“Will he live?” Blackbird could see how her words made the wide-eyed, terrified zebra mare squirm and she felt bad for adding to the poor mare’s terror. At the moment, she was a bloody horrifying sight, Blackbird was, and she knew it. Raising her left talons, she pointed at Dim and this time, she kept her voice down when she asked her question. “Will he live?”

“He be a bleeder,” the little zebra replied in a thick patois. “His blood no thicken. A Weaver might be able to give him spider venom—”

“Spider venom?” Blackbird’s eyes narrowed and her head darted down until she was nose to nose with the tiny zebra mare. “To put him out of his misery?”

“No!” The mare let out a pleading whine and took a step backwards. “It very risky. The venom make the blood thicken, but it might also cause blood clots or make his heart stop. He be bleeding under the skin… bleeders don’t bruise like we do, they just keep bleeding and bleeding until the skin falls away from the muscles and fat.”

Hearing this, Blackbird felt something clench around her heart. “He’s dying, right?”

“At the moment, he is, yes. He be down in the shadow of the grave.”

“If he’s dying, it’s not like it matters. Get that spider venom in him. I want him alive!” The roar of Blackbird’s voice sent the zebra mare skittering for cover. For a moment, Blackbird’s eyes lingered on Dim where he lay, and then she glanced over at the bloodied heap, everything that was left of Bombay. “Motte… how bad is it?”

“I’m not a doctor!” Motte’s lip curled back into a snarl and he shook his head. “I’m a combat engineer and a field medic. I can probably sew what’s left of her back together. From what I can tell, it looks much worse than it really is. Her ear is gone, along with her eye, and part of her scalp. I think I can stretch everything out enough to sew it all together and cover up her skull. As for the rest of her… flesh wounds?”

“Get to stitching,” Blackbird commanded. “Now.” The authority in her voice made Motte’s ears pin back in submission. “What about Bailey?”

In response, Motte shrugged. “She’s a tough gal. Got her head bonked, but I’m pretty confident that she’ll come around. I told her to keep her damn fool head down, but she didn’t listen!”

“Munro, you’re Motte’s assistant. Scrub up and make yourself useful!”

Saying nothing, the minotaur calf scrambled to do Blackbird’s bidding.

“Others need me.” Shuddering, she tried not to think about the Bard. “My strength is needed. Keep me informed.”

Every muscle ached and burned with advanced fatigue, which drove away the freezing chill of the night. When Blackbird sat down, her joints screamed at her, begging and pleading with her to stop. How long had she been lifting rocks and timbers? How long had she been sorting through crumbled buildings and rubble, looking for survivors?

Looking eastward, she had her answer. On the horizon was the rosy pink of dawn. Bodies were everywhere, stacked in piles between the ruined remains of buildings. Almost sobbing, Blackbird wanted to keep helping, but her body protested and her bloodied, battered talons kept seizing up. The rough edges of stone, the splintered ends of wood, all of it had been merciless.

There was nothing left to give. She had endured multiple explosions, the abuse of which had left her body in a sorry state, and then she had spent the whole of the night picking through rubble. Inside of her skull was a dull, thudding ache that threatened to push her eyeballs out of their sockets.

Hearing the slosh of water, Blackbird’s head turned left and she saw a zebra colt approaching, carrying a bucket in his teeth. He wasn’t quite tall enough to be carrying a bucket; because of this, he had to strain and stumble. She saw his eyes—haunted—and wondered if he was scared of her.

When he put the bucket down, water sloshed over the side and splashed him. “Thirsty?”

Blackbird reached out to pick up the bucket, but her muscles rebelled and her talons seized up into a convulsing, quivering fist. Some skin had been peeled away from her knuckles and she saw that she was in a sorry state. In need of water, she fell over, dunked her face into the bucket, and drank as much as she dared.

Weaver Violet, much like Indigo, was covered in ritual scars. She was an old mare suffering the ravages of age, but she was still somehow spry enough to move around, not to mention tough enough to endure the whole of the awful night. Blackbird watched the curious old mare, who fretted over Dim’s sweaty, delirious body.

“He off on Heebie Jeebie bidness,” Weaver Violet said to Blackbird in a patois so thick it was almost incomprehensible. “Da Dreaming One has him now. He off in Her realm… nchi ya ndoto. He be suckling at Her teats and She be given him life. Dem Heebie Jeebies look after dey own. If he live, or if he die, it be by Her will.”

Blackbird found that she was not comforted by this, not at all, and she stared at the old mare. “Can nothing else be done?”

“I know nuddin ‘bout healing no Heebie Jeebie. He be kivuli… if he was a pony, I could do more.” The old mare’s face collapsed into a mass of wrinkles and she squinted down at Dim with one rheumy eye. “Aunt Nancy says that mebbe you make deal with the Hearth Keeper and mebbe he live. Such a cost, dat. No godling give for free. Always a cost with dem.” The old mare smiled, revealing her toothless gums, and she nodded. “I go now. Many in need of a Weaver. Flesh and bone. Not kivuli.” Stepping away from Dim, she shivered.

Exhausted, Blackbird nodded, but had nothing to say.

Dim’s hat was being frustrating and Blackbird had no patience for recalcitrant magical items. Growling, elbow deep, she fished around inside of it with her talons, just as she had earlier when trying to find the alicorn’s throbbing heart. Tongue out, she could feel all manner of items brushing up against her talons, but not the one item she wanted.

Exhausted beyond comprehension, she pushed her claws in deeper, and her foreleg was longer than the hat was tall. She didn’t understand this thing, and she didn’t want to, either. Most of the time, when Dim was awake and aware, the hat cooperated. Blackbird came to a realisation and she gave the hat a frustrated shake.

“I am trying to save Dim, you idiot! Open up or he’s dead! I need that spear!”

A jet-black obsidian spear tip poked up out of the voluminous space within the hat and Blackbird made a grab for it before Dim’s hat could change its mind. Resting upon Dim’s brow, the hat had no doubt absorbed much of Dim’s personality, which meant that it was a perverse, contrary asshole of epic, grandiose proportions. As if it had read her mind, its battered, limp tip brushed across her belly as she yanked the spear free from the hat’s magical confines.

She fumbled her grip on the spear and it went clattering to the floor, along with Dim’s hat. Unable to contain her frustration, she batted Dim’s hat away with her talons, snatched up the spear, and held it up before her face. Scowling, she gave it a shake, as if she wanted to wake up the occupant inside, and then she gave voice to her desires.

“Chantico! Things have gone right to Tartarus, Chantico!”

Nothing happened. Glancing once at Dim, Blackbird whimpered in frustration, thumped the butt of the spear upon the floor, and tried again. “Damn you, what use are gods when they don’t answer? If you don’t come out of there right now, I’m coming in there somehow and I’m gonna give you a skullfucking with your own damn spear!”

This—this seemed to get Chantico’s attention, because the spear vibrated in Blackbird’s talons.

Chantico manifested with a yawn, looking annoyed at first, and then quite alarmed. Glancing around, she seemed quite surprised by the situation, and then her gentle, wise eyes focused on Blackbird while the rest of her body coalesced into semi-solidity. Before Blackbird could say anything, Chantico extended one paw-finger, booped the frantic hippogriff right on her nose, and then turned away to examine Dim.

A few seconds after the disorienting boop, Blackbird recovered herself. “I need Dim better. What’s your price, paprika-eater?”

“We’ve already made a bargain,” Chantico said to Blackbird whilst she caressed Dim’s cheek with her paw. “You came to me while Dim slumbered, unaware. As I recall, you offered to do good for the world, to do what was necessary, if I led you to your mother once all of this was over.”

“I need a new deal.” Blackbird didn’t like the sound of her voice, how weak, tired, and worn out she sounded. She wasn’t in a good spot to bargain, and she knew it.

“You were supposed to protect my champion—”

“And I did my best!” Blackbird’s whole body trembled with frustration, fear, and exhaustion. Her mouth had gone dry, blood pounded in her ears, and her feminine places had gone so dry that they ached. “Look, I recall the terms of our deal, but that was before I had to fight a fake alicorn. I feel that I’ve gone above and beyond our original terms.”

“You killed an alicorn?” Chantico whirled around and now, her eyes glowed with dangerous pink fire.

“One of the fake ones. I beat his ass into the dirt, ripped his heart out of his chest, and stuffed in a grenade. My only grenade. I’m a bit sore about it—”

“You killed one of those soul-spliced abominations?”

Blackbird felt her face grabbed by Chantico’s paws, which were solid and quite real. The pressure was almost too much to bear and the immense bulk of her body was hefted around as if she was but a tiny foal. Chantico was even stronger than the pseudo alicorn had been and Blackbird felt her bladder clench in terror. Had she wet herself? She couldn’t tell—at the moment, Chantico’s burning stare was boring a hole into Blackbird’s soul.

“The few that are left will have grown stronger,” Chantico said, her breath a roaring fire that was far too hot upon Blackbird’s face. “There’s not many left now. Celestia told me that when they were many, they were relatively weak, but with each death, they grew stronger. For you to have destroyed one…” The cat-dog creature’s words trailed off into nothingness.

“I had help,” Blackbird whispered, terrified right now in a way that she had never been before in her life.

“I owe you a debt for saving my devoted champion.” Chantico let go and Blackbird dropped down into a heap on the floor, panting in abstract terror. “Dim has retreated into the dream realm… the new one. His divinity has returned to the source and he is with the Essence of Night. Dim needs a reminder of why he lives, because the pain of life is too much for him right now.”

“Can you get me there?” Blackbird asked, getting right to the point while looking up at the cat-dog entity that loomed large over her.

“Yes, but you might not be able to get back,” Chantico replied while she looked down at the hippogriff on the floor before her.

“I need Dim… I was just starting to make progress—I was just starting to sort him out and do all of the things I could imagine my father, Stinkberry, telling me to do. I think Dim was starting to come around. What do I gotta do to reach him?”

Chantico raised one of her immense paws and she made a furtive glance at it for a second before restoring eye-contact with Blackbird. For the briefest moment, Chantico’s face appeared to be apologetic, but then it hardened, becoming fierce and cold. Lightning fast—literal godspeed—her arm swung out wide and then came arcing down like a bolt from the heavens. Her paw collided with terrific, thunderclap force upon Blackbird’s cheek.

Alas, poor Blackbird, never in her life had she ever felt this much pain. Like booming thunder, the pain reverberated right into Blackbird’s soul, and then commited time-travel. Clear as day, she could remember the pain always there with her as a constant companion, going all the way back to when she was a teeny, tiny little nipper made of fluff, feathers, fuzz, and fangs. She suffered a dreadful precognition of sorts when she realised that the agony would be with her in her future memories as well.

When Blackbird’s head cleared up a little bit and her vision almost returned to normal, she saw a most curious sight: her own body on the floor in a limp heap. Chantico turned to look at her, and Blackbird realised with no small sense of dread that she wasn’t in her body at the moment. She had just been bitch-smacked into an alternate state of existence, one outside of her body.

“You coulda warned me!” she wailed at the cat-dog creature that had just done this—whatever this was—to her.

“Do you really think a warning would have been sufficient?” One of Chantico’s eyebrows lifted and her head cocked off to one side.

“That really fucking hurt!” Reaching up, Blackbird rubbed her cheek, which was still smarting, and her non-corporeal eyes were watering from some kind of unknowable existential agony that she couldn’t even begin to comprehend. “Am I dead?”

“I will keep your body alive while your soul goes off on a journey. Prepare yourself. The dream realm might reject you. You do not belong there. It is a place of will. Think of Dim. Focus on him, and do not let your fears get the best of you. With luck, the Essence of Night will sense an intruder and you will be brought before her.” Chantico glanced down at her paw once more, and then looked at Blackbird.

“Wait!” Blackbird cried. “Are you about to smack me again?”

Chantico’s paw moved faster than mortal eyes could follow…

Author's Notes:

Next chapter: Blackbird bravely goes to a place where she does not belong.