The Wood of Shattered Trees was aptly named. Of course, this was the translated name, but the translation was spot-on. There weren’t many trees here and most of them were dead. Everything about this particular place seemed bespoilt; what was left of the trees were rotten and the soil was a curious shade of gray. A group of ponies and griffons were burning a patch of poison joke, which was about the only signs of something living. At least the rain would keep the fire from burning out of control.

Dim could feel it, the rottenness was strong here. He had felt it in other places, but here, the sensation caused a dull ache in the root of his horn. Whatever had taken place here had happened long ago and the residual magic had ruint like milk left in the hot summer sun. The farms here looked particularly poor and Dim wondered what they produced, because they certainly weren’t growing anything.

Now the very land itself was festering.

With a sigh, Dim returned to his studies while the wagon trundled along the rutted path. Though it seemed unlikely, there was a spell he hoped to burn into his memory, a complex spell that thus far, had been out of his reach. For far too long, he had tried to burn it into his memory, but the words would not stick and the complex spell would not sear itself into his mind. It had been a source of constant frustration and a reminder that he wasn’t as powerful a wizard as he would like to be.

But… casting Fenix Fireburst had given him hope. He had grown, gained experience, expanded his mind, and strengthened his resolve. With his own eyes, he had seen his progress and it ignited within him some faint light of hope that it might be possible to learn Clover’s Chaotic Conundrum. It utterly annihilated minor spell protections in a huge area of affect and for each spell protection that it stripped away it triggered a random mental effect. Those beguiled by the spell might be confused, dominated, frightened, sickened, have their central nervous system shut down, leaving them paralysed, or a number of other detrimental outcomes, each of them quite debilitating.

In general, the more protected a wizard was, the more vulnerable they were to Clover’s insidious manifestation of chaos, hence the conundrum. On a wizard with no protections, this spell had no effect whatsoever, making the spell absolutely useless. Most wizards forwent this spell completely—Dim’s own mother frowned upon it, calling it a parlour trick—but Dim saw potential. He understood how it could be exploited and best used. Of course, that was what made him special as a wizard, he felt; his ability to use low level spells in horrifying and creative ways. A grease spell was great for an airship wizard and its most common application was for maintenance. However, if you cast a grease spell on a creature and then fired off an ignition spell… things happened.

He read the same words as he had done a thousand times before and nothing happened. No pleasurable burn tore through the folds of his grey matter, rewarding him for a job well done. The words themselves were magic, a voice made with ink. Read them in just the right way and they would brand themselves into the mind, revealing secrets. The vast, mind-boggling complexity of the spell and all of its nuances would take root in the psyche. No mistake, this was a powerful spell, a spell of an entirely different calibre than anything else he knew.

These spidery words were time travellers of a sort, with Clover’s voice echoing into the future. Clover had gone through the excruciating trouble of scribing a new spell, creating it, birthing it, and then the entire contents of that spell were written in the language of magic, a kind of cipher that kept away the unworthy and the cretinous. Princess Cadance had done much the same with her coded missive and with that fresh in his memory, including his fondness of her, he made ready to try again.

Were they friends?

Was he worthy of her friendship, he wondered.

The question was distracting.

All internal dialogue was distracting.

If he went home and they met, would they be fond of one another?

Why, the very idea left him feeling peculiar and when he read the ancient cipher once more, the words ignited and sent a fiery ray of understanding through his eyes. His mind could hardly contain a spell of this immense power and his body seized as if in climax. Like a hot branding iron, the words were forever imprinted upon his thoughts, his consciousness, and with understanding came unbridled ecstasy.

Years of study paid off in this worthwhile moment.

Dim could almost feel his grey matter being rearranged, his neural synapses twisting and forming new growth that would allow him to manipulate the thauma in the manner he so desired. A rush of power left him giddy and as the blood pounded in his ears, the stench of ozone tickled his nose. Having had his mind rewritten by the spell, he was left lightheaded and in need of recovery. He closed his eyes, intending only to rest them for a moment…

The sign, what could be seen of it beneath the heaped birdshit, said Le Mousquet Rouillé in bold embossed letters. Beyond the sign was a proper inn, a fortified compound complete with a somewhat crooked guard tower and a barracks for constables or soldiers. Lighting a clove-laced joint, Dim decided that he liked this place right away. Smoke curled from chimneys, the grounds smelled of urine, and there was a battered bounty board between the barracks and the inn. Why, there was even an airship mooring here, though it was empty.

It was a welcome sight and Dim hoped that he could get a bath.

Off to the west, the sun hurried for the horizon, no doubt hoping to shine on a better location than this alicorn forsaken place. A tree dragon, roosting atop the guard tower, warbled out a lusty song that Dim could not understand. On second glance, the tree dragon was revealed to be a wyvern. There was an important distinction between the two and Dim was surprised to see that this one was friendly.

“Je veux te baiser dans le trou du cul,” the wyvern sang to no one in particular.

A soldier approached; not a militia member, but an actual soldier. She wore a battered mail hauberk that had seen better days and a pair of yawning blunderbusses were strapped to her back. She wasn’t all that big for a griffon, but Dim noted that she had a fantastic air of deadliness about her. Gratin went to meet her and much to Dim’s surprise, she spoke in a language he understood.

“Hail and well met,” she said while her hauberk clinked around her face. “My name is Grabbigail. I have a pretty good idea who all of you are and all of you will find that you are welcome here. This place is owned by Duc Chanson Argentée and we’re all soldiers in his employ. I was told by one of Pearl Fisher’s birds to keep an eye out for you.”

“Pleased to meetcha, Grabbigail,” Blackbird replied in the most charming manner she could muster. “What’s this about birds?”

“I don’t know thing a thing about it,” the griffon replied. “Some kind of magic I don’t understand. But Pearl Fisher controls the birds and uses them to send messages.”

At this, Blackbird grinned. “And probably to spy.”

“That too.” The captain raised one talon for Blackbird to wait a moment, then turned her head around and shouted, “You dirty buttfucking lizard, will you shut the fuck up, you barbed-dicked sodomite?”

Scowling, the wyvern took wing and went flapping off, his stinger tail trailing behind it in the breeze. Blackbird snickered and after resisting for a few seconds, Munro joined in, though he looked guilty for doing so. Gratin watched as the wyvern headed towards the setting sun, his eyes squinting in the fiery orange glow of the sunset.

Looking apologetic, the captain returned her attention to Blackbird. “Do come in, all of you. We have wine, we have whiskey, and we have sablejack if the Abyssinian is thirsty. Take a load off. This place is as safe as a place can be right now and from the looks of things, all of you could use a break. So come inside!”

Dim saw Blackbird glance back at him, and he gave her a faint nod.

The big hippogriff returned the nod, and then faced the griffon once more. “We’d love to come in and sit a spell. Thanks for having us.”

Amorphous clouds of blue smoke moved with a life of their own and took shape as wyverns, which flew in lazy circles over the top of Dim’s head. It was a neat trick and though Blackbird kept it to herself for fear of being thought as foalish, she truly loved to watch. Dim looked comfortable, sprawled in an overstuffed chair with threadbare arms. He nursed a tankard of mead and something about him right now was appealing.

In the lithe manner of cats everywhere, Bombay slipped into the space beside Dim on his chair. Blackbird laughed when Dim grunted in protest, but to her surprise, he did not kick Bombay from his seat. Earlier, when walking along the rutted road, Bombay had seemed a bit melancholy, but her mood had improved. Almost purring, Bombay pulled Dim closer and slipped one thin arm around his neck while holding a mug of sablejack in her free paw.

The sablejack smelled of anise, blackcurrants, and something suspiciously like catnip.

Dim’s wyverns dive-bombed Bombay’s head and Blackbird was surprised to find that Dim was in a playful mood. Sure, he was sneering a lot, and his dimples were in full view, but this was just about as good as it got. In silence, Munro was staring into his tankard with a sleepy expression and Blackbird wondered if his horns were heavy.

“Hey, Blackbird… hey…”

“Yeah, Bailey?” With a relaxed turn of her head, Blackbird faced the mare now standing beside her.

“All those guns you’re carting around,” Bailey said in a low conspiratorial whisper, “I think you could make a few coins here. I told Grabby about them and she was interested. Her troops want revolvers.”

“I have revolvers.” Blackbird gave Bailey a nod while leaning over a little closer. “But there isn’t much brass. Not enough to outfit a garrison of soldiers. That’s the problem ‘round here, not much brass. Which is why black powder remains popular, I guess.”

“So, you want to make a little scratch, Blackbird?”

“Yeah, yeah I do. I wonder what they got to trade.” Whipping her head around, she peered at Dim and Bombay. “You two stay right there and keep each other company. Stay out of trouble. I mean it. I gotta go do business.”

“You go and do business,” Bombay replied. “Dim and I will have a quiet moment. No trouble will be had.”

From Dim, there was no response other than a nod.

Turning back to Bailey, Blackbird waggled her eyebrows. “I need to go to the garage where the wagon is and get my goods. I’ll be right back.”

Blackbird’s eyes focused on the prize, a grenade with a match pin and a slo-fuse. This sat next to a small pile of gold and silver ingots, tiny ones, ingots that were about the size of her thumb. One of the soldiers was examining a revolver, spinning the cylinder and staring down the iron sights. While staring at the grenade, Blackbird wondered if this is what dragon-greed felt like, because she really, really wanted the boom-boom-bomb.

You never knew when a grenade would come in handy.

“These are in pretty good condition, for having been pulled from dead bodies,” Grabbigail remarked while her eyes darted from pistol to pistol. "Old mare’s teats, how many souls have you consigned to the dirt to get all these guns?”

Grinning a sheepish grin, Blackbird shrugged. She thought about Dim going aboard the Black Talon ship as well as their many other encounters. How many? That was an excellent question. How many… mind racing, Blackbird’s eyes now glanced down at the guns before her. All of these firearms had been liberated from their previous owners through murderous means. Her grin vanished and Blackbird began to feel more than a little uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” Grabbigail said to Blackbird. “Huh… you must be the face of your group. I had you pegged as one of the killers.”

“I’ve killed.” The words tasted ashy in Blackbird’s mouth.

“Yeah, I reckon you have, but you’re not like the others, now that I’ve had a good look at ya. Motte and Bailey? Career killers. I doubt they’d even flinch. That Abyssinian… she’s got a murderous glare about her. She’s slinky. The big griffon? He kills, but I don’t think he’s happy about it… just a guess. As for that unicorn…”

“What about him?” Blackbird asked.

“What’s that lazy aristocrat do to earn his keep other than sneer and give orders?”

Unable to stop herself, Blackbird burst out laughing, almost fit to split. She laughed so hard that she gave herself side stitches. Starbursts popped in her vision and she almost choked. Her peals of laughter became whooping coughs and she banged her talons down upon the table hard enough to make everything jump, including the grenade.

Grabbigail’s beak clicked together and her her glittering eyes were now like hidden stagehands behind a half-closed curtain. “What’s so funny?”

Unable to answer, Blackbird whooped some more and then began pounding on her girth with her fist while blue-white dots played tag in her vision. She sucked in a huge breath, gasped a few times, shook her head, and then let it all out as slow as possible while the griffoness stared with one raised eyebrow.

“Hey,” Blackbird managed to say while she battled her wheezes, “I want you to imagine all the worst possible ways that a creature can die. I mean, the worst. Now imagine all of them happening all at once while everything is on fire. Now, whatever it is that you’re imagining? I’ll tell ya, you’re not even close. You have no idea. When I first met Dim, he threatened to boil a minotaur in his own semen and then set him on fire. He burned down the island of Tortoise-Tuga. All of it, I think. He accidentally set the ocean ablaze.”

All of Grabbigail’s face feathers drooped and her eyes slowly opened wide.

“Oh, you’ve heard about that, I take it?” Blackbird waited for a moment and allowed her words to sink in. “Let me tell you the story of the fight we had with this pseudo-alicorn. I think you’d like it. Neat story. Lots of explosions. I could tell you what happened to my last grenade, and why I need a replacement…”

Author's Notes:

A brief, pleasant interlude.