A most curious thing happened when Blackbird held the Spear of Chantico; black and pink flames danced along its length and there was a curious thrum. Holding it made her feel calm, strong, in control, it eased the fears in her mind and left her feeling courageous. Something had changed within her, something profound, and when she held this spear in her talons, she felt that anything was possible.

Anything at all.

Beside her, Dim stirred, and Blackbird’s tufted ears pricked at the sound. Would he wake again? He did, sometimes, long enough to eat or maybe drink a little, and then he would drift off again. Blackbird gave the spear an absent-minded twirl in her talons and waited to see what Dim would do. His lips moved, and he seemed to inhale. She listened, hopeful.

“Pyrotheosis.” The sound of Dim’s utterance was like dry leaves tossed about in the wind, or a door with poorly oiled hinges slowly creaking shut.

What sort of word was pyrotheosis? Blackbird’s head tilted off to one side and a quizzical expression could be seen upon her face. She didn’t get much of a chance to think about it though, because Dim burst into flames—again—and she had to scramble to put them out. The spear fell to the floor with a clatter in her mad rush to stop the flames, which she suffocated with a blanket. After she had patted them out, she then double-checked the cushions that Dim lay upon, fearing more damage. They were a bit more burnt now, a little blacker, and she felt awful about their condition.

Dim was like a foal that wouldn’t stop wetting the bed, only this was a good deal more dangerous.

“Getting real sick of that, Dim.” Blackbird shook the blanket again and ashes tumbled down to the floor like snowflakes. She waited, wondering if the flames would flare up again, and without even thinking about what she was doing, she held out her talons. On the floor, the Spear of Chantico wiggled for a time, and then flew back to Blackbird’s outstretched talons. “You keep this up and you’re going into a fireplace. Now stop it.”

Munro returned, and somehow he held Bombay in his arms. Abyssinians were a bit bigger than one might expect, and minotaurs as young as Munro weren’t very tall. Blackbird turned to watch and noted that what appeared to be whole weeks of healing progress could be seen. An ear was gone, as well as an eye, but new pink skin had been grown where her scalp had been stitched back together and her many stitches had been removed.

“Blackbird?” Bombay could hardly be heard. “Help me, Blackbird, Munro won’t let me do anything for myself. Wouldn’t even let me walk.”

Huffing and puffing only just a little, Munro dropped his feline companion down upon a cushion. He then made sure that she didn’t fall over and hurt herself. Hovering over her, he waited until she got settled in, cross-legged, and it was only when he was certain that she was safe did he back away.

“We all got fucked up pretty bad,” Bombay said while she folded her paws into her lap.

“How are you holding up?” Blackbird sat down on the floor and kept an eye on Dim, ready for him to burst into flames again.

“I’m fine,” Bombay replied. “It doesn’t even hurt much, so long as I have a few drinks in me.”

“No.” Shaking her head from side to side, Blackbird twirled her spear in her talon-fingers. “No, that’s not what I mean at all.”

“Oh. That.” Bombay closed her eye and huddled down. “I’m okay. Really. I mean, I’m sad, don’t get me wrong, but I knew this was something that would happen.”

“How can you be okay?” Blackbird asked.

“Motte and Bailey,” was Bombay’s cryptic reply. After a short time spent taking a few deep breaths, she explained herself better. “I’ve stood on other worlds, Blackbird. I’ve seen things. I’ve seen other whens and wheres. That means that there are other Bards. Happy Bards, sad Bards, Bards that are whole of soul, and Bards that are still madly in love with me. It helps… really it does. I wouldn’t lie about something like this.”

Munro, humming to himself, went to work preparing some tea.

Meanwhile, Blackbird could see a pained smile upon Bombay’s face, which seemed as though it was stretched a little tight. It couldn’t be argued, the Bard had inspired them. Mere moments before the disastrous attack, the Bard was a clear voice of order in the midst of the chaos. His words drove away fear and brought clarity to the mind. If he could inspire so much while still alive, what might his death have done?

“I will be the Bard now… our Bard,” Bombay continued and there was a strange look in her copper eye. “As awful as it is, I will draw inspiration from all that has happened, and I will become our Bard.”

The emphasis that Bombay put upon the word ‘bard’ was unmistakable and Blackbird knew that this was how the Abyssinian was coping with this dire predicament. Different creatures responded to grief in different ways, and Blackbird understood this better than most. Some went off on murderous rampages, seeking revenge, while others sought meaning and beauty after experiencing loss.

“Munro, if you wouldn’t mind, when you are finished, could you bring me my mandolin?”

“Sure thing, Miss Sable.”

The door banged open and Blackbird almost chucked her spear. Everything in her body tensed and she only stopped herself because there was a zebra colt in the doorway, panting and breathless. Wild eyed, he tried to say something, but failed. After panting for a few moments more, he seemed to have enough wind to speak.

“Dere be dis mighty big griffon here! I be dold to dell you, he comin’! He be drinkin’ now, but he come when done drinkin’!”

Griffon? Blackbird gripped her spear, unaware of how Bombay’s surviving eye reflected the pink and black flames. Why would a griffon be here to see her? Even though her thoughts were racing, she remembered to smile, and she nodded her head. “Yes, tell him to come and see me. I’ll see a visitor, if I have one.”

“Sure ding, Mizzy Blackbird!” Stripes wiggling, the zebra colt was gone in an eyeblink and he forgot to close the door.

“Some of the zebras call him Marathon,” Munro remarked while he went to shut the door. “I have no idea what his real name might be. I’m almost certain that is the longest time I have ever seen him stand still.”

“Yeah, he strikes me as a twitcher,” Blackbird replied, absent-minded.

When the door opened, Blackbird wasn’t sure who she expected to see, but it most certainly wasn’t Gratin, who was covered in bandages. She almost panicked seeing him, but clutching her spear, she held it together. He looked tired, weary, worn out, and wounded. The big griffon limped on his right hind leg and his left foreleg was swollen near his elbow.

“Blackbird,” he said before she had a chance to say anything. “I was sent to find you. We were attacked.”

“So were we!” Bombay blurted out. “One of those alicorns!”

Gratin nodded. “Us too. Jolie turned our guns on him. We all shot him… there was a big battle. The Solar Stinger was damaged pretty bad.”

“How did you kill him?” Bombay’s paws wrung together and she waited for a reply.

So did Blackbird.

“She.” Gratin blinked once, and then his eyes became distant. “After we blew out her shield, we blasted her to smithereens with our guns, or tried to. When she started to recover after we blasted her into the dirt, we harpooned her and hauled her up to the edge of space. Once she froze up solid, we shot her and her body shattered into a million tiny fragments.”

Blackbird gave the big griffon a nod. “Well, Gratin, have a seat. Have we got a story to tell you.”

Having exchanged stories, Gratin sat in silence, and a look of profound sorrow could be seen in his eyes. Hearing that the Bard was gone had impacted the big griffon and Blackbird felt bad for being the bearer of bad news. Jolie’s crew had suffered losses, and though Blackbird didn’t know them, these losses caused a keen sense of remorse to settle over her.

“So, agents from the Fancy Foreign Legion are in Gasconeigh right now?” Bombay asked. She held a cup of tea in her paws and wore a sad frown upon her too-tight face.

“Jolie violated the directive, but for good reason.” Gratin paused for a moment to gulp down a bite of stew, and then, holding his spoon in his talon-fingers, he pointed it at Bombay. “You don’t need to worry. The agents are there to protect Jolie and our crew.”

“That makes me worry.”

“Sorry, Bombay. Some of the city’s lords are trying to excite trouble. Many feel that Jolie’s warship shouldn’t be here in the first place. The whole damn city feels like a boil that needs to pop. Insurrection is happening all over Fancy. Other cities have turned to rioting. Feels like we showed up at a bad time.” Stabbing his spoon into his bowl, Gratin ate more strew.

Motte turned away, shook his head, but said nothing. Bailey sat watching Gratin eat, and like Motte, she remained silent. A large, goose-egg sized bump could be seen on her head and one ear was still rather swollen. Blackbird looked around at her group, her troupe, her companions, and wondered to herself, what came next?

“Pyrotheosis!” Dim’s wet, gurgly voice held a surprising amount of volume and he burst into flames upon uttering his exclamation.

When Blackbird moved to put him out, Motte said, “Let him burn.”

Motte then lifted Dim up from his cushions, and held the burning unicorn aloft. Bailey added her magic to Motte’s, and then the two of them sat together, watching while Dim burned. Munro, a practical young minotaur, pinched a slice of bread in his thumb and forefinger, and held it above Dim so that it would toast.

“Munro, really?”

“Miss Sable?”

“You look ridiculous.”

“Maybe I do, but I’m about to have fresh, hot toast.”

“Fix me a slice?”

“Sure thing, Miss Sable.”

“Anarchy is the last light of our fading hope.”

Everypony—everyone present—took a moment to look in Dim’s direction. Motte became thoughtful, reflective even, and Bailey appeared as though she was considering Dim’s philosophical babble. Even Gratin was thoughtful while he ate his stew, and Munro, failing to pay attention, burned his fingers, almost dropping his toast.

“How bad do things have to be for Dim’s delirious rambling to sound appealing?” Bombay asked of her companions.

“That’s the thing”—Blackbird jerked her thumb in Dim’s direction—“if you travel with him long enough, you’ll find that he says the sanest things in the maddest moments.”

“Eerie sent Dim to help unravel things here in Fancy.”

“Motte?” Bombay seemed a bit startled by this revelation.

“It was Eerie’s hope that everything that could go wrong, would go wrong. She wanted Dim to break as much as he could, so that it could be fixed and made better. From what Gratin is telling us, it sounds as though everything is coming apart. Now we just somehow need to get Dim into the middle of it so that nothing holds together.”

Bombay closed her eyes. “Did everybody get different orders from Eerie?”

“I got the same orders as Motte.” Bailey’s eyes had the reflections of Dim’s flames in them. “She told me that Dim is the calm eye of the hurricane, placid and quiet, surrounded on all sides by absolute and total devastation. Eerie gave Motte and I orders to stay in the eye.”

Opening her eye, Bombay shook her head. “I don’t like this. Eerie is all about order. Nothing about this feels right. She gave all of us different directives, and I’m fine with that, but different orders? We’re a team, we should have a common goal.”

“We do.” Motte’s expression turned hard and flinty. “Some of us are just more aware of what the goal is. I don’t think it is coincidence that mere days after we arrive in Fancy, we’re attacked by those freaks. At the same time, from the sounds of it. Everything has gone wrong, which is exactly what was expected, no doubt. I suspect that Eerie was counting on this to happen. By leaving our orders specific to our roles, she left us with a great deal of flexibility to handle this crisis, and no one is freaking out about not being able to follow an order… our individual directives can still be met.”

“I suppose that you’re right.” Sighing, Bombay rubbed the side of her face with a soft, tender touch and her paw moved with an almost circular motion. “So what do we do now? The Bard is gone. He was our translator and trusted face. He knew the area. I can speak Fancy, and I even know some of the local customs, but there is no way I am a trusted face. I don’t know if I can get us lodging for the night. What happens next? Should we just pack up and go home?”

Bombay, it seemed, had said the very thing that was on everybody’s mind, because all gathered became thoughtful, save for Dim, who was delirious. Blackbird, feeling some strange pressure upon her, tried to weigh their options. She found herself in agreement with Mott; it couldn’t have been a coincidence that not long after their arrival in Fancy, they were attacked. Not just one attack, but two, upon the both of them while they were seperated by whatever distance had sprung up between them. Clearly, their visit here was anticipated, planned for, and whomever had tried to kill them was still at large.

Even more notable was the riskiness of it, because the alicorns had revealed themselves. They had been here operating under somewhat secretive circumstances, no doubt pulling the strings of their puppets from offstage. But with their bold attack, they had shown themselves. Of course, now it stood to reason that this attack was expected to be successful, which lead Blackbird to new places of thought; she had an inkling that she and her friends now held some advantage, having survived this attack.

Survival had given them an edge of some sort, she was certain of it, but Blackbird could not say what it was. These attacks had been to prevent further interference, so it stood to reason that now was the perfect time to interfere. Now was the time to push while they held an advantage. Surely, the loss of two fake-alicorns had hurt the plans of whomever was in charge and now was the perfect time to introduce yet more chaos into the situation. Turning her head, Blackbird glanced at her unicorn companion, who was currently in use as a toaster.

“Gratin… you speak Fancy, right?” Blackbird’s eyes now darted to the griffon eating stew.

“Oui,” the stew eating griffon replied.

“Griffons around here are trusted faces. They work as law enforcement. They defend the farms. The earth ponies around here trust their very existence to the griffons that protect them.” Blackbird hesitated, because she could feel Motte and Bailey’s eyes burning holes into her. “Gratin, I can’t let you go back to Gasconeigh.”

“What?” Gratin dropped his spoon into his stew.

“She’s right,” Motte said, sounding weary. “OId friend… I can’t let you leave. It’s nothing personal.”

“Motte… did you just conscript me?”

“Yeah. Yeah I did. Jolie will forgive me… at some point.” With a sigh, Motte got down to practical matters. “You came armed, and though you seem a bit roughed up, you’re no worse than the rest of us right now—”

“I am a privateer.”

“Correction”—the word came out flinty—“you were a privateer. Now you’ve been conscripted into Dim’s Irregulars.”

“Well… shit.” Raising his wing, Gratin saluted. “Aye-aye, then.”

Bailey nudged Motte in the ribs, nodded once, and a half-smile could be seen upon her face. “Listen to that. He’s just so… elegant.” Tossing her head back, she gave herself over to snickering.

“We’ll need to find some way to send word back to Jolie so she doesn’t panic.” Motte raised his hoof and offered Gratin a sincere return of his salute.

“Nothing changes,” Blackbird told her companions. “We’re not wanted here. Someone expected our arrival and had a plan to be rid of us. We’re still alive, so we’re going to exploit that. We’re going to push on, and see what sort of trouble we can stumble into. If we find trouble, we’ll give it trouble. We’re going to do what we do best… stumble ahead blindly and then blow shit to smithereens in a panicked overreaction.”

Gratin, holding his bowl of stew in his left talons, held out his right talons in a fist. “For glory… for Blackbird’s Francs-Tireurs!”

Munro, who jerked his toasted bread away from Dim, was the second. “For Blackbird’s… whatever that was.”

This wasn’t what Blackbird had in mind, and she felt a most peculiar panic.

“Yes,” Bailey said, laughing, “here is to Blackbird’s Francs-Tireurs!”

“To our good fortune and continued survival!” Motte raised his hoof.

“For the memory of our Bard, we go ever onward!” Bombay held out her paw.

Though terrified, Blackbird put on her bravest smile and prepared to lead.

Author's Notes:

Interesting word, pyrotheosis.