Healing Properties

The mist permeated everything, even the inner sanctum of the temple. However, Princess Lotus Blossom merely dribbled the holy water from the ladle, and the answering steam billowed and banished the intruder.

Encircling her, the villagers sat in row after row of redwood pews. Outside the temple, their coats had been matted and limp, their manes tangled and knotted, their eyes blackened and bloodshot at the same time.

The poor souls, she thought. Always in the fields or in the dark forest. Even those colts and fillies. Even those wrinkled old nags. Beside her, the earth pony chief of the village chanted under his breath, his ceremonial headband gleaming white in the murk.

She liked to think it was an open community. Pegasi sat side-by-side with griffons, unicorns chanted with mules, donkeys shuffled to make room for the cows and the sheep. Her own tiara was nowhere here. In this place, she wore only the headband.

She just wished they didn’t keep giving her the golden one. Gold silk cost a fortune out here, far more than the village itself could ever afford in a century. In between her bending down to scoop up more water, she cast a suspicious sidelong glance at the chief.

Below their hooves, the spring was clear and still.

In her youth, she’d marvelled at the way any splash on its surface soon settled down, though not after the chief had hurriedly whispered to her not to do that again. Princess Lotus Blossom scooped up more water, turned her head, and watched it sparkle as she tipped it over the hot coals.

As she watched, the steam smothered the villagers. Skins were smoothed down and gleamed with sweat. Manes became sleek and shining. Their eyes brightened and the skin around them newborn and stretchy again as they blinked in surprise.

No one smiled. There was no law against it. But you weren’t serious if you smiled.

Finally, the chief finished his chanting. As one, the congregation jerked awake. Some were still shaking off the trance, but most of the others were already filing quietly out of the rear entrance, which squeaked as the pinewood weighed down upon the rusting hinges.

No one spoke. In her heart, Lotus Blossom nodded with approval at this solemnity. It was serious. But no one nodded, so she refrained from doing it too.

Now this is what life must be for me. Who cares if Dobazhanask is just another peasant village? We are all children of Spatsa here. The temples of the body must be preserved.

She filed out alongside them, the chief holding back so she wouldn’t be the last to leave. Lotus’ face twitched with irritation. Some of these old-timers were so set in their ways. But one had to make allowances.

Under the grey and beige stratus and stratocumulus that was the smothered sky, the mud streets were churned with a hundred cartwheels. Ponies respectfully waited in a line on their side, dull eyes barely noticing the back-and-forth of timber and hay bales.

One colt saw the roads clear and began to stumble forwards.

“Ahem!” snapped Lotus.

The colt stotted with shock and snagged on her glare. He scurried backwards.

Opposite them, the one donkey nodded and flicked his sign around. Where he’d been holding a red circle on a stick, now he held the green circle. In an orderly queue, the ponies ambled and shuffled across the road while the drivers either side waited with stiff backs and heads held high.

And Lotus Blossom, in spite of all precedent and decency, flashed a small smile. Silly youth. I hate ponies who don’t obey the laws, even the new ones.

It is strange, I understand. But order is as precious as the temple of the body. It too must be preserved.

On the opposite side of the mud road, her carriage stood waiting, the only one the village would ever see in its life. Pine trees surrounded the village. Without any conscious intervention, she settled into the plush seat and dreamed the next few hours away, staring out at the fencepost trunks that never ceased to guard her country.

***

By contrast, the throne hall was a village without a village. In expanse and ornamentation, it was enough for a settlement, populated by vases and tapestries and helix columns of gold, ebony, and sapphire. Columns stretched away all around, pretending to be trunks in a forest much too colourful and spaced-out to pass muster.

Two thrones loomed under the mosaic of dragons and tigers chasing each other around a globe. Both were silver and covered with more crescents and stars than a magician’s cape. Several metres away, Lotus Blossom stood over the kneeling cushions, watching them as expressionlessly as she dared.

King Sacred Fig stirred in the one on her right. A clerk scratched quill against scroll beside him, but with a wave of his hoof, he sent the servant away. Lotus listened to the clatter of hooves on the marble before the grand doors slammed together.

“They have simply overlooked us,” he said, and his regal voice – trained by years of practice – carried around the hall and came up like an obedient army sounding off behind her.

“Overlooked us? Father!” Lotus ignored her own growling echoes; each one made her sound more vicious than she felt, which suited her fine either way. “We are one with the Slavikovsky Union! Yet ask an Equestrian what they know about us, they’ll say we have a funny accent and live in cabins in the woods! The ‘Slave Nation’, they call us! It is a studied insult!”

Queen Holy Lime raised a hoof to stifle a yawn. Bangles jangled on her limb. Lotus – who’d sooner eat fresh deathcap mushrooms than wear anything made of metal – cringed at the sound.

“Nevertheless,” said her mother from the throne on her left. “Hundreds of years of peaceful trade buoy our nation. You must accept this.”

“You are forbidden from consorting with the peasants any longer,” said her father. “It’s time you learned the proper ways of royalty, especially given your history. We won’t give you a tablet of peace and prosperity just to see you smash it on the tiles. It’s time you learned leadership.”

Lotus did not tremble and grind her teeth. Too many lessons with her tutors had sternly talked that habit out of her.

It wasn’t even the issue. In truth, Equestrians were just a bunch of wishy-washy types with enough heart between them to pump the world’s rivers, yet only enough brain to fill a thimble. But her parents’ voices had always been mere echoes to her.

She was an only daughter. Her own bargaining chip. And she’d be damned before she was told not to go to the village. At least there she saw more faces in a second than she saw in a year here.

“Forbidden like the last three hundred times?” Lotus stuck her nose up in the air. “I see what your leadership does to ‘the peasants’. Growing fat on their grains and fruits while they have only the healing springs to tide them over. Most of them have never set a hoof outside the village.”

“You have to see the big picture,” insisted her mother, but both parents slumped in their thrones. She always won. It was only a matter of time.

“Oh, I shall!” Lotus barked a laugh. “I shall see the great Study Stables of the Great Spatsan City. None of these dead mare’s rules. A living ethics, for a change.”

Both her parents wrinkled their noses. “Moral philosophy?” they groaned in unison, and the armies groaned with them.

“Yes!” Lotus nodded, in complete defiance of her own screaming brain.

She wasn’t sure why her blood raged and frothed and made her refuse to kneel before them. They certainly had never shouted at her, or raised a whip at her, or even told her anything worse than that a princess could do better. She could do better. She knew it. But as soon as she heard them say it, the thought turned to bile and poison in her stomach.

The world does not rest on laws. It rests on rules. The deep rules, as sure and certain as the earth ponies’ power lies buried in the bedrock. And I will find them. I must.

***

Twenty years ago, the filly Lotus Blossom squealed her way out of the tuition chamber, her latest unicorn music teacher levitating her ear just an inch high enough to force her onto the tips of her hooves. As soon as she’d been led down the corridor, she wept and wished she hadn’t been stupid enough to correct him. She’d done something wrong. She just wasn’t sure what.

Ten years ago, the young mare Lotus Blossom marched sullenly out of the college’s main hall, ignoring the stern lecture of her pegasus and wondering why she had to listen to yet another class about how great and noble the five-hundred-year-old war had been. She’d been caught reading some ancient war poetry under her desk. Forbidden war poetry. She knew why it was forbidden – not enough “Hail Spatsa!” and too much “Oh my gosh he’s bleeding!” – so she looked upon her tutor with utter hatred ringing in her ears, drowning out every word.

Now, Princess Lotus Blossom burst out of the Stable’s grand entrance, the unicorn porter hurrying after her with her levitating suitcases. Cruising in the servant’s wake, the archchancellor peered down his beard at her and harrumphed from the topmost steps.

“It is only in your interests, Princ – Lady Blossom,” he said. “Don’t think of it as a punishment. Think of it as a pre-emptive correction that will serve you well in your future political life.”

Lotus spun round, jaw gaping. A thousand words fought for control of her tongue, but all they achieved in the scrum was a tremble.

“But –” she managed. “But –”

“No, I’m afraid you’ve done this one too many times for ‘but’,” replied the archchancellor, patting down his robes with a hoof. “I would’ve thought having your own private tuition chamber would have been serviceable.”

I didn’t want to be in a private tuition chamber! Do you not understand? I want to see other faces, I want to hear someone speak who is sitting beside me. I want you to get rid of these infernal servants you keep foisting upon me!

“I’m terribly sorry, Your Highness,” continued the archchancellor. He shook his head and creased his bushy brows at her. “A fine young lady like yourself – only natural you’d discover, well, as you grow older – but it won’t do for a future monarch, I fear. The eyes of the world are upon us. You must lead by example, or learn by example.”

She ignored the rest of his speech, which followed her as she shambled across the gravel path towards the iron gates. In her mind, the courtyards of the Stables, the great fountain, the clock tower where she’d set up her papers and read quietly under the midday tolling bell… all of it vanished.

Real faces! Voices! Smiles! What a place the Stables had been. Amid the seas of deontology and the fields of virtues and the crowd of Pegasine chroniclers and their jaundiced texts, actual souls who laughed and chatted and ran about under the sun yelling idiocies at each other. She’d sat outside the brick walls of the sunflower gardens and simply curled up, watching them at play even through the killing snows of winter.

And one day, alone in her royal dormitory with portraits and vases and tapestries and a crackling fire for company, she’d gotten up and stridden out of the door. How her heart had leapt into her mouth. Down the stone corridors. Towards the stallion who’d seemed to laugh and smile and shout the loudest.

Barely ten minutes later, the archchancellor had burst into the dormitory, out of breath, while the stallion lay face-down on the fiery sofa. She’d barely begun to slather the soothing oil onto his back. His muscles had been tensed with worry. He was still telling the opposite wall about how his parents wanted him so badly to become a physician like his forefathers.  The poor devil.

“Again!?” the archchancellor had boomed.

So barely five minutes later than that, she’d fumbled her way into her seat opposite the desk while the archchancellor had patiently and with much regret explained that she was jeopardising her future for the last time, and so he’d take it away from her.

“A pity too,” he’d said. “Some moral philosophy is what we need in this country. But one must lead by example.”

I’ll show you an ‘example’, was her first thought when the gates slammed shut.

Her second was that she’d  like to ransack the City Library of required texts on her way out. No one was going to come between her and the Dialects of Przewalski the Hedonist, for a start.

***

“Yes,” she said for the umpteenth time.

It was barely a sunrise after the iron gates had closed on her forever, but the spires and blocks of the Great Spatsan City burned as brightly as her new mind, and she’d marched along dozens of cobbled streets to the main spire in the Administration Station. Five polite requests and three stern demands later, she was standing before another desk, eyeing up three clerks who backed off a few inches when she smiled at them.

“I will set an example,” she said sweetly, and but for the shadow in her eye and the gleam in her bared teeth, they might have broken ranks and smiled back. “So I will help those parts of the Union that also set an example. Spatsa needs its representative.”

One brave – or suicidal – clerk leaned forwards again. “Um,” she said. “You have come to the right place, have you not, Your Highness?”

“I read the sign above the door, yes,” she said. “Why? This is, after all, the ‘Spatsan Company, Tyrannus Extremis’, yes?”

The name had caught her eye. Among the scrolls she’d piled up in her lodgings, “The Complete Works of Tyrannus Extremis” still told her that “the ultimate basis, for all talk of morals, and principles, is, a common understanding, of the greater good, the right of which, the greatest among us, must see for those who are blind”. Commas had not been as crucial back then, she figured, as an ultimate basis. Exactly what she needed.

“Uh, very well.” The second clerk coughed and adjusted her collar. “I mean, after all, the Great Spatsan City is a most free-thinking place. I suppose… well…”

Lotus’ face went blank. Until now, she’d just assumed that playing, smiling, and so on were simply yet more local traditions. While it was true they weren’t serious ones, and therefore not ones she intended to take beyond a few years of study before leaving, nevertheless… Well, they had to be traditions of a sort. No fool would do that sort of thing without good reason. Otherwise, it’d be a mockery of the whole enterprise of society.

“Do you have any experience on a military frontier, Your Highness?” asked the third clerk, who was a little faster than the others.

“No,” Lotus said, and for once she felt a twinge of uncertainty as she said it. Hastily, she added, “But I have had much experience overseeing the rituals of Spa and Sauna. That makes twenty years at over a hundred temples and as many healing springs.”

“Hm,” said the first clerk. “There’s a point. We could always do with more medics in the Company.”

“Yes,” whispered the second, “but this is royalty we’re talking about –”

“I can hear you,” said Lotus, and she barely nodded when they flinched. She could not approve of them openly. That would not be being serious. “Listen to me. I am only a princess now. It is an ancient tradition for royalty to come and live among the…” Desperately, she sought for a better word, but her mind shrugged at her. “Common ponies, at least from time to time.”

“Yes,” said the first, “but those are bedtime sto – ow!”

Lotus blinked at him, fluttering her long eyelashes like the wings of a butterfly.

“Pardon my confused friend,” said the third, pausing to rub his leg under the table. “Of course, we would be more than happy to accommodate someone with such an enviable track record. The sacred sites are nothing to sneeze at, naturally.”

“You kicked – ow!”

“Yes…” She threw the thought out of her head. Presumably, kicking ponies under the table was some kind of foreign custom. “We are all members of the Union. I wish to prove my worth as a medic. From what the… common ponies say on the street, there is trouble in Magjeney Haatan.”

The first clerk opened his mouth, and then hastily fell silent at the glare the third one shot at him. Between them, the second clerk wiped her brow.

“Your Highness –” she began.

“‘Lotus Blossom’ will suffice,” said Lotus.

“Very well. Lotus Blossom, please understand. Magjeney Haatan is not the best place for you at this time. There’s talk of raids and… I mean to say, it’s right on the fringes of the Equestrian territories.”

“Good.” Lotus Blossom had just enough self-control to stop the frown mid-crease. “I will go there directly. You will not regret this.”

“You might,” muttered the first clerk, and then yelped at another kick under the table.

***

The sky burned golden with the setting sun. Beneath the searing circle, another sun shimmered in the gilded sea. Winds rushed over Lotus’ sleek locks, salt pricked her nostrils, and the never-ending hiss of the bow waves slid through the ears like the applause of foals.

Her forelegs resting over the rails, she watched wave after wave wipe across the surface, and saw them change nothing. Sunset sky was still aflame. Seas stretched onwards to a horizon beyond sight or reach. These joys stoked embers in her chest before, silently dimming under the shifting shadows, they left her with only the freezing drifts of mental snow.

I am going to die, she thought. Steam, oil, pounding hooves: none of that will do anything against Equestria. They are not as weak as we think.

Her time in the Study Stables brought back new whispered conversations she’d heard behind aisles of shelving. Printed sheets called newspapers lay on the students’ tables. Her tutors from years before had told her the same things: the glories of Spatsa, the peacetimes of the Union, the boring “begats” of the old empires and how they’d passed on writing and pottery. Yet among these students, Equestria was legend. It was a hundred times bigger than even the Union. They had a Celestial Princess too, who could crush countries and flame entire cities, or so they said. Their maps had been much bigger than any she’d seen back at her palace home.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” said a voice beside her.

Lotus’s memory stirred. The words had not been spoken in Spatsan. This was Tshekhovian. Her tutor had drilled her on verb conjugations for hours and hours…

Focusing, she replied, “Today is a good day for a bumper crop.” In truth, she only understood the idiom, not the words, but the gist of it rang true to her.

She turned to see the other pony leaning over the rails. No one else was on deck. The mare’s coat was pink, yet her mane was a bushy heap of curls and she, most unusually, had no cutie mark on her flank. Her pasterns bulged with a thousand weights, and her eyes were slightly sunken.

Lotus almost beamed. But no. If she was what she looked like, then this Tshekhovian was the spiritual sister of the villagers of Dobazhanask.

“Ah,” said the stranger, and to Lotus’ surprise, a smile bloomed without shame on the mare’s face. “You hail from the old country?”

“No.” Feeling stupid, Lotus added, “But we are all brothers and sisters of the Union, my friend. We deserve a better life, free from all the petty squabbles and hide-bound politics of the old countries.”

Yet the mare blinked at her. Oh dear. What have I done now? Broken a rule of etiquette? Insulted her by being too familiar? I knew “brothers and sisters” was too informal.

To her astonishment, the mare squealed with delight, clapping her hooves together so fast they were a blur. “Well said! Your tongue is like a sword wielded by a unicorn master! We’ll show those Equestrians, won’t we? A new life! A less rainy future! That’s what I’ve always dreamed of!”

For the first time in weeks, Lotus felt the ice cracking inside her mind. Perhaps she does not know who I am. Intriguing…

The mare gestured to the main quarters, a veritable mansion topped by the glass shield of the bridge. “Would you like to join me for supper? We could talk about our old lives together.”

Lotus’ heart stiffened with shock. “I am sorry. We do not do that where I come from. It is not… serious. I’m afraid I am only here to serve my ultimate purpose, not to make friends. I am sorry. It is how it is done.”

Yet the mare’s ears drooped so low that she was moved to add, more sincerely and less stiffly, “I’m s-sorry. Perhaps you would like to join me in admiring the sunset, my cheerful friend?”

Too informal, she thought with a grimace, yet the mare nodded her head and turned her gaze back to the melting gold beyond.

“They say the Celestial Princess controls the sun and the moon,” said the mare.

“Ha! Mere propaganda spread by the Equestrians, I think. You will see. If there is such a pony, she is a mortal being like us. I’d love to find her out and drag her into the light for all to see.”

Stupid bravado, she thought irritably, yet as soon as she glanced at the mare, she was met with a stare shining with stars.

“No one will even dare to say that in the sleeping quarters,” the mare breathed with awe. “You must be very brave.”

Lotus peered out across the waves. In the distance, dark slithers of shadow splashed. Dolphins, she thought at once. Smart, yet free. Speaking and thinking with those gigantic brains, yet free to roam the entire world.

“What is your name, friend?” she whispered, and dared herself to inch closer.

Giggling, the mare replied, “My friends call me Aloe Vera. Pleased to meet you…?”

Suddenly, Lotus was faced with a hoof thrusting towards her. She paused, staring at it, shocked at this flagrant breach of etiquette. Familiarity, and with a princess no less!

But… on the other hoof… nevertheless… No archchancellors. No tutors. No parents looking down at her from thrones.

She flashed a smile and met hoof with hoof. Warmth coursed through her leg. Firmly, she shook it up and down once.

“Lotus Blossom,” she said.

***

Darkness enclosed the desk. Beneath the sputtering candle, the oil of the wick gleamed. Orange paper glowed, the desk glowed like baking bread, and even her forelimbs seemed greyer under the clash of blue fur and flickering flame.

Outside the timber room, the blasts of thunder echoed. Grains of dust drifted down from the ceiling. A few shouts made her lift her head up, and then she shrugged and continued writing, her neck jittering under each slight flick of the quill.

The officers had assured her there was nothing to worry about. Raids and assaults like this happened all the time. They rarely resulted in casualties, since the pegasi were quick to snap up ponies on the ramparts of the fortress before any serious lightning balls hit them. Cannons and catapults crashed under the hooves of charging earth ponies, and unicorns easily unhooked grappling hooks and clamping siege ladders before pushing them back down. By the third week, it had become no more remarkable than the early morning breakfast at the communal trough.

Occasionally, she broke off and tapped the edge of some copper coins nearby.

“If one wishes to find material for mockery,” she scrawled in shining ink, “one can do no worse than sit and wait for the real world to provide ample supply.”

Truthfully, she wanted to scratch out the silly affectation. She only did it because she’d been reading those library texts so often. Tyrannus Extremis had been a shockingly insightful mare. Lotus could only shuffle along in her shadow.

“Take life in the villages of Spatsa,” she continued, while outside hooves thundered by and armour shuddered. “The peasants” – she shot herself full of hatred at the sight of the word, but sheer momentum forced her to write on – “are told to pay more taxes, to work before dawn and after dusk, to be put in stocks for looking at any higher citizen in any way, and to sell or be spent.”

If only she could become a Queen. If only she could pass new laws, new ideals, new traditions to uphold. If only anyone actually cared about royalty anymore.

Times were treacherous, though. Ponies looked elsewhere for the head of the comet. They would trail after it.

Oh, ponies in suits and brass buttons and silver horseshoes were off the radar too. They were as rare on the streets of the Great Spatsan City as chickens, but it was no good looking to them. The Lords and Ladies were looked upon more as a historical curiosity than anything else, like a cabinet full of fine china no one likes but which no one wants to throw away.

No. Much as it cracked her straining mind to bear it, the weight of all her years there pressed down on her. Ordinary-looking ponies, rarely wearing more than the odd bow tie or frilly saddle: smiling, laughing, playing in the sun. Yet they ate the crunchy hay fries and bowls of seasoned oatmeal. From what little she’d heard them say, they just assumed everyone ate like that. Even the villagers. The ones she had to dip in the sacred spring to stop their bones poking through.

Lotus looked down at the paper. She didn’t dare write this down. That was Not Done.

Besides, if she thought that about the old country, what was she supposed to think about Equestria?

On her third day at the Study Stables, she’d found the library and looked up, over the desk, to see a map sprawled across the back wall. The word “EQUESTRIA” spread across half of it. At the time, she’d merely cocked her head in puzzlement before going on to apply for a card.

On her last day, she’d been heading out with saddlebags bulging and looked back, over the desk, to glare at the word.

By all accounts, it was a largely decent country. No major wars, decent healthcare, educational standards highest in the known world. Something about that made her blood boil.

And then a few Spatsan villagers, fed up with the latest hike in taxes, had floated on a raft over the sea and set up a few driftwood tents, and been told the next day that they couldn’t do that. The old Union, tied to its customs, would have shrugged and let Equestria get on with it. The new Union, however, had Ideas. It was coming out of the Dark Ages. Its citizens took to the streets, or so she’d read in the archives.

Sentimental nonsense, of course. Those Ideas were only fads. The ultimate basis was still the same, if only she knew what it was. But it seemed she could only know it when she saw it.

Dipping her quill into her inkwell, she scrawled “Aloe Vera” on the note, beamed, and ignored the next trickle of dust when a cannonball exploded outside.

***

Blue skies blazed over them. Pegasi zipped away. On their right, the rounded mountains ebbed and flowed. On their left, the vast sea watched, enthralled.

Gravel crunched under their galloping hooves. The Royal Guard fled. Unicorns kicked up grit, some without helmets or with bits of barding missing. Pegasi flapped limply, some with only one wing while the other hung uselessly by their side.

Behind them, the orange chainmail and grey helmets of the Tyrannus Company surged as a sweeping bow across the beach. No trees, nothing but moss grew on the island, and yet it gleamed with the recent rains. More of the company poured down from the mountains behind. Shattered timber smoked on the slope, and the toppled flag boasted a pair of winged unicorns forever circling the Earth. Black stains covered the fabric. Ponies in orange chainmail trampled it.

Among them, white tunic flapping and white headband tight across her head, Lotus Blossom screamed and beamed at the enemy. Alongside her, Aloe Vera squealed and smiled.

They skidded to a halt on the beach, kicking up a plume of dust and sand. Strapped across Lotus’ back, the pole slid forwards under its tight rope. The folded orange flag bristled against the sea breeze.

Yes! Lotus whooped and stamped all four of her hooves in excitement. We have captured another island! Beautiful! Excellent work!

Never would she dream of getting close to the actual fighting. Amid the cries of pain and the flying blasts of white spells, she’d kept her head down and galloped.

They always said that it didn’t matter; the white tunic of the medics meant the Equestrians were honour-bound to leave her alone. It was drafted after some previous war, or something. Besides, medics were fine for the enemy; they weren’t allowed to buck or curse or dive-bomb anyone, regardless, so it was a waste of time shooting them.

Still, Lotus trusted her hooves more.

Her bulging saddlebags shook while she reached back and untied the pole. Aloe watched her. She wore the orange chainmail of the foot soldiers, and every instinct in Lotus’ head screamed at her to get back into the charge. Nevertheless, Lotus never said a word.

Water sloshed in her bags. She brought the flagpole round while the rest of the company charged onwards.

“Right on the beach,” she murmured, “where every ship approaching us can see it.”

“Oh, this is so good!” Aloe drummed her four hooves against the pebbly beach. “I think we will call this place New Tshekhovia! Or maybe you would like New Spatsa?”

“I don’t mind.” Lotus unfurled the flag itself. “Think of what we could do with this place once the Equestrians leave. Military base. Central headquarters. Company outpost.”

“New schools! New houses! New farmland so we can feed our children!”

“No, my friend. Once we fight to earn this place, we’ll have to fight some more to keep it.” At Aloe’s drooping ears, however, she added, “One day, we will be safe enough to create new futures here, my friend. Fear not.”

They both blushed and didn’t make eye contact. Lotus knew about Aloe’s views. She seemed to think the future was soft and fluffy. In a strange way, Lotus found herself attracted to that. Yet she wished, deep down, that Aloe would wake up sometimes.

After she’d raised it up, the orange flag fluttered. A unicorn, an earth pony, and a pegasus chased each other around the blooming lotus flower, a spiked explosion of pure petals and pink streaks.

Damned Equestrians. Tell us what to do, will you?

Hope flooded her chest as the three ponies quivered in anticipation…

And then her leg screeched. A glowing aura seized her left forelimb and zapped it off the flagpole, sending the flag crashing to the beach. Aloe shouted her name, she spun from the shadow of the mountains to the scorching glare of the sun-reflecting sea, and then the curse bit into her and she tried to shout her way out of her mouth.

Spinning round again, she saw the unicorn on the ridge raise his smoking horn. Two pegasi from the Tyrannus Company shot across and tackled him. Stones bounced down and skated across the mossy slope to tumble around her.

Lotus gritted her teeth and fell onto her chest. Sharp stones jabbed into her sternum. Her right hoof flailed for the saddlebags, now suddenly an inch too far away. Sparkling magic buzzed up and down her cursed left limb. Hornets of golden magic stung the skin, whips of light slashed at her joints, and a binding force almost cracked her hoof.

Spring water doused the pain. Cool shock ran through her.

She glanced up in time to see Aloe drop the saddlebag. The vials tumbled out, glass cracked, and spring water slopped onto the pebbles. Lotus opened her mouth to curse the mare for her clumsiness when the pain stung again.

Groping all the way, she dragged herself inches closer to the saddlebag and rummaged around inside. Any attempt Aloe made to lift anything out resulted in Lotus batting her away with a hiss.

Thank you, she thought, but she refused to say it.

***

Lotus Blossom lay on the bed, fuming. Her injured leg stuck out straight to the side, bound from pit to hoof wall in dark green seaweed. Occasionally, she twitched and gritted her teeth.

How much longer is this going to take!? Her brain fought not to eat itself alive. She’d been staring at the same timber walls, the same empty beds lined up either side of hers, and the same dim glow of the windows casting themselves across the room.

Days? Weeks? It could have been months, for all she knew.

Every muscle in her legs itched to get back onto the beach, which was now miles away across barren plains and barren sea. They could have allowed her. She could, if she’d been so disposed, have ordered the ponies to do it. But the mere idea of throwing around princess rights made her squirm. That move would be like reaching for a crutch.

Once more, Lotus stared at her bound limb.

They used to say in the village of Dobazhanask that invisible demons could sneak into a magical wound and make it fester. That was why all but the best physicians could still lose one patient out of three. Most of the time, she scoffed and smirked at the idea, but on nights in the dark forest, when the void was full of monsters of the imagination, and she’d picked up twigs and sticks illuminated under her firefly lantern, when the timberwolves howled and the soul owls hooted and screeched, she’d never let go of the light…

The door squeaked open. Aloe Vera slipped in, her back laden with piles of seaweed and a basket rimmed with dribbles of mud.  Her face was tight, eyes stretched wide, mouth a slit, jaw clenched against it.

Wordlessly, she placed the items onto the bedside table and unwound the seaweed from her leg. Lotus looked instead at the square of daylight creeping up the far wall of the room.

Bless Aloe, but she’d been quick even back then. As soon as Lotus had spat out grit and sand, and shouted “SEAWEED!” in Tshekhovian, the mare splashed into the shallows and dredged up a tangle of shiny ribbons and one puzzled crab. Sadly, she’d brought Ichalovian Weed instead of the more traditional Joungir variety, but lying on the beach with her limb screaming at her, Lotus had snatched at it with teeth and one good foreleg. She’d be darned if anyone was going to dress her injuries. Her, the medic.

Oh, I bet they love that one, she thought, biting down hard at the mere idea. The medic needing medicine. How we are laughing.

For that was the strange thing about living among the huts and cabins and watchtowers of the fortress. No one ever smiled at her. Oh, the officials showed her some polite imitations, but laughing huddles fell silent whenever she turned the corner.

Blasted Tshekhovians, she thought. They know.

Buried under all this, some small part of her added, You should be dead by now. That spell was no ordinary pony magic. Someone was guiding that unicorn’s horn. I wonder who, and why they went for me.

Not that she’d find out. The prisoner was sitting in a jail somewhere on the fortress, and by all accounts had refused to say a word. He was already looking at life imprisonment; firing a spell on an obvious medic was the last thing he’d ever do on the battlefield.

“So…” murmured Aloe.

Lotus looked round in time to see the mud slathered up her exposed limb. Crackling yellow magic sank into the ooze. Pain stopped clawing all along the skin and hoof.

Aloe was a little too silent today…

“You know who I am,” said Lotus. Her mind slumped at the words, but the flicker of a frown betrayed Aloe at once.

And, if in the wonderfully quiet room, try to sleep… Old poetry rose up from Lotus’ inner chaos. But that was life, wasn’t it? Everyone in Spatsa knew it. You work the fields, and then a meteor flattens your forest to cinders.  There was no sense to it.

Looking at Aloe’s flickering glance, Lotus did not find that comforting.

“In my country,” said Aloe as though commenting on the bedsheets, “we no longer have a word for what you would call ‘princess’.”

No. But you do have a word for ‘banishment’. “Yes,” said Lotus to the face that refused to look at her, “Tshekhovia has always been a fascinating country. They are so full of life that they rally their own country folk, and then rally the rest of the Union. In its own way, Tshekhovia is a princess many miles wide.”

Aloe’s eyes flashed with such a flame of impatience that Lotus flinched on the bed. Suddenly, she could have been lying in a cot, waiting for a nursemaid or for a servant to come and levitate a spoon into her mouth, or to dress her in miniature versions of her mother’s robes…

“Do you hate me?” she said in a small voice.

Aloe shook her head, but refused to look up. However, her brow softened. She seemed strangely scared of the limb she was now wrapping with fresh seaweed.

“Listen,” snapped Lotus, already seeing the mare turn away and walk to the door, “I am still Lotus Blossom! I would be Lotus Blossom whether I was born in a golden cot or in a country ditch. You think you can look down on me!?”

“What? No, no…” Aloe met her gaze, and worry and fear flew up to her and shone against the black lie, revealing the strong contrast.

“Here, I am no damned princess, and you can stop pretending I am a stranger to you.”

“I never meant any of that! Of course not!” Both hooves, sticky with traces of mud, pressed around Lotus’ offered pastern. “You will be back on your hooves in no time. I follow your instructions exactly!” Glancing at the seaweed wrapping, she added, “I learn so much from you. There is more to a country than who is ruling it!”

Lotus did not speak; she realized she’d thrown herself forwards at some point. Muscles melting, she slid back down onto the pillow. Infernos raged inside her chest, beating against her stiff limbs.

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “We will see, Aloe. Don’t think I’m staying in this pit for long if I can help it.”

Unfortunately, a minute later Aloe mumbled an apology and said she had to hurry out. Lotus watched her go, and the infernos collapsed under the falling wreckage.

The silence poured in.

She sighed. Within her mind, thoughts, feelings, and anything else caught in the storm reached for weapons and armour. A battle of a different kind lurked inside the next few hours.

The wooden wall stared on. Aloe’s absence haunted her, even as the light dimmed and she faced hours against eyes that refused to sleep.

***

On the rainbow hues of the reflected sunrise, a winged shape drifted like a paper boat. Despite being a dot with bits sticking out either side, its helmet headcrest was enough for Aloe. There’d been plenty of sightings of this one flying over Dobazhanask and the neighbouring Grani woodlands and mountains. Azhdarcho, the sky terror.

Watching from the hill, Lotus ignored the shivers of the land wind rushing down to the beach. Even through the seaweed dressing and the white tunic, her leg stung with cold. Eyelashes quivered when she squinted harder.

Azhdarcho raised its swan neck and a bill a heron would’ve backed away from, and then flapped and splashed its way across the surface to throw itself into a soaring flight. Both crescent-shaped wings stiffened. Azhdarcho spiralled into the air, preparing to sling itself around and back to its home country, a mere few hundred miles away.

Lotus focused on the horizon, and saw the black sails.

From behind her, pegasi galloped up the hill and launched into the air. She watched them zoom ahead, soon turning into dots against the angry red sun. Overhead, Azhdarcho’s spiral settled into a circle.

Scavenger, she thought, and wrinkled her snout at it.

An out-of-breath donkey stumbled into view beside her; she swivelled her head as though on oily axles.

“Your Highness?” he said, blinking at her. “What are you doing out here?”

Behind him, a squadron of donkeys, mules, and unicorns tramped into view, weighed down beneath their orange barding. They skidded to a halt and gaped at her.

She shrugged and smirked. “I apologize for being so tardy, but Beachy Island had been a bit trickier than I’d thought. You know how it is, I imagine. Losing the use of my leg three weeks ago didn’t help very much, I imagine. Still, it rains on the dull and the dutiful, as they say.”

She’d checked a calendar on her way into the stock room, and then spilled a few rolls of bandages fumbling for the small window’s catch. There’d been no light. However, to someone who’d sneaked imported tofu stew out of the Study Stable larder, sneaking around and out of the fortress’ ward had been a piece of cake.

The squadron exchanged shrugs and grimaces of doubt. “Beachy Island?” a few of them muttered.

“It was my own little hiccup,” she said, waving a hoof dismissively. “Not important. Do you see that ship there, captain?”

Dutifully, the donkey saluted and then craned his neck. “Ah. Black sails.”

“Exactly. Looks like enemy number two has made an appearance at last.”

“But I thought they were stuck south of here. Too many griffon islands and defended straits and ice reefs that way.”

Lotus could feel the burning through her pupils, scorching the edges of the irises. “Apparently, they have become unstuck.”

Oleg pirates. No-good mercenaries. Forget the “yo ho ho and a bottle of rum” types. She braced her legs to charge. With any luck, the pegasi will take care of them. Pirates don’t take military training, after all. They prefer fighting targets that don’t fight back.

The donkey hummed at Lotus. “You sure you’re supposed to be out here, Your Highness?”

“I was discharged,” she lied, knowing full well a Spatsan was not going to question any further.

Of course, he turned back to watch the black sails growing closer. The dots of the pegasi now swung down left and right as though on pendulums. Out here, she could imagine the slash of scimitars and the thud of axes on golden timber trees; Oleg pirates loved flash over function.

A fresh pegasus landed before her. Lotus took in her ridiculous crimson cap, her ridiculous crimson jacket, and her utterly preposterous white breeches, and at once held out a hoof. From over the years and from the memory of a vast hallway of a classroom with the unicorn’s drone echoing at her from all angles, she recalled the rote lines of some otherwise forgotten history: Red and white, your mail’s all right; red and black, you must attack.

“Thank you,” said Lotus before the mare had finished her bob of the head, which looked like an attempt at head-butting the grass. Lotus held out a hoof, and curled the pastern over the proffered envelope.

The donkey captain’s voice rose and fell with confusion. “Mail on a battlefield? Are they orders?”

“Yes,” Lotus lied, and a little version of her giggled inside her own head.

Her teeth bit into the paper, and perfumed richness laminated the insides of her mouth. Despite the stiff leg she bore, she struggled to open the envelope. Folding that away and tucking it into the folds of her tunic, she held up the letter.

“She’s replied already,” she murmured. Stings prickled the edges of her eyes, but she glared until they got the message. Only one pony could know about her “miraculous” recovery.

In Tshekhovian, the letter said: “The curse has claimed her leg.

The fall was in my heart.

The struggle came from her fiery soul.

The rise will meet the dropping rain.”

Well, she’s no Colobo the Poetic, but at least she mentioned rain. It wouldn’t be a Slavikovsky Union poem if it didn’t mention rain at some point.

“Your Highness.” The donkey nodded towards the sails, and in spite of the hundreds of yards between them and under the rushing land wind, they could hear the faintest laughter and the clash of metal and the high notes of a shanty.

Stings crawled up Lotus’ leg. Hurriedly, she bit her lip hard enough to sting back. She couldn’t bend the leg, couldn’t move faster than a loping canter, couldn’t do more than dress a wound with the healing seaweed or pour spring water over a wound.

“What are we waiting for?” cried a unicorn from the back. “Set up the defences, you layabout Spatsans! Fetch the Pegasine Fire Catapults! Do something!”

Scattering soldiers churned up what had once been a pristine hillside. Lotus winced at the sounds of thundering hooves. They were running out of nature on the islands as it was. There was hardly any call to churn up more.

Shrieking defiance among their own shrieks, she galloped two yards before the pain smacked into her concentration and she smacked face-first into the soil. Clumps smothered her muzzle and sucked against her front legs and chest. Panic flashed by, burning under the rising infernos of fury.

Damned leg! she thought.

Everyone laughed when she loped onto the beach, bound leg held aloft like a bent beam. Even the Spatsans let out bursts of mirth before hastily hitting their own mouths. A red mist descended over her eyes.

They rushed around her, while she never took her eyes off the growing black sails and gilded hulls. Pegasus silhouettes dive-bombed the fleet. Across the sky, Azhdarcho circled onwards, nothing to the action and yet intimately tied to it.

More white tunics flashed around her. Lotus sat down for the next few hours and stewed while the arcs of fire went on without her, and the battle cries went on without her, and the pirate ships turned and sailed away, and overhead Azhdarcho flipped round and soared onwards without her.

I’m going home, she thought, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Stupid Beachy Island! What was I thinking!?

***

It was for her own good. It was for her own good. It was for her own good.

The disapproving looks around the table? A bad memory. The shouts and stern threats and calm and collected speeches? Mere echoes. The stench of fear and confusion and rage like a cocktail of manure, rotting fish, and bitter perfumes? Already faded away.

Around her was the box of the country manor. No matter that its balustrade had twirls and frills, its ceiling a painting of bearded unicorns through the ages, its door frame topped with a bronze symbolic owl, or its carpet the complex spirals and curves of royal purples and daisy yellows. She knew it was a box.

She sat on the carpet. She waited.

The flap squeaked. Envelopes flopped onto the mat. A few seconds later, she was on them, wincing at the bandages around her bad leg. The white fabric poked through the gaps in the seaweed binding.

She tore open the envelopes. She read the letters.

One contained a photograph of her parents, both sitting on their thrones, both smiling. The Queen was looking noticeably rounder about the belly.

So they finally did it. Yet her rebellious heart no longer heard the news she read in her mind. The King and the Queen were now a bad dream. Her parents, indeed. Ponies with lives as rich and textured as her own, she knew. But they were a bad dream.

Her leg twitched again. She sat on the carpet and waited. Every few hours, she got up to stretch, or to fetch a book, or to hunt down a spare pie or cake from the larder.

She reread the letter. Her parents’ smiles bespoke a new courage; their faces were ruddier, their eyes twinkling against the camera flash. The mere fact that they’d used a camera went against years of paintings and engravings and carvings.

Banished, she thought. Ha. Only after I’ve left. Nonetheless, her stomach writhed under the words of the letter. Worse, they’d been polite about it, “regrettably” informing her and “solemnly hoping” she’d understand and “expressing their gratitude” that she’d embraced her “new life”. Even when they were metaphorically throwing her out, they did so while literally wringing their hooves about it.

Banished. For my own good.

Outside the arched windows either side of the door, black smoke crossed the sky diagonally. From her seat, she could make out the tips of the factory chimneys. The mountain peaks had tree stumps and the odd pine, but then, this wasn’t Spatsa.

She wasn’t really sure what this place was. She knew its name – Flyagaric – but not the character. Not the brick and metal amid the hacked and slashed forests. Not its withering hedgerows fighting back, fighting against the encroaching dark rash, and scattering leaves everywhere. Not its soot-stained villages and coughing, soot-stained villagers.

Or maybe she did know them. Peasants worked on, after all. Grim-faced, tight-lipped, they worked on.

Her uncle was not in the manor, though he’d grunted in greeting and hurried out of her life days ago. In his own words, a Duke like him was excused manners on account of “dying”. He always said he was “dying”. He’d been saying it for decades, though once he had at least explained his philosophy to her, and then apologized. Lotus remembered her mind exploding like a dandelion clock in the face of his careful premises and logical arguments, and remembered the fluffy awe drifting through her mind long after she’d forgotten what, exactly, had blown her mind about it. Not a single argument survived: only the sense of being convinced.

Lotus watched the white skies above the smoke layer. They faded to midnight blue, and then bleached themselves again. The smoke never changed. To her astonishment, birds sang. She could hear the whistles and chirps through the glass.

What a chaotic place our Union is. Under the smoke and shadow, the peasants sow and reap, and work on. A viceroy throws a king off his throne, a warlord tears a city apart for a magical gemstone, and yet the peasants sow and reap, and work on. Chancellors bellow speeches about freedom, and build magnificent crystal cities that will capture the imagination of the entire world, and yet the peasants work on. Azhdarcho flies wherever it wants to, and yet still the peasants work on.

Our countries are chaos.

The flap squeaked. Envelopes flopped onto the mat.

This time, she kept very still. Because if she went forwards this time, she would flicker with hope, and the flicker would crackle and rustle its way to a blaze, and the only thing worse than a splash of cold reality was a tsunami of it smashing through such strong flames, thinning them to steam.

Nevertheless, that was how the colonies worked. She knew this. They darted into Equestria and then out, like foals goading a dragon from its cave entrance. They were waiting for flames and roars. They were facing dragons, not stupid tax rebates or the usual shower of grim news.

Flyagaric waited too, lurking under the smoke, biding its time.

Overhead, the bronze symbolic owl peered down at her. An owl, she thought, her eyes twitching. Why an owl? I know why an owl: to symbolize wisdom. Funny, when owls are the one bird of prey the royal falconers won’t touch. They’re too stupid to follow the simplest orders. Yet the owl looks wise, and so we have a bronze owl, and then we look for wisdom, and someone else sees the bronze owl and, for a sensible and easily understood artwork, casts another one. And then another artist sees that owl, and in the end, from reason comes insanity.

She groped for, and then picked up, the envelope with a hoof. She tore through it trying to get to the words inside.

Aloe’s perfume greeted her nostrils. For the first time since the previous letter, Lotus relaxed. A pink letter flopped onto the floor at her hooves. She bent down.

Having skimmed the curly writing, she hobbled over to the chest of drawers and opened one. The inside was padded with pink letters, and she added to their number.

Then she sat down and waited at the door. Outside, the sky brightened. The birds sang on.

***

Almost there, she thought after thirteen sunsets had passed.

She’d watched the first three through the manor’s barred windows. She’d watched the next two from the train’s windows before resting her head on the pillow provided. She’d missed the next five in the customs complex, stuck in darkness sans the candlelight and her scratching pen. Finally, she’d watched the next three from the mossy hilltops, staring out beyond the hazy mountains, while Aloe sat next to her and talked endlessly about stars.

Now, they missed the sunset. In here, their world was a timber prison with no windows. Yet Lotus oozed out across the long bench and felt the walls and ceiling exploding away, vanishing into the void, far away from anything she cared about.

At once, the scene transformed. Aloe flicked the switch, and lights from the ceiling created a new day. Dark timber became pastel-painted planks, bright and beaming skies. Steam hissed from pipes shaking about the edges and corners.

“Hm.” Lotus twisted her lips. “Very… modern.”

She suppressed a groan. A twinge of pain hit her leg.

“I remember what you say!” said Aloe. “All rituals and all skills! Like the salty hoof bath and how to squeeze the invisible demons out the muscles! I thought, after that, a lot of this material is waterworks. In Tshekhovia and neighbour countries, metal piping is waterworks. So I save time.”

Aloe strutted over to her, eyes wide and teeth bright with the grin. Lotus blinked; her friend’s eyelashes were longer, the mane was slicked back instead of a tangled mess, and the lemon yellow ribbon was an obvious ersatz of her own golden headband. As for her Spatsan, Lotus could still hear the tangs of Tshekhovian behind it, but Aloe ran the words about like a yipping puppy.

Lotus sighed. It was good, but it wasn’t because she was back. The punching and kicking had moved to the very coast of Magjeney Haatan, whereas here she could barely pronounce this place’s name, and hadn’t seen anyone about the fortress except clerks rushing with stacks of paper. Lotus made to get up, but a sharp glare from Aloe eased her back onto her stomach.

“Oh you!” Suddenly, the wide eyes and the grin were back, as was the puppy speech. “Always trying to prove yourself. Look at your leg! You fall over that, the whole world will laugh at you before sunset. Not the officers, though. Officers tell you off again.”

“Don’t remind me.” Hearing Aloe mangle Spatsan kept Lotus firmly on Tshekhovian turf. She just wished Aloe would get the hint, but the mare instead poured out oil onto her own hooves and rubbed them together, pausing only to spit the oil canister out of her mouth.

Lotus Blossom closed her eyes and whimpered. Perhaps now is a bad time to tell her I’ve never had one of these. Given them out, yes. Thousands of times. But to actually be weak enough to need one… no, not me, never. I should not have agreed to this.

“Why would they laugh?” she said. “They hate us that much?”

Aloe reached forwards and pressed her hooves into Lotus’ back, and at once the fear and shame rose to a crescendo of squeals – Lotus actually shook under a spasm of shock – before they drowned, and settled into the deep. She could relax again.

Had she really agreed to this? Barely seconds ago, it felt like. Aloe had taken one look at her and a spark entered her mind, just like it had done the first time they’d met. She’d just suggested it. Lotus had opened her mouth to refuse… and then closed it again.

Why not, after all? The ultimate basis said everyone was to be considered. That must, she reasoned, include her. Still, as she lay there, she couldn’t help fidgeting under the touch of hooves. It should have been the other way around, she was sure of it.

For the first time, she was aware of the contours of her own back. While hooves pressed deeply into and slid across her skin, she could sense every twisted lump like a stone in oatmeal. Bits of her tightened like strings, ready to snap.

“Wow!” said Aloe. “You are so tense! Is it really the case that you have not had a massage before?”

“I was busy,” spat Lotus. Suddenly, she was certain it was no one’s business.

“My my!” Aloe giggled and drew circles over the shoulders. “Not very lovable pony, are you?”

“Huh.” Yet Lotus kept quiet while the caresses rubbed along her back, leaving the clammy feeling of oil.

Like I need to be loved. Magjeney Haatan doesn’t need love. It needs ponies with strong hooves, quick brains, keen eyes. Equestria won’t like us whatever we do. Very well, then let us be disliked! At least when our enemies are honest, they’ll say we were good at what we did. Even if what we did was not good.

Even if we poke at a sleeping dragon. Even if we’re full of ponies from a dozen countries, none of which like the others. Even if we’re idiots and charlatans and dullards and cowards and brick walls. Even if we left home and burned the bridge we crossed leaving it.

Under the hooves, Lotus was sinking into the long bench. “Why did I come out here?” she whispered.

“Sorry?”

“Hm? Oh. Nothing. I was just thinking aloud, that’s all. It’s not… it’s not often I have a massage.”

Everyone read the papers, after all. There in black and white, written in a dozen languages, were the world’s thoughts. She could hear the mocking voice of the translators, though the translators hadn’t meant it that way. Upstart countries. Warmongers. Cantankerous busybodies.

Oh, is that so? Lotus bunched her muscles, pushing back against the hooves. An upstart? That’s what they call anyone who dares step forwards without being asked. Well, we’re not their puppets. I’ll proudly fight for what I believe in. Not like those backward, complacent, laissez-faire shells of nations.

They say there is a Celestial Princess? Let her be there. I will be the first to stand muzzle-to-muzzle with her, and I will tell her what I think of her soft country!

The last twinge of pain ebbed away and vanished. Her leg wouldn’t bend, but it had found the will. It would be stronger.

“I wish I was in Magjeney Haatan already,” she said. Her leg hit the bench, and stabs of pain ran through her. She hissed through her teeth. “I… ow… I hate doing nothing!”

“This is only a small stop,” said Aloe, and she paused to pat her on the withers. “I know your feeling. My comrades walked for long trying to get this far, and still no wonder city. There should be a new country. A better country, like another Tshekhovia. There will be. It is a matter of time.”

Pain ebbed away again. Lotus, at long last, allowed herself a smile. She has the will.

She melted under the press of hooves, limbs running over the edges. Aloe talked on and on about the stars in her country and the time she had to sow the same field three times and chase the crows away every night, and Lotus breathed it in deeply. She wished she had known the peasants better than just giving them steam and sacred bathing rituals. But at least they’d thought her worth having around. At least Aloe thought her worth talking to, instead of worth talking at.

I’m home, she thought.

***

The hooves of the pegasus pressed into her chest. Gales blasted her mane about her head. Squinting through the roars and howls, Lotus watched the whiteness below for any sign of movement.

To her right, Aloe squeaked. Her saddlebags bulged and creaked. Her white tunic flapped.

Both pegasi cleared the cloud cover, and Summit Island was there. A spike out of the sea, encircled by grey flatland, rising up as a black crag, topped by blinding snow. Specks pushed back and forth across it, some dark like a shadowed orange, some golden and gleaming.

One more island, thought Lotus, then we’re on to Magjeney Haatan. The prize.

Both pegasi dipped, and then the mountain island filled their immediate futures. That snowy cap became the icing on a monstrous gateau, cracked with grey and so inexpertly applied that black patches tore through. Specks now had flapping wings or shot sparks at each other. Soon, they clearly had wiggling legs. The whole thing shimmered; Lotus’ eye caught the faint purple tint of the dome shield.

She narrowed her eyes to slits. They sent a team of shield-class captains? No one unicorn could do that. They must be desperate.

“ALOE!” she shouted over the gales.

Rustling cloth preceded the “AHA!” Aloe drew her hoof out of the saddlebag, beaming across while still squinting. The golden headband glinted on her forehead.

“THROW!”

The lobbed jar tumbled amongst the gales, and then shattered. Crystal clear water splashed over the shield, which pulsed purple in shock. In its wake, the shimmering drew back. A puddle-shaped gap was left.

Aloe shot through first, and then Lotus felt the winds bunch and scatter as the edges of the shield whooshed past her. The air was clear.

Far below, but coming up fast, crags and ridges broke out all the way to the ivory tower. Shots burst across from the top of the tower, but simply screeched past behind Lotus’ courier. Orange-armoured unicorns huddled among the crags, staying out of range of the golden-armoured equivalents. Pikes rose up glowing along the enemy ranks.

Lotus felt the hooves break away, and she stretched out all four limbs and landed. Shock ripped through her limbs, up her torso, and across her face. She gasped and almost stumbled, but held position.

Oho, I can imagine the looks on their faces. Yet she didn’t bother looking behind her. That was not her job.

Her good leg straightened up. Her other leg clanked into place. A metal mesh ran across it, little iron pipes hinged around each of the joints, and there were no seaweed strips and no bandages. She flexed and stretched, chafing against her barrel where the metal caught the skin, but no sparks of magic appeared.

Aloe, you are truly a marvel. Only a Tshekhovian could take piping and put it on a leg. You beautiful genius, you. And that’s not all…

Five shots burned their way over to her. At once, she raised the metal-encased limb. Even now, the iron seared her with cold.

Five shots shattered and evaporated on impact. Lotus braced her legs for the pushback, but it was barely an inch.

Aloe galloped across to her side, though her hooves fidgeted and she was staring at one or two of the Royal Guards groaning on the ground. Her white tunic and golden headband meant she could stand in the open, though, provided she resisted the urge to kick.

Good. She’s learning too. OK. Let’s end this.

“Medic!” Lotus darted forwards, pretending to wince at each stamp of her leg. So long as they only think she is tagging along behind the real attacker, then she’s safe. See how their silly laws like that!

Aloe overtook her. Shots fired at her from hiding places to her left. She didn’t dare break her gallop.

Crags and spokes of rock cracked but didn’t shatter, and Lotus weaved between them, ignoring the sparks that evaporated as spells failed against stone. Stopping to raise the leg was all very well in theory, but the iron didn’t go any higher than her pit, and speed was of the essence.

A jar flew over the ridges. Aloe lowered her foreleg and they both barrelled on towards the four guards at the tower’s main gate. They saw the jar arc over. They heard the smash and burst of steam. They ignored the coughing and spluttering. As the pale mists ploughed into them, they bounced off grunting shadows and soon burst through into the dark hall.

Aloe was already up the stairs, more guards coming the other way. Her hoof vanished into her saddlebag. Seconds later, both guards clawed at the sticky brown goop piled on their faces before Lotus barrelled up the stairs, passed Aloe, and ploughed right on through. Both yelps ended with a thump; the stairs hadn’t come with rails.

Laugh at my country, will you? Think I’m some backward princess, do you? Here’s where Equestria learns, you arrogant supremacist pigs!

Two guards appeared round the bend, standing before a black door. Without even waiting, Lotus thrust her forelimb into Aloe’s saddlebag, tugging her back. Both unicorn guards raised their pikes. A blur: the binding seaweed spun around both pikes, whirled around the gasping guards’ necks, snapped tight, and dropped. Lotus gave each one a slight kick as she galloped through the door.

Five officers spun round. Five shots went for her chest.

She saw it at once; she couldn’t raise her iron leg to catch more than three –

Pink thrust itself past her and took the blasts in a white flare.

Glass shattered. Lotus barely had time to gasp before Aloe hit her face-first. Soon, the air was full of pink mist. Barely had she thumped onto the ground herself when Lotus heard the choking and thumps of five other bodies.

“Aloe!?” she said at once.

“I’m… not… dead…” murmured the voice into her chest. Warm puffs spread across her sternum with each word.

Lotus sat against the wall where she’d hit it. Aloe rested against her chest and lap on her side. One saddlebag smoked, the tattered edges of the remaining half of it blackened and crispy.

Beyond, all five unicorn captains lay in a silent heap. Many of them looked green around the cheeks. Pink mist rose as a shimmering cloud to the ceiling, wisps trailing from their twisted faces. Beyond the open roof of the tower overhead, the purple shield crackled and evaporated its way to the ground, wiping itself out of existence.

Aloe raised her head, struggling to keep her eyes open; green tinges stained her own cheeks. “Did… Did we win?”

Lotus smirked at the five bodies. Five Equestrians, knocked out cold by the “cantankerous busybodies”.

“By a nose.” She sniffed, and then shuddered and stuck out her tongue. “What… what is that, anyway?”

Now it was Aloe’s turn to grin. “A little something… I was trying. Lots of… perfumes, and… concoctions. I thought they… might work as lotions, but… guess not.”

They both staggered to their hooves, Lotus slipping out from under Aloe’s weight. Her brain hadn’t touched the ground the whole time. Thoughts and emotions rushed back in, battering and bruising her more thoroughly than anything the Royal Guard had done. But she was smiling. She smiled, in spite of the frantic signals coming from her self-control, all the way out the door and back down the stairs. She smiled her way out the entrance, iron leg clanking on the bleached marble-like floor, and stood peering across the valley. Orange armour rushed over the crags. In the centre, a huddle of Royal Guards sat tightly bound with ropes. On the horizon, more orange armour rushed in to catch the escaping unicorns.

Summit Island down, she thought. Next, Magjeney Haatan. And then, perhaps, Equestria itself. How can we stop now? We have to keep going. This is only the start.

Gradually, the smile faded from her face. She knew that somewhere out there, the peasants worked on. It wouldn’t change.

The mountain of Summit Island towered over their pathetic little scene of specks chasing specks. She could run, but when she stopped, the crags and grey shadows were back again. The island did not care.

But Aloe did.

She flapped a hoof dismissively at the mountain, and marched down to the nearest of her fellow soldiers.

***

“Utterly unwarranted,” said the first clerk, shuffling his papers. “Totally reckless. A disgrace to the Tyrannus Company.”

Lotus Blossom sat opposite, chewing her lip and glaring sidelong at the three of them. A few weeks ago, she might have granted the clerks her full attention, leaning forwards, eyes wide, ears cocked. That was showing respect, the ultimate virtue according to “The Analytical Teachings of Areson”. Now, she found their mere presence irritating.

Part of her winced at the way she acted like they were carrying pony pox. The Tyrannus Extremis Company, after all, were technically correct. No one was outright saying that they hadn’t won, because the map room had showed an orange piece atop Summit Island. But there were a lot of funny looks coming her way.

Around the four of them, the room seemed to be nothing but display cabinets. Medals gleamed behind one glass case, while mounted coins stood rusting in various shades of red and grey behind another. Even the windows at the back showed off the rise and fall of the waves as though they constituted a novelty prize. The cabin seemed to say, “I’m a winner; what are you exactly?”

“I know the rule,” she said in a voice trying not to strangle anyone, “that a medic cannot be targeted unless they are fighting. Yes. We know this. But where is it written a medic cannot be another pony? It is a role, not a rank.”

“Don’t you understand?” The second clerk levitated her documents and shuffled them. “Ahem. Your medic –”

“Aloe Vera, thank you.”

“Yes. Your medic accompanied you on an unauthorized raid of an Equestrian stronghold, clearly armed for combat. The saddlebags have been emptied, or at least the one has and the other has been cut away from its contents.”

The third clerk frowned. “‘Cut away’?”

“On account of the magical burns.” Lotus Blossom waved a hoof irritably. “Listen to yourselves, please. I requested the medic myself. She had learned enough of the trade that I felt confident assigning her a new role –”

“Excuse me, Miss Blossom –”

“Your Highness, if you don’t mind!”

As soon as she’d said it, she groaned into her hoof. She’d crossed the line. Being princess was just an accident. It meant nothing to her. She’d seen what princesses from other countries had been like: pink, whiny, bratty little monsters that couldn’t see past their own powdered noses. They weren’t fit to rule a mud patch, never mind a nation state. Yet she’d sooner be cursed in the leg again than called “Miss Blossom” by someone who considered writing an extreme form of exercise.

The second clerk threw a smile at her. “Very well, Your Highness. We might add that you have consistently refused to listen to orders and suggestions before now, ever since that unfortunate incident with the unicorn curse.”

Lotus’ stomach somersaulted. “Has he confessed yet?”

“Not yet. He still refuses to talk. No identification whatsoever. A nonexistent soldier for an nonexistent army.”

“Nonexistent? He’s an Equestrian!”

He doesn’t have to be, she thought at once. There are a dozen countries in the Union. That’s sixty six chances for hatred and suspicion and paranoia. They don’t all smile and sing songs around a campfire, after all.

The first clerk patted his cuffs as though fiddling with the buttons. “Getting back to the subject of our discussion –”

And these three are clearly not Spatsans. She’s probably from Tshekhovia too, and he’s almost certainly a citizen of Blasmo. They both banished their last kings. I’ll bet all of my homeland temples they’re thinking the thoughts of their ancestors.

“This is nonsense,” she said through the calmness of one hoping they’ll wrap things up in a second, “and you know it. That raid was carried out on my orders, and need I remind you, gentlecolts and dear lady, that in my country I am second only to the royal couple. Regal blood runs through my veins.”

She wanted to kick herself for every word. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Yet, every time they tried to snatch away her pumping heart, her galloping hooves, the sheer buzz running through her head as she’d joined Aloe into the chamber with the five captains, she felt no further regret for her words until she stopped to think about them.

The third clerk gave a wan smile, like a sickly dandelion blooming against winter. “You might find that legal nicety a mite tricky to –”

“Anyway, no one was ‘clearly armed for combat’. Forgive me, but seaweed and smelling salts are not traditional weapons of war. Most of our alleged attacks were defensive moves in response to unprovoked attack.”

“But! But!” spluttered the first clerk. “But you leapt into a fully guarded enemy stronghold!”

“Well, these Equestrian stallions are supposed to be gentlecolts, are they not? They only had to ask nicely.”

Between the other two clerks, the second one placed a hoof on each shoulder. “Your… Highness, I’m sure there were mitigating circumstances for some of the, uh, controversial actions. Of course, accounts can be a little confused, especially in the heat of battle.”

“But –” said the first clerk, who was rapidly becoming Lotus’ least favourite.

“With that in mind,” said the third clerk, who winked at her and instantly became her all-time favourite, “I believe a sensible temporary reassignment might be right up your alley. You will, of course, receive some recognition for your services.”

Lotus sighed. This was exactly why she hated politics. Its practitioners could never get to the point, or if they did, they usually had another point concealed about them. Usually a knife down the sleeve: her history chronicles had not been stingy with the details.

“You are, of course, an excellent asset to the Tyrannus Extremis Company. Organisation has certainly been much smoother since you’ve arrived, and…”

And if it were not for my healing waters, half of you would be lying in bed, trying not to cough your guts up. The water here is atrocious. Every time a pony presses a pump, I see Death standing beside them. It’s the invisible demons again, but at least at home, Spatsa ponies only had to deal with Spatsa demons. They can’t all be splashed away. I’m running out of rituals faster than I’m running out of demons.

The third clerk stopped staring at her. “…and naturally, we’ve heard nothing but good reports from your superiors.”

Lotus’s eyelid twitched, but her inner self laughed at this and forced the rest of her to focus on the clerks instead. Superiors? Here in the land of equals? What is this?

“In any case, perhaps it IS time you learned in the deep end. Yes. I believe we have a new mission for you. And since, by good luck, we happen to have breached the last intermediate stronghold to it, perhaps Magjeney Haatan would be more your speed.”

Lotus narrowed her eyes. “This is a punishment?”

The second clerk grinned at her. “Of course not, Your Highness. Think of it as some work experience with a notably steep learning curve, and you’re more or less there.”

***