we really want to discuss that again?” I asked.

She chuckled. “Nah, I’m just fucking with you. I didn’t want to lead with ‘how have you been’, because I know exactly what it’s like to sit there and get lectured by Diadem for six or eight hours. You look like a fucking zombie.”

I idly considered how slack faced and bag-eyed I probably did appear after a terrible night of sleep, but no matter how hard I tried, my cheeks refused to pick up my lips into anything resembling my usual confident resting grin. “Is that how you learned your fancy dueling stun?”

“Oh, yeah, Diadem’s a great duelist,” Gale replied with obvious sarcasm. “Once, I hear she fought an entire encyclopedia by herself.” She rolled her eyes. “Star Swirl taught me that. He’s the real fucking badass wizard. Diadem did teach me something, though.”

Gale’s horn lit up, and with a rather quick cast for such a new student, she disappeared with a pop and the scent of fresh ozone.

“Teleportation?” I recalled her frustrations when I had tried to teach that lesson. They vanished, rather quickly, when I heard a loud thud overhead, followed by a dull wheezing breath.

“Fuck… I missed.”

About three stories up the side of the tower from the library door, Gale hung from a set of stone crenellations, her hind hooves dangling in open air.

“Wait… you couldn’t figure out teleportation from me, but the evil queen of libraries honestly got it to work for you?”

“Yes, actually,” Gale replied. “It was pretty fucking simple when she skipped all the crap about wine glasses and circles on the ground. You gonna help or not?”

“Well, you could just teleport back down,” I observed.

Gale’s horn sparked twice, and then she groaned. “It’s a complicated spell! I’m not used to casting while hanging off a damn cliff!” After a few moments of attempting and failing at a pull-up, she turned her head to glare down at me. “Enjoying the view, asshole?”

“No,” I told her. “Just waiting for you to drop.” When that comment earned me another glare, I grinned and extended a hoof as if to catch her—though doing so would involve diving off the side of the tower stairs to my own death. “Raponezel, Raponezel—”

“I will geld you with Dad’s sword,” Gale interrupted. “Grab me with your magic or something!”

I sighed. “Some ponies have no appreciation for drama.” My horn flared, and with another pop, Gale landed sitting just beside me. She stood up, brushing herself off as I shook off the wave of exertion and fatigue from the spell on top of the long day of sitting and being repeatedly accused of murder.

“What did I ever see in you?” She muttered, catching her balance from the usual disorentation of teleporting.

I shrugged. “Almost super-equine good looks? A certain indescribable charm? All the makings of a dashing he—”

The word choked on my tongue, even before Gale grabbed my throat with her magic. “You smug fucking douchebag.” After holding me for a moment, she let go.

I rolled my eyes, not even having been choked long enough to gasp for breath. Blowing off my own hesitance at my last thought was easy. “Like I said. No appreciation for drama.”

“If you’d sat through a third of the fucking theatre I have, you’d hate drama too.” After saying that, Gale glanced nervously over her shoulder at the stout door of the tower. When she saw nopony present, she took a visible breath of relief, and then turned to me again. “I don’t really give a shit what Diadem thinks of me, but Dad said if he caught me swearing again he’d make me keep attending court in full ‘royal regalia’ for the next year. And I think I’d rather kill myself.”

“I’m surprised you’re afraid of what your father will do, given you ran away with his sword.”

“That didn’t have anything to do with Dad,” she told me, staring off into the distance. I’d learned enough to know whatever had caused her to run away hadn’t been resolved. “Mom was just being a prick, and… Look, don’t worry about it. It’s stupid. Royalty shit.”

“If you say so.” I rolled my neck and took in the fresh air. The evening still held a lingering heat higher than anything we would usually experience in the Crystal Union, even in summer. Still, after River Rock and the eternal blizzard, I wasn’t about to complain. I glanced up and down at Gale’s immaculate dress and her clearly styled (though still rough and short) mane. “You look phenomenal, by the way.” As she rose, I started on my way down the tower’s stairs.

“Doesn’t really make up for having this fabric most of the way up my ass, but thanks, I guess.” She shook her head, and fiddled with the collar of the dress with a brief burst of telekinesis. “After I got back, Mom and Dad were right up there with the dress for a week. ‘No swearing, go to court everyday, wear a real dress, have dinner with the suitors…’ I was about ready to kill somepony waiting for you to show up.”

“Suitors?”

Gale gritted her teeth. “You know about monsters, right? Is there such a thing as a giant fucking leech that can turn into a pony? Or maybe a walking cock with almost as much ego as you?”

“I see…” I replied, and even those two words were hesitant.

Gale shook her head. “You should just drop it, unless you’re gonna help me deal with them.”

“I don’t know if I can help with something like that,” I told her. “I don’t do assassinations, despite what everypony seems to think. And I can’t exactly force your parents to do… well, anything, really.”

“Fuck that! I mean we should run away again.” With a burst of energy and surprisingly agility for a mare in a dress, Gale leapt up onto the railing of the stairs spiraling around the tower, balancing on the thin metal with barely any apparent effort. “I heard from Pathfinder—he’s one of my dad’s old scouts—that there were some elk asking for help against some kind of monster down to the southwest, in the desert colonies. And Star Swirl says there’s some settlement down there where the ponies had to fight off a sphinx.”

“You want me to help you run away? From your dad?”

Gale jumped down from her perch and then slapped me across the face hard enough that I flipped over the railing and fell off the stairs. Fortunately, we were about two stairs from the ground anyway, but without describing the flip over the railing you likely wouldn’t understand how much the blow hurt.

“Stop being such a pussy. My dad isn’t going to hurt you, even if he thinks it’s funny to give you shit in the throne room. It’s Mom you’ve gotta watch out for.”

“...at dinner? Or just in general?”

“Gah!” was Gale’s answer, and she trudged down the stairs and onto the streets of Everfree City, leaving me to sprint and catch up.

“Sorry?” I offered when I once again matched her stride. Despite my height advantage, it was tiring keeping up with the frustrated mare, whose pace was only a few bent knees short of a gallop. She didn’t bother to reply to my half hearted apology beyond a sidelong glance in my direction. I let that silence sit for a few moments, and watched the city as it passed us. Ponies milled about, though a few did recognize Gale and offer her a bow or a wave, calling out ‘Princess’ or ‘Your Highness’ as she passed. My friend’s response was to walk a bit faster past each of them and to avoid further contact.

Finally, nearing the entrance to the palace itself, I felt the need to relieve a burning question. “Gale, about River Rock… I figure with what happened in court, we’re good, but I just wanted to make sure. Are you okay? With me?”

Gale stared at me silently for a long few moments. Then, to my relief, she snorted back a laugh. “Nah, I just blow all my casual acquaintances in public. Yes, Morty, we’re fine. And before you let that go to your head, the hornjob was to save your life.”

“What?” I asked her. “How could you possibly save me with—”

“It got Mom to completely forget about dealing with you, and made her so fed up with court she gave you a day’s reprieve.” Gale observed. “It wasn’t about you.”

“Oh. Well, then—”

“If it were about you, I’d have taken my time with it.”

I blinked, dumbstruck, and my hooves followed Gale the rest of the way to her home without any input from my now thoroughly muddled brain. I only managed to gather some semblance of a sentient thought when we finally reached our destination.

Hurricane’s villa was a wide orange thing, with smooth plaster and pillars supporting a fairly deep patio that looked out on a small farm of hops and barley and a few other grains between the city street and the front door. The upper floors featured a number of open archways protected from the weather by wide eaves in place of windows—a fact I would later identify as a feature of most upper-class pegasus architecture—allowing a nice breeze to flow through the building and letting flying visitors come and go as they pleased.

When we arrived, two other ponies were also standing on the porch. Blizzard and the pestilent wart that was Tempest sat by the door, apparently having just knocked. As we approached, I heard Tempest speaking.

“Calm down a little, Blizzard. Take a deep breath. I don’t know what your dad thinks, but Grandfather is about as friendly a pony as they come. He might tease you a little, but family is pretty much the only thing in the world he cares about.”

“That, and his beer,” Gale cut in, gesturing to the crops behind us as she stepped up onto the porch. “And before you get worried, he’s not an alcoholic. He's just a snob. Apparently, the beer here in Equestria just doesn’t taste like it did when he grew up, so he brews his own. Also, hi, Blizzard. Tempest.”

“It’s good to see you again, Gale. That dress suits you.” Blizzard smiled, though it faltered when Gale groaned and snorted up a wad of bile to spit on the soil beside the garden path. Blizzard was taken aback, and after a flustered moment to regain control of her wings, she glanced in my direction. “Good to see you again too, Morty.”

“Thanks. I’m surprised you all got here this quickly.” I glanced around the porch. “Where’s Graargh? And Angel?”

Tempest snorted. “Your pet and the rock are with the goddesses.”

Tempest’s scruffy tuft of a beard and his unkempt mane removed any threat from his pointed glare, so I answered him with a civil smile—though looking like a zombie as Gale had observed earlier, I’m not sure it even came off that well. “Thank you for letting me know where you stand, then, Tempest. And he isn’t my pet; Graargh is a pony with a curse.”

Tempest groaned. “Well, on the carriage ride over here, the pony he decided to be was Lady Celestia. I just about had a heart attack when he jumped out of the carriage trying to fly.”

“He turned into Celestia?” Gale asked, incredulous. “Wait, what? Morty, he can turn into other things? I thought he was just a bear…”

“It’s a long story,” I noted. “Celestia thought we should keep that quiet, though I suppose Graargh isn’t helping that. I’ll explain later, I promise. In the meantime… is the Commander coming?”

Gale chuckled. “Right.” And then she pushed open the door with her magic. “Of course.”

The view through the doors revealed a room that sat metaphorically at the intersection of a foyer and an atrium, and literally at the intersection of a kitchen, a dining room, and a stairwell. It was into the penultimate of those options that I followed Gale, and it is that dining room which still haunts my waking nightmares to this day.

Lifting her voice, the princess shouted into the home. “Dad, you’ve had guests at the door for a while now. Are you sure you don’t need Star Swirl to look at your ears?”

“Hmm?” called the voice of the legendary Commander Hurricane, somewhere within the villa. Tempest entered the home calmly, but it wasn’t until Blizzard and I both hesitantly entered the foyer that the stallion appeared. “Sorry, did you knock? I was cooking.”

Sure enough, the one-winged living legend held in his teeth a chef’s knife roughly long enough to touch a stallion’s spine, if inserted from the belly. Around his neck were the straps of a white apron covered in rather a lot of text. Obviously, I couldn’t read it at the time, but later encounters mean I can convey that writing now.

Near Hurricane’s blue-black neck, bold red letters embroidered in the fabric read World’s Best Dad. Somepony had actually taken the time to embroider a black line through the writing from left to write, as though a pony with a quill had scratched through it.

Beneath that label, in somewhat less clean script, the apron proclaimed that Hurricane was a great dad. That too had been crossed out.

Some third label appeared below that, but I have to assume Gale wrote it. I say this because rather than a black line through the center of the text, the entire segment of script had been covered with a thick black strip censoring whatever lay below.

Finally, nearing the bottom hem of the apron, somepony had stitched in two words in crisp red: A Dad. And even then, the mysterious censor had struck, adding another word into the cramped space to the left of that label: Technically.

Hurricane seemed to have taken the scathing commentary on his family role in good humor, since he was was willing to wear the thing in front of me. He answered his daughter with his gigantic knife still between his teeth. “You and Tempest both know the door is always open to family.”

Gale snorted. “So fuck Morty, then?”

“I would prefer if you’d stop that, especially in public,” Hurricane answered firmly after sheathing his knife under his wing (yes, really). He stepped forward and extended one leg opposite his single remaining wing. “Blizzard, it’s wonderful to finally meet you properly. Welcome to Everfree!”

“Thank you, sir.” Blizzard awkwardly accepted a one-winged, one-legged hug from the graying stallion, holding him like someone might a damp, muddy foal with a distinct scent of sewage.

“Don’t feel like you need to be so formal. ‘Grandpa’ is fine. Or ‘Cane’.”

I felt lost in a whirlwind as the pony I had grown up fearing so completely proceeded to hug his grandson and his daughter in a sort of awkward, aproned ritual of family. At least they answered the motion firmly. My mind rebelled; where was the Hurricane with the sharpened fangs who would as soon eat another pony as greet them? Where was the Butcher of Amber Field and his cloud of living lightning?

I lost track of those thoughts mostly because Hurricane finally approached me.

A hoof extended toward me. “So, Morty… welcome to our home.”

“Our?” I asked, hesitantly accepting the hoofshake.

Gale rapped me behind my ears. “I live here too, stupid.”

“Gale, hospitality,” Hurricane chided. “But yes, Morty. ‘Our’. Gale and I live here, along with my wife on those rare occasions that she’s able to escape the palace. She won’t be joining us today—”

“Thank Celestia,” Gale muttered.

Hurricane grumbled something under his breath. “—but don’t be surprised if you run into her in the future.” He gestured to the foyer stairs. “I’ve set aside some rooms for both you and Blizzard,” he glanced over to his granddaughter with a smile. “And you both have the run of the villa, provided nopony goes stealing things out of my office.” That comment earned Gale a glare. “Oh, and that everypony should stay in their own rooms at night. Platinum says I have a tendency to sleepwalk, and I was a soldier long enough that I startle awake easily. I’d hate to hurt anypony by accident if they weren’t where they were supposed to be.”

I cannot emphasize how strongly his piercing magenta eyes dug into my soul as he issued those words.

“I… I’m not going anywhere.” After a moment’s consideration, I added “Sir.”

“Good. Then I’m sure we’ll all get along. Dining room is in there,” he added, gesturing with his wing. “Go ahead and take some seats at the table; dinner is almost done, and we can all catch up more comfortably then.”

The dinner table had six seats, though the foot of the table lacked a plate or any silverware to speak of. Hurricane’s seat at the head of the table was amusingly obvious, as he had placed all of his utensils and his drinking cup on the left side where he still possessed a wing. Gale quickly stole the seat to her father’s right, and Blizzard almost as quickly took the opposite corner, out of reach of her still unfamiliar grandfather.

Tempest looked straight at me and smiled like an ill-groomed shark. “Welcome to Everfree, Morty.”

Then he took the remaining seat out of Hurricane’s direct reach, leaving me to sit at Hurricane’s left, where the commander’s one wing could easily touch me.

“Well, Morty, don’t feel like a stranger.” Hurricane’s voice shook me from the realization of the seating as he approached from behind carrying no fewer than four skillets and pots, all apparently made of skysteel. “I don’t want to burn you with any of this.” How he spoke around their handles, I will never know, but the fact that he carried the sizzling iron on his bare coat and wing and the handles in his bare mouth were more than evidence of his strength over the element of fire.
Gale grabbed me by my shoulders with her magic before I even had a chance to move and hauled me to the remaining seat. Hurricane followed swiftly, setting down the food he was carrying: two loaves of bread, a full salad of mushrooms and lettuce and cabbage and tomato decorated with berries and nuts, a soup of some kind that smelled of corn, and a number of small buns decorated with a sticky tempting icing.

And then he put down the last skillet, and my stomach reprised the award-winning Crystal Flugelwaltz it had previously performed at the tavern named in Hurricane’s honor in Lübuck. At least three dozen strips of browned flesh looked back at me, the last remnants of some poor animal I couldn’t even identify.

“Steak?” Tempest smacked his lips, and I noticed even Gale smiled at the dish.

Hurricane nodded with a smile of his own. “Almost ready. Gale, can you grab the wine…? Gale?” I followed the Butcher’s gaze and saw Gale adjusting her dress with increasing frustration. “Something wrong?”

“If I sit on the hem, the dress is going to choke me to death. This collar is so high, and the whole thing is just… just so f— gah!”

Blizzard chuckled, but the rest of the native Equestrians seemed less amused. Tempest rolled his eyes and Commander Hurricane sat back in his chair as Gale’s frustration grew more and more visible and less and less linguistically complete.

Finally, Gale lit her horn more potently, and ripped off the entire collar of the garment.

“Your mother isn’t going to be happy,” Hurricane observed flatly.

Gale rolled her eyes in reply. “Well, when Mom wants to get strangled, I’ll be glad to put it on her neck. Now, wine. Right.” The mare opposite me kept her horn lit, and glanced over the kitchen. From somewhere out of sight, a few long-stemmed glasses and two bottles of wine floated into the room. “Anything else, Dad?”

I stared at the floating dining crystal with wide eyes. “Wait… what are those?”

Gale looked at me like I was insane as her magic finished setting the table. “They’re wine glasses, Morty.” One of the little cups with the tall stems floated down in front of me, and it was quickly filled almost to the brim with a rich red wine that smelled of berries as well as grapes.

I blinked twice and then broke out laughing. “Oh!” As everypony stared at me, I held a hoof to my chest. “Oh, okay. I see now. This is why you were so confused in Lübuck. When I was trying to explain teleportation… This isn’t the shape I meant at all. I’m sorry, Gale.”

“Are Crystal wine glasses shaped different?” Hurricane asked, cocking a brow and leaning forward.

“Yes, but Wintershimmer hated virtually everything about ‘barbarian’ culture. Almost everything Wintershimmer owned was unicorn made, and most of it he’d enchanted himself for one thing or another. His wine glasses were... I don’t know if I actually know a word to describe it, but they didn’t have an ‘inside’ and and ‘outside’ you could tell apart.”

“What?” Blizzard asked. “That’s doesn’t make any sense…”

“Tell me about it,” Gale muttered.

“I’ll show you all later,” I promised. Then I took a deep breath, if only to punctuate the thought. “Sorry for the interruption.”

“It’s fine,” Hurricane answered. He gestured to the food spread across the table with his sole wing. “Well, everypony, let’s eat.”

Salad and soup and bread all passed around the table clockwise, balanced on wings or gripped in magic. Nopony spoke during this surprisingly well-choreographed process, though at least Blizzard’s unfamiliarity shared in causing some minor delays in the otherwise oiled system. Nopony commented on my lack of meat, and I held my tongue about the atrocity the others at the table were committing.

A few minutes into the meal, Hurricane settled his attention on Blizzard. Before he could ask whatever was on his mind, she turned her attention in my direction and spoke hastily. “How was your trip here? Aunt Typhoon brought you?”

“Oh, it was wonderful. She accused me of murder.” I lit my horn, speared the first bite of my food, and enjoyed a bit of a genuinely incredible salad. Chewing took only a moment, and then I continued. “Kind of a lot actually. Her secretary was nice, at least.” I glanced from Blizzard to Tempest. “Help me understand something: given your mother’s obvious preferences, where did you come from? Are you adopted?”

The first response I got was Hurricane violently choking on a piece of lettuce. Only a moment later, Gale picked up with violent laughter.

Tempest sighed. “You really want to do this, Morty? Here?”

I shrugged. “I thought discussing intimate romance was a family tradition. Especially after River Rock.” I looked toward Hurricane, who after clearing the lettuce in his throat had adopted a curiously straight face that should have terrified me. “Cyclone threatened my life when he assumed I was… sleeping with Gale.”

“You aren’t?” Hurricane sighed. “Oh, thank Celestia.”

“Dad!” Gale shouted.

“I take offense at that!” I cut in. “I mean, if I might be so bold, the foals would look incredible.”

Hurricane coughed heavily and sat upright again, looming over me in a way that most pegasi physically can’t. “As long as you’re rating the appearances of foals, let me just say I object to having a pedophile as a son-in-law. And Tempest is right, that’s more than enough discussion of romance at the table.” The aging soldier then leaned back in his seat again and turned to the opposite side of the table. “Blizzard, how is River Rock? Is your father doing well?”

Blizzard recoiled a little bit at the attention of her grandfather. “He’s healthy.”

If anything, the terse response only seemed to worry Hurricane. “Did he mistreat you? Is that why you came here?”

“No…”

The silence in the room grew heavier and heavier, until I felt the need to come to her rescue. “We’re looking for her mom,” I cut in.

The simple sentence left Hurricane recoiling, almost as if I had struck the living legend. I was careful not to press him, leaning back to give the topic space, but I continued nonetheless. “Did you know her? Summer?”

Hurricane cleared his throat, and I caught the hint of a growl in the action. “Only from a distance.” His head swiveled slowly to look at Blizzard, and he spoke with the speed and force of an iceberg, carefully choosing each of his next words. “I will tell you what I can, Blizzard, because you have a right to know. But I would just as soon encourage you not to worry. You’re nothing like her.”

Blizzard nodded. “I think I want to know anyway, Sir. Er, Grandfather.”

The soldier nodded, but the wrinkles on his muzzle deepened. “Summer Celsus was a medic who worked for one of my Legates, Iron Rain. I met her more than once when I first became Emperor, and then after our exodus from the griffons. Her father was a senator, and one of my closest advisors. Both Summer and her father were Nimbans…” He sighed, and to my surprise, he turned to me. “How much of our history you know, Morty?”

“Just snippets…” I answered hesitantly. “You had a war with the griffons and their god, right?” A flash of unprecedented anger slipped over Hurricane’s expression, and I caught glimpse of a hint of a spark on his wings. It faded quickly, but the momentary expression told me that not all Hurricane’s scars were as obvious as his missing wing. “But that’s basically it. What is a Nimban?”

Hurricane nodded. “I see. Nimbus was a Cirran city. A citadel sitting right on the griffon border. The city was renowned for its warriors. Blizzard’s mother, Summer, took that reputation to an extreme in the war.”

“Hold on,” Gale interrupted. “If Summer fought in the Red Cloud War, wouldn’t she be your age, Dad? Because if she was f— ” Hurricane’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Hooking up with Cyclone, that’s… a little creepy, right? She’d be like thirty years older than him.”

“Closer to twenty,” Hurricane noted, but he nodded as he said it. “They weren’t married. On recommendation, I tasked Summer with tutoring Cyclone when he was about your age. She was the strongest fire empath in the Legion at the time. This was back when we’d first discovered how to use our magic, after the war, and I had the sense that mastering our magic the way the unicorns had was the way Cirra was going to survive. And even as a colt it was obvious fire was where Cyclone’s talents lay.”

“Was he an angry colt?” I asked. At Hurricane’s raised, incredulous brow—probably wondering at the audacity of my question, I held up my hooves in a calming gesture. “For pegasi, fire comes from anger, right? So I would assume that meant Cyclone was angry, if it was obvious he was going to be strong with fire.”

That explanation seemed enough to spare me the Commander’s ire, and he nodded. “Cyclone always had a temper, and a rebellious streak.”

Nopony said a word.

Hurricane continued without comment on the pointed silence. “As far as I know, Cyclone and Summer were never really in love. Their romance came from a few nights of indiscretion. Summer was married to…” The blue-black stallion’s brow twisted into a knot for a few moments, before he gave up on his memory. “Some cloud architect, I think, though I can’t recall the name. Whoever he was, they could never have foals. They both thought it was Summer’s fault.”

Blizzard frowned. “But she had me… Was it magic?”

“Magic?” Hurricane shook his head and chuckled. “No, nothing so special. They were just wrong. It was the stallion. But Summer was the one who took the blame and it tore her marriage apart. She had no foals, she was getting too old to fight on the front lines, and she felt like she had nothing else to live for.”

“Are you kidding?” Gale asked with a snort. “That would be fucking great. Literally.”

“Gale,” Hurrricane whispered harshly.

“Oh, come on, Dad. Tempest is thinking it too.” At Gale’s comment, Tempest held up both his wings, waving them slightly as if to ward off any association with his… was Gale his aunt? That certainly seemed strange, given that he was older. Gale certainly didn’t seem troubled with the relationship, or for that matter with the words she was spewing. “As much rolling around in the hay as you want with no eleven-month stomach aches afterwards? Sign me up.”

“There’s a simple spell for that—” I dropped the thought very quickly when Hurricane glared in my direction.

Blizzard nervously looked down, avoiding Gale’s attention. “Pegasi only take nine months, Gale.”

“Oh?” Gale shrugged. “Whatever. You get my point. And Morty, you should have said something. We should talk—”

Hurricane cracked a hoof on the table. “Ahem.” I emphasize that he did not, in fact, clear his throat. “Obviously, teenagers do not change through history, since Cyclone seems to have had the same idea that some of you are having. And since you obviously need a cautionary tell, let me remind you that he was wrong. Summer was perfectly healthy, it was her husband who was infertile. I had no idea Summer was pregnant, Blizzard. She and Cyclone kept you secret from both me and your grandmother, Swift Spear. But that was only a few months before Cyclone’s rebellion, and she chose his side.”

“Oh.” Blizzard looked away. “Father said she had been killed…”

“She was,” Hurricane confirmed. “I wasn’t there, but if it is important to you to know more, Iron Rain can tell you more. I can introduce you if it is important to you.”

I put my hooves on the table as calmly but firmly as I could. “Cyclone told us she was dead as well. But either it isn’t true, or somepony besides Wintershimmer and I is practicing necromancy in Equestria. Very evil necromancy.”

“Hmm?” Gale cocked her head. “You sure this isn’t Wintershimmer, Morty?”

“I tried to seance Summer.” I glanced toward Hurricane, who had quirked a brow. “Like what Luna did in the throne room. It’s necromancy, to bring a soul back from the Summer Lands or from Tartarus and talk to them. But Summer wasn’t in either place. Somepony has done something to her.”

“It’s Lady Luna.” The table was utterly silent after Tempest’s abrupt announcement. “I don’t know anything about Blizzard’s mom in particular, but I know Lady Luna has been known to raise the dead in the past.”

Gale shook her head firmly. “Bullshit. Aunt Luna would never do anything evil with her magic.”

“I don’t know; she certainly seems to enjoy being evil verbally,” I noted.

Hurricane spoke up. “Tempest is telling the truth, Gale. Though despite what Morty seems to think, she is well within her rights.” His focus remained locked on Tempest. “You and I are going to have a long, private, conversation about how you know that. And as for the other three of you, do not bother Lady Luna about this.”

“Hold on, what?” I turned to Hurricane. “You’re saying that you know with absolute certainty that Luna is taking dead souls away from their afterlives and binding them into undead servants, but I’m the one on trial over what happened in Platinum’s Landing?”

“You are not a goddess,” Hurricane answered sternly.

I stood up from my seat. “Okay, let’s assume that’s a remotely valid argument and there is something special about Luna herself that makes her gigantic and immortal, instead of some artifact she touched or some secret spell she cast. Even accepting that, do you have any idea what happens to a soul trapped inside an undead body when the body gets destroyed? Or what happens when a soul is left in a body like that for too long? You're telling me that Summer is out there, walking around undead right now, and I should just let Luna grind what's left of her soul to dust? And all you can give in justification is some pegasus religious wisdom?”

“Life wisdom, Morty. It isn’t our place to interfere in the wills of the gods. I know more about them than anypony alive, and all it’s brought me is suffering.” Hurricane took a long slow breath, and then a slow sip of his wine. “Let the gods judge the dead. It isn’t our place to drag them back. Especially not the damned.”

“Oh.” I shook my head. “Great. This is all about Tempest and Solemn Vow, not Summer. Glad we could clear that up. For a second, I thought you were about to offer an actual logical justification to look the other way while Luna turns the souls of the dead into evil spirits. Come on. Tell me why a chat with Solemn Vow makes me evil. I'm all ears.”

Tempest snarled. “Sit down Morty. You’re sticking your nose some place it doesn’t belong again. You have no idea what Vow was like.”

“Why does it matter?” I shouted, feeling the bones of my spine pop at the speed with which I turned on Tempest. “I asked him three questions. I didn’t let him do anything. The ponies lives I saved matter a lot more than some bad day you had as a little colt. I’m getting very tired of arguing this with you.”

“Be quiet.” Hurricane didn’t shout; it was that same strange magic from the throne room, as I suddenly found myself unable to breath. This time, he didn’t draw out the strange experience at all. His magic—and I was certain it had to be magic—only lasted long enough to win him silence. Then he turned to Tempest. “Give us some room.”

Without so much as another word, the sky blue stallion walked away.

Hurricane’s already wrinkled forehead furrowed between his brows as he turned to me. He wasn’t angry, but rather he seemed burdened, as if somepony had placed a great weight on the center of his skull. “Morty… I do not fault you for what you did. I won’t pretend speaking to Solemn Vow was a crime, and if you have been telling us the truth, you had every reason to want answers from him. But if there is any warning I can give you, it is that meddling with the dead will only lead you to suffering. I know that Celestia and Luna consider it a sacrifice to judge the dead.”

The graying old stallion reached forward, speared himself a piece of steak, dropped it on his plate, and then regarded it with some sort of ennui. At last, he lifted his head enough to look at his granddaughter. “Blizzard… put aside all this talk about magic. Your mother is dead, and if you do ever meet one of Luna’s servants out there, she won’t be the mare you’re expecting. Tempest and Gale and I are your family, not some ghost you’ve never met.” Carefully, Hurricane’s wing guided a knife through his meat, and he took a single contemplative bite. I watched the apple of his throat bob as he swallowed it.

I sat back down in my chair, regarded a piece of bread on my own plate, and decided I wasn’t terribly hungry. “Why is Vow so much worse than Cyclone?”

I want you to understand that I am not exaggerating when I describe to you the impact that simple question had on Hurricane’s dining room. It was as if I had snapped a chalkboard in half and then grated the cragged, sharpened edge of one half against the surface of the other. Everything stopped. Not just speech but movement.

Hurricane slowly looked up. And then, just as slowly, he spoke. “I am going to give you the chance to explain that question.”

The sudden feeling of danger made me swallow and focus my words. “Both of them tried to take over Equestria, but everypony is specifically comparing me to Solemn Vow. If I’m going to defend myself against what Typhoon is saying, I at least need to understand what about Vow makes him such a preoccupation for everypony.”

Hurricane nodded slowly, but it was only when his chest rose and fell once that I felt like air returned to my own lungs.

“He doesn’t talk about it,” Gale explained in the ensuing moments of her father’s silence. “You might as well go ask Celestia, or—”

“No, Gale,” Hurricane interrupted. “In this case, it matters. Coil is right.”

“Wait, what?” Gale didn’t come across surprised so much as offended. That emphasis grew stronger when she stood up from the chair. “You’re honestly just going to tell him right now? Some random-ass stranger you met today?”

“Actually, yesterday,” I unwisely contributed.

“Go fuck yourself, Morty,” she snapped without even looking at me. Her focus was purely on her father. “I’ve been asking you to tell me all this shit for ten fucking years! But no, Gale doesn’t need to hear a damn thing about her own father? What is it? Are you worried I’m too gods-damned sensitive?”

Hurricane frowned with a look bordering on guilt, and he did not correct his daughter’s cursing. “Gale, I do not want to tell Morty this. But his life is on the line. He is right. He does need to know.”

“Oh, okay, that makes sense,” Gale snapped sarcastically. Then her voice picked up to a full shout. “I mean, we’re gonna make Gale rule a third of the entire fucking country, but she’s not about to get killed over it, so who gives a damn, right?”

“Gale…” Blizzard tried her best to give a consoling voice, though I barely even registered the placative over Gale’s volume.

Gale’s magic grabbed onto her wine glass, which she downed in a single gulp before flinging the precious crystal against the wall. It shattered rather spectacularly as she began yelling again. “Since I wasn’t born with wings, I guess I’m enough of this family to get any straight answers about my parents!”

“Gale, this isn’t about—”

“The fuck it isn’t!” She walked away from the table. “I’m going out, Dad.”

Hurricane stood up at that, speaking with much more resolve. “Gale, you are not—”

Unfortunately, parental condemnation didn’t stand much of a chance against outright teleportation. Gale vanished from the room in a flash of magic and a whiff of ozone, leaving Hurricane standing with his wing outstretched toward thin air.

“Gale…” He whispered to himself, and then collapsed back in his chair.

“Do we need to go look for her?” Blizzard asked.

Hurricane chuckled rather sadly. “No… and you’ll never find her if you do. I usually have to go get a scout to track her down when she disappears, and even that takes the better part of a day. She knows the city too well. And you two don’t know it at all.”

“So she’ll be okay?” Blizzard pressed.

Hurricane nodded. “She always is. I’m sorry you both had to see that.” Then the aging soldier swiveled his chair away to face straight toward me. “To answer your question as briefly as I can, Morty… Cyclone was a soldier. He planned in secret, he attacked directly with military might. Vow was a manipulator. A schemer, and a politician. Everypony knew who he was. He cast himself as a hero of the unicorns and the earth ponies, and tried to argue the Legion being all pegasi was what had let Cyclone rise up in the first place. Until Typhoon uncovered the truth, most ponies thought I was a cruel, oppressive warlord and he was their champion.”

“Hero…” I muttered to myself.

Blizzard slipped a wing over my shoulders. “Morty, that isn’t you. You really do want to help ponies. I know it.”

I nodded. “So does Wintershimmer. And ponies keep getting hurt because of it.” My memories flew to Silhouette, and on a whim, I reached into the pocket of my vest to retrieve her glistening black void crystal amulet.

Staring at the shard, it hit me. “Wait, how did…”

“Is something wrong?” Hurricane asked. “Is that void crystal?”

“It’s supposed to be,” I answered. “But Luna teleported me from the throne room to Diadem’s tower. And…” I lifted the amulet up with telekinesis. It offered no resistance. “…if this were a real void crystal, this would be impossible.” I dropped the amulet onto my dinner plate, lifted a knife, and brought it down rather like a sword.

Behind the thin outer layer of black crystal, the interior of the crystal dribbled half-molten tallow.

“What? How are you doing that, Coil?” Hurricane asked, eyes narrowing.

“I’m not. Though I can’t prove that with this alone.” I sighed. “Commander, give me a second to think.”

“Is that candle wax?” Blizzard asked. “Like what you said about Wintershimmer?”

“It is,” I told her. “I got this when Wintershimmer claimed he had given me Silhouette’s body. Now, let me think please.”

Hurricane stood up wordlessly and walked into the depths of his home as I plotted and schemed.

“Can I help?” Blizzard asked. “I feel so lost here…”

“Bear with me,” I answered. My eyes glanced toward where Hurricane had disappeared, and I swallowed. “I’m going to need your help in just a little bit, Blizzard. Do you trust me?”

“Of course!” she answered. “You helped me with my dad.”

“You trust that I didn’t kill those ponies in Platinum’s Landing?” I pressed. “You trust I didn’t kill Silhouette?”

Blizzard nodded. “Morty, what is this about?”

I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I’ll tell you in a few minutes, I promise. For now, just don’t question what I’m about to tell Hurricane.”

I waited for a few moments, scheming as I sat, until Commander Hurricane entered the room.

Hurricane walked back into the dining room, having deposited his amusing apron in favor of a purple sash attached to a sheathe running under his wing. The now familiar hilt of Procellarum jutted out from under the limb. “I’m going to need an explanation now, Coil.”

I nodded. “Commander, this wax crystal proves Wintershimmer is behind what’s been happening. It’s magic, but I can explain it to Luna and Star Swirl or whoever else you might need to know. But right now, we have a problem. When Typhoon brought me here from Platinum’s Landing, we also brought the body of Silhouette, the Crystal Union guard captain. Or at least, we thought it was her body. I believe there is actually a candlecorn loose in Everfree City right now.”

Hurricane frowned. “So what do we need to do? Call up the Legion?”

“You need to get your void crystal armor from Typhoon, or she needs to go out. Wintershimmer will rip out souls, so we can’t risk anypony who can’t defend themselves from his necromancy. The Sisters may be able to fight him; I’ll let them judge themselves. But there’s another problem. Wintershimmer may be gunning for Gale.”

Sparks danced over Hurricane’s wing. “Why?”

“Leverage,” I answered. “She’s isolated herself and become an easy target. I don’t know if he’s actually likely to go after her, but I’ll need to find her and get her someplace safe. You said there was some scout you usually look for?”

Hurricane nodded. “Pathfinder. But she’s my daughter; you should warn Celestia—”

“Commander, with all due respect, they haven’t all seen me cut a solid crystal in half and spill out a bunch of wax. We do not have the time to wait for them to make me prove my innocence. They’ll trust you, and Gale will trust me. Now, where do I find this scout?”

“His name’s Pathfinder,” Hurricane replied, then glanced to Blizzard. “Behind the villa, there’s a pegasus chariot. I need it to get up to Cloudsdale with one wing these days. Attached the saddlebags on the harness, you’ll find a milky looking green potion. Morty will need to drink that.”

“What?” I asked. “Why?”

“The potion will let you walk on clouds. I keep a few handy for Gale. You’ll find Pathfinder at the Legate’s Lookout; it’s an old legionary tavern in Cloudsdale. Right on the very edge of the clouds; you can’t miss it. Tell him I owe him six barrels now and he’ll know you came from me.”

“Six barrels?” Blizzard asked.

“No time,” I interrupted. “Thank you, Commander. Sir.”

Hurricane nodded. “There’s a door in the back. Go. And if you’re right, Morty, you’ll always have a welcome under my roof.”

I scampered off toward the back of the villa as Hurricane’s spry but elderly gait took him toward the main door. Blizzard followed me, and together we slipped out the back door.

A rather rickety looking chariot sat on the dirt before us, in a small clearing between two small fields full of more of Hurricane’s hops and grains. It certainly belied the Hurricane I would have claimed to know earlier.

“Morty, what were you talking about?” Blizzard asked as she stepped toward the chariot.

“Hmm?” I glanced at Blizzard.

“You were super worried and asked a lot if I trusted you. Why were you so worried?”

I sighed, and stepped up to help her with the straps of the carriage’s harness. “I just lied to Commander Hurricane’s face.”

“You lied?” Blizzard asked.

I nodded as I fiddled with a large buckle over her haunch, trying my best not to pinch her wings. “I can’t prove anything with that glob of wax. Even if it is part of a candlecorn, unless Wintershimmer is actively inside it, I have no way of proving I wasn’t the one in control. And as far as Star Swirl or Diadem or Luna know, I stole a candlestick in one of the palace hallways and just shoved it in my pocket to pull that stunt. Visual illusions are easy, but often effective. That’s how Celestia got your father to believe I was innocent.”

Blizzard turned to face me, inadvertently yanking the chariot in a half circle. “Then why lie to Grandfather?”

“I can’t prove my innocence in court. Luna proved that brutally today.” I climbed into the back of the chariot. “All that academic debate and law is for ponies like Luna and Diadem. That’s Wintershimmer’s game. But if I break out and keep digging for why he’s going through all this trouble to frame me and get me killed, maybe I can find some real evidence.” Nervously, I joked “Plus, if I can’t beat him, at least this way I’ve got a head start when I try to run away to live with the dragons or whatever.”

“You’re worried you won’t find anything?” Blizzard asked, taking a few steps forward to get a feel for the chariot harness.

“I think I’m terrified,” I answered her as calmly as I could. “But I’m not about to give up now. I feel like there’s something important about that wax crystal, but I haven’t stopped to figure out what yet. I need to not die first. Come on. Let’s go find Gale.”

Blizzard glanced back over her shoulder at me. “Why? I thought you just said that to get grandfather’s help. Is she actually in danger?”

“I doubt it,” I replied. “But Hurricane said she knows how to hide better than anypony else in Everfree City. And… honestly, I think I need her help.”

A few moments later, as Blizzard broke into a gallop, I shook my head. What was it about that mare that made me say things so bluntly? I still don’t know if I understand the effect Blizzard had on me.

In the moment, with my face exposed to the wind and an increasingly fatal fall waiting just a few feet behind me off the back of the chariot, any such introspection was lost to gut-wrenching inertia.

XLIII - A Sword Named 'Sword'

Celestia had fully lowered the sun over Everfree City by that hour, but the orange glow hadn’t yet left the horizon, as we approached Cloudsdale. The pegasus city-within-a-city that hovered over the western edge of Everfree was an architectural marvel and nothing short of a glistening gem. Beautiful pillars of condensed cloudstone supported wide, puffy roofs as the city’s pegasi finished up their last tasks for the evening and made their ways home.

My mind took in rather little of the beauty though. I was working my way through what I had learned. I could be almost certain Wintershimmer had tricked me, and had never given me Silhouette’s real body. I had willingly let the candlecorn stay near me for days in Platinum’s Landing. But that meant that in my sleep, he had plenty of opportunities to kill me. Yet he hadn’t taken that chance. Instead, he had swapped out my real void crystal for the wax copy that he could use to spy on me, and presumably he somehow prepared to frame me for his crimes.

That virtually ruled out my suspicion that Wintershimmer wanted some kind of revenge on me for a perceived betrayal. Framing me instead of killing me alluded to some further motive; some purpose for which he would need to avoid scrutiny from the goddesses and Equestria. My instincts screamed that knowing that motive would tell me how to prove my innocence, but I had no idea what end Wintershimmer was aiming for.

At least I was rid of the wax crystal. Wintershimmer could not track me anymore, and I’d broken free from Equestria’s grasp—at least for the moment. The next thing I needed was time. And time would come from Gale.

Ahead of me in the chariot harness, Blizzard shouted something incomprehensible.

“What?” I bellowed into the wind, feeling my throat grow hoarse from the gust of air trying to stuff my words back down into my neck.

“Potion!” she shouted back.

Right. I reached forward to the straps of the harness, and just as Hurricane had promised, inside the pouch I found a milky green potion.

I imagine that, shortly after I swallowed the thing, my face made a decent match for its color.

“Landing!” Blizzard managed to shout to me after a few inaudible attempts. I braced myself on the sides of the chariot as we suddenly lurched forward toward a puffy white street.

To say I nearly fell to my death would be an understatement. When we reached the street proper after bouncing six or seven times, I was hanging onto the side of the chariot by just one hoof. Both my rear legs had ground rather shallow divots into the squishy ground, and my chest was sore from bouncing against the wooden planks of the chariot’s seat.

“Morty, are you okay?” Blizzard demanded, rushing around to face me. Of course, still harnessed to the chariot, her motion dragged the chariot, and that in turn dragged me forward. She stopped, mercifully, after I groaned. “I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine…” I muttered, releasing my grip from the seat’s handle. “Is…” I paused to retch onto the street beside me. “Is the place… here?”

Blizzard spoke as she fought with her harness straps. “That sign right there says ‘Legate’s Lookout’. See?”

“I can’t…” I muttered back as I finally, shakily found my hooves.

“You can’t see?” Blizzard asked, turning on me again. This time, at least, I wasn’t dragged down the street.

“I can’t read,” I told her, and then dry-heaved one final time, wiped my lips, and stood up. “And I got made fun of enough by her holiness, Lady Luna, for one lifetime. So let’s not talk about it.” I dragged a hoof over my face, wondering what I looked like now, if I had already been a zombie when Gale pulled me out of Diadem’s library. “Ah. The sign with the helmet plume.”

I have a pet theory that the Legate’s Lookout may, in fact, be some sort of immortal creature disguising itself as a tavern. From that day years ago to today as I sit writing this journal, the only change I have ever recorded in the cloudstone public room is the number of occupants slipping through its doors. On that particular day, it was fairly busy with Typhoon’s subordinates, some of them still armored and uniformed, who pushed in and out of the broad double doors. Blizzard quietly took up pace just behind me, and I led the way in.

The inside of the cloudstone walls weren’t as white as the outside, but rather a gray tainted by two roaring fireplaces, a few dozen tables with candles in their center, light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, and more than a fair share of pipes. Behind the bar, a young mare with a powder blue coat and a sandy blonde mane was mixing a familiar and blasphemous drink for one particularly familiar face.

I couldn’t help but laugh as I approached. Gale was sitting right there in front of me, next to some ancient, white-maned mass of scars and forest green wrinkles that you might be forgiven for mistakenly calling a pegasus stallion. He certainly looked like Hurricane’s elder, though he lacked much of the legend’s subtle size and unspoken presence.

“That was easier than I expected…” Blizzard muttered.

“Be careful,” I warned. “Last time Gale and I were in a tavern like this it ended poorly.” I made my way up to the bar and sat down right beside Gale without a word.

“This is private—” Gale cut herself off when she actually looked up at me from her hunched, miserable posture. “Morty? How the fuck are you… this is Cloudsdale.”

The old green scar-tissue mass leaned forward. “That’s Morty?”

“The one and only.” Gale chuckled pathetically, her shoulders lifting a lot more than her depressed voice did, and I smelled more than a few Luna’s Unmentionables on her breath. Judging from the small glasses arranged on the bar in front of her, she’d put away seven shots, and the fact that she could still pronounce any of her words led me to realize the crown princess was a much harder mare than I had realized before. “Finder, meet Morty,” She introduced me with a half-hearted wave of a hoof. As an afterthought, she added “And that’s my cousin Blizzard. Morty—”

“Blizzard?” Pathfinder asked, both his notched ears perking up as he rose to a full posture. “You’re…”

Blizzard’s shoulders hunched up until her wings hid a bit of her face. “Don’t say it,” she whispered, nervously looking around the room.

“Right…” Pathfinder sighed. “Guess I should have realized. Sorry, kid. Well, like Gale was saying, I’m Pathfinder. Technically ‘Scout Centurion’, though I’m unofficially retired. Pleasure to meet you both.” He extended a hoof and offered me a strong shake. Blizzard was more reluctant, but she too took the motion.

“What are you doing up here?” Gale asked. Then her face soured even further than it already hung, and she stared into her empty collection of drinks. “Did Dad send you?”

“No,” I told her. “We need to talk.” I glanced at Pathfinder, and briefly considered telling him ‘privately’, but something about the scout’s inquisitive brown eyes told me that would lead to trouble.

Despite her inebriation, Gale proved more than adept at reading my face. “Finder, can you give us some space?”

Pathfinder snorted back a laugh, and wide wrinkles from a well worn smile peeled back the shallow scars on his cheeks. “Yeah, yeah, alright. I’ll be in my corner if you need me.” He hooked his hoof through the loop on his mug and walked away with excellent balance for a stallion with three legs and several mugs of beer in him.

I glanced nervously at Pathfinder as he walked away, then leaned forward to Gale, speaking in a conspiratorial whisper. “You know Typhoon brought Silhouette’s body with us when she brought me here?”

Gale sighed, not even pretending to lean into the hushed conversation, and speaking at her (admittedly low) miserable volume. “Yeah, I remember. What about it?”

“It wasn’t Silhouette’s body. It was a candlecorn. I think Wintershimmer used me to sneak it into Everfree City.”

Behind me, Blizzard tentatively raised a hoof like a schoolfoal. At least she gathered the sense to speak when I turned toward her with a raised brow. “Um… if Wintershimmer can make the candlecorns look like whoever he wants, why bother having you sneak it in? Why not just turn into a farmer or somepony unimportant and walk in the gates like we did?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It probably has something to do—”

“You don’t know?” Gale interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Seriously?” Something in the way she swayed on her seat betrayed her inebriation. “Mr. Smart Ass knows everything in the world about magic, but you can’t figure that shit out?”

“Am I missing something obvious?”

Gale nodded. “Hold on.” Then, waving her hoof toward the bartender, she mumbled. “Cirrus.” Frustration grew in her tone when the blue pegasus mare failed to hear her over the din of the tavern. “Cirrus! Hey, bitch!”

Her answer finally arrived after that shout. “What, Gale?”

“Get my friends drinks. And I need another lick. Put something for Finder on my tab too.”

“Your father’s tab,” the bartender grumbled, shaking her head. Nevertheless she started pouring drinks into a few sizeable wooden tankards.

“Fuck my dad,” Gale answered, before turning back to me. “What were we talking about?”

“Wintershimmer,” I told her with a sigh. “And how bad of an idea it was to come to you—”

“Right. If Wintershimmer snuck in and did something on his own, it would make you look innocent.”

“I…” I stared for a very long few seconds at Gale, who was casually drifting to the very edge of balance on opposite sides of her stool as she waited for yet another drink. “How did you figure that out?”

“Because my mom’s a scheming evil bitch,” Gale snapped. “Did you think the stupid nasal voice with the bears was the only thing I ever learned from her? I can’t avoid all of it.”

“Sorry,” I offered hastily, holding up my hooves to try and wave off Gale’s obviously drunken temper.

“I’m not nearly as much of a fucking brick wall as you,” she continued, obviously not paying attention to her words. “I do actually learn things sometimes.”

I took that one in stride, if only for how many drinks Gale had downed. “Gale, I realized that I’m never going to be able to prove my innocence in court the way we tried today. That’s trying to prove a negative, and the only good solution there is to offer proof that Wintershimmer really is behind this, rather than that I couldn’t have done it. I need to figure out exactly what Wintershimmer is after. And knowing what he wants in Everfree seems like the clue to that.”

Gale gave me a motion that loosely resembled a nod. “So what else do you know? Anything actually useful?”

“I have no idea.” I sighed. “I thought Wintershimmer wanted revenge because I refused to kill Clover, but if that were true, he could probably have killed me at Platinum’s Landing. He’s gone really far out of his way to frame me for what happened.”

“No shit,” Gale noted. “The only other option is that Ty and Mom and Aunt Luna get their heads out of their asses and admit he’s the one responsible. And if Aunt Luna comes after him, he’s basically fucked, right?”

“I would have to think so,” Blizzard added. “They’re immortal. Gods, right?”

“Wintershimmer always claimed they were just ponies who had found some sort of magic,” I concurred. “If not spirits of some kind who had taken pony form…”

“They’re not fucking ghosts!” Gale caught herself shouting and shook her head. The vigor of the motion very nearly toppled her from her stool. “Okay, Morty, that doesn’t matter. Wintershimmer doesn’t want to pick a fight with Equestria, so he basically has to blame you. Here’s something different. Why bother killing Clover?”

“Because she…” No. It wasn’t that she had spared the Windigo. The truth of the accusation didn’t mean the motive was likewise true. “Revenge against Star Swirl for having him exiled?”

“That’s not the read I got on him.” Gale watched as a drink slid down the bar to stop in front of her and scowled. “Cirrus, I’m not drunk enough to mistake water for beer yet.”

“I don’t care. You’ve had enough, kid.”

Gale grimaced and slammed back the tankard, using her hoof in place of her magic. A few audible glugs later, she slapped the half-drained vessel back on the bar. “So what it is?”

I shrugged. “I thought you were building to something.”

“Fuck that, no.” Gale groaned. “You’re the wizard. I just know revenge is bullshit. Even just talking to him when you tried to teach me to teleport, I know that’s a steaming pile of shit. It’s something practical. What else do you know?”

“Well… since he gave me a candlecorn, he still has Silhouette’s body.” I frowned. “Actually… that does bring something else to mind. Right before he took Silhouette’s soul, I was holding her foreleg, trying to pull her up over this broken board in the street—the streets there are all these raised boardwalks above the swamp, so—”

“I’ve been there before,” Gale muttered. She glanced over her shoulder, as if her own boisterous volume was somehow still keeping our secrets. Thankfully, the bar still held no small modicum of noise—or at least, a modicum of ponies smart enough not to stick their noses in Gale’s family business. “So? What did Silhouette say”

“How did it go? She said ‘a project turn against you.’”

“What?” Gale stared at me, and then to Blizzard. “Did I have too much to drink? That isn’t even a sentence.”

“Yes on both counts.”

Despite her obvious tipsiness, Gale still had the coordination to drop a hoof square between my eyes. Blizzard leapt back from her own stool, fluttering her wings just as I collapsed across her seat. In the moment, I recall a ringing in my ears. Looking back, I can say with amusement that the incident proved Gale was a regular at the Legate’s Lookout. Almost nopony even bothered looking up from their drinks as I climbed back onto my stool. “Well… you asked.”

“You want another?”

Blizzard frowned. “Gale, there’s no call for that.”

For my part I held my silence a few seconds which satisfied Gale. “She say anything else?” she asked.

“Then she said ‘remember’.” I stood up without really thinking about it, pacing slowly just behind the row of barstools holding my two friends and the strange old stallion Gale insisted I could trust. It was amazing how he blended into the scenery if I wasn’t focusing on him. Looking back, if I’d been more conscious of his presence, I might not have said some of the things I did. “Wintershimmer had said it when we were fighting a little bit before that. I think I said something off-hoof about how his candlecorns track teleportation, and he was trying to compare that to my betraying him or some forced metaphor like that. ‘How does it feel to have a project turn against you?’”

Gale’s eyes widened, cold sobriety flashing in her expression. “Morty, I’m not sure what this means, but you had heard that before.”

“Before Wintershimmer?”

“You had that exact same conversation in Lübuck with Silhouette, when we were trying to rescue Graargh. Remember?” At my look of confusion, the fatigue and lack of focus in Gale’s expression swept back. “Whatever. I was in the middle of trying to make sure she couldn’t grab Procellarum by holding it up in the air with one of the chapel pews.”

“You’re sure?”

Gale gave me one firm nod, managing not to lose her balance this time. “I am dead certain on this, Morty. Not sure what good it does you to know that, though. Do you think she was trying to tell you to do something with a bell? Or drop something on his head?”

I almost hit myself in the face when I finally realized what it meant, and then I slowly lifted my hoof to my brow as I tried to put the pieces together. “Wintershimmer could not have known those words unless he was already there. Which would mean he was already in one of the candlecorns…”

“What? But they were all just mindlessly following her orders, weren’t they?”

“No, there was one…” I tapped my hoof twice on my brow—after all, if pressure on the chin scares up neurons, slapping your own skull is sure to make some real progress. “I didn’t come up with the bell thing completely alone, Gale. One of the candlecorns gave me that hint. No… Wintershimmer gave me that hint. That’s how he knew what I had said to Silhouette.”

“Wait, wait…” Blizzard leaned forward. “Wintershimmer helped you?”

“At the time, I was doing what he wanted” I countered, turning back to my pacing. “But we know he had to have been watching us in Lübuck. And one of the candlecorns subtly helped me. So I can say he definitely was already in a candlecorn then. And if he was already in a candlecorn before I fought Clover… then how in Tartarus can that even be true? I seanced him an hour before that. That was when we were working on teleportation, Gale.”

Gale shook her head from her place on the floor. “Not the right question.”

I pivoted in place, cocking my head. “Don’t we need to know how the magic works?”

That earned me a shake of Gale’s head, and she stood up. “Morty, you just told me you couldn’t prove you were…” a hiccup slipped past her lips, and she groaned. Magic flared on her horn, and she gritted her teeth as a glow surrounded her head. “Mother fucker!”

“Are you okay?” Blizzard pressed, leaning across my now empty stool.

“Drink fix,” Gale muttered, sounding eerily like Graargh for just a moment. “Learned it from Star Swirl. Skips you ahead to the ‘hangover’ part. And makes the hangover way fucking worse.” She ran a hoof down her muzzle. “I think he meant it to stop me drinking so much. But I’m sober now… Sorry if I curse at you or hit you. A lot.”

“Better late than never,” I told her with as much of a grin as I could muster over my fatigue and the throbbing headache her blow had given me.

“Look, my point is that it doesn’t matter how he did the magic right now.” Gale nursed a few more sips of her water. “You know he did. You gave evidence. We need to look at what that tells us. We need to know why.”

“Okay…” I muttered. “But I don’t know why. Wintershimmer told me he wanted revenge on Star Swirl and Equestria for being banished by King Lapis decades ago. But if that’s true, why does he even care about me?”

Gale rolled her eyes and adjusted her mane with her magic when rough bangs dangled in front of her view. “Words are cheap, actions are everything.”

I frowned. “Solemn Vow told me that.”

“Yeah, and Mom taught him. What a long string of assholes that is.” Gale shrugged and sighed in pain. “Let’s start over from the beginning, Morty. You killed Wintershimmer, right? What happened after that?”

“Well, one of the candlecorns thought I was responsible for killing Wintershimmer, so it fired a spell and stunned me. Later on, Jade told me that somepony had slit Wintershimmer’s throat. They thought it was me.”

Gale nodded once, and even that motion was barely noticeable. Blizzard, however, cut in again. “Did Wintershimmer usually have the candlecorns stun other ponies? With how you talk about him, I didn’t think he would be so… gentle.”

“You’re right,” I answered. “Wintershimmer wasn’t a very firm believer in second chances.” Then I frowned. “I assume you’re saying that even right then, that was him in the candlecorn stunning me? But how—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Gale interrupted, drawing a firm arc in the air with a foreleg that would likely have bruised my muzzle if I were just a few inches closer. “We know Wintershimmer is behind this. We know he possesses candlecorns, and he could do it very early in your journey. That candlecorn acted unusually. It was probably Wintershimmer. Then we say Wintershimmer was behind his own stabbing while you were unconscious.”

I couldn’t help but frown at that. “After he lied to Jade and I had to escape the Union, he did tell me to my face that he thought I would have stayed and taken over being Archmage in his place.”

“So he needed you to leave,” Gale nodded. “But he also wanted you to think he was dead.”

“Think he was dead?”

Gale nodded. “The candlecorns can look like him, right? And if his throat wasn’t slit, you could have just put him back into his body, right? How do you know he actually got killed at all? And for that matter, if we do think he was able to take over that candlecorn, why would he slit his own throat, instead of just hopping back into his body?” Apparently amused at my widened eyes, Gale gave me a confident grin. “So now everypony in the world, you included, thinks Wintershimmer is dead. He tells you to go kill off Clover and sends you off on this long damn quest. But he’s following you as a candlecorn too, right?”

Again, I had to nod. “But if he’s still got his real body, why not use that? His horn is so much stronger than a candlecorn’s candle, even if he is getting old, and…”

As my expression widened in a final realization, Gale chuckled. “The word you’re looking for is ‘motherfucker’. Try it, Morty.”

“Immortality.”

“Not even fucking close. And I thought I was the one drunk.”

I ignored the comments; my mind was racing down a path I’d just discovered at breakneck speed. “Wintershimmer told me that was what the Summer Lands ritual was for, but when he died, I assumed he’d failed. But if that is somehow letting him control the candlecorns from afar and steal bodies, then it did exactly what he wanted.” I whirled at the end of my pacing. “And the point of sending me after Clover was that the only way I could ever hope to kill her was with his spell. Her body would still have been alive, and he could have slipped in and stolen it.”

Gale nodded. “That makes a twisted sort of sense. It explains why he only turned on you after you refused to kill her.”

“Why not just stay in a candlecorn?” Blizzard asked. “They don’t age, do they?”

“No, but it would destroy his soul.” I sighed as I realized what metaphor would make my point stick. “Pony souls aren’t meant to stay in dead bodies, whether they’re artificial like a candlecorn, or natural like a real corpse. A short stint won’t do noticeable damage, but over time the soul starts to degrade. That’s what I meant when I was talking to your grandfather. That’s why I’m so worried about what Luna has done with your mom.”

“So he needs a living body,” Gale observed.

“A unicorn body,” Blizzard cut in, and then grimaced. “Wait, Morty you aren’t saying Clover—”

“I would bet my life on it,” I answered. “Wintershimmer ‘dies’ and Clover keeps on living. Wintershimmer probably would have turned on me then to tie up the loose end. But I didn’t kill her like he wanted.”

The whole conversation put a dour expression on Blizzard’s face. “So why wouldn’t he kill you?”

I tapped my horn. “My horn isn’t… Well, it isn’t normal. I can only cast three spells in a day, and it took me a long time to learn enough control to do anything other than destroy whatever my horn was pointed at. I wouldn’t be any good for the kind of magic Wintershimmer wants to do. He needs another living body. So who is he thinking of in Everfree?”

Gale shrugged. “Star Swirl is liable to keel over any day now. So Diadem would be my best guess.”

“But that would reveal him,” I countered. “If a candlecorn snuck into her tower and just murdered her in cold blood, that would prove me innocent and bring the Divine Sisters down on his head.”

“You don’t think he’s just going to kill some poor unicorn in the streets, do you?”

“No,” I answered. “Too much risk of getting noticed for barely any reward. He’ll want a wizard’s horn.” A moment later, I stood up from my bench. “This is all conjecture, but it’s the best idea we have. I’m not sure of what I’m about to say, but I think I have to bet on it anyway.”

“Yeah?” Gale asked.

“Wintershimmer was banished for trying to put a horn on an earth pony’s body. And he still had all that research.” I glanced to the door, and hopefully symbolically to the world below. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have relied on that symbolism when Gale was suffering a magically strengthened hangover. “Now he has an earth pony body.”

“You think he’s going to stick somepony’s horn on Silhouette?” Blizzard asked with a gasp.

Gale shook her head, and winced as she regretted it. “That doesn’t answer who, Morty. Everything you said about killing somepony to get a body is exactly the same if he sneaks up with a knife and lops their horn off. Probably worse, since then there would be a survivor too.”

“If he takes a living pony’s horn, sure. But that doesn’t matter. Because I know there’s one wizard’s horn in Everfree City—or at least, somewhere nearby. Gale, do you know where Solemn Vow is buried?”

Gale swallowed heavily. “Umm… shit. Okay. Uh… hey, Finder!” Gale shouted at Pathfinder while waving a hoof, then her ears flattened against her mane as the sound of her own voice burrowed into her skull.

“What, kid?” the old scout asked, his mass of scars rippling as he approached. “You done with all your secrets?”

“Just got a question,” Gale answered. “You and Ty fought Solemn Vow in his basement, right? The old haunted house?”

Pathfinder frowned. “I don’t like that question. You aren’t about to do something stupid, are you, Gale?”

“It’s stupid,” I told him, cutting in. “But it’s also necessary.”

“Yeah? And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?” the scout asked.

I nodded. “You are. Because now Hurricane owes you six barrels.”

Pathfinder’s eyes widened just a touch. “Well… I do not like this, for the record. But yes. I wasn’t in it much, though. Typhoon finished that business alone.”

“Is his body still there?” I asked.

That earned me a big frown. “Now I ought to arrest you.”

“I have no intention of bringing him back.” Technically, that was a lie, though it was certainly true I didn’t intend to do it any time soon.

“We need to make sure nopony else does,” Gale told him. “Besides, if Vow does turn up all zombie-d up walking around, you can basically just say Morty’s guilty as fuck and kill him.”

Pathfinder’s eyes swept between the three of us, and then he nodded. “Yeah. Last I heard, Vow’s still down there. Commander Typhoon made some crazy ice that didn’t melt for years. For a while, we would go down, make sure none of his magic was left, and it never thawed a drop.”

“Alright.” I took a deep breath, if only to buy myself time to think. “Pathfinder, I need you to fly and find Celestia. Tell her to bring Angel and… my bear to Vow’s manor.”

“You honestly expect me to just run some errand for you, kid? You’ve got some nerve.”

“Should I go?” Blizzard volunteered. “If you’re going to go fight Wintershimmer, I’m not going to be much use, after all, and…”

I waited for her to trail off against the slow shaking of my head. “You said you had ice magic, Blizzard. We almost certainly will need your help.”

Gale stepped away from the two of us, right up almost against Finder. “Morty might have a bad habit of sucking his own cock in public, but he does tend to be right about this kind of shit. If Aunt Celestia or Dad get on your case, I’ll take the hit.”

He was quiet for a very long time before he dipped his head. “Alright, fine kid. But when this is over, right or wrong, seven barrels.”

Gale spat on the frog of her hoof and slapped it against the scout’s. “Deal. Gimme your sword.”

I hadn’t realized Pathfinder was wearing one until he lifted a wing and produced a decent sized blade in his teeth. Gale lifted it with her magic. “So help me, Gale, if you don’t bring Ensis back to me, it’ll be my wife chasing you down the next time you run off.”

“Ensis?” I asked.

Pathfinder nodded at the weapon. “Sword.”

“No, what does it mean?”

“That is what it means. Sword. Unlike some ponies, I don’t come from a family with a name like ‘the storm blades’.”

Gale spun the rather plain blade, then pulled the sheath off Pathfinder’s side, revealing a set of very narrow straps that I had mistaken for even more of his substantial scar tissue. With a bit of a struggle, the harness tightened around her own barrel. “Alright, Morty. Blizzard. Ready to kick some ass?”

Blizzard’s answer was a mute and nervous nod. I grinned more honestly. “Let’s go snuff a candle.”

In retrospect, the second of Gale’s blows to the growing bruise on my muzzle probably didn’t make the impending battle any easier.