Land of the Blind

by Cold in Gardez

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 28422

A prince and a young mare go in search of a legendary cure. Finding it is the least of their challenges.

Queen Platinum is dying.

She is cursed, and every day she grows weaker. If she dies, the kingdom will collapse, and the three tribes will once again fragment. Centuries of unity and harmony will come to an end.

There is only one thing that might cure her – a mystical, half-forgotten potion known as the Panacea. It can cure any curse, any disease, any poison. But all magic has its price, and the greater the magic, the greater the sacrifice it requires.

Prince Hyperion will do anything to save his mother. He will find the Panacea, regardless of the cost.

Even if he isn't the one who must pay it.

Winner of the April Writeoff Competition

Published 2015-08-16 05:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-08-27 18:40:11 UTC

Prologue: Cause of Death

In the final accounting of things, it was a bad piece of chalk that killed Queen Platinum.

The fatal experiment began like many others: in the lowest level of her palace, where the thick, iron-rich rock acted as a shield against stray magical fields. Sometimes the rock protected the rest of the palace from the results of her experiments; mostly, though, it kept ponies from knowing about them in the first place, for not all of her research was strictly legal. Not that anypony could arrest her, but she liked to imagine herself a beloved queen, and rumors about dark magic and wicked experiments would have detracted from her image.

So she experimented in the basement.

The stale air wafted around her when she arrived in the room with a flash. It had no door – she had to teleport every time she came and went. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and she worked her mouth to try and rid it of the fetid taste that grew here in her absence. After a few seconds she realized she was stalling and got to work.

The room around her was a perfectly sealed vault, a hollow space twenty paces on a side, with a high ceiling and flat, polished floor. Bookshelves crammed with tomes lined the walls, and cabinets held a small fortune of magical implements and ingredients, but the center of the room was bare. She needed the room to move around.

Experimenting with dark magic required wards. When drawn correctly, wards created a threshold across which most magical effects ceased to function, and for this particular experiment only a basic one was necessary. Queen Platinum could have drawn it in her sleep. She barely gave the motions any thought as she snatched up a piece of chalk from a bowl and began scribing her design on the floor.

Normal chalk is composed of countless tiny skeletons, the remains of microscopic sea animals that lived, died, and fell to the ocean floor millions of years ago and slowly fused into a solid mass. It is approximately as common as mud and has no special properties whatsoever.

The stick of chalk Queen Platinum held in her magical grip, tracing elegant spirals across the floor, was not normal chalk. It was unicorn chalk, and it was made of unicorns – specifically, a severed horn that had been ground into a powder, mixed with a binding agent such as beeswax or tempera and allowed to harden.

Queen Platinum finished the circle and stood back to admire her work. The intricate ward could have been a piece of art, composed of delicate loops and whorls that intersected each other at dozens of points around its circumference. The curves were perfect to an unnatural degree and spoke to years of dedicated practice. Anything less, in an experiment like this, risked disaster.

Her inspection found no flaws, and the ward was indeed perfectly drawn. But she failed to consider the chalk itself.

Queen Platinum knew how to make unicorn chalk, but she was a busy pony and couldn’t exactly go around chopping off unicorn horns herself. Nor did she ponder where the chalk – or, really, the vast majority of her spell components – came from. She had ponies to get those sorts of things for her.

The arcana dealer who supplied her chalk was not an honest pony. He had discovered, years ago, that by mixing a bit of bone in with the powdered unicorn horn he could make more chalk with fewer ingredients. Bad enough, but this chalk had a special flaw: a flake of bone somehow survived the grinding process and found its way into the mix. It settled into the middle of the mould with the hot beeswax binding, and when the stick solidified it sealed the flake within. For years the queen used the chalk without any trouble, slowly wearing it down until she exposed the thin bit of bone.

When she drew this ward, the bone itself scraped along the floor, leaving for a short stretch a line that seemed as perfect as all the rest. But without the power of the unicorn horn, the circle was broken before it even began.

The nexus of the experiment was a simple candle, and she set it in the center of the warding circle. There was nothing magical or unusual about it except for a slight infusion of lavender oil, which filled the room with a pleasant scent when burned.

The lavender oil wasn’t important. The queen just liked how it smelled.

Queen Platinum lit the candle with a spark from her horn and carefully stepped out of the warding circle, making sure not to smudge any of the lines. She closed her eyes, focused on the energy flowing through the candle’s wick, and used it as a conduit to something much higher, darker, and more powerful than the simple world in which she dwelt.

The candle’s flame turned a cold, sterile azure, a visual artifact of the otherworldly energies flowing into the room. Slowly, Queen Platinum relaxed her magical grip on the flame, letting it burn hotter. Tiny sparks, so bright they left glowing afterimages in her eyes, sprayed out of the flame. New flames emerged where they landed on the stone floor, and soon a cold blue bonfire blazed in the center of the warded circle. It outshone all other light in the room, erasing every other color, painting the world azure and black.

Still good. Queen Platinum let out a shaking breath and stepped back to wait for the fire to burn a larger hole between the worlds. The energy in the room began to build, and she tasted it on the back of her tongue, a faint metallic flavor reminiscent of blood. Unpleasant, but she had long ago learned to ignore—

A spark jumped over the warding circle. A tiny flame, no larger than a match head, sprang from the stone where it landed. Queen Platinum stared at it for a full second.

She felt the fear first – as soon as the spark jumped over the line, before her brain even had time to comprehend what just happened. To realize she had drawn a flaw in the ward, and that she stood mere feet away from an unconstrained wellspring of dark magic. That the itch on her coat wasn’t just her imagination or drying sweat; it was the spell knocking at her skin, looking for a way in.

She pivoted toward the emergency teleportation circle carved on the wall behind her. This took another second.

By the end of the third second, she made it halfway to the circle. Her horn flashed as she attempted her own teleportation spell, but the glow around it faltered, sickening, ghastly and rotten. It dripped down her face, searing away her eyelashes, and the spell melted. Not even an alicorn could cast a spell so close to uncontrolled dark magic. And she was no alicorn.

Behind her, the fires surged higher. Where there had been one spark, thousands now danced and skipped across the stone floor, leaving bobbing trails of flame behind them.

When the fourth second passed, she was a step away from the emergency circle, her hoof stretched out to touch the rune at its center. The fire had spread all around the room and licked at the stone beneath her. It crawled along the ceiling overhead. She felt its cold touch upon her hooves.

Five seconds. Her hoof smashed into the rock wall hard enough to split. The circle flared, and in the blink of an eye Queen Platinum vanished, sucked into the wall like a stone sinking into water.

In the fraction of a second before she disappeared, a wisp of azure flame touched her flank. It felt surprisingly cold and not painful at all.

The next few seconds were spent inside the wall. The spell slid her through the spaces in the rock, in the vast gulfs between the iron and carbon and silicon atoms that constituted the seemingly solid matter. The experience was like being squeezed through an impossibly fine mesh.

On the far side of the wall, Queen Platinum emerged as though being birthed from a stone womb. It dropped her on the floor with a muffled thud, bruised but otherwise intact, except for the small, dark patch on her flank where the azure flame had touched.

The palace trembled. In her laboratory, the runaway experiment consumed every organic item the flames touched, and then they began to eat away at the rock itself.

Queen Platinum noticed none of this, for she was already screaming.

It was a long while before she stopped.

Chapter 1: The Alchemist

Brewing potions was generally safe, Foxglove often told her friends. Except, of course, when it wasn’t.

She didn’t tell them that.

The most dangerous part of potion making, she decided after years of fires and burst glass beakers and caustic smoke, was adding the final ingredient. By then the potion was already live, boiling over a gas flame, hissing and popping and changing colors whenever she looked away. It contained all the magic necessary to change reality, to bend the world to the alchemist’s desires. All that remained was to seal the potion’s magic with a final offering, a symbol of the brewer’s hopes.

Followed, of course, by running to hide behind a special blast-proof wall she installed in her workroom after a firelime potion went wrong several years before. She still felt the pebbly scars beneath her coat when she brushed down the ruff of fur on her chest each morning.

But danger was a relative term, and today’s order was so tame that she didn’t bother with the blast shield or the heavy lead apron she wore when crafting the more exciting potions. She did wear her safety goggles, but only because her old master had so thoroughly drilled that habit into her head that she sometimes went to bed with them forgotten and still on her face.

Foxglove kept her distance from the bubbling potion. She’d ruined more than one batch as an apprentice by hovering over them, impatient, only for the moisture in her breath to upset the delicate balance of ingredients and turn the whole thing into a mess of fused glass and colorful sludge. So instead she watched from several paces away. The muddy brown fluid boiled merrily, and when she judged it hot enough she gave her sister a tiny nod.

“Now,” she whispered. It wasn’t necessary to be quiet around healing potions – they didn’t react to sound, unlike some others she brewed – but she learned that habit from painful experience.

The peach filly – really a young mare, but to Foxglove she would always be a filly – stepped up to the table, using a stool to make up for the several inches of height she lacked on her sister. She twisted shut the gas line feeding the burner, extinguishing the flame, and then she turned the assembly holding the beaker so it hung just a few inches above the stone table.

“Good,” Foxglove whispered again. “What comes next?”

“State checks.” Anise turned her head away from the beaker to speak, and Foxglove could hear a faint quaver lurking in her voice. “Uh, highest to lowest?”

Foxglove smiled. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

The gentle rebuke had its intended effect, and Anise took a long, slow breath before responding. “Highest to lowest, starting with vision.” She lowered her head until her eyes came level with the potion, and she studied it in silence. “Color is ochre to dark ochre with small red inclusions. Not perfect, but pretty okay.”

Pretty okay? Foxglove fought the urge to roll her eyes. “What else?”

“Smell.” Anise waved a hoof over the beaker several times, wafting its fumes toward her. She inhaled deeply, eyes closed, and let the scents settle in her nose. “Burnt strawberries and cut grass. Perfect.”

It wasn’t perfect – there was no such thing in alchemy – but that lesson could wait for another time. “Good enough. Keep going.”

“Taste, which we skip for healing potions, followed by sound.” Anise tilted an ear toward the potion and waited. “Faint pops, a few seconds apart. That gives us… uh, three-to-five minutes?”

“Plenty of time,” Foxglove said. She stepped up to the table herself and sat close enough to Anise that their coats rubbed together. “Anything else before we continue?”

“Viscosity,” Anise said. She gave the metal arm holding the beaker a careful twist, turning the beaker just enough to unsettle the potion. It flowed slowly, like honey on a cool day, and clung to the glass wall. “A little thick. Did we mess up?”

Foxglove shook her head. “No, it’s fine. Just the weather.”

“Okay, good.” Anise stopped to lick her lips. “Good, good. Then we’re ready to finish it.”

“We?”

“Er, me. I’m ready to finish it.” So saying, Anise leaned over the table and picked up a silver lancet in her mouth. The obsidian blade at its tip was barely an inch long, chisel-shaped, and edged on both sides. With one hoof she steadied herself against the table, and carefully positioned her other leg above the beaker’s mouth.

Blood was a common element in alchemy, but healing potions were one of the few recipes that required fresh blood, straight from the wound. Not much, fortunately – just a few drops, more the idea of blood than blood itself, as her old master liked to say. But that didn’t make this part any more fun.

Anise pressed the lancet’s tip against the sole of her hoof, right on the margin of the frog where the skin was thinnest. At first the sharp point formed a dimple, but with a hair more pressure the skin broke and Anise jerked the blade away. It didn’t really hurt, Foxglove knew – a little prick, more surprise than pain – but the reflex was impossible to banish.

The first drop of blood missed the beaker entirely, splattering on the stone table. The next found its mark, and Anise waited with her hoof over the potion until four more drops joined it. They sank into the fluid with a quiet hiss and left only a faint trace of steam, gone in a moment.

Anise spoke first. “So… did it work?” She held a cotton ball against the bottom of her hoof.

“Yeah.” Foxglove could see the small red dots scattered throughout the potion slowly growing in size. By morning the fluid would be a vigorous, uniform scarlet, and the healing potion would be ready to drink. Unnecessary, hopefully, but ready all the same.

“Start cleaning,” she continued. “I’ll get to work on dinner.”

* * *

One of the nice things about having an apprentice was never having to clean the workroom again.

Foxglove’s workroom was her pride and joy. A wide, empty space, with only enough shelves to hold the materials she needed for whichever potion currently bubbled away. All the rest – thousands of flasks and beakers, mortars and grindstones, burners and stills and enough copper tubing to stretch from her house to the center of the village and back – were kept safely in the next room, behind a solid oak door, where an errant explosion or two couldn’t damage them.

Further away, hidden in a cellar dug beneath her backyard, she kept the countless stores of powders and herbs and gems and berries and bones that served as the raw materials for her craft. A dozen years of hunting and scavenging had given her one of the greatest collections of alchemical materials in all the world. Or, at least, so she told herself.

Most of the workroom was open space, with plenty of room for her to walk around without fear of bumping into tables or snagging something with her tail. A series of grooves circumscribed the shop, cut deep into the stone floor. Most of the time they were empty, but every once in a while an order came along for a potion that required a specific ward during its crafting, and she filled the grooves with salt or ash or powdered rust. She could even turn the grooves into a tiny moat by flooding them with water, which helped keep everyone safe and happy when brewing potions with the help of spirits – the ghostly kind, not the alcoholic.

At the center of the room stood the work table. In any other setting it could have been confused for an altar – solid stone, smooth-topped and edged with a tiny lip to keep spilled fluids from flowing over the sides. Years of crafting had stained the surface with a patina of browns, grays and blacks, and no amount of polishing would return the stone to its natural color. The table’s base was fused with the stone floor, which in turn was fused to a long column of basalt that descended hundreds of feet down an old well shaft until it reached the bedrock. When Foxglove laid her hoof on the stone table, she touched the bones of the world.

She was doing exactly that when Anise walked in, her mane tied back with a faded handkerchief and her coat speckled with dark spots of water. She trotted over to Foxglove and butted her shoulder with her forehead.

“Dinner?” she asked.

“Patience.” Foxglove elbowed her back. “It’s cooking.”

“I’m patient. I’m, like, the patron saint of patience. I have to be, living with you.” Anise leaned her weight against Foxglove, pushing her without success toward the door leading to the shop’s living area and, specifically, the kitchen. “You’re just slow.”

“Dancing around like a filly who drank a gallon of apple juice won’t make dinner cook any faster,” Foxglove said. She stood and walked through the back door, eventually reaching the kitchen. The rich aroma of vegetable stew filled the room, and she gave the pot a quick stir followed by a taste from the ladle. “Almost done. You just gotta wait for some things.”

“Hmph. I’ve been waiting years for you to find a stallion and move out so I can have this place. Where’s that gotten me?” Anise darted away before Foxglove could swipe at her with the ladle and took shelter behind the dinner table.

“Who says I won’t find a nice stallion, and he’ll move in with us? We might need to commandeer your bedroom for a nursery.” Foxglove measured out two bowls of the stew, taking an extra moment to subtract a potato slice from one bowl and add it to the other. Perfectly balanced. “You could sleep in the workroom. Or maybe the cellar? It’s nice and cool in the summer.”

“Better hurry, then.” Anise snagged her bowl from Foxglove’s hooves and dug into it, using the spoon mostly as an afterthought. “Those ovaries aren’t getting any younger. Fertility potions can’t work miracles, you know.”

Foxglove resisted the urge to return fire. She was too young to obsess over her age, but the topic was nevertheless a favorite for her little sister. With nearly fifteen years between them, strangers had once confused them as mother and daughter rather than siblings. Now that Anise was well past adolescence and a young mare in her own right, such confusion was rarer, but that didn’t prevent Anise from teasing her as “Mother” from time to time.

The rest of their dinner passed quietly, though as usual Anise finished her portion before Foxglove was halfway through hers. She gave Foxglove a quick peck on the cheek and a chipper “Thanks!” before bolting out the kitchen into the supply room. The quiet clank of bottles rattling in saddlebags followed, and then Foxglove heard the front door open and shut as Anise took off with the evening’s deliveries.

And just like that, the shop seemed a thousand times more empty. Foxglove considered the silence that followed in her sister’s wake, then gave a slight mental shrug and finished her stew.

* * *

The evening light filled the kitchen with a warm orange glow as Foxglove finished washing the dishes. Her shelves, crammed with hundreds of empty glass bottles, beakers and phials, caught the rays and refracted them, turning the bare wood room into a fluid starscape that lived, shifted and died in the minutes it took for the sun to finally set.

Someday, Foxglove hoped, there would be enough money to build another basin in the workroom to wash all that glassware. Until then, the kitchen would have to do. It sometimes made for interesting choices, such as whether she could store preserves in a jar that had once held essence of fireleaf.

It turned out she could – it even gave the preserves a certain spice.

Only at the height of summer did Foxglove see the sun set while washing up from a day’s work. The rest of the year, night came too early, and she more often saw the moon or stars while completing this last task of the day.

Only a single jar remained, smeared with pine sap that refused all her entreaties to come clean. With a heartfelt grunt she dunked it back in the soapy water and left it there. The damn thing could soak overnight.

The sun was gone, and she gazed out the window at the fading twilight. Clouds painted dark blotches across the vermillion, and she watched them for a few minutes, letting the stress flow down her legs and into the earth until nothing remained but stillness and silence.

She turned to fetch the lantern from its hook, to light it for the evening, when a bell sang from the shop’s main room, followed by the creak of her front door. It couldn’t be Anise returning from her deliveries yet – too quiet, and no accompanying clamor of hooves banging on the wood floor.

“One moment!” she called through the doorway. The lantern blossomed into life as she tapped the spark crystal, and she carried it with her into the shop. “Sorry, I’m closed for the day… er, my lord.” She finished with a respectful bow of her head to the unicorn stallion casually perusing her shelves.

“My apologies,” he said. His soft voice carried easily, and in those two words she knew his diction was crisp and perfect and utterly, completely at ease ordering around his lessers. His body was a study in symmetry and flow, from the long spiraled horn to the perfect, imperial arch of his neck.

“I wanted to speak with you alone,” he continued. His horn glowed with a pale-green light, the same color as his eyes, and the front door swung shut with a clatter. “On a private matter.”

“Of course.” She willed her heart to slow. “How may I serve you?”

“You know who I am?”

She nodded. No pony in the Riverlands, earth pony or pegasus, wouldn’t recognize this pale blue stallion. His coat was the color of clouds in shadow, with a faint dappled pattern along the chest and neck that sometimes marked those of royal birth. “You are Prince Hyperion, son of Queen Platinum the Seventh.”

The corner of his lips turned up. “And you are Foxglove, correct? Daughter of Oak Heart?” He tilted his head downward, a mocking echo of her own supplication. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”

She swallowed soundlessly before replying. “What can I do for you?”

“I have heard of your skill with elixirs and potions. They say you are the greatest alchemist in the world.”

She couldn’t help but snort. “Whoever they are, they exaggerate. Wheat Husk taught me everything I know, and I still stand in his shadow. There are zebra alchemists who make even him seem like an apprentice. I am skilled, but nothing more.”

“Zebras are just myths. Stories for foals.” He gave one of the potions on her shelf a tap with the tip of his hoof. The crystal sang like a chime and the fluid within let loose a few bubbles. “And Wheat Husk is dead. His other students are timid – even the unicorns he taught are unwilling to test themselves with real challenges. Do you know what they told me? Every single one?”

Foxglove shook her head.

“They said to find you. Find Foxglove.” The prince turned away from the shelves and walked over to her, stopping only when he reached the counter between them. “And so, here I am.”

“Well, remind me to thank them,” Foxglove said. “And what is so important that a prince of the realm must go hunting for a simple shopkeep?”

He hesitated before answering. The smug expression he had worn since entering her shop slipped for a moment; his eyebrows drew together, and his mouth pursed as if tasting an unpleasant secret. His ears flicked to and fro, and his eyes scanned the dark doorway behind her before returning to her face.

“It’s better if I show you,” he said.

His horn glowed again, and a small black pouch floated out of his saddlebags, coming to rest on the countertop between them. Not cloth, she noted, but some fine metal mesh composed of wires thinner than a hair, bound together with a silver chain drawstring. A hot metallic scent filled her nostrils.

“And this is?” she asked.

“Open it,” he said. “Carefully.”

She grunted quietly and set the lantern down. With both hooves she slowly loosened the drawstring, allowing the pouch to fold open. The bitter, hot metal scent doubled, and her nose wrinkled as she tipped the bag onto its side.

A single black pebble tumbled out, rolling a few inches across the counter before coming to a stop. It left a charred trail where it touched the wood, and the counter beneath it blackened and smoked where it came to a stop. A baleful point of azure light shone out from the stone’s depths, stinging her eyes until she turned away. The lantern’s light flickered and grew weak.

“Get out,” she said. Her voice was calm despite the disgust in her heart. “I don’t traffic in black magic. Take that thing and get out of my shop.”

“I understand.” He lifted the bag in his magic and carefully scooped the pebble back inside. The room seemed to grow lighter as he tightened the silver drawstring. “You’re a smart mare and wise to despise dark magic. We unicorns know too well the suffering it can cause. But I do not use dark magic, and this is not mine.”

“Whose is it, then? Why do you have it?”

He shook the bag. “It’s a curse, or a very small part of one. I removed this gem from my mother’s horn two days ago. There are a dozen like it, and more grow each day.” He paused, and for the first time an emotion other than arrogance or amusement shadowed his features.

Fear. She saw it in his eyes, and then it vanished like it had never been.

“Queen Platinum is dying,” he continued, turning away to avoid her gaze. “She is cursed and dying and none of my or my sisters’ magic can stop this… thing. At best we’ve managed to hold it in check. Soon that will fail, and she will be consumed.”

“Ah.” That cast a different light on things. Foxglove’s shoulders relaxed. “I’m sorry.”

He waved a hoof. “Don’t be. Your morals do you credit.” He dropped the bag on the floor and ground his hoof into it. A faint wail, like a distant scream echoing up from a bottomless cavern, sounded in Foxglove’s ears, gone as soon as Hyperion removed his hoof from the flattened pouch.

“But I still need your help,” he continued. “They say you can brew the Panacea potion.”

Silence followed his statement into the room. She stared at him for a long moment, eyes wide, until the expression of confidence on his face faded with a faint frown.

“Well, can you?” he asked. His tone had lost some of its kindness.

“In theory? Yes. It’s an herbal potion, which is my specialty. I even have some of the components in stock.” She stepped over to her bookshelf, scanning the spines for a moment until she found the one she wanted. It was thin and unbound, just a sheaf of pages tied together with string, and she carefully took it over to the counter. The old and faded parchment threatened to flake away as she turned to the appropriate recipe.

“But that’s not the problem. See for yourself.” She carefully turned the manuscript and pushed it across the counter toward him.

“Panacea potion,” he read. “The magic of this potion is limitless and can cure any disease, illness or curse. Its power is matched only by its cost…” He trailed off, and his eyes danced across the lines as he read the rest of the page.

Minutes later, he spoke again. “I don’t recognize some of these. Prism lotus?”

“It’s a flower that grows on the surface of ponds in the Wildlands. It cannot be plucked, and the Panacea must be brewed on the living flower. But that’s not even the hardest part. Read the last ingredient.”

His eyes returned to the page. “Eyesight?”

“Yes.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Just what it says. Eyeballs, two of them, from the same pony.”

A much longer silence followed this time.

When the prince finally spoke, his voice was low, almost a whisper. “Assuming I could procure such things—”

“It’s not that easy, my lord. If it were, I’d be rich, and the world would be filled with immortal unicorns and blind earth ponies.” She tried to keep her voice even, but some of her distaste must have leaked through the words, judging by Hyperion’s tight expression. “Tell me, how much do you know about alchemy?”

He snorted, and she got the feeling he wasn’t the kind of pony who was used to being contradicted. “More than most, not as much as some. Less than you, certainly.”

“Well, thank you for that. You’d be surprised how often unicorns try to tell me my business.” She paused to clear her throat. “Anyway, the final ingredient is almost always the easiest to procure. It’s never rare, and usually has little value.”

Hyperion glanced down at the faded manuscript. “You consider eyeballs easy to procure?”

She shrugged. “Yes, but not for the same reason as you. The prism lotus, on the other hoof, requires a trek to the Wildlands, and it’s one of the safer items to find.”

“Is that all that’s stopping you? I’ll pay you handsomely, more than everypony has paid you for every potion you have ever made. I’ll be happy to provide an escort to the Wildlands. They’re not so dangerous as ponies believe.”

“If it were just that, I’d do it in a heartbeat, my lord. The problem is still that final ingredient. It doesn’t matter how many desperate ponies you pay to blind themselves – that’s not how alchemy works. The final ingredient is the most powerful because, even though it may be common and cheap and easy to find, it is an offering.”

He leaned away. “When you say ‘offering’...”

“Yes. It’s why uninformed ponies consider alchemy a borderline form of dark magic.” Foxglove pointed a hoof at a shelf, where a dozen small red vials stood like soldiers in a row. “Those are healing potions. Each one has a few drops of my blood in them. On the nightstand beside my bed is a dreamwalking potion that contains a memory of my childhood. I don't know what memory it was, because it is gone, prince. I gave it up to fuel the potion.”

“So the eyesight it requires…” He looked back from the shelf to meet her gaze.

She returned the stare until he blinked and glanced away. “Yeah, mine. The Panacea potion may be a great form of magic, but it is also cruel. I can’t imagine a situation dire enough to make an alchemist craft one. I doubt I will see one in my lifetime.”

He had no reply to that. Instead he studied the rows of healing potions aligned on the shelves. Outside, in the village, she heard ponies trotting through the streets on the way home from the fields or the mines. Their words were muffled and indistinct, but their laughter was clear.

Eventually the prince turned back to her, though he kept his eyes on the parchment between them. “I suppose it was too good to be true. But humor me for a moment – I am not just any pony. I am Queen Platinum’s only son. I can make you richer than any earth pony in the kingdom.” He looked up, meeting her eyes at last. “I would even take your hoof in marriage. ‘Princess Foxglove,’ do you like the sound of that? Your life would be one of leisure.”

“Leisure and darkness.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, my lord. I hope you find some way to save your mother, but I cannot—”

The door banged open, cutting her off, and Anise pounced into the room. “Foxy, I’m back! Belle Cast wasn’t home, so I just left the delivery on her...” She came to a stop, mouth hanging open as she stared up at the prince. Her surprise was so thorough she didn’t remember to bow.

Hyperion recovered first. “Well, hello, miss. What is your name?”

“Uh… Anise?” She glanced between Foxglove and the prince, her ears folded back against her mane.

The prince bowed to her, a tiny smile on his lips. “Well, it is a pleasure to meet you, Anise. I am—”

“Go to your room, Anise,” Foxglove said. “Now.”

“But—”

“Now!” Foxglove stared at her sister until the mare wilted and turned, plodding up the stairs with a final desultory glance back at the two. Upstairs, a door slammed, and Foxglove exhaled.

“Well, she seemed nice,” Hyperion said. “Your sister?”

“Yes, and my apprentice.” Foxglove saw the spark in his eyes and hurried to interject. “And no, she cannot craft the Panacea potion. I never intend to teach her.”

He sighed. “This doesn’t have to be a dispute, Foxglove. Please consider all the good you would be doing if you helped me. Good for the kingdom, and for yourself.”

“I don’t think so. I am sorry for your mother, Prince Hyperion, but I cannot help her. No alchemist will brew this potion.”

“Very well.” He stepped through the door, pausing astride the threshold. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

* * *

Anise was a curious filly. Most of the time, Foxglove considered this a positive trait.

“Offered to marry you, huh?” Anise chewed on a stick of her favorite snack, licorice, as Foxglove stalked around the workroom, straightening the various tools and books for the fifth time in as many minutes. “So, why didn’t you tell me about this potion?”

Now was not one of those times.

“Eyeballs, Anise. Just knowing that potion exists is dangerous. I should have feigned ignorance.” Foxglove let out a huff and stopped halfway through her sixth circuit of the room. “One of the others must have told him about it. Probably Heliotrope – she never could keep her mouth shut.”

“Do you think it’s true, though? About the queen?”

“I don’t see why he would lie.” Foxglove stopped next to her sister and wiped away a black smear the licorice left on Anise’s cheek, much to her displeasure. “Or if it was a lie, it’s an odd one to choose. Word will have to get out soon about this curse.”

She had slept fitfully the night before, with one ear turned toward the window overlooking the street. Her dreams were filled with panicked, half-heard sounds and visions, above all the image of a tiny black crystal shining with an evil light. It rolled across the floor to her hoof, up her leg, across her chest, leaving a burning trail wherever it touched. It rose up her neck, along her jaw and cheek until it perched on the edge of her eyelid, burning, blinding. All the world was lost, subsumed in its azure light, and when she was sure at last that her eyes had boiled away and she would never see again, she woke, and darkness replaced the dream for a few half-lucid moments before sleep claimed her again.

Foxglove was cranky in the morning.

Anise’s rather calm reaction to hearing the story of the prince’s visit hadn’t done Foxglove’s mood any favors. Worse, she’d peppered her with questions about the Panacea potion all throughout breakfast and the morning ritual of readying the shop for work.

And still they continued. “Were you ever going to teach it to me?”

“No. And if you’d think about it for five seconds, you’d understand why.”

“I understand why. I’m not stupid, Foxy.”

“No, but you’re young.” Foxglove hefted a stone mixing bowl onto her back and carried it over to the worktable, depositing it there with a loud thunk that shook their hooves. She measured out a cupful of powdered iron and tossed in dried plants from a series of earthen jars – a hoofful of cactus needles, honeysuckle, orchid petals and sycamore leaves. “And young ponies don’t always make good choices. Can you get me the rainwater?”

Anise found the appropriate jug and lugged it over to the worktable. At Foxglove’s direction, she poured a bit into the mixing bowl until the contents resembled an odd, unappetizing stew, then stood back to watch as Foxglove stirred the mixture with a wood spoon.

Most potion-making was like this. Slow and tedious, waiting for mixtures to set or complex proteins to denature before the next step could take place. Sometimes it resembled baking more than alchemy. It meant plenty of time to talk.

And Anise loved to talk.

“I’m just saying, you shouldn’t have turned him down out of hoof.” She nudged Foxglove in the ribs. “We could finally get that new sink you want. Eh? New sink?”

“Your estimation of the value of my eyesight is noted and appreciated.”

“Oh, don’t be such a grump. You’re missing what’s important!”

Foxglove spared her sister a glance. “I am?”

“Yeah! So you weren’t able to help him this time, but a prince came to you, of all the ponies in the world, for help making a potion. How many alchemists can say that?”

“Princes aren’t like normal ponies, Anise.” Foxglove gave the mixture another stir, clouding the water for a few moments before the heavy iron particles sank back to the bottom of the bowl and the leaves bobbed on the surface. “And neither are princesses or queens or any unicorn, for that matter. Having something they want isn’t a good thing.”

“Bijoux is a unicorn. She’s not like that.” Of the hundreds of ponies in Rivervale, precisely one was a unicorn – a canary yellow filly two years younger than Anise, and one of her best friends.

“Bijoux’s parents are earth ponies,” Foxglove said. “That’s different.”

“You just don’t like unicorns.”

“I like unicorns just fine, but they’re not like us.” Foxglove leaned over the bowl and inhaled deeply, letting the mingled scents of metal and water and leaves fill her mind. Almost ready.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help him. And I’m sorry about the queen,” she continued. “But if I never see another prince again, I’ll count my blessings.”

“Your loss, I suppose.” Anise leaned over to sniff at the bowl as well, then lapped at it with her tongue. She grimaced at the foul taste and spat on the stone floor. “I think it’s ready.”

“It is. Are you ready?”

Anise looked down at the small tray laid out before her. “No. Do we really have to do this?”

“Well, I guess we could close the shop and never make potions again. But if you want to be an alchemist, then yes, we have to do this.”

Anise didn’t answer – at least, not with words. Her lips curled as she stared at the small cotton swab on the tray, and Foxglove could smell the sweat breaking out beneath her sister’s coat.

Foxglove’s old master, the honored, departed Wheat Husk, was notoriously hard on his students. Alchemy was not a discipline that lent itself to gentle souls – every potion required an offering in proportion to its power. A mild purgative or insect repellent might only demand a few hoof shavings, an offering so painless it barely seemed worth the term. Healing potions, Foxglove’s stock in trade, required fresh blood. Shimmerveil potions, which rendered the imbiber invisible for a hundred heartbeats, needed a painful secret. On the far end of the spectrum were potions like the Panacea, which required eyesight, or Fecundity, which guaranteed a mare would conceive a foal the next time she mated. It cost the brewer a single nipple, sliced clean from her teat. That was another potion Foxglove never intended to brew.

As an apprentice, when she huddled at night with Wheat Husk’s other students, they whispered to each other rumors of potions that required even greater offerings. Potions indistinguishable from black magic, able to dramatically extend a pony’s lifespan, or let them transform at will from one tribe to another. The cheapest of those potions required decades of life as an offering – some required life itself, though why anypony would ever craft one was beyond Foxglove’s comprehension.

Such were the rumors, at least. Wheat Husk never spoke of them except to say they no longer existed. Better, older alchemists had burned those recipes and taken the memory of them to their graves. The discipline they passed to their students was harsh, and sometimes cruel, but never evil.

Wheat Husk could certainly be harsh. Foxglove still shuddered when she recalled some of his lessons, or his casual acceptance of pain and blood as the price of magic. But he was effective, and over the years he had pounded into Foxglove’s young head the necessity of such offerings. They were the cost of being a master alchemist, and they should be embraced, not feared.

Did Wheat Husk feel this way with his first student? Foxglove wondered as she watched Anise fret. Did he regret this part?

“You don’t have to. I can do it this time…” Foxglove whispered.

Anise shook her head. She snorted, nearly blowing the little roll of cotton off its tray, and she set her shoulders as though preparing to lift the whole world. “No. I can do this. I can do this.” She repeated it several more times, quieter, almost a mantra.

Without any further prompting, she grasped the cotton swab in the crook of her hoof. She dipped one end in the bowl, letting it soak up the water, and then carefully touched the wet end against a pile of greenish-yellow powder also on the tray.

There was nothing magical about the powder. Foxglove had made it the previous night by grinding dried mustard seeds in her mortar and pestle. It was a common potion ingredient, though in this case being used for other purposes.

“Remember, just a tap,” Foxglove said. Part of her, the part that remembered changing Anise’s diapers and holding her while she cried, wanted to snatch the cotton swab away and use it on herself. Anything to spare her sister. Another part, older and wiser, swelled with pride.

“Right, just a tap.” Anise exhaled and leaned over the bowl again. She placed her free hoof against her cheekbone and pulled down, stretching the skin and holding her right eye open. Without hesitation, barely flinching, she brushed the discolored end of the cotton swab against her exposed eye.

For a moment, nothing happened. Her head jerked, and the muscles of her face spasmed, but she didn’t cry out. Her breathing slowed, and the firm set in her shoulders relaxed.

“That wasn’t so bad…” Anise tried to blink, but the hoof against her cheek kept the eye from closing. “It stings a bit, but… okay, now I can feel it. Ow. Ow ow ow ow!”

“Keep holding it open.” For all that pain and blood and sacrifice were intrinsic to alchemy, she still hated to see her little Anise in pain, like the foal whose skinned knees she bandaged and whose tears she silence with a kiss.

“I know, I know.” Anise exhaled loudly. Her tail flicked about wildly, and her hooves beat out a frantic tattoo against the stone floor. “Owwww! It hurts!”

“It will pass. Stay over the bowl.”

It didn’t take long. The mustard-seed powder was a powerful irritant, and within seconds a stream of tears began flowing from both of Anise’s eyes, wetting her muzzle, cheek and jaw as they dribbled down her face to fall into the mixing bowl.

Foxglove counted them. When two dozen had dropped into the mixture, she gave her sister a gentle tap on the shoulder. “That’s enough.”

“Ohhh thankyouthankyouthankyou—” Anise ran across the room, and her words cut off as she dunked her face in a basin of saline water. She shook her head violently, spraying it every which way, and eventually rose. Her mane and face were soaked, and she dripped unashamedly on the floor. Her right eye was a vibrant, throbbing scarlet, but Foxglove knew from experience that the irritation would fade within a few minutes.

Foxglove waited for her to stop panting. “See? That wasn’t so bad.”

“Not bad?! It still hurts!” Anise blinked so rapidly her eyelids were a blur, and she tossed her head about, as though trying to dislodge a bat from her mane. “How can you stand this?”

“It gets easier.” Foxglove lifted the mixing bowl and poured it through a fine mesh sieve. The iron powder and water flowed between the wires, and she picked away the leaves. “But look what you made.”

In time, Anise stumbled back over to the work table and sat down next to her sister. She stared, silent, at the dozen crystal tears gathered at the bottom of the sieve.

* * *

Eleven of the crystal tears went into a lead glass vial labelled with Anise’s name, the date they were created, and the word “Pain.” The twelfth tear Foxglove kept for herself, and she placed it in a tiny keepsake box with other trinkets from Anise’s childhood – her first milk tooth, a scribbled bit of art, a lock of dark-green hair from her first manecut.

Anise didn’t know about the box, and she would have laughed if she saw it. Or maybe she would have blushed and pretended to ignore it, embarrassed in the way that young ponies were by such displays of love.

Tears were a common ingredient in potions. Sleeping potions required them, as did prophylactic potions, which Foxglove did brisk business in during the spring and summer months. The fact that these tears were crystallized made no difference to the potion – it merely made them easier to store, and when it came time to brew up a recipe she could simply drop them in rather than trying to cry on the spot.

A week had passed since Prince Hyperion’s visit, and Foxglove found her thoughts returning to him less and less. There were no rumors in the village market about the queen being ill, and she wondered if perhaps the prince had found another cure, or if the queen had already died and the royal family was keeping the news hidden.

The capital was a dozen miles from Rivervale. On clear days, if Foxglove squinted, she could see faint shapes rising in the distance – towers and spires and minarets, all vaguely suggestive of a unicorn’s horn. Or maybe every tall building resembled a unicorn’s horn, and she was being too sensitive. Most days it didn’t matter, as the Riverlands were a wet and warm place, and the haze in the air shrouded the capital from her sight.

Foxglove was fine with that. The unicorns had their city, and the pegasi had their sky, and the earth ponies had their villages and farms. If it wasn’t quite harmonious, at least it was balanced, and that was good enough.

Summer was a busy time for earth pony villages. For miles in every direction, farms and orchards and fields covered the land. They were a riot of growth now, at the height of summer, when the sun beat down on them sixteen hours a day. Every morning a giant bank of fog, nearly a cloud, loomed above the river flowing through town. It cut the world in half, until the rising sun finally burned it away. Its ghost stayed with them, though, a humid, oppressive blanket of wet air that dampened coats and curled manes and clogged lungs. Walking through the Riverlands in summer was like swimming; the air more chewed than breathed.

Foxglove loved it.

The other seasons had their charms, of course. She enjoyed the snow, and spring was magic, filled with blossoms that transformed the green and brown of the lowlands into a living rainbow. Fall was crisp and heady, every step feeling like the last of the year.

But summer Foxglove adored. She loved splashing through muddy fields in search of ingredients for her potions, and the way the sun burned like fire against her shell-pink coat. She loved that she could sweat and sweat and sweat and not worry about feeling dirty, because every other pony in the Riverlands was dirty and sweaty too, and none of them had time to care.

Summer was when Foxglove restocked her shelves. Summer was when she made nearly three-quarters of the entire year’s sales. Summer was when earth ponies were most alive – let pegasi have the cold winter months, and let the unicorns cherish the liminal days of spring and fall, when magic was at its strongest. Summer was when life itself ruled the world, and every day was a celebration for their entire tribe.

Summer days were endless, filled with working the fields and harvesting fruits and hauling the abundance of the earth to market. Summer nights were filled with singing and dancing and doing the things ponies do to make more ponies, followed by a few hours of exhausted, death-like sleep, and then the whole experience started over with the dawn.

Most summer days, Anise stayed close by her sister’s side, learning what plants to gather and where to find them. True to her name and her cutie mark, a star-shaped seed pod, she had taken rapidly to herbalism. She already knew as much of the art as Foxglove, and soon Anise would be the one gathering most of their ingredients.

But on days like this, with clear skies and a hot sun, Foxglove knew better than to keep her sister leashed to work. Young ponies needed time to be themselves, to roam in herds across the Riverlands, making friends and building the bonds that might, one day soon, blossom into something more. Foxglove had already seen Anise making eyes at the teenage stallions – colts, really, but all colts thought they were stallions. Rather than fight back, Foxglove had given her sister a long talk and made sure she learned to craft prophylactic potions.

And so today Foxglove was alone, wandering through the semi-wild meadows that extended past the endless fields around Rivervale. The river itself – a wide, slow, muddy snake that split the valley in two – extended far to the north and south. The villages downstream were much like Rivervale, though they grew smaller and farther apart as the distance to the capital increased. Eventually there were no more villages, and civilization ended, and the Wildlands began. She’d been to them several times, more than every other pony in her village combined. They were the best place to find the magical plants crucial to the most powerful of her potions. Potions as powerful as any unicorn’s spell.

Someday soon, probably before the year was out, she would make another trek to the Wildlands. There was always some new plant to find, or new recipe to attempt. But that could wait until summer ended. Perhaps Anise would even want to come with her.

So thoroughly had summer cast its spell over Foxglove that she forgot about Prince Hyperion and the queen. She forgot about the Panacea potion, and the questions her sister had asked. There was just her, and the summer, and the wide, beautiful world.

Until, one day, Anise didn’t come home.

Chapter 2: The Prince

Prince Hyperion sometimes felt like a stranger in his own home.

To call the palace of Queen Platinum anypony’s home stretched the meaning of the word beyond its normal bounds. Ponies inhabited the palace. They lived within its walls. Some, like Prince Hyperion and his sisters and nieces and nephews, were born and raised inside it. They shared it with hundreds of retainers, servants, guards, gardeners, aides, scribes, cooks and cleaners. The palace was a city in miniature, and a pony could live comfortably in its miles of corridors and countless rooms without ever missing the outside world.

But to call the palace a home – Prince Hyperion sometimes had trouble doing that.

Only one pony had truly called the palace home and meant it. Queen Platinum, the first of her name, dead now for centuries but remembered in the innumerable paintings and sculptures and stained-glass windows that populated the palace like a thousand ghosts. She had overseen the construction of the palace, and no detail was too small for her eye. The very shapes of the bricks were subject to her whims. Every wing, every tower, every vaulted arch that rose so high over their heads that one might be forgiven for thinking a pegasus architect had designed them, every one was stamped with her intent.

Once, on a whim, Hyperion decided to walk down every corridor, pathway and hall in the palace. He started outside the door to his chambers and began walking, and when he reached the first intersection he turned left. He did this again and again. When he grew hungry, servants brought him food. When he was tired, they set cushions down on the marble floors for him to sleep. He spent three days in the gardens alone, walking every path in the topiary gardens and finding the shortest path through the hedge maze. He was the first noble in a generation to walk through the servants quarters and the guards’ barracks. His sisters paced beside him when he walked through their wing, laughing at his silly quest, and his mother stopped him for tea when he passed by her door.

Three weeks elapsed before he returned to his room. It seemed smaller than he remembered.

His sisters were more at ease in the palace. Or, at least, they had never confided similar feelings to him. Even his twin, Electrum, had disagreed – where else but a palace should unicorn royalty live?

He found he had no answer to that.

* * *

Not counting its towers, some of which rose a thousand feet into the air, the palace had over a dozen levels, both above and below ground. Each had hundreds of rooms, ranging from the size of a broom closet to courts that spread more than an acre. The indoor gardens on the ground floor were the largest enclosed space in all the known world – the ceiling so high that, on humid days, Hyperion could barely see the frescoes carved upon it through the haze.

Of those countless rooms, there were perhaps a dozen he was forbidden to enter. All but one belonged to his sisters, and the prohibition was ruthlessly enforced by shrieks and flung pillows whenever he tried to stick his head past their doors. He only knew what the inside of their quarters looked like because Electrum let him into hers.

As for the final forbidden room, he hadn’t known it existed until two weeks ago. He stood in it now, surveying the damage, hoping to spot some clue that had evaded him during his last search.

Little remained of his mother’s laboratory. He could guess that the cold cinders scattered near the wall were the ashes of shelves, along with whatever books they once held. Tall black shadows seared into the walls supported that hypothesis.

The center of the room still burned. Ghostly azure flames licked at the bare stone floor inside a pentagram he and his sisters had frantically carved following the accident.

Accident – that’s what they called it, as though dabbling in forbidden arts and losing control of dark magic was as casual and faultless as an overturned carriage. None of them dared say the obvious, that had anypony other than their mother done this, they would have been hanged on the spot.

But Queen Platinum VII was not anypony. She was the anchor that kept the tribes from spinning apart. She was the bulwark against the dark times that had preceded unification, and for this her children could overlook a sin that was, surely, borne of desperation. She knew, better than anypony alive, how thin the knife was that pony civilization balanced upon.

Aside from the stone floor and walls, no solid matter inside the laboratory had survived the accident. There was no door – the only entrance was an extra-dimensional portal that passed through seven feet of solid rock into a specially designed antechamber, where Hyperion had discovered the queen after the initial explosion rattled the palace. She had enough time to escape the laboratory, but not before whatever dark instrument she was toying with had brushed her soul and left her screaming in pain.

There was a door now – or, rather, there was a physical passage. Three of Hyperion’s sisters bored a tunnel through the rock to reach the hidden room and the out-of-control spell. The burst of pent-up magic when they breached the chamber shattered windows for miles around. His ears still rang at night.

Hyperion had already scoured the laboratory from top to bottom. He could draw it from memory, though to be fair, there was so little left in it to draw.

Black crystals grew between the cracks in the stones beneath his hooves. They reflected the light of the fire, turning the floor into a bleak, shifting galaxy. A large peice of the ceiling was simply missing, melted away by the flames and reduced to frozen rivulets and rocky icicles. The room smelled of ash and bones and burning hair.

And, of course, there was the fire. He stared at it, lost in thought, ignoring the sting in his retinas.

The sound of glass crunching under somepony’s hooves broke him from his reverie, and he turned to see Electrum stepping lightly over the crystals. She squinted and raised one leg to shadow her eyes from the light of the fire.

“I don’t understand how you can look at that,” she mumbled. She stopped beside him and pressed her cheek against his neck, and for a moment her scent took him back to their childhood. “It hurts my eyes just being in the same room.”

“You get used to it. It’s like staring at the sun.” He glanced away from the flames to give her forelock a friendly lick, and then he turned back. “After a while, you forget it’s supposed to hurt.”

“Until it leaves you blind, anyway.”

He shrugged. “I keep wondering if there’s some clue in there, some hint of what she was doing. Something that might help us find a cure.”

“It’s just flames, Pear.” The usual warmth in her voice when she used his nickname was gone. “Just fire.”

He snorted but made no other reply. In time she left, and he was alone once more.

* * *

Electrum hadn’t gone far, it turned out. She was in the antechamber beyond the stone passage and was leaning against the wall with some book – a journal, by the look of it – floating in the air before her.

She wasn’t reading it. Her head hung low, eyes closed, and if he listened closely he could hear faint snores above the crackle of flames from the chamber behind him. Asleep on her feet. Again.

“Rum. Wake up, Rum.” He gave her shoulder a gentle push with his muzzle.

Electrum woke with a start. The faint gold light surrounding the book flickered and went out, and he barely caught it with his own magic before it hit the floor.

“Sorry, sorry.” She shook herself, took a deep breath, and reclaimed the book, sliding it into the embroidered saddlebags draped over her barrel. “Must’ve dozed off, there.”

He gave her a longer look. Now that his eyes weren’t filled with the azure fire’s light, he could see how her muscles sagged beneath her white coat, and the way her mane and tail hung in limp golden strands. Her yellow eyes were puffy, weary, exhausted.

“When was the last time you slept?”

“Just now?” She shook her head before he could reply. “I don’t know. A few days? What about you?”

“The same, I think.”

That was not an entirely truthful answer. He certainly didn’t feel as tired as his sister looked, but neither could he remember sleeping more than a few hours in the past week. By all rights he should have collapsed long ago.

A strange energy filled him. It buzzed within him, burning like a fuse. He felt it in his shaking breath, in the tremor of his heart, in his dry, stinging eyes. It drove him, banishing his exhaustion and leaving in its place a brittle core that would never stop, not until he found his answer or he shattered into pieces.

“You don’t look too tired,” she said. “What’s your secret?”

“Just younger, I guess.”

She stung his flank with a flick of her tail. “By all of five minutes.” It was an old joke of theirs, almost a ritual, though one that had slowly turned to his advantage as they passed into adulthood and youth became more prized than maturity.

They walked together up from the palace depths, leaving behind the cursed chamber and its flames. As they climbed to the surface, the oppressive weight on his soul seemed to lift, until he reached sunlight and it vanished entirely.

Almost entirely – a shadow remained, a sliver lodged in his mind. He let the sun wash over him, and in time even that small piece of darkness seemed to fade.

“That’s better,” Electrum mumbled. She stretched her head up toward the sky, eyes closed, letting the sunlight that filled this small courtyard bathe her in its rays. Despite the grime and weariness that clung to her, she was as beautiful as he remembered.

“Yeah.” He held a hoof over his forehead, shading his eyes. “Bright, though.”

“You’ve been down there too long. You’re going to turn into a bat.”

“I don’t think that’s where bats come from.” He stepped over to the shade of an orange tree, its limbs low and gravid with fruit, and took a seat against its trunk. “So, how is she?”

Electrum took her time before answering. She let out a quiet breath and lay down beside him, shifting her saddlebags so their coats could press against each other. “No change.”

He grunted. “The curse?”

“Still growing. Argentium thinks the crystals have reached her spine. If so, they’ll start spreading faster.”

They were quiet after that. A gentle zephyr set the heavy branches swaying like pendulums and filled the silence with the the gentle rustle of dry summer leaves.

“How long?” he whispered. It seemed obscene to speak of Mother’s death in normal tones. He’d only been gone four days, searching for the Panacea, but it seemed like the whole world had turned upside-down.

“A few weeks, maybe less. Argentium said she’s only found a few similar cases, and they all ended poorly.”

Argentium had taken the lead in fighting back the curse, and the fact that their mother hadn’t died within hours of the accident was entirely due to her. She was the youngest of his seven siblings by over a decade, and she came as something of a surprise to their mother. By the time she was born the rest of them had already carved out roles and aspirations, little fiefdoms to fight over, and rather than compete she chose the life of an academic. Hyperion had thought her choice a waste at the time, but the past ten days had forced him to reevaluate the worth of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

“Does she have any ideas?”

Electrum shook her head slowly. “She said to start making plans. And to say our goodbyes.”

Hyperion tried to swallow, but found his mouth dry. “The others?”

“Platinum wants to talk with you before she makes any decisions,” Electrum said. The family’s eldest daughter was always named Platinum, now at the eighth in this generation. “She’s more scared than she lets on. Corinthium and Titanium agree with Argentium. Sterling still hasn’t spoken yet.”

“How is Sterling?”

“Better. You should visit her.” Sterling had been at the head of the trio who broke into the laboratory, and she caught the brunt of the runaway spell. The shield she managed to erect around the remains of their mother’s experiment, even as her coat burned away, lasted long enough for the others to carve a permanent ward in the floor. She had, in a very real sense, saved all their lives.

“I will.”

“Good. Bring some strawberries from the kitchen, too. She’s eating solid foods.”

“I might steal some of those for myself.” How long had it been since he’d tasted a strawberry? Or any fresh food? The memory escaped him, and he shook his head. “What about Quicksilver?”

Electrum shrugged. “Depends what time it is. I can never get a straight answer from her.”

“Typical.” He licked his lips. “And what about you?”

His sister dug at the loose soil beneath them with a hoof. “I’m with Argentium.”

A cold frisson ran down his back. He stared down at her, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze. “You… you’d just let her die?”

“She’s already dead, Pear.” Electrum closed her eyes. “She was the moment that spell went awry. All we can do is prolong her suffering.”

He wanted to scream. To shout. But he forced his mouth shut. Four of them – Argentium, Corinthium, Titanium and Electrum, his beloved Rum – were ready to let their mother die. Of the remaining four, Quicksilver could change her mind in the time it took a drop of water to fall from the gutter to the ground, Platinum was apparently undecided, and Sterling was silent in her recovery.

He was alone. He was the only one still fighting for their mother’s life.

“It’s not like that,” Electrum said. She turned to press her face against his shoulder, and he realized he had spoken that last thought aloud. “We want her to live, but we have to face the facts. She was using dark magic—”

“She was just trying to help us. To help us all.”

“Dark magic, Hyperion.” She opened her eyes and stared up at him. “This is what happens to ponies who use it. Every time. Every single time, and if they’re lucky, they’re the only one who dies. We should be thanking the stars Sterling survived and move on.”

Now it was he who couldn’t meet her gaze. He turned away, focusing on the shifting patches of darkness and sunlight beyond the orange tree’s shadow. “She wanted to help.”

“I know, I know.” She nuzzled his shoulder again. “And we still love her. But there’s nothing more we can do.”

Nothing more we can do. The words echoed in his mind, and he closed his eyes to banish the cheerful, comforting sight of the courtyard garden in the summer sun, too beautiful to taint with these thoughts.

“What if there was?” he asked.

* * *

The next three days were busy for Hyperion. Favors were called in. Secrets were exchanged. A significant amount of gold from his personal reserves was spent to keep ponies quiet.

He was, he reminded himself in every silent moment, doing the right thing. He was saving his mother’s life. He was saving the kingdom. He was making the hard choices that sometimes befell rulers in the course of their duties.

By the third sunset he was done. He went to his chambers, shed the silk vest he wore for decorum’s sake and collapsed onto his bed.

And there he lay, for hours, awake.

The fuse still burned within him. When he closed his eyes he saw its sparks, the same vile azure as the flames in the laboratory far below. It filled his chest with frantic energy and chased away any hope of sleep.

In time the sun rose, brightening his room, and he crawled out of bed. His exhaustion and numbness and pain he squeezed into a ball and trapped in the back of his mind. Today was going to be important – he could feel it, the way his sister Corinthium sometimes got premonitions about the future. Today was one of the hinges upon which the fate of the kingdom would turn.

But before then, he had something else to do. Something he had neglected for too long. On the way to it, he stopped by the kitchen and picked up a plate of fresh strawberries.

Sterling lay asleep in her bed when he entered her quarters. A nurse stood by her bedside with a tray of clean bandages, and as Hyperion watched she slowly unwrapped the old linens from around Sterling’s neck and chest. His sister mumbled something in her sleep as the nurse carefully slathered a silvery cream on the ugly blisters beneath her charred coat. They wept a clear, yellowish fluid, and he turned away.

He focused on his breathing for a while, until a quietly voiced “I’m done, prince,” came from the bedside. He turned to see the nurse packing up her tools, and on the bed a newly bandaged Sterling, still asleep.

He swallowed. “How is she?”

“Much better. Doctor Spindle is confident she’ll make a full recovery.” The nurse, a pale beige unicorn he recognized from his time with the Guard, stopped beside him to speak. “Her coat might be a bit patchy over the worst of the burns, but there doesn’t seem to be any loss of function. Her lungs are fine, which was our biggest worry.”

“Right, that was my worry, too.” In fact, he hadn’t even considered her lungs. All he could think of when they mentioned Sterling’s name was the sight of her screaming, wrapped in the azure flames that poured from the hole in the stone wall. They were bright, almost blinding, but through them he could see the silver light around her horn as she warded the rest of them from the sudden blast of dark magic.

Her lungs had sounded fine, then. But to be fair, the same explosion had nearly deafened him.

“Feel free to stay with her as long as you like,” the nurse continued, oblivious to his distraction. “If she wakes, she can have those strawberries, but try not to distress her. I wouldn’t mention the, ah…”

Right. Their mother. “I won’t. Don’t worry.”

She nodded. “I’ll be outside if you need me.” She paused for a moment, then darted in to press her neck against his. It was a rather familiar gesture for a lowly nurse to share with a prince, but he must have looked like he needed the contact. She gave him a tiny, abashed smile and trotted out the door, closing it quietly behind her.

He took a deep breath. The room smelled of Sterling and her beloved perfumes, but also the antiseptic sting of countless creams and potions. Beneath them all lurked the salt-and-iron scent of blood, and he shook his head to rid his nose of it.

Enough stalling. He snorted and walked over to his sister’s bed. A cushion sat beside it, probably meant for a doctor or nurse, but he found it suited his rump just as well. The tray of strawberries he carefully set on her bedside table, next to a row of healing potions that might well have come from Foxglove’s shop. He stared at them in silence, thinking about the mare and her other-worldly talents, until a quiet sound from the bed caught his ear.

Sterling was moving. Her eyes were still closed, but one leg reached tentatively into the air to bat at some dream image. She mumbled something too low for him to understand and settled back into the pillow.

“Sterling. Sterling,” he whispered. “I brought you some strawberries.”

No reply. After a minute of silence he frowned and looked away.

“I’ll be leaving again in a few days,” he said, not sure if he was speaking to her or himself. “I think I found a solution. It’s… it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough. And when I come back, we’ll save Mother.”

Still no response. He stole one of the strawberries for himself, savoring the taste and the way it washed the room’s ugly, medicinal scents from his nose.

“Anyway,” he continued. “I just wanted you to know that you saved her. And me. And all of us, probably. And I won’t let that be in vain.”

Silence fell over them, except for the faint wheeze of her breathing. He felt his throat tighten, and he rushed forward before his courage could abandon him.

“And I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, and I will make this up to—”

Sterling’s ear twitched. Her head jerked, nostrils flaring, and her unbandaged hoof began to paw at the bandages wrapped around her chest. Hyperion stood and was about to stop her when she froze, and her eyes cracked open.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”

She snorted, and her lips moved. She paused, wetted them with her tongue, and tried again. “I hurt, so I must be.”

“How much do you remember?”

“Dreams. Just dreams.” She let her head sink back into the pillow, and her voice grew soft and thready. “Even this is a dream, isn’t it? I dreamed of pain, and when I woke, my dream came true.”

“It’s not a dream, Sterling. You’re awake and you’re going to be alright.” But he was too slow, and her eyes closed again, and her chest rose and fell in the steady rhythm of sleep.

He sat beside her for another hour to see if she would wake again. When the nurse returned, he excused himself and left.

* * *

Prince Hyperion was coated in sweat and sawdust kicked up from the floor of the salle when the guard found him.

The salle was Hyperion’s refuge – the one place he knew none of his sisters or their mother would venture. It was dirty and stank of sweat and unwashed ponies and mud. The wide floor was covered in cedar chips that kept away mold but stained the light coats of his highborn kin. Even Electrum avoided the ring after his attempt to teach her the basics of fencing ended with a bloody nose (his), a wounded ego (also his) and tears (hers).

To be fair, they’d both been foals when that happened. He sometimes wondered, when practicing, if it was too soon to invite her back.

Today’s chosen blade was the sabre, a brutish sword, heavier than the graceful rapier he prefered, and its primary use was for hacking at enemies in close quarters, crashing through their armor, as much a bludgeon as a blade.

It was rather cathartic to use.

By tradition, the sabre was held in the mouth, even by unicorns. It was simply too heavy to wield with magic alone – another reason he preferred the rapier, designed for precise, lighting-quick strikes and wielded by horn.

The sabre rewarded the strong, the fast and the stubborn, ponies willing to bash and bash and bash against an opponent’s guard until it crumbled. Ponies who wanted to feel the spray of blood on their muzzle when they struck.

Earth ponies, in other words. But every officer knew every weapon, and so once a week he picked up the sabre instead of his rapier and used it for the day.

His fencing partner was Champron, a one-eyed earth pony sergeant old enough to be Hyperion’s father, his red coat speckled with gray and only a few original teeth still in his jaw. If there was an ounce of fat on his corded, spindly frame, Hyperion couldn’t see it. The iron pauldrons and breastplate he wore had to weigh at least as much as Hyperion’s whole body, but the stallion moved like they were made of clouds. His cutie mark was three crossed swords, which Hyperion assumed represented the sergeant’s special talent of beating young princes into the dirt without breaking a sweat.

Champron was in the process of thrashing the prince for the third bout in a row when the guard arrived. The indigo pegasus stopped at the edge of the salle and waited until Champron finished knocking more bruises into Hyperion’s battered body before he spoke.

“Your Highness, there’s a mare to see you. An earth pony from Rivervale,” the pegasus said, and Hyperion racked his mind for the fellow’s name. Few pegasi joined the palace guard, and he knew he’d seen this one around before.

“Is there?” Hyperion gave Champron a slight bow, then flipped his sabre over and passed it to him handle first. “Does she have a lavender coat and a pink mane, like the inside of a shell?”

“I’ve never seen the inside of a shell, sir, but her mane is pink.”

Hyperion pulled off his helmet with a pained grunt and checked inside to make sure his ears hadn’t come off with it. “And is her mark a tall stalk of bell-shaped flowers?”

“Yes sir. They’re white. The flowers, I mean.” The pegasus turned, perhaps unconsciously, to indicate his own cutie mark as he spoke. It was a small, finch-like bird, perched atop a musical note.

That was it. “Very good, Nightingale. Finally, is her name Foxglove?”

“So she said, sir. She also said you would know why she was here.”

“In fact, I do. Let’s not keep her waiting.” Hyperion finished stripping off his training armor, dropping each piece back in the appropriate bins. “Bring her in. Under escort, please.”

Nightingale nodded and darted back out the door, leaving Hyperion with his training partner. Champron racked their practice swords and stopped by the prince’s side.

“Expecting trouble, sir?” Champron’s voice was a gravelly whisper, the result of an old wound that would have decapitated lesser ponies. “Want me to stick around?”

“If you don’t mind,” Hyperion said. “I expect she’ll be civil, but this discussion might be a bit contentious. And you know mares – they can get emotional sometimes.”

“Aye, sir. I wouldn’t say that around your sisters, though.”

“Oh, of course. I enjoy not being a gelding.”

Their banter might have continued longer, but at that moment the guard returned. He brought a fellow with him, a large earth pony corporal the same color and approximate shape as a brick, and between them was the mare who had stalked his thoughts for the past week. She was angry – he could tell from the stomp of her hooves, from the flare of her nostrils, but most of all from her eyes. Wide, bloodshot, they latched onto him the moment she passed through the door.

Champron must have noticed it, too. He took a step forward. Not much, but enough for everypony in the room to see.

Everypony except Foxglove, anyway. She tromped up to Hyperion, stopping just feet away. He could smell the rage rising from her body like steam. Her chest trembled as she drew in a breath to speak.

“Prince.” She spat the word at him.

“Foxglove.” He gave her an easy nod, as if there weren’t two armed guards on either side of her. “Welcome to my home.”

For her part, Foxglove didn’t seem to pay the guards any mind either. “My sister. Release her.”

Hyperion counted to three before answering. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Has something happened to Anise?”

“Don’t give me that.” Foxglove took another step forward, stopping only when Champron moved between them. “You think I’m a fool?”

“On the contrary, I think you’re brilliant. It’s why I want your help. Now, what’s this about Anise?”

Foxglove’s lips drew back in a snarl. “You’re a poor actor, prince, but if that’s your game, fine. She didn’t come home two days ago, and after a frantic night I found her in a cell, arrested by your guards on some nonsense charge of dark magic. She’s an apprentice alchemist, not a sorcerer!”

“First off, they’re not my guards. They serve the crown and the kingdom. Second, you yourself said that alchemy walked a fine line with dark magic. Are you so certain you know everything she’s been doing?”

“I raised her! I taught her everything she knows! If you suspect anyone of dark magic, then have me arrested, not her!”

“Calm down.” The temperature in the room was getting a little high for his liking. The guards and Champron stood on the tips of their hooves, ready to jump into action. “If Anise is innocent, as you say, she’ll receive a fair trial and be acquitted.”

“She is innocent!” Foxglove leaned forward until the brick-like earth pony guard pressed his leg against her chest.

“Then you have nothing to fear. Of course, if she has been dabbling in the dark arts...”

Silence followed, thick enough to choke him. Part of his soul rebelled at this part, at this blatant and cruel exercise of power, but he forced it into the back of his mind along with his exhaustion and worry and fears. He had time for no such things.

“Then what?” Foxglove asked, all but whispering. “Finish that sentence, prince.”

Hyperion hesitated, his eyes drawn to the saddlebags draped over Foxglove’s barrel. Had the guards searched those? Surely they wouldn’t let her into his presence with a weapon. But her weapons were not arrows or daggers; she would use potions and poisons. Things the guards might not recognize as dangerous.

The confidence borne of three armed guards ebbed. It flowed away from him, like wet sand washing out from beneath his hooves, leaving an oily unease in its wake.

But it was too late to stop. “Dark magic is a serious crime. If she’s convicted, it wouldn’t end well for her.”

The snarl on Foxglove’s face grew, twisting her entire face. “You had her arrested. You set this whole thing up to force me to brew the Panacea. You’re a monster, Prince Hyperion, and I swear if any harm comes to Anise I will kill you—”

That was as far as she got. Before Hyperion could stop them, the two guards had Foxglove flattened on the floor beneath their weight, one foreleg twisted behind her back and her saddlebags flung off to the side. Champron darted forward, faster than Hyperion had ever seen him move during their sparring matches, and came to a stop with his hoof against Foxglove’s neck. She choked as he put his weight into it.

“Enough,” Hyperion said. “Don’t hurt her.”

“Sir?” Champron growled. He let up with his hoof but kept his eyes fixed on Foxglove’s trapped form.

“Just hold her.” Hyperion kept his distance, snagging her fallen saddlebags with his magic and dragging them over. Something inside them clinked, and he opened the flap to find a hoofful of glass vials nestled alongside a folded piece of parchment.

Curious, he pulled the parchment out. It was what he expected – a list of the charges against Anise, including, among others, the study of dark magic, conspiracy to practice dark magic, and practicing dark magic with the intent to harm other ponies. All serious crimes, but nothing of particular surprise. He had, after all, drafted her arrest warrant himself.

“It’s dangerous to threaten a member of the royalty,” he said, placing the parchment back in her saddlebags. “I’m willing to overlook this incident, because I know you are under so much stress right now.”

Foxglove gurgled something. From the look she shot him, he guessed it wasn’t an apology.

He gave the saddlebag’s contents another cursory inspection. The vials all seemed to be filled with healing potions – he’d seen a lot of those, lately – except for one thick, stout cube of glass with a small space carved out from the center. It was empty, the cork removed, and only a faint smear of green fluid remained. He lifted it to his snout for a sniff and nearly gagged on the bitter, bile scent.

“What is this?”

Foxglove wheezed out something unintelligible. Champron took the rest of his weight off her neck, and she cleared her throat before speaking again.

“Special mixture. Two elixirs.” Her voice was rough, and she coughed.

“Oh? Anything I’d recognize?” Hyperion tilted the jar upside down. A single drop ran down the glass walls, beaded at the lip, and finally fell onto the cedar chips at his hooves.

“I doubt it. The first is Stoneskin, and it’s made with a cockatrice feather and half the hair from my tail.” She flicked her tail as she spoke, and he saw that it indeed looked thinner and shorter than he remembered. “The second is my own invention, crafted with dragon’s blood, the last acorn to fall from a century-old oak before it died, and a day of starvation. I call it Ogre’s Strength.”

An unsettling feeling, like standing on the edge of a high cliff, flooded Hyperion’s gut. The guards tensed, and Champron slowly lifted a hoof to the lip of his breastplate.

“Why is it empty?” Silly question, but something demanded he ask it.

She grinned at him, a wild, bloodthirsty grin that swallowed her whole face. “Elixirs are slow. I drank it an hour ago.”

Champron reacted first. His hoof finished the motion it had already begun, snatching a concealed stiletto from beneath his breastplate and driving it down into Foxglove’s exposed throat. The weapon was simple and ugly, little more than a glorified icepick, but long and needle sharp, and it struck just below her ear with enough force to impale a log.

The tip snapped clean off. The remainder of the blade skidded across her throat with a shriek of tortured metal and flash of sparks.

Foxglove was already moving. She grunted and stood, never minding the two guards still piled on top of her back, or Champron’s hoof smashing into her face. The blow rattled Hyperion’s teeth from several feet away.

It should have killed her. Instead she growled and spun in place, tossing the huge earth pony off her back. Nightengale didn’t even try to hold on – he took to the air as soon as his wings were clear.

“Stop her! Stop her!” Hyperion shouted. He clutched the saddlebag against his chest like a shield and stumbled back. The cedar chips beneath his hooves shifted and he stumbled.

That was all the opening Foxglove needed. She jumped at him and nearly lost her own footing, but still managed to snag Hyperion’s hoof with her fetlock.

Once, when Hyperion was a foal, he snuck out of the palace with Electrum in tow. They were on an adventure, a quest to search the nearby forested lands for bandits and hidden treasure. Their heads were filled with silly myths of their own invention, of sunken castles and gold chests and magical, twilight-haunted glades where forlorn lovers played flutes for lost ghosts. Instead, barely a hundred yards past the treeline, the young prince stepped on an old, forgotten beartrap with his foreleg. The trap was ancient and brittle and barely functioned, but it snapped shut with enough force to break the skin and put a hairline fracture in the bone. His screams were heard all the way back at the palace.

Foxglove’s grip was like that trap. Blinding pain shot up his leg, and he let out a strangled shout. He swung the saddlebags at her, spilling the potions all over the salle, and bashed her face with his free hoof. Nothing. He might as well have been blowing kisses.

She pulled him closer and wrapped her legs around his barrel, her muzzle inches from his. Her hot breath washed over his face with it the vile, sulfurous scent of the potion flowing through her veins. She growled in his ear, spraying his mane with spittle, and squeezed.

Her grasp wasn’t like iron – iron could bend; iron could be broken. Her limbs were steel, and they crushed him as easily as he could crush a grape beneath his hooves. His breath exploded from his lungs and kept flowing away, until nothing remained in his chest. His ribs flexed and began to pop. One gave way with a particularly loud crack, and he would have screamed if he had the air. A red haze settled over the salle, growing darker every moment.

Somepony hit him with a sledgehammer. His vision, nearly black, slowly returned along with his hearing, and he looked up to see Foxglove still wrapped around him. Champron stood over them, slamming his hooves into her head. Each strike shook the room and sent cedar chips flying.

Foxglove turned to snarl at him and caught the next hoof with her face. It snapped her head back and stunned her. That was enough – Champron hammered her again and again, each time loosening her grip by just a hair, until Nightengale was able to pry Hyperion away from that terrible grip.

Air! He gasped, letting it flood back into his lungs. They ached, ached with each breath, like he’d been run over with a wagon, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was breathing. For long seconds he heaved on the floor, torn between the piercing pains in his legs and chest, the wonderful taste of oxygen, and the intense need to vomit.

The need to vomit won. He rolled onto his side, spitting the last of the sick from his mouth, and saw the end of the fight. The earth pony guard was down, his jaw folded at an unnatural angle. Nightengale bobbed overhead, though one of his wings was missing several primaries. Foxglove snapped at Champron from the floor, but she seemed woozy and disoriented. Slow. The way Hyperion felt.

Champron was not slow. The sergeant reared up to his full height and brought his hooves down on her skull hard enough to crack a boulder. The room shook at the blow, and again and again as he repeated the motion. Finally, he stumbled back, panting, and collapsed onto his haunches.

Foxglove didn’t get up.

* * *

Four healing potions survived the scuffle. Champron turned one down, though he looked like the bad end of a bar fight – face swollen, chin overflowing with blood, patches of coat missing. Nightengale tried to do the same, until Champron ordered him to quaff it. He made a face at the taste and shuddered, his wings flexing and feathers ruffling, as the magic worked through his veins.

The earth pony guard wasn’t able to drink his. Apparently Foxglove had clipped his jaw with a hoof while Hyperion was busy passing out, and the entire lower half of his face was a bloody wreck. Broken teeth tumbled out of his mouth, and they had to hold him down to pour the potion between his lips. His struggles slowly faded, and the sickening flow of blood ceased. Within seconds he was asleep on the salle floor, his breathing slow and peaceful.

Foxglove hadn’t moved in several minutes, not since Champron put her down. Her right ear hung from a scrap of flesh, almost severed, and the mane beneath it was a sponge filled with blood. Her head formed a slight depression in the earth beneath the wood chips, and if it weren’t for the slow rise and fall of her chest, Hyperion would have assumed her dead.

I can fix this. I can still fix this. Hyperion took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Those damn azure sparks, after images of the fire beneath the palace and burned into his mind’s eye, teased him, distracted him. He tried to focus on what was important. On solving all his problems and the kingdom’s problems without—

A gentle hoof touched his chin, turning his head to the side. Hyperion opened his eyes to see Champron’s face peering at him from just a few inches away. Inspecting him.

“Alright. You too, prince.” He held a healing potion out in his hoof. “Drink up.”

“I’m fine.”

“Like hell. You look like shit. And that was before she almost killed you.” Champron’s gaze slid over to Foxglove and lingered there. “The queen’ll make me a gelding if she finds out I let you get hurt.”

Come to think of it, maybe the potion wasn’t such a bad idea. His ribs hurt every time he inhaled, his head pounded in time with with heartbeat, and his hooves burned with each step. To say nothing of the sting in his eyes, or the heavy blanket of exhaustion dragging him down. He wasn’t tired, not really, but lately it was like somepony had piled a stack of millstones upon his back when he wasn’t looking, and they wore him down with every passing hour.

“Fine.” Hyperion snatched the potion away. He bit the wax seal off, spit it onto the floor, and swallowed the thick red fluid in a single gulp. It tasted like strawberries and fresh-cut grass and ever so faintly of blood. The flavor washed away the sharp tang of vomit still lingering on his tongue.

The effects were quick, and much more pleasant than experiencing Foxglove’s other concoctions. The potion traced a warm path down his gullet, pooled in his stomach, and quickly spread throughout his body, washing away his aches and pains. The dagger jabbing his lungs with each breath vanished, and for the first time in days the accursed headache dimmed. Even his exhaustion fled, and he stood taller. The colors of the world seemed brighter.

“Huh, that’s actually pretty good.” Hyperion looked around the salle with newly invigorated eyes. They still stung, and when he closed them he saw those cursed azure sparks, but otherwise he felt better than any time since the accident.

“One left.” Champron peered inside Foxglove’s saddlebag, then back at the fallen mare. “What do you wanna do?”

Hyperion took a deep breath. Then another. And a final one, just to be sure, before he spoke.

“Get some ropes and bind her. Then pour that thing down her throat.”

Perhaps she was ready to talk.

* * *

Even with the healing potion, it took most of an hour before Foxglove stirred, which was plenty of time for Champron to mummify her with ropes and shackles. A full squadron of palace guards arrived in the interim, alerted to the fight by Nightengale. The same nurse who tended to Sterling came with them, and Hyperion set her to tending Foxglove. The guards he sent away – the salle was getting uncomfortably crowded.

An uneasy quiet settled around Hyperion as he waited, seated a few feet away from the nurse, who carefully stitched Foxglove’s ear back onto her head. The healing potion flowing through Foxglove’s veins did most of the work, and every time the nurse pulled her thread taut, the torn edges of skin knit together, leaving only a faint pink scar in their wake.

Hyperion was so absorbed in the process that he didn’t notice Champron sitting beside him until the old warrior spoke. “Want some advice, your highness?”

“No.” He blew his breath out his nose, trying to rid it of the stink of blood: salt and wet iron and burning lungs. It seemed everywhere he went in the palace – his mother’s laboratory, Sterling’s room, and even here, in this, his sanctuary – he could not escape it. “Fine, yes.”

“Whatever plan you’ve got for that mare, forget it. It’s not worth it. Either she’ll kill you, or you’ll kill her, or maybe you’ll both get lucky and kill each other.”

“You don’t even know what the plan is.”

“Don’t matter. I know a bad bet when I see one. And that,” he pointed a hoof at Foxglove, “is a bad bet.”

“Maybe.” Hyperion closed his eyes and tilted his head up, so the rays of the afternoon sun shining into the salle passed through his eyelids, washing away for a moment the azure sparks he couldn’t seem to escape. “But sometimes there’s no choice. Doesn’t matter if you’re a prince or a gutter cleaner. Fate doesn’t care what your station is.”

“Doesn’t mean you need to be stupid, though.”

“Well, that remains to be seen.” He cleared his throat. “Nurse, how is she?”

The nurse waited before answering. She added a few final stitches to Foxglove’s ear, then dabbed at the quickly healing wound with a cotton swab. “Normally I’d be worried for a pony who’s been unconscious this long, but her breathing is fine and there’s no skull fracture. That healing potion you fed her must have been fairly strong.”

“She’ll mend properly?”

The nurse shrugged as she put away her tools. “Mostly. A few scars. Earth ponies don’t seem to mind those much, though.”

“They add character,” Champron said. A few drops of blood fell from his chin as he spoke.

“Someday I hope to live in a world with less character, then,” Hyperion said. “Once you’re done, nurse, head back to the infirmary. And take Champron with you.”

Champron cleared his throat. “Sir, are you sure that’s a good—”

“I’m not sure about anything. But I need her help, and that means I need to take some risks.” He paused. “If you hear screaming, though, feel free to come back.”

“Your leadership is as inspiration as ever, your highness. Just be careful – there’s too many royals dying around here as is.” Champron’s hoof slid beneath his breastplate, and emerged with the remains of his stiletto, which he passed hilt-first to Hyperion. The tip and last inch of the blade were gone, and the fine edge dulled from scraping across Foxglove’s stonelike skin, but it was still a serviceable weapon.

Or, at least, better than nothing. Hyperion lifted the blade with his magic and left it floating beside him. “What can I say? I learned from the best. Now, go get those scrapes taken care of.”

With Champron and the nurse gone, Hyperion found himself alone in the salle with Foxglove. Her breathing was deeper, slower, and the nasty swelling around her ear and other wounds faded as he watched. She seemed to be merely asleep, rather than unconscious, and Hyperion kept his distance, content to wait for her to wake. Only the blood soaking her mane and streaked across her coat remained of the brutal, short skirmish that could have easily killed somepony.

“I really hope you’re worth it,” he whispered.

Somepony must have told the palace guard not to disturb them, for hours passed in the salle without another soul in sight. The beams of sunlight stabbing through the rafters swept across the floor as the sun descended toward evening. The cedar chips covering the floor did their job, and slowly the scents of the day – stale sweat and blood and vomit – faded, overtaken by sawdust and the sharp tang of the pitch-tarred rafters.

Twilight covered the sky when Foxglove woke. Overhead, visible between the wood beams, dark clouds drifted across the darkening heavens. A few faint stars dared to peek out at him from the east.

Foxglove groaned, the first real sound he’d heard from her in hours. The metal links in her shackles clinked as she tried to stretch her legs. She struggled with them for a moment before abruptly growing still. Her eyes shot open, darting across the salle floor before settling on him.

They stared at each other in silence. Her ears flicked about madly, and the shackles tinkled like bells as she strained against them. But the monstrous strength that filled her during the fight was long gone, and only a mortal mare remained. An earth pony, yes, but not even the strongest of their tribe could snap cold iron like spiderwebs.

“Can we talk like adults, now?” Hyperion asked softly.

“You still have Anise.” It was an accusation, but without heat. “How can you expect me to to speak with you calmly? Like we’re bartering over the price of bread?”

“Because you have to. Because her welfare depends on your ability to act with restraint and consideration. You love her enough to do that, I think.”

Foxglove glared at him.

Hyperion cleared his throat. “I’m going to undo those bindings. At that point, you have a few options. You can try to kill me again, and maybe you’ll succeed this time. If you do, Anise will still be imprisoned or hanged for dark magic, and you will hang with her for murder.

“Second, you can walk out of this palace, back to your village, and let Anise take her chances. If you do this, I promise you Anise will not be executed. But her sentence will be long, and you will not see her again until you are an old mare.”

“I’ll die before I let that happen. Mark me, prince.”

“I’m not asking you to die for her, Foxglove. My original offer still stands. Brew the Panacea potion for me, and I will make you the richest earth pony in the kingdom. Anise will go free, and – if you still desire – I will take your hoof in marriage. You will become a princess, along with your daughters and their daughters. There are many ponies who would give up far more for this chance.”

Silence again. For a moment, Foxglove’s will seemed to waver. The tips of her ears dipped, and her eyes danced around the salle, unable to meet his. But somewhere inside her heart she must have found another spark, another bit of will to resist, and her glare returned.

“You damn unicorns,” she spat. “So assured, so self-righteous. You presume to rule all the tribes, but what did you ever do to earn that throne? You talk about unity and harmony, but where is your sweat and blood? Is this, this ransoming and kidnapping and threat of death, is this all you can offer? You boast of your magic and how it keeps us safe, but all I see is a cruel boy, willing to toss his lessers into the flames if doing so will withhold from him a single day’s worth of suffering.”

Such venom. He closed his eyes to it and took a deep breath.

“I understand how you feel. I suspect I might feel the same way, were our positions reversed.” He leaned forward, lowering himself until his eyes were level with hers. “I’m going to cut you loose, and then I’m going to show you something. Can I trust you not to attack me until afterward?”

She snorted. “Trust me? You ask if you can trust me? One of us, prince, is a unicorn. The other is an honest pony. Yes, you can trust me.”

That stung, but no more than he deserved. He did his best to ignore her flinch when he levitated the stiletto up to her neck, set it against the ropes, and began to saw. It took a while to cut off all of Champron’s ropes. The shackles came off more easily – they were magic, and a light tap of his horn against the locks popped them open with a quiet click.

Foxglove stumbled to her hooves as he unfastened the last shackle. She tensed, and for a moment he thought she might attack him again, or bolt from the room, but slowly the muscles straining under her coat relaxed, and the tips of her ears stopped shaking.

“Well?” she said. “Show me, then.”

* * *

“How much do you know about dark magic?”

“Trick question?” Foxglove seemed torn between keeping her distance from Hyperion and pressing close to his side to avoid the ponies they passed. For some reason, the sight of a bloody, battered prince and an even bloodier earth pony mare walking together down the palace’s back corridors attracted a few odd looks from the staff and guards. “Get me to confess to forbidden knowledge?”

“Knowledge isn’t forbidden, only what you do with it,” Hyperion said. They had been walking for nearly twenty minutes, and his injured ribs were starting to ache again. He wondered, briefly, if any of Foxglove’s wounds pained her.

“Then why ask?”

“It will help explain some of what you’re about to see.” Hyperion stopped at the mouth of a long, dimly lit corridor. A pair of guards stood on either side of the entrance, eyeing him and his companion with undisguised interest. He gave them a small nod and led Foxglove into the shadows beyond.

“Unless I’m about to see Anise, I don’t see why I should care about anything you have to say.”

“Anise is quite comfortable, I assure you. She has her own room, books to read, and even a tutor to keep her company. As long as you and I continue to cooperate, she won’t be tossed in the dungeon.”

“You assume I’m going to cooperate.” Foxglove spoke quietly, but there was a heat in her words, burning just below the surface.

“I think you will.”

“Really? Have you been right about anything yet today, prince? Your confidence seems to be…” Foxglove trailed off and came to a stop, one leg still held in the air, about to complete its step. Her ears strained forward, twitching, searching.

A moment later, Hyperion heard it too. High-pitched and piercing, lasting only a breath at a time before it vanished, leaving only echoes before it sounded again.

Screaming.

“She’s awake,” he said. “Come on, let’s not keep her waiting.”

He stepped down the corridor and stopped after a few steps, looking back. Foxglove hadn’t followed – she stood back at the entrance beside the guards. Her wide eyes stared past him into the darkness.

“Come on,” he repeated. “I need you to see this. I need you to understand.”

“What…”

“Trust me. That’s all I’m asking. Trust me.”

She shook her head slowly, but followed him into the corridor. “It’s too late for that, prince. But whatever. Lead on.”

The bare stone passage around them was unlike any other in the palace. No paintings or sculptures enlivened its flat stone faces. There was no carpet to soften the hard floor beneath their hooves. Dust gathered in the cracks between the flagstones and swirled into the air as they passed. The only light came from soft blue magelights suspended in place of torches, and their weak glow did little to push back the darkness. Sunlight rarely felt so far away.

“Who is that?” Foxglove asked. He strained to hear her over the wail drifting down the corridor.

“That’s my mother. A pony who thought she knew more about dark magic than she actually did, and now she’s paying the price.”

They kept walking. Ahead, a bright blue spark, like a solitary star in the night sky, signalled the end of the corridor. It stung his eyes, just like the fires in his mother’s workshop, and he turned his gaze down to the floor.

“Try not to look at the lights,” he said. “We don’t think they’re harmful, but they can be… well, discomforting.”

“What are they?” Foxglove squinted, blinked rapidly, and held a leg up in front of her face. “I can see them with my eyes closed. I can see them through my damn hoof.”

“Argentium can explain it better than I can. Just stay by my side, and for harmony’s sake don’t touch anything.”

The screaming stopped at some point during their walk. The silence it left was a welcome blessing, but he knew it would return before long. Mother never seemed to sleep more than a few hours at a time.

The corridor ended in a massive wood door, banded with black iron and fixed to the wall with hinges the size of his leg. The room beyond had been empty since before he was born, but whatever the original Queen Platinum kept in there must have been very precious or very dangerous. It was far and away the most secure room in the entire palace, and the obvious place to stash his mother after the accident.

The blue sparks were brighter now, like fireflies dancing just out of hoof’s reach. Their light shone through the door like the thick oak was nothing more than a lantern’s paper skin.

“I can’t stop looking at them,” Foxglove mumbled. He glanced away from the sparks to see her staring forward, eyes wide and watering. Tears flowed down her cheeks.

“I know. Just remember, don’t touch anything.”

He reached out a hoof to the door. It was keyed to his touch, and swung slowly open. The magelights in the corridor behind them flickered and died, leaving only the cold azure glow pouring out of the room beyond to light their way.

The room hadn’t changed much in the week he spent away. Inch-thick iron panels weighing thousands of pounds hung in a circle around the center of the space. In the gaps between them he could see the queen’s bed and the vague shape of her prone form. The azure light cast its rays between the iron panels, dividing the room into blocks of shadow. The scent was the same as he remembered: fire, and cold metal, and blood. Nowhere in the entire damn palace could he escape the smell of blood.

A light-green mare, barely older than Anise, sat in the center of a small warding circle. A series of books and chalk slates floated in front of her, bobbing gently in the golden glow of her magic. How she managed to hold the things, much less read them, eluded Hyperion, for wrapped around her head was a thick blindfold with iron plates riveted over the eyes. She turned as the door opened and sniffed at the air.

“Hyperion and…” she paused, sniffing again. “A guest? Welcome. Please keep your voices down.”

Hyperion stepped over to the mare, followed slowly by Foxglove, who seemed to jump at every little sound and spark to emerge from beyond the iron plates.

“Foxglove, this is my sister, Argentium,” Hyperion said in a low voice, once they were huddled together. “Argentium, this is Foxglove. She’s helping me with our problem.”

Argentium raised an eyebrow, and the corner of her blindfold glowed as she grabbed it with her magic. She pulled it up, revealing a bright yellow eye that glanced up and down Foxglove’s form.

“Your optimism is boundless, brother.” She glanced at Hyperion, then lowered the blindfold, turning back to the queen. “But I think your efforts are misplaced.”

“Assuming you’re right, how long does she have?”

Argentium’s ear flicked back toward him. “A few weeks, perhaps. You can see the crystals have reached her spine. From what I’ve read, they’ll start spreading more rapidly. It will end very quickly when they reach her heart.”

“What do you mean, we can see…” Foxglove mumbled. Her eyes were wide and fixed on the center of the room. The azure light cast dancing reflections in the tears flowing down her cheeks.

Hyperion sighed and followed her gaze. Even through the iron plates, he could see the azure sparks emanating from the crystals embedded in his mother’s horn – and now, much further as well. “You see the shape the lights make? You see the long row? That is her horn. The round swell beneath it is her skull. The sparks in a line beyond it? That is her spine.”

“The light is coming from inside her?”

He waited before answering. The sparks shifted position; his mother twitching in her sleep.

He heard a clatter of hooves on stone and turned to see Foxglove’s tail vanishing out the door. The echo of her retreat down the long corridor followed. He sighed again and gave Argentium’s neck a gentle brush with his muzzle.

“Do what you can,” he whispered. “And have some faith.”

“I don’t need faith. I have these.” The gold glow around her books pulsed. “I hope your own faith isn’t all you’re relying on.”

“I have a plan… We have a plan. But I need to make another trip for it.”

“Mhm.” Argentium sniffed at his coat again and wrinkled her muzzle. “Blood and vomit. Your plan is off to a wonderful start, big brother.”

“There have been a few hitches. We had an… argument, but I think it’s sorted out now. In fact, I’d better go find her.” He turned toward the door.

“Wait.”

Hyperion froze, one hoof held above the floor. He turned his head back sharply – he wasn’t used to commands from his littlest sister.

“Mother wasn’t doing her experiments alone. Somepony was helping her.” Argentium spoke as calmly and mechanically as always. “The traces were faint, but there are definitely two magical signatures in the crystals.”

For a moment, Hyperion forgot to breathe. A cold shock roiled up his spine, and his ears folded back involuntarily. Even the blinding azure light spraying out from the queen’s bed seemed to dim at Argentium’s statement.

“Are you sure?” His tongue felt two sizes too large for his mouth.

“As sure as I can be without asking Mother.” She held up a hoof to stop him. “To answer your next question, it could be anypony. Logic suggests it’s one of her children, though. She would trust us.”

“That’s… no. That’s impossible.”

“It’s not just possible but necessary. There are signs in the crystals that could only come from another unicorn’s magic. I’m inclined to believe it can’t be Sterling or Quicksilver. If it were Sterling, she would have been more careful opening Mother’s secret room. And Quicksilver, well…” She finished with a shrug. There was no need to belabor Quicksilver’s flightiness. Not a pony one would trust with dark magic.

“And what am I supposed to do with that information? Start a witch hunt?”

She shook her head. “I only tell you so you will be careful, Brother. Whoever it was may have deliberately sabotaged the experiment.”

“Murdered her, you mean. You think one of us might have murdered her.”

“I think it is possible. I’m not inclined to give a pony who employs dark magic the benefit of the doubt.”

Hyperion frowned. “That statement includes Mother, of course.”

“I know. What she did was foolish, and in many ways she deserved what happened.” Argentium turned her blindfolded eyes toward the queen’s bed, and her shoulders slumped ever so slightly. “But she is still our mother. I could never wish this upon her. I don’t know what to feel anymore, Brother. So please, just be careful. I cannot stand to lose another pony I love.”

Argentium had always been the least emotional, least outwardly loving of his siblings. He knew her heart was as full as Electrum’s or Quicksilver’s, but she rarely wore it on her sleeve. As a result, he and his sisters often mistook Argentium’s cool delivery and careful words as the sign of a pony who felt little, who only cared for her books.

It was untrue, of course, and moments like this reminded him so. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be. Go, find Foxglove. Hopefully she’s not too frightened to help us.”

“It’s not her fear that worries me.” Hyperion gave his sister a tiny bow, which she returned, and then he stepped back to the door.

He was nearly through it when Argentium’s voice caught him again. “How are your eyes, Brother?”

Azure sparks. They chased him everywhere – the visible sign of the fuse in his heart that chased away sleep. Nothing except the sun seemed to banish them.

“They’re fine,” he said. He waited for some other response, and when none came, left to find Foxglove.

* * *

Foxglove was all the way back at the corridor’s entrance, shivering in a pool of moonlight cast from a nearby window. The guards didn’t seem to know what to do with her – they had orders to keep unauthorized ponies out of the queen’s room, not in. Their tense postures eased when he finally joined them, stopping by Foxglove’s side.

“Walk with me,” he said. He made it several lengths down the hall before he heard the tap of her hooves following him. The silence between them held.

Finally, she could take no more. “What did she do?”

“An experiment. Something went wrong.” He shrugged. “That’s about all we know.”

“Why? She had to know this would happen. It always does.”

It was a truism among unicorns that dark magic was invariably fatal. The so-called “sixth circle” of magic was quick and direct, and it offered mages easy access to the sort of power that would otherwise take decades of careful study. But it was also a gamble, and unlike the other circles of magic it did not forgive mistakes. The tiniest error, the most insignificant overlooked detail, would send the whole thing spinning out of control. To play with dark magic was to play with fire in the most literal sense of the term.

A unicorn might get away with one spell. They might survive ten, and think they had beaten the odds. That they, alone among all the thousands of others who dabbled the dark arts, had somehow mastered it. They might use it hundreds of times.

But it always caught up with them. There was only one cause of death for unicorns who used dark magic, and that was dark magic. So it always was, and would be for their mother.

Unless he could beat the odds himself.

“I don’t know, and we can’t exactly ask her,” he said. They passed the border between the palace’s administrative and residential wings. The corridors here were smaller, homier, filled with warm colors and simple, tasteful decorations. “But everything she does, every thought she has, is to the purpose of keeping the kingdom together. Without her it will fall apart, and the tribes will return to the old ways. We’ll divide, and all the centuries of unity will be for nothing.”

“That has nothing to do with Anise.”

“You’re right. She is innocent, and doesn’t deserve what is happening to her. Neither do you. And you can call me a bastard and the queen a bitch who’s just getting what she deserved, and maybe you’re right about that too. But the fact remains that I, and the queen, and the kingdom need your help, and I will compel it if necessary.”

Silence again. Distantly, down the hall, he heard the faint echo of guards on their evening patrols. Foxglove’s ears twitched at the sound, but her eyes remained fixed on his.

Finally, she looked away. “And if I help you?”

It took all of Hyperion’s remaining strength not to collapse in relief. “Anise will go free. She will have every opportunity you want. As for you, riches. Marriage, if you desire.”

Her expression soured. “To the stallion who stole everything from me? How generous, prince.”

“Then whatever else you want. You will not lack for gratitude, Foxglove.”

She closed her eyes. The signs of weariness, so obvious in himself, he now discerned in the set of her shoulders, in the way her ears drooped. The past few days had been just as stressful for her, he realized.

“I need to think about it.”

He nodded. “Sleep on it. In the morning, tell me what you’ve decided.”

But he already knew what her answer would be.

Chapter 3: Down the River

Foxglove woke with the first light of dawn. Given that it was the height of summer, she suspected the rest of the palace wouldn’t rise for several more hours. Only guards and servants would be up this early. Guards, servants, and those rare earth ponies like her, used to life in a farming village but transplanted into the capitol, where things moved at an altogether different tempo. Slower to start in the morning, but frantic and heartless when they finally got going.

At least her bed was nice. It was easily four times the size of hers in Rivervale, and she didn’t know what to do with all the space. Sleep in the center? Sleep near the edge? She spent half the night rolling restlessly between spots.

The dawn came as a relief, and she could stop pretending to sleep more than a few minutes at a time. Memories plagued her through the night, of her panicked search for Anise and the brutal, sickening fight with Hyperion and his guards. But most of all she dreamed of the queen. She dreamed she shared her bed with a dark, screaming form, all alight with azure flames. Those lovely sparks entranced her, and she lay beside them in fascination, even as the covers and bed and room caught fire and burned, and her along with them.

The weak gray light of morning peeked around the embroidered curtains like a rescuer’s lantern. She let out a shaking sigh when it greeted her, and she crawled out of bed. This took some time and effort, as she had migrated to the center of the mattress in her restless slumber, and getting to the edge required her to stand up and walk across the covers.

She skipped over the cold floor and sat on a nice thick rug in front of an ornate mirror as tall as she. The damage from yesterday seemed even worse now: both her eyes were bruised and swollen, an empty socket took a tooth’s place in her lower jaw, and her left ear felt stiff whenever she moved it. A ragged white scar ran across its base.

Just how bad was that fight? She didn’t remember much, just a frenzied blur of heat and hate and pain. And joy – above all joy burned in her heart when she heard the prince scream. She focused on that memory and doubled over as a wave of nausea burbled up from her stomach. She concentrated on her breathing until the urge to vomit on the silk rug passed.

Getting back to sleep didn’t seem likely, so Foxglove meandered into the suite’s attached bathroom. She’d washed in there the previous night, and the bloody residue of her shower still speckled the porcelain tub. She frowned at the pink smears and twisted the faucet to wash them away.

If the rest of the palace wasn’t awake yet, it meant she had plenty of time to soak. She used the time to think about her sister and whether Anise was soaking in a similar tub somewhere in the labyrinthian palace. Perhaps she had already adapted to the city’s timetable, and was still happily asleep. It occurred to Foxglove that she would never see her sister’s face again, or marvel at the combination of her green mane and peach coat. She would never see her smile.

But she would hear her laugh, and hold her, and drink in her scent. They would be together. The Panacea would not take that away.

“Don’t worry, Anise. I’ll find you.” She mouthed the words to herself, over and over.

In time she drained the tub and dried herself off with one of the dozens of enormous towels piled on the racks, any of which could have mummified her from snout to tail. When her coat was dry and didn’t smell like soap, she gave her mane a casual brush and stepped out the door.

A pair of guards awaited her. They seemed attentive and curious, but not hostile. As far as she could see they had no weapons. If Hyperion was true to his word, she could walk past them out the doors of the palace and be on her way.

And the result would be the same. She would never see her sister again. She closed her eyes.

“Please tell Prince Hyperion that I accept his offer.”

That said, she turned and went back into her room.

* * *

It took less than twenty minutes for Prince Hyperion to come knocking at her door. The fact that he bothered to knock surprised her, seeing as how she had just indentured herself into his service. But knock he did, and a second later the door swung open on oiled hinges.

He stepped in and stopped just past the threshold. A tan cotton cloak accented his blue coat nicely and wouldn’t have seemed out of place in most town markets. Some thin sword hung from his saddlebags, and if it weren’t for the dappled spots running up his chest and neck she might have mistaken him for some rich merchant or minor noble rather than a prince.

But then she saw his eyes and the arch of his neck and the haughty expression on his face, and nopony could deny the royal blood in his veins. He could be naked, chained, in mud, and still he would wear that imperious mein.

He cleared his throat, and she realized she was staring. She snorted and shook her head. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked if you were ready to go.”

“Already? The sun’s barely up. I thought unicorns preferred to sleep in.”

“I’m a light sleeper.” His horn glowed, and her saddlebags, stuffed with provisions for the trip, floated over to her.“And we have a long way to go and not much time.”

She followed him out into the corridor. The palace was starting to wake, and she could smell the scent of baking bread drifting from one of the kitchens. The two guards stationed outside her room stood straighter as the prince walked past, but to her surprise they stayed in place.

“Wait… we?”

“Well, I can hardly send you to the Wildlands by yourself.” The prince’s mouth twisted, as if biting a lemon. “You’d never make it back after crafting the Panacea.”

“Your concern is touching. But why you? The Wildlands are dangerous, and you have an entire army.”

“The army is busy. I sent some ponies on ahead. We’ll meet with them on the way.”

“Fair enough. But why you, specifically? Why not send me with that guard from yesterday?”

They took several more steps down the hall before he answered. “I’m the one forcing you to do this. It’s only fair that I accompany you.”

“Ah. How noble.”

She must not have sounded sincere, for he gave her a small frown. They didn’t speak for the rest of the walk through the palace.

The city was already awake. Merchants busied themselves in the endless rows of storefronts and crowded markets. The entire town of Rivervale could vanish inside a single city block here, and no one would know it had arrived except for the sudden intrusion of earth ponies’ particular scent. All her life it had been the scent of hard work and effort, but in her experience most unicorns turned up their noses at it. They liked to pretend their sweat didn’t stink.

But the capital certainly did. Nearly a million ponies lived within its walls or spilled out onto the floodplain beyond. It was the largest city in the world, or at least as far as she knew, and it stank with the effluent of a million bodies flowing through its ancient, creaking sewers. It stank with the rubbish of the markets and the massive piles of garbage waiting to be carted out to the landfill. But most off all it stank of the river, the bloated, muddy flow that split the land in two. Even from here, miles away, she smelled the peculiar mix of mud and decaying vegetation and swamp gas the river carried with it across a thousand-mile run.

It reminded her of Rivervale. She let out a quiet breath and hurried to catch up with the prince, who pulled away while she woolgathered.

The area around the palace housed the richest of the city’s residents – virtually all unicorns. She thought she saw an earth pony once, but a second glance revealed a servant following his master, a load of bags heaped on his back. In fact, few ponies they passed seemed to give her any thought. They likely assumed she was a creature of the prince’s. She scowled and stepped ahead, making sure to bump his shoulder with hers.

His step stuttered, more in surprise than anything else, and he arched an eyebrow in her direction. “Everything alright?”

“Peachy. Where are we going? The road to Rivervale is out the south gate.” While most the ingredients for the Panacea could be found within the Wildlands, she still needed some from her own stores, along with specialized tools. Hopefully the prince hadn’t forgotten that.

“Yes, and if we were walking, that is the path we would take. However, as I am a pony of some means, I have managed to secure actual transportation for us.”

She sniffed at the air again. One stink had risen above the others, and she wrinkled her muzzle. “We’re taking a boat?”

“Yes. It’ll get us to Rivervale and then onward to the Wildlands in three days or so. We’d need a week to walk that far.”

She frowned. “I don’t like boats.”

“You’d rather walk?”

“Can we?”

“No, it was a rhetorical question. Now come on, they’re waiting for us.”

The trekked the rest of the way in silence. The prince, accustomed to the flow of the crowded streets, stepped between and around the thousands of ponies like a dancer. It helped that many recognized him, or realized he was some sort of nobility, and gave him space to pass.

She received no such deference. They pushed past her, bumped into her, or worst of all ignored her. They turned up their noses, and when she brushed against them they wiped at their coats in disgust.

And to think, she could live here too, if she accepted the prince’s reward. The thought left a sneer on her face as she bulled through the morass to keep pace with him.

The boat waiting on the pier had pretensions to shiphood, but for all its graceful lines and soaring bridge high above the water line it remained a river boat, driven by a pair of huge paddlewheels on either side of the hull. Unity was printed in flowing script across the bow just above the royal crest. It seemed they were taking the pride of the Equestrian navy for this voyage.

A unicorn waited for them atop the gangplank. He wore a dark-blue jacket studded with brass buttons and made a show of bowing as the prince set hoof onto the deck. Beside him, a grizzled earth pony with a raindrop cutie mark ducked his head as his only show of respect.

“My lord!” The unicorn cried. “Welcome aboard. It’s a pleasure to host you again so soon.”

“You’re too kind, captain,” the prince replied. Gone was the moody, serious air she associated with him. He seemed a different pony, bright and chipper, a smile on his face. “Thank you for making room for us on your schedule. I know this is a busy time of the year.”

“We serve the crown, your highness. Please, let me show you to your quarters.” He glanced at Foxglove, as if noticing her for the first time. “We’ll clear a space for your servant in the galley. Quite comfortable bunks there.”

Hyperion stepped in front of her before she could fling the captain over the edge of his own boat. “That’s quite kind of you, captain, but Miss Foxglove is my guest. If you would be so kind as to deliver another bunk to my quarters, she’ll be staying with me.”

The captain blinked at this, but after a moment a wide smile broke out on his face. “Oh, I understand sir. Very good, of course. I won’t say a word to the others.” He ended with a showy wink, and waved the earth pony at his side off to do the prince’s bidding.

She could throw them both overboard, Foxglove reasoned. But that would only delay their trip, and probably result in her sleeping on the deck, so instead she merely glared at the back of the captain’s skull and tried to set his mane on fire with her gaze.

* * *

The Unity floated on the murky river with the ponderous grace of a dead log. Even with both her boilers steaming at full power to spin her massive wheels she sailed no faster than a pony moving at an ambling walk. It took more than an hour for the boat to escape the city limits, and that was moving with the current. Smaller boats, crewed by earth ponies trawling with nets or pushing at the river bottom with long poles, darted around them like insects on a pond.

The prince vanished as they got underway, but Foxglove opted for the deck. It was hard enough to tolerate the swaying of the boat beneath her, but to do so from inside a cabin, with a tiny porthole her only window on the world, twisted her stomach and threatened to spill her breakfast all over the neatly washed planks. Instead she leaned over the railing, where the ghostly breeze offered some relief from the churn of the river.

Sailors scurried around her, their coats stained black with soot from engines, darkest on their faces except for shocking rings of color around their eyes. Earth ponies, all of them, and they laughed and cursed and spat over the side as they worked. They stank of coal and sweat, even above the fetid river, and every single one worked with a smile. Foxglove glanced back at the receding docks, the last bit of the capital that clung to the river like a fungus as it wormed its way south. The unicorns there, the millions of them, how many smiles did they wear? She barely saw any during her short stay in the city.

Short, and never again repeated. She turned back to the countryside drifting by at the river’s languid pace. Plantations, the rich pony’s version of a farm, sprawled out over the land south of the capital, interrupted by towns that straddled the water every mile or so. Stately manors, whitewashed and drizzled with ivy, glowered down at her from the high hills. The city’s riches leaked out from the seams and were gobbled up here before they could reach the distant villages.

The sun was halfway to noon, and already the daylight sizzled on her back. The tar slathered on the Unity’s hull dripped in rivulets to the deck. Ravens cawed at the passing boat from the shady boughs of the trees, and even the insects seemed cowed by the blazing heat. The cicadas’ buzz barely reached her ears above the weak breeze.

It was nice. She took a deep breath, letting the hot air sear her lungs, and then slowly exhaled.

The background murmur of the sailors faded, leaving only the engine’s chug and the lap of the river. She turned to see the prince standing a few feet away, leaning against the railing like her. The crew detoured around them.

She nodded. “Prince Hyperion.”

He returned the nod. So very polite. “Miss Foxglove. Are you feeling any better?”

“Who said I was feeling bad?”

“Forgive the observation, but you’re still a bit bruised from yesterday’s tussle.” He turned to watch the riverbank sliding by. “To be fair, so am I. Your potion was rather effective.”

She snorted. “Not effective enough.”

“It gave you the strength to take on four stallions, all of them trained for combat. If Champron hadn’t been there, I think you would have killed us all.” He raised a hoof and tilted it back and forth. “Of course, that wouldn’t have ended well for you either.”

“I wouldn’t have killed you.” She tasted bile in the back of her throat and tried to swallow it. What else would she have done? The joy she felt when she crushed the prince’s ribs, the way each one popped lit her brain with a euphoric spike, better than sex. No, she would have killed him, and it would have been the greatest ecstasy she’d ever felt.

She pondered that. Prince Hyperion was politely silent while she vomited over the railing.

“Seasick? It happens to some ponies,” he finally said.

“Yeah, sure.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hoof. “Seasick. What brings you out into the sun, prince? Shouldn’t you be lounging in your cabin?”

“You know, I feel like I haven’t seen the sun enough, lately. Too much time in dark rooms.” He closed his eyes and turned his head up to the sky, letting the sun wash over his face. The shadow of his horn ran down his muzzle.

“You’ll bleach your coat if you stay out here too long. Turn drab and colorless as an earth pony.”

His turn to snort. “Now you’re just being difficult. You have this image of unicorns as selfish bigots. That we rule without even noticing the earth ponies who toil to feed us.”

“Am I wrong?”

“I won’t lie. There are many unicorns who think that way, some of them in my own family. But there are plenty who don’t, who see the common thread that binds us. I don’t believe earth ponies are brutes only good for hard labor. I’ve encountered many who are masters of their craft, as skilled with their hooves as any unicorn could be with their horn. Earth ponies who can work magic.”

“Like me?” She spat into the river to clear the last of the sick from her mouth.

“Yes. You, or Wheat Husk, or any of the great alchemists.”

“Mm. You said, when we met, that I was the greatest alchemist alive. Do you remember that, prince?”

His ear flicked. “I do.”

“And when you found this great earth pony alchemist, the mare who had something you wanted, what did you decide to do to her, prince? When you weighed her life against your wants, which did you find more valuable?”

He scrunched his eyes shut. “Can we not have this conversation every time we speak, Foxglove? I can’t explain myself any further than I have, and you cannot change my mind. Let us, at least, speak of other things.”

“Fine. This trip, then. We’re stopping in Rivervale?”

“You said you had some of the ingredients for the Panacea. I assume they’re at your home.”

“My workshop,” she correct. They were the same thing, of course, but she had some professional pride. “There are tools I’ll need as well. And supplies for the Wildlands.”

“Hm.” He was quiet for a few breaths. “You’ve done this before? Trips to the Wildlands?”

“Yeah. They’re not too dangerous if you’re careful. Three days should be enough for us to…” She paused, her mouth twisting. To get what we want, she was about to say. Hardly accurate under the circumstances. “To find the remaining ingredients.”

“And then a few days to get back out.”

She shook her head. “Just one, since we won’t be searching for anything on the way out. It would be even faster if you left me.”

He flinched, followed by a severe frown. “I thought we agreed to speak civilly with each—”

“I’m not trying to provoke you, prince. I am being serious – if you need to get the Panacea back to your mother as quickly as possible, it would make sense to leave me behind. Leading a blind mare through the Wildlands is not a quick proposition.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll not leave a pony to die because of my actions.”

It took all her will not to fire back at his smug self-assurance. “If you say so, prince.”

She knew a lie when she heard one.

* * *

The Unity arrived in Rivervale in the late afternoon. Fishers and river trawlers rushed to maneuver their tiny boats away from the pier as it pulled up, its wake nearly swamping them as it passed. A crowd of earth ponies gathered at the end of the dock and watched the crew fasten the boat to the mooring posts. Overhead, the town’s few pegasi swooped in lazy arcs or stooped over the river to dangle their hooves in the water.

“Making a bit of a scene,” Foxglove observed. She gazed at the crowd, picking out the faces of her friends and neighbors. “Perhaps a smaller boat would have been wise?”

“And deny these ponies an exciting story to tell their foals? I think not,” Hyperion said. He stood beside her, his cloak fastened around his neck and the hood covering his mane. It must have been roastingly hot, but aside from a sheen of sweat on his exposed coat he seemed unbothered.

The crew was quick. The boat bumped up against the dock once, twice, and they had it secure. The gangplank went down, and a scrum of sailors descended onto the pier with boxes and bags lashed to their backs. Hyperion waited for the initial buzz of activity to fade, then led the way down the plank. The villagers kept a curious distance from him but shied away as she stepped onto the hard-packed dirt. Within moments the wharf was deserted. Ponies peeked at them from windows and dark doorways.

“Friendly bunch,” Hyperion said. “Are they always so skittish?”

“Well, two days ago my sister was arrested for practicing dark magic, and suddenly I arrive in town with a unicorn prince,” Foxglove said. “I can’t imagine why they would be wary.”

“Hm.” Hyperion gave the town a little frown. “No matter. The sooner we collect your things, the sooner we can be gone.”

“How exciting.” Foxglove pushed past him a bit more force than necessary. He stumbled and looked ready to retort, but by then she was already several steps down the road. She heard him snort and hurry to catch up.

The village was not just a collection of houses and shops bunched around the main road – farms spilled out for miles, dotted by ranches and homesteads like Foxglove’s home. Fields and rows of trees hid them from view, and only the low buzz of the town’s market reached them as Foxglove pushed open her door.

“I need to mix some ingredients,” she said. She pulled off her saddlebags and dropped them on the salesroom counter. “Grab all the healing potions. They’re the red ones with the gold foil on the stoppers.”

“What about these others? Do we need them?” Hyperion stopped beside the shelves, scanning them with the light of his horn. None were labelled, and the murky, shifting fluids within gave no hint to their purpose.

She shook her head. “Those are all for household use. Nothing we need where we’re going.”

“You hide the stronger potions elsewhere, I take it?”

“I keep them somewhere safe.” She walked over to the bookshelf, searching for the collection of loose-leaf pages containing the Panacea recipe. Somepony had moved it, and when she found it she could smell Anise’s scent on the pages. The foolish filly’s curiosity had no doubt overcome Foxglove’s warnings. She scowled as she pulled them out, and then took them into the next room.

The workshop was a mess. The stills, bowls, mortars and flasks she’d used to craft the Stoneskin and Ogre’s Strength elixirs lay strewn atop the stone table in the room’s center. She hadn’t even bothered to clean after brewing them, just poured them into a bottle and ran out the door with murder on her mind.

So foolish. She stared at the filthy tools, their insides black with dried fluids, and for a moment the heat she’d felt, the hate, flooded her chest. It bubbled up from her heart, into her throat, choking her. Her hoof lashed out, sweeping the instruments off the table with a clatter, and she slapped the recipe onto the stone. The fragile binding tore, and they fluttered apart, coming to rest scattered every which way.

It didn’t matter. She memorized the formula years ago.

She collected a clean set of beakers and the few ingredients she needed from the root cellar beneath her yard. When she returned, Hyperion stood near the doorway. He made no move to approach the table, and his eyes darted up from the mess on the floor.

“Is there a problem?”

“Of course not.” She set an earthenware bowl on the table, gently this time, and carefully laid out a series of small pouches beside it. “Start a fire, would you?” She flicked an ear toward the hearth behind them.

He hesitated, and his lips parted, but whatever he planned to say died within him. He shrugged and trotted over to the hearth with a spark on the tip of his horn.

In addition to its exotic ingredients, the Panacea required an odd mix of common plants and refined compounds. She opened the first pouch and poured a half-dozen dried thistles into the bowl. They skittered on their spines, dancing around like spiders. Next she added the crow’s bones, and the sea salt and the snake’s shed skin and the bark of a willow tree. Then she grasped a heavy stone pestle in her hooves and crushed them all together. She smashed and smashed at them until her breath came in ragged gasps and sweat streaked her coat and half the ingredients spilled out onto the table.

Hyperion was staring at her. She could feel his gaze. Focusing on her breath, she set the pestle down and peered into the bowl. A sickly yellow paste flaked with spots of green filled the bottom and smeared the sides. She rubbed a bit on the tip of her hoof and tested its flavor with her tongue. Greasy, meaty, foul.

Perfect. Hyperion gagged.

“You’re going to see much worse on this trip, prince,” she said. She wiped her hoof clean on her chest and used a spoon to measure the residue into a pair of small vials. It was far more than she needed for a single Panacea potion, but experience had taught her to bring extra on excursions into the Wildlands.

She put one vial in her saddlebags and passed the other to the prince. “You keep this one. Try not to lose it.”

“I’ll do my best.” He made an effort to sound civil. “Anything else?”

“Let me grab a few things. A few personal things. I’ll meet you outside.”

If the dismissal offended the prince, he didn’t show it. Instead he gave her a curt nod and retreated into the storefront. A moment later Foxglove heard the chime of the bell above her door.

She waited to make sure he was really gone. When he didn’t return, she collected the scattered pages of the Panacea recipe and tossed them into the fire. The old parchment caught instantly, and within seconds nothing remained but embers. She watched them burn to make sure.

She would never see her workshop again. Another item on the list. And in a few minutes they would walk through the town, board the prince’s boat, and she would never see Rivervale again. She would never see the river, or the sun, or the trees, or the way the wind blew through the tall grass outside her home, making it dance like the ocean’s waves. She would see the prince, her last pony, and then darkness.

The ember in her heart seethed. She let the breath hiss out between her clenched teeth.

She spun away from the fire and stormed out the workshop, shattering an errant flask with a stomp of her hoof.

* * *

She settled on the stern of the boat as it pulled away from Rivervale. The Unity’s wake turned the muddy river into a bubbling froth that trailed into the distance behind them. From her vantage point she saw the hovels grow smaller, indistinct in the summer haze, until a bend in the river finally hid them from view. A lonesome, rickety pier, jutting out into the water, was the last shred of Rivervale to vanish. Crows perched on its moorings, and she heard their cawing long after the village passed out of sight.

And that was it. She would never see Rivervale again, or her neighbors or friends or second cousins or old lovers. She closed her eyes and pictured their faces, but found them already indistinct, generic, blurred.

“Already lost,” she mumbled.

It was twilight when the prince rejoined her. He’d shed his cloak and leaned against the railing, eyes closed, head back, letting the wind tease his mane. The setting sun’s orange glow complemented the dappled spots that ran up his chest and neck. She imagined many mares would kill to be in her spot, spending time with a bachelor prince.

“Is there a particular reason you keep chasing me down?” she asked.

“We’re going to be spending quite a bit of time together soon,” he said. “May as well get used to it.”

“Or enjoy being alone while we can.”

He cracked an eye open. “Do you want me to go?”

She frowned and held her tongue. Lately every moment with the prince had descended into a verbal sparring match, and while that was better than actual fighting, it wasn’t conducive to the sort of partnership they would need to survive in the Wildlands. They had to trust each other.

So, civility. “I don’t mind.”

He nodded and closed his eyes again. She followed his gaze toward the setting sun, now brushing against the tips of the trees lining the distant river bank. It was warm on her face, despite the late hour, and she closed her eyes as well, letting the heat seep into her muscles. The churn of the boat’s wake drowned out other sounds, even the grumble of the engine, and it was easy to imagine herself back in the village on some nameless summer night, waiting for the day to end and the fun to begin.

A faint jolt shook the boat, waking her from the dream, and a moment later a bobbing log drifted past. She gave it a small frown and turned back to the sun, now half-eclipsed by the horizon.

“In ancient times, ponies thought the sun and moon and stars needed magic to move,” Hyperion said quietly. “That without it, they would stick in the sky. Forever day or forever night.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad. Sun always high, forever summer.”

“Every earth pony I tell that story to says the same thing. Why?”

“It’s perfect.” She stretched her neck, trying to catch the last of the sun’s rays on her face. “The summer is when we live, prince. Everything is at its greatest in summer. Our crops choke the fields. The forests burst. The day seems to last forever, and at night, our blood boils for each other. How could you want anything else?”

“The pegasi do. They tell me of endless nights, brilliant with the moon, the earth swaddled in snow. They say the air is so heavy in winter they can glide for days without flapping their wings. They lick the frost from each others feathers and say it tastes like diamonds.”

“Hm.” Foxglove puffed out her cheeks in a huff. She hated winter, it’s chill, its darkness. The weak sun that rose and set in the span of a few hours. Ice that clawed at her hooves. “And what about unicorns, prince?”

“Just like this, I think. Forever twilight. The sun warm but not burning. The moon awake but not alone.” He flicked an ear up at the waxing gibbous moon. It had risen hours before and stood near the top of the sky, a bright oval against the dark-blue vault of heaven. “Some unicorns say magic is strongest at times like this. I don’t know if they’re right, but it feels more powerful. Like everything is aligned in the world. Earth, sun and moon.”

“And stars.” Foxglove turned to the east, the darkest part of the sky. It was nearly black now, and speckled with faint twinkling lights.

“And stars,” he added, turning to the east. “They’ll be out soon, too, and the sky will be complete.”

Foxglove turned that sentence over in her mind, her tongue carefully still. She glanced at the prince out of the corner of her eye and saw him staring into the east.

“Soon indeed,” she said.

They fell into silence after that. In time, the sun set, and sailors set lanterns on the lines running abreast the ship. They chased away the darkness, and a spotlight on the prow illuminated the river’s easy bends. The ship never slowed.

“Well, I think I’m going to retire,” Hyperion said. “Staying up?”

She should be with Anise, getting her ready for bed. Or perhaps escorting her sister to the night’s bonfires, whispering in her ear to have fun, but above all to make smart choices. And then she herself might seek out a different sort of company, one to make the night memorable.

She sighed. “Yeah, sure. Let’s go.”

The prince’s cabin was luxurious by nautical standards, but would barely qualify for a closet back at the palace. Foxglove’s own bedroom in Rivervale was larger. A tiny desk huddled against the bulkhead beside a sturdy bunk that folded down from the wall, and a sailor had stashed a small cot for her in the remaining floorspace.

So much for privacy. She pulled the blankets off and shoved them under the cot – it was too hot for them anyway. Her saddlebags were already on the desk, and she nosed through them quickly to make sure the crew hadn’t misplaced anything. Satisfied, she slumped onto the cot, her back toward the prince’s bunk.

“Goodnight, Hyperion.”

“Goodnight, Foxglove.” The wood squeaked as Hyperion climbed into his bed, and the room fell into darkness as he snuffed the lantern.

It was a long while before she found any sleep.

* * *

They spent three days on the river.

It grew as they steamed south. Tributaries spilled in from the sides, adding their muddy waters to the great flow, until the banks stretched so far apart that at night the ship's lanterns could no longer reach them. They may as well have been floating on calm, brown sea.

With each morning's light the banks returned, overflowing with towering sycamores and honeysuckles dipping their leaves in the froth. Birds warbled in the branches, stretching their wings to catch the ray, and as the mists vanished they took flight, often circling over the boat for hours, waiting for sailors to toss last night’s leavings overboar.

Towns and villages dotted the banks, and ponies worked the fields stretching into the distance. But the spaces between towns grew, and the fallow land expanded between the farms and orchards. They were coming, Foxglove knew, to the edge of the world.

The world didn't actually end, of course. Even after the last pony town and the cobbled road vanished beneath the dirt, the world extended on infinitely. But outside Equestria the world was a wild place, lawless, overrun with chaos and nature. Out there lived gryphons and dragons maybe even zebras, if the old legends were true. She'd never met any of them, but sometimes, on lonely winter nights, pegasi wanderers would stop by in Rivervale to warm their bones, and they would share tales of the wonders they saw in the greater world. Floating cities, basilisks, dreamoras, glaciers so large they seemed like oceans. Compared with those explorers, ponies like the prince lived in tiny, circumscribed worlds, little fish swimming in a puddle, unaware of the forest around them.

And she wasn't much different, Foxglove conceded. Her trips to the Wildlands aside, she was a creature of Rivervale and the sprawling demesne of the earth ponies. Even her apprenticeship with Wheat Husk had taken her no more than twenty leagues from home.

A change in the engine's timbre woke Foxglove on the morning of the third day. She lifted her head, befuddled, and saw that Hyperion was already gone, his bunk folded against the wall and his saddlebags missing from their cubby hole.

She scowled at the sight. Some perverse bit of earth pony pride insisted that she be the first of them to wake, but every morning he somehow ruined it. It was as if he never actually slept, just laid down in his bunk for a few hours. She shook her head, snagged her saddlebags in her teeth, and stomped out the door to find him.

The ship buzzed with activity. Half the crew raced around the deck, hauling ropes or baskets or odd nautical instruments she had no hope of identifying. She spotted Hyperion standing near the prow with the captain, and past them, at the edge of the river, was a town she recognized immediately, though she had never seen it from this angle.

Precipice was the last town in the kingdom. It grew up the side of tall, earthen bluffs that towered over the river like cliffs. Stairs wound their way down to the river and its network of piers, all crowded with boats. Pegasi ignored the stairs, flitting up and down from the river to the high town, dangling fish-filled nets from their legs or pushing clouds between the homes like Foxglove would push a cart. A small herd of fillies shrieked and giggled as they danced over the water like dragonflies, zipping past the Unity and racing each other to the dockside. A few alighted on the ship's smokestacks, sticking their faces in the belching smoke until it turned them black, and then laughing as they dove into the river to wash the soot away.

As far as Foxglove knew, Precipice was the only ground-bound town dominated by pegasi. Most of their kind preferred the drifting cloud cities of their ancestors, or roosted in the mountains overlooking the capital. But out here, on the edge of the kingdom, the weather was an unruly thing, even for pegasi, and clouds could not be trusted for permanent habitation. They might dissolve in the summer heat, or break apart like frozen cotton in the depths of winter. And so the pegasi of Precipice built their homes into the cliffside over the river, which was tall enough to suite their needs. Flat plains extended past the cliffs, giving the pegasi a wide view of the far marches.

Foxglove smiled – it was impossible not to smile around pegasi. They always seemed so light hearted, as if the troubles of the world could not tangle them. They were free in a way that other ponies could never be. And for all that they lived high above, they never looked down on earth ponies in the same way unicorns did.

“Good morning,” Hyperion said as she approached the rail. “Sleep well?”

Her smile vanished.

“Not as well as you, it seems,” she said. “Are we stopping here?”

“We are.” He motioned with his hoof down the river. “This is the last port before the river becomes unnavigable.”

“Rapids and waterfalls,” the captain said. “Can’t challenge them with a ship this large.” He peered over the rail as the Unity drew closer to the pier. When they were within a few yards he shouted back at a sailor, and the crew tossed lines down to the dockworkers below.

“We’re on hoof from here,” Hyperion said. His horn glowed, adjusting his saddlebags on his back. “Have everything you need?”

“Ah.” She swallowed soundlessly. The past three days, stuck on the swaying boat with only the prince and the crew for company, had grated on her, but now she found herself suddenly wishing for more time. Anything to delay the journey through the Wildlands and its inevitable end. “I suppose I do.”

The air beneath the cliffs was still cool as they ascended the stairs to Precipice. Banks of mist floated across the river, occasionally enveloping the Unity and the ponies scuttling around it and turning them into faint dots of color swimming in the gray. Pegasi foals tore through the fog with their wings, shredding it into strips that slowly sank to the water and dissolved.

The town was built on wood platforms jutting from the cliffside over the water. Thick cypress struts held the entire affair aloft, and the stairs wound around and and up them. The mists beaded on the wood and fell like rain around them.

Finally, they reached the top of the cliff, and the world spread out before them. The sun, fat and red, floated just above the horizon, slowly burning away the mists that covered the vast plains to the west. Faintly, at the edge of her sight, Foxglove saw a green line lying beyond the plains.

The Wildlands. A day’s walk, if they started now. Her legs, cramped and stiff from their confinement on the boat, longed to break into a run.

A rustle of wings caught her ear, and she looked up to see a gaggle of pegasi perched on the rooftops, their wings spread wide to catch the sun’s first light. Precipice’s houses were tall and thin, the opposite of the earth pony ranches Foxglove knew so well, but they had an odd grace to them. They seemed to reach for the sky in a way that the unicorn cities, for all their spires and towers, could not.

“Last chance,” Hyperion said. He’d strapped a canteen around his saddlebags, and his rapier in its sheath. “Anything else you need from the town? I’m sure I can requisition it.”

“Just…” She stopped and frowned. “Wait, it’s just us?”

“Yes. The boat will wait here for our return. If we’re not back within two weeks, they’ll send a party out to search for us.”

“You said there’d be more. You can’t go by yourself!”

“I’m not. I’ll have you.” Hyperion started walking down the road away from Precipice. Overhead, a few pegasi soared in lazy spirals, but they seemed more concerned with finding early thermals than the two ponies beneath them. “And the situation changed. It’s not… necessary to have anypony else with us.”

“But—” She darted forward and stopped in front of him, blocking the road. “Why? There are monsters in there, prince. I know my way around. I can avoid them, but not with you tagging along. Why can’t we bring help?”

He stepped around her. “Are you sure you just don’t want to be alone with me?”

She fought back the urge to snap at him as he passed. He must have sensed her intent, for his ears folded and his muscles tensed, but he kept walking nevertheless.

“Coming?” he asked, after a few steps. “I’ll tell you more later.”

The cobblestone road faded into a dirt path barely wide enough for a cart just outside Precipice. Pegasi had little need for roads, and this far from the capital most travel was by the river. The miles passed quickly beneath their hooves, and though Foxglove kept pestering him over the lack of an escort or guard, he only commented on the surrounding prairie in reply. Frustrating, but hardly the worst she’d dealt with from the prince, and by the time the sun reached its zenith she resolved to let the topic lie for now.

They saw no other ponies, not even pegasi. Precipice marked the furthest edge of the kingdom, and they were officially beyond Equestria’s borders. For all that, the endless grasslands around them smelled the same, and the sun beating down on their backs felt just like it did in Rivervale. If anything, the heat here was drier, less oppressive. It dried her lips and parched her tongue, but she could breath without feeling like she was drowning.

It was nice. She glanced over to see how Hyperion fared. He had the thin cotton hood of his tunic pulled over his horn, shading his face, but aside from a few sweat stains along his barrel he seemed unbothered by the heat. Not so soft as she’d feared, then.

The green line on the horizon slowly grew. It swept out to either side, crawling up the distant mountains which barely contained it. Giant thunderheads churned overhead, white as cotton on top and dark as slate beneath. They roiled the sky like waves. As the day wore on and the afternoon faded to dusk, the clouds flashed with heat lightning. Muffled thunder, distant and uncertain, rolled across the plains toward them.

“Those are… clouds? They’re huge,” Hyperion ventured during one of their short watering breaks. He squinted at the bright sky. “They’re larger than the mountains.”

“Real clouds are, yeah.” Foxglove took a sip from her canteen. “Pegasi keep them away from the kingdom. Say they’re dangerous.”

“I believe it. Think it’s going to rain on us?”

Foxglove glanced at the grass around them. It was dry and yellow and showed no signs of recent watering. “I doubt it.”

“Huh.” He stared at the blazing clouds for another moment, then resumed his walk.

In time, the prairie gave way to stands of short birch trees braced against the winds. As they drew closer to the Wildlands, the dry grass began to green, growing taller with each mile until it brushed against their bellies where the trail narrowed. Other trees – dusty poplars and olives – joined the birch in woods that stretched across acres before giving way once again to the grasses. Swallows darted between the islands, twisting in flight to snap up invisible insects.

They made camp for the night in a dusty bowl beside the path. Long ago it might have been a pond, but years in the baking sun had reduced it to cracked dirt and stones. They spoke little and only on practical matters. She resolved to stay up later than him, and wake earlier, but at some point while staring at the stars, waiting for him to fall asleep on his pile of blankets, sleep stole her away.

He was already up when she woke. She scowled at the empty bundle of blankets across the dead fire pit.

* * *

They walked for nearly an hour before the sun finally broke over the horizon. The land around them could no longer credibly be called a prairie, but neither yet a forest. The trees were too short, their crowns disconnected from any inkling of a canopy. Ahead of them, the green line that signified their destination had long since grown into a brooding shadow over the horizon. The rising sun seemed unable to touch it.

“How much further, do you think?” Hyperion asked after they forded a small brook that cut across the path. They were the first words he’d spoken since they broke camp.

Foxglove shook a bit of mud off her rear leg. “Not much. An hour, maybe.”

“How will we know when we’re actually in them?”

She couldn’t help but laugh. A quick bark, without humor. “Trust me, prince. We’ll know.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“It is.” Foxglove looked up. The thunderheads had fled, but the taste of ozone remained in the air. “It’s unmistakable. My first time here, with Wheat Husk… I’d heard his stories, but nothing prepares you for it.”

Silence, except for the crunch of leaves beneath their hooves. The path shrank to little more than a dirt trail, broken by washes and littered with fallen branches. No one came out to tend it, she guessed.

“It’s free,” she continued. “That’s the best way to explain it. None of our order or harmony or laws apply inside. Magic runs wild, touching everything. It has no day or night or seasons, just a perpetual twilight, whether the sun or the moon is overhead. You might like that part, I suppose.”

He cleared his throat. “I might have misspoken on that.”

“Mhm.”

The trail passed through a copse of black cherries and willow, and when they emerged a wall of trees, tall as titans, greeted them.. Their crowns rose hundreds of feet overhead, woven all together and forming a canopy like night. Within the forest beyond, spears of sunlight broke through, forming golden pillars in the fog. Dark, verdant shadows, rimmed with shoots and vines and thorns, spilled out from between the trees, grasping the earth like claws.

They stopped. Hyperion tilted his head back, back, back to see the highest branches above.

“This… this is the Wildlands?”

“Yes.” Foxglove swallowed. The world swam, and fifteen years vanished, and she stood in this same spot with Wheat Husk’s giant form by her side. He laid a reassuring hoof on her back as she trembled.

She blinked, and the vision vanished. Hyperion stood by her side, and she was a grown mare, and Wheat Husk dead in his grave. But the forest was the same. Not a leaf seemed different from her memories.

“Okay, listen.” She waited for his attention. “I need you to stay with me in there. Assume everything is dangerous unless I say otherwise. Don’t eat anything, even if you think you know what it is.”

He nodded. “Very well.”

“That’s it? No arguments?”

“You’re the expert here, Foxglove. I’m not so foolish to pretend I know this place.”

“Huh. Well, good.” She licked her lips. “Ready?”

“No. Does it matter?”

“Not really. Come on.”

They followed the path between the trees into the Wildlands. Into the mad, bleeding heart of nature.

They stepped into the land of night.