“~Then one day,” Autumn Blaze explains with an upbeat song as they trot through the verdant forest, “~a fight broke out! And hurtful words were said. Flaming tempers were inflamed, destruction quickly spread! And flaming bred from head to head. It even burnt our… bread!~”

Applebaum finds herself bobbing along to the catchy beat as she hobbles to the village, even though the lyrics are a bit depressing. “Come along, Totem,” she repeats.

“Wait,” Totem interrupts, following the frolicking Kirin with his eyes. “The Kirin… are also the Niriks?”

“~It’s been a boon in times long past, when foes were far and near. But when the worst is being cursed from those you hold quite dear? Our manes ignite, to better fight, but all we’d gain are tears!~”

“But, how do you tell?” Totem seems legitimately dumbfounded. “You’re all so hot!”

Applebaum rubs at her forehead with her bad hoof.

At first, Autumn Blaze just raises an eyebrow. Then her muzzle puckers up, a loud snort splitting her sides and the silence. “Oh, it’s a joke! I love jokes! Have you heard the one about how many alicorns it takes to screw in a lightbulb?”

“It wasn’t a joke-” Totem starts before Applebaum cuts in. “-No, how many?”

“Two!” Autumn Blaze grins. “One to hold the lightbulb, and one to spin the sun around!”

“That’s not a joke, either,” Totem deadpans. “That’s just a fact.”

“Ah thought it was clever,” Applebaum shoots back.

“No, but, seriously.” Autumn Blaze returns to her frolicking, nearly to the Kirin clearing. “We can change back and forth between Kirin and Nirik. It happens when we get angry. Or hungry. Or…” she coughs. “...Horny. But we’re always horny!” She taps her two-pronged horn. “Get it?”

“So what you’re saying is,” Totem asks with a certain lasciviousness in his voice, “that you’re twice as horny as the average unicorn?”

“No, they’re not,” Applebaum cuts in, tired of curbing the colt’s tendencies. Even if Autumn Blaze is winking at Totem. “Tell me more about this turning into a Nirik thing. All you need to do is get angry?”

“Yup!” Autumn Blaze grins, though her smile immediately fades to a pensive frown. “Except, I don’t really like getting angry. Not when there’s so many wondrous things out there! Like singing, and dancing, and telling jokes! Would you believe I forgot how good it feels to tell a joke? All because we doused ourselves in the Stream of Silence! Thinking about that makes me so...”

Autumn Blaze stops dead in her tracks, her muzzle contorting through various scowls and glares. Wisps of blazing opal surround the split red horn, but a precursor to the circle of red that flickers around her hooves. Then, in a blink of the eye, an inferno billows upward, consuming the Kirin with searing red and teal and purple flames that sends the trees shaking with the updraft. And in another instant the conflagration is gone, leaving a coal-black Nirik with an ashy back, embers for hooves and a fiery mane and tail!

“Angry!!”

“Sweet Celestia!” While Totem takes a hurried step backward, Applebaum’s eyes fill with wonder at Autumn’s blaze. “That’s amazin’!” Her cutie mark blazes fire just as bright, filling her with an excitement she’s only felt once before, the day she got her mark. Her bad hoof reaches out, trying to touch the searing flames.

“You’re…” Applebaum trails off, noticing how the hair around her hoof curls from the heat. She doesn’t care, wanting more than anything to embrace the flames. “You’re really hot!”

Totem snorts. “That’s what I said!”

“Can ya teach me?” Applebaum gets as close to the blazing Kirin as she can stand, singeing her coat, still in awe. “Please?” She tries to get her eyes to shimmer, except her tears keep evaporating, her mouth dry and lungs complaining. “Pretty please?”

“Sorry.” Autumn Blaze’s deep voice reverberates through the trees, accompanied by an unearthly echo. “You need a powerful source of magic.” She taps her bright-gold horn.

“And earth ponies don’t qualify?” Applebaum pouts. “Where do Ah get a horn for mahself?”

“Tempest Shadow wants the same thing,” Totem suggests.

Applebaum’s eyes slowly go wider and wider. “O-of course! That’s it! If Ah find the…”

Just as quickly as she transformed, Autumn Blaze shifts back into a normal, flame-less Kirin. “Find the what?”

“Um,” Applebaum stammers. “Ya see, we’re tryin’ ta fix Tempest Shadow’s horn. She broke it as a filly, and it never healed. We’ve got Radiant Hope with us, an’ she’s a right powerful healer.”

“A powerful healer?” Autumn Blaze interrupts with a massive grin. “Well, why didn’t you say so? Come on!”

The Kirin bounds forward through a gap in the trees. Applebaum tucks her leg back in the makeshift sling, hobbling as fast as she can. She doesn’t want to get left behind, even if these woods are far safer than the jungle below. “Come along, Totem!”

The village is surprisingly intact, given how infuriated Tempest Shadow was getting when they left. The reason why becomes obvious quite quickly.

“Put me down!” the rose-colored unicorn bellows. “Now!”

She twists and squirms five feet above the ground, suspended in a light blue aura. Sparks fly from her broken horn, but they sizzle and sputter before they can cause any harm. The entire village has congregated around her and Radiant Hope, though the purple unicorn is unharmed and unmolested. At least for now. They march, slowly but surely, to a gurgling stream on the farm side of the village that is surrounded by cautionary signs.

“Well, that can’t be good,” Autumn Blaze casually remarks. She has stopped by a mural on one of the rocks showing a peaceful village with Kirin in one scene, and the entirety in flame with Niriks in another. Totem vacuously nods along. “They’re heading to the Stream of Silence!”

“Wait!” Applebaum shouts, hobbling forward as fast as her single leg will let her. She threads through the crowd of Kirin to stand underneath the writhing unicorn. “Surely we can talk this out!”

The leader firmly shakes her blue-wreathed head. Their procession continues unabated; even when Applebaum tries to get in her way, she merely steps over the hobbled youngster.

“We were just having a disagreement!” Radiant Hope calls. The Kirin ignore her. “Don’t do it!”

Dread builds in Applebaum’s gut as Tempest Shadow locks eyes with her, full of fury and worse. She shrieks, “Think about what yer doin’!” but to no avail.

With a casual flick of her long horn, the Kirin leader tosses the suspended unicorn into the opaque water.

Even the splash Tempest Shadow might have made seems subdued; Applebaum reckons she makes larger ones when she dives into the lake. She can only watch from the banks, horrified, not daring to step a hoof in lest she receive whatever magical effect the Stream inflicts.

A moment later the broken-horned unicorn pushes herself onto the banks. If she notices her mane and coat are completely soaked she doesn’t show it. Likewise, any sort of hate or fury that was burning in her eyes is completely gone. Apathy reigns in their place, the same unconcerned expression the Kirin, minus Autumn Blaze, share.

“Tempest!” Radiant Hope shouts, galloping past the Kirin to her friend’s side. “Are you okay?” She tilts her head to get a better look at her vacant eyes, only for Tempest to gently but firmly push her hoof away.

Radiant Hope whirls on the surrounding Kirin. “How could you? She was just asking questions!”

Applebaum gulps at the glances exchanged between the Kirin. Before they can decide Radiant Hope must share a similar fate she rushes in front of the unicorn. “Wait!” she hurries out, trying to diffuse the tension by distracting her. “You’re a healer, right?”

In the background, Autumn Blaze’s eyes lift up and she dashes over to get a closer look. Totem stands where he was before, watching everything.

Applebaum points at Tempest Shadow. “Can ya fix her?” She makes a quick back-and-forth motion with her hoof before the other Kirin get the wrong idea. “Once we’re gone! This is your home, your rules!” She pleads with Radiant Hope, “Right?”

All eyes are on Radiant Hope as she considers. She grits her teeth, clearly unhappy, yet just as clearly outnumbered and outhorned. “Right,” she concedes with a dire glare that softens when she inspects Tempest Shadow. Her muzzle pulls tighter and tighter as her eyes shine white.

“...Well?” Applebaum asks after nearly a minute of scanning.

“...Maybe.” Radiant Hope sighs as her eyes return to normal, the blue light around her horn fading. “Detrimental magical effects like these, curses in short, aren’t easily broken. If I had a week, and half-a-hundred compounds to test, I might be able to concoct a counteragent. If I had one on hoof, I could duplicate it in an instant.”

“So all you need is the cure?” Autumn Blaze squees with joy.

“Yeah!” Applebaum rounds on the ecstatic Kirin. “Autumn Blaze! You said you went into the stream! How’d ya get better?”

Autumn Blaze jitters on her hooves, looking like she needs to use the restroom, except she glances worriedly from side to side. “Well, there was a flower called Foal’s Breath that I stumbled into one day. But after I made my cure, I searched and searched, seventy three and a half times, but I couldn’t find any more.” She taps a hoof to her chin as she stares up at the sky. “But maybe that last half time might make all the difference…”

A shiver runs down Applebaum’s spine as the leader’s head inclines downward. Even if it’s just a fraction, it’s the most she’s reacted to anything, and it can’t be good. “Well, we don’t gotta be hasty. Tempest, are ya doin’ okay?” She looks the unicorn up and down. “You don’t seem to be hurt or nothin’.”

The unicorn blankly stares at her; Applebaum misses the fire she often saw behind the pupils, even if it was often directed at her and Totem.

“Okay, so ya can’t talk. But can ya write it down?” She looks, hesitant but hopeful, at Autumn Blaze. She has some paper in her bags, and a pencil. “Y’all know how to read’n write, correct?”

“Of course we do!” Autumn Blaze snorts. “What, do you think we’re backward hicks because we have crude drawings on stone walls?”

Totem glances at the crude drawing on the stone wall next to him, then back at Autumn Blaze.

“Err,” Applebaum stammers, shaking her head. The ‘hick’ remark stings, but nopony calls the Apples hicks anymore. “No?”

“Good!” Autumn Blaze grins. “Because we have a rich tradition of comedy clubs and newspapers and dramas! Like the one about an opera singer who lived beneath the stage and…”

Applebaum turns to the leader as Autumn Blaze explains her non sequitur. “An’, ya won’t get upset if that’s all we’re doin’, right?”

After a long, tense moment, the leader nods.

Applebaum sighs in relief. “Good.” She motions to Radiant Hope. “An’, wouldn’t ya say that if’n ya had more power available, ya’d be able to fix this a mite easier?”

“Of course.” After a moment Radiant Hope realizes where Applebaum is going with this. “Oh! Right. I could fix just about anything if I had the right tool!”

“And this tool,” Autumn Blaze gleefully guesses, ”has something to do with Gusty the Great?”

“Exactly!” Applebaum clenches the dirt with her good hoof, trying to keep her excitement from showing. “Can ya tell us about her?”

“Well, let me think.” Autumn Blaze grins at the Kirin surrounding them. “Anykirin who objects, just raise your voice!” She looks this way and that. “No? Nokirin? No objections? Then follow me!”

If Applebaum had to guess, about half of the Kirin look enthused to follow along, while the other half linger farther back. But all of them follow to the mountain’s edge. Autumn Blaze rolls a heavy stone away from a cave and beckons them inside.

Next Chapter: Ch. 107 - Fireborn, Part Three Estimated time remaining: 15 Hours, 5 Minutes