Becoming a Monster

Chapters

Chapter 2: Uninvited Guests
Chapter 4: Treachery
Chapter 5: Life Goes On
Chapter 6: ...and on.
Chapter 7: Careful what you do... and say.
Chapter 8: The Last Straw
Chapter 9: Fear of the Unknown
Chapter 10: Full Circle
Chapter 11: Unfinished Business
Chapter 12: Becoming a Monster
Chapter 13: New Beginnings
Epilogue
Chapter 1: Home Sweet Home?
Chapter 3: Keep Your Enemies Close, and Your Family Closer

Chapter 2: Uninvited Guests

Rain was something I didn't get to see too much of. The clouds that brought it often hovered overhead, but most of the rain fell on the far side of the mountain range we called home. Farther on this side of the peaks, desert stretched on for as far as you could see. That was as good a reason as any for me to never venture out there. Supposedly the pegasi, and maybe the griffons, were able to influence the weather directly. Whatever they chose to deprive of rain and bake in the unforgiving sun was something I didn't want to meet.

But, as luck would have it the overcast of the day before brought a pleasant drizzle overnight that was still pattering away at the rocky slopes outside. The main chamber of Fealty's cave was fortunately situated above its entrance, so we weren't sitting ankle deep in water. It was a bit clammy inside though.

He'd noticed me trying to stifle a shiver and disappeared into another room to fetch something that would help with that. He knew I had a spell that could fix it, and I'd reminded him, but he insisted. He strode back into the chamber with a blanket rolled up in a sheath of green magic. “Here we are, just a moment.” The blanket unfurled, revealing an elaborate tapestry of yellows and pinks, then draped around me. It was a lot cozier than magical warmth, that I couldn't deny.

I offered thanks and tightened the blanket around me, wondering for a moment where he'd gotten it-no, I didn't want to start down that road. I already wondered too much about that when I read through the spell book he lent me, which was now sitting on a shelf off to the side of the room. It was a convenient excuse to come see Fealty, even if I didn't need him to fix my wing. It was also worrisome: inside was enough pony writing to know where it came from. I just hoped how he got it didn't come back to hurt him later. Ponies weren't likely to simply misplace something like that.

“And thank you for bringing that back,” he said, following my eyes to the book. He lowered himself to the floor next to me, catching the glint from the magical lamps around the room in his copper scales. “I take it you're done with it then? Did you learn much?”

“The simple stuff at least. I've used it to heal a few scratches.” And a ripped wing. “Haven't had many chances to practice, thankfully.”

He nodded. “How are the others, by the way?” he asked, reaching out with his magic to drag a large metal pot closer.

“Oh, the same as always,” I said with a small chuckle.

“Good, good.” He lifted the lid, and immediately the rich smell of fish swirled into my nostrils. “Are you hungry? I caught a lot more than I could eat yesterday.”

There was no way I was going to turn that down, and before I knew it I had a piece in my hands. It was lightly smoked but kept a fantastic and rich flavor. The bones didn't even have any snap to them. Meat tended to run away, the ponies never had any with them and only rarely did the griffons, so that meant that it was a rare treat that I ever got any. That Fealty was sharing his with me really meant something. I was vaguely aware I was leaning against him.

He smiled and slurped down his fish. “Are you alright? Something seems to be bothering you.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine.” I finished my food. “Why do you say that?”

“I don't know, you just seem a bit quiet.”

“I just had something in my mouth. Unless you'd prefer I lose my manners...”

He chuckled and handed me another fish. “No, no. It... I don't know, it seems like something's on your mind though.”

The silence that fell told him everything he needed to know, so I had to say something at that point. He could always read me like a book. I swapped the fish between hands a few times, considering what to say. “I've just been thinking a lot lately. About the future.”

“Really? Like what?”

Where to begin? “I don't know, a lot of things. For one, I just keep wondering, you know, how long our luck will hold out?” Fealty cocked an eyebrow at me and stopped chewing. I shrugged. “Yesterday Zeal and I almost got killed by griffons. That's probably only going to happen more often.”

Fealty choked on his food. “What? When? Where?” He calmed down when I explained that it wasn't near either of our caves, but that didn't stop him from immediately examining my wing and grumbling something about not being able to fix the scar.

When he released me, I went on, “I... I just sometimes wonder. Wonder if there's a point in doing anything past living day-to-day. To, you know. Plan for the future.”

Fealty wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close. “Hey now, none of that.” He tapped a claw to my lip. “I've lived here ten years, and I don't intend for that to change any time soon. Things aren't any worse now than they've ever been. Maybe even a bit better.” He rubbed my side. “You weren't planning on leaving me now, were you?”

I let a tiny smile form. “No.” My siblings and I had lived here for four years now and grown rather fond of our home. I didn't want to go anywhere.

I leaned into Fealty. Especially not without him.

The intention was to just drop by Fealty's home to return his book and catch up with each other, but as it turned out I spent almost the entire day with him. It was very late that night when I got back to our cave, but at least I didn't see any ponies or griffons on the way there. Traveling at night seemed to come natural to my three siblings, but I hated it. I must have been night blind, but everything always managed to get the drop on me in the dark. Imagine how I felt then flying alone back to our cave, trying to keep as low to the ground as I could to avoid being spotted. At least there wasn't anything to fly into Even I wasn't blind enough to fly into a cliff face.

I made it back in one piece and without flying into anything more harmful than a moth, which was what the rational part of my brain expected all along. The irrational part had begged me to get Fealty to fly back with me, but I managed to bury it under a bit of reason and pride. So it was just me trotting up to the illusion covering the entrance. I wasn't about to try flying through it at night.

The illusory rocks were right where I expected. I stretched out my hand to feel for-

“Welcome home.”

I nearly leaped out of my scales. The next thing I remembered I was lying on my back and staring up into the golden eyes of my sister. She was nigh invisible, perched atop the mouth of the cave as she was. Her charcoal scales were black as the night around her, but the faint moonlight picked out her eyes. She grinned. It picked out her teeth too, apparently. “Sorry about that, I didn't mean to scare you.”

“S-Sure you didn't!” I spat, rolling over onto my hands and knees. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I tried to slow my breathing to calm it a bit. “Just like the last three times, huh!?”

She hopped into the air and glided down to my side. “Okay, you're right. I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to scare you that bad.”

“Yeah,” I huffed, running my claws through my hair. “Why are you out here anyway? Isn't it Zeal's turn to keep watch?”

“Oh, the boys are off looking for you,” she replied. “Well, that's what they said anyway. Since you said you'd be back by lunch.”

I groaned lightly. “Right, uh, I didn't mean to be gone that long.”

“Don't worry about it, they'll be back soon I'm sure.” Revelry shrugged and floated through the fake stones. “We weren't really worried, we know how it is.”

They 'knew how it was,' huh? There wasn't much more to be said for it, really, but she'd scuffed my scales now and I wasn't letting her off that easily. I fumbled my way through after her and down the descending and irritatingly dark path into the main chamber. Finally there was something I could do about the pervasive darkness, and with a swipe of my hand the enchanted stones set into the ceiling flickered to life, bathing the room in a warm glow. “So, what was that supposed to mean?”

Revelry inverted in the air to face me, still grinning. “Oh, come on, you don't have to be shy about it. We know you and Fealty are intimate. Nobody can spend that much time together just practicing spells.” Her grin widened to an almost impressive amount. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”

Sometimes that smile of hers made me a bit nauseated, but I just rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. They'd have had to have been pretty dense to not know. And so what? She was right. What did it matter? I mounted my cot and got into a comfortable position. “You know, I just wonder why you and the boys don't seem to care about meeting someone. It's... well, it's indescribable really.”

She shrugged. “They're interested alright. Or, well, Antic is. I don't talk to Zeal all that much but I'm sure he is too. There's just not a lot of options. How many other draconequuses have we met out here anyway? Two other than Fealty? And both of them seemed to be as afraid of us as they were of the ponies and griffons.”

That was a good point, to which I replied with a sigh. Meeting Fealty had been a freak chance revolving around me lusting after the tomes of a pony magical archive. I never managed to build the courage to try and break into the elaborate stone building on the edge of the pony town, and spent many days simply sitting off in the distance and admiring it, wondering what secrets it held. Fealty had the skill and mental steel to both try and succeed. Bumping into him as he flew off with three of the most fascinating magical books I'd ever read in tow was a most fortuitous coincidence. Similar interests and the ability to talk without thinking one was out to completely screw the other meant a friendship was almost inevitable.

Another frustrated sigh passed my lips as I noted not for the first time that the best parts of my life seemed to revolve around stealing things from the ponies and griffons. I wish it didn't have to be that way, but up to that point that's simply how it had been.

At that point I realized I'd been wandering far from my original thought and I snapped back to the conversation with, “I guess you're right.” I glanced over to her. “You didn't say you were interested though.”

She pursed her lips and reclined against nothingness in the air. “Maybe I'm not?”

“Come on, you can't mean that.” I cocked an eyebrow at her. “You've never had even the slightest little bit of... desire? To maybe, you know, even have a clutch of eggs your own?”

An unexpected and energetic fit of laughter followed. “Oh, oh, no. No, no, no, no. Whelps? What would I do with a bunch of whelps? I'm not the mother type.” She twirled over herself in the air again, resting on her stomach and peering over folded arms at me. “But you want some, then?”

“Sometimes.” Thinking about it brought forth a lot of conflicting emotions, most of which I'd spilled all over Fealty earlier that day. “Sometimes, I think so. Sometimes, I think I'm crazy.”

“There's probably no bigger responsibility,” she said. Yep, that's probably the main reason she didn't want any. “And besides, is this really the kind of world you want to bring whelps into?” And... that would be the main reservation I had and talked about with Fealty.

I turned a hand about casually to inspect my claws. “It makes me wonder what mom was thinking,” I said, not really considering what I was saying. An intensely awkward and unsettling silence fell, and I didn't dare look at Revelry. Instead, I tried to recover with, “I mean, we turned out alright, didn't we?”

The silence lingered for a bit. “Yeah. I think so.” She didn't need to say anything more. I knew what she was thinking, and I didn't want to think about it. I shouldn't have ever brought it up.

More silence, and I finally glanced over. Revelry was staring into the floor. I tried to think of something to change the subject with, but all of the straws I could grasp out felt too hollow to even dignify with an attempt. Things were pretty quiet until Zeal and Antic got home.

The next morning was a somber affair, but for entirely different reasons. I didn't really think Zeal and Antic were out looking for me all day, and I still don't know what they were actually doing. But whatever it was, they found something disturbing at the other end of the valley. The ponies were building a new town there.

So, as it was I was feeling a distinctly familiar sensation as the four of us crept along the edge of canyon, moving from cover to cover along the way and chancing the occasional glance down at the stream running below. No sign of anything larger than a rabbit, which was just how I liked it. Antic assured us that were getting close though, and that had my nerves on edge. For a moment I questioned again why all four of us came along. One might be spotted. Four probably would.

Then I remembered the argument and Antic bemoaning how whenever I never trusted him or Revelry to do this sort of thing. I kind of didn't. The two hadn't given me much reason to trust them in these matters, but the last time Zeal and I went off alone I almost got killed, and there was no denying that the two of them were better at this than us. So to keep him happy and hush him up, I caved. This wasn't the first time we'd done something like this before, of course, but having him along would help.

When we reached the end of the canyon, we found the pony town sitting in a clearing in the forest that receded from the mountains. It was pleasant looking, I had to give the ponies that. The stream made it a natural location to set up, and there was more than enough wood. And stone, if they got really ambitious.

Antic was ready, and while we peeked out at the ponies milling around far below, he cast his spell. The four of us shimmered and vanished from sight, cloaked in a veil of illusory magic. A second spell later and we could again see the world. Funny thing about invisibility: if the light goes through your eyes you can't see. It took a second spell to let you see afterward, and the colors of everything looked distorted and washed out. Antic didn't really know how to convey how it worked, but he was absolutely gifted with similar magic. He could keep both going for twenty times as long as I could, which would give us plenty of time to scope the development out.

As we drew close it became increasingly obvious that that was all it was. There weren't any buildings to speak of so much as a few framed foundations and some tents. The ponies must have gotten here recently.

There were probably two dozen of them trotting back and forth, assembling stacks of wooden planks, organizing barrels of something, knocking over the barrels and stacks and generally getting in the way of each other. It looked to be about an even distribution of the three kinds. The earth ponies and pegasi didn't worry me much, but you never knew what a unicorn might be hiding.

We swooped down to get a better look. Before we set off I told them to just do a flyover, since I didn't want to risk running into one of the unicorns or really letting the ponies even think we might be here.

The descent went without a hitch, and I found myself admiring the landscape. There were more trees than I could count slipping past us, of every variety I could imagine. No, there were more kinds of trees than I could count out here. Not to mention the vines, shrubs, flowers and more interspersed between them. The scent of fresh cut vegetation was almost overpowering, but it was a distraction from the familiar earthy smells we lived in. It really was beautiful, and I mused that if we ever had to relocate this would be an excellent place. Aside from the ponies of course.

The flyover went without incident, aside from the heart skipping moment when a mud colored pegasus mare flew past me close enough to touch her. She paused above me, looking around with a perplexed expression plastered on her face. Had she heard us flapping our wings? Or felt the gusts of wind? Next time we'd need to muffle our sounds too. Fortunately, she shrugged it off and soared higher into the sky, leaving us to keep inspecting what the ponies were doing.

I was hoping that they weren't working to set up a permanent establishment, whatever alternative I clung to vainly, but that was precisely what it looked like. Two large earth pony stallions of a green that blended in with the scenery were busy hacking down a tree while a quartet of mares were balancing a smaller log on a platform with a wicked looking saw. Based on the amount of wooden planks around I had a good hunch of what that was for, and that much cut wood meant they were planning on building a lot. As if the pegasi and earth ponies erecting a wall didn't give that away. It was still too early to begin guessing what it would turn out to be, so I had plenty of time to fret over that in the coming days and weeks.

It was right about then that I realized I was the only one still in the air. A flare of panic filled me and I searched around me frantically. The panic tripled when I saw Antic crawling around on the piles of cut planks below. And there was Revelry snooping around the barrels, and Zeal looking lost in the center of the clearing.

Idiots! They were going to get themselves all killed! I flailed my arms at them and gestured with my whole body for them to stop being stupid and get up here now, but if they saw me they were ignoring me. I screamed internally and searched for a vacant spot.

I set down closest to Revelry, already fantasizing about strangling her and Antic for being so stupid. Zeal was just down here to protect them, like me. I lifted from the ground under the power of my magic and floated for the stack of barrels. Walking or flying the old fashioned way would make too much noise, despite the risk of startling Revelry from my silence. She deserved it a dozen times, but now wasn't the time to be eliciting startled shrieks from my sister.

For a moment I considered just setting the barrels on fire. The ponies seemed to be fond of highly alcoholic drink that burned rather nicely, and that would provide us with a fantastic distraction to escape under, keep Revelry from taking any of it, and maybe even damage enough to convince the ponies to leave. Revelry would get away in time.

I was halfway through conjuring a spark of flame at the base of the pile when I saw it: a bag of books sitting next to a wagon of other supplies. Could it be? I froze in place, questioning myself. Did I dare to look? I'm not proud of what I did next, but the other three were busy picking over the pony supplies and generally ignoring their common sense. Wasn't I permitted to do the same once in a long while? And a spell book could be so much more valuable than a stolen barrel of wine! The wine would just get you drunk for a while, but a learned spell was useful forever! I abandoned the spell.

My heart fluttered as I grasped the first book in my hands. It was a spell book! I couldn't read the cover quickly, of course, but I recognized the symbols. I flicked through the pages, seeing a lot of spells I knew already but a few I didn't. I couldn't contain the grin that followed. I also didn't notice the pony gawking at the book floating around and paging through itself.

She took a step closer. “Wh-what?” she mumbled, and I finally looked up to see the garish purple earth pony staring with wide eyes. I stifled a panicked scream and pulled the book to my chest. What to do!? My vision flashed and shimmered, and that question answered itself. The look of horror on her face when the invisibility spell vanished is something I would never forget, nor would I ever forget her desperate plea, “Help! A monster!”

I swore volubly and spun around to find my siblings. Antic was lying on the ground amidst a knot of shocked ponies, rubbing his head and groaning weakly. Two ponies were carrying planks of wood on their backs, and I already knew how he got on the ground and why the invisibility spell broke. I panicked again.

“Monster!”

“What is it!?”

“Help!”

“There's another over here!”

“There's three of them! No, four!”

“Dirk! Yari!”

Most of the ponies either broke and fled at that, or began backing away amidst frightened murmurs. We had to leave. Now. I hit the ground and ran for Antic, ready to scoop him up with my magic and escape while the ponies were still confused. Where were Revelry and Zeal!?

A white unicorn stallion covered in bronze armor broke into the clearing. His eyes flew open when he saw us. “Prancing princesses! Draconequuses!” His horn lit up and the scabbard at his side was sheathed in blue. “My sword!”

Zeal crashed to the ground between him and Antic, brandishing the weapon and swiping at the pony clumsily. “Get back!” Antic was back on his hooves and staring at the disaster unfolding.

“I've got him,” a mare said. A snapping twinge filled the air and an arrow smashed against his magical shield. I traced it back to its source to see a stony gray pegasus mare leveling a crossbow at my brother. She swore and fished for another bolt from her quiver.

“No. I've got him,” the stallion said. His horn flickered blue again, and the world exploded.

I was on the ground and in serious pain. For all the world it felt like someone had hurled one of those wooden planks at my head, and it took several seconds of stumbling around in the grass before I realized how quiet everything was. What little I could hear was drowned out by an insipid ringing that would not end, and I groaned too quietly to hear. When I was finally upright and stable, I noted that most of the ponies were likewise covering their ears or mouthing moans.

There was one thing I could hear though: muffled screams. My head felt like it was going to explode from the pain, but that all stopped mattering when I saw the source. Zeal was still lying on the ground, curled up and clasping his hands to the sides of his head. He was right in front of the unicorn when the spell went off! I staggered toward him, feeling another pang of urgency as he knotted up tighter and wailed again, just barely audible through the ringing. He seemed so far away. I'd never reach him in time, and the unicorn had already drawn a dagger with his magic.

Worse still, from the corner of my eye I saw that pegasus had readied her crossbow. She mouthed something through apparent pain and took aim at Zeal. My limbs locked in place, unable to channel a spell to save his life. The crossbow discharged, and much to my shock the pegasus reeled and dropped the weapon. She stumbled back two steps with a panicked expression, and I saw the bolt jutting from the bronze plate across her chest. How...

Revelry zipped from behind her, hands wreathed in a blue glow. I then realized the mare never dropped her weapon; Revelry had twisted it back at the last possible instant. She took the oversized weapon in her hands and looked it over, clearly baffled at how it worked.

I didn't have a clue either, and had more pressing concerns. Turning back to Zeal, I was relieved to see the unicorn covering his eyes and stumbling backward. My hearing was beginning to return, so I could just make out him shouting something about being blind before Zeal's cry of agony suffocated it. I darted for him again, realizing on the way that Antic was flying over the unicorn, and snatched him up in my arms. He was astonishingly heavy and his size made him awkward to hold, but that was irrelevant. I spread my wings and hefted him into the air, ignoring everything around me. Antic and Revelry were safe now.

We flew for several tense seconds, but no more bolts speared the air around us. I was beginning to relax when I realized he was trembling in my arms. His shrieks of pain had died down to nonstop whimpering at least, but what I saw worried me all the more. Tears were dripping down his cheeks. I'd never before seen him cry. Not even after what happened to mom. The pain he was in must have been incomprehensible. When he moved his hand for a moment, I could see blood smeared across the side of his head, and a bit in his ears. Oh no, he was hurt very badly.

“Cantrip? Is he okay?” I glanced over and saw Antic on my right. “Need me to carry him?”

“I-I don't know.” Maybe it wasn't so bad. Once we got somewhere safe I could check. I was quickly running out breath carrying him, so I said, “And yes, please.”

Antic took Zeal in a field of magic, suspending him just in front of us. I nearly smacked myself. Why hadn't I done that? Then Revelry asked, “Are you okay? Out of mana?”

“N-no.” The moment I let go of him I knew why. I was holding something else in my magic. A book. I floated my shame into my arms and pulled it close to my chest.

She looked suitably shocked. “Oh.”

I wanted to hurl the cursed thing into the trees below, but that would solve nothing at this point. I simply flew ahead, following our path back to the canyon.

We didn't wait to get home to set down. The very first outcropping that looked like it provided at least a tiny bit of concealment wasn't far along the canyon, and we plopped down without a word.

Zeal's condition hadn't changed, for better or worse, and I hadn't wasted any time discarding my stupid spell book to examine him. My meager knowledge of healing magic wasn't enough to diagnose just how badly hurt he was, so my only choice was to keep casting healing spells at pray for the best. As it turned out, a single casting was enough. I was relieved beyond words when the spray of golden light was all it took to to calm his trembling and get him back on his hooves.

That was an hour ago by this point. Probably. I'd really lost track of time as we sat against the mountainside beneath an outcropping of stone. The wind whistling through the canyon was the only thing that any of us heard for the half hour after Zeal had stopped sniffling. Nobody had any idea what to say or do, so we just sat there. Processing what had just happened. All four of us came within a breath of dying again.

Revelry was the first to pipe up, and about a similar subject. “I think I killed that pony,” she squeaked.

“Huh?” Zeal asked. His hearing had returned, but not completely. I was hoping that was temporary.

“I think I killed that pony,” she repeated. “The arrow? It went through her armor, didn't it? Hit her in the lung? Had to.”

Zeal snorted and looked away. “I hope you did. We weren't hurting them. All we were doing was standing there.” He punched the ground. “Standing there! And they tried to kill us!”

That wasn't the answer Revelry was looking for, and she sank further into the shadow. Antic leaned over to say something to her, but my attention was elsewhere. I dragged the spell book from my side and held it in my hands. “I'm sorry.”

“What?” Zeal glanced over. His eyes rested on the book, then stared into mine. He glowered and looked away.

“I don't think it would have made a difference if you were just standing there,” Antic said. “They were already freaking out when they saw me.”

That didn't matter. I felt unbelievably dirty now. As much as I preached to them not to steal stuff from the ponies because it prompted retribution, here I was doing just that. I dropped the book and rested my face in my hands. I hadn't meant to steal it! I was just going to peek inside! I only grabbed it in the panic!

“Whatever.” I heard metal scrape against stone. “I hope those ponies do come looking for us. I'm going to drive this right into that pony's ears.” I don't know who grabbed the sword, or why. Probably Antic. Not that it made me feel any better that someone else broke the 'rules.'

“Are we going to move again?” That was Antic.

Without a thought I answered, “No.” I uncovered my face to see three sets of eyes boring into me, and I fought to find an explanation. “I-I mean, they don't know where we live. They've got no idea. And the illusion protects us.” If it wasn't for Fealty I'd probably be a lot more behind the idea of relocating, but I couldn't get his words out of my head. 'You weren't planning on leaving me now, were you?' No, Fealty, I wasn't.

“We didn't scare them off,” Zeal spat. “The ponies aren't going to stop until they find us.” He clenched his hand around the hilt of the pony sized sword, ponderous and awkward in his grip as it was, and bared his teeth. “Let them. I'm tired of running.”

Things went silent again. Finally, Revelry broke the silence again. “C-Can we go? I don't-I don't want to be out here right now.”

As one we rose. Antic gave Revelry a little hug, then we grabbed our ill-gotten gains and took to the air.

Chapter 4: Treachery

As it turned out, I was quickly learning that there was a lot more to being a mother than I could have predicted. On top of that, my eggs hadn't even hatched yet.

I curled up tighter around my clutch and found myself subconsciously counting them again. Six, just like there was supposed to be. The temperature was perfect too: each was just detectably warm to the back of my hand. If the day got too warm that afternoon I might have to take them out of the blanket I'd improvised as a nest, but it was overcast last I heard, so I didn't expect to need to do that. If any of the others turned up soon I'd ask them how things looked outside.

Speaking of which, I hadn't seen any of them that morning since sunrise. All three disappeared at various points to go looking for food or anything else interesting or useful. Ever since laying the clutch of eggs, I hadn't drifted far from the main chamber of our cave for some sort of hardwired fear that something terrible would happen to them the moment I took my eyes off of them, which meant I hadn't been able to help out at all with the scavenging. I felt pretty guilty about it, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. It would be a few months yet before they hatched...

Sitting around and mooching off of my siblings while I watched six immobile and very safe eggs left me with little to do other than think and read through my stacks of spell books. My newest addition was still giving up its secrets quite reluctantly, with most of its contents interspersed with too much wordy pony text I couldn't read well enough to grasp the entire meaning of. If Antic was here he could tell me what it all said, but he was off looking around for things to survive off of with the others. Whatever the spell book contained, it probably wasn't that important, and I'd learned very early on as a whelp to take experimenting with unknown magic very carefully. I'd never forget the time I blinded myself for half an hour with a flash of light I didn't intend to create.

There was that one “sentry” spell I kept going back to, and which I'd mostly figured out. Based on what I was able to get Antic to read to me while he was home and from my very careful testing, I'd determined that it was a very useful spell indeed. You could cast it on the ground and if anything ever wandered over it it would trigger another linked spell. There didn't appear to be much of a limit on what it could trigger, but in this case something simple was all I cared about. A flash of light and sound would make it perfect for alerting us if someone or something was getting too close At that point I hadn't told Zeal about the spell, since I was pretty sure he'd want me to rig it up to set the intruder on fire or something...

I shifted into a more comfortable position to read, sending my eggs into an alarming wobble that jostled one free of the nest and sent it listing away on its side. Without even a thought to realize what I was doing I snatched it up in my magic, only to realize I shouldn't be so rough with them. If it was me that broke one or otherwise hurt it, I'd never forgive myself so long as I lived. Fortunately, it turned out to be unharmed, so I let it slip from the caress of my magic back into its spot. I needed to be more careful...

Once my heart settled back down, I had my snout back in the book. There were a lot of intricacies that I was still working to master before the spell would really be useful. For one, I'd tried casting it near the entrance of the cave only to discover that it was far too sensitive. I didn't want to be woken up every ten minutes from a bug flying too close, but my attempts to fix that wouldn't trigger even after I moved a boulder over it. Nothing practice wouldn't fix.

Anchored to my unhatched whelps as I was, I couldn't really venture outside to practice it, but there was plenty inside the cave to test with. The spell itself was simple enough, and two twists of my wrist and a jolt of mana later it was done: an invisible circle about as wide as I was tall centered in the room. Time to get to work.

Using my magic to lift a few small things, I floated them over the circle. A ladle didn't set it off, nor did the annoyingly empty box of crackers. That was a good start. I moved a few progressively heavier things over it, leading up to a couple of jugs of water heavy enough to strain against. Still nothing, which wasn't so good. I pursed my lips and flicked a hair out of my face as I thought. Maybe if I tweaked-

My train of thought was broken by a shrill but brief whistling that made me nearly jump out of my scales. I perked up immediately to train my eyes on the entrance, watching to see if it was actually someone setting off the spell outside this time, or if it was just another twig blowing by.

“Hello? Anyone home?” a familiar and soothing male voice called.

“Fealty?” It took a bit of restraint to avoid jumping up and spilling eggs everywhere, so I settled for easing up to look him in the eyes as he descended the steps.

He smiled warmly at me and strode inside, failing to set off my new spell I noted, and said, “I knew you wouldn't be far. How are the kids?” He cupped an egg with his hand, which made me feel surprisingly uneasy, but I didn't have long to think on it before he leaned in to give me a peck on the cheek and quick nuzzle. “And you?”

“Oh, they're fine. Behaving themselves for the most part,” I said with a small chuckle. “And I'm pretty well, if a bit tired. Watching eggs can be surprisingly draining.”

He nodded. “Still haven't reconsidered moving in with me? We could both keep an eye on them then.”

Oh, I had considered it a lot, especially now that I wasn't much good to my siblings. None of them had said it, and they probably never would have, but I knew inside they probably were harboring a bit of frustration with me and maybe even wanting me to leave. There was one pressing issue that was really keeping me from jumping on the opportunity though. “I know, but right now I'd be afraid to move them. Maybe in a few weeks?”

That brought a smile to his face and a small squeeze from him. “I'll take what I can get. In the meantime I can keep you company for a while. The others going to be back soon?”

“I'm not sure,” I answered honestly. They'd probably trickle back in over the next few hours but there was never any way to be certain. “Oh, but since you're here I've got something to show you!” I slid my spell book between us and pointed to the page. “Ever seen this spell?”

He squinted at the page and shook his head. “Sentry...something? No, don't think I have. What's it do?”

“Sit back and I'll show you.” This would be a nice distraction from just practicing it alone, and I didn't get much opportunity to practice with my siblings. It was also a rare chance to do something for Fealty, and I wasn't going to pass that up. Not to mention it just might keep him safe one day.

If I could figure out the finer details that is... too bad Fealty couldn't read any better than me. Oh well, all the more time we'd spend working on it together, right?

As I predicted, Revelry and Zeal returned a few hours later, about an hour apart. Revelry returned first with an outright surprising amount of fruit hovering in her magical grasp. I recognized some apples floating around in the swirl of colors and shapes, and thought I even saw some pears mixed in. She seemed to be in a pretty good mood, but if I'd managed to find that much food in one go I probably would have been too. I could only guess that she'd been off in the woods not far off from the new pony settlement, but I wasn't in a confrontational mood and didn't bring it up.

Fealty decided to take his leave about that time, which left the two of us to sort through her find. Fruit wasn't that filling and wouldn't keep forever, but I was pleased to discover she'd found enough to feed all of us for a least a couple of days. Apples and pears were the main attraction, but she had a few grape vines mixed in along with some blueberries and even a few figs. A handful of a couple of nuts were a nice addition too. We'd be eating a little better for a few days for sure.

The two of us were busy nibbling on something or other when Zeal finally plodded back in. I noted with mixed emotions that neither of them had returned with any more of those heavenly crackers, but I was definitely disappointed that he hadn't returned with any food or supplies. That is, aside from what looked an awful lot like a pair of gauntlets that griffons would have worn. He swore up and down he just found them lying around, so at the risk of diving into an argument I didn't want I left him to his word. He seemed content to flop down on his cot and play around with resizing them with the trick I taught him, which just left me to wonder dark things about the collection of metal he was gathering while I helped put the food away with my magic.

Antic was taking longer than I expected, to the point I was starting to get worried. I loosened up from my curled up position around my eggs and cast a glance to Revelry. “Any idea where Antic went? He's pretty late.”

She was busy scrutinizing a fig for some flaw I was pretty sure wasn't there. “Hmm? Oh, he followed me down to the forest earlier, but we split up there.”

“And you're not worried?”

“He'll be fine,” Zeal said in an almost disinterested tone. “He's good with that illusion magic.”

That only made me worry all the more as I pictured him using that illusion magic to do scary and dangerous things, but he kept assuring me when I asked previously that he hadn't been off pretending to be a pony. That didn't mean trouble wouldn't find him of course, and if I wasn't metaphorically tethered to my eggs I'd probably have jumped up then to go looking for him. I made a mental note to search through my spell books later for a spell I could use to locate one of my siblings if they ever did go missing in the future.

Instead, as it was I couldn't leave and seemed to be the only one who was significantly worried so I settled on going back to alternating between paging through my books and checking up on my eggs. It wasn't much to distract me and quell the butterflies in my stomach, but I didn't have but maybe half an hour to wait before Antic finally came scampering in with his signature grin and an impressive sized sack slung over his shoulder. He dropped it in the center of the room, allowing it to open and spill a fraction of its contents on the floor. I could see a lot of scraps of cloth inside as well as a great many things I couldn't readily identify. “Antic? Where...”

He raised a hand up to hush me and started digging through the bag. “Before you ask, yes, I found this near the pony town. They were just throwing it all away!” A bolt of cloth more than large enough to make a pillow hung from one hand as he pulled more things from inside. “Not sure what we can do with some of this stuff, but I didn't leave anything!”

Were those glass beads? Even I had no idea what we'd do with something like that, but he had my interest. My eggs would be fine for a minute while I helped him pick through everything, so I eased up and moved over to peer into the bag. Scraps of thread, cloth and wood were the most obvious things, but there were a few more useful items. I recognized an oil lamp in the middle of it all, but unless there was some oil in a jug in here it wouldn't be worth a whole lot. I raised a hand to my chin as I continued to appraise it all. For once we might actually have to throw some of it away ourselves since space was starting to become a premium here.

Revelry had just slipped from her cot to come take a look herself when something happened that terrified me to my very core. “Antic?” A voice from outside. Feminine. I didn't recognize it. “Antic are you around here?”

Zeal was on his hooves faster than I could believe, grabbing his gigantic sword and the pieces of armor he had collected. All four of us shot each other horrified looks as he joined us in the center of the room. Even with the weapon and armor, I could see the fear on Zeal's face, but Antic looked like he was on the verge of panic. How did this voice know him? It couldn't be... he'd sworn that he hadn't gone parading around as a pony!

The warning whistle blared, sending all four of us to the floor and reeling from the shock. Whoever it was, she was right outside. “Huh, what was that? Antic?” No, no, no! I'd left the spell outside running!

I scrabbled back toward my eggs, wracking my mind for something to do. She was going to come down here now! She had to be a pony, and once she knew we were here... My eyes darted over the eggs as I came up with nothing to do. Could... could we kill her? Before she told the others?

Zeal certainly looked ready to. He hadn't moved from his spot and through the fear I saw a distinct look of purpose on his face. He spread his wings and flared his nostrils as he kept the sword up, ready to attack. Revelry made a small squeal and backed away to cower in a side corridor, while Antic finally gathered his wits and interposed himself between the cavernous entrance and Zeal. “No! I-I can fix this!” he hissed. I felt and saw magic splutter to no effect around him; he was so worked up he couldn't concentrate.

Hooves clopped down the stone for agonizing seconds before, finally, the fright of the unknown was replaced with horrible truth. A crimson unicorn mare with a darker red curly mane emerged, nearly bumbling straight into Antic. Everyone froze. I could hear Revelry whimpering to my side, but I couldn't look away from the pony. Her eyes gradually widened as they swept the room and her mouth hung agape. When she saw Zeal, she did the worst possible thing and screamed.

“Scarlet, wait!” Antic pleaded, jumping between her and the exit. “Y-you-I mean, don't be afraid!”

That worked about as well as could be expected, and she barreled right past him in a mad dash for the surface. She would have made it too, if Zeal hadn't grabbed her with his magic at the last possible moment and hurled her back inside. “I'll give her a reason to be afraid!” he roared, drawing the sword up.

“Don't kill me!” she begged, wriggling in vain against his magic and covering her face with her forelegs.

Whether Zeal was ready to make good on his promise or not I don't know. Antic shoved him aside with a frantic, “No!” The two collided and tumbled together, sending the sword clattering to the floor. Zeal shouted a curse, but Antic continued to wrestle with him. “She's not a bad pony! Don't hurt her!”

Scarlet wasn't content to wait around and see what was going to happen, and the moment his magic vanished she rocked to her hooves. “I'm sorry! I d-didn't mean to come here!” I wanted to believe her and Antic. I really, really did. I'm a realist though, so I knew if she got away the other ponies would be here before we could bat an eye. With that in mind it was my turn to pin her down with a flash of magic. I couldn't bring myself to actually hurt her yet, but I was searching my mind for something to use. If I could kill her without causing too much pain... “Please! I-I won't t-tell anypony!” she begged again. “Help me!”

Revelry had just managed to work up the nerve to slink back into the main room, chewing at the claw on her index finger as she watched me fight to keep the red pony restrained. “Y-you're not really going to, uh...” she asked, tearing her eyes away to look into mine.

We had to. We just had to. I didn't want to hurt her. She really sounded like she didn't want any trouble, and that was something I could sympathize with a thousand times over, but I had eggs to protect now. “We can't risk it...” I said, wishing for all the world there was another way.

“No! Please!!!” she screamed again.

“Cantrip! Don't!” Antic yelled before he was tossed aside by Zeal with another louder curse.

“She'll bring the whole town here!” Zeal shouted, retrieving his sword with his magic.

“No!” Scarlet shrieked again. Tears were beginning to streak down her terror-stricken face, and it was becoming more and more difficult to see this through. But we had to!

Fate had something else in mind. All five of us winced and cowered when the alarm spell triggered again, and again and again. Scarlet rolled away and tightened into a shuddering ball as my magic faltered, and the rest of us watched in renewed horror as three more ponies trotted down the path inside. “Scarlet!?” a male shouted. “Scarlet Swirl!” So that's whose book I'd taken. I didn't have time to reflect on it before the ponies were upon us. I recognized the first as the unicorn soldier from before. Dirk? The other two were new. A massive and heavy set chocolate colored earth pony stallion with an axe to match his size, and a sky blue pegasus mare with a long, fine sword flanked him. History repeated itself as everyone present just stared in abject shock.

“You!” Dirk shouted, angling his sword at me. I guess I was the closest, but whatever reason he chose me for, it was enough to send me leaping up to my hooves to back away. Revelry squeaked something and dove behind me, grabbing my shoulders and peaking around the moment she was there. I had absolutely no clue what to do.

Zeal snarled and jumped to meet the intruders, swinging his sword in a wide arc and even convincing the three soldiers to take a step back. “Don't come a step closer! You're not hurting any of us anymore!”

The new mare snorted. “I guess that's where your other sword went.”

Scarlet bounded up and galloped under the huge stallion, who gave her a reassuring pat with a gigantic hoof. “Stole a sword and now trying to hurt my daughter?” he growled.

Dirk was scowling. “You stole my sword!? You know what we do to thieves?” His horn began to glow a deep blue, and I completely panicked. If he fired off that noise blast in here it would kill us! There was only one thing I knew to do, risky as it was or not, so I jumped to it. Literally, as I flung myself across my eggs and dumped all of the mana I could gather into a teleport spell, reaching out and snatching my three siblings up in the magical ebbs at the last possible moment before the world lurched and shifted in a direction I didn't know existed.

There hadn't been time to think about where to go or even how far before I fired the spell off. I simply used all of my magic in a desperate bid to get us to safety, and it worked. The four of us appeared somewhere, and as was becoming standard fare for unprepared teleports, far enough off of the ground that the fall rammed the air out of my lungs and sent my head spinning. I rolled onto my back and muffled a groan caused by my aching ribs while I listened to my brothers and sister pick themselves up.

“Wh-what?” Revelry gasped. “What happened? Where are we?”

Antic moaned and rocked to his hooves, eliciting a crunch of a dry twig as he did so. It was then I realized my scales were a bit damp and I could feel the bristle of grass and weeds on my outstretched wings. We really had traveled some distance to end up in the forest down below the mountains, and if I wasn't so confused, scared and tired I might have even been a bit smug and impressed with the feat I'd pulled off. The feeling was short lived, as I immediately began fretting we had materialized near the pony town. Something so much worse was to come to my attention first, however.

It was Zeal's gasp that set my nerves on edge. “Ca-antrip...” Antic followed with a gasp of his own, and Revelry let out a pitiful whimper. “Y-your...” Zeal went on, taking an uneasy step toward me.

My what? I propped myself up on my elbows to see what the fuss was about, but halfway through the motion I already knew. There was something else I'd brought with us that had managed to escape my mind for those few seconds, and now that it was back a primal chill of terror shot down my spine. I knew what the dampness was already, but I couldn't not look now. It was everything I dreaded: I found what was left of my eggs. My belly was slick with sticky yellow yolks, interrupted by patches of shattered shell adhering to my scales.

I had crushed my own eggs with my body in the fall.

My jaw slackened. There was nothing I could do but stare in utter disbelief, mouth agape. I just laid there and made small choking noises as I absorbed what had happened. There aren't any words I can use to relate what I felt right then. In my haste and carelessness, I had killed my own unhatched children. I screamed.

Zeal, Antic and Revelry clearly had no idea what to do either and just kept their distance as I got to my knees and looked over the smashed remains next to me. In desperation I tried to cast the healing spell I knew, but even if I had any strength left to give I knew it was hopeless at that point. You couldn't fix this. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I wept openly, gathering bits of pulverized egg in my hands and shuddering. It was the ponies' fault that I had to whisk us away so abruptly and at such risk, but it was me who was directly responsible for... for their death.

I was so lost in my despair I was barely aware of what the others were doing. Revelry and Antic were talking about something I couldn't care less about, but I noticed Zeal circling us nervously and whipping his head back and forth to stare into the depths of the woods around us. Let the ponies come to me now. If I had any reservations about hurting Scarlet and the others, they were gone. I lowered the slippery hulls in my hands back to the ground and felt another bout of sobbing come on, but something caught my eye. There were only two eggs there. “Wait!” I cried out, rocking to my hooves and all but losing my balance from exhaustion.

“What?” Zeal shot at me with wide eyes.

Antic caught me mid stagger. “What is it?”

“There's only two!” I exclaimed, jabbing a talon down at the eggs. “Th-the other four! They must still be in the cave!”

Zeal all but blanched as the implications settled. I saw the protests simmering under the surface, but he must have recognized the bloody vengeance I promised if he didn't help me get them back. “We have to hurry,” he said.

Revelry caught me by the arm opposite to Antic, loosening her grip when she touched slimy egg goo. “Can you fly?”

By all rights I shouldn't have been able to, but I wasn't going to let being tired throw away the sliver of hope I had left. I spread my wings and was the first into the air.

Once we were airborne it hadn't taken but a minute to get our bearings. Somehow I had teleported us well into the forest past the pony town. It was the furthest I had ever gone with the spell by a league, even alone, and bringing three others and two eggs with me had made it equally more amazing. Desperation spoke for a lot.

Unfortunately, desperation wasn't everything. Less than a minute of trying to fly back home with reckless abandon had left me sputtering in the air and gasping for breath. My dry throat burned with each heave as I floundered in the air, and a feeling of hopelessness began to swallow me whole. I had wasted all of my strength saving us and was tapping into energy I didn't have to fly back. I knew there was no way we would make it in time. If the ponies were going to hurt my eggs they would have done it by then. All I could hope for was that they tossed them aside and I could get to them before they died of exposure.

Antic and Revelry had to help carry me the second half of the trip, each taking turns suspending me in their magic rather than slow us down by trying to physically carry me. It was enough to let me catch my breath and wipe some of the fresh tears from my eyes, but every moment I spent floating listlessly in their magic just sent my mind racing with more and more worry. I couldn't possibly rest like that, if the few minutes would have even mattered.

Zeal was the first on the ground when we reached the ledge of the canyon. He trotted up to an outcropping and flattened himself against it before bringing his sword up. After a tense moment to peer out around the side toward the entrance to our cave, he waved us over. “All clear,” he whispered.

Revelry set me down gently, but I collapsed against the mountainside the instant I tried to take a step. She shot up to my side to prop me up again, even against my feeble protests. “Just... just stand here a second,” she whispered to me before shooting pleading glances to Zeal and Antic.

There was no time to just stand around! I pushed away from her again and immediately regretted it, finding myself on my hands and knees and for the first time in my life reflecting on just how comfortable the dusty stone looked compared to trying to stand again. “We...” I rasped and shook my head. “...we...”

Revelry knelt to scoop me back up, but this time she had nothing to say. They all knew the time had come and gone long before we got there, and none of us had any idea on what to do. Zeal scowled and arced the sword upward. “Just stay here. I'll handle this.” A faint pop met my ears and he was enshrouded in an almost invisible shimmer of red. The shield could stop a couple of arrows or bolts... could it stop swords and axes? I wasn't so sure.

“Wait... let... let me think...” I wheezed, brushing my tail out of the way and rocking into a sitting position with Revelry's help. “You'll just... just get killed.”

“Better than just letting them have their way,” he growled.

Antic shuffled between us, letting his hooves scrape on the stone. For the first time I saw he was actually trembling. He wiped at his eyes and croaked, “Let me go. Pl-lease. I-I screwed this up...” He locked tearful eyes with me. “I-I'm so sorry Cantrip... everyone... I di-idn't know this would happen!” Even after I told him? I wanted scream at him for being so unbelievably stupid, but I just couldn't. Instead, I just looked away. “I screwed this up so badly... but I can fix it. I'll be right back.” With that, he was gone in a glittering burst of magic.

Revelry's ears shot up as she stood, but if she had any protest she withheld it. Zeal too looked on in disbelief as the wisps of dust kicked up by his unseen hooves disappeared around the corner, and the blink of an eye later we couldn't follow him if we dared to try. Zeal swore under his breath and slid closer to us, flicking his tail and sword nervously. “Stay low,” he muttered. “If you see a pony, stay calm.”

Calm? How could I be calm? Even so, I was more tired than ever before in my life, and more so than I expected should have been strictly possible. The only thing I could do was sit back against the wall, pant and shudder from the unbearable stress. I covered my face with a hand and broke into more hushed sniffling while we waited. And waited. And waited. Every muscle and nerve in my body tensed with each passing minute, rapidly passing the point of physical pain on to a sensation of utter anguish. If we could just save one. Just one....

I could take no more. I wasn't going to sit around any longer while the fate of my eggs hung in the balance. There couldn't possibly be much time left to keep them warm even if they were still intact. Despite every protest from Revelry and Zeal I pulled myself to my very shaky hooves. Antic wasn't the only one who knew the invisibility spell! I was going to go get my eggs back, and no pony was going to stop me!

Zeal did. He caught me by the arm as I stumbled past and pulled me back to face him. “Cantrip, stop. One more isn't going to make a difference.”

“I don't care!” I shouted, eliciting a very alarmed look from him and Revelry from the volume. “They're my eggs! I'm getting them back, no matter what!” I wrestled against his grip in vain, and once again began weeping. “Let go!” We fought for a few moments, which consisted of little more than me writhing and crying for him to let go of me, but he knew better. He pinned me back against the wall with one hand and shook his head slowly and silently. For those few moments, I hated him beyond words. I tried to scream for him to release me, but it only came up as a pleading whimper as he stoically ignored a kick.

Revelry was standing off to the side, holding one hand to her chest and another to her mouth. Her ears twitched as her eyes swept the canyon below, but she never looked back at us. Right then I hated her too. Why wasn't she helping me?! She was just going to stand there and let Zeal keep me from saving my eggs! What was wrong with them?! I opened my mouth to shout at her too, but something caught my ear.

Someone else crying.

“Ca-antrip... I-I'm s-so-sorry,” Antic whimpered. His magic spluttered and seemed to almost lazily drip away to reveal him standing in the middle of us all. Weak trembling shook his body and he raised a hand up, presenting... a broken shell dripping with sticky yolk. His reddened eyes met mine. “W-w-we were t-too late.”

Zeal's mouth went slack and his eyes widened as he finally released me. He stomped a hoof, letting out a stream of profanity and shooting Antic an acidic glare before turning to unload his verbal ire on a nearby stone. Revelry covered her face and looked away.

I just stared. Sat and stared at the remains of my unhatched whelps. I couldn't scream or cry. Just stare.

Even as Antic collapsed next to me and started sobbing himself, I just stared. That was it. They were gone. It was all gone. Everything we owned but our lives was gone. We couldn't stay here anymore. We'd have to find somewhere new and start from nothing. Again.

Antic was wrong, and it cost us everything.

Finally, the tears started to well up in my eyes again. I hated the ponies. Hated them so much it hurt. Why... why couldn't Antic have been right?

Why couldn't we just live in peace...?

Why did my eggs have to die...?

Chapter 5: Life Goes On

The day following our very forceful eviction from our home was shaping up to be the most miserable experience in my life. We spent what felt like hours huddled in the tiny outcropping, crying, shuddering, swearing and trying to come to terms with what had just happened, but I knew in reality it couldn't have been more than a few minutes. Zeal was constantly watching and trying to prod us to move before it was too late, and by the time he'd gotten through to me I had only recovered enough strength to stand properly. The irrational part of me just wanted to sit there and let the ponies come kill me too, but Zeal's pleading and threats to physically carry me finally broke through to the rational side.

Where would we go now? I had no idea. I really wasn't thinking very much at all as we wandered off. Zeal was the only one who seemed to have any purpose left anymore, so I just fell in line next to him, shambling along and scuffing my hooves weakly against the gritty stone and all but forcing him to make good on his promise to haul me around if he had to. Antic was behind us with Revelry. I assumed. I couldn't care less at that point. I couldn't care less about anything.

It was only after the stony trail began to give way to more and more scrubs and yellowing grasses that I even noticed we were going anywhere. It was also the moment that my taxed stamina gave out on me again. My next step sent my hoof skidding out from under me when it hit a patch of something mossy and in turn dumping me hard onto the rough stone.

“Cantrip!” Zeal threw an arm out to catch me but missed by a hair. He crouched at my side and offered a hand to help me up. “Are you alright?”

Had he been there a couple of hours ago!? Of course I wasn't alright! My attempts to shout that at him ended in splutters and gagged whimpers, and I pushed myself into a sitting position against the mountainside before lowering my head. Between the rasps for air and shuddering, I could do nothing but just look down and avoid their eyes. I knew they were all staring at me. Why couldn't I just have some privacy to mourn!?

“We can rest for a minute,” Zeal said, sounding weary himself. He slumped down uncomfortably close, clattering noisily as the scraps of looted armor touched rock.

I heard Antic and Revelry lower themselves to the ground too, but kept my eyes glued at my lap as I continued to fight to catch my breath. Time passed with nothing but my ragged breathing to break the silence, but Revelry broke the awkwardness by asking, “Where are we going?”

“I don't know,” Zeal said. “Down into the forest somewhere. It's the only safe place now.”

“What? But, that's where the ponies are!”

He sighed. “I know. They know we are in the mountains, and they're going to keep looking for us there. We have to be somewhere else when they do start looking. Heading the other way just takes us too close to the griffons. It's the only option, and there are places to hide.”

Revelry sputtered something unintelligible in protest, but Antic and I remained silent. Whatever. Zeal could lead us right into the pony town now and I wouldn't care. If I managed to recover any of my magic by that point I might even take a few of them down with me. Alright, I wasn't completely silent. I growled under my breath, just frustrated beyond words at everything. Nothing was certain now. We were headed into an unknown because the ponies would be searching high and low all through the mountains. Just because we walked into their town and I took one of their books! They were going to keep looking until they killed us because of a book! They found the cave. They could have it back! They could take everything-

“Fealty...” I muttered when a new horrible realization dawned on me.

Zeal appraised my new worried expression. “What about him?”

“The ponies. They'll find him! We-we have to go warn him!”

He swore and punched the ground. “He's in the complete opposite direction. It's too risky right now.”

I was having none of it, and eased up to my hooves. The motion was still distressingly difficult, and in the end I found myself spilling into Zeal's grasp. He placed me back against the mountainside and shook his head. “No, we can't. He's not stupid, he'll be safe. We can come back and warn him later.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” I demanded, squirming against his grip. “You just said they'll be combing everywhere! He doesn't know!”

“I know! I know. Cantrip, please, just listen to me!” Zeal was all but pleading with me at this point, holding my shoulders and leaning close. “In our state, if we go sneaking around again we're going to get caught, and you're in no shape to get our sorry hides out of trouble this time. I can't carry all three of you at once!”

Antic raised his hand meekly. “I'll go. Please...”

“No!” Zeal shouted, causing Antic to recoil visibly. He took a deep breath and shook his head again. “No. No, no, no. None of us are splitting up, and none of us are going back right now. I am not going to let any of you get hurt anymore.” He released me and spun to face away from all of us.

Antic locked eyes with me for a fleeting moment before slumping and placing his face in his hands. Revelry looked lost, which probably wasn't far from the truth. I didn't care what any of them did at that point. If I had any strength in me right then I'd have thrown it in Zeal's face to go rescue Fealty, but I didn't. I just had to sit there, wheezing still, and recover my strength so I could.

A thunderous crack sounded above us and I almost jumped out of my scales when something exploded next to me. I scrabbled away, bounding over a small boulder and finding I wasn't nearly as tired as I thought I was. Revelry squeaked and dove into a crouch next to Antic, and Zeal danced away before whipping his sword up.

It was a rock. A rock that had broken away and fallen from a ledge above. A surge of panic rushed through me when I saw something carried aloft by wings fluttering away, but instead of a pegasus or griffon it turned out to be just a buzzard. Stupid birds. I hated them.

“We should get moving,” Zeal said, relaxing out of the combat stance he'd assumed against the invading boulder. “That might have alerted anything nearby.”

Being scared out of your mind has a tendency to give you energy you didn't realize you had, so I groaned, dragged myself up to my hooves again and set off after Zeal to wherever we were headed. The sky was starting to darken from the cloud cover that always hung over this side of the mountains. At least we were headed where we would get a little shade from any downpours.

The day stretched on for an eternity. It was already mid afternoon by the time we left the mountains, but it felt like night would never come, even with the perpetual cloud cover overhead. The weather decided to avoid drenching us in rain for some reason, but given how I felt it almost annoyed me more that the world was denying that everything was just dreadful. Not that it stopped the temperature from plummeting down to levels that were just cool enough to be annoying, nor did it stop a slight breeze from winding through the trees all about us to periodically chill my wings to the bone. Even tucking them as close as I could couldn't keep the away all of the bite against the thin skin.

We'd settled down for the night after it got too dark to continue on. As usual my siblings didn't seem to have a problem navigating the forest in the dead of night, but I was stumbling along, and after the third branch slapped my arm and wing I'd had enough. The others didn't take much convincing. It was cold, dark, clammy and we hadn't eaten anything in forever. I hadn't developed much of an appetite, but even I felt a hollow gnawing in my stomach that was getting hard to ignore completely.

Scavenging was out of the question though. The only source of light we had was the small fire we were huddled around, and it didn't extend very far at all with so many trees around. None of the plants around us were edible, so that was that. I'd half expected Zeal to protest when I set a section of an old fallen tree alight with my magic, but he seemed to agree that warmth was more important than avoiding the nigh insignificant chance of a random pony or griffon blundering across us there and then. At least my magic was recovering well. By morning I would probably be mostly fine, as little good as that would do us. I still couldn't conjure food, or poof my eggs back to life, or make everything happy and fantastic again.

All I could do was start a fire, and that was all the company we had. The faint crackle breaking the monotony of insect chirping was almost as welcome as the warmth, since we weren't doing anything but silently avoiding each others' gazes. I've heard someone say before that 'the tension could be cut with a knife', but right then, I wasn't sure a dragon's claws could cut through it.

We must have sat there saying not a word for half an hour before Zeal broke the silence. “You three should get some sleep. We'll need to get going as soon as the sun is up.”

Across from the two of us, Revelry broke away from staring at the fire and asked, “What about you?”

“I'll keep watch.”

She frowned. “We can take shifts. You don't have to do this alone.”

“I'll be fine,” he insisted, standing to punctuate the statement. “Now, go on and rest while you can.” His sword floated up to rest in his hand, and he stepped off amidst the rustle of once dry leaves dampened by dew.

The rest of us went back to not looking at or talking to each other, which didn't seem like it was going to end anytime soon. Then Revelry proved me wrong by slumping to the ground on a patch of soil in the sea of wet leaves. She made a small noise as she curled up into the tightest ball she could manage, facing the fire.

That just left Antic and me, and under those circumstances the inevitable happened. We were looking at each other. Eyes locked, unblinking. “Cantrip-”

“Save it,” I hissed. For a moment I felt a twinge of vindication at the hurt look that flashed over his face, but I didn't dwell on it. I just followed Revelry's example by lowering myself to the messy ground and turning away from him and the fire.

Let him wallow in a fraction of the sorrow I was. I wasn't ready to forgive anyone of anything.

I didn't even realize I'd fallen asleep when Zeal's frantic shout jostled me awake from a dreamless sleep. I groaned and rolled over, finding that my left wing was tingly and half asleep while my shoulder and hip ached from resting against the bare ground. My joints popped and little twinges of pain fluttered down my side, causing me to catch half way. A thin fog hung in the air, muting the already gray and dull early morning light. It couldn't have been long past dawn, and my body was still gripped with fatigue that told me I hadn't gotten nearly as much sleep as it wanted.

“Revelry!” Zeal shouted again, wobbling uncertainly as he lurched up from his prior spot next to a tree. “Revelry, answer me!”

“She's gone?” Antic asked from outside my field of view.

Zeal growled and swore. “Yes!”

“Weren't you watching us?” Antic trotted over, panning his ears around as he scanned the woods.

“I fell asleep.” Zeal snorted and growled again. “Why? Why would she do this!?”

“Maybe she went looking for food?”

“It doesn't matter.” Zeal ran his claws through his hair and twitched his tail. “She knows better than to wander off alone. She knows the ponies are out here. If she went near that pony town I'm going to throttle her when we find her.”

I rose to my hooves and immediately regretted the motion. “She wouldn't do that,” I said, rubbing my sore shoulder and meeting tired eyes with Antic for a moment. She couldn't possibly be that stupid.

“Well, she went somewhere,” Zeal said, sweeping his arm around. “And we can't go looking for her, because she'll probably come back here looking for us.”

Really, I was hoping she was out looking for food. The hunger wasn't too strong to ignore the night before, but I was starving now. My tongue and lips were all but screaming for something to drink too. Had we really drank nothing since we left? “Is there any water nearby?”

Zeal snorted again. “I don't know. Maybe.” His tail twitched again and he stretched his wings. “Maybe she went looking for that. Doesn't change anything though, we're stuck waiting for her.”

That didn't improve any of our moods. Zeal looked several times like he was going to change his mind and rush off to locate her, but common sense reasserted itself and he sank back against his tree with yet another snort. Antic just paced around the smoldering remains of the fire from the night before. Fortunately, Zeal insisted that he knock it off before I did it in a less pleasant manner, and so we settled back into an eerily similar routine to the night before. I was strongly considering flopping back down onto the ground to get some relief from the tension and all consuming exhaustion.

Just as that temptation was winning me over, the waiting ceased. All of our ears perked up at the almost inaudible flap of wings and rustling of leaves, and Zeal curled his hand around the hilt of his sword, anticipating a pegasus or griffon at any moment. Instead, the charcoal scales of my sister shifted through an opening in the tree canopy and she floated down into the opening. “Hey, you're all awake.”

“Where have you been?” Zeal demanded, releasing his death grip on the weapon. “You know how dangerous it is out here.”

She rolled her eyes and inverted in the air to face him. “I do, but I also know a few tricks to get out of trouble. You looked so tired and all, so, you know, I thought I'd take over watching for you.” Zeal didn't look convinced, but said nothing. Revelry clasped her hands together and said, “Oh, but I've got some good news! I found a stream back that way. The water is a bit grimy but it tastes okay after you purify it. Better though, is that I found some berries growing near it. I don't know about you three, but I'm starving.”

I didn't need to hear another word, but had to ask, “What kind of berries?”

She shrugged. “A few kinds. Mostly blueberries I think. I ate some and feel fine, so I don't think they're poisonous.”

I was too tired to groan at the reckless behavior, but Zeal did a good enough job of it. He snatched up his chanfron and donned it before stretching every limb. “Right, let's go get something to eat and drink and get moving as soon as we can.”

Revelry took the lead, hovering just above the ground and winding her way between the trees in what looked nothing like a planned path. Antic trailed behind her on hoof, dragging his tail and hooves and slouching. I let out a frustrated sigh and fell into line beside Zeal, trying to avoid watching my miserable brother in front of me.

The trip to the stream was shorter than I expected, and after a couple of minutes the sound of running water was loud enough to overcome our shuffling through the soft leaves and shrubbery. Those annoying thorny vines were growing thicker and thicker as we got close, and I was quickly starting to understand why Revelry chose to fly. Rather than waste my still depleted mana or stamina I just dealt with it. Our scales were thick enough to ward them off for the most part, but the burning sensation in my wing told me I'd gained another small scar or two in the membrane. Yet another thing too minor to worry about. Right then, all I cared about was getting something wet in my mouth.

Much to my relief, the vegetation ceased near the banks of the stream, leaving us a little room to spread out without bumbling into a branch or vine. Revelry was right about the stream: the water wasn't moving fast and was cloudy with fine silt. Definitely something I wasn't thirsty enough to drink like it was. Fortunately, this was a problem all four of us had the magical knowledge to fix. I was the first to reach out and scoop up a bowl of the murky water in my magic before waving my fingers over it. A deep blue aura enshrouded it for an instant, and the imperfections floated to the surface and fell back into the stream. That looked much more inviting, and awkward as it was to drink a floating ball of water, I downed it as fast as I could get it in my mouth. The cool water tasted amazing, and I repeated the process again and again until my stomach refused to hold any more.

“Oh, that's better...” Revelry said, drifting down to the bank next to me and wiping a trickle from the corner of her mouth. Of the four of us she was the only to show anything approaching manners while sipping at her globe of purified water. She must have drank plenty when she first found the stream.

“Much,” Zeal agreed. He wiped his mouth with his forearm and strode out into the stream, watching the flowing water intently.

Antic glanced up, and his ears rose from hanging at the sides of his head. “What are you doing?”

Zeal grumbled and stamped a hoof. “Making sure there aren't any fish. Which there aren't.”

“It's too shallow,” I said. Oh, if I had anything left to give I'd probably have given it all for another smoked fish at that point, but even I knew we weren't going to find any. If we were lucky we'd find a crayfish or something, but I wasn't betting on that. Probably just a little frog or a slug or something at most.

“I know,” he grumbled again. “Where are the berries?”

Revelry gestured a claw down the stream. “A few bushes down there.” She squinted up at the tree canopy. “I think there might be some nuts up there too. A bit more filling maybe.” She hopped up and drifted upward without beating her wings. “I'm going to go take a look.”

Zeal nodded and sloshed off down the stream, thoroughly frightening away any unseen wildlife. ...and leaving me alone with Antic. I groaned inside my head and tried to find something to occupy my mind. Oh, look. Trees. Yes, lots of trees. And a bird. I hated birds. Water... water... wonder where it came from and flowed to? Yes. We should follow it. It would lead somewhere interesting. And ponies, probably. Argh.

Antic was busy contemplating the dirt in front of him. His wings and ears hung limply at his sides as he scratched at a patch of leaf-free soil with a claw. He paused the scrawling twice and his jaw muscles worked almost imperceptibly, and I prepared myself for whatever he was planning on saying. If he was planning on apologizing again he was just wasting his breath, but no words ever came out. Instead, he whimpered. Whimpered and scrunched up his face. What followed was inevitable and I tried my best to ignore it, but once he looked back to lock teary eyes with me that became impossible. An instant later he was looking away and covering his face with a hand. Good, at least he understood just how much he screwed up.

Amidst a few choked heaves he stood and trudged off in Zeal's direction, head low. That left me alone at the stream bank, which was just what I'd been wanting for half a day now. I crawled closer to the water and stared into the ebbs of swirling silt, which for some reason reminded me of the dripping egg yolks that not long ago were smeared all over my belly. That drew a tiny whimper from me too, and I reached down to scoop a bit of water up to rub the last traces of the slime away. Too bad I couldn't wipe the image from my head.

“Hey, Cantrip?”

If Revelry thought she was going to startle me, she was right, but I didn't show it as I looked up to find her floating just above head level. Maybe she found some food. “What?”

“I, uh, have something that might help you feel better. If you want.” She flicked her wrist and a ball of off colored blueish water drifted down to my face. I studied it for a while, unsure if I was believing what I was looking at. Where would she have even found it?

I sniffed it. “Is this... wine?”

She nodded. “Yeah, it's not very strong though. I just made it. It might help, you know, take some of the edge off.”

My siblings were insane. Clearly and utterly insane. I shot her a disbelieving glare and stood. I knew how those spells worked. You had to have fruit or something first. “You mean... you found some food, and you wasted it?”

She recoiled and floated back out of reach, nearly dropping the wine in her magical grasp as she did so. “I-I-I just thought-I mean, there were a lot, so...”

Oh, this was just perfect. On top of everything that had just happened, Revelry just let me know that from now on she was going to be drunk out of her mind. At least before she was limited by how much she could find or steal, but now she could make it in an instant. She drifted back further with a worried look as I scowled at her. “No. Keep it and do whatever you want with it,” I said, spinning around and storming away.

Behind me, I heard something splash into the water, followed by small hooves sloshing away.

Revelry had been right about one thing at least: there were an almost absurd number of berries scattered throughout the bushes lining the stream. After drinking so much I couldn't eat many, even ignoring the fact that I was still worried that some might be poisonous, but having actual food in my stomach did a lot more to take the edge off than any of Revelry's wine could have.

Speaking of which, I was beginning to feel a twinge of guilt for snapping at her. There was more than we could eat, so it didn't really matter if she made some into wine. I kept reminding myself that that wasn't the point. Getting drunk or even a little buzzed out here right now could be outright deadly, and she didn't need to be getting it in her head that were somehow safe just because a griffon hadn't rammed an arrow into one of us or a pony's axe hadn't cut one of our heads off yet.

Besides, she seemed fine. She was floating up ahead next to Antic, mumbling something to him from time to time and generally keeping an eye out. Zeal had agreed to the idea of just following the stream for a while, and left the other two to head the journey for now. Based on the bags under his eyes and the hint of slurring in his speech, he was just too tired to protest or suggest an alternative. Under the circumstances I would have probably voiced my concerns about running into ponies living near the water source, but I felt just as tired as he looked. It would give Antic and Revelry something to do too, which might prevent any more disasters or upsets.

On the other hand, following others around was giving me little to do but dwell on the hopelessness of our current situation. What were we expecting to find? Could we hope to set up somewhere permanent to live up on the surface? Even if the woods would provide some cover and probably plenty of warning if a pony was wandering nearby, I don't think I could ever truly feel safe like that. There were reasonable choke points and other natural points to set up traps or early warning spells, but there were twice as many spots we couldn't protect. Add on top of that that we probably couldn't keep food from spoiling or being eaten by insects or vermin and I was doubting that we were going to find anywhere to settle down for a long time.

The sun rays streaming through the tree tops and the faint trickle of the stream were bringing back a few memories though. They were all fragmentary and fleeting, but this definitely felt familiar. It had to have been more than a decade ago by then, but we had spent years living in the forest when we were just whelps. Things were so much simpler and more innocent then. Mom would always find food for us, and lead us around the safe paths during the day before finding a secluded and safe spot to nestle down for the night. Thinking about her was quickly suffocating any nostalgia at the thought of living a nomadic lifestyle again. It really scared me sometimes when I realized that days went by that I didn't even think about her anymore, or that I could only just remember what she looked like or what her voice was like. If I had anything left to give, I'd have happily done so to have her with us right then. She would know what to do.

Zeal didn't notice the involuntary sigh that passed my lips, clearly too tired or jaded by the thousand others I'd blown out in the last day. That little irrational part of my brain was trying to get annoyed that nobody noticed or cared that I was upset all over again, but I buried it when I saw the confused look on his face. He picked up his pace and lazily hopped a mossy fallen tree to catch up with the two ahead of us, which I then noted were cautiously approaching something I couldn't see. “What is it?” I asked. Nobody answered me, so I doubled up my pace to not lag behind.

Antic stopped and peered down at the ground. “How far down do you think it goes?” He crouched and extended a hoof down... something. Revelry reached out to take his hand, but he vanished in an instant with a startled yelp.

Revelry bounded into the air and circled around. “Antic!”

Zeal and I darted forward. My heart was skipping in my chest and my mind was racing, trying to figure out what I'd just seen. We just reached Revelry when Antic burst from the ground and soared into the air with a mighty beat of his wings. “Wow, that's deep.”

It was then that I noticed the giant hole in the ground. The soil had eroded in a roughly circular patch to expose stone below, which had also been worn away in an irregular pattern down to a depth I couldn't see the extent of. Alright, maybe we wouldn't have to be nomads. Maybe we'd stumble across a new cave.

Zeal placed a hand over a patch grass clinging to the edge of the hole and peeked inside. “It's too dark to see down.”

“It goes a long way down,” Antic reiterated as he descended. “If we had a light we could check it out...” he muttered, looking in my direction out of the corner of his eye.

I took the hint and wove my hand through the air, and a moment later all four of us were cloaked in a dull glow. Maybe not the most subtle way to go poking around in a deep, dark cave, but that way I wouldn't have to try to concentrate on moving a ball of light around or keeping up with whoever needed me to flash a light down a dark corridor.

Zeal stood and flapped his wings to get into the air. “Alright, let's take a look. Everyone stay together, got it?”

We all confirmed our assent, and one-by-one fluttered down into the darkness.

Antic wasn't kidding about the cave being deep. We descended for a full thirty seconds before we finally found the bottom, although we were moving at a careful pace to avoid any unseen lingering hazards. The magical light cast off thousands of tiny ripples in the stone shaft surrounding us, and at the bottom the dark blobs of side passages were evident. At first glance, it looked like the cave might turn out to be an entire network below the surface. That had the potential to be a very bad thing; the last thing we wanted to do was blunder into a large creature of some sort in its home.

Water dripped down one of the side paths, echoing a hundred times and making the cave seem all that much larger. Even before I heard it or touched the clammy damp stone of the floor, the moldy wetness had lodged itself firmly in my nostrils. That meant one thing for sure: there was a water source down here, and the flowing water had probably carved the cave ages ago.

“This way,” Zeal said as he crept along one of the flat paths of the floor toward leftmost passage way. His hooves made a deafening racket in the near silence, and for a moment I considered suggesting we fly. I then realized that we might not have enough room to do that in the tunnels, and anything that wasn't dead down here probably knew we were here now anyway.

Antic halted atop a small mound and prodded at something with his hand. “There's a puddle of water here. We wouldn't have to go looking for that at least.”

“Mmhmm,” Zeal agreed. I imagined his tone carried an implied, “Please don't talk too much and alert the monsters, okay?”

The tunnel was short and terminated in another spacious cavernous room. Magical light reflected off of glistening stone dampened by the humid air, highlighting a trickle of water from a hole in the ceiling that poured into a basin. The liquid spilled from its sides into channels in the floors that disappeared down tiny streams pockmarked by rocky spikes jutting from the floor and ceiling. It was a truly awe inspiring sight, and for a moment I was already picturing how we could put it to use.

Revelry was the first to take a closer look by soaring into the air and over the pool of water. “Huh, that's odd...” she trailed off. I was preparing to ask the obvious question when she made a string of choking noises and placed both hands against her forehead. The golden aura that enshrouded her grew in intensity to the point my eyes ached just looking at it. She let out a low moan. “Oww...”

“What is it?” Antic asked with a twinge of panic in his voice. When she answered with more moaning and a drunken flap of her wings, he leaped into the air and joined her. “Revelry, what...” A moment later he was reaching for his forehead too, and panic began to overtake me. What was happening!? I was about to jump up after them, but Antic had the presence of mind to grab Revelry and yank her back down to the ground, ending up in a knotted pile with her next to Zeal and me.

Revelry dug herself out of the mess and clasped a hand back to her head. “Oww... that... that's a lot of mana... Too much...”

“Huh? Mana?” I cast a glance back to the pool and shut my eyes, trying to feel any ambient energy flowing around us. I felt nothing.

“It's the water,” Antic explained, rubbing his temples.

They seemed to be recovering, so my curiosity got the better of me and I stepped toward the basin. Sure enough, the closer I got the stronger the background mana felt. By the time I was close enough to place a hand against the rocky structure it was almost painful to be near it, but all of the magical fatigue I'd accrued over the last two days vanished.

“Cantrip?” Zeal nervously. “Are you alright?”

I didn't even notice that I was grinning and stifling a giddy chuckle. “I'm fine.” I turned to my siblings and shook off the goofy grin. I was supposed to be upset, and I needed to show it. “It's a natural magical spring,” I explained, walking away before I doubled over from the headache. “There's no way to know how much mana it holds... but it could be enormous. Just imagine what we could do with it...”

“Do you think you could use it to keep the cave safe?” Zeal asked as he stood from crouching next to Antic and Revelry.

I chuckled. “With that much? I could incinerate a dragon.”

He grinned and nodded. “Perfect. Let's go check out the other paths, because I think we just found our new home.”

The remaining side passages turned out to be pretty mundane. Well, the first led to another branch and a smattering of small chambers holding nothing of interest. The second was a bit more interesting and led to an underground stream that had carved a channel large enough to walk down and extended for further than any of us could see or dare to explore. That made me a bit nervous, since something or someone could possibly come sloshing or swimming up the stream from a direction we didn't expect, but at least I had proven that the sentry spell could protect us from that. If it was set off by something inoffensive like a fish, that would only be a bonus since we would also have a supply of food down here. I wasn't really expecting that, but so far the cave had been nothing but pleasant surprises.

That process had taken an hour or so, and by now we had settled in to relax for a little while before we went looking for something to eat above ground. The others were all in the main chamber, last I saw. Zeal had collapsed in an empty spot to get some sleep he desperately needed, while Antic and Revelry were sitting at the edge of another small pool, dangling their hooves in the cloudy water and talking about something I hadn't gathered a word of. I was off in one of the smaller side rooms, trying to get a moment of peace and privacy to collect my thoughts. My mood had not improved.

“Cantrip?” The solitude didn't last long... and much to my distress, it was Antic's voice.

“What?”

He peeked his head around the corner. “You, um, got a minute?” Yes, but I really didn't want to do this. I just kept my mouth shut, so he crept around the corner. “We... I-I just need to talk to you. Please?”

I took a deep breath and locked eyes with him, but again said nothing. This had to happen eventually. Did it have to be now?

He wrung his hands and avoided my gaze. “L-look, I, um. I wanted to say again h-how sorry I am. Really. I'm really, really sorry.”

What was I supposed to say to that? That everything was just okay? It wasn't.

The silence wasn't quite what he was expecting, if his reaction was any indication. He frowned harder and came closer. Each step made the tension in the room grow and grow, but I held my tongue. “You-you were right. I should have listened to you. I-I could have gotten us all killed.”

I locked my jaw to avoid gritting my teeth and nodded. That was an understatement.

He was right next to me by that point, and much to my unease he sat next to me. “I'm so, so sorry, but... you have to believe me... I was trying to m-make sure that this never happened.”

“But it did.” It was my turn to look away this time, rather than stare death at him. That took considerable willpower.

He placed a hand atop mine, and I snatched it away. “Cantrip...” His voice was unsteady, on the verge of cracking. “Cantrip... please forgive me.” Curiosity got the best of me, and I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. He blinked and tears broke free of his eyelids to run down his cheeks. “Please?”

I looked him dead on and narrowed my eyes. “Antic, if there's anything that you should learn from this, it's that there are things that 'sorry' does not fix.”

He looked crushed, which admittedly didn't have the satisfying effect I thought it would. His mouth worked silently and he fell backward onto one of his palms. “Wh-wh-” A choking noise rose from his throat instead of words as he blinked more tears out of his eyes.

That was all I wanted to see, so I leaned against the wall away from him and buried my face in it. Time dragged on forever as he gagged and fought the crying, but finally he gave in. I kept staring at the slab of cratered gray in front of me as he climbed up and trudged off. The scuffs of his hooves just barely failed to mask the quiet sobs in the room.

Not all of them were his.

A better person would have at least told him he was forgiven, even if he wasn't really.

Why couldn't I have been a better person?

Chapter 6: ...and on.

Once again, I found myself waking from a dreamless and not particularly refreshing sleep the next morning. Time turned fuzzy and meaningless after I ran Antic off the night before, so I'm not sure when I drifted off or for how long. The magical lighting I'd hastily installed in my chamber didn't really give any clue on what time it was either, since not much sunlight made it this deep down. That meant I was restless and unable to go back to sleep when I woke up, since I didn't want to sleep the day away. I had important business to take care of as soon as possible. Not to mention I was hungry again, and not accustomed to sleeping that way.

Zeal was right where I'd last seen him, laying sprawled out on one of the few dry patches of stone in the main chamber and sleeping far more heavily than I would have thought possible under said conditions. He was still recovering from keeping watch most of the previous night in the woods and too sleepy to pay much heed when I told him I was leaving. He didn't even care when I said Antic and Revelry were nowhere to be seen. They could watch each other, he'd said. Suited me.

The trip to Fealty's cave was longer than I'd expected, even accounting for the fact that we had traveled who knew how far into the woods away from the mountains. Flying was much faster than walking of course, but even that took several hours by my best estimates. The path took me close to our old home, but the temptation to drop by didn't last long. For one, I knew that there was a nontrivial risk that there would still be ponies snooping around. More importantly, part of me really just didn't want to see it ever again. I was starting to come to terms with the fact that it was gone. Getting even a close look at it would be... counterproductive at best and deadly at worst. Best to just avoid it altogether.

From the air, Fealty's cave looked completely unharmed, so I allowed myself a tiny flash of hope as I set down and trotted toward the entrance. It occurred to me right then that he might have installed the sentry spell that I'd shown him, but that wasn't why I stopped in my tracks at the entrance. I ran my hand down a gash in the stone, trying to remember if I'd seen it before. It was certainly large and deep enough to have been made by a pony's axe... but it looked old. No dust or debris around it. Surely I'd seen it before. There wasn't any blood or anything around. Fealty was fine. He was smart. He wouldn't let the ponies catch him by surprise. But why wasn't I triggering any early warning spells?

I swallowed and forced myself onward. Inside was dark, but I knew the layout well enough to avoid stumbling around too much. I only kicked over one small, unidentifiable thing on my descent into the main chamber, but by then it was just too dark to continue on. Was he not home? “Fealty?” No response. I waved my hand through the air, conjuring a ball of light that shed enough brightness to pick out most of the features of the chamber. Dozens of small objects of all sorts on shelves and boxes reflected back at me as I stepped along. “Fealty?” I repeated again, louder.

Shuffling and scuffing noises echoed through the cave, and I spun in place and panned my ears around to find its source. One of the side chambers? I edged closer and angled the light toward it, trying not to imagine ponies hiding in ambush. A little magic and they'd get me before I even knew they were there. Instead, Fealty emerged from the shadows, shielding his face against the glare. “Huh? Cantrip?”

I didn't waste an instant. Before he had finished registering that I was there, I had him in my arms, squeezing him hard enough that he choked and recoiled. “You're alright!”

“Whoa, hey!” He nudged me, trying to pry me loose enough that he could breathe properly. After he'd regained his breath, he gestured to light the room up. “What's the matter? Everything okay?” he asked as the darkness receded into the side chambers. He rubbed his right eye and yawned widely. “I wasn't expecting you this early.”

I stepped back and nodded, resisting the urge to jump straight into a long dump of everything. “Now that I know you're okay, yes.”

He cocked his head and furrowed his brow, studying me for a few moments. “What happened? You look exhausted...” He ushered me further back into the chamber and paused halfway toward another doorway, looking distracted and confused. Another muffled yawn left his mouth as he shook his head and turned to hear my answer.

“Ponies ran us out of our home.”

“What?” He dashed back to me, eyes wide. “You mean-but when? What happened? Are you hurt?” He circled around and stretched my wings out to scrutinize every inch of my body.

Not physically hurt at least. “No, no I'm okay. It happened the day before yesterday. Ponies from that new little settlement found us.” I neglected to mention the still unbelievable circumstances that led them to follow Antic back.

He stopped in front of me and took me by the shoulders. “What about the others? ...and our eggs?”

“Zeal, Antic and Revelry are alright...”

“...our eggs?” When I merely shook my head, his mouth hung agape. “No... don't say that...”

“I couldn't save them,” I said, shaking my head again. “I tried! I tried so hard! It-it just wasn't good enough!”

His mouth worked silently as his hands fell away from my shoulders. “No...”

“I-I did everything I could... y-you've got to believe me!”

He shut his mouth and nodded. “I... I know you did. I don't doubt that for a moment.” He pulled me into a hug and patted me on the back. “It's going to be okay. Just... just tell me everything. Where are the others? Where have you been?”

We ended up slinking to the floor at some point during my deluge of explanation and the flood of emotions that surged back to the surface. Fealty kept an arm around me as told him everything: what Antic had done, how the ponies followed him home, how I'd whisked us off to safety and lost our eggs, then how we'd moved on to the forest to find the new cave. I did a better job of keeping myself together through the story than I expected, but even still I had to pause a time or two to wipe my eyes and level my breathing.

Fealty just listened and nodded along as I talked, mostly staring down into the floor. When I was finally done, he gave me a little squeeze and said, “It's okay. As long as you and the others are alright, everything's okay.” He drew me into another hug and brushed a hair out of my face. “No need to worry anymore.”

For a moment, I really felt better. Being with Fealty always made me feel that way, but I was amazed that it could help me get over something so life shattering so easily. In fact, it made me feel... warm. And fuzzy inside. More than usual. When I realized I was also feeling the faint tingle of magic flowing through me, I twisted my head to find the source. A wispy red glow covered Fealty's hands that flowed against my sides like thick fog, and where it touched me the calm and tingly sensation was strongest. “What...?” I asked dumbly, pushing back to get a better look.

“Don't worry, it's just something to help you relax,” he explained, withdrawing his hands and the magic. Without a moment spared, the tired, lost and hopeless feelings returned. “I read it in a spell book last week,” he added, pointing a claw off to a new looking book sitting atop a crate in the corner.

“Wh-what? You... but...” I wanted to feel better. Nobody wanted to feel like their life was over. But I didn't want to just magic it away like that! That... that wasn't right! And where had he found the book? If he took it from ponies...

“What's wrong? Is it not helping?”

“It... it just, I don't want to just ignore or forget what happened.” I thrust a claw toward the book. “And where did you get that? Please, Fealty, Antic nearly got us all killed just by going near the ponies. Y-you're not stealing from them, are you?”

The awkward pause that followed told me everything I needed to know. Finally, he said, “I thought it was another book of healing spells. Something like that, well, I thought it was worth the risk. And it was. In a way. A book about healing minds or something... that will be useful once I figure out more of it.” He no doubt read the intense disapproval and worry I was harboring, and said, “Don't worry. No ponies saw me, and I didn't hurt anyone.”

I placed my face in my hands and tried to shove the thoughts of him being murdered by ponies into a dark corner of my mind from whence they would never return. “I don't need this right now... please...”

He wrapped his arms around me again and held me close. “Forget about all of that. None of it's important right now. You're safe, and that's all that matters.”

I nodded and returned the hug. Things could be worse, and I didn't want to dwell on that a moment longer. Mental magic or not, I felt a little better just being there with him and didn't want to ruin what I feared would be the last reprieve I had for some time.

We held each other silently for some time, until the moment was rudely interrupted by my stomach growling. Somehow, I'd managed to forget how hungry I was. I hadn't even bothered to stop to find anything to eat on the way there that morning.

Fealty released me. “Are you hungry? When's the last time you ate? What about the others?”

“It's been a little while...” I admitted. Oh, I hoped he had more fish around, but at that point I believe I would have settled for even the most bland greens that ponies seemed to be so fond of.

The rest of my stay with Fealty turned out to be surprisingly similar to any other. We spent a little while talking about the unimportant small things that had happened to us, ultimately ending with him trying again to convince me to move in with him. The offer was more tempting than ever, but I had even greater reason not to. My brothers and sister were going to need all of the help they could get right now, and abandoning them was the last thing I wanted to do. He did offer for all of us to move in with him until we got back on our hooves, and if anything at all went wrong I think we'd probably have to take him up on that. Even if Zeal didn't like it.

Leaving him behind to return home hadn't left me in a great mood though. I wanted to stay with him so badly... even if I had obligations elsewhere. I also really didn't want to come back to the shattered pieces of our lives that we were still trying to put back together. Especially Antic. After what I'd said to him the night before, I had no idea what to say to him, if I should say anything at all. Part of me just wanted to drop the whole affair and never speak of it again, even if I knew I would have a hard time just forgetting it.

I sighed and continued to stare at the hole amidst the clearing that lead to our new home. How long had I been standing there, trying to work up the courage to face Antic, and to a lesser extent, Revelry? Too long. I scooped up the box I'd brought back with me, spread my wings and fluttered down into the dank depths.

“Hey, you're back,” Revelry's voice called to me as I set down. I looked up to see her hovering near the ceiling, examining a stalactite and tapping it with a claw. Four of the larger stalactites hanging from the roof of the cave were glowing, and I then realized that things were considerably brighter than when I left. Good to see her taking some initiative. She drifted down to the floor with a faint clack of hooves against stone, and strolled toward me. “So, how's Fealty?”

“He's fine, thank goodness. He hasn't seen any ponies or griffons.” I set the crate down and eased into a seated position on a dry patch of stone. Flying back with that in tow had really drained me.

She smiled. “That's good. Say, what's in the box? Did you go back by the old cave?”

“No, Fealty had some extra food.” Really, I was pretty sure it wasn't so much extra as most of what he had stocked up, but we had nothing so it didn't take much convincing to get me to take it. “Some smoked birds of some kind and a little fruit.” Not fish, but it sure beat nothing.

She popped the lid off, and her eyes lit up. “Oh, great! Zeal hasn't got back yet and I'm starving. Make sure to tell Fealty thanks for me.” She reached in and withdrew a piece of the cooked bird meat, the species to which it originally belonged impossible to discern now, and popped it into her mouth. “Mmm... oh, that's so much better,” she said, sinking to the ground across from me.

“It should be enough to last us a day or two, if we ration it,” I said, placing the lid back on. “You said Zeal was off looking for food?”

“Mmhmm.” She smirked and mimed swiping something around. “He took that sword and everything. He'd get a lot farther hunting with magic, but whatever. I figured I'd try and brighten the place up a bit while he was gone.”

“Right. Where's Antic?”

She took a deep breath and shrugged. “I don't know for sure. He said he was 'heading out for a while' when he got up this morning. Didn't say where or when he'd be back.”

I couldn't help but feel pretty guilty about him wanting to be away from me for a while. If someone had said to me what I said to him, I'd want to avoid them too. I'd probably rerun the scene in my head two dozen times since I woke up, picturing and hearing his response over and over again. Maybe when he got back I could set things straight. Right now, maybe I could set something else straight. “Hey, Revelry?”

She tore her eyes away from the stalactites above to meet mine. “Hmm?”

Apprehension fluttered in my stomach and my heart skipped a beat. Why was this so hard? “I... I'm sorry about yesterday.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Huh? What about it?”

“For snapping at you back at the stream. Sorry, I, uh, know you were just trying to help.”

“Oh!” She waved a hand at me. “Don't worry about that, I'd forgotten about it already.” Her ears lowered a bit. “I know you were upset. We all were. Still are I guess. I'm just glad you're looking better today.” She smirked. “A little talk with Fealty helped, eh?”

She didn't know the half of it, but looked like she was reading an awful lot more into it than there really was. What, did she think I only went to see him to be intimate with him or something? “Yeah, I suppose so. Finding a new cave helped more than anything.”

“Yeah, no joke. It's going to take a while to get it cozy, but I think we'll like it more than the old one once we do.” She grinned. “Maybe when the ponies and griffons start trading some they'll 'lose' some stuff for us.”

“Don't start that, we're just getting resettled.”

She raised a hand to her chest and mocked surprise. “What? I never said a thing about stealing anything. Remember the other caravan that broke down? Might get lucky.”

I was starting to doubt luck really existed, but we did just stumble across this cave by blind chance. It had taken us years to accumulate everything in our previous home, but in time we'd rebuild here. Luck or no. “Yeah. Well, I hope they 'lose' some pillows and blankets soon. I don't know if I can get used to sleeping on bare rock.” I flexed my back to pop a few achy vertebrae to punctuate the point.

“You said it.” She tapped a claw to her lip. “We could probably improvise something with some leaf litter in the mean time. It would be a lot softer at least.” She stood and stretched her wings before floating gently into the air. “Why don't we go take a look?”

That sounded better than just waiting around doing nothing, so I followed her up, out and into the warm sunlight above. One thing you could say for sure about the new location: the view was a lot more interesting than just rocks all over the place. The nearby stream left a constant calm trickle hanging in the air, and fruit trees and bushes were all around. Maybe we could gather a bit while we were out?

“Hey, what do you know, it looks like Antic's on the way back,” Revelry said, pointing at something winged and headed our way. “Wait, no, I think that's Zeal. Looks like he found something too.”

It was then that I noticed something large and limp in his grasp, though it wasn't until he was landing next to us that I recognized it as a boar of some kind. I had no idea those even lived around here. Zeal set down heavily, dumping the lifeless animal at our hooves and breathing heavily as he recovered from hauling it all the way here. It was a fairly small one by the looks of it, probably the only reason he could fly with it at all, and covered in stab wounds. Sure enough, the sword hovering in the air next to him was smeared in dry blood.

“Dinner for the next week,” he said. “Hope you like it, because I don't know if we'll be eating it again. These things fight like monsters.”

“You're hurt!” Revelry said, trotting over and crouching next to him.

There was a shallow gash on his left forearm and what looked like a deep stab wound to his right thigh. One look at the boar's tusks told me all I needed to know to guess where those came from. “Hold on, let me take a look at it,” I said, joining Revelry at his side. Fealty was a lot better at healing magic than me, but after practicing it a few times I was good enough to fix this. I raised my hand to cover the hole in his leg and concentrated, bathing the blood drenched wound in golden light that slowly closed it. As I feared, it left a large scar, but that was infinitely preferable to getting an infection or bleeding to death.

When I repeated the motion to fix the cut on his arm, he sighed in relief and rubbed the thin scar. “Thanks.” He brought his sword up and glanced at the blade, then the hog. “No idea how I'm going to butcher this thing with this, but I'll figure it out.” He rolled the carcass over and drove the sword into it in a seemingly random spot. “Antic home yet?”

Revelry shook her head. “Nope. We were hoping we might see him, but we ran into you.”

He nodded and prodded at the now leaking body. “Figures. If you're heading out, keep an eye out for him. And try not to stay too late, I'd like to get this frozen before too long.”

Which meant me, since I was the one who knew the spell. I had no intention of staying out all night of course. If Revelry and I could gather some food, and maybe some large leaves to start some bedding, I'd be happy enough. That couldn't take too long.

As it turned out, making the cave cozier didn't take as long as I feared it would. It was still a long way from being 'home,' but the leaves we'd gathered made surprisingly good bedding when the alternative was cold stone. I was astonished at how durable the leaves were, especially if they were fresh, and if we had some thread of some sort we could probably have even sewn them together into blankets. I was tempted to try making some out of hair, but even though I knew ponies did that sometimes I didn't have a clue how. We'd probably find some blankets before I figured that one out.

The new cave did have one enormous advantage over the old one at least: the mana spring. I'd spent the last three days working out ways we could use it to make life easier, and I was finding more every day. The second night we spent there was already much more comfortable than the previous, since Revelry and I worked out how to warm each of the chambers on demand. Something like that would have been far too demanding to keep powered on our own supplies of mana, but the spring made it trivial. We could probably even magically cool it once the warm season finally arrived in full force. There were so many nights I wished we could have done that at the old cave...

I was still trying to work out a solution the problem of being unable to determine how bright it was outside, and thus what time it was. Revelry and I spent the better part of a day fiddling with spells to adjust the ambient light to mimic that of outside, but it was proving elusive to both of us.

If Antic was around a third opinion and take at working the magic would have been welcome, but for three entire days I never even saw him. He'd always get back after I was asleep and leave the next morning before I was awake. At least that's what Revelry told me. Zeal hadn't seen him either, and by this point he was starting to get a bit nervous about it. Something was going to happen to Antic with him spending so much time away and alone, and every day made me feel even more guilty about it. I'd resigned to tell Revelry to talk to him if I didn't see him before sun down. Or even go looking for him myself.

In the mean time, I was busying myself with another magical project. We never kept much meat around before, because the best we could do to preserve it was smoke it and eat it within a couple of days. Zeal gave me an idea when he suggested freezing the boar though, and I was almost done making a magical icebox of sorts. We didn't have any actual ice, although with the river just a few steps away we certainly could have, but it didn't matter. I'd tapped into the immense magical potential of the mana spring to make one of the unused side chambers permanently cold enough to freeze any meat or other food we wanted to save. Keeping the cold restricted to that room was taking a little bit of work, but I was sure I'd have it figured out by the end of the day. I cast a glance to the hunks of boar meat lying in the corner that Zeal had hacked off of its body, thankful that defrosting it was simpler at least. Maybe I'd even take some back to Fealty as thanks for sharing with us earlier.

We might not have been cold blooded dragons, but standing around in the freezing temperature was growing very uncomfortable, so I left it to return to the main chamber and warm up a bit. Zeal must have still been in his chamber asleep, since I only found Revelry there. She was lying on her back in the shaft of light from above, dangling a hoof lazily in one of the small pools of water and humming to herself. “Get the freezer working?” she asked.

“Mostly. Had to come warm up before I finished it.” I joined her at the pool and dunked my hooves in the water, which I was thankful to find was at least as warm as the air. “You know, maybe we should heat one of these too. A warm dip every now and then would feel nice.”

She propped herself up on her elbows and grinned at me. “Hey, now that's an idea. I could go for that right now.”

Well, why not? It was a simple enough spell, so I waved my hand over the pool and poured magic into the shallow water. The water wasn't deep enough to really bathe in, but the warmth was most welcome either way.

Revelry sat up and dipped her other hoof and tail in the water. She chuckled and asked, “What, not enough magic in that spring to power this?”

“Oh, I'm sure there is. Just need to find a better spot. It's a shame we can't just use the spring's basin itself.”

“Yeah, wouldn't want your head exploding or anything like that,” she said, waving open hands around her ears.

I was pretty sure that wouldn't happen. It probably wouldn't even kill you so much as make you wish you'd die, but the point stood nonetheless. “Maybe we could dig one of these pools out a bit. Make it deeper, then enchant it.”

“Mmhmm. Maybe we can get Zeal to help with that rather than sleep around all day,” she said with another chuckle. She shrugged. “I guess we're all tired.”

He was spending an awful lot of time snoozing, but then there wasn't a whole lot else to do other than go scavenging. After doing that pretty much constantly for a couple of days, I didn't blame him for wanting to relax a bit. The cave wasn't going anywhere and we had enough food to last another three or four days easily. “Yeah, maybe taking a day off wouldn't hurt anyone.”

We chatted for a few more minutes, musing over some of the more outlandish things we could do with all of the magic. Her idea to project the illusion of a dragon in the main chamber was actually pretty good. Something like that would keep even the craziest pony or griffon out, but we'd probably need Antic's help with that. Even if I knew the spell, he seemed to do a lot better with it. There was a certain... artistic touch to it that I seemed to lack. He'd catch a hundred tiny details I wouldn't.

Just as we were moving on to a different topic, the flapping of wings above drew my attention. I looked up in time to see a draconequus gliding down through the hole, turning and compensating awkwardly from the load in their arms. “Revelry! I found something!” he said, looping overhead and dropping down with a heavy thump. Antic!

“Found what?” I asked.

You'd have thought he just noticed a hydra in the room from the way he jumped back. Something shifted and thumped in the box in his arms, threatening to spill out altogether as he juggled it to regain his grip. “C-Cantrip... I, uh, didn't see you there.”

Was he really that scared of me? I sighed and slouched. “It's okay. What did you find?” I said, trying to sound as nonthreatening as possible.

Revelry was already up and peering into the box when he set it down and retrieved a book from inside. It looked awfully familiar... “I... um, w-well, I know you must miss your old books, s-so I, uh, went and got them.”

Eeee! I jumped up and darted over to the box. Sure enough, there were dozens of my old books in the box. I couldn't believe the ponies hadn't taken them all, especially by now. Without a thought I threw my arms around him. “Antic, how did you get these?”

He fidgeted in my grip and said, “Well, I just went back to the old cave, and they were there.”

“Were there no ponies there? Was anything else left?”

“Most of the stuff was gone, but your books and some other stuff were packed up like this. I couldn't carry it all.”

Revelry produced a large book with a simple leather cover, devoid of any writing. “Huh, don't remember this one.”

Neither did I. I released Antic to grab and page through it. Nothing inside looked familiar either. “Was this with the rest of them?”

“Well... not... exactly,” he said sheepishly. I shot him a questioning glance, and he backpedaled a step. “Th-there was a pony there. A unicorn. He was digging through our stuff, so, I, um, took his spell book.”

I dropped it back into the box. “What? Antic...” Really? He'd really do something like that? Take that kind of risk after what just happened?

Revelry interposed herself between us. “Wait, Cantrip, don't be mad at him. This was my idea!”

“What? How was-I don't...” I growled and kicked the box. To think I was going to tell him I was sorry! What if that pony saw him? What if he was on his way here now with soldiers? What-

Antic whimpered something and flew off almost faster than I could track. Revelry followed a moment later. “Antic! Wait! It's okay, come back!” she cried after him.

I watched them vanish through the hole in the ceiling, then snarled and kicked the box again. When were they going to stop doing this!? How many times was I going to have to tell them? They weren't going to be happy until one of us got killed. That was it, huh? Smash my eggs and we'd get over that in a few days. They were just eggs, right? What were they going to do when one of us were next?

A warm dip was the last thing on my mind at that point. I spun around and stormed back to my chamber. I needed to be alone for a while.

If anything can be said about me, it's that I'm a creature of habit, and one of my habits that I thought was gone forever had just been dumped back on my by Antic. It couldn't have been more than an hour after he and Revelry flew off to who knew where before I found myself back in the main chamber. I'd intended to just drag the crate of books back to my room to read through them, but after I picked up that new book I found myself just standing there, staring into it. Then I found myself on the floor staring into it.

Not too long after that, Zeal shuffled in, yawning and generally making enough noise to jar me out of the pony words in the spell book. After I explained to him how the books got back and where Antic and Revelry were, he flopped down on the other side of the box to retrieve a random book and page through it. Not that it would do him a lot of good; he couldn't read pony at all and had an almost equally bad comprehension of the spell notation itself. At length, he dropped it back into the box and said, “You know Cantrip, maybe you should lighten up a bit.”

What was that supposed to mean? I cut my eyes to him and asked him precisely that.

He snorted. “Antic did you a huge favor you know. Did you have to yell at him?”

“I didn't yell at him.” I slammed the new spell book shut with a crisp slap. “I wasn't even that mad at him. I mean, it was extremely reckless. Even being there was reckless. But I was... I don't know, just angry at the whole situation.”

Zeal shrugged. “I am too, but Antic's really sensitive you know. He's pretty messed up right now.”

“And I'm not?”

“I didn't say that,” he said, looking up to the hole in the ceiling. The afternoon sun wasn't providing much light anymore, but at least Revelry's efforts gave us plenty to work by. “But you're made of tougher stuff than him. I'm not worried about you.”

And what was that supposed to mean? I crossed my arms and stared into the wall away from him. Sure, whatever. Antic screws up big time and doesn't learn from his mistake, and Zeal blames me. Fine, whatever. I was just going to shut up. If that made them happy, that's what I'd do.

“Don't take it like that, you know what I mean.” He knocked against the stone between us when I didn't respond. “We need to all be working together here, okay?”

“I know,” I grumbled.

“Serves the pony right anyway,” Zeal said, leaning against the crate and peering inside again. “He was stealing our stuff this time. It wasn't like Antic was digging around in some pony's home.”

“I know.” I kicked a pebble away and watched it bounce into a pool of water. “Look, can we drop this?”

“Fine.” Zeal took a deep breath and twitched his tail a few times. “What's in the book anyway?”

I shrugged and glanced back down at the well made but blank cover. “Haven't got a clue. Whoever wrote it was obviously way too fascinated with big words over readability, so I can barely tell what they're going on about.”

“Sounds like pony wizards. Can't tell by just reading the spells?”

“Not yet. His writing is surprisingly neat, but I can't tell much of anything just looking at the spells. I'd probably have to try casting them to really know, and I'm not about to do that.” If Antic was here, he might be able to read it...

Zeal nodded and grunted something I took to be agreement. He rose to his hooves and stretched all six limbs. “Right. I'm going to get something to eat. Hungry?”

I shook my head and scooped the book back up. Maybe after I read a bit more I'd join him. Antic shouldn't have taken the risk of snatching this book from that pony, but since he did I might as well make good use of it. I blew some grit from the cover and opened it to a random page of the same nonsense. Maybe if he got back I could apologize and he could help me decipher the gibberish.

Chapter 7: Careful what you do... and say.

Unfortunately, as it turned out I saw very little of Antic in the coming weeks. That was largely my fault, for one reason or another. First, I guess if I hadn't snapped about the book that was currently in my hands, he wouldn't have wanted to avoid me. Second, I was spending a lot of my own time away with Fealty. Between the two, I only caught glimpses of him coming or going. I even stayed up one night to try to catch him coming home late but he never showed. How was I supposed to apologize to him if I never saw him?

Talking with Revelry and Zeal about it hadn't gotten me very far. Zeal hadn't seen him much more than me, despite going out to look for him on more than one occasion. Revelry claimed to have talked with him a few times, and even told him I was sorry, but she stayed mostly quiet about what they spoke about. All she'd tell me was that he was depressed, and that he wouldn't say much else.

I flipped the page in the spell book and blew out my breath. It was very difficult to read through it without thinking about who brought it to me. For a few days after I scared him off, I felt increasingly bad about it. After a week or so had passed, it drifted to the back of my mind, which scared me even more. How could I just forget about my brother? I had no intention to. The previous night the thought occurred to me that Antic might have been around more than I realized. He was an absolute master with illusion magic after all, and I knew he could stay invisible for hours. As far as I knew he could have been in the room with me right then. “Antic, I'm sorry,” I muttered again, on the off chance he'd hear and believe me. As before, there was no response.

More than likely, it was just wishful thinking on my part that I could just sit around and expect things to get better. It was my fault and I was the only one who could do anything about it. Doing something about it meant actually doing something, not just telling my siblings to pass the word along. Somehow, I had to find him and make things right in person. I had a lot of magic at my command, surely I could find him if I put my mind to it.

Yet, there was one big reason that I hadn't tried that yet. I set the book down and ran a hand over the lightly speckled eggs in the improvised leaf litter nest next to me. Five, just like there were five minutes ago. A mix of emotions bubbled under the surface as I looked at them, each so similar yet different enough to identify as individuals even before hatching. Maybe Revelry hadn't been so wrong about Fealty and me after all. Did that make me a bad person?

No. Ignoring my brother, who I had hurt, made me a bad person. Fortunately, it wasn't too late to do something about that. The new spell book might have continued to be almost entirely impenetrable to me, but as much as it made me nervous to do so, I'd worked out a way to make it safe to leave my eggs. Or, they'd survive without me there to incubate them anyway. We had a supply of infinite mana just trickling through the ceiling right behind me, and it would be trivial to use that to keep my eggs at the perfect temperature. If I was feeling more enthusiastic I could probably even use it to project a shield over them or reinforce their shells. There were a lot of possibilities.

After things went back to normal, I'd spend a while on that. I wasn't going to lose these eggs, no matter what.

Falling asleep that night had proven easier than for the entire prior week. For the first time in recent memory I even dreamed, and amazingly about something other than ponies or griffons chasing me or of crushed eggs or anything else terrible. For some reason I dreamed Revelry had laid a clutch of eggs too, and that Zeal and Antic had eggs from somewhere, although I never met their mates. I was constantly grabbing eggs that spilled out of their nests and tucking them away safely only to repeat the process moments later, but it wasn't annoying me for some reason. Dreams were strange after all. I suppose that's why I barely paid it a second thought when one of the eggs started shouting something in gibberish. Then another started, and another.

The shouting got louder and I cracked my eyes. A few moments of profound confusion followed as I tried to puzzle out how or why my eggs were shouting at me, but sense quickly reasserted itself and I rolled onto my back to relieve the ache in my side from sleeping on bare stone again. Who was making so much noise anyway? I was trying to sleep! I was-

“Zeal! Cantrip! Help, please!”

Revelry! I bolted up and flexed my hip to pop the sore joint. Where was she? What was going on? I fought off more of the mental fog and jumped to my hooves. A lot of agitated talking echoed from the main chamber and I bolted in its direction.

“He-he's out there! I-I-I tried to help, b-but there were too many! I-I-I-I-” Revelry was in hysterics by the time I got there. Her wings were flared out and the hair on her head and the tip of her tail stood on end. She grabbed Zeal's arm and started tugging him toward the center of the room.

He was out there? Who, Antic? Fealty? “What happened?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Revelry released Zeal to spin and face me. Her eyes were red from crying and her cheeks were still damp. “It-it's Antic!” she screamed. “We-we r-ran into ponies! I-I-I got sepa-separated from him!”

“What? Where?”

She shook her head furiously and lifted into the air. “J-just follow me! Hurry!” Without waiting to see if we were following, she flew up and disappeared into the morning sunlight.

I exchanged horrified glances with Zeal. He said nothing before snatching the bits of scavenged armor and his sword, then followed her out. I stood in stunned silence. Was I still dreaming? Was this a nightmare? The nauseating feeling welling up in my stomach told me that it wasn't. I swallowed bile and launched up after them. My entire body felt shaky and dead as my heart thundered.

This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening.

Every moment we were airborne twisted my guts tighter and tighter into a knot. If Antic was in trouble, I knew we weren't going to be able to help. It had been at least fifteen full minutes since Revelry last saw him, and probably a lot longer. Whatever was going to happen had surely unfolded long before then. I just hoped against all the odds that Antic was alright. He was extremely gifted with illusion magic. He could just slip away, right? He was smart. That's what he'd do. He was probably already long gone and hiding somewhere, or even better, heading back home.

Trees whipped by us just out of reach below. Up ahead, Revelry was leading the pack as fast as her wings could carry her. It was difficult to hear anything with the wind in my ears, but even still I could hear her panicked whimpers and cries. Once or twice I felt something wet spatter against my face. Tears? She hadn't told us what she saw exactly, but if it had her that terrified I knew it had to be bad. A nervous whine left my own mouth as the last of the now sparse trees disappeared behind us, leaving thinning grass leading up to the mountains ahead. What was Antic doing out here?

Revelry took an abrupt turn and headed straight into the valley, which started to bring back a few unpleasant memories. I found myself subconsciously scanning the sky and horizon for griffons, and every muscle in my body tensed at the thought of an arrow ripping through my wing again. Yet, I saw nothing. No griffons, no pegasi, nor any other ponies of any variety on the ground. I did see what looked like wagon tracks winding through the valley, but it was impossible to tell how fresh they were. Antic couldn't possibly have been here hoping to loot a merchant caravan.

We took a sharp dive and landed in the center of the valley atop a patch of yellowed grasses. Revelry whipped her head around and squeaked nervously. “Th-they were right here,” she said, pointing a trembling claw at the dusty ground a few paces over.

Zeal trotted over and knelt down. “Looks like ponies were here,” he confirmed.

I joined him and saw the scuffs of hooves too large to be any of our own. There might have been griffon paw prints and talon scratches too, but it was hard to make out. I couldn't make out any indication of what any of them were doing. They could have just been walking along as far as I could tell. I didn't see any evidence of violence of any sort, and allowed a tiny bit of hope to surface. Antic must have gotten away.

Zeal swore. He stood, tore something from the mountainside and held it up. An arrow. “I don't see any blood.” He looked about and snapped the arrow's shaft. “Where is he? What were you doing out here anyway?”

Revelry sniffled and wrung her hands. “We... we were, um... um, he was uh...” She pointed off. “Living in our old cave.”

“What?” Zeal and I asked in unison. Dread washed over me. “Why?” Revelry descended into another stream of 'ums' and stammering, so I shut her up with a raised palm and jumped into the air. “Come on, he might still be there!”

Our old cave was some distance away, hidden behind several turns that obscured the valley for long stretches. I was afraid we'd blunder into the caravan if we proceeded too quickly, but when we rounded the first bend something a dozen times more horrifying caught my sight. I halted in the air, breathless. Down below, lying in a pool of blood large enough to run off the nearby ledge was a dark serpentine figure. A flutter of motion caught my eye. We weren't too late! He was still alive, and I could heal him. If I could just get to him, he'd survive long enough to get him to Fealty. Fealty could-

Revelry screamed. A long, shrill screech of disbelief that lingered and died off in a tapering whine as she dove downward. Her descent frightened away the buzzards.

Buzzards? Wait... that's what was moving...

“No, no, no!” Zeal shouted, diving after her. He lashed out at the birds as they flew off, severing a few feathers but nothing more. He screamed something primal and furious and threw his sword at the closest of the two, but the only indication I got that it hit anything was the clang of metal on stone. I was too busy staring at Antic... lying motionless...

Revelry landed and immediately screamed again. She fell to her knees next to him and reached out. “Antic! No, pleeeease!” she wailed, withdrawing her hand to cover her mouth. Zeal crouched next to him and stretched out a trembling hand of his own. He flinched and let go when Revelry threw up.

The horror could no longer hold me back. I wove my hands around to prepare the healing spell and poured every bit of energy I could into it. Even then I knew it was pointless, but I had to try. Tears welled up in my eyes as I touched down and I fired the spell off before I even stopped moving.

Nothing happened. I tried again and again, feeling all of my energy drain away fruitlessly as the magic washed over Antic to no avail. No... not Antic. His body. His corpse. When I had no more strength to give, I collapsed backward onto my hands and finally looked at it. I gave it a good, thorough appraisal. There was never any saving him. He was dead. Blood... so much blood... everywhere. Three arrows had speared his chest, leaving bloodied fletchings protruding from his back. Streams ran from his mouth and nostrils onto the ground, pooling in reddened mud. He was curled up, holding a limp hand over a long gash covering his underside that reached from his hip up to his chest. Two of the arrow heads had been severed... had they cut him after shooting him? And... his wings... my stomach rebelled and I nearly vomited myself when I saw there was nothing but profusely bleeding stumps left of them.

His eyes were almost closed, but through the cracks I could see they were fixed down at the ground. Even in death... he wouldn't look me in the eyes.

I placed my face in my hands. I just couldn't look at him anymore. My brother was dead. I probably should have been crying. Or screaming. Or wailing in despair. I should have been, but I couldn't. I couldn't do anything. All I could do was sit there, face in hands, listening to Revelry weep and cry enough for all of us. She gasped and spluttered something indecipherable, then threw up again.

There are many things I've done over my life that I regret. Some of them I regret so bitterly that if I was given the chance, I'd happily strangle myself to prevent them from coming to pass. None of those things compare to how much I regret what I did next.

I lowered my hands and cast an accusing glare at Revelry. “You knew he was out here. Why didn't you tell me?” I demanded. Caught completely off guard, she choked and fell backward. I leaned forward. “Why!?”

“Cantrip...” Zeal said.

I balled up my fists, grabbing handfuls of dusty grass. “You knew the ponies were out here! They knew where the cave was! He knew! What was he doing out here!?”

She curled up into a ball and hid her face. Between desperate sniffles she uttered, “He-he-he-he s-said...”

“Cantrip.”

“He said what!?” I stood and stepped around Antic's body to approach her. “What!?” They... they weren't going to be happy until one of us was killed. Well, here it was! Antic was dead now!

Revelry whined and curled up tighter. “I-I-I-don't-he s-s-said...”

“Cantrip!”

“What!?” I leered over her. “Why did you keep this from us? Why were you and Antic always keeping things from us!?”

Revelry couldn't say anything anymore. She just went back to crying.

“This is how it always is...” I stamped a hoof, finally feeling tears dripping down my cheeks. “You two always do reckless things like this! And you never think about the consequences!”

“Cantrip, that is enough!”

“Are you happy now!?” I screamed. “He's dead, Revelry! Dead! What was so important that it was worth-”

“Cantrip, shut up!”

Zeal grabbed my shoulder and pulled me away from our cowering sister. So caught up in the rage as I was, I wheeled on him and lashed out with my claws. Talons caught flesh, and both of us stared in stunned silence. Blood welled up within three deep lacerations on his cheek, and he stared in disbelief at his hand after wiping some away. I was halfway to trying to apologize when he sneered and slammed an open palm into my chest. The air was driven from my lungs and I tumbled backward into a heap. He pushed me! He... no, I... hit him!

Fury flickered in his eyes as he towered over me. He thrust a claw at Revelry and yelled, “This is not her fault! The only one to blame is whoever killed Antic!”

My jaw worked wordlessly as blood dripped from his face onto mine. I scrabbled backward, fighting to put distance between us as I tried to come to terms with what I'd just done. I'd hit him... and said that to Revelry...

Right then, she uncovered her face and shrieked, “Antic said he wasn't going to hurt you anymore!” She hacked and choked, and said, “He said he'd live out here where he wouldn't put you or your eggs in danger anymore!”

A heavy silence fell.

“There, are you happy?” Zeal growled at last.

No! My eyes darted from Zeal to Revelry to Antic's corpse, then back again. There wasn't anything to say. I'd gotten one of my brothers killed and probably destroyed what was left of my relationship with the rest of my family. There wasn't anything to say, so I dragged myself to my hooves, turned away and jumped into the air.

I expected Zeal to yell for me to come back, to shout that I was going to get myself killed out here alone. He didn't. I just flew higher and higher and away from them, never looking back. I had no idea where I was going or why. Maybe I would run into ponies that would end my miserable existence. Things would have turned out better for everyone if they had.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a creature of habit, and it hadn't taken me very long at all to settle on a destination. It took me over an hour to fly to Fealty's cave, which was much faster than I should have been able to manage after wasting so much stamina in my desperate but doomed attempts to save Antic's life. The entire time I was airborne I never looked back to where I'd just up and abandoned my surviving siblings with my brother's body. Every moment that passed cemented more and more firmly in my mind that there was nothing I'd ever do to make up for that. Maybe... maybe I'd finally have to accept Fealty's offers and pleads for him to move in with him. I'd go home long enough to get my eggs and leave Zeal and Revelry before I made things even worse. I had to think of what I'd say to them all, or Fealty. What was I going to say to him?

Even after an hour or more of questioning that, I never came to a good answer. I'd probably just break down into a sobbing heap in his arms as usual and wait for him to make it better. At that point, I didn't even care if he used his new magic to make the pain go away. Words really can't convey what it felt like to have the image of Antic's dead eyes staring into the ground burned into my mind, haunting me every time I clenched them shut to contain tears. At least that stopped long before I got to his cave. I went through the motions, coughing and choking and covering my eyes, but I was long out of tears to cry. I just wanted it all to stop.

By the time I was on the final approach to his cave I had managed to calm down enough that I could probably at least talk to him. It was still early in the morning, but overcast, and that meant the entrance was pitch blank. That didn't slow me at all as I slammed down into the stone walkway, tumbled from my hooves, scrabbled back up and darted inside. I kicked over that same whatever-it-was on the way through the darkness.

“Fealty!” No response. I stumbled to a halt in what I guessed was the center of the main chamber and repeated the call. “Fealty! Please, are you here?” Still no response. My entire body felt ready to give out at the mere thought that he'd suffered the same fate as Antic, but as before there was no evidence of violence on the way in.

A flickering ball of light coalesced in my palm, but collapsed in a wisp of mana an instant later. I was too tired to even conjure light. “Fealty!” Still nothing.

Why I bothered trying to feel my way through the blackness I don't know, but I rapidly gave up after I kicked over something else and spilled some water on the floor. At least I hoped it was just water. “Fealty...” I whimpered before giving the ground a hard stamp. Then another and another.

This had to be a nightmare. I sank to the floor, ignoring that it was now wet with something odorless, and curled up to place my face in my hands again. It just had to be a nightmare. Any second now, Revelry would wake me up and tell me that Antic had come home, and that everything was alright. Everything...

...would never be alright ever again. I flopped onto my side, winding tighter into a ball as the enormity of the previous hour and a half slammed down on me again. That was it. Antic was dead. After eight years of getting by on our own... eight years... it finally happened. We'd had so many close calls in the early years that I'd lost count. I got complacent. I figured we'd always outsmart the ponies and griffons and they'd never actually catch us, but in a month we'd gone from blissful ignorance to being kicked out of our home and having everything taken from us to Antic being killed.

How old were we, anyway? How long had we been with mom before she disappeared? I'd guessed maybe five or six years. That meant Antic was fourteen at most when the ponies killed him. Some still considered themselves foals at that age. They-they murdered a child.

For what? He was the one who wanted to be friends with them! Of all of us, he was the last one who deserved what happened to him. He was probably trying to talk to them again... if I wasn't there to yell at him for it, why wouldn't he? He'd obviously talked with that mare, Scarlet Swirl. He'd proven he could interact with them. Was that it? Had he tried to pretend to be a pony again, and they killed him when they found out? Because he was a draconequus? Because he didn't have four hooves like them and had scales? Why did they hate us so much?

I shuddered and sniffled. What would mom think if she was there? Sorry, mom. I screwed up. I screwed up bad and now Antic's dead. I screwed up and lost my eggs. I screwed up and now Zeal and Revelry would hate me forever. Everything... everything was falling apart. She'd know what to do. She'd been through this... right? If only I could speak with her again... she'd make everything better. I wasn't Zeal, Revelry or Antic's mother. I couldn't be... I was their sister, who didn't know what she was doing half of the time and lost her temper and got her brother killed because she couldn't keep her stupid mouth shut! Maybe Zeal and Revelry really would be better off without me leading them astray or into danger. Zeal was strong and brave... I'd seen the way he stood up to ponies and tried to protect us. He was smarter than he let on too. Revelry would be safe with him.

He'd never turn on her like I did. He'd never scare her away and drive her to her death like I drove Antic. Even now, he was keeping her safe from me. He let me leave rather than try to keep me near her. Even if it meant the ponies or griffons got me.

Somehow... that hurt almost as much as losing Antic...

...not really. I clenched my fists, digging the claws into my face and palms deep enough to draw blood. If it hurt, I didn't notice.

Nothing could compare to the hurt deep down inside. I felt fresh tears somehow welling up inside me, as if I could just let it all out like that.

Whatever.

I didn't fight it. I tried to just let it all come out, to scream and wail like Revelry. Instead I just sniffled and trembled. Why couldn't I be more like her? More forgiving and more reasonable?

Why couldn't I be a better person?

...why couldn't Antic still be alive?

Fealty never showed up. I even stayed all night, slipping once or twice into shallow and fitful sleep that did nothing to make me feel better, but he never showed up. By the time the sun was rising outside, the panic and dread at the thought of him lying dead in a crevasse somewhere had come and gone to be replaced by a persistent gnawing in my gut. Somehow, I couldn't descend into the levels of despair from the day before. I was too tired.

I think I spent at least an hour sitting in the entrance to the cave, staring dumbly in the direction of our new cave and wondering what to do. Fealty was probably never coming home. He was probably dead too. What was I supposed to do? Take over his home and pick up the pieces of his life too? I was too tired. Even after all that had happened, there was a deep longing and emptiness inside me. Part of it, Antic's part, would never be filled again, but there were two other parts I could try to fill again. Even if I doubted they would forgive me, I had to try. I'd already never forgive myself, but I'd forgive myself even less if I didn't even try to apologize to them.

When I had finally mustered the courage, I hefted myself to my hooves and lazily drifted into the air with my magic. With a weak beat of my wings I set off for home. Should I go back to where Antic had been killed? Had they... taken care... of him yet? Surely they had. By now, I knew they had. Zeal wouldn't leave him there. Going back by would do nothing but make me doubt if I was doing the right thing, so I didn't. I just took the straight path back, taking no measures to conceal myself or hurry. I didn't really care if a griffon saw me at that point. If I saw a griffon or pony right then, I'd die, but I'd see to it that they paid dearly for what they'd done to Antic. I wasn't a fighter, but I knew enough magic to make the last few moments of their life agonizing... I'd give them a reason to fear me and want me dead. That's what they wanted, right? Let them come to me, I'd give it to them.

Smoldering anger filled me for most of the way home, which was a distraction from before at least. Yet, when I saw the unmistakable hole in the ground just off of the stream ahead, worry resurfaced in my gut. I had no idea what to say to Zeal and Revelry. An hour of musing over torturing griffons and ponies hadn't given me much time to think about that. Not that thinking about it would have made much difference.

I set down near the stream and took the opportunity to quench my thirst and waste a few moments trying to rehearse an apology, but it amounted to nothing. At length, I turned toward the cave and plodded along, wondering who I'd see first. When I got close enough that I could make out the irregularities of the stone shaft descending into the depths, I stopped. This was madness... I shouldn't be trying to apologize for the unforgivable. I should just leave before-

“I was starting to wonder if you were going to come back,” Zeal said to my side.

I let out a small startled cry and spun to face him. He'd been sitting between two trees, facing such that he could watch the entrance. He'd been watching me the whole time. No emotion was evident on his face as his exhausted eyes bored holes through me. Badly healing gashes were on his face though. “I... I...”

“Where were you? With Fealty?”

I hung my head. “He wasn't home. After... after I... I mean, I didn't... couldn't...” This was going fantastically already. I never managed to meet eyes with him, even as I said, “Zeal... I-I'm sorry. Y-you d-don't know how sorry I am.”

His tail twitched, but he said nothing.

“Please... I-I just wanted to come and tell you I was sorry.” I half turned away. “I... I'll just go.”

“I'm not the one you need to apologize to.” He pointed at the cave mouth.

At least he wasn't running me off. I didn't really expect him to, of course, but in a way I wished he had. Right then, being told to go away would have been easier than what I had to do instead. Revelry got upset easily, but she got over things easily too. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. She'd still be upset about Antic, but that might deflect some away from me. I sighed and dragged my hooves on the way over. I was rationalizing this over whether she'd be more upset about me yelling at her or our brother's death. What was wrong with me?

My guts knotted tighter as I descended and plodded along toward her chamber. Even from there I could hear her, but if what she was muttering was even words I had no hope of decrypting them from the echoes and low moans. Something else struck me as I drew close, prompting me to stop in the hallway. A peculiar odor... vomit? Another whimper... then another moan. Oh, I did not want to step around the corner. I fidgeted and second guessed myself a half dozen times, but with a final run of my hands through my hair I found the courage and rounded the corner.

She was facing away from me, curled up in a ball and whimpering softly. Worse, she didn't even notice or care that anyone was standing there. I scanned her chamber and immediately found the source of the smell, which was indeed old vomit in a few places. Two empty bottles, no doubt from our old cave, were lying on their sides in a corner. Mixed in the scent was something fruity and sharp. I had a very good idea of what was in the bottles not long ago.

With another sigh I stepped inside. “Rev?” Her ear swiveled back to face me. “Revelry?”

“Wh...at?” she slurred. She propped up on an elbow, dislodging another empty bottle that rolled off to join its friends, and moaned. Her eyes floated across me and settled somewhere around my hooves. “Wh... Cantrip?!” She tried to jump backward, but slammed into the wall amidst her drunken flailings and fell back to the ground.

“Wait, wait!” I held my hands up, trying to look unassuming. “Revelry, hold on, I... I just wanted to say I was sorry about yesterday.”

She huddled up in the corner with the bottles and looked aside. “Go away...” She covered her face and whimpered again.

“Please, Revelry, I'm not going to yell or anything... I'm very sorry,” I said, taking a step further inside.

“I said go away!” she shrieked. She glared at me through bloodshot eyes and threw one of the bottles at me. The bottle shattered against the the wall to my side, showering me with glass fragments and dust and a fine spray of leftover wine. I nearly fell backward in my attempts to put distance between us. In all of our years together, she'd never done anything like that. Completely shocked by the display, I staggered down the hall back into the main chamber, looking back once or twice for no real reason. She wasn't following me.

I stood silently in the faint shaft of sunlight from above, stunned. There are some things that sorry doesn't fix. No matter how earnest and truthful I was... sorry just didn't fix this. I whimpered and fluttered upward back to the surface. I'd just tell Zeal goodbye and be on my way. He and Revelry shouldn't have to put up with such a messed up and hateful sister.

Fortunately, he hadn't moved an inch. I dragged my hooves in the grass as I strolled past him. “Bye.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don't know,” I answered honestly. “Fealty's probably dead. I don't know.”

“When will you be back?”

“I'm not coming back.”

“Aren't you forgetting something then?” I slowed to a halt. “Five eggs?”

“Oh...” I looked back at the hole in the ground. How could I have forgotten about them? Could I carry them with me? All the way to Fealty's cave? Could I keep them warm the whole way? I took a step... and stopped. I didn't know what I was going to do. I couldn't take care of them and myself alone, and if something happened to me like Fealty... I didn't know what to do. So I did something useless and placed my face in my hands. And I cried. Again.

Grass rustled and hooves fell next to me. “Cantrip.”

“I-I don't know what to do!” I blurted out. “E-everything's falling apart, a-and I don't know what to do.”

“Sit.” What? I wiped my eyes and looked up at Zeal. “Go on,” he insisted, so I complied. He joined me, and leaned back against a bare patch of a mossy tree. “Good.”

“Zeal, I really am sorry about yesterday... I just... Antic... and-and Revelry and-and-”

He placed a hand on my shoulder. “I know. I know. Cantrip... just listen for a second. What happened to Antic, that wasn't any of our faults. Not Revelry's, and not yours. It was the ponies' fault.”

“I know...”

“Revelry's going to be alright. It's going to take time, but she'll be alright. None of us are going to get over this overnight.”

He sure seemed to be dealing with it well. “I know...”

Zeal looked out over the stream. He didn't say anything for a while as the gently churning water flowed and kept it from being totally silent. “It's just us now. Just... the three of us. We're going to need each other. All of us are going to need all of our help. Not just two, and not alone.” I sniffled and stared down into my lap silently, so he asked, “Understand?”

“I-I know...”

“Good.” He withdrew his hand and let out a breath. “Just stay up here with me for now. Give Revelry a little more time.”

I nodded wordlessly. “Zeal... where is he now? I mean, what did you do?”

There was another long silence before he nodded toward the stream. “I burned his body. Scattered the ashes in the water. Had to get Revelry to read one of your books to get the spell.”

Another nod. That... was something at least. Not much... but something. “Okay,” I whispered. I fell back against the tree Zeal was leaning against and shut my eyes. Antic's face kept popping up in the darkness. Happy, carefree... innocent. I'd never see it again. Maybe I started crying again, or sniffled, or something. Whatever I did, I felt Zeal's hand wrap around me... and pull me into a hug.

In that instant, no matter the horrors I'd faced in the previous day, everything was kind of okay. I knew then, that no matter what I'd done, or what had happened, there was someone who still cared.

Sometimes, that's all it takes to get you through the darkest hours of your life.

Chapter 8: The Last Straw

The next two days were almost unbearably tense. I didn't talk to Revelry at all during that period, and only said a few words to Zeal. That wasn't so unusual, I suppose, but under the circumstances it only served to reinforce the terribly empty and lonely feeling my life had gained. None of us were talking to each other. It was as if we had all lost purpose, like the one thing holding us together had been torn away and cast aside.

In a way, I guess it had. The saying goes, 'You don't know what you have until it's gone,' but I never realized just how true that was until then. Losing our old cave and all of our possessions, and yes, even losing my eggs, didn't compare to the shock and continued gnawing sense of loss that lingered in my chest every time I thought about Antic. I could look up at the tunnel and remember that his chamber was just out of sight, where Revelry and I had prepared the shoddy bedding that he might have used twice. It was still almost undisturbed, with only a slight depression in the center that I couldn't help but picture my brother sleeping in. I made it a point to not walk by any more than I had to, but I could never resist the urge to look inside. It was so bare... never really used... and it never would be...

I clenched my eyes shut, adjusted myself next to my eggs and turned the page in the book in my hands. With little else to do, I'd resorted to my tried and true pastime: practicing my spells. In this case though, I was trying yet again to discern what the new book that Antic gave to me contained. It had initially been very difficult to pick it back up, since it reminded me all too well one of the biggest reasons that Antic was dead, but curiosity and a strong desire to not make his death even more meaningless meant I eventually cracked its cover to pore over it again.

Almost immediately I found myself frustrated by its complexity, and when my thoughts drifted back to Antic yet again and how he could read it so easily, I nearly threw it into the magical spring behind me in a fit of rage. Instead I just slammed it down into the stony floor with a resounding thump and blast of dust.

It just wasn't fair! None of this was right! We hadn't ever hurt a pony except in self defense, and this is what happened to us! We went out of our way to avoid them, and they still killed us! For nothing!

I clenched my eyes shut and fought off another shudder. Not again. I wasn't going to cry again. There were already too many little dimpled and rippled spots on the pages inside of the book for me to add any more. Crying wasn't going to bring Antic back, and it didn't make me feel better for long. I had to do something to get my mind off it... and that only left reading the spell book.

After two days of reading and rereading the few spells I thought I had a chance of understanding, there was one in particular that I had made a little headway with. Most of the pages of flowery dialog had an odd and unsettling fascination with death and dying, if I was reading it right, but this spell was something about life. New life? Extra life? Not dying? Without Antic I really was struggling to understand it, but that sounded like a good spell to start with. Predictably, it turned out to be perhaps the longest one in the entire book, so it was going to take me a week to decipher the symbols for the spell. At least.

My hands left a curious green glow as I went through the motions of the beginning of the spell. Funny, very few spells had that color for some reason. I brushed it off and ran a claw under the next line of symbols, trying to channel the mana as it directed. The spell started off simple, but its complexity grew steadily with each line, to the point I began to question if I might even be capable of understanding it. Determined to not let it beat me like those simple food spells, I went through the next motions. The green glow coalesced around my hand, and I stared in wonder at the flowing energy. It felt... strange. Not really alarming, just strange. This was definitely magic I'd never worked with before. I had to learn more...

Hooves scuffed against stone in the tunnel, and the spell wavered and imploded with a gust of wind and pop as my concentration faltered. Revelry stood in the mouth of the tunnel, looking around with a pained and profoundly confused look on her face. Her eyes drifted up to the ceiling. “Whu-where's the exit?”

“Uh, the other chamber?” I said. She must have still been drunk...

Revelry danced back and flattened herself against the tunnel wall. “C-Cantrip! When-where did you come from?” She shuffled away, then froze, raised a hand to her forehead and groaned. “I-I was just looking... looking for...” She blinked and rubbed her head again. “...for... uh...”

I don't know if I startled her, or if she really just that unhappy or scared to see me. Either way, it didn't matter. “Wait, Revelry, don't go. We need to talk.” I eased up, taking care not to jostle my eggs out of the nest, and set my book aside.

She moaned softly and shook her head. “No, no, I, um... it's okay.”

“It's not okay... please, come in,” I told her. She just stood there, avoiding my eyes, so I took her hand in mine and nudged her inside. “Please?”

She mumbled something that sounded like “leave me alone,” but didn't offer much resistance as I literally pulled her in. “Wh-what do you want?” she slurred.

“Just sit down for a second, alright?” She again complied without much protest, so I joined her on the cold floor. First came the all but necessary and very pointless question, “Are you okay?” She looked up through bloodshot eyes to give me a death glare that would have shamed Zeal's worst. Nevertheless, I said, “I'm serious. We need to be honest with each other.”

“No. No. I'm... not okay, Cantrip.” She cringed and rubbed her temple again. “Should I be?”

I shook my head. “No. Rev... I am really sorry about what I did.” She said nothing. That made the next part even harder to say. “No matter what happened... or what I said... you... you know I still love you, right?”

She was silent at first, as the knife twisted around in my chest. Finally, she said, “You've got a funny way of showing it.”

The knife cut into my heart again. “I-I know, I'm sorry. Really, really sorry. I... I was just...” I shook my head and looked away from her. “There-there's no excuse. At all. Just...” There was a strong temptation to mention Antic, but in the state of mind she was in I decided against it. Her glazed over golden eyes stared back at me, waiting for me to finish my sentence. “...n-nevermind that. How do you... feel? You, uh, look like you feel really bad.”

She pulled her hand away from her head and gave me another questioning glare. “T-terrible. My head... everything hurts...”

“Hang on a second.” I hopped up and grabbed a metal cup from next to my nest. It hadn't taken me long to decide what to do with the bit of scrap Zeal returned with the day before, and a flash of magic had turned whatever it was into a set of perfectly serviceable cups. Amazing how you can forget what life is like without such trivial things, but at least we were already rebuilding. I flew up close to the basin of magically charged water and used my magic to fill it up, then back down to hand it to Revelry. “Here, this will help you feel better.”

“My head hurts enough,” she said, refusing it.

“It's okay, really. This much won't hurt.” I had no idea if she was magically depleted or not, but if she was it would help with that too. More than anything, she was clearly recovering from binge drinking the night before, and drinking water instead of alcohol would help.

“Whatever...” She downed the cup and leaned back against the cavern wall with another low groan. “Cantrip?”

“What is it?”

“Can I go now? I... I feel like I'm going to puke...”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Go ahead.” I helped her to her hooves and moved aside as she trudged out. I had no idea if my feeble and awkward attempt to apologize again had helped at all. She didn't say much, but at least it went better than last time. It was going to take more than a couple of days for her to get over all of this. Would she ever completely get over it?

Would I?

I blew out my breath and eased back down next to my eggs. This wasn't something I was ready to deal with. I needed something else to clear my head, so I grabbed the spell book and went back to the more life spell, or whatever it was, and started going through the motions again.

The mood over the following three days improved a little, but mostly because I was no longer afraid that Revelry was going to drink herself to death and was convinced there might be a chance that she might not hate me forever. Small improvements would build up eventually.

In the meantime, I found myself on watch duty above ground. Zeal had taken it upon himself to decide who would be doing that and when, and for the foreseeable future it was just the two of us. Revelry was still in bad emotional shape, but worse yet she was pretty sick. After drinking so much and barely eating anything for half a week, that wasn't surprising. She would probably get better soon, but unfortunately, curing diseases was beyond my knowledge of healing magic. For now, it just meant that Zeal and I weren't getting a whole lot of rest when not on watch duty, since she was barely able to get up to get anything for herself. I was quite tired after just two nights of it, but at least Zeal had been kind enough to take the night shifts on watch. I'd have been pretty useless on night watch anyway.

With the sun high in the sky I had plenty of light to read and study by, so I was doing just that rather than really keeping watch like I was supposed to. Reading complicated pony words was only the tiniest bit more engaging than staring at unchanging woods around me, but as much as I was yawning and rubbing my eyes I'd take anything I could get. Working magic on the other hand was both a blessing and a curse. I charged my hand with some mana and worked through the third part of the life spell again, feeling my sleepiness fade as I moved. Then the mana evaporated in a silent flash of light again, and the tiredness returned.

Which was better? Sleepy or tired? I groaned and stretched out in the grass, really wishing I didn't have to decide. I hated both equally, and just wanted to go to sleep. It was growing increasingly hard to keep my heavy eyes open as they tracked from symbol to symbol. They started to blur and cross over with each other... and darkness encroached from above and below...

I bolted up and rolled over. How long had I been out? A few seconds? Minutes? The sun didn't look like it had moved, although upon further inspection I saw that I had evidently been asleep long enough to drool on my spell book. That was annoying. I snorted and wiped the corner of my mouth, then the page, which did absolutely nothing. It would have to dry out the old fashioned way, because I wasn't about to risk incinerating it with a magical attempt to heat it up or something. I held the page up and frowned. The saliva had seeped through a few pages. Maybe if I propped it-

A shadow rolled over the clearing, covering me completely for an instant before drifting further down the stream. I huddled under the nearest tree and scanned the cloudless skies for its source. No bird could have been that big, so my mind jumped straight to the worst possibilities. My heart skipped a beat when my eyes picked out the dark shape circling overhead, but something was off. It was too small to be a griffon and was moving all wrong to be either that or a pegasus, which left only a handful of possibilities and of those only one likely one.

I dared hope my guess was correct as I stepped further into the clearing and hopped into the air. The closer I got the more my hope surged. It was definitely a draconequus, and the coppery-gold scales could have belonged to only one. “Fealty?” I called out.

He jerked to a halt and spun around to face me. “Cantrip? Cantrip!” I barely registered him moving before I was caught up in a tight hug. “Oh, you don't know how happy I am to see you! I've been looking for you for days!”

Had I not shown him where our new cave was? Oops. “Why? Where have you been? I was looking for you too.” After I took a moment to give him a look over, alarm rose within me. His scales were grimy and scuffed in a dozen places, his hair was matted and greasy, his eyes were exhausted, and was that a scar on his wing? “What happened!?”

“Griffons...” he muttered. “They've been snooping around my cave a lot lately. I got spotted once, so... I've been avoiding it. I knew you lived out here, but not exactly where.”

“Oh...” Had it been the same party that got Antic? Couldn't be, that was ponies. Worry knotted up in my gut. Griffons and ponies were out looking for us...

Fealty craned his neck and looked around. “Can we, uh, go inside? I don't think we should stay up here.”

“Y-yeah, sorry.”

We descended and darted into the relative cover of the trees. This far out, I wasn't expecting any griffons, but you never knew about ponies. Either could have followed him of course, so the sooner we got inside the better. The mouth of the cave loomed ahead as we trotted closer, a dark pit partly covered by trees. If Fealty knew it was here and couldn't find it, that gave me a little peace of mind at least. I just wish we had an illusion to cover it like before.

“I hate to impose on you all like this, but I don't have any other options right now. I... don't know where I'll move to.”

“You can stay here as long as you need to,” I told him. We had space, and I didn't expect Zeal to complain. Maybe Fealty could just move in with us permanently. We could definitely use the help. I wouldn't mind some help with the eggs.

Maybe he saw something on my face or heard it in my voice, but he paused at the grassy lip of the cave. “Are the others all here? Everything okay?”

“Zeal and Revelry are here. She's pretty sick.”

“Maybe I can help?” He cocked his head. “What about Antic? Where is he?” He didn't know. He couldn't have known. Even still, it took me a few seconds to rally. “What's wrong?”

“Antic... is dead,” I mumbled.

His eyes flew open. “What? How? ...When?”

It took me a few moments more to begin, but eventually I managed to explain the big details. The most important thing was that Antic was gone. It might have been selfish or dishonest, but I glossed over my own involvement in the whole affair. Especially my despicable accusatory rant that followed. Fealty didn't need to know about all of that.

“Oh, Cantrip... I'm so sorry...”

I just nodded and glided down the hole, prompting him to follow. I was trying to not dwell on Antic, as terrible as it was to not want to think about him. Making Fealty feel bad about it wasn't going to bring him back either.

Not that this was exactly new for him. He'd told me once he had a brother and no less than five sisters. As far as I knew, none of them were alive any longer. I had never asked him what happened to them, and he never volunteered it.

Tragedy was just our lot in life, I guess. We just had to suck it up and get used to it.

Zeal was pretty surprised when I trudged back into the rear chamber, no doubt worried that I'd seen something when on watch. When he saw Fealty, he got his answer. He whispered something to Revelry, who was lying in a listless heap atop a pile of relocated leaves, and trotted up to us. “Fealty? It's good to see you're alright. Cantrip thought something had happened to you.”

“It nearly did,” Fealty replied, nervously scratching the side of his neck. “I, uh, hate to ask this of you, uh, three, but Cantrip said I could stay with you for a while...” He descended into a more vivid description of his brush with death at the talons of a griffon who lost him in a ravine, culminating with how he had been afraid to return home for fear that they would be waiting on him. A passing mention of pony caravans with griffon guards led to him saying, “Cantrip told me something happened to Antic. I'm so sorry...”

Zeal's face hardened and he snorted. “It's true. Ponies killed him before we even got there. Probably the same griffon guards that chased you off.”

Fealty lowered his head. “Probably.” A long, awkward silence fell before he looked back up. “Cantrip mentioned that Revelry was sick too. I might be able to help.”

“If you can...” Zeal said, sounding tired, and if I was reading him right, even a bit worried. That made me worried. He waved for us to follow and led us back over to her. “Her fever has gotten worse today.” Sure enough, she was shivering as much as her weak body would allow, despite the field of magical warmth I had erected around her before I went up on duty that morning.

“Let me take a look.” Fealty knelt next to her and placed a grimy hand on her shoulder, eliciting a small noise from her. She just kept her eyes shut and moaned softly amidst more shivers as a thin film of white magic enshrouded her. Fealty shut his eyes and nodded along to a rhythm I couldn't hear of feel. At length the magic evaporated, and Fealty frowned grimly.

I crouched next to her and looked her over more closely. A small bead of sweat dripped from her forehead to join the growing growing dampness beneath her. She let out another tiny groan. “Bad?” I whispered. Fealty nodded.

Zeal swore and raked his claws against the stony walls. “What can we do? Anything?”

“I-I don't know,” Fealty said, standing. “I was hoping... but I... I don't know a spell to fix this. There's a book at my cave. I... I think it would have the spell we need. But...”

He didn't need to say anything else. My heart sank at the thought. We could risk trying to fly under the griffons' beaks to get it, or risk Revelry slowly dying right in front of us. Zeal swore again, stamped a hoof, then ran both sets of claws down the wall. The high pitched scratching would normally have set the hairs on my tail on end, but I was too distracted by Revelry's whimpers to pay it any attention.

“...she will probably get better on her own,” Fealty said. “I... I can't guarantee it, but she's not that bad off.”

Another heavy silence fell before Zeal ground his hoof into the gritty stone floor. “We have no choice. I'm not leaving her to go look for it.”

“I'll go.” Both Fealty and Zeal gave me questioning glances. “I mean it. I know the way, and I know which book you're talking about. I'll go get it.”

“Too dangerous,” Zeal growled. Fealty nodded.

I took a step toward the exit. “I don't care. I'm tired of this. I won't let the ponies claim another one of us. I'm not going to let something happen to her just because I'm afraid of the ponies and griffons.”

“Cantrip, wait.” Fealty rested a hand on my shoulder and said, “She's going to be okay through tomorrow, I promise. Why don't we wait until then and see if she improves?”

A little nagging sensation in my gut told me to tell him to be quiet and come with me or stay behind, but the logical side of my brain told me he was right. Rushing off on this intensely dangerous and probably unneeded errand might only serve to get us killed. I deflated. “Okay. Maybe... she'll be better tomorrow.” I didn't really believe it, but the naïve little draconequus in me did. I could still hope.

Zeal grunted his affirmation. “Good, just wait. I'll keep an eye on her.” He sighed and lowered himself to the floor before placing his hand on Revelry's. He whispered something to her too quiet for me to make out.

“Are you going back outside to watch?” Fealty asked me.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.” That was all there was to do. Just go back outside and sit around while Revelry suffered. There wasn't anything we could- My thoughts were interrupted when five white and lightly speckled things in a nest caught my eye. “Oh, wait. There's something I want to show you.”

“What? Oh...” Fealty trotted up to the nest faster than I could keep up and spun around to face me. “Cantrip, are these y... ours?”

A small surge of warmth returned to me, mixed in with a tiny bit of pride if I'm honest. “About a week old.”

He pulled me into another hug. “This is fantastic! I-I had no idea.” He patted my back and we exchanged nuzzles. “Maybe I can help out some this time?”

“You can count on it.” I have to admit, despite Revelry being in bad shape, I was feeling a lot better with Fealty there. He was smart and good with magic too. We'd see to it that Revelry got better, he'd make sure of it. He could help keep watch too. And... if any ponies or griffons did find us... he'd be able to help get us and our eggs to safety.

Yes, I was feeling much better.

Despite the hopes of that naïve little draconequus inside of me, Revelry hadn't really improved at all by morning. She wasn't any worse at least, but my best attempts to get her to drink something throughout the night hadn't met with any success. She was barely lucid and refused anything offered to her. If she felt half as bad as she looked, I didn't doubt why. I was growing very worried about her, but Fealty's revelation that what she was ill with could be contagious made that much worse. So much for it just being because she stayed drunk too long.

Regardless of the cause, that left us with only one option. Unless she was almost completely better that morning I was going to insist we got the spell book anyway, but now we pretty much had to. I meant what I said the night before. I wasn't going to let the ponies or griffons kill my sister indirectly by preventing us from getting her the help she needed. Not after what they'd done to Antic. Not after what what I'd done to her. Not ever.

So, early the next morning, Fealty and I arose and readied ourselves for the trip. Zeal was on watch duty over night, which left me to watch over Revelry while Fealty recovered from days in the elements. I wasn't in the best shape or mood from the lack of sleep, but determination counts for a lot sometimes. Zeal met us at the mouth of the cave, where he appeared to be fighting a losing battle with sleepiness himself. “Be careful. Both of you.” His eyes lingered a little longer on Fealty. “I wish I could come with you.”

“We'll be careful, I promise,” I told him. He seriously didn't need to remind me of the dangers.

Fealty nodded. “Stay with Revelry, we'll be fine. Actually, maybe I should be the one staying? In case she gets worse?”

Zeal shook his head. “I would only slow Cantrip down right now, and you know the book. Just make it as quick as you can.”

We both gave him a final goodbye and promise to be back soon and in one piece, then took off for Fealty's cave. It was several hours away, especially in my tired state, and on top of it we had to fly as low as we could to reduce the risk of being spotted by anything. Trying to make haste under those conditions was about like asking me to conjure bread from stone. Not going to happen. Nevertheless, we tried our best, and aside from the odd scare or two from birds flying overhead, we made at least tolerable time. The sun wasn't quite at its height when we reached the canyon, and from there it would only be a quarter hour or so to his cave.

For the final approach, we opted to avoid flying through the canyon itself and stayed close to the cliff on the left side. There wasn't anywhere for a griffon to get the drop on us from above that way, and if they were watching the canyon we'd be able to get away if they spotted us at all. The jitters in my stomach were beginning to settle a little as we touched down on the ledge that connected to his cave. The entrance was visible just a trot away, partly obscured by moss and leafy vines. The weird nick on the side was still just like we left it. Nothing was out of place, and no griffons were around.

“I guess the griffons didn't figure out where the cave was after all,” Fealty whispered to me. We were edging our way along the wall of the cliff, trying to present as small a target as possible and using our scale colors as natural camouflage. Fealty's scales blended in a lot better than mine against the reddish stone, but if we were relying on that we were in deep trouble anyway.

“Good.” There wasn't much else to say, and I wanted to make as little noise as possible.

Fealty stopped suddenly, eliciting a fluttering of nerves in my stomach. “Did you hear something?” He glanced up and around, then shrugged. “Nothing. Anyway, since we're here and should have time, I'd like to grab a few more of my spell books. No reason to leave them to the griffons.”

“Good idea. I can carry a few at least,” I replied, shooing him on.

He turned and started back on the path. “It just kills me that we can't get it all, but even with Zeal and Revelry we'd have to ma-” His voice cut out with a choked gasp and he jerked and twisted halfway around. Both hands came up to clutch at something protruding from his chest. Feathered. An arrow. His face contorted to stunned shock as he coughed and swallowed. Blood came up to stain his lips.

I screamed. In my panic I glanced up and saw our mistake. Three griffons burst through a layer of clouds with bows drawn taut. The crisp snap of their strings slapped into my ears an instant before the whistle of arrows tearing through the air. I screamed again when one struck me in the forearm and penetrated completely through halfway up the shaft. The pain was immediate and unbelievable, and my legs gave out to send me spilling into Fealty. I heard him grunt, then saw him topple over the cliff. “Fealty!”

Another arrow bounced from the stone next to my head and I flipped over onto my back. The arrow stuck in my arm twisted and scraped along the wound, but I was so wound up I barely felt it. I did feel the arrow that bit into my left wing only to bounce free from the stone beneath it. I shrieked and scrabbled over the edge, spreading my wings once free and flapping for all I was worth to get to Fealty and safety. Anywhere but up on the cliff!

My heart sank to all new depths when I landed beside him. He was lying motionless in the heap he'd landed in... blood ran from the wound around the snapped arrow shaft jutting from his chest and collected in his nostrils and corners of his mouth... but he was alive! He was still breathing! Without even thinking about it, I shot a hateful glare at the half-bird monsters circling overhead. Not this time! They were not going to hurt us anymore! I stood upright, raised my good hand into the air and channeled a burst of mana. A deep red field of hard magic surrounded us, just in time to shatter two more arrows and turn a third glancing hit aside.

“Watch it, they have magic!” a deep voiced griffon shouted above.

“Fan out!” a female replied as she nocked another arrow.

Fan out all you want, you picked the wrong draconequuses to mess with! I chose the closest griffon, a big male with buttery yellow feathers and gaudy orange patches on his cheeks, and concentrated as much mana into my finger tip as I could muster. Then I charged more. The shield flickered for an instant for a bolt of hard light to stab out at him, again and again. The first shot blasted a few feathers on his wing free and the second scoured the armor on his side, but the others missed. Fine. Fine! Give me a few more moments to ready myself. I charged my finger again...

Something big crashed into the shield to my side, and I whipped my head around to see a light green feathered griffon readying another javelin. White hot energy boiled the air as another shot speared her straight on, vaporizing the bronze of her armor and dropping her with a shrill scream. A grin crawled onto my face. The ones I didn't kill had best run or fly while they still could, because I wasn't going to stop until they were all dead!

I was an absolute idiot.

With only a scant few hours of sleep and almost no practice with those spells in perhaps years, I don't know what I was expecting. Already I was feeling winded, but I clung to the hope that I could hold off long enough to scare them away. I was an idiot. Another javelin from the green griffon, who was already back up on her feet, collided with my shield. The magic buckled... and vanished.

I fired another shot at the griffons above, missing completely, and spun to face the one tossing javelins at me. I glared harder and shouted, “Leave us al-” My empty threat was interrupted when an arrow ripped through my cheek, slashed my tongue and exited through the other cheek. The wavering confidence I held was crushed as pain shot through my entire body, and I stumbled backward while holding my snout in my hands. I tasted blood. Lots of blood.

“I have you now!” the yellow griffon I shot earlier shouted, drawing his bow back again. The others with him all did the same. I was going to die. We were going to die.

I'm not proud of many things that I've done in my life, but when you're in extreme pain, tired and facing down four griffons bent on your death, it's hard to think rationally or be brave. I panicked. Just like the scared little girl I was, I panicked. Just like I always did when faced with danger, I panicked. There were a dozen smarter things I could have done, but I fired off the first spell I could think of, and the world flashed to impenetrable darkness.

“It... it vanished!”

“Watch yourselves, some of them can do that. They have powerful magic.”

“It is probably still nearby, be careful!”

Panic doesn't begin to describe what I was feeling. Four monsters were bearing down on me and I couldn't see anything. And so, I did the only thing my terror gripped mind could think of: I ran. Right into the stoney cliff side. The air was knocked from my lungs and I fell backward to land on my back. The arrow in my arm twisted again, but through heroic effort I contained the scream. I could hear the griffons land and start poking around.

“Where did it go? It could not have gone far.”

“Do not be so sure, they are crafty and very powerful. Keep vigilant.”

“I have seen one teleport, like the ponies can.”

My heart hammered in my chest so hard I feared they could hear it. Each beat pushed more blood into my mouth, which I gave up swallowing in lieu of letting it just run from the hole in my cheek. The spell would disguise it too. Please...

A weak groan sounded out, followed by the rustling of grasses. Fealty... oh no...

“Hey, is that one still alive?”

Scrunch. Snap. “No.”

My heart stopped. They... they couldn't...

A female chuckled. “The lieutenant will not believe this. Alexie killed the creature.” Something stepped over me. “Come, let us take it back to town as proof.”

They bantered and joked. I could hear them dragging Fealty's corpse up from the ground, and they were joking. I laid there, terrified to move for fear of being their next victim, and waited for the spell to end when my strength gave out. I don't know how long it took. At that point, lost in the blackness that gripped me, I couldn't tell. It couldn't have been long. Less than a minute. A minute that no matter how long I live... or what happens to me... I will never... ever forget....

At length the blackness withered and faded, letting colors drip in like rain drops that ran down my vision and restored my sight. Clear blue skies framed by the canyon walls came into view. No griffons. No clouds. They were gone.

I laid there for some time, staring up into the sky and trying to come down off of the adrenaline surge borne of mortal terror. Minutes passed as I whimpered and fought to catch my breath, daring not to sit up or move in case the griffons were playing some demented game with me. I waited... and waited... but soon I could wait no longer. The more my nerves settled, the more the pain returned. Throbbing, terribly aching pain returned to my arm and tongue. I was bleeding badly, and if I didn't do something soon I'd probably lose consciousness. Already I was feeling light headed, but whether that was from my wounds or pure unmitigated shock I had no idea.

Pushing myself up with my good arm brought on an astounding number of involuntary shifts of my injured limb, and by the time I finally got up I had to just let my mouth hang open to let my tongue hang out, lest the cut brush against another tooth. Everything hurt so much, but fear and desperation drove me on to examine the arrow that had speared my arm. There was only one way I could treat it, and I was so exhausted I doubted I could pull it off. If I blacked out, I would die. If I didn't do anything, I would die. Tough choice.

I focused all of my will and strength at the spot where it penetrated, and ran my free hand through the motions of the spell. Unbelievably, I found the energy, and with a faint double pop and crackle of air being shoved out of the way, the arrow teleported out of the wound and landed with a faint clatter. Fresh blood oozed from the hole, dripping in thick globs. I didn't have much time... Again, I took a deep breath and clenched my eyes shut, tensing every muscle to scrounge for every last ounce of magic I could. Golden light illuminated the wound, and slowly but surely the gaping hole knitted closed before my eyes. One last wound...

My breath left me briefly and I spat out another gob of bloody spittle. This one probably wouldn't kill me, but it hurt almost as bad, and let me tell you, trying to not move your tongue is a lot harder than it sounds. I hyperventilated to regain some semblance of control and lucidity, and channeled the healing magic to my mouth. The pain faded to a faint tingling...

...and darkness encroached on my vision.

When I awoke, I awoke to a world of confusion, aches and exhaustion. Fogginess shrouded every sense as I rolled over and spasmodically coughed out a few specks of clotted blood. I groaned and flexed every joint, feeling an odd stiffness in my right arm and the fingers of that hand. The fuzziness in my head swirled and parted, letting the events of the fight return to me. No... not a fight... murder.

I bolted up and scanned my surroundings. Reddish stone towered around me, leading up the cliff to an open sky. The sun had moved westward, but just how much time had passed was a mystery. Where was I again? What was I doing...

Fealty...

I jumped up and spun to face the last spot I'd seen him, and in a horrifying replay of memory I found nothing but an enormous blood stain on the grassy stone. I looked up and around, desperately searching for the signs of griffons. If they were still around I could get him back! He couldn't be dead! I-I'd get him back and heal him before he died! It... it wasn't...

...it was too late. I fell to my hands and knees in the damp patch, shaking my head in disbelief. But it was true. 'Hey, is that one still alive?' Then a gut wrenching crack of bone. 'No'. He... he was dead before I blacked out. I couldn't protect him from so many griffons. Maybe if it was just one or two... maybe I could have saved him. Or-or if I'd just been smart and teleported us to safety rather than try something stupid by fighting them...

I could have saved him, but I didn't.

Everything felt numb. It was like time stopped as I stared into the uneven blotches of overlapping blood beneath me. My eyes moved from one to the next, and terrible images of how each must have formed ran through my mind. The large sweeping splash... had they slashed his throat? Or just rammed a spear or sword somewhere else to watch him bleed out? To see how long it took? That's what they did, right? Just killed us for sport!? For some unknowable sadistic and demented hatred for us!?

I gathered handfuls of clumpy, grimy dust in my hands and punched the ground with all of my might. If I hadn't been exhausted already I'd probably have broken a knuckle, but as it was I just pounded ineffectively at the last remains of Fealty. His dried blood... that was all that was left...

“Are you happy now!?” I screamed at the top of my lungs. I thrust my head back to face the sky and stood on shaky legs. “Are you going to take everyone from me!? Why me!?” I stamped a hoof and snarled something as tears streamed down my cheeks. “Why not me!? Why are you killing everyone else? Come back and face me you cowards!” The world lurched and I fell backward to catch myself against a large rock. I was too tired to be screaming and shouting, but I didn't care! I wanted the griffons to come back and answer for what they'd done! I wouldn't run or hide this time. If they killed me, what did I care? Everything I cared about had been taken from me!

My legs gave out, depositing me on my back to stare up at sky again. I tried to rock to my hooves or roll over or do anything, but I had neither the spirit nor strength. So, I just shouted and wailed at the heavens, hoping that a pegasus or griffon would stumble over me and end my miserable existence.

Of course, when you want them to be around, they're nowhere to be seen.

It was just me. Just me, and the dried final remains of Fealty beneath me. This was when he was supposed to show up and give me a hug, then tell me that everything would be okay. Or, I could just fly to him and tell him how crappy my day had been, and he'd listen and nod along silently as I told him about this or that. Not anymore! He was dead. Dead and gone. Gone to be on with Antic. That's what the ponies believed, right? That the dead went on to some paradise where they never hurt or had to be sad again? Where did draconequuses go? Probably to the same place to be tortured forever to make the ponies happy. Or the griffons.

I wailed again and, with strength I didn't know I had, pulled myself to my hooves. Fealty was dead. He was dead, but there was a reason. There had to be. He couldn't have just died pointlessly. I-I had to make sure of it. The spell book was still in his cave, just above. Revelry was depending on us... and now, just me.

The griffons probably knew where the cave was. They'd been waiting in ambush. Yet, I could still hope that they didn't bother looting it. They had no use for spell books.

Maybe if I was lucky, it would still be there.

If I was more lucky, there would be griffons inside to kill me.

There were no griffons inside.

In fact, it didn't look like they had even set paw or talon inside at all. Nothing had been disturbed. They didn't care about what was in there. They just wanted to kill Fealty or any other draconequus that was nearby.

At least that meant I found the spell book, and a dozen others that looked worth saving. If he was still there with me we could have taken all of the books he owned, and probably some of his other belongings, but it was just me. Just weak little Cantrip, who was exhausted and scared out of her mind. I'm still not sure how I managed to fly with the box of books in my grasp.

The trip home took forever. As tired as I was, the normally multiple hour trip ended up taking until well past sunset. The entire way home I wept continuously, picturing Fealty's pained and startled final expression, and every mistake I made following it that led to his death. I kept hearing them snap his neck, over and over again. Not seeing it had only made my imagination run wild with it. Was he even aware? Was he scared? Had he been watching me, pleading silently for me to stop being stupid by fighting the griffons instead of just teleporting us to safety? Did he see me flee rather than stay and help him?

I took the same path back that we took to the mountains, using as much cover as I could and stopping several times to rest. It didn't matter to me if I lived or died at that point, but if I did die, Revelry might too. Even if I gave up on life, she hadn't. She deserved better. And for that, I tried my best to avoid being seen. I found myself constantly scanning my surroundings, and every little gust of wind sent a shiver down my spine and nearly sent me scurrying for the ground and any cover. It never amounted to anything, of course. The griffons had what they wanted. They weren't looking for me.

By the time I made it back to our cave, it was so dark I could barely see anything. Even so, I was familiar enough with the area by then that I was able to pick out the clearing and land heavily amidst a patch of flowers of some sort. My mind began racing as I lugged the box of books along the final stretch to the cave mouth. What was I going to say to Zeal and Revelry? I had no idea.

“Cantrip! I was about to come looking for you!” Zeal said from somewhere up ahead. It was too dark for me to even see him among the trees.

I said nothing and trudged onward, head held low to conceal my emotions.

Tree branches rustled and something big fluttered down to the ground. “What took so long? Is everything...” Zeal trailed off as I looked up. He looked terrible. Beyond exhausted. He probably hadn't slept more than two hours since Revelry got sick. “...is... is that blood?” He raised a hand up to my cheek, but stopped short of touching me. “What happened? ...where is-”

“Fealty's dead,” I interrupted in a high voice. He obviously didn't know what to say to that, so I spared him the trouble of asking what happened. “Gr-griffons were waiting on us. They killed him.”

His mouth hung open dumbly as his eyes danced over my body. “What? C-Cantrip...”

I broke away and stepped toward the cave. “I got the book.”

“Th-that's good. Revelry isn't any worse.” He trotted up beside me and asked, “Are you...” Oh, don't even ask if I'm alright. “...hurt?”

“Yes.” On more levels than he could imagine.

I guess he didn't know what to say to that either. I don't blame him. What do you say or do when your sister comes back, drenched in blood, and tells you that feathered cat monsters killed her lover and father of her eggs? It wasn't his fault. He didn't need to suffer too. It was just the griffons' faults, right? That's what he said when Antic died. I didn't need to hear that again.

So, I just silently flew down and made my way to the back room to help Revelry. She didn't need to suffer either.

Just me.

Just little... old... me.

Chapter 9: Fear of the Unknown

I don't really know what happened over the three or four months that came after Fealty's death. Everything was just a dull, gray blur of lethargy and apathy that I thought would never end. Antic's death removed something from my life that had been there since I hatched. A brother who I sometimes didn't agree with completely, but who I really did love despite the hurtful things I said and did to him. Those were things I would never be able to atone for.

Fealty's death was altogether different. I missed him terribly too, but I had only known him for a couple of years. Even so, in that time I came to know and love him to a depth that I could never hope to repeat with another, if I even wanted to. We shared aspects of our lives with no others. Our fears, hopes, dreams and little secrets, nothing was hidden between us. I felt like I belonged with him, and when we were together I felt safe in ways I never did elsewhere. The griffons had shown me how foolish that notion had been.

After that, I never felt safe again. I spent a lot of time in the back chamber with my eggs, but any time I was alone I felt almost unbearably anxious. For a while I asked Zeal or Revelry to stay with me, but I knew that had to be getting old fast, especially when they had other things to do. At least Zeal didn't make me perform watch duty for a while. I probably couldn't have. If I was alone up on the surface I'd probably have lost my mind from fear of a griffon swooping down on me at any moment.

That lasted for two weeks or so, but finally, eventually, I buried my fears under a thick layer of forced indifference. The way I saw it, Zeal and Revelry were all I had left, and if I annoyed them into kicking me out, I'd truly be alone. I had suffered loss, but so had they, and ultimately our situation hadn't changed. We were still living in a world where creatures that hated us lived around us on all sides, and where food and other basic supplies were hard to come by. If I just moped around forever, I would do nothing but drive myself further into a sea of despair while weighting my remaining family down even more.

So, I just gave up. I gave up on everything, and did whatever I had to. I just didn't really care what happened to me anymore. I spent most of my time sleeping or trying to sleep rather than dwell on things. Weeks went by that I remember barely a thing of because I slept them away.

What little time I spent doing something constructive was thrown away reading through Fealty's spell books. I'd brought his new book with me when I returned, which held a number of spells for dealing with mental illnesses. To be honest, I was afraid I would need it. There was one day in particular that I really thought long and hard about taking my own life. I had magic at my disposal that would do the job quickly and quietly, and if I did it right, almost painlessly. I could have wandered off into the woods somewhere and killed myself, just like that. Zeal and Revelry wouldn't have to know or deal with it, and the ponies and griffons would have one less draconequus they'd have to slay. Win-win, right?

Well, I almost did. In response to that I pulled out Fealty's spell book and read the spell that would let me get through the worst of it while I came to terms with everything. It was surprisingly easy for me to understand, maybe because I already knew what it did. Yet, I never even cast it. It wasn't some magic infiltrating my mind and making me forget how sad I was supposed to be. It was the five eggs in my nest that grew closer to hatching every day, and my brother Zeal and sister Revelry.

It was one late night that really cemented in my mind that killing myself would have been the worst mistake I ever made in my life. I was curled up with my eggs just like every other night, with the strange pony spell book before me and opened to the new life spell. It was the same routine that I had repeated for weeks. I'd woken up from a shallow and fitful sleep to do nothing but roll over and stare at the ceiling to watch little drops of water run down the walls. I'd done that for maybe an hour while I thought about everything and nothing, and when that finally got boring enough I pulled out the spell book to reread the spell again. I wasn't sure why I was bothering. In my state, trying to cast it would have been an enormous waste of time, even if I had deciphered almost the entire thing by that point. Not really what it did. Not yet. But I thought I understood how to cast it anyway.

I was halfway done running through the spell's motions when Revelry shuffled past, distracting me enough to destroy the swirls of green magic floating around my hands. She glanced briefly at me with lifeless eyes before shuffling up to the water basin and scooping some out. I didn't realize she was carrying another bottle of wine until both she and it slumped against the wall with a clank of glass. Fealty's death hit her harder than I expected. Learning that he died trying to help her probably made it much worse than it might have otherwise been.

We didn't say anything to each other, as was also becoming routine. She sat there, holding her head and whining to herself quietly, while I laid where I was and tried to look like I wasn't bothered by it. It wasn't awkward or tense anymore. It's just what we did now. Two draconequuses that had given up.

It wasn't long before Zeal plodded in and found an empty spot across from us to sink to the floor. He leaned back against the cave wall and rubbed his face before yawning widely. The bags under his eyes were growing worse every day, and almost as soon as he finished one yawn he was starting another. I didn't know how he was even still going. He took a few deep breaths and wiped his face again before asking, “Revelry... it's your turn to watch, isn't it?”

She whimpered and nodded.

A pained frown worked onto his face. “You don't feel like it, do you?”

She whimpered and shook her head.

“Alright...” He sighed and locked eyes with me for a moment. There was the unspoken question we both understood. Would I be a good sister and do it for them, since neither were really able? I hadn't since Fealty died, and at that point I was still terrified of the idea. We stared at each other, and my unspoken answer settled. No. No, sorry, I was still too messed up. He sighed again and laid his head back against the wall. “...alright. I... I just need a second to wake up.”

Wracked with guilt, I buried my face back in the spell book. How could I have done that? He was on the verge of passing out from exhaustion, and I let him take the responsibility anyway.

It was at that moment, that I decided that I couldn't just kill myself.

Why? It was because in Zeal, I saw that even through everything that had happened, he hadn't given up. He was still willing to slowly work himself to death to do his part in keeping us all 'safe' and fed. Even if I'd given up, he hadn't. Revelry... I wasn't so sure about her, but maybe she hadn't either. If they were still willing to forge ahead and try to survive, I had to as well. If something happened to me... that would probably finish them off too. I couldn't do that to them.

A sigh passed my lips as I set back to reading the book. The next day I was going to take over for Zeal, no matter how scared or sad I was.

Considering the mindset I was in at the time, I can't remember for sure how long it was before the big day finally came. About four months after Fealty's death, I think. Four long, dreary, boring months of me lying around a nest of permanently damp leaves holding five speckled eggs was finally rewarded in the early hours one morning.

It started when one of the eggs moved. I don't know how long it took to jostle me awake, but when I cracked my eyes and felt it shift next to me again, my first instinct was to panic. Something was after my eggs! I leaped up and spun to face the nest to be gifted with the sight of two more wobbling gently in the pile. It took a few moments for reality to set in, but when it did, joy surged within me. Finally! Finally, after months and months of waiting and losing a clutch, it was happening! I was going to be a mother!

For some reason, my first thought was to rush and grab Zeal and Revelry, but I quickly dismissed the idea. Zeal was busy on watch, and Revelry was probably sleeping off another hangover. It wasn't like they could really help anyway.

Another egg jerked, and I lowered myself to the floor next to the nest to watch. What was I supposed to do? Just look on? Could I help them break out of the shells? ...would that hurt them somehow? I had no clue. For the hundred thousandth time that week, I wished mom was there. She'd been through this and would know exactly what to do. The four of us hatched after all.

I reached out and laid a hand on the closest, and within I could definitely feel something moving. My heart fluttered and the knot in my stomach tightened. I really felt like I should be doing something... which I did by jerking my hand away when something struck the shell from within. The nerves in the pit of my gut clenched, but I backed off. This was natural. Everything was going like it was supposed to. This was how birds hatched, right? And griffons? The chicks did all the work, I thought. They'd get out on their own..

With extreme apprehension I nestled down on the floor, peering over folded arms at the process unfolding before me. At least I wasn't a pony. I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to give birth to a baby whole...

It took a while, and as frightened and nervous as I was I couldn't really keep track of time, but after at least an hour or so of eggs quaking and jerking, the first signs of progress showed. A little piece of shell cracked and bulged out. Then another, and another. Finally, the first egg grew a split the length of my finger, which grew and widened with each push. A large chunk fell away, dripping thin, clear liquid into the nest as it fell. I could see the whelp inside! It rested a bit, then chipped away at the shell again with the end of its snout. The egg gave more, and it reached up to try pulling itself free.

Not quite enough room yet, but I could wait no longer! I peeled back part of the shell, which split completely and came loose, trailing a few strings of slimy egg goo. The whelp chipped away at the remaining half of the shell, despite half the egg being missing already, then pulled up again to leave the wet prison that it had occupied for so long.

The very first thing I wanted to do was to scoop my child up and hold it, but it was so small and delicate. I didn't want to hurt it! So, I pulled myself closer and gave it a thorough appraisal. A boy. It was a boy, my first son. I had a son! His scales were a pale bronze, much like his father, but his hair was black as night like mine. I couldn't contain a grin as I watched him roll over and blink the goo out of his eyes. I had a son!

A son who was licking at some slime and trying to wriggle free of it, so with a single finger I gently helped wipe it away. He stared up at me with his purple eyes, unblinking. “Hey there...” I cooed. He kept staring, obviously not quite sure what to make of this big thing looking at him and making funny noises. Words can't really convey what it felt like to just... look at him. My son. Relief, elation, worry... so many emotions mixing in ways I didn't think was possible. Indescribable. We must have stared at each other for several minutes before he did the next thing that came naturally to him, which involved curling up where he was and drifting off to sleep. I could only imagine how tiring it must have been for the little thing to work his way out of the shell.

The entire affair must have taken two full hours. After him came my first daughter, who looked almost exactly like me aside from the green eyes. After her was another girl with aquamarine scales and white hair. The next didn't hatch for almost an hour after her, but out came my second son, with light gray scales and dark hair. I was beginning to wonder if the fifth egg was a dud, but it was just waiting its turn. Well after I had four whelps sleeping soundly in my nest, my third daughter cracked her shell and pulled herself out.

Five. All five hatched! That was a little unusual, since as far as I knew lots of birds and reptiles had at least one or two eggs per clutch that didn't hatch, but all of mine did. Joy filled every part of my body as I watched them sleep in a little bunch at the center of the pulverized egg shells. All healthy, and so beautiful.

Next came the hard part. What was I going to name them? A few names had trickled through my head in the weeks leading up to that day, and I had perhaps discussed it in passing with Fealty, but I couldn't really settle on anything at first. The moment I saw the little bronze whelp and his brother, I knew what to name them. Fealty and Antic. It might sound a little strange and maybe even disrespectful of their memories to name my sons after them, but they looked so much like them, and it would give me something to remember them by forever. They would understand, right?

The girls were a little harder, but in time I figured it out. The blue-green one had hatched all on her own, pulling herself out of the little hole she made with surprising skill. Finesse. That's what I named her. Then came the one who looked like me, sitting in the middle of the pile of sleeping whelps. I named her Harmony, since it looked like the others were brought together by her. The last was a little trickier, but the name came to me in a moment of inspiration. It had taken her longer to hatch than any of the others, but she never gave up, and in the end she did it all on her own. Tenacity. Fitting, I thought.

It's a little silly to claim I was tired after just watching my whelps hatch, but I was mentally exhausted. Now that they were all out of their eggs and curled up in the nest, I just wanted to join them and get back to sleep. I brushed the egg debris aside and wound my body around them, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to actually sleep. Not now. I laid there and watched them fidget and maybe even dream, happy to just see the small breaths they took and the content but tired looks on their faces.

Five little whelps, hatched today and without a care in the world.

A tear ran down my cheek and I failed to contain a few sniffles. I knew that the next couple of days would be busy and tiring beyond anything I could guess, but right then I didn't care. I was too happy to care about that.

Finally... I was a mother.

Yet, somehow, I did manage to fall asleep. I wasn't even aware that I was drifting off before I was roused by something crawling on my face. As usual, my first instinct was to panic. A spider or something else small, crawly and poisonous was on me! I bolted up, losing the offending thing on my head in the process, and whipped my head around to find the culprit. Two small golden eyes stared up at me.

“Antic?”

The little whelp cocked his head and resumed his quest to ascend to the highest part of my body that he could find, but before he could get past my arm I took him in my hands and sat up properly. He wiggled and twisted in my grasp, fluttering his wings and twisting his tail. “Careful now, I wouldn't want you to fall off and get hurt.” I set him back in the mound of sleeping whelps, but he just rolled off and stared up at me again, kicking his hooves.

“Antic? Nice name.”

I almost leaped out of my scales at Zeal's voice, but managed to avoid scrabbling out of the nest. “Wh-huh?” He was propped against the cavern wall to our side, with folded arms and the permanently tired expression I was growing accustomed to as his new norm. “How long have you been there?”

He yawned and shrugged. “Long enough. They hatched last night, huh? All of them?”

“Yeah. Yeah, all five of them. No trouble at all.” I nestled back down, noting with relief that Antic was settling down himself.

Zeal nodded and hefted himself up. “So, Antic? What are the others named?”

I ran a claw across the pile, naming them off as I went. “Fealty, Finesse, Harmony, Tenacity and, well, Antic.”

He nodded again. “Fealty and Antic. Nice names, all of them.”

“Thanks.” I was worried he or Revelry would think I was weird for naming my sons that, but so far, so good. “Antic seems to be the liveliest of the bunch so far. Guess I got that one right.”

“You look pretty tired. Can I get you something?” he said, crouching at the nest.

“I'm fine, thanks. And, well, I guess waking up in the middle of the night to watch them hatch will do that. I just need a little more sleep.”

He took a deep breath. “I understand, believe me. Go on back to sleep if you need to, Revelry's on watch right now.”

I yawned and wiped my eyes. Getting back to sleep would probably be tough, and I was already awake, so there was a temptation to just get up and deal with it. “Not sure I can now.”

“I understand that too.” He went from crouching to sitting and extended a single finger for Antic to stare at. “A lot to think about?”

“Yeah.” That was a gigantic understatement. The conversation I had with Revelry months before about the responsibility of being a mother replayed in my mind. Keeping the eggs warm was the easy part. Now they needed to eat, and soon enough they'd be moving around and getting into trouble. I must have been crazy. “I... I don't really know what to do right now.” I looked away and whispered, “Wish mom was here...”

“Me too,” he said weakly. Antic reached up and wrapped his hand around the talon on Zeal's index finger, prompting a small smile from my brother. I hadn't seen one of those since... I couldn't remember when.

I ran a finger through his hair to put it back in line and said, “Like, for starters, I don't know when to feed them. Or... even what to feed them. They, uh, don't seem hungry.” That was something I had mixed feelings on about ponies. On one hand, producing milk sure took the guess work out of that. On the other, I really didn't like the imagery of nursing a baby with teeth. That could punch through shells.

Antic released Zeal and yawned before curling up again. Zeal kept his eyes on the whelp as he said, “I guess they'll let you know when they're hungry. As for what... the same as the rest of us?”

I nodded. That made sense. I mean, that's how animals did it, right? Mammals just nursed the babies, but birds and reptiles did it that way. “We've got plenty, don't we?”

“I think so. They can't possibly eat that much. Probably four or five days' worth of food right now.”

“That's good. Great.” I frowned a little. “I'm, uh, not sure when I'll be able to really help scavenge again. I... I'll figure something out about keeping watch.” It wasn't like I'd been participating a lot in either, but I had been helping with the watch rotation at least.

He yawned again and nodded. “Yeah. We'll figure it out. Don't worry.”

A silence fell as Antic nodded off again, joining his brother and sisters in carefree slumber. Oh, how I envied them for that. I couldn't remember what it really felt like to not have to worry about something, but for the foreseeable future, I was going to have to be the one that saw to it that my children were safe and sound. Yeah, that did wonders for making me feel better... so I fished for anything to get my mind off of it. “Hey, you think Revelry would like to meet them? Does she know yet?”

Zeal smirked. “Not yet, I don't think, but I think she'd like to. I'll go get her.”

He disappeared, and after what I imagined was a muffled conversation above that was really too far away to hear at all, he returned. Revelry trailed after him, stepping a bit lighter than the night before and with wide eyes. Her hooves clopped crisply one last time as she stopped in front of the nest.

“Say hello to your nieces and nephews,” I said with a half smile, waving a hand over them.

Her mouth hung open a hair as she crouched and looked at each little whelp resting in the nest. She settled on Antic, who was awake again and looking about. They locked eyes, and Revelry extended a finger to him. “Hey there little fella...”

He made a small chirping noise and met her halfway.

“I think Antic likes you,” Zeal said.

“Huh?” She looked between him and me. “Antic?”

“That's right,” I said. “I, uh, named him after Antic.” Of course, after that I had to go through and name them all for.

A mixture of emotions washed over her as I pointed out Fealty, and again, Antic, but in the end she made a sad smile and kept a finger out for Antic to reach up at. Maybe naming him that wasn't such a great idea?

Or maybe it would help her come to terms with our brother's death?

Either way, it was done. Another little chapter in my life where I made a decision and had to live with it, for better or worse.

As I watched him, I couldn't help but think it was for the better.

That day came and went faster than I could have believed, but without much of interest. To my mild surprise and relief, my whelps didn't do much other than sleep for almost the entire day. I just passed that off as part of the normal process, since they were surely still tired from all of that effort. I did keep worrying about them eating or drinking something, but so far they were content to just cuddle together against me or squirm about on occasion. Zeal was probably right, and they'd let me know when they got hungry.

That did leave me in a somewhat uncomfortable position that night though. I was pretty wound up worrying over every little noise and movement they made, and hadn't left the nest for more than a minute or two since they hatched. The two combined was stressing me out a lot, so I turned to my tried and true pastime, and paged through the pony spell book yet again.

I'd been considering it for days by that point, but something inside me almost compelled me to go through with actually casting the more life on myself, just to see what it would do. I'd spent days analyzing the wording and even the magical symbols themselves, in an attempt to discern exactly what it did, but as before that didn't really help too much. I was almost certain that it wasn't dangerous, and that it was supposed to do something like... give more life. How could something like that be bad?

Working with unknowns in magic is a dangerous thing, but my curiosity only grew stronger the more I put it off. It couldn't be dangerous. It was beneficial. I had no reason to worry.

And yet, I did. I looked down at my sleeping babies and wondered what would happen to them if this killed me somehow, or otherwise incapacitated me. Would Zeal and Revelry be able to take care of them? Would they even be willing to? Probably... but how could I do something like that to them and my children? Losing our mom when we were so young was almost too much to bear. Losing me when they were but a day old probably would be too much. Or would they not even remember me?

I sighed and paged through the book to the symbols of the spell. No, they were too young to remember me if something happened to me, but really, that was why I was even considering the spell in the first place. By my best figuring, it was supposed to somehow protect against death. I didn't really understand how, or even what that meant, but if it could prevent me from dying and leaving them to a horrid world that wanted to kill them too, wasn't that worth trying?

I... wasn't sure. I also didn't want to ask Zeal or Revelry, since I knew what they'd say. No way they'd want me to cast an unknown spell from a pony spell book. I was crazy to even be considering it. Even I knew that.

Somehow, that didn't stop me as I raised my hand and started going through the motions. It was an enormously complicated spell, thrice again more than the greatest I'd ever cast before. Maybe I didn't think I could even do it. I'd just give it my best shot and when the magic fizzled out, I could let it go and forget about it.

The green swirling magic collected around my hand. That was the first step, and I started the second part.

Maybe I thought Zeal or Revelry would come by and see what I was doing and stop me before I finished it. They'd ask what I was doing, and when I had to explain it I'd see how crazy I was, and stop.

A purple glow enshrouded the green, then flowed over the rest of my body. That was the second step. Just one more to go, but it was brutally complex.

Maybe I thought by the time I got to this part, I'd see how hard it was and give up. If a more life spell really existed and worked, I'd have heard about it, right? Some crazy pony, who liked big words too much, probably wrote all of this down without expecting it to work. Maybe it was even a decoy spell? Something to throw off a thief and make them waste their time trying to figure it out?

The purple haze shifted, and the entire world grew brighter. My vision wavered and twisted in illogical ways as the magic flowed through me. All of my senses felt heavy and distant. The room felt icy cold in an instant. The air smelled dead and lifeless. I heard murmuring and other strange sounds I couldn't identify, and my vision went black. I couldn't feel my heart beat anymore... I couldn't breathe! Terror gripped me and I struggled against paralyzed limbs to stand up and move away from this... deadness!

Shrill screams like things being tortured filled my ears. I leaped up and slammed into the floor, well clear of the nest. My heart was pounding in my chest. I could feel it! The damp, mildewy scent of the cave returned to my nostrils as I took a deep breath. I felt my body, running my hand down my side to feel each little ripple of a scale. I was alive! I was alright!

All five of my whelps were staring at me.

It took me a full minute to regain my composure and confirm that yes, I was really alright. Everything felt okay, aside from the jittery knot in my stomach, but it had a good reason to be there. I felt intensely nauseated at first, but even that began to subside soon. On shaky limbs I crawled back over and nestled down with them. “It-it's alright. Sorry for scaring you like that.” I tried to level my breathing and nudged them all back together. I don't know how much I really scared them, but I certainly scared myself half to death, and learned my lesson. I wasn't even proud at apparently successfully pulling the spell off.

I wasn't going to be casting anymore unknown spells. Ever.

Chapter 10: Full Circle

Becoming a mother had given my life new purpose, and for the next two months I felt better than I had since before Antic died. Not everything felt so heavy and lifeless anymore, and I no longer felt like I was just going through pointless motions to keep my body alive despite an increasing amount of apathy in my mind. Everything I did had reason to it again. A goal. Something to aspire to. Caring for my whelps was rewarding and fulfilling in ways that I couldn't have begun to predict when I was still warming their eggs.

Which wasn't to say that it was all easy. Fortunately, Zeal had been right all along, and it didn't take me long at all to pick up on their little cues when they were hungry or needed attention for one reason or another. Even better, they happily nibbled away on just about anything I gave to them, which meant we weren't hard up on food. But, while that much was simple, I found myself constantly nervous or worried about one thing or another. Sometimes one or two of them didn't eat anything, or would make little chirping noises as they wanted something, but I never could figure it out. So far everything had worked out, but I couldn't help but fear that wouldn't last forever. Especially now that they were getting old enough to start moving around a bit more, and while they didn't stray far from each other I'd occasionally find one out of the nest trying to explore a bit more than I liked.

One night in particular I recall having to go retrieve Fealty from wandering away no less than five times, and that on top of keeping an eye on his four siblings and working on refreshing some protecting spells for the cave meant that I was exhausted. I was dreading what the nights would be like once they started learning how to use their magic...

There was still the matter of feeding them all before bed though, so I was busy fighting off yawns as I cut off tiny little chunks of boar meat to present to each of them. That night at least they all accepted their food and ate without any fuss, so I just sat and watched, content to have a little break for the day. They were all starting to finally lose their egg teeth, with Antic and Tenacity being the last two with the little bony protrusions at the ends of their snouts. All five had grown an astonishing amount in those two months, and for a while I had to question if perhaps draconequus whelps grew faster than pony foals. Maybe hatching from eggs gave them a head start?

With that business concluded, I chewed thoughtfully on my own share of meat and inspected the back room of the cave. I'm still not quite sure how I ended up claiming the whole thing as my rookery considering I had a barely used room of my own just down one of the tunnels. The endless supply of mana had been useful in securing the nest I guess, and once I'd established myself there, there wasn't a whole lot of reason to move. Six months of lying around in it had given me a lot of time to look at it, but not until my whelps had hatched did I really pay it a lot of attention. There was a lot that could be done to improve it. The most obvious thing that came to mind was that I really needed to replace the nesting material, since six months had not been kind to just adding more leaves on top of the bed of battered and torn material. With that thought aside, I began questioning how safe it was for my whelps. Or the entire cave, really. There were a lot of places for them to fall into water and drown, and once they really got mobile they could easily wander down the path with the underground river. None of us had really explored it even still, and I really didn't want my whelps being the first.

I flopped back against the cave wall and watched them finish their meal before crawling atop each other and finding a cozy place to bed down. I was too tired to really think about all of that right then. Something to think about the next day.

“Hey, Cantrip, mind if we talk about something?”

My eyes fluttered open and I searched the room for Zeal. I'd completely forgotten he was still in there with me. “Sure, what is it?” I said, finally finding him sitting on a natural shelf in the rock facing.

He glanced around the chamber and let his eyes rest on the exit for a little while before saying, “It's about Revelry. Have you talked with her much recently?”

“I... no. No, I guess I haven't. Why?” Truth be told, I hadn't spoken with her much at all since Antic died. A terrible thing to realize, but it seemed any attempts to really chat were almost entirely one sided. I wasn't sure if it just me or not. She'd never actually accepted my apology...

Zeal crossed his arms and laid back. “Well, I've tried. As far as I can tell, she doesn't want to talk to me. It's starting to worry me.”

“You too?” I asked. I had noticed before then that her mood hadn't made much of a recovery, even after my whelps hatched, but if Zeal was seeing the same thing that meant she must have been worse off than I ever realized. Then again, the two of them had never been too close.

“Yeah. I don't know what to do. I don't know if I can do anything to cheer her up, but I hate to see her like this.” He sighed and shook his head. “Do you think she's still this upset because of Antic? Or Fealty?”

“I... yeah, I think so,” I said. I bit my lip and tried to think of what else to say. Nothing great came to mind, so I just settled on the natural path of thought. “He was closer to her than either of us. Antic, I mean. I... I don't know. I guess, well... after what I said to her, I guess she just feels like she can't talk to me. I tried telling her I was sorry, but I don't know if she really believes it.”

Zeal sat silently for a while, flicking his tail and staring at the exit again. Finally, he said, “I don't know why she won't talk to me. Same thing maybe. I... haven't always been the nicest brother to her.” He placed his face in his hand and sighed again. “Which is going to make it even harder... but I'm going to try to get her to stop drinking. Maybe forcefully if I have to. It's killing her, even if she doesn't see it. I think it might be a big part of her depression too.”

Which certainly made sense to me. I'd been terrified to upsetting her again to the point that I never brought her drinking up with her, but he made an excellent point. “I think you're probably right. What can you do though? She knows magic to make it out of just about anything edible.”

“I know, I know.” He grunted and shook his head. “So, I don't know. I just... I wish... it's been what, five months? Six? It still hurts when I think about Antic too, but this can't go on forever.”

I had no idea how much it still hurt Zeal, or even Revelry, but I could sympathize with her a little. If I wanted to feel downright awful all I had to do was dwell on him or Fealty for a little while. It wasn't always easy to come out of the funk either. “I know, but, what can we do?”

“I don't know. I think I've run out of things to say to her.” He locked eyes with me. “Do you think you could try talking to her again? I think we both know why she's depressed, but maybe she'll open up to you?”

Oh, probably not, but I couldn't deny it was worth trying. “I...'ll try. She's on watch tonight, right?” He nodded. “Okay. Yeah, I'll try talking to her in the morning.”

“Thank you.” He slumped into a lying position and flicked his tail again. “Can't lose her too,” he said quietly, maybe quietly enough he didn't think I could hear it.

I didn't want to lose her either. I could say with absolute certainty that losing anyone else in my family would have completely broken me at that point. Maybe the same was true for Zeal? He'd never show it, but even if it wasn't true, he'd shown over and over again how much he cared about us regardless. For him and Revelry, I'd do whatever I could to help her. Trust me when I say that living a hollow shell of an existence dominated by depression wasn't much better than being dead.

I wasn't going to just willingly let her go on like that. I was tired, but first thing in the morning I'd see what I could do. Maybe she'd talk over breakfast?

As it turned out, I should have gone to talk with her right then. Has anything bad ever happened to you because you put something important off? It has to me.

If I dreamed that night, I don't remember what it was. All I remember was bedding down for the night around my whelps and shutting my eyes. I really must have been more tired than I realized, since even their fidgeting and chirps didn't keep me awake long. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath...

...and awoke to screams.

Mental fog swirled and abated to bring the same cave I'd fallen asleep in back into view. Everything looked fine. What was going on? I sat up and panned my ears around the cave. It sounded like-

“My wing!” Revelry shrieked. More pained cries echoed through the tunnel. What happened!?

Zeal was already up and flying toward her voice before I could even get up. I stepped over my whelps, took one last look to make sure they were all present and in place, and bolted after him. When I arrived in the main chamber, I found him bent over Revelry, who was on her hands and knees and doing her best to avoid screaming again.

“Her wing's broken,” Zeal told me when I reached them. He didn't really need to. I could see that one was folded up correctly, but her right wing was lying at her side and twisted around in a way that shouldn't have been possible.

Revelry balled up a fist and whimpered, “It huuuurts....”

I didn't doubt that for a moment, and wasted no time by helping scoop her up. “Come on, get her to the back room, I can fix it.” The glint of shattered glass reflecting moon light caught my eye as we went. What, had she gotten so drunk she fell through the hole and broke her wing? I didn't know whether to feel sorry for her or not at first, but guilt almost immediately overtook me. We were going to help her with that...

“Nnng... no!” Revelry blurted out between her sharp breaths and gasps of agony.

“Hold still, this won't take but a second!” For the life of me I couldn't figure out why she was fighting us so much, but Zeal was so much stronger than her that her struggles didn't get her far. When he placed her on the floor and held her still, I set to work on the healing magic. “Hang on, let me help with the pain first.” Her ragged and desperate breaths instantly leveled out as the gold-white aura covered her. She blinked the tears out of her eyes and struggled again when I started manipulating her broken wing back into shape. It would never heal properly if I got this wrong, so she needed to be still!

“Wait, n-no! We've g-got to get out of here!” She tore out of my grasp effortlessly and scrabbled backward. Her limp wing caught her eye, prompting a startled gasp.

Zeal turned back to the entrance. “What? Why? Let Cantrip fix your wing!”

“It'll only take a minute,” I assured her. “The pain spell won't last long...”

She shook her head furiously and pointed at my nest. “Grab them, quick! We've... we've got to leave now!”

A sensible person probably would have just done as she said, but I stood there dumbfounded. Zeal stamped a hoof. “Why? What's got you so spooked?”

She thrust a talon upward. “P-ponies! They saw me!”

...which explained a lot. She was at least a little buzzed, but she didn't fall into the hole because of that. She was frightened into it. I swore and moved to obey her. “Through the illusions?”

“Yes! H-hu-”

Her sentence was cut off by an overwhelming pressure building in the air, followed by the distinct crack of something teleporting, except magnified a dozen times over anything I'd ever heard. I was thrown from my hooves by the wave of air to land in a heap next to the nest, but to my immense relief none of my whelps were dislodged. Their terrified eyes peered over the edge of the nest at me.

“Well, looks like you were right, Bone Chips,” a female said.

I rolled over to face the source to find five ponies now occupying the center of the chamber where we all just stood. The pony at the center, a white unicorn mare with a black mane and tail and with two spell books in a bag on her side, stepped forward and surveyed the room. “You didn't say that there were three of them.” Her eyes met mine, then settled on my whelps. “Oh, or even more.”

Gut wrenching terror filled me, and I leaped up to place myself between the ponies and my children. Over my dead body were they going to touch any of them!

A pus colored unicorn stallion grumbled and tossed his mane. “I didn't know. For that matter I thought there wouldn't be any left after those stupid griffons killed the last one.”

They knew about Fealty? Who were these ponies? Were they responsible for his death? Or Antic's? I began gathering mana silently from the basin. It was difficult but not impossible, and I wanted to be ready the instant I figured out what to do. I actually had a pretty good idea what I was going to do this time.

Zeal crashed into one of the other ponies, tossing the pegasus stallion from his hooves to skid along the slick floor. I didn't even see him slink away to grab his sword, however he got it, but he slashed it twice at the ponies nearest to him. The blade caught a tail and drew a shallow cut on the unicorn mare's side, eliciting a sharp gasp. He pulled it back overhead, ready to bring it down with both hands, and shouted, “You're not going to kill anyone else!”

What would have been a crushing swing of the weapon was stopped short when an earth pony mare bucked Zeal aside. He flew back and slammed into the wall with two successive grunts, but through some miracle kept hold of the sword.

“I'll torture you for that...” the mare hissed, lighting her horn with a swirl of purple and green.

I have no idea what spell she was planning, and I didn't care. At that moment I took all of the mana I'd accumulated and dumped it onto her with a swipe of my hand. I hadn't cast a stunning spell in a long time, but even I was astonished at the scintillating shower of gold and blue flashes from the raw power of it. She gagged and instantly fell to the ground. Yes! There were just three... wait, the one Zeal knocked over was getting back up...

My plan at that point was to teleport all of us to safety. I hated the thought of abandoning our home, even temporarily, but I wasn't going to repeat my mistake that led to Fealty's death. I was not going to watch any more of my family die. That was my plan.

What actually happened, was right as the first pony got back up, Revelry lost it. She whimpered something and ran for all she was worth for the exit. Her wing might have still been broken, but there was nothing wrong with her legs, and she wove between and jumped over the interposing ponies to get to safety. But she couldn't fly! How was she going to get out? The underground path we'd never explored? She was going to get killed!

“After that one!” the unicorn stallion shouted, flagging some of his subordinates over to take care of her. He and two earth ponies galloped through the exit to the tunnel, shouting things that echoed and overlapped too much to comprehend.

That just left two ponies to Zeal and me, one of which was incapacitated. I liked those odds a lot better, but the crossbow armed pegasus clearly didn't. He backed up a step and swept his weapon between the two of us. We had to get past him to help Revelry! Two on two odds didn't make a bit of difference when she was out there with three chasing her!

Zeal obviously agreed. Without warning or even a glance to me, he flared his wings and flew overhead, drawing a poorly aimed shot that spanged off of and shattered a stalactite. “Leave her alone! Revelry!” his voice carried through the tunnel, growing fainter as he repeatedly called to her.

I... I was alone. Just me and my hatchlings. They left me.

“Ugh...” the mare grunted, dragging herself back to her hooves. “You... you'll regret that...” She glared and started toward me, lighting her horn again. “Die, creature.”

Her spell passed by ineffectively as my whelps and I were yanked in a direction I didn't know existed. The six of us flopped to the floor somewhere, driving the air from my lungs and confusing my sense of direction. My whelps chirped frantically and scrabbled over each other, and ultimately behind me as I leaped up to my hooves. The world spun and swam for precious seconds, and I whipped my head around to orient myself. The mild headache I attributed to the fall began to grow, and intuitively I knew where I was.

“It's up there!” the pegasus shouted, raising a hoof in our direction, then his crossbow.

A sharp whistling tore through the air, followed by a crossbow bolt detonating in a shower of splinters against the magical shield I erected. Oh, the teleport might not have taken us to safety, but with all of mana of the basin at my hooves, these two ponies were dead. I sneered and gathered up enough to recharge myself completely. The mare was probably responsible for arranging Antic and Fealty's deaths, and she and this other idiot were between me and my two siblings. I was going to kill them, and they were powerless to stop me! Trying to fight the griffons while tired and out of my element was a mistake, but they were the ones to make the mistake this time!

I raised my hand and speared the air with a flurry of beams of hard light. One caught the pegasus on the wing, and he yelped and threw himself to the side. Two more crashed into the unicorn, splashing into swirls of ebbing energy against her own shield. She was skilled. I should have expected no less. Ponies were usually terrified of us, so one that came looking must have known what to expect. She grinned. I put more energy into my shield.

A razor the size of my fist ripped through my chest.

Utterly confused, I blinked and looked down to see the feathered tip of a crossbow bolt jutting from my body. Unbelievable amounts of blood began pouring from the wound, and within seconds I felt light headed.

“Foal. You tried to stand up to one of the most skilled mages in history in a magical duel? Did you not think I could feel that mana source too?” The mare grinned wider and cocked her head to the side. Her horn stopped glowing orange, and I felt the magic return around me. Wh-how did she do that?

The shield spluttered back to life for an instant before going out again. My legs felt heavy... too heavy to lift. I couldn't breathe... I tasted blood.

But, there was no fear. I gripped the bolt sticking from my chest and fought to concentrate enough to heal the wound, but it was pointless. I felt no fear, because I felt nothing.

My head lolled involuntarily, and I collapsed to the side. Everything sounded so distant, and the fall felt like it took hours. I heard muffled chirps and whines, and the sounds of pony hooves against stone. I felt... cold. It took me several full seconds to realize I was in the water, but I couldn't breathe anyway, so that was okay. Everything... was... just.... okay...

I shut my eyes, and let the sleepiness take me.

'Over my dead body...'

Chapter 11: Unfinished Business

...screams...

...whispers...

“Where am I!?” something said.

“Help me!” something else said.

I was cold. So, so cold. Cold... it was all I could feel. Attempting to move, to twist and look around... I felt nothing. Just the ever present chill that seeped down to my bones.

Eternal blackness. All around me, it was all there was. In the distance, flecks of green and purple light danced around. Another scream rolled past me like a slow breeze, bringing with it a wave of frigidity and a flow of faint golden light.

Terror grew within me. I thrashed and spun around, desperate for any tactile sensation. Where was I? What was this horrible place? Why couldn't I remember how I got there?

“...please... let me out...” something whispered behind me.

I wheeled around, but nothing was there. I couldn't even see myself. Just more darkness that stretched on forever. More terrifying screams of every imaginable creature echoed in the nothingness. I flailed, trying to feel myself.

Nothing.

“Where is this place!?” I shrieked. To my relief and astonishment, I actually heard it. I could talk!

“Let me out! Where am-”

...my mouth filled with water.

My eyes snapped open, and all around me I saw the shimmering and flowing diffracted surface of stone. I moved my arm, feeling the sluggish drag of water. Water... water... I was under water! Involuntarily, I opened my mouth to draw breath, and sucked down more liquid. I was drowning!

I thrashed and tried to right myself. My body felt heavy and weak, but after a coughing and fighting fit my claws found purchase on stone. I was so tired... unbelievably tired, but I pulled and dragged myself up onto a gritty ledge. The stone was cold. Everything was so cold...

That didn't matter. I was out of the water! I rolled onto my side and coughed, spraying water all over the stone. My chest still felt heavy, but I wasn't out of breath. That was odd. I took a deep breath, feeling the water swirl and percolate in my lungs. Shouldn't I have more of an urge to cough it up? In fact, as I took another breath, I felt something strange. I could breathe better, and something was running down my chest.

I looked down to see water draining from a fist sized hole to the right of my heart.

At first, my mind refused to admit what I was looking at. There was no pain, so surely there couldn't be a hole through my lung large enough for a pony to stick their hoof through. That would be silly. It was also silly that I could breathe. Kind of breathe anyway. I took another breath, and more water squirted out. Well, it was mostly water. There was some sticky, blackish green sludge mixed in with it. That probably wasn't good.

I reached down with my right hand to pick at this hallucination of a mortal wound, and froze. The slick white of wet bone almost glowed back at me through the darkness. Scraps of tattered ligaments covered the joints of a skeletal hand, and a little patch of discolored meat slipped off of a forearm to land with a plop in front of me. With wide eyes, I tried to slide out from beneath the corpse that was atop me. The arm came with me. I flexed the fingers on my right hand. The bones moved in sequence. My eyes tracked back along the bony limb, from finger tips to wrist, to mid forearm where rotten meat appeared, up to the shoulder. My shoulder.

Panic shot through me. I screamed and rolled to my left, away from the horrifying thing attached to me. Bare bone clattered against stone and I shrieked again. It was still there! That bony arm that wasn't mine was still attached to me! I squealed and half-kicked the ground to hop backward, slamming into the wall as I stopped.

Then I saw my legs. My right leg was mostly fine, except for the putrescent flesh near the hoof, exposing two bones covered in blotchy pink and red meat. My left leg was skeletal from the knee down, aside from the hoof.

I gasped and stared. Wh-what was I looking at!? Th-this wasn't me! What... how!? I was alive! How could I have a hole in my chest like that and skeletal limbs and still be alive!? How-how could I even move them without muscles!? This didn't make sense! My entire body trembled and shuddered. Impossibly, even the bones. Fear... indescribable horror and fear welled up inside me, followed by intense nausea. I held it for only a moment before I threw up, spraying the ground with putrid, discolored water. Some even rolled down my right cheek... through a hole big enough for my tongue to fit through.

Overcoming the paralysis and terror, I forced myself to my hooves and stumbled over to the water. A feeling of strength washed over me, growing stronger as I drew closer. It felt familiar somehow. Warm. Calming, and inviting.

That is, until I stopped at its edge, and took a good look. The water was stained a light red. From blood? Had I bled that much? How was I still conscious? There was something small and rod shaped at the bottom... a crossbow bolt? I traced my dead hand up to my chest, and remembered. I'd been shot. Almost immediately afterward I lost consciousness and fell into the pool. Who shot me? Why? Some pony. Some pony shot me, but right then, that didn't matter. I was too busy looking at myself. My reflection. My dead hand reached up to touch the hole in the side of my face, which I could now clearly see was where the scar had rotted through. Teeth were visible through the torn skin, skin which was now pale and greenish. Blotches of discoloration pockmarked my previously pristine gray scales. I could see muscle and bone through the skin in a few places... and my wings... they were barely more than scraps of ragged skin hanging between the bony digits.

I pressed my good hand to my chest, next to the hole and where my heart should still be. I waited, and waited, but I felt nothing. For minutes, I held my hand there, waiting for a heart beat. Nothing. I held my breath. No matter how long I refused to draw breath, I felt nothing.

...I... I was dead...

Slowly, I panned my eyes around the cave. Was this it? Was this what happened when you died? This dark, cold, lifeless place... was it where I would spend all eternity? Alone? What had I done to deserve this? Was it just because I died here? Was that it? Life was cruel and uncaring, and so was the afterlife?

Utterly crushed, I sank to the floor and placed my face in my hands. Tears started to form in the corners of my eyes. Oh, good. That much of me was still working. My trembling voice was cracked and distorted. Raspy. I wanted to cry out and scream and demand an answer for why this was happening to me, but really, I couldn't remember anything other than dying. Everything leading up to that moment was just gone. Everything leading up to that unicorn casting her spell, then that pegasus shooting me.

Wait... unicorn? Pegasus?

Memories began to form through the veil of blackness in my mind. I remembered standing next to the mana basin. Wait, I remembered it! That's why I felt strong near it! But, didn't it used to hurt to be near it? I didn't have a headache. In fact, I felt no pain at all, despite my gruesome appearance.

Anyway, I was standing next to it, after they drove me up there. They... they'd invaded the cave. This was my home. There were others with me. They ran away. Zeal. Revelry. That was their names. My brother and sister! I remembered now! This wasn't some horrible tomb for my soul... it was my home. They'd fled, no doubt realizing to stay would mean their deaths too. Where were they? Could I find them?

I stood, feeling my exposed joints pop and crack in a most unpleasant manner. It didn't matter. I had to find them, and find out what happened to them.

So much was still a mass of confusion and broken thoughts in my mind, but if I found them, maybe it would start to make sense again. Maybe they were still alive.

Please... please still be alive...

Even the short trip through the cave back to the main chamber was enough to return many memories to me. I was beginning to remember everything. The bed of leaves was where I had spent ages, mostly intensely sad about one thing or another. I remembered I had another brother who had been killed, whose name was Antic. My lover Fealty had also been killed, not long after. I remembered the pain and sorrow well.

I also remembered that I once had a lot of spell books. They weren't there anymore. I wasn't sure what had happened to them, but I had a pretty good guess. Those invading ponies had probably stolen them. Or, well, I guess it would be more appropriate to say they took them back. None of the books were rightfully mine anyway. Even the book Antic stole from that pony snooping around in our old cave wasn't rightfully mine, and it was missing too. There was something about the way those ponies spoke, of what I could remember, which made me think this was no coincidence. Bone Chips. That was one of their names. How likely was it that a spell book fascinated with death and dying had ended up in our cave not long before a unicorn with that name showed up, knowing about us?

No, he'd come looking for his spell book, and found more than he expected.

I stopped in the main chamber and thought back to those moments. Revelry's wing was broken, wasn't it? She couldn't have flown out. Right... that's right. She would have had to have fled down the underground caverns where we hadn't explored. Maybe they led up to the surface, or maybe she was still hiding down there. Maybe Zeal was with her.

In any case, it was the only sensible option, so I doubled back and trotted down the passage. Shallow puddles of cold water splashed under my hooves as I went, leading me deeper and deeper into the unknown. Around the first corner, I found a patch of blood sprayed against the uneven rock to my left. Pony or draconequus blood? I had no idea, but felt a renewed sense of urgency and broke into a run. The sounds of my hooves crashing into the water was almost deafening in the silence. If there were any creatures down here, they had to know about me now. I didn't care. Nothing mattered except finding my brother and sister.

As I went, I tried to reason and rationalize my situation more. In almost every sense, I was clearly dead. My heart wasn't beating. I didn't have to breathe. I wasn't even getting tired from running. I had to be dead. Pretty much all of my blood had to be in that basin right now, and even if it wasn't, nothing could survive with so much... flesh missing. I was dead. Yet, here I was, thinking about it. The dead couldn't do that. The dead couldn't run through a tunnel and make noise and think about being dead. Two deep purple beetles of some variety skittered away as I sloshed by. I clearly wasn't just some spirit roaming the world. Things were reacting to me. I was real... somehow...

For an hour maybe I ran along the caves, taking random twists and turns as I went. Occasionally I had to backtrack and find another path, but finally I found myself in a gargantuan open cavern housing an underground lake of impressive size. But, what caught my eye was the trickle of a small stream coming from a path leading upward. Getting up there would be very difficult without wings, but it was possible. It was the only way out. Maybe Zeal and Revelry went that way? I hadn't found their bodies or any other signs of a fight, so they must have gotten out somehow.

Without a thought, I spread my wings and flapped them. To my shock, I lifted from the ground effortlessly, despite the fact that decrepit and torn wings like mine couldn't lift anything, much less something as heavy as I was. And yet, upward I flew, suspended in a field of magic. It felt... trivial. I reached deep inside to probe the depths of the magic and couldn't find an end to it...

...it was incredible. More power was at my finger tips than I even knew was possible. I must have absorbed some of the mana from the basin. It was the only explanation. But this, this was so much more than should have been possible...

I brushed the thought aside and flew up to the passage, feeling a faint gust of wind brush past my face on the way up. Wind meant an exit. I was headed the right way!

The surface was only minutes away, and I crawled my way through a tight passage to emerge into early afternoon light. Long leaves of some sort of fern brushed my head as I fought my way out of the narrow hole, and my hooves nearly slid from beneath me on the damp leaves and grass that filled the little depression I found myself in. Above me, light peeked through a bush to highlight a steep climb up to the actual surface, which I set to immediately.

I saw claw marks and hoof prints in the mud between the shrubbery. I was headed the right way!

As I ascended the near vertical climb, I finally convinced myself that this wasn't a dream. No dream lasted so long or was so vivid. I was almost certain it was no hallucination either. How could it be? If I was still drowning and bleeding to death in that basin and this was just some sort of death vision, it wouldn't have lasted so long. A couple of minutes at the most, but this had gone on for nearly two hours. It was real. It was real.

Entering daylight also brought a new realization to me. My eyes stung and my vision was washed out as I blinked them to readjust. There hadn't been any light in the cave, yet I could see. This wasn't a dream or vision of some sort, but something was definitely wrong. It only took a look down to my arm and legs to remind myself of that, of course, but... I just still could make no sense of any of it. There was rhyme and reason to what I was experiencing, but it was just beyond me at that point. So much of my memories and thoughts were still jumbled and fragmented... it was no surprise. After it all came back to me, I was sure I would understand.

Except, I had no idea what to do then. I looked around, seeing only trees, ferns, bushes and puddles of water and mud for as far as my vision carried. There was a vague path, but what were the odds that my siblings had just followed it? How far did it go anyway? How would I ever find them now?

My heart sank, as much as it could, and I plodded along. I was out of the cave, but now I was still alone and with nowhere to go. What could I do? I stopped and looked down at my hands, wondering what my siblings would have done. Zeal would have taken charge. I had no doubt of that. He'd have tried to lead Revelry off somewhere safe. But where was that? Another cave? Would he have rather stayed near water?

I balled up my fists and stamped the mud, making a little squirting noise and splattering droplets on my legs and tail. I didn't know! If only I had a spell to tell me where they were!

...a spell. A spell!

It was an extremely long shot, but I did know a spell that would detect life. It was part of a refinement I had tried to make on the sentinel spell, and one of the few experiments that actually worked. There was an immense amount of plant life around me, and probably a lot of animals I couldn't see, but it was my only option.

Reaching deep inside to draw out the mana needed, I raised and swept my hands through the motions. The spell ended with an outstretched finger against each temple, and with a flash the entire world shifted colors. Everything looked gray and dreary, aside from little pinpoints of white. Bugs and insects covered everything, hiding under bushes and in the trees. I saw what looked like a few birds roosting in the higher branches, and far, far off into the distance a few small mammals of some kind danced between trees. It worked! All I had to do was fine tune it a little to exclude the small things, and I'd have a tiny glimmer of hope.

The world shifted to a darker color, and the insects and birds disappeared. On the horizon I could see pinpricks of distant life, many times farther out than I'd ever managed to accomplish before. I didn't feel tired, either. I reached inside to feel my mana supplies again, and couldn't even tell if they had been depleted at all by the spell. Good. Excellent. I could keep this going for hours and hours if I had to.

I picked what looked like the nearest target and trotted off again. I had no idea how much time had even passed, and so had no idea how far away Zeal and Revelry would be, but this looked like the best option to start with.

It was good that I could keep the spell going. This could take days...

My search was not fruitful. Creature after creature turned out to be just animals of one kind or another wandering the woods in search of food and generally distracting me. A bear. A coyote. A huge snake. Another coyote. Not my siblings.

I was beginning to lose hope as the day began to wear on. Even into the night I continued to search and follow the closest sources of large life, but again and again I only found animals bedding down for the night. At least I didn't run into any ponies or griffons.

By morning I'd returned to the cave exit to try searching in a different direction, where I lingered for some time. Somehow, I wasn't tired. I wasn't weary from my body refusing to go on. I wasn't hungry, or thirsty or sleepy, even after many, many hours of searching. I was just losing hope. Again. An entire night of stumbling through the woods and coming no closer to being reunited with the only living creatures in the world that cared about me was beginning to take its toll. It was as I sat against a stone in a sea of muddy soil that a terrible realization struck me.

Would they want me back?

Throughout the night, more and more of my memories returned to me. By this point, I could remember everything up to perhaps a few weeks before... well, I died. I remembered the terrible things I did and said to Revelry, and everything about Antic. I hadn't hurt Zeal personally like that, but would he want me back? I was probably holding them back, and it was only a matter of time before I did hurt him. Or Revelry again. Or I did something awful that got one of them killed too. Could they possibly want me back after that? They thought I was dead. They had to know. Should I just leave them to themselves and let them think I was gone? I raised my dead hand and looked over the still very chilling sight. How could they want this back? What if I was in their position? How would I feel?

...I'd probably be scared. At first. How could they not be scared to see their half-decayed sister walking up to them? But... no matter what had happened to Zeal or Revelry, I'd never turn them away. In a situation like this, they'd need me.

Just... just like I needed them.

With considerable trepidation, I rose and started off again. This time I was headed off toward the canyon where our old cave was. If I didn't find Zeal or Revelry, I wasn't sure what I'd do, but at least then the odds were pretty good that a griffon would spot me. One way or another, I wouldn't have to worry about being alone for long. My hooves were heavy, and a strange feeling like butterflies and nausea settled in my stomach. If I did find them, even still I wasn't sure what I would do. I mentally chewed on that for the next few hours, arriving at only the most tenuous of plans. There was no way to know until I found them.

When I did, I really, really wished I was better at that sort of thing.

It had been two or three hours by my best estimates, but the life sensing spell led me straight to them this time. They were near a stream, just like I expected. With the spell going I could pick out their shapes through the trees well enough to be sure it was them. One was lying on the ground, not moving very much. The other was strolling their way, and I could easily make out the long serpentine body, tucked wings, tail and hooves. Definitely draconequuses. It had to be them!

I stepped closer and cringed as wet leaves rustled beneath my hooves. How should I approach them? Should I just walk up and wave? No... there was a much better way. I drew deep on my magic and worked an invisibility spell, confident that my endless supply of mana would hold out for long enough. The trees, branches and leaves melted from my vision to be replaced with almost pure blackness. I was shocked at first that I could still see... something. Two purple, wispy blobs were where Zeal and Revelry had been. That was peculiar, but I could worry over it later. I flashed the next spell and running specks of color returned to bring the world back to me. I didn't feel tired. So far, so good. With a flap of my ruined wings I lifted into the air and silently drifted closer.

The first thing I could make out was muffled crying. Revelry. I floated around a tangle of trees to get a better look, and found her lying on her stomach along the river bank, crying into folded arms. One wing was folded up like normal, but the other was resting awkwardly outstretched at her side. It was still broken. Of course. How could it not be? She must have been in extreme pain...

Zeal crouched next to her and looked over the injury. “It's okay, Rev, I'm here. Is it any better today? Do you think you can get up?”

“I don't-I don't know,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It still hu-urts. A l-lot.”

Zeal nodded and sighed. “Take your time, but we need to move as far as we can today. Do you want help?”

She mumbled something I couldn't hear, and Zeal slipped his arms under her. She took in a sharp breath and clenched her eyes shut. With a single but not fluid motion, Zeal raised her from the ground. Revelry held it in for but a second, but a shrill cry turned into a scream halfway up. She twisted and wrenched free of his grip, lashing out with a hoof to strike him solidly in the gut. He fell back with a grunt, and she collapsed against a tree with another wail. Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks, and she whimpered over and over again in her attempts to straighten up. “Zeal, I-I'm sorry! I di-did-idn't mean to...”

He rolled over and cursed under his breath. “It's alright,” he moaned eventually before descending into a coughing fit. It took him an agonizing length of time to get up to his hands and knees, and when he did he remained curled up with a hand to his stomach and his forehead to the ground. She couldn't have hit him that hard. He wheezed and used an adjacent tree to pull himself up to his hooves, and it was then that I saw the huge gash running from his left shoulder down to his right hip. It was scabbed over except for a bright bloody spot where Revelry's hoof struck him, but even from where I was I could see the discolored white blotches. It was infected... but he soldiered through the pain and turned to face Revelry. “Do... do you think you'll be able to stand?” She nodded. “Good.”

The two were silent for a while, each propped against their own tree and fighting through pain and I could only guess what else. It was Revelry who broke the tension by asking, “Zeal?”

He took a deep breath. “Yeah?”

“We... we're going to die. A-aren't we?”

“No.” Zeal was firm and decisive in his response. “No, we're going to make it. We've got food and water.”

She shook her head. “No. I-I mean, no m-matter where we go, it... it's not going to matter, is it?” She choked and gasped. “The ponies and griffons will come for us.”

“Don't talk like that.”

“It's true!” She raised both hands and whimpered. “Th-they killed Antic! And Fealty! A-and now they killed Cantrip and her whelps!” My what now? I was too busy processing that to notice Revelry rising to her hooves, but she was creeping toward Zeal.

He shook his head. “Don't give in to it, Rev. That's what they want.”

“Give in to it? Give in to it!? It's true!” she screamed again. “They killed them, a-and they're going to come for us next! J-just like they killed Antic and Cantrip and her babies, they-they're going to find us! And-and they'll kill us! And c-cut our wings off and throw us to the birds!”

“That's enough!” Zeal shouted back. He stamped a hoof and twitched his tail, glaring at Revelry hard enough to make her retreat back against the tree. “They're not going find us or hurt us anymore. I'm not going to hear anymore of this!”

Revelry sank to the ground, covered her face and started crying again. Between her sobs she shuddered and whimpered, “I don't want to die...” I wanted to go give her a hug and show her that I was okay and that everything would be alright, but I couldn't. Not yet.

Zeal scratched his claws down the tree. “You're not going to die.” He looked torn on what to do next, but opted to grab the sword propped against another nearby tree. “I'm going to get washed up. I'll be right back.”

She sniffled. “O-okay... b-be quick.” I could see in her eyes that she desperately didn't want him to leave, but off he went anyway.

With Zeal slipping away into the woods, I was left with a choice. Which one did I want to show myself to first? I didn't have to think long about it. Revelry was clearly beyond wits' end, and seeing... whatever I was... would probably push her over the edge. I didn't want her to hurt herself any worse! That left the only remaining choice: Zeal. He was probably almost to his breaking point too, but even before what I'd just seen I expected that he'd be able to stand this a lot better. With that in mind, I floated after him, winding our way through the trees to a little secluded pond fed by the stream.

Zeal stopped at the bank and stared into the water. I floated around in front of him, hovering over the water where I could observe him for a moment. I had to be sure he would be ready. If Revelry snapped on me she'd probably just run off. If he snapped on me, things would probably end up a lot... messier.

He crouched and covered his face. “Can't... give up now.” A ball of water rose out of the pond, encircled by the glow of his magic. The glow shifted to a deep blue, and the impurities in the water rose to the surface to fall back into the pond. With a wave of his hand, the water ran down the gash on his chest and belly, taking some of the pus and grime with it. He cringed. “Getting worse. We've got to hurry...” He fell back into a seated position and looked back toward Revelry, who was too far away to see and obscured by trees anyway. “...can't go on like this. I... am going to die.” His voice trailed off into a soft whimper as he said, “...soon.”

...that was it. I was seeing Zeal give up. The one person I thought would fight to the bitter end, no matter what had been thrown at him, was giving up. But, it was going to be okay. He didn't know it, but I was here. I could-

Zeal put his face back in his hands and sniffled. He... he was crying. I'd never seen him cry before except when in agony. He was in much worse shape than I realized.

I'd seen enough. There was no way I was going to watch them suffer anymore, whether I had any idea how to reveal myself or not. I drifted over to the bank and dismissed the invisibility with a wave of my hand. The world flashed strange colors and returned to normal, and I folded my wings to land with a small crunch in the leaf litter. Zeal heard it, as I expected and hoped, and snapped his head around. His eyes widened slowly as his jaw slackened. Well. What was I supposed to do at that point? I don't know. I know what I did do though, which was to just make a little nervous smile and say, “Hey Zeal.” My voice was still distorted and scratchy sounding. I was never going to get used to that.

In a single fluid motion he leaped up and back onto his hooves, and with a frantic whimper he snatched his sword up and pointed the blade at me. A string of incomprehensible starts of questions from his trembling mouth assaulted my ears as he searched my body with wild eyes and stepped back.

“It's okay!” I tried to assure him, raising both hands unassumingly. “I-I know it looks bad, but it's me. I'm... alive.”

He kept inching back but never took the shaking blade away. “Y-you-you can't be... I-I saw your body.”

“I don't understand it either,” I began, following after him step-by-step. “But, somehow I-”

“Stay back!” he shrieked, slashing the sword at me hard enough to blow a few stray hairs into my face.

How could I convince him that he didn't need to be afraid of me? I looked horrifying enough, I admit, but I was still me!

“Wh-what did the ponies do to you?” he asked, lowering the sword a hair to get a better look at me again.

“They didn't do anything to me.” I couldn't be sure of that, but by this point I was starting to get a decent idea of what happened. The memory was fuzzy, but I remembered casting a spell on myself from that pony's spell book. Bone Chips. What kind of magic would a pony like that have? It had to be the explanation. I raised a hand toward Zeal and started to explain, “It was-”

I should have known better. He lashed out again, whipping the sword at the movement and catching my arm halfway down to the elbow. The blade struck bone and effortlessly snapped my arm off at that spot. Intense burning pain shot through the rest of my limb and I fell to my knees, clutching at the severed extremity and howling in my twisted voice. Tiny embers of green and violet magic licked from the exposed wound and I felt the magic leaving me, but shockingly the pain began to fade almost instantly.

Zeal gawked and staggered backward. Whatever internal debate he was having ended a moment later, and he turned and bolted in the direction that he left our sister. “Revelry! Revelry, we've got to get out of here!”

No! No, no, no! I was not going to lose them because I looked like a monster! Ignoring my bony hand twitching among the leaves, I rocked back to my hooves and pictured the opening where she was and where he soon would be. The magic came to me naturally as ever, and in an instant I was yanked through nothingness to reappear in the air mostly where I hoped I would. I landed and spun in a small circle to get my bearings, just in time to see Revelry noticing my abrupt appearance and Zeal bursting through the trees.

“Revelry, run!” he commanded, brandishing his sword yet again.

She squeaked something and backed against a tree. “Wh-wh-wh... C-Cantrip?”

“Cantrip's dead! This is a pony trick! Run!” He slashed at me twice, driving me back with each swipe.

Revelry whimpered and did what she was told, running for the nearest opening in the tree line. No! Forgive me, but I wasn't going to let this happen! I reached out with my magic and tried to grab her, but in my haste I just tripped her. She barreled over and landed with a shrill scream, which at least stopped her! Now for-

My left side erupted in searing pain. I looked back to see Zeal's sword impaling my chest, spraying flecks of multicolored magic from the wound. “Stop it you idiot!” I screamed, before I thrust my palm at him and knocked him clean off his hooves with a burst of magic. Vile tasting thick blood filled my mouth and ran from the wound as I extracted the weapon, but just like with my arm the pain vanished almost as soon as it appeared.

Zeal tried to get up and run, but with another swipe of my remaining hand I pinned him to the ground. He thrashed and shouted desperate curses and demands for me to release him, but that wasn't going to happen. Not until they heard me out!

I looked over and saw Revelry failing to get up amidst frantic squeals. She'd landed on her bad wing again, and no doubt the excruciating pain was enough to keep her down.

With a flick of my wrist, I pulled Zeal up and over to set him near her. Another flash of magic should have erased Revelry's pain, and she quietened down.

“Now, shut up, both of you, and listen to me!”

Zeal and Revelry turned out to be pretty good listeners. That was helped a lot by me holding the two of them down with my magic for a while, but after a minute or two of assuring them that I wasn't going to hurt them they both settled down. If they didn't, I wasn't going to let them go, so maybe they just realized it and gave in. Either way, it let me finally actually talk to them, which was starting to make some progress.

Revelry was sitting next to Zeal across from me, staring wide-eyed at me and making absolutely no noise. Her wing was hanging limp at her side, obviously broken in at least two places, but the magic I'd cast on her was keeping her from feeling it.

Zeal looked much less comfortable. The scuffle had reopened a stretch of the cut across his belly, but the blood had reclotted already. He was clearly in pain as he shifted back up against the tree he was propped up against, and he sucked in his breath before asking, “So... you just... woke up?”

I nodded. “It was like a strange... nightmare. The next thing I recall was inhaling water and fighting to get out of the basin. I can't really explain it much better than that.”

He didn't look too pleased with the answer, but made a small nod. “The ponies... their magic...” He went silent and took a deep breath, averting his eyes. “I killed one of them in our escape. Just as soon as he went down... the unicorn with them... he cast a spell. The pony stood back up, plain as day. I'd run him through with my sword. Hit both lungs. Nothing could get back up after that.” He looked back. “I... I didn't believe it at first. I just kept running with Rev.”

Revelry blinked. That was an improvement. She raised a trembling hand up and pointed at the exposed bones in my arm, still lacking a hand. “Th-th-they-they did the s-s-same to you?”

“I... I don't think so. Not much point.”

Zeal growled. “Who knows why the ponies do what they do.” His eyes scrutinized me for the thousandth time. “But... they clearly did. Does it... hurt?”

“No, not really.” I was feeling a dull ache throughout my body now. Something like a mild fever, but it wasn't more than I could stand. I'd figure it out later.

Revelry blinked again. “What... what about your babies?”

...there was that again. “Huh? My what?”

The two of them exchanged uneasy glances. “Your whelps,” Zeal reiterated. “Weren't they with you? Were they still with you when you woke up?”

“You... you two remember that I lost my eggs right? When Antic brought the ponies back to our cave? That was months ago.”

Revelry blinked yet again. “Uh. Um... Cantrip, don't you remember your next clutch? They... they hatched a couple of weeks ago. Don't you remember? You named your sons Fealty and Antic?”

This was not a joke I was appreciating or understanding. “This isn't funny. What are you talking about?”

They exchanged profoundly worried looks, but Zeal raised a hand. “Uh... never-nevermind.” He shushed Revelry when she started to ask a question, and told me, “That doesn't matter now. What matters is that you're here now. We were heading back to the old cave, hoping one of your spell books might still be there. We were going to try to use that to heal ourselves, but frankly, I don't think we were going to make it. The books are surely gone anyway.” Revelry squeaked, but he added, “That doesn't matter now though. You... you can still heal with magic, can't you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” Why not? I could use all of my other magic. Even missing a hand I should be able to. “Hold still.”

He shook his head and pointed at Revelry. “She's hurt worse than me. Help her first.”

That was fair. “Okay, hold still Rev.” I raised my remaining hand and worked through the spell. It came just as easily as any other magic, thank goodness, and soon both she and I were wrapped in a golden haze. Her wing thankfully hadn't set in the bad position, as best I could tell, and with a little magical manipulation I put the bones into places. Another burst of magic prompted the breaks to reknit, and in a few seconds she was as good as new. “How's that?”

She sighed deeply and flexed her wing before tucking it away. “Much better, thanks.”

“Now you,” I said to Zeal, moving my hand over. His wound was infected, but still much simpler to treat. Golden yellow magic infused the gash, and before our eyes the wound closed and flaked off clotted blood. The infection might need another treatment later, but that would do for now at least.

He took a deep breath, flexed a few muscles and twisted around. “Thank you. Really...” He brushed his front off and added, “Uh, what about you? Can you... heal yourself? Or your arm?”

...the idea hadn't even occurred to me. “I don't know. Haven't tried. Um, I probably should... go get my hand. I... I might be able to reattach it.”

Zeal nodded and pulled himself to his hooves. “...sorry about that.”

“It's alright. I understand.” I was being pretty generous there. He cut off my hand, but I really did understand. I'd have been scared out of my mind if he just showed up looking like a corpse. As long as I really could reattach it, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Like I said, it didn't hurt anymore.

The three of us made our way back to the spot where I dropped in on Zeal. I wasn't about to return here alone while they waited. I was pretty sure they wouldn't just run off without me, and even if they did I could find them, but I didn't want to even tempt them. Three pairs of eyes would find my skeletal limb faster than one anyway, but in the end it was me who saw the bleached white lying atop the leaves in an obvious spot. I scooped it up, which earned a blanch from Revelry, and held it to the stump. The bone had shattered and crumpled partially, so it didn't fit quite right, but I hoped it would work...

The healing magic felt strange. Two cold spots where the bones met gradually warmed under the influence of the golden aura. Cracks shifted and closed, and within a few seconds the fissures and missing chunks of bone vanished. Feeling returned, and one at a time, I flexed my fingers. “It worked...”

Zeal looked relieved. “Good. What about the rest of you?”

“Here goes...” I reached deep inside and drew as much mana as I could. The magical haze covered my entire body, growing thicker and denser with each ounce of energy poured into it. I felt strange... like my organs were being twisted around in my body. Something welled up in my throat, and despite my attempts to hold it down, I coughed up a thick fluid. Then vomited it everywhere. The world spun, my vision went dark and I felt the vague sensation of falling...

“Cantrip? Cantrip, wake up!” ...Zeal's voice?

I cracked my eyes and coughed again, spraying something on the ground. “Wh...at happened?” With considerable effort, I propped myself up and saw blood everywhere. The red liquid ran from the holes in my body, dripped from the corners of my mouth and pooled in my nostrils. I groaned and looked down to see fresh blood oozing from the exposed flesh of my arm. Okay, trying to heal myself like that wasn't going to work...

“Are you okay?” Revelry asked. I looked up and found her standing well clear of the blood fountain I'd just sprayed onto the ground, looking ready to flee at a moment's notice.

Standing was almost too taxing, but with the assistance of an adjacent tree I dragged myself up. Zeal and Revelry, understandably, didn't offer to help. “I'm... very tired now...” It felt like almost all of my mana was gone. Had I really used that much trying to heal myself?

“Can you walk?” Zeal asked, sidestepping a small pool of red to get closer.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” I leaned against the tree, finding it very, very strange that I could feel so exhausted without being short of breath. My mind felt hazy and muddy again. “Where were you two headed again?”

Zeal glanced at Revelry, then back to me. “The old cave. I was hoping to find one of your old spell books with healing magic, remember? We don't need that anymore, so... I don't know. Maybe somewhere past the canyon.”

Into griffon territory? Had he lost his mind? Whatever. I was too tired to protest, and just wanted to go somewhere. I really wanted to just lie down and go to sleep, but Zeal seemed anxious enough to get moving, and I didn't want to fight him on the destination right now. I was too tired. “Okay. Ready... when you are.”

I didn't have a clue which way we were going, but Zeal led the way. At first. After a few minutes, I found he was walking beside me, as was Revelry. I guess it was good that we could keep each other in sight.

The rest of that day went by in a blur. We walked the woods back to the canyon, which only became apparent when the giant void in the mountains became visible through the thinning trees. I was too distracted to pay much attention to where we'd been headed. The feverish ache wracking my body had grown worse, and the feeling of extreme fatigue had only abated the slightest bit by the time the sun began to set. I was convinced by then that it was directly related to how much mana I had left. Twice we'd been forced to fly over masses of fallen trees or debris, and unlike Zeal and Revelry I couldn't fly without magic anymore. Both times I nearly passed out from exhaustion upon landing, and both times I felt better after a few minutes to let myself recharge.

When we drew near the mountains, Zeal revealed that he had no intention of going through the canyon itself. I was wondering why he was taking such a seemingly suicidal path, with the ponies and griffons coming and going through the path on a regular basis, but his plan made a tiny bit more sense. He wanted to fly around the mountains, far from where the griffons and ponies were likely to be. That made a tiny bit more sense too, but I was in no shape to fly anywhere at this point. An hour of bumbling around after him and Revelry while barely being able to keep my eyes open obviously told him as much, so we picked a spot to settle down in at the edge of the woods with the plan to continue on in the morning.

The clearing we chose provided a surprising amount of cover, with a large collection of boulders to hide next to and enough trees and mounds of earth to prevent anything but the most determined person from discovering us if they were wandering around. The three of us sat huddled around a small fire, but for once it wasn't necessary. The nights were beginning to warm up some, and we really only started it out of the sense of familiarity that it provided. Well, Revelry started it anyway. I was still very drained, and I wanted to save my magic.

After a short discussion, I volunteered to take the first watch. My siblings seemed a bit reluctant to accept the offer, but I had gone an entire night without any sleep and had no apparent ill effects from it. I might not even have to sleep anymore. I didn't need to breathe anymore, and hadn't eaten or drank anything in two entire days. Zeal caved to that argument, and before too long both he and Revelry were curled up together next to the stone.

That was the moment I'd been waiting for. Ever since I figured out what happened to me, I'd been debating on whether I should go through with this.

I stood from where I'd been keeping watch and strolled back to them. They were the only things I had left in the world. I had to do everything I could to make sure they'd be alright. The spell I'd cast on myself had done its job. The extra life spell. When I died, it brought me back. Somehow.

Green magic collected around my hands. If I asked them to let me cast it on them, they'd never say yes. This was for their own good.

A purple haze formed and covered the green, then drifted to them. I watched the magic swirl around and enshroud them completely, then started the third and final step. It was for their own good! Even if they died, they'd be okay! Now the ponies and griffons would never be able to take them from me.

The magic twisted and flowed into them, and with a final wave of my hands it vanished with a pop. I stepped back and braced myself for the inevitable reaction. If they experienced it anything like I did, this wasn't going to be pretty. My head swam and I stumbled back before falling onto my rump. That took a lot of magic... almost all that I had. I was so tired I-

Revelry screamed and jumped up. She landed against and toppled over a stone, and immediately held herself the moment she was upright. Tiny frightened whimpers were punctuated by gasps for breath as she stared at me in horror. Sorry, but that was the worst of it!

Zeal thrashed and rolled onto his hands and knees. His head snapped around and his chest heaved as he tried to calm down. See, that wasn't so bad, was it? He fixed me with an accusing glare and demanded, “Cantrip, what happened?” His eyes narrowed and he shifted into an awkward seated position. “What did you do?”

Okay, maybe now wouldn't be the best time to admit it. A few minutes after I'd cast the spell on myself, I felt just fine. They'd forget soon enough and I'd never have to even admit to them what happened unless one of them got killed. “Uh... n-nothing. I was just going to, uh, let you know I was getting very tired.” That was true enough. The longer I sat there the harder it was to stay alert. Was I actually going to fall asleep? “I'm not sure I can stay awake much longer.”

The two traded unsure looks. Zeal leveled his breathing and nodded. “Alright. I'll take over then.”

“I... I'm not sleepy anymore. I can take over,” Revelry added.

“Alright, you can watch with me then. Get some sleep Cantrip,” Zeal said. He stood and helped Revelry up, and relocated to the far side of the clearing.

That... could have gone worse. I might have to actually explain in the morning, but they'd have some time to calm down by then and I'd hopefully come up with a better way to explain it to them. It was to help them. They'd understand.

Whatever. I was growing so weary that I laid down and shut my eyes. I hadn't fallen asleep since waking up in the cave, but I sure felt like I could then. Maybe I'd just lay there and recover a bit...

...frantic chirps... …squeals of fear...

...Antic... …Fealty... ...Finesse... ...Harmony... ...Tenacity...

I remembered! Zeal and Revelry were right! I did have another clutch of eggs, and they hatched! I had five whelps. All of them so beautiful and innocent, they'd been there with me... when I died. They weren't there when I woke up! Where were-

I bolted upright to find myself back in the clearing. It was cold and clammy, but morning. I'd slept through the night. That answered that at least, but... my whelps! They were gone! I had to go get them! “Zeal, Revelry! You were right! I remember now!” I jumped up, noticing that the ache and exhaustion were gone, and looked around. It was foggy and still a bit dim around, but I couldn't see Zeal or Revelry anywhere. “Hello?”

...there weren't many places for them to be. I ran the perimeter of the clearing, searching the trees as I went. No sign of them. “Hello!? Zeal! Revelry!” Were they off looking for food or water? Where had they gone?

I flapped my wings and burst through the tree canopy into the early morning air. I couldn't see them for all the trees, but I had magic! Faster than I believed possible, I ran through the motions of the life sensing spell, and my vision flashed into dull monochrome. There wasn't anything nearby. Wherever they were, they were a long way away. What... why did they leave? Did a pony come across us last night and scare them off? Why didn't they wake me up? Maybe they couldn't?

They-they were headed past the mountains, right? Maybe that's where they went? I turned that way and scanned the horizon, but from where I was I couldn't see anything. The mountains would block the magic... I had to get around them!

I immediately started that way, flying as fast as my magically enhanced but ruined wings would carry me. My heart wasn't beating, but even still, almost unbearable apprehension welled up inside me. I kept wracking my brain, trying to figure out why they'd leave me behind like that. There had to be an explanation. There just had to! Zeal wouldn't leave me behind. He always looked out for us. Back in the cave, when Revelry and I were too messed up to even take care of ourselves, he was always there! He'd never leave me behind.

It was about the time that I flew past the first mountain peak that a terrible realization washed over me. That... that was why he left me. He didn't trust me. I slowed to a stop in mid air, and looked down at my ghastly body. Of course... of course he didn't trust me. I was a monster. How could he trust me? Pony magic had returned me from the dead. 'Cantrip's dead! This a pony trick!' This whole time, he thought I was going to hurt them. And the night before, when I cast the spell on them... that...

I spun in a circle, scanning everywhere around me for any sign that he and Revelry were nearby. Nothing. There was nothing! I had to find them... and... and... I had to prove to them that I was still me! That I wasn't going to hurt them! They had to know! Please...

There was no sign of them. There was nothing alive around me larger than a bird. I was out here alone. Alone... Were they even out here, headed this way? I was never going to find them now. ...I was alone...

That was it. Everything I'd ever had was gone. The griffons had taken my mother, my brother and my lover. The ponies had taken my homes, my children and my life. And now, because of them, my remaining brother and sister were too scared of me to even risk letting me be with them anymore.

Sometimes knowing someone is there for you is all that it takes to get you through the darkest moments in your life. When you don't even have that anymore...

Fine. Fine! If they were going to take everything from me, I was going to take it from them!. I clenched my jaw so hard one of my worn teeth cracked. The pain meant nothing. I was going to make them pay, and make them hurt as much as they'd hurt me and my family! The griffons were closer now. They'd get the first taste of my wrath.

Magic boiled up with anger inside me, culminating in a primal scream. Wind tore past me and tears streaked down my face as I soared for the nearest griffon town.

They were going to pay! They thought we were all monsters just to be wiped out and made to suffer? They thought we didn't have feelings, or maybe they didn't care. They thought we were just there to inconvenience them by existing. They thought we stole from them just for the fun of it, and to make their lives harder. They never stopped to think that maybe we had to in order to survive because they treated us like animals! Or, maybe they didn't care.

Flecks of flame and embers coalesced around me, fueled by unspeakable rage.

I was just another monster. A monster who didn't matter to anyone.

Well, they were going to see how wrong that was. We only mattered when we were in the way, or when they wanted to hurt something.

They thought I was a monster? I was going to give them a monster. I was going to get in their way in a manner that their kind would never forget about so long as they existed!

Chapter 12: Becoming a Monster

It's funny. I'd lived somewhat close to a griffon town for years, but I never did learn its name. Blackfeather something, I think. I'd only been close enough to see it for myself a handful of times, and back then I couldn't read well enough to decipher the sign in the amount of time I had to view it. Understandably, I never picked up the name from any of the merchants traveling through, since, you know, they always ran away screaming or tried to kill me. So, as it was, I didn't even know the name of the town I was about to throw myself at. Not that it mattered. I never mattered to the griffons before, so why should the name of their little town matter to me?

Far off in the distance I could see it. An impressive sprawl of wooden and thatch buildings covered the valley floor, merging with lots of both natural and artificial habitations up the mountainside. The entrance at the mouth of the valley was protected by high fortified walls and an ornate gatehouse with a drawbridge over a moat that spanned the gap between mountains. The place was well protected, and we'd learned the hard way many years ago that it must have been a military garrison of some sort. I guess to justify such defenses it would have to be. An army attacking from the ground would have met an almost impenetrable target. Of course, these being griffons, they were prepared for an aerial attack. Even this far away I could see countless patrols of the cat-bird things flying in twos and threes, armor glinting in the midday sun.

Good thing I didn't care about surviving this.

I was still consumed with anger boiling over from years of repressed hatred for them and the ponies, but in the hour or so that it took me to fly there I'd managed to calm down enough to plot. I didn't care at all whether I ever left the place. In fact, if they could rekill me for good, that might have been a blessing. But even so, I wanted to hurt them. I wanted them to suffer and remember that a draconequus did this to them for all of eternity. If I just flew up and killed a guard or two before they hacked me to bits and dumped me in the moat, that wasn't going to happen. So, when I was still far enough off that none of the patrols could hope to spot and recognize me, I cast the invisibility spell. Dots and blobs of violet clouded the new blackness to be replaced by washed out and dead colors. Fitting.

None of the guards batted an eye as I casually flew right past them. Interesting that they weren't prepared for a magical invasion. I guess if they had unicorns or natural magic they might, but what were the odds that a crazy unicorn or other magical thing was going to turn invisible, fly over the walls and start killing them? Oh well. They'd probably install defenses after I was done. Maybe they'd even write about me in one of their books.

The center of town was bustling with activity. Griffons of two dozen colors and coat and feather patterns milled around, tending to their daily routines. A male and female couple were buying some cut of meat from a vendor. A young mother flew over the scene, trailed by a griffawn that looked almost too young to fly. Guards circled overhead or perched atop buildings to keep disinterested eyes on the masses. More griffawns played and pounced on each other in a small grassy plot off to the side. It must have been nice, living so carefree. I'd wondered a lot what it felt like. Once I even thought I really knew, but that was just before my eggs were crushed by three ponies. I never knew, and never would know. These griffons wouldn't know much longer.

I touched down atop an enormous statue of some griffon I couldn't care less to know the history of, conveniently placing me in the very center of the activity. A grin crawled onto my face and queasy butterflies fluttered in the pit of my stomach. Oh, this was going to feel so good. With a wave of my hand the spell ended, returning me to the realm of the visible.

It took a surprising length of time for them to notice me. A handful must have seen me when the spell shuddered and died, but probably couldn't quite make out what I was. Then they poked the nearest griffon to them and pointed at me, leading to an amusing chain of griffons dropping what they were doing to gawk at me and murmur to one another. Two guards hefted their pollaxes and lifted off with a beat of their wings.

“Hi guys, remember me?” I thrust a skeletal finger at the closest of the two. A beam of blinding light lanced out to impale her chest, and she plummeted with a choked gasp. The male with her went down with a shrill cry when I blasted a hole through his midsection. I watched the two tumble into the crowd below, where they shuddered once each and gasped their last. That did feel good. Exhilarating!

A collective scream issued forth from the civilians, long and unending as one picked up where another left off. Those who saw their protectors die from an effortless gesture on my part broke and ran, throwing themselves into the bewildered remainder and clawing or trampling to get away from me. Good. Be afraid! Despair! One panicked and took to the sky, so I picked him off with a bolt of magic to the back of his head. His smoldering body spiraled downward and crashed into a vendor's stand, spilling bolts of cloth and hundreds of things I didn't recognize into the street. More desperate screams surged out, and more and more of the griffons tried to run only to become entangled with one another in the narrow streets.

It was just a shame that I could only shoot one at a time. With uncaring precision I lined up one after another and speared them with beams of hard light. One. Two. Five. Ten. Soon two dozen griffons, male and female, young and old, soldier and civilian, laid dead or dying in the streets. Acrid smoke from burnt flesh filled the air. It was too easy. After waking up, I felt refreshed and magically stronger than I had ever been. Punching holes in them wasn't tiring me out at all. I could keep this up all day.

In fact, that sounded like a great idea! But first, the scene needed a little fire. I swept my hands through the motions and channeled a burst of mana into the nearest wooden building, the function of which I didn't know or care about, and grinned wider when its roof erupted into flame. Griffons squealed in terror and doubled back in the air to avoid the embers kicking up from it.

Something slammed into my back, hard enough that I felt it even through the magical shield I'd raised. I spun to find a soldier raising her greatsword up again, and caught the blade in my magic. She was strong though, and tore it free after a momentary struggle. Three more soldiers in light plate and wielding bows formed up overhead. As one she twisted and pulled her sword back, and the archers drew their bows.

I smiled and fired off the teleport I'd been holding.

The terrified screams grew distant in an instant, but once the crack of displaced air ended I could definitely make out the turmoil I'd left behind. I had no definite destination in mind when I triggered the spell, aside from making sure I'd stay within the city. The wooden wall ahead of me, adorned with shelves and a few ceramic pots, told me I'd ended up in someone's house. Whoever they were, their day was about to get a lot worse.

“Lazar, is that you?” a female voice called out. Someone approached from behind. “What's going-” Her voice cut out with a small gasp. I spun to face her, finding a white griffon with a black beak staring back in abject shock. Her beak worked silently and she took a step back. “Flying feathers,” she muttered.

She ducked aside, avoiding my blast of magic by a hair, before bolting down a hallway. I had no reason to follow her. I could have just as easily set the house on fire and left her to her fate, but I wanted to see her dead. Smoldering hatred flared up inside me, and I charged after her, winding through two turns to find myself staring her down in a large room lit by four windows. A box sat in one corner, filled with blankets. And eggs.

The griffon reared back on her hind legs and pulled a knife from a desk next to the nest box. “Stay back!” she warned, desperation obvious in her voice.

I shrugged and ripped the dagger out of her grip with my magic. “You didn't.”

With a gesture, the dagger launched forward and embedded itself up to the hilt in her chest. She fell back against the wall and grabbed the handle, gagging and choking. Fresh blood ran from the wound as she made the mistake of pulling at it, but the pain overcame her before she got far. She collapsed to her side, sliding down the wall next to her eggs. Her eyes widened with fear. Good, she was still awake for this.

I strolled forward and picked her two eggs up in my magic. “You know what else you did?” The eggs hovered down to her eye level, and renewed terror surfaced on her face. I clenched my fist. The eggs quivered briefly in the air before their shells crumpled and shattered, spraying both of us with thick egg slime. I flicked my wrist and tossed the gooey remains onto her.

She made a hacking noise that brought up blood, and closed her eyes.

Whether she was aware to see it or not I had no idea, and at that point I didn't care. It was time to get moving again. I turned and stepped away, working a spell to ignite the room behind me. Maybe she'd be awake long enough to suffer a bit.

I failed to contain a little grin.

“The monster is over here!” a griffon cried out from somewhere to my left.

I stepped into the street, leaving the fifth burning home behind me as I went. The sky was becoming clogged with a thickening haze of smoke. No doubt the fires I'd set were beginning to spread through the city. The homes and other dwellings up on the mountainsides wouldn't catch, but everything in the valley floor would be at risk. They'd have a tough time controlling the flames now. If I was lucky so much would burn down they'd have to leave.

An arrow zipped past my face and two more bounced harmlessly off of my shield. Blazing pain shot through me when a fourth arrow shattered the barrier and embedded itself in my chest. To my side, a squad of griffons were flying low and nocking fresh arrows, with their leader pointing a talon at me. One consequence of all of the smoke was that the griffons couldn't fly so high anymore. That kept them from finding me so easily, but when they did I didn't have much time to react. Up to now it hadn't mattered much. Just shooting the griffons was getting boring, but since the soldiers seemed to be bent on dying to me I figured I'd try something a little different. I opened my arms and turned to face them, making sure they could see how ineffective the arrow rammed through my lung was at killing me. “Yes, the monster is right here.”

They drew their bows back, and blinding light seared the world. The griffons shouted in confusion and one of their bows went off, sending its arrow in a direction that wasn't near me. I smirked, then jumped to the side in case any of them got the idea to try shooting where I was. None did, so I reached out with my magic, twisted the temporarily disoriented and blinded griffons to face each other, and knocked their hands from their bow strings. The snap of arrows launching and impacting steel armor rang out, but to my displeasure they all bounced off without penetrating.

I huffed and blasted the four of them with beams of light, dropping the first two in screaming heaps. The last two shrieked and grabbed at smoking wounds on their chest, dropping their weapons in the process. My magic was growing weaker. Those shots barely penetrated their armor, leaving blackened holes and singed feathers underneath. The survivors groaned and locked eyes with me for a moment. Their mistake. I shot again, catching one in the unarmored wing and the other in her hind leg. The first screamed anew and fell to the street atop his comrades, and the last female flew off before I could shoot her again.

Run! Be afraid! Feel what I did!

It was probably for the best that she fled, since I was rapidly realizing that I didn't have the strength to fight much longer. That was how that last arrow penetrated my magical shield. I couldn't stop many more shots, and the next one to clobber me with a halberd would cut me in half. I could probably kill a few more civilians if I found them, but by now everyone was hiding or trying to get out of the city. It was mostly just soldiers left in the streets now.

Further, my suicidal bent had been tempered a lot by the fact that I'd gotten away with killing so many griffons. I considered just running toward the largest knot of soldiers I could find rather than keep up this little game of hopping around the city and setting it ablaze, but something else came to mind: the griffons had done a lot to hurt us, but the ponies had done at least as much.

They had to pay too.

I watched embers lick up over the buildings around me, and listened to griffons shouting. I could kill a few more griffons, or a lot more ponies.

That's what I'd do.

I reached deep inside and gathered as much magic as I could. There was still more left than I expected, but this would take a lot of strength. My hands swept through the air and traced through the shapes to complete a new teleport spell. I held it for a few moments more, waiting for I knew not what. For griffons to find me? To make sure I'd done as much damage as I could? I wasn't sure.

With a long sigh, I triggered the spell and was torn through reality. Flames, smoke and ash were replaced in an instant by earthy stone, and I collapsed onto my hands and knees. I was outside of the city, but precisely where I had no idea. Thin wafting trails of smoke rose high into the sky above me, but everything was deathly silent.

I flopped onto my belly and rolled over, seeing the fletchings of the arrow in my chest sway to and fro from the motion. There was no strength left in me to stand, much less remove the arrow and repair the damage.

It would return in time. A few hours. Maybe a day.

If I was lucky, the griffons would find me and end my miserable existence while I couldn't fight back.

Of course, that didn't happen.

For hours upon hours I laid there, watching the smoke fill the sky but never seeing even a single griffon fly overhead. Once again I found myself experiencing the most peculiar combination of absolute exhaustion that was accompanied by neither breathlessness or sleepiness. Only with time did it gradually fade with the return of my magic.

It was dusk when I finally had the strength to sit up and rip the arrow out of the wound. Black, dead blood dripped and ran down my belly. The flash of pain subsided in a few seconds, just like the other wounds before it. And just like those wounds, a small dose of golden healing light was all it took to remove it. Fresh and bright red blood leaked from my dead arm and a tear in my stomach, but I felt no pain. Just a quirk of what healing magic did to a body that didn't know it was dead I guess.

I stared at my newly “pristine” ruined body for a long time further before I summoned the will to stand and leave the little crevasse I'd teleported myself into. My magic hadn't returned to me entirely yet, but I had the energy to fly up and get my bearings.

Blackfeather, or whatever the name of the city was, was still smoldering. The fires appeared to all be gone out now, but wisps of black smoke still trailed up from a dozen places within the valley. I was too high and far away to pick out individual griffons, but they were milling around in the gutted, burnt out city. Probably looking for wounded or survivors, or trying to salvage their ruined lives. I spat gooey, bloody spittle at the scene of carnage. Now they knew how I felt. Maybe when I was done with the ponies I'd come back and let them experience it again, just in case they forgot between now and then.

Whatever. I was done with them for the moment, and it was now the ponies who were going to get a taste of my wrath.

I inverted and rolled over in the air to face down the canyon, and with a beat of my wings I soared off. There was an absolutely perfect little place for me to start with right at the end of the trail, but there was no need to hurry. I still needed to recover a little before I got there. It wouldn't be any fun if I had to leave too soon after arriving.

Night had fallen by the time I got there. In the two or three hours it took to fly the trail at such a leisurely pace I'd managed to recover nearly all of my power, which left me in perfect shape to raze the little blight of pony kind upon the land. I never knew the name of the settlement at all, and soon enough its name wouldn't matter to anyone.

Being night time did leave me with the interesting problem of most of the ponies being indoors. There was a slight temptation to settle in the center of town like I did at Blackfeather and wait to see how long it took for a pony to notice me, but frankly, I wasn't in much of a mood to toy with the ponies. I just kind of wanted to kill them, and so I decided to use pretty much the same strategy that I'd adopted earlier. Fire worked very well on those wooden structures, and pretty much everything in the settlement was wood.

I touched down outside of the woods far enough away that none of the pegasi patrolling the skies could have possibly seen me, and strolled through the trees and thick underbrush to approach from a direction that hopefully no ponies would expect.

The settlement had grown since the last time I laid eyes on it.

Pushing a branch out of the way, I emerged into the clearing proper and took in the size of it all. At least three dozen buildings of various sizes and functions stood sprawled out in a semi-organized fashion. I was staring down what appeared to be a main road of some kind, along which most of the buildings had been erected. Two earth pony guards patrolled in the distance, but none were evident nearby. Why would there be? This wasn't a military outpost like Blackfeather. This was just a little pony community, filled with families trying to start a living on the frontier. Oh, but they did blow out my brother's ear drums and try awfully hard to shoot us just because we stopped by. I clenched my fists at the thought that Bone Chips or any of his associates might be there.

No, he probably wasn't here, but it didn't matter. Most of these ponies were probably innocent, just like the dozens of griffons I'd murdered earlier that day. Innocence proved nothing for them, and it would prove nothing for these ponies either. Not that they were that innocent.

Flames crackled and popped into a ball in the palm of my outstretched hand. Frustratingly, the first building I approached was a little hard to light, but in time the heavy logs caught flame. My smile grew wider and wider as the flames spread and picked up strength. Any ponies inside were about to have a bad night. Once I was sure it would continue burning without my assistance, I moved on to the next building down the street. It was just as hard to light, but it too in time caved to my will and caught fire. Embers crackled and licked at wood, and spread.

I'd set about half a dozen buildings on fire by the time I was finally noticed. Stealth was pretty far down the list of things on my mind, so I brazenly wandered into the main street to get to the next row of homes or whatever was on the other side. As I half-expected and half-hoped for, one of the guards was sprinting toward the growing flames. She almost didn't see me in her haste, but when I stepped under a magical street lamp, she snapped her head around in my direction and skidded to a halt. “What... in the world...?” The pegasus drew her sword and turned to face me completely.

“Hi there,” I replied, grinning. Hello there, first victim! I raised a hand and bored a hole through her chest with a beam of light.

Frustratingly, she collapsed without so much as a squeal. That meant I was still free to wander around and start fires without the ponies fighting back. Killing them this way was effective, but so impersonal. I didn't want to just smother them in smoke in their sleep. I wanted to see their fear.

Oh, let's get this on with, shall we? I conjured a larger ball of flame in each hand and hurled them at two different buildings. They exploded with satisfying showers of embers and cracks that resonated down the entire street. That had to get their attention, but while I waited, I kept conjuring globes of fire to launch at whatever target presented itself. For a while that was nothing but wooden structures, but I got bored and tossed a few through some windows. That elicited a startled yelp, and a smirk from me. Finally, an interesting target of opportunity presented itself. Another pegasus flew overhead to get a good look at the carnage I was wreaking, only to have a fireball zip past him.

He shouted a curse and aimed a crossbow at me. “We're under attack! Yari, get over here!”

Yari? Wasn't that one of the ponies who- I flinched and backed up when a bolt spanged off of my magical shield and flew off into the woods behind me.

The stallion above was busy grabbing for another bolt when Yari flew into view to my right. She whipped her crossbow down at me and drew aim too. “Oh, buck! Another draconequus!”

Ah, yes, she was one of the ponies that was here before. The one Revelry shot and was afraid she'd killed? Well, sorry Rev, but she wasn't going to live much longer. I lashed out with three more beams of deadly light, clipping the stallion's leg and wing and blasting a hole in her peytral. Both screamed and spun out of the sky to land with satisfying thumps and clattering of metal against the dirt path. I shot the stallion again to end his life, then leered over Yari, who much to my delight was still alive.

She pawed uselessly at the ground and tried to roll away from me, but I slammed her with a magical field to pin her down. “Remember me?” I hissed, rolling her over to face me. “A few months ago you tried to kill me and my family for walking through.” She spluttered something and kicked feebly at me. “Well, now I'm going to show you what it's like...” I charged magic into my claws and slashed at her throat, spraying blood onto the ground and my hooves.

I left the twitching and shuddering mare and spun to face the rest of the town. Ponies were starting to emerge from their homes now. Stallions, mares and foals.

A smile edged on to my face.

The griffons hadn't put up much of an effective fight, but the ponies were even worse. Many were groggy and disoriented from being awakened by screams or their houses burning down, and those who were alert seemed so horrified and shocked at my appearance that they didn't do much more than stare or scream before I ended their lives.

I kept using the same tactic that worked so well at Blackfeather, which made it even harder for the disoriented ponies to mount any kind of defense. With a wave of my hand I was torn through nothingness to reappear with a crack and pop at the other end of the settlement, leaving a dead earthpony stallion behind as I went. There couldn't be too many ponies left now. This place wasn't a tenth the size of Blackfeather and I'd already killed two dozen ponies at least. Good. I wasn't going to let a single one leave this place alive.

Movement caught my ears from behind, and I turned to find one of the few remaining buildings that wasn't yet ablaze. Something moved in a window, and I approached.

“It's coming!” a mare said in an urgent tone. Silverware and plates clanged and smashed against the floor, and shadows danced inside. What a shame. They couldn't hide from me.

I raised a claw to my chin to consider the best way to kill them, but before I had more than a moment to think the front door flew open and a white unicorn stallion galloped out. He flashed a sword at me, which slammed harmlessly against my shield. “Get back, monster! I won't let you hurt my family!”

There was no way I could have forgotten this pony. I grinned at him and raised a hand toward his home. “Oh, I'm sorry Dirk. I couldn't keep you from hurting my family, and now you can't keep me from hurting yours.” Magic surged through my arm and the room through the window erupted in flames. Terrified shrieks pierced the air.

“No! Leave them alone!” He slashed twice more, doing nothing more than throwing flecks and sparks of red magic up from my shield. “I'll kill you!” He drew his sword back and thrust with his entire body behind the blade, and much to my surprise it finally penetrated and dug a deep gash into my side.

I snarled and pulled away, leaving the pony with a triumphant sneer on his face. He wound up for another thrust, and I swiped my hand down. Magic surrounded him and he fell forward with a confused grunt, leaving him in a moaning heap in the grass. “You're too late, I'm afraid. Somepony already beat you to that,” I said, waving my skeletal arm at him. “Tell you what, if you love your family so much, you can die with them.” I snatched him up with my magic and hurled him through the window.

It took a moment for the screaming to start, but the stunning magic didn't last but a few seconds. I chuckled and turned to go find more victims, which took only a second.

A teal coated unicorn mare stood just away from the house, wide eyed in horror. Behind her was a little brown colt, trembling and holding his mommy's hoof. “Dirk!” the mare screamed as she stared at the burning house and listened to his dying cries.

Hey, that's no fair now. You were all supposed to die together, remember? I grabbed her in my magic and pulled her off her hooves and closer to me. She shrieked and kicked at the magical bonds holding her tight, but it was futile. “Cinny, run!” she wailed at the little foal now standing alone in the clearing. The colt looked between the two of us, but his hooves were frozen in place. “Run!” she screamed again.

“You'd best listen to mommy,” I said to him sweetly. “Run while you can. The grownups can't save you, because they're dead!”

He finally turned and galloped for the center of the burning town, leaving me with the weeping mare in my magical clutches. Oh well, best let her die with Dirk like I promised. I reared back to throw her inside too, when she squeaked, “What did we ever do to you?”

I relented, then drew her a little closer. “Do you really want to know what you did to me?” I asked, leaning close enough for my blotchy and dead skin covered snout to touch her muzzle. Warm, frenzied breaths rolled from her nostrils into mine. “Take a good look at the monster you've made, pony. You've killed, murdered and taken everything from me. Now it's my turn.”

“Wh-” She never finished her sentence. Just like Dirk before her, I lobbed the mare into the burning house and stood out front while her screams echoed through the dying town.

There were no more shouts or screams from behind me. The only sounds I could make out were the pops of burning wood and the crash of a building succumbing to its fiery fate. For minutes I watched the home before me burn brighter and hotter, contemplating the ends of all of these ponies.

Oh, yes. I was missing at least one little colt, now wasn't I?

Killing and destroying so much had left me tired, but I had the strength left in me to channel the life sensing spell. The glow of the flames died out in a a gray and washed out world covered in tiny pinpricks of life. Nothing inside the house ahead of me.

I turned and plodded back toward the center of town. There were a few lights left. Cowering. Hiding.

They couldn't hide from me.

The main road running through the town was littered with at least a dozen corpses, and on each side the homes and warehouses were still raging infernos. The town wouldn't completely stop burning for a full day at least, but it was of little consequence. One of only three or four lives left in the town was just up a head, amongst the bodies. Playing dead? Nice try.

I kicked a dead mare out of the way and strolled closer. Something shifted and whimpered ahead. “Mommmy...” a foal whined.

Cinny? Should have run farther. I stepped onto and over a dead stallion and saw something. A gray pegasus mare in metal armor twitched. Yari? Impossible. She'd have bled to death a dozen times over by now. I charged a bolt of magic to shoot her with again and stepped closer.

Another string of whimpers met my ears. From here I could see her leg move, and a little pink filly's face poked out. She squealed and ducked back behind it. “Mommmmy...” Cries mixed in with the whines. Oh. Yari was still dead, it just seemed that some foal was just now finding out. Her daughter? Probably.

I stepped around the corpse and looked down at the filly. She was covered in her mother's blood from green mane to tail. Little pink wings laid limply at her sides as she gasped and curled up into a tiny shuddering ball. “Mommy!”

“Mommy can't save you,” I said levelly. “Mommies can't save anyone.” I pointed a glowing finger at her. Relax, it would all be over soon.

She squealed again and grabbed her mother's foreleg. “Mommy... pleeeeeaaaaaase...” She went back to weeping and trembling.

The magic at my fingertip swirled and shimmered. Just one flash and it would all be over. Then she'd never hurt or be sad again. I would be doing her a favor, really.

She covered her face with Yari's leg and cried louder, spluttering and sniffling in absolute terror.

I knew how she felt. Poor thing. It sucked being at the mercy of a creature that held none for you. I was a monster. Pure and simple. All I did was exist and kill things. That's what the ponies believed, and sure enough, after trying hard enough that's what they made me. I wasn't a person anymore. I was the monster they always knew I could be. Best not disappoint them. The magic intensified, and I crouched next to her. Wouldn't want to just wing her.

“Mommy! Mommy, wake up! Please!!!!”

The magic on my fingertip shuddered.

It would be easy. I could stab her heart and lungs with a blast of magic and in a wink of the eye she'd be gone just like the others. Her life was in my hands. Just like mine was in the hooves of those ponies and claws of those griffons. She had no say in what I did to her. She was powerless to stop me. With a snap of my fingers I could snuff out her life like the insignificant thing it was. She was a pony, just like the others. Put in the opposite places, she'd crush me like a bug because I was a monster that didn't deserve to live.

Why should she get to live!? Why her and not Antic, or Fealty, or my whelps or me!?

I leered over the trembling and wailing filly for an agonizing eternity, rationalizing everything in my head. The magic evaporated in a frazzled poof.

With a frustrated scream I stamped my hoof, leaped into the air and flew as fast as I could away from the destruction and death I'd wrought.

They deserved it!

Chapter 13: New Beginnings

Where was I going to go? I didn't have any idea. Going back to either cave was out of the question; I wasn't in the mental shape to deal with staying in them then, even if they were safe at this point. If they weren't I didn't really care anymore. Half of the point of me destroying Blackfeather and that pony town was to die in the process. I wanted to kill and hurt the griffons and ponies so that they'd never forget what they'd done to me, and then I could die to go on and be with Antic, Fealty and my whelps. I'd killed and hurt them, but the instinct to live is frustratingly strong at times and I'd survived. So, I'd wrought an untold amount of death and destruction, and now... now I had to live with it.

The whole time I was in the air I could think of nothing else. Faces of ponies and griffons flashed through my mind moments before images of their deaths replaced them. Shot through the head or the chest, shot out of the sky to crash into the ground, burned alive, torn apart by magically enhanced claws... the list went on and repeated. Over and over and over again. Some of them, mostly the griffons, were happy an instant before they ran into me. Life was good and innocent and carefree. They were just doing something trivial to further their lives, like getting something to eat or visiting a friend or even just taking their kids out to play. They had no evil on their minds at all, and yet I'd killed them all.

I kept trying to rationalize what I'd done. Up until then every pony or griffon I'd run into had been an intensely unpleasant experience. If I was lucky they just ran away, usually screaming that they'd run into a monster, but all too often they just shot or stabbed at me. They wanted to kill me, so why shouldn't I want to kill them? Many of them deserved what they got, maybe even most. But no matter how much I tried to tell myself they all had to die, I knew it wasn't true.

Scarlet Swirl was a perfect example. Antic had befriended her. A pony. He'd gotten to know her, hadn't he? Obviously we weren't so different on some level. She'd probably never done a thing to a draconequus in her life. Even when we tried to kill her, she just balled up and pleaded for her life.

In the back of my mind, I heard ponies and griffons crying and screaming for mercy.

But, that's how it was! Everyone begged for mercy when it was too late! The griffons who murdered Fealty would no doubt have wailed and pleaded for their lives if I faced and overpowered them. Crying for mercy proved nothing!

The brutal deaths of those ponies and griffons flashed through my mind.

Even so, I knew there were those who didn't deserve to die. The children. Griffawns and foals who were too young to have possibly hurt anything bigger than a bug. They didn't deserve to die. They didn't deserve what their parents had brought on them. I... I hadn't targeted them directly. Whenever there were adults around they sometimes got caught in it, but I didn't try to kill them.

The tormented, shrill screams of a young griffawn trapped in a burning home replayed in my head.

...so? So? Innocence proved nothing either! Antic hadn't hurt the ponies ever! Revelry felt terrible after she shot Yari just to save him, and yet neither of them had been spared pain and death. Fealty had stolen from them, but did that earn him such retribution? Or, of course, my whelps. They'd never even left our cave and yet they were taken just like the rest. Why should the young griffons and ponies be any different!?

Because... because, I knew it was wrong. It didn't matter how many mental barriers I tried to hide it behind. I knew it was wrong.

Extreme nausea filled my stomach, and if I'd eaten anything in the past few days I probably would have vomited all over the trees rushing past just below.

So, where was I going to go? I had no idea. Incredible fatigue wracked my entire body and I felt the cry for rest and sleep, but I knew trying to give in to either would be pointless. How could I sleep after murdering so many?

Willing or not, it was rapidly becoming apparent that I wouldn't have the magical strength to fly much longer, and eventually I drifted down into a small opening between the trees. I landed in an uneven clearing behind a fallen tree overcome with moss and lichens. Dead leaves crunched under my hooves and I nearly collapsed from exhaustion, but for the moment I propped myself against the nearest tree with an outstretched hand and just... stood there. My eyes and ears panned around, taking in the calm night. There were no screams of pain or dying, or the crackle of burning wood, nor was there even the scent of smoke or charred flesh in the air. Just... calm. Only the chirp of insects.

I flashed through the motions to cast a spell and the world flashed to show me the living things picked out as small lights hidden in the fallen leaves or up in the branches. They were watching me. Judging me. “What are you all staring at!?” I screamed at the bugs. “Don't you know what it's like to live and die at the whim of others!?”

The chirping paused for but an instant before resuming.

I screamed and kicked a branch next to my hoof. What had this accomplished? Nothing. Nothing! At most somebody would talk about the monster that destroyed Blackfeather, but nothing would change! All I'd done was reaffirm what they knew: that we were dreadful creatures that killed innocents in the night. They would just be even more afraid now, they wouldn't stop hurting or killing us. Zeal and Revelry were still going to die at the hooves of a pony or claws of a griffon one day. Rev was right. Nothing was going to change that. They'd never be safe, no matter what they did or where they went. And I was just making it worse!

A flare of magic surged through me and the tree I stood against erupted into flame. The chirping stopped. “Yeah! Yeah, that'll shut you up, huh!?” I yelled into the woods.

I fell to the ground, weeping and kicking at any small stone or other obstruction my hooves could reach. This had accomplished nothing! It wasn't going to protect or save anyone. It wasn't going to bring Antic or Fealty or my whelps back! All I'd done was murder a bunch of griffons and ponies for fun!

“Cantrip? It's okay...”

Panic shot through me and I rolled over and into a seated position to look in the direction the voice came from. There, in the clearing, seated atop the fallen log, was... Antic.

No. No, no, he was dead. I saw his body. Nobody could have survived that! And yet... I looked down at my dead hand. Had the ponies brought him back from the dead too? Why? But, didn't Zeal burn his body? I slid back as far as a kick of my hooves would let me. Something wasn't right here. A lot wasn't right here.

He waggled his fingers and made a shy wave. “Hi. It's, uh... it's been a while huh?” He slipped off of the log and stepped my way. “Things haven't been going very well, have they?” A frown edged onto his face. “Sorry...”

I choked up a spluttering string of nonsense. What...

“Don't be afraid,” he said, holding his hands up. “I've... well, I've been watching you Cantrip. I'm so sorry about what's happened.”

“Y-you... you're alive?” I finally put together.

He stopped in place and shook his head sadly. “No. I'm really sorry about that too. I just didn't want to hurt you anymore. If I'd known that you, Zeal and Revelry would end up so sad because of me I'd have never gone off like that. Can you forgive me?”

“Uh... uh-huh,” I stammered, still staring at my brother. He was dead. But he was here. Wh-what?

His expression shifted to something a little happier, and he raised his arms and spread his wings before spinning in a little circle. The horrible wounds that covered his corpse weren't there. “It's okay. I don't hurt anymore. Nobody hurts here. You don't have to worry about me.”

“Whu... huh? But... you're here?”

Antic nodded with a wider smile. “Yeah, I am now, but I'm only here to help you. We saw what happened just now. And everything else that has happened to you. I told them we had to help before it was too late.”

This wasn't going to start making sense anytime soon, I could tell. “'We?' Help me? Who-who else?”

“Me, Fealty... oh, and mom.”

My eyes flew open. “Mom?”

“Uh huh. She wanted to talk to you too.” He extended a hand to point off behind me. “She's right here if you want to speak with her.”

What? I spun around and saw another draconequus standing between two trees. Her deep green scales and ivory white hooves were clearly visible despite the darkness, glinting brightly under the moonlight. Long white hair reached down her to shoulders, blowing gently in a breeze I couldn't feel. She smiled pleasantly and searched me with her golden eyes. “Mo... mom?”

She nodded and strolled forward. “Hello Cantrip. It's been too long...” she said in that wonderful soothing voice I'd forgotten.

I... was... losing... my... mind...

What could I do at that point? Instead of replying or running away like a sensible person, I just froze. My mother, who had been dead for a decade, was walking toward me with a smile like there was nothing in the world wrong with this situation. I snapped my head back to where Antic was, but he was gone. Huh?

“Don't worry about him. He's back where he's safe and can't hurt or be sad anymore,” mom said. I looked back just in time to see her reach up and take my skeletal hand in her very much alive hand. Except... there was no warmth to her touch. Her little smile faded. “Cantrip... what have you become?”

I withdrew my hand and cradled the abomination next to me. “It's... it's not my fault! The-the ponies! It was their magic! I-I didn't know!”

She frowned and shook her head slowly. “That's not what I meant.” She brushed a hair from my face. “I'm talking about what you did to those ponies and griffons.”

“Wh-what? No. No! A-Antic said you saw what happened, that you saw everything! You know why I did it! Those ponies hurt Zeal! A-and the griffons killed Fealty! And you! B-both could have killed Antic! They deserved it!”

“Did Scarlet Swirl deserve it?” she asked simply.

To our right, the appropriately named red pony stepped out of the woods. Two crossbow bolts were still lodged in her skull where I deflected the shots from me to her. Blood was gushing down the sides of her head as she cast a mournful gaze at me. “I wasn't going to hurt you, remember? I was really sad after daddy ran you all off and crushed the eggs in your cave. I told him it wasn't right.”

...I had lost my mind. My mouth worked silently while I looked over her. What could I say at that point?

Mom sighed and looked to her left, where a black beaked white griffonness stepped out of the woods. “Or Ida? Did she deserve to die?”

The griffon's feathers and fur were singed, burnt and melted. A blade running with blood was buried in her chest. She cowed slightly and said, “I... I was just trying to protect my eggs. Why did you kill them? Or me? I didn't mean you any harm...”

I backed away. “B-but... you would have. Every griffon I've ever met tried to kill me! Some ponies ran away, but every griffon wanted me to die!”

Ida blinked back tears. “I did not know what a draconequus even was. I just wanted to be a mother... I never wanted to hurt anybody. Why did you take them from me?”

“You would have killed me! I know it! They always do!” I insisted, backing away more. I bumped into something and whirled around to find Yari and Dirk standing behind me. Blood poured from her neck, and he was covered in horrifying burns like Ida.

“We were just trying to protect our families. Just like you,” they said in unison.

Yari tried to stretch her shattered wings and hobbled forward on her three good legs. “We were scared you'd do something like this. I just wanted my husband and daughter to be safe.”

Dirk coughed and stumbled closer. “I swore I'd protect my wife and son to my dying breath. From anything, be it thieves of any sort or monsters.” His sad eyes locked with mine. “I feared you would all return in the night to hurt them. Was I wrong?”

“Eye for an eye!” I screamed back. “You killed me and my family!”

Around me dozens more ponies and griffons emerged from the woods, covered in burns, impaled on broken spears or by crossbow bolts or with profusely bleeding gashes across their throats. A griffawn so badly burnt his wings were missing limped out of the crowd. “How many eyes did you lose to take so many?”

The mournful looks of my victims changed to scowls. A black filly with blood running from her mouth and nose from a crushed chest pointed an accusing hoof at me. “Daddy said there weren't any real monsters, but he was wrong!”

“Monster...” a mare said.

“Nothing but pure evil,” an elderly stallion added. So evil not even death could keep you.”

“Monster!” a young voice shrieked.

“Monster! Monster! Monster! Monster! Monster!” the crowd chanted, over and over and over.

I covered my ears and hunkered down. “Shut up! Shut up, all of you!”

“Monster! Monster! Monster!”

“Stop it! Shut up!”

“Evil... born of it. Destined by your nature!”

“Monster... Monster! Monster!”

I fell to the ground and curled into a ball to hide my face. “I know! I know!” I shrieked. The chanting went on, growing closer. I could hear each voice distinctly. Each stallion, mare, foal, griffon, griffonness and griffawn that I'd murdered. Each blaming wail of anger fell upon me and reverberated endlessly in my head. “I'm sorry! Please! I know it was wrong!” I screamed before tears began to flow from my eyes. “It was a mistake! I couldn't take it anymore! All of the pain and fear and anger and sorrow, I just couldn't take it!” Everything I tried to say after that was lost among sobs and attempts to plead for forgiveness.

“Cantrip... it's alright.” I reluctantly looked up to see an outstretched hand covered in green scales. Mom was looking down at me with concern, and at that moment I realized the accusing chant had ceased. She crouched next to me and laid her hand on my side. “Nobody hurts here anymore, or feels any sadness ever again. Their pain and fear have all passed.”

Without a thought I rocked into a seated position and threw my arms around her waist before descending into another crying fit. “M-mom, I'm so sorry... I've done n-nothing but mess up since you died. I-I-I tried, but it w-was just too m-much...”

She pulled me into a caress and rubbed my back. “I know it's been hard. I'm so sorry for leaving you four, but it wasn't my choice.” She stroked my hair and said, “Cantrip, up until today, I couldn't have been prouder of you and your brothers and sister. You've done so well without me and grown so much...”

“Pl-please, mom... if-if I could take today back I w-would!”

“It's alright, and I know.” She raised my chin up with a single finger. “Everyone makes mistakes. What separates the good from the bad is whether you try to fix them.”

“Bu-but how? I-I can't bring them back! M-maybe the p-ponies, i-if the spell works that way, b-but the griffons... I can't get back to them!”

She touched her finger to my mouth to hush me. “Once you're here, there's no coming back. The ponies and griffons who died are safe and happy here. It's only those who you left behind that need comfort now.”

What? What was she talking about? “Huh?”

Yari reappeared to our side, devoid of her gruesome wounds. “I forgive you, Cantrip, if you'll make sure my daughter is okay.”

With a flash, Dirk appeared to our left. “As long as my son is alright, that's all that matters.”

They... couldn't be serious. What was I supposed to do? The foals would be beyond terrified of me! What was I supposed to do with them anyway? Take them to another pony town?

Mom smiled. “You always wanted to be a mother, didn't you? It's the most rewarding thing in all of the world.” She released me, stood and took a step back. “You were always a smart girl. I know you'll know what to do.”

“Wait. Wait, you-you can't mean that. I c-can't raise pony foals... even if I could they'll never let me!”

She began to fade from view before my eyes. “You'll know what to do. I believe in you.”

“Wait. Wait, no! Don't go!” I jumped up and threw myself at her only to pass through and land with a crunch among broken twigs and leaves. “Mom! Wait!”

“Don't leave me!” I screamed, bolting upright.

It was morning. I looked down and examined myself to find I was laying in the spot where I'd just tried to grab my mother before she vanished. She wasn't there. There was no sign of anyone having been there all night except for me. Even the tree I'd set ablaze was completely unharmed. It... had all been a dream.

No. No, not a dream. No dream I'd ever had in my life was ever so vivid... or specific and timely. I sat there for minutes, just staring into the woods and trying to convince myself whether I had or hadn't just witnessed it. If I had, what did it mean? Was it true? Had mom, Fealty and Antic been watching me? Really? Or the people I'd killed? Had they really forgiven me already of something so despicably vile?

No. No, there was no way. I'd simply... well, really, I had to have dreamed it. There was no other explanation other than having literally lost my mind. But now... now every thing was clear and sensible again. That didn't happen when you went insane, did it? I didn't know, and for the longest time I did nothing but sit there dumbly and fight back more tears as I dwelt on why I'd dreamed what I did. Even if it was just a hallucination of a sleeping mind under unbelievable stress, so much of it held so much truth...

I had done something unimaginably awful and evil. Nothing I could ever do would make up for it. For a moment I wanted to fly back to Blackfeather and just stand there until they killed me, but that wouldn't make up for it either.

The last thing my mother had charged me with kept repeating in my head. Was I seriously considering trying to go collect the surviving children of that pony town and raise them for my own? No! No, I couldn't do that! That wouldn't make up for anything either, and would only add kidnapping children to the list of horrifying things I'd done.

Yet, I couldn't shake the fact that there were at least two foals there who were left in a burning town without any adults to protect them. That was my fault, and the very least I could do would be to get them to safety somewhere. Yes... yes, I could do that much.

I dragged myself to my hooves, feeling rejuvenated after a night to recover yet still with shaky legs. No matter what happened to me, I was never going to forget last night... for so many reasons.

Wings spread, I leaped into the air and oriented myself toward the faint plume of smoke in the distance.

The town was still smoldering. So much heavy wood would take days to stop burning entirely, and as much as I had hoped for that very thing less than 24 hours ago I was now feeling yet another stab of intense guilt. The crackling corpse of the town now stood as a testament to what I really was under the surface. Just like the magic had brought me back to life with a twisted and rotten body, my very soul was forever changed and darkened. I wasn't Cantrip anymore. I was something else...

I set down in the center of the main road and began surveying the damage for any signs of life. It was entirely possible that the foals had died after I left, from breathing the smoke or being forced into the woods or any number of other ways. If I was lucky they wouldn't have gone far. If I was extremely lucky I would have somehow missed one of the mares or stallions, and maybe they would have taken any survivors somewhere safe by now.

The first thing I noticed was that some of the corpses had been moved. Yari's body was gone, the only evidence it had ever been there being an enormous stain of blood on the stones and grass. Most of the other guards who had been slain trying to protect their families and lives had been moved too. Maybe I would be lucky after all. If there was an adult or two left, I could just leave...

Behind me I heard tiny hooves clopping on stone and a young voice sniffling. A green earthpony filly moped down the street and stopped at an armored body lying in a twisted heap next to the road. She was older than the others I'd seen. Maybe just a couple of years away from being a mare. I watched as she wiped her eyes, then rolled the body over to start removing the guard's armor. Piece by piece she stripped the dead stallion, brushed the bloody armor aside, then started tying a rope around his forelegs. Was... she the one who moved them all? Where? I ducked behind a partially standing building and watched as she pulled the rope taut, strained and slowly dragged his body away.

It wasn't too hard to follow her without being seen. Even if I'd made sure that the town was razed and there were few places to hide, the poor soul ahead of me was making enough noise on her own that she never heard me creeping along behind her. Each sniffle and sob was like a knife in my heart. This was a mistake. I really shouldn't have come back. What was I even going to do? I still had no idea! Just walk up to her and apologize for murdering her family and the other ponies whose carcasses she was cleaning the streets of?

Unsure of what to do, I followed her a bit further until we reached what looked like it was once a landfill at the edge of town. Now the garbage had been covered by at least ten dead ponies. I saw Yari's body there, as well as Scarlet's. A few others whose names I'd never know. My guts tightened in a strange way, and I watched the filly unstrap herself and start untying this pony. She wiped her eyes again, sat heavily, and looked up.

Her eyes met mine. Her mouth dropped open.

Clearly, neither of us knew what to do at that moment. Here I was. The beast that had slaughtered her family and come so close to taking her with them. A defenseless little filly who was just doing her meager best to pay respects to the dead here. Staring each other down. Tears began to flow anew down her cheeks as she sank into a hunched position.

“No... please... don't be afraid...” Oh, sure, like that was going to work!

Predictably, she squealed in terror and bolted as I took a step closer.

Which in turn prompted me to give chase. I hopped into the air and beat my wings from habit so I could follow without thundering after her on hoof. What in the world was I going to do if I caught her? Ask her over and over to forgive me until she did? What sane pony would listen to the walking, talking decaying corpse of a monster? This was stupid! Even so, I flew after her, winding through the street and into a side alley between burnt out husks of homes. I had to do something other than leave her to her fate here...

The scream and sob filled pursuit ended when she ducked into the house on the right. She couldn't have thought that would hide her long, but I can attest that when you're scared you'll do just about anything. I touched down at the doorway and tried to ignore the overpowering stench of soot and ash as I scanned the room. It was probably a single room home initially, but it was so badly scorched and partially collapsed that I couldn't be sure. To my left I heard a faint rattling coming from a cupboard. If she was hiding in there, maybe I could catch her with my magic before she could bolt again. Faint blue energy swirled around my hand and I prepared a stunning spell, just in case.

Inside the cupboard I found a pile of metal pots and pans trembling and clattering together, and a single little green hoof poking out from behind them. “Child... I mean you no harm...” She squeaked and the pots shifted, but no response.

So, I removed the biggest pot at the top. Bloodshot orange eyes peered over the makeshift cover for an instant, then ducked down amidst panicked whimpers. “Don't kill me!” she pleaded before descending into bitter sobs.

“I'm not going to hurt you, I promise!” I reached out a hand and removed another metal container I didn't know the purpose of. “Please... I just want to help.”

“P-P-P-Princesses save me...” she whined, her voice cracking at the height of it.

Well. Here I was. What now? I'd spent how long trying to figure out what to do at this point, and this is all I could come up with? I could hardly blame her! But... okay, if I left her alone, what should I do? Make sure she wasn't hurt and that there was food around for her? That wasn't going to solve much of anything! But there had to be something else I could do!

A moment later, it hit me. I knew a spell that could help, but I had only the most fleeting amount of practice with it. I'd used it a time or two to relax right after Fealty was killed. A spell I'd learned from him. “It's okay... everything's going to be okay...” Red magic fog drifted from my hands into the hole she was curled up in. Even after a few moments her shuddering began to ease back. “There... now, don't you feel better?”

“I-I-I... I do-don't...”

I removed a couple of pans to get a better look at her. Her cheeks were soaked with tears and her entire body was covered in grime and soot. Poor thing... how could I have done this to her? “Come on out... I'm not going to hurt you, I promise.”

Reluctantly and only after a lot more urging from me she crawled out of her hole, spilling utensils into the floor with a suitable racket. She sat in front of me, face to the floor as she sniffled and trembled a little. “Wh-what are you going to do to me?”

“I'm here to help,” I said sadly. With an intact finger to her chin I urged her to look up. “It's okay... I... made a terrible mistake last night. I'm here to make up for it however I can.” Might as well be honest, as pointless as it was.

To my surprise, she nodded slowly and wiped her nose. “Why did you kill everypony?”

I took a deep breath, completely out of habit since I didn't need to breathe anymore, and replied, “Because they hurt me and my family before. They killed some too. I was very angry and not thinking clearly.”

She nodded again.

“What's your name? Are there any others left?”

She nodded again slowly, fighting back tears. “I-I'm Lilac. There-there are two more. Cinnamon Flakes and R-Rose.”

Talking seemed to be working. It scared me how effective this spell was. This might actually work. I placed a hand on her withers. “Okay. Do you have any other family? Anywhere else?”

“I-I don't know. Nopony near here.”

A sigh passed my lips, again out of pure habit. So, okay, she wasn't screaming or sobbing anymore, but what now? If she didn't have any other family, what did I do with her? Just take her to the nearest pony city and hope for the best? I guess I could. Now, where was that?

While I was busy worrying over that, she slumped forward into my chest and started weeping again. Each choked gasp and tear was another twist of the knife in my heart. So help me, after I got her and the other two somewhere safe, I was going to tear off my wings and throw myself off a chasm. Maybe that would kill me...

“No... no, please... don't cry anymore.” I channeled more strength into the spell, and again she quietened down to a few soft sniffles.

“Who are you?” she mumbled at last.

The possibility that she'd care hadn't even crossed my mind. I... I wasn't Cantrip anymore. Cantrip died in that cave, and what rose from her corpse wasn't her. I placed my arms around the distraught child and just held her for a little while. “It doesn't matter. Don't worry about who I am anymore. I want to just be gone and forgotten.”

She threw her hooves around me. “Do-don't leave me. I don't want to be alone again!”

Yet again I was taken aback. She was hugging me. Willingly. I didn't know what else to do other than to just rub her back and say, “It's okay. I won't leave you alone. I promise.” It took a little effort to coax her to her hooves, but at length I got her out of the house. “Why don't you show me where Cinnamon Flakes and Rose are?”

Lilac took a shaky step off toward a small building at the back of the settlement. Near where I'd first landed to wrangle my insane siblings half a year ago. “O-okay. They, um, they're back here. I told them to hide in the shed. Since it wasn't burnt and there were lots of places to hide.”

“Smart girl,” I said, stroking her mane.

She smiled, and off we went. She smiled. This magic was scary in what it could do...

My encounter with Cinnamon Flakes and Rose went about the same as it did for Lilac. More of Fealty's soothing magic calmed both down to the point they willingly came out of their hiding places to join us. That made our little ragtag group of misfits two fillies, a colt and the monster who slew their families. If I wasn't living the moment, I would have never believed it in all my years.

That still left me uncertain on what to do. I knew there were more pony towns and cities far, far down the river. Or if I was feeling like taking a bigger risk I could have left them at Blackfeather, but I didn't like how that could play out. The griffons and ponies got along, but would they take in the foals? I had no idea and didn't want to take the chance.

So... three pony foals who were terrified at the idea of being left alone, and nowhere certain to take them. Time wore on as I sat with them in the smoldering ruins, and the only conclusions I ever came to didn't seem like great ideas. It could be several days' travel to get them somewhere safe. Could I protect them for that long? Could I provide for them? Lilac was quick to show me the meager scraps of dried fruit she'd saved from the burnt out storehouse, but it would only last them a day at most. That left me with few choices...

...so I settled on what at the time felt like the least bad option. Together, the four of us touched down at the lip of the hole in the ground leading to our-no, my-cave. It was getting dark and the dried apple slices and raisins that Lilac found were already almost gone. I didn't have a lot of choice left. Here they would be safe with me. Anything that dared invade the cave would have a very nasty surprise in the form of a living-dead draconequus with a limitless supply of mana at her disposal. Yeah... even if it didn't work so well last time.

“This is where you live?” Cinny asked, stepping closer to the hole.

I held him back rather than let him risk slipping and falling in. “That's right. Just down here. Hold on everyone.” A faint haze of magic shrouded the three ponies and lifted them into the air. Together we floated down the shaft of dwindling evening light to land between little pools of standing water. “Follow me.”

“Does anyone else live with you?” Rose asked on the way back to the chambers my siblings and I once used to sleep.

“Not anymore. They all... left recently.” I moved on past the bedchambers, still filled with my sibling's belongings, and brought them to the back room with the mana basin. “This is where I stay most of the time.”

The three looked around in wonder, but didn't stray from me. “Are we going to stay here too?”

“For a little while.” Until I could figure out where to take them, they would be safe there. It couldn't take but a few days to figure that out. A merchant caravan would come along down the trail maybe. I had some illusion magic. I could pretend to be a pony if Antic could. I'd tell them I found the foals orphaned and didn't know what to do with them. That would work, wouldn't it?

Lilac wrapped her hooves around my arm. “Y... you're not going to leave us, are you?”

Rose and Cinny faced me, fear evident on their faces. The colt asked, “Bad things aren't going to come get us too, are they?”

I gathered all three into a strong hug. “No... no, nobody is going to come hurt you. As long as you're here with me, nothing can ever hurt you again.” Tears began to form in my eyes. I'd allowed and caused too much harm to ever let that happen. These poor, innocent, sweet children had been wrong in such a barbaric, tragic way...

They tightened their grips on me, and I wrapped my arms tighter around them. “No... with me, you'll never be sad again. You'll never hurt again. You'll never be alone again...”

Never... alone... again...

Epilogue

Deep beneath the surface, hidden away in the sprawling caverns connected to a great basin of magical might, sat the aged living corpse of a draconequus. She sighed contentedly and crossed her legs before leaning back in her throne. “And that, my children, is my story. Forgive me for taking so long. Over the centuries I'd nearly forgotten just how much there was that could be told.”

Around her sat dozens and dozens of ponies of all kinds. Stallions, mares and foals. Among the crevices near the ceiling even a few griffons roosted. Every possible emotion imaginable was visible on at least one of their faces. Some ponies were tearing up. Most of the foals simply stared in awe and wonder. At least one couple were holding each other.

“I know this can be a lot to take in. Believe me... I understand.”

Silence fell across the morose crowd. The awkwardness lingered for some time before one of the foals near the front, a pegasus colt named Crosswind, spoke up. “What happened next? Did you go back to Blackfeather and help them too?”

The draconequus shook her head sadly. “Blackfeather Roost, as I was to later learn was its name, was abandoned soon after my attack. I never did learn why exactly. The damage I did couldn't have been that severe, but I suppose the griffons thought it wasn't worth rebuilding after trade dried up. They took their survivors with them.

“As for what happened next, well, look around you.” She waved a skeletal hand over her assembled family. “For days I tried to decide on what to do with Lilac, Rose and Cinny. None had any surviving family, and after what I did the ponies began to pull out of the region. Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months and years. In time... I found more and more outcast, abandoned or forgotten ponies and griffons. Even a few zebras. After centuries, we now number in the thousands throughout our lands.”

Next to him, a gray unicorn filly named Dusty Tome raised a hoof. “Um, mom? Why did people call you Cantrip back then?”

The draconequus nodded slowly, in thought. “Yes... that is a detail I didn't get to. As I said, to me, Cantrip died three hundred ninety eight years ago.” She pointed off down a side passage. “Just through there. After what I did, I no longer wanted to be remembered at all. When it became apparent that I would live on for some time and have children to care for, I took on a new name.” In a skeletal hand she took up a ragged old spell book. “I spent some time trying to think of something appropriate. I found it in Bone Chips' spell book. Entropy. A word he used often in his writings and so fitting. It means several things. Disorder, for one, but it can also mean to decay. Just like I did.”

A griffon above her asked, “But, didn't he take his book back?”

Entropy grinned. “Oh, he did. Years later I tracked him and his cohorts down. They never hurt anyone else after that.”

“Did you find your babies?” a young pony called to her, lost among the crowd.

“No...” Entropy dropped the book back into its pile. “I never found out what happened to them. They weren't with the pony necromancers, nor were they in the cave when I awoke.”

Silence reigned again before a mare asked, “What about Zeal and Revelry? Did you ever talk to them again?”

“I... did. Much later. The rifts between us never healed, although the spell I cast on them did its job. They should have both aged and passed on centuries ago by now, but they still live, last I saw them.” Entropy looked aside. “Zeal goes by the name Mayhem now, and has a lot of the surviving draconequuses from around the world living with him. Together they enslave and kill as many ponies and griffons as they can. He simply doesn't understand...

“As for Revelry, well... I don't know for sure what happened to her. She parted ways with Zeal and slowly lost her grip on reality. She now calls herself Anarchy. I haven't seen her in two hundred years, so I don't know where she is now or what she's doing. If she still lives.”

A dull yellow stallion sat up. “Is he the reason the other ponies hate us so much?”

“Partly... but children, remember that I have never been and never will be accepted by them. They hate you because of me, and because you love me instead of them.” Entropy shifted in her chair, cracking joints. “When I saved you all and changed you to what you are now, they envied you because of it. They know you have something they never can.”

“What's that?" Crosswind asked.

“It's that unconditional love. They know that no matter what happens, that you'll never turn on each other. You'll never stab each other in the back, or abandon your family. You'll always stand together, through good and bad.” Her tone turned sad again as she added, “For as long as ponies and griffons and everything else have existed, they've never been able to do that. I gave you that gift.”

Dusty Tome scooted forward and hugged Entropy's skeletal leg. “We'd never do anything bad like that!”

She smiled and stroked the filly's mane. “Yes, yes, I know. And I would never turn on any of you.”

Before she could say anything more, a dry and ethereal voice called out to her from the side passage. “Mother? There is an important matter we should discuss soon.”

“Excuse me, children. I'll be back in a moment.” She rose and stepped into the tunnel, where she found the skeleton of a pony wearing heavy blackened steel armor waiting on her. Serrated Blade, one of her oldest sons that she had preserved into undeath like herself. The piercing blue glow of phantom flames in his eye sockets flared and turned toward her. “What is it?”

He made a small bow at the neck and said, “Pardon the interruption, but something has come up that needs your attention.” He stepped back and beckoned for her to follow.

“Yes, go on. What is it?”

“I was just told by somepony that we have some 'intruders' in the plains to the south. A couple of days ago, a group of ten ponies with several wagons set up there and have a large camp. From the looks of things, they intend to stay for a while.”

Her expression darkened. “Is that so? It's been decades since anyone has been so bold.” She flared her wings and snorted. “Thank you for telling me. I think I'll go have a look myself tonight.”

Serrated Blade bowed again and ducked away into the shadows, and Entropy made her way to the surface. Once there, she turned to look off to the south where she pictured the sight of ponies chopping down trees and cutting them into planks. They couldn't have done much in two days, but she knew from experience it didn't take long for them to get a surprising amount put together. Images of an incinerated pony town whose name she either never learned or forgot hundreds of years ago returned to her.

No. Not this time. She sneered and flared her wings. History was not going to repeat itself.

She would keep her family safe without hurting them. They would not hurt her family... whether by joining them or otherwise. But first, she was going to go take a look at these brazen intruders. They must be very interesting indeed to come so far into known 'discordant pony' territory willingly.

With a beat of her wings, she lifted into the air and soared off to the south. She might not even have to lift a finger. It was usually easy enough to scare the occasional visitor away. After all, there were a few benefits to being an undead monster from ages long forgotten...

Author's Note

And thus concludes the story of Cantrip. I'll refrain from making many comments on my feelings on the ending since it may color those of readers, but there are reasons for many of the seemingly strange plot turns throughout the story and especially here.

Art credit for Entropy goes to Kryptid! Trivia: the image I digitally painted for the story cover was originally a full body picture of Cantrip right after her reanimation, but Kryptid's art was so much better that I decided to use it instead here.

Anyway, as I mentioned in the comments, this story is technically an alternate universe and was intended to be directly related to another story I helped co author: Duskfields. There's an ongoing but incomplete transcription here on FiMFiction here.

The plot of Duskfields mandated the outcome of this story in ways I could have never anticipated when I conceived of Entropy for that game. I had no intention of ever writing this story about her, but well, as you can see, I did. Was it a mistake to try to create a backstory for such a character? I'll leave that up to you to decide. It certainly caused its complications, and I definitely would have done things differently in several places in the story had I not had Duskfields to link to.

If you want to imagine this story takes place in the "real" canon of the cartoon, then I think it stands alone reasonably well now. But, it also links in to Duskfields seamlessly if you're willing to read on to see what happens to Entropy now.

Chapter 1: Home Sweet Home?

I haven't had many chances to tell this story over my unnaturally long life. There are so few to listen that I once considered recording it in writing somewhere, as if one day someone would stumble by it. Someone who would read it and understand, if not really care. When you've been through what I have and become what I am, you begin to wonder if there is anyone in existence who cares. Centuries ago I came to accept that no, there weren't. There were definitely those who knew the story, but none who cared.

Imagine my surprise then when you, little one, asked me to tell you my story. You might be surprised to learn that of your brothers and sisters, perhaps only five have ever asked this of me before. But fear not, for you, I will tell you everything you wish to know.

There are many points where I could begin, but one day stands out particularly strongly in my mind. The days before it I do not remember well, and the events are of little relevance.

So, sit, and listen well while I take us back to centuries gone. Four hundred fourteen years ago, to be exact.

The day was turning out to be unremarkable, which was precisely how I preferred my days. I was at home relaxing and enjoying one of my favorite pastimes: paging through one of my spell books and practicing a few of the simpler ones. There were few spells in the books that I hadn't mastered years ago, but it gave me something to do and kept my skills sharp.

I flicked a claw through the air, tracing a faintly glowing orange trail as I did. One twist of the wrist and a wall of flame would erupt around me, but I held it. I always enjoyed the flashy spells, even if I never admitted it. There's a primal joy in feeling the mana rush through you to create a fantastic display of light and power; an almost addicting sensation that you never quite grow out of, no matter how many times you do it or how old you grow.

But, as it was, I was at home and didn't want to set our possessions alight. Or my brother, for that matter. I held the spell a few moments more, letting the extra light flicker across the rough stone surfaces of our cave. The glow seemed to cast thousands of harsh shadows in the shallow irregularities in the walls, making everything feel for all the world that much darker. I snuffed the spell and flipped to the next page, recognizing the spell as one intended to keep someone warm in bitter cold.

To my left, my brother Zeal was sleeping on his cot. Well, I say he was sleeping, but a more accurate description would be that he was tangled in it, letting his tail hang free while he rested atop his wings in what looked like an extremely uncomfortable if not outright painful position. The grubby sheet he'd been using for a cover was dangling from the tip of his tail, resting in a large twisted mound on the floor. Spring was nearly upon us, and it was getting uncomfortably warm to sleep under the sheets. At least he wasn't snoring.

I thumbed through the spell book, beginning to recall its contents and realizing there wasn't much else of interest in it. I set it atop a stack of similar books next to my own cot and studied the room. Unlike most of my siblings, I kept my belongings in something approaching a semblance of order despite the fact that I had a collection that would make most quite envious. I reclined and concentrated on a stack of books at the far end of the cot, lifting the top book with a veil of unseen magic.

I took the book in my hands and frowned. The original bright cover was marred by a fine film of dust, a testament to how long it had been since I'd looked through it. I wiped it with my hand, restoring most of the vibrant colors of fruits and vegetables depicted. This was a book I had not mastered yet. There were dozens of spells inside I hadn't had but the tiniest bit of success with. Spells that could convert a rock into the tastiest apple you had ever eaten. Or reverse the ravages of time to turn moldy and stale bread fresh. It seemed silly and almost infuriating that I could teleport, and I could not get the spells of a chef to work.

Yet, I'd have given half of the trivial spells I knew to learn them. As a draconequus, food wasn't just a stroll down the street away. Not like it was for the ponies and the griffons. My siblings and I ate what we could scavenge, and it often wasn't particularly good tasting or even good for us to eat. If I could learn more from this book, that problem would vanish in a flash of magic.

As it was, instead we often resorted to less savory means of acquiring food. I felt my frown tighten as I flipped the page. That was probably where my brother Antic and sister Revelry were right now. No matter how many times I told them not to, they would go off looking for ponies or griffons when they were supposed to be just scavenging. Then they would return with as much as they could carry, beaming and extolling the value of the things they had stolen. They were always thinking of now, not later. One day it was going to come back to haunt us.

I spent some time studying the text inside the book, but for how long I had no idea. As usual time seemed to grow muddy while I read it, lost as I was in the symbols. I understood them. The symbols were clear to me, and I knew how the spells worked, but I could not force the magic to coalesce and do my bidding.

I levitated a pebble up to eye level and worked the ritual to transform it into a ball of bread. Or at least I thought that's what the book said it should become. The pebble flickered an array of colors and warped about oddly, but when the magic faded it was unchanged. Not surprising. I squinted back at the book and reread the description of the spell. I was sure that's what it said. Perhaps when Antic returned he could confirm it.

Whenever that would be. After a few more tries with no more success, I put the pebble and spell book away and rolled over to face the wall. He and Revelry would be back when they got back.

And maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't disappoint me.

I felt like I had just closed my eyes when I heard their excited voices echoing from the passage leading up to the surface. Whatever they were saying was drowned out in the wash, but I knew they must have found something impressive from their tone. I rolled my eyes and flipped over to face the entrance, waiting to see how badly I was going to have to scold them.

“Guess who's home?” Zeal grumbled, cracking his eyes.

Revelry was the first inside, swooping down the hallway without setting hoof nor claw on a single step. She hovered in the center of the room, grinning just like I imagined and holding three wooden crates in her arms that looked five times too heavy for her to carry. I snorted. She knew why.

“Hey, don't start that Cantrip,” she began, lowering her prize to the floor before descending herself. “It's not what you think.”

“Do tell.”

“Zeal, Cantrip, look what we found!” Antic cheered as he joined us. “The ponies just left this stuff lying around on the trail down south. Not a single pony in sight.”

“Then how do you know it belonged to the ponies? If you didn't see any?” I asked. They weren't above telling me what I wanted to hear.

He shrugged. “Hoof prints.”

Revelry flicked the top from a crate and began rifling through it. “Something attacked a caravan it looks like. The ponies scattered and left all of this for us to take.”

Zeal stretched and rose into the air. “Good, maybe whoever did it will make them forget about us.” He settled next to her. “What did you find?”

She raised her hands to present open palms to me and Zeal. “Stand back, and behold.” That got my attention, which quickly vanished when a small box of some kind of pony food sprung from the crate, held aloft by her magic. I reached out and plucked it from her magical grasp with my own. The box looked simple enough. Based on the cover there were a lot of circular wafers of some sort inside. What could possibly be so interesting about this?

Antic hopped over and ran his claw under the big word plastered across the top. “C-r-a-c-k-e-r-s,” he spelled out to me, smiling wide enough I thought his face wouldn't be able to contain his mouth. “Try one!”

“Crackers?” I asked, picking one from inside. It didn't have much of a scent, and didn't look very impressive. I slipped it into my mouth, and I entered heaven. It was a bit too salty, but it melted into a wonderful buttery lump on my tongue. I'd never tasted anything so inviting... so comforting. I immediately shoved three more into my mouth, reliving the mild euphoria.

“This is amazing...” Zeal said in mild disbelief and with his mouth half full of crackers. “What else did you find?”

Revelry smirked and propped against a crate. “See? Didn't I tell you? Oh, but I've got a special present for you!” She disappeared into the box and emerged proudly holding something metallic above her head. A piece of armor for a pony.

“Oh, this...” Zeal took it in his claws and wasted not a second dropping it onto his head. It was comically oversized for him, but the shape was surprisingly similar enough. “A chanfron. From one of the guards?” he asked, removing it and scrutinizing it from every angle.

“Maybe? It was lying on the ground.” She smirked again. “Looks good on you, maybe you can get Cantrip to shrink it to fit?”

“I can try,” I said, trying to dredge up the spell from memory. I'd probably need to find the book for that one.

Antic floated up onto the cot next to me and flashed me an apologizing frown. “Sorry, nothing special for you. They didn't have any spell books or anything like that.” Lost in the joy of crackers, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind, and I told him as much. He smiled sheepishly and laid back against magical nothingness to watch Revelry dig everything else out of the crates and do the worst job imaginable trying to organize it all. “I figure we've got a week's worth of food in there. Maybe more if we ration it.” He cut his eyes to me. “There was a bit more left at the wreckage. Do... you think we should go back and get it?”

I let that simmer for a moment. When I realized that Revelry was no longer churning through her pile I looked up. All three of them were staring at me. Oh, sure, now they cared what my opinion was. I hated to leave the possibility of free supplies lying around, but if we went back we'd risk being spotted there. I groaned and nodded. “We probably should. If all four of us go it's going to be too risky though.”

Zeal stood tall and said to Revelry, “You and Antic should finish here. Cantrip and I can handle this.” Which worked for me. I trusted Zeal for this more anyway.

I spent an extra moment inspecting the illusion guarding the entrance to our home before we left. Antic had done a good job on the spell, as he usually did, but I didn't want to risk it failing while we were away. It seemed strong enough, so I left it alone and started off toward the southern valley with Zeal at my side.

We stayed close to the mountainside as we traveled along. It was overcast that afternoon, which gave us an advantage. Zeal's scales had an earthy undertone, so in the most dire of situations he could find a pile of rocks or some scrub to hide near and maybe get lucky enough for a pegasus to miss him. My gray scales wouldn't be so useful, but in a shaded spot I could blend in pretty well. That was all assuming our magic didn't save us, which it so far hadn't failed to do.

The caravan turned out to be right where it was supposed to be. A train of four wagons was sitting abandoned down in the bottom of the valley. The first wagon was canted and missing a wheel, but from there I couldn't really begin to guess what happened. At least there were no ponies, griffons or anything else bigger than an insect around. The only signs that anything had been here were the hoof prints marking the trail up ahead, heading away from our home. That was good.

“Looks safe,” Zeal whispered into my ear before crouching at the edge of the cliff and peering into the valley. That was the first thing he'd said since we left, and was one more reason I was glad to have him with me. He understood how to be quiet and out of the way when he needed to be.

I spread my wings and scanned our surroundings one last time before taking to the air and gliding down. I could teleport both of us down of course, but that made a big flash and a lot of noise. As long as we didn't stray far from the wall of the canyon we'd be pretty hard to spot.

Up close, the fate of the caravan was a bit more obvious. There weren't any weapon marks on anything that I could see, but the front axle on the first wagon was splintered badly. It had probably just broken on the unforgiving rocky terrain, leaving the ponies stranded. From the number of tracks I saw there were a lot more wagons at one point, and based on just how little was left in these wagons the ponies must have taken everything they could and moved on.

“Not much left,” Zeal muttered, hopping up onto the nearest cart and lifting a tarp.

“They probably got everything worth taking,” I agreed. I climbed onto the wagon next to him and started examining the boxes and barrels left behind. The barrels were interesting, and I had a vague idea of what they contained even if I couldn't read the labels. With a bit of effort and liberal application of my claws on the seal I managed to pop the lid open and took a sniff. Just water. That explained why Revelry hadn't hauled it back home at least, and why I was leaving it too. Water was perhaps the one thing we never really had to worry about since all four of us could purify any from the stream down the path.

“Huh,” Zeal grunted. He pried the lid from a crate and pulled out a bolt of cloth for me to see. “A lot of this here.”

My ears perked up and I made some little motion with my hand. “Oh, set that one aside. I'd love to have some new sheets.” I felt a smile edge onto my face. Maybe if we found some feathers we could even make some pillows! After we had to abandon our last home and I lost my pillow, I'd never slept the same.

Zeal popped open another box and pulled out a handful of something white and fluffy. “Uh...”

Cotton. “Oh, yes! Set that aside too.” New bedsheets and pillows? This was already worth the trip out here. Of course Antic and Revelry got the food first, but this was great stuff. The boxes on this wagon turned out to be empty, but at this point I didn't care if we found anything else. There was an extra large wooden crate on the last wagon in the train, and I set off to check it. It was big enough that I could have fit inside, and predictably the lid was too heavy for me to dislodge with muscle alone. When you have magic though, such things are a lot less of a problem.

The crate turned out to contain a lot of smaller boxes. A box of boxes. Ponies were silly creatures. I crawled inside, finding it to be surprisingly spacious even with all of the smaller boxes. The contents were varied but universally worthless. Lots of figurines or trinkets or other little crafts that the ponies made and saw value in. Sure, they were interesting to look at, but what good were they going to do us?

I was getting ready to pop the lid on the sixth or seventh one when I heard voices outside. “Careful, I think I saw something. Looks like they were attacked.”

I should have known better, but the only thing I could think to do at the time was to bolt up and take a look outside of what I was now feeling was a wooden prison. Right into the eyes of a yellow feathered griffon. Both of us let out startled cries and staggered away from the other. She flared her wings and drew a sword, and I realized she was wearing a helmet and breastplate made of bronze. For my part, I simply bumbled backward into the side of the crate. The impact dazed me and I fell into a panic.

“Natasha, get down!” a male shouted from above. I looked up just in time to see a brown feathered griffon in the same armor drawing a bow and aiming it right at me. Now I was really in a panic. My heart stopped as I stared at the metal tip of the arrow aimed at my face.

I threw my arm up and turned away as the whistling of an arrow tearing through the air met my ears. Instead of the stab of pain I was expecting, I heard the arrow thump against something. I cracked my eyes and let out a gasp when I saw it hovering a hair's width from my nose, suspended in the swirling light of a magical shield. But... how...

I never finished the thought. My left wing exploded in pain and snapped back. The panic surged when I realized it was pinned to the wooden wall behind me, and my instinctive twists to free myself only sent more waves of shock and agony through my side. I saw the first arrow at my hooves and realized the shield collapsed when the second struck it. I had no time to think, only to act. The world shifted nauseatingly as I teleported outside subconsciously.

I ended the teleport upside down and somewhere in the air. The fall was brief but enough to knock the wind out of me and daze me all over again. I gasped for air and stumbled to my hooves, feeling another jolt in my wing. The arrow came with me!

The bow creaked again as it was drawn taut, and I heard a griffon beating its wings to take to the air. What should I do? I whipped my head around in time for another arrow to splinter against a magical shield instead of drill into my chest. “Cantrip!” Zeal shouted to my side. “Move!” That snapped me out of my stupor in time to see the female griffon arcing toward me with her sword drawn back. The world lurched again and I found myself in a heap at Zeal's hooves.

“Come on!” he shouted, pulling me up.

I felt the faint gust of another arrow zipping by and threw my arms around him. An instant later we were hurled in a direction I didn't know existed, landing in a clearing... somewhere. I rolled off of Zeal onto my back, panting with exhaustion and trying to ignore the throbbing and burning in my side and wing. We were at the top of the canyon again! We made it! But we weren't safe yet, griffons could fly, and they'd surely find us soon. I rocked to my hooves, feeling for all the world like I'd run for hours without a break.

I liked the flashy spells, but that didn't mean I could just sling them left and right.

And now I had no idea how we would escape. All of the mana in my body was gone. My wing was hurt. I was so exhausted and out of breath I couldn't fly anyway. If the griffons flew up here I was dead.

It was Zeal's turn to wrap his arms around me, and into the air we soared.

The trip back was one of the most nerve wracking experiences of my life. Antic and Revelry had to deal with losing pursuers far more frequently than Zeal, and he had dealt with it far more than I had. With the pain of a torn wing and the fear of griffons waiting in ambush all around us, I was doing little more than clinging to my brother for the first third of the trip home. To his credit, he knew precisely what to do without my help anyway. We stopped at least five times to wait and watch for followers and took an indirect path. Odds were that the griffons didn't care enough about us to go through the trouble of tracking us through that, so by the time we got home I had relaxed for the most part. Disaster averted.

I was now sitting deep inside the cave we called home, holding my wounded wing outstretched while I examined it with a hand mirror. Probably a griffon mirror, I mused. Ponies wouldn't have had a lot of use for a mirror with a handle on it like this.

Antic and Revelry were busy pestering Zeal about what happened, which got them out of my hair for the moment. We only had one storage room in the cave, but it was enough to get a bit of privacy while I checked myself over. All of the miscellaneous things we had collected over the past few years was packed away or organized in piles against the cave walls all the way to the ceiling. It was cramped and not the best place to treat a wound, but it would have to do. I flexed the first joint of my wing and winced. The arrow had torn neatly through the membrane and missed the digits, but it somehow still managed to hurt and bleed a downright astonishing amount. The bleeding stopped well before we got here, but it had taken a few minutes to scrub the dried mess from my scales. The pain was now mostly a dull throb and ache, but each twist led to another jolt.

I slumped and popped a cracker into my mouth. It helped get my mind off of what happened, but that wasn't going to make me completely forget almost being killed. If Zeal hadn't been there with his shield, I would have died. I had been shot at by griffons and ponies before, but never so close and personal. I'd never been hit either. The look on their eyes when they readied their weapons... how for that moment they wanted nothing more than for me to be dead... that wasn't something I'd forget soon. I gobbled another cracker.

“You okay?” my sister asked from behind me. I confirmed that I was, and she floated into the room anyway. She nestled into a sitting position next to me on my injured side. “You sure?”

“Just a cut on my wing, I'll live,” I answered truthfully.

She leaned in annoyingly close to get a look at my wing and sucked in her breath. “Ow, I know that hurts. I've got something that will help with that, if you want it. And, ah, anything else that might be hurting.”

I sighed and managed to contain half of the eye roll that followed. Sure enough, a bottle floated from behind us and settled next to my hand, sporting a vibrant label with half a dozen fruits and pony words to the effect of it containing berries. So, she found some after all. I wasn't really surprised since most of the caravans carried as much alcohol as they could. My first instinct was to pour it out, but I settled on taking a long drink. That wouldn't annoy her as much and it was that much less she'd drink. And to be fair it would take the edge off more than the crackers, if for no reason other than it feeling like I was drinking acid.

She grinned. “There you go, that'll help in a minute.” She looked back at my wing. “So, are you going to get Fealty to look at that for you?”

I shook my head. “No. No need to bother him over something this trivial.” I raised a hand to cover the rip and concentrated. Healing magic was hard to do and was something I thankfully hadn't had many opportunities to practice. Something this simple was within my ability however, now that my magic had recovered partially. A dull golden glow enveloped my hand and the pain began to vanish.

Revelry's eyes widened. “Wow, did he teach you that?”

“Not quite. He let me borrow one of his spell books,” I explained. I held the mirror back up and grimaced. The cut left a dark spiderweb of a scar leading down to the edge of my wing. Fealty wouldn't have left a scar, but at least the pain was gone.

“Ah, I see.” Revelry retrieved the bottle of wine with her magic and cupped it in her hands. She stood and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Well, if you're hungry I put some dinner together for us. I found some cheese in one of the boxes.”

I nodded and cracked a tiny smile. “In a minute.” First, I had to figure out what pile I'd dug this mirror out of...

Chapter 3: Keep Your Enemies Close, and Your Family Closer

Fealty eased onto the floor next to me. “You're sure he's alright? Don't want me to take a look?”

“He's fine. His hearing has almost completely returned today. That's what he said anyway.” I'd spent the last twenty minutes relating to him our very unsettling encounter with the ponies the day before and our narrow escape from death. He listened while tending to a pot of something brewing over the magical coals in the center of the room, nodding on occasion but saying nothing until then.

“That's good.” He sprinkled some sugar into a cup and handed it to me before taking one for himself. I recognized now that it was tea, having somehow missed the scent while spewing out my story. He drank it through pure iron will or some other unknown method, but knew I couldn't stand it without at least a pinch of sweetness to it. Sugar, of course, was a luxury, so I didn't complain that it could have used a touch more. Instead I felt a bit guilty using up what he had. And questioning where he got it. He took a sip, straight-faced as usual and said, “I'm glad all of you are alright.” He chuckled. “Are we going to have to move closer together so I can come to your rescue? Or am I just going to have to teach you more?”

Both sounded great actually, but I knew I'd have to settle for the latter. “I've read through your spell book a few times, but without practice there's only so much you can learn.”

He nodded and frowned slightly. “It sounds like you're getting some practice though.” He sighed and set his cup aside. “What you're telling me does have me a bit, ah... concerned though.”

To my knowledge that was the first time he'd ever admitted to being worried, and I felt my own sliver of confidence about the situation evaporate like the water left in the pot. “We're still pretty far away,” I said, fishing for excuses or something to soothe my frayed nerves. “I don't think they'll come this deep into the mountains. Or this high up.”

“No, probably not. Not at first anyway.”

I wrapped my hands around my cup and let the warmth radiate through them as I thought. “The griffons already fly through here sometimes, and there will be pegasi now too. Not that many though.”

“I'm not too worried about that. I'm more worried about what will happen if the town gets very large. Grayfeather Roost is just through the canyon from there. Seems awfully intentional to me.” The griffon city had been here longer than I'd been alive, but aside from the occasional military patrol we didn't see much of them. I was beginning to connect the dots when he finished the job for me, saying, “I'm betting that they're going to be doing a lot of trading. The ponies and griffons get along pretty well, no reason not to.”

“And there will be a lot of traffic through the canyon...” I concluded.

He nodded. “I'm pretty far off the trail, but you're not.” Conflicting emotions washed over his face. “I really wish you'd reconsider moving closer.” He wrapped his arm around me and whispered, “Or here.”

We'd been through that a couple of times before, and I turned him down again. I didn't need any convincing to move in with him, but Zeal, Antic and Revelry made that very complicated. I wasn't going to up and abandon them, and even if it wasn't for the fact none of them seemed to be particularly fond of Fealty there was neither the room nor the hospitality for all four of us here.

He sighed again. “Alright. If you're not going to move out of the way of harm, maybe we really should get in a bit of practice? You weren't in a hurry to fly off, were you?”

And pass up an opportunity like that? I shook my head and smirked. “Not at all.”

“Alright then, how about we start small? Do you know the pain control spell? It's something you can try without needing an actual injury.”

He fetched a familiar book with his magic and set it between us. I snuggled up closer to him and set my cup aside. This should be interesting, and I never turned down an opportunity to learn a new spell.

After what happened the last time I visited Fealty, I'd learned my lesson and left well before dark to return home. The mountains were far less intimidating to fly through during the day, even alone, and when I got back home I could see the camouflaged entrance marked with familiar scrub. No sign of Revelry camping out in anticipation of my return to frighten me. After how shaken up she still was that morning, I doubted she'd have done it anyway.

As I headed down I could hear all three of them talking about something related to ponies, but their conversation was infuriatingly distorted by the echoes up the shaft. They didn't sound alarmed at least, but I could hear some agitation. Zeal's voice?

I don't know what I was expecting to see when I entered the main chamber, but what I ran into wasn't it. I nearly leaped out of my scales when I stumbled into the hindquarters of a gray pony, and I fell backward onto the ground with a shriek.

“Huh?” The pony spun to face me. “Oh, Cantrip, you're back?”

It knew my name! I scrabbled backward and flattened myself against the wall, wracking my brain on what to do. Why weren't Revelry and Zeal doing anything!? What were they doing before? I snapped my eyes back and forth between the three creatures in the room, all but ready to teleport us outside. The pony swished his black tail and grinned. Wait... I recognized that grin...

Revelry snickered. “Hey Antic, I think that proves the illusion is good enough.”

“Don't look at me,” Zeal said with a snort. “I kept telling them this is a terrible idea.”

I stepped away from the wall and held a hand to my chest, trying to still my heart. I'd had enough near heart attacks for two days, thank you very much! “Antic?” I questioned, visually dissecting the pony stallion. The illusion was perfect...

“Yep!” he quipped. “I had this idea a little while ago, see. I thought that I could make myself look like a pony, so I could go down and take another look at the town. I might learn a thing or two without them, you know, screaming and trying to shoot me with a crossbow.”

Revelry crossed her arms and lifted into the air. “He wanted to go as a mare. Can you believe it?” Yes, I could.

“Couldn't get the voice right,” he said, shrugging. Wow, that looked really awkward for a pony.

“Uh... you're kidding right?” I asked. “There's no way you'll pull it off.”

Zeal threw his hand into the air and flopped back onto his cot. “Thank you! I've been telling them that for fifteen minutes now.”

“Hey, you fell for it,” Antic said, pointing a hoof at me. Everything about his body language was just wrong.

“I'm not a pony,” I pointed out. “They're going to notice, and what are you going to do then, huh? For that matter, what kind of story were you going to try to give them? They're probably not expecting new ponies.”

“I dunno, tell them I'm lost and just found the place?”

“You're going to need more than that...” I moaned. “What name are you going to give them? Where are you from? What are you doing out here?” I slapped my hand against my forehead and sank to the ground. “Come on, you can't think this is going to work!”

“Hey, it's not that bad. Antic works as a pony name, doesn't it?” I had no idea. Dirk and Yari were the only pony names I could remember. “And I'll just make the rest of it up as I go. Trust me.”

Revelry floated around and tapped a claw to his forehead. “Hey, only the unicorns can do magic, right? Might want to fix this just in case you need to use some magic.”

“Oh, right.” A tiny flash and pop later and he had a horn jutting from his forehead. “There we go.” Great, the 'plan' was falling apart already.

I shook my head. “No. No, please, you're going to get yourself killed Antic.” Zeal grumbled something in agreement. “You do remember yesterday, don't you? They're probably watching and waiting for anything strange to happen.”

Antic sat heavily and let out an exasperated sigh. “What if Revelry comes with me? I can keep both of us changed for a long time.”

“No!” I exclaimed, standing again and swishing my tail. “No, if both of you go the odds of something going wrong are even worse!” I looked between him and Revelry. “Please... don't do this. Look, I'm all for spying on the ponies if it's safe, but walking among them and talking to them? That's the least safe thing we could do!”

“See?” Zeal agreed.

The pony shimmered and another flash filled the room, revealing Antic as it faded. “Fine...” he said in a dejected tone. “Fine... I'll think of something else.”

“Thank you...” I flopped onto my own cot, letting some of the tension flow out with each breath. I'd nearly been killed or lost one of them to the ponies yesterday. I didn't need to be worrying about that again right now.

Revelry took Antic by the arm and led him toward the back room. “Come on, let's go rethink this plan.”

I rolled my eyes at Zeal and turned over to fetch my newest spell book from the floor. Maybe now I could study it some with a bit of peace of mind and make yesterday more worth it. 'S-c-a-r-l-e-t-S-w-i-r-l' was what was written at the top of the cover. Was that the owner? An interesting name for a pony. I flipped it open and lost myself in the symbols. I'd deal with the pony writing later when I had more energy.

Things settled down after the two disappeared into the back room to discuss another suicidal scheme for a while. Antic returned and slumped onto his cot some time ago, facing the wall and not saying a word to any of us. Revelry did similarly, but laid on her back to face the ceiling with a vacant stare on her face. I could only guess that whatever they tried to come up with didn't pan out, and overcome with a surge of common sense they accepted that I was right and didn't want to admit it.

An awkward silence fell, so I looked to my new book for a distraction. I was thumbing through it only to find it was less interesting than I'd hoped for. I already knew most of the spells inside, though there were a few new ones I hadn't deciphered yet. The pony who owned it had very neat writing, but even still trying to read what he or she had written was turning out to be frustrating due to their fascination with big words. One spell was something about a sentry, which sounded interesting. There were a lot of warnings written in pony I couldn't figure out though, and I'd need Antic's help to read it. He was busy still sulking on his cot, of course, so that would have to wait until later.

I was just considering a chance to catch a short nap myself to get some relief from the silence and boredom when something unexpected presented itself. Zeal rolled over to face me and said, “Hey, Cantrip... you got a second?”

“What is it?” I closed the book and set it aside. Whatever he wanted, I was done with it for the moment.

He lifted the chanfron up from beside his cot. “Think you could fix this for me?”

“Sure.” It would only take a second. I reached out with my magic to sift through the stacks of magical tomes to find the one detailing the spell, and a thought struck me. “Actually... I'll do better than that. Why don't I show you how to do it?”

Judging by the confused expression he shot me he wasn't so enthusiastic about it, but he shrugged and sat up. “Fine, if you want.” I flashed him a smile and hopped off of my cot. If he wanted something, he could work a little toward it, right?

We set down in the middle of the main chamber to give plenty of room on all sides, and I spread the book between us. It was one of the oldest books I owned and not one I poked through often, meaning a surprising amount of dust was liberated while I paged through it. Zeal rotated the helmet around in his hands while I worked, nodding once as he spotted something unspoken that he approved of. I finally located the spell in question, fixing a crease in the page and repositioning the book so he could get a good look. “Alright, let's see now...”

The spell went about like I remembered, though I was glad to have the reference since there were a few details I'd forgotten. I began relating to him how to adjust the size and shape of the chanfron, which he seemed to take to well enough. “Once you've got it surrounded with the mana, you can twist and pull on it. You can do a lot that way, but shrinking and expanding things is probably the easiest.”

“Right...” He set it on the bare stone in front of him and raised a hand over it. I could feel the magic flowing around it, and while it was a bit sloppy he was pretty close. The fields contracted and... too fast! A poof of light and sound later, and the helmet was the size of his fist. “Uh... this can be fixed, right?” He gingerly lifted it and shock played across his face. “It's really heavy.”

“Yeah, interesting thing about that. Uh, I don't know how to really describe it, but the weight doesn't change. Bigger or smaller, it stays the same.” I tapped it. “Go on, see if you can fix it.”

He snorted and cocked a frown. Magic swirled around it again and slowly it began to expand. Once he was satisfied with its size, he slipped it over his head. It fit much better, but the shape was still a bit off, evidenced by his ears sticking straight up through the provided holes and the bridge riding well above his snout.

“Good, see? That wasn't so hard.” I closed the book and smiled at him, feeling a bit triumphant at passing the little mote of knowledge on. “Think you can adjust the fit?”

Turned out that he could. The magic to alter the helmet seemed to come pretty naturally to him, and he twisted the ear holes and visor enough to fit his head surprisingly well with a minimum of fuss. He grinned, something I had almost forgotten he was able to do, and said, “Perfect. Oh, wait.” The sword floated past us and rested in his hand. Once again I was reminded of just how enormous pony weapons were, and it took both of his hands to grip the hilt well enough to keep it upright. He tested the weight a bit, and I felt magic swirl around it like with the helmet. The entire weapon narrowed and lengthened to the point of being almost as long as he was tall. He slouched and tried to catch his breath as he set the blade aside. “That's tiring...”

“It can be. You don't practice your magic much, so I'm surprised you could do that much.” My eyes rested on the length of deadly steel dividing us and I asked, “So, what are you planning to do with that?”

He stood and took a deep breath before retrieving the sword. “Remember what I said earlier?” He gripped it with both hands in the same way I'd seen some griffons wield their titanic greatswords. “The next pony that looks at me funny?” He swung wide, slashing through the air with a deep whoosh, and grinned again. “They'll be getting a taste of this.”

Revelry flicked her tail and glanced over. Whatever she was planning to say, I was going to beat her to it by reiterating that looking for a fight with a pony was going to get him killed. That is, until he swung the weapon again and drew a shrill cry from something in the room with us.

Zeal and I jumped or fell backward while Revelry leaped out of her cot to scrabble on the floor behind us. Zeal whipped his sword up again, and I could see fresh blood running down the blade to spill onto his hands. The three of us searched frantically around us for the source, and I wracked my brain for a spell to reveal the intruder. It wasn't necessary.

“Ow... owwwww...” a male voice moaned pitifully. I noticed an instant later that Antic hadn't even flinched, and the reason why became clear. A gray pony with a black mane and tail flickered into view, sprawled on the floor and awkwardly pawing at a long gash leaking blood on the side of his neck. “Oh... it hurts...” he wailed again, clenching his eyes shut and tightening into a ball.

The sword clattered to the floor, and we rushed to help our wounded brother.

Antic sniffled and rubbed at the scar on his neck, propped against the cave wall with only a few of our cleaner sheets behind him to offer any comfort. He was unbelievably lucky, if you could consider getting hit with a sword while invisible lucky in the first place, as the blade missed everything important. A little closer to the front and the big vein in his throat might have been cut. Much further back and the hit might have broken his neck. Or if Zeal had really swung, it might have killed him anyway. He sucked in a breath of air and groaned lightly again, looking away from the rest of us. Especially me.

Revelry was sitting on her cot again, balled up and making an occasional small noise I couldn't identify. She'd helped mastermind this little charade by providing the illusion that Antic was still in his cot the whole time, and I guess she was feeling more than a little guilt for Antic getting hurt. Good. I wanted all of them to understand what happened when we tried to do anything to the ponies or griffons, and when we did things behind each others' backs.

Zeal was off behind us, standing in the corner and trying not to look at Antic too much. He'd spewed enough apologies by now maybe he just didn't know what to do anymore, other than stare at the blood still soaking the floor and the sword he'd hurled into the back of the chamber.

As such, it was just me sitting across from Antic at the moment. All of us jumped to help him after what happened, but it quickly became apparent I was the only one who could really do anything for him. Once again I'd had to use my healing magic to save one of us, and it wasn't helping my frayed nerves at all. I was getting a bit better at it, as little consolation as that was. The scar should have been a lot worse than it was, and I even managed to clean most of the blood from his scales with the spell.

He rubbed his face and finally looked up at me with pink, tearful eyes. “Thanks.” He looked back down and sniffled again. “And... s-sorry.”

I frowned and sighed. I was angry at him and Revelry, that much I wouldn't deny. But how angry can you be at your brother after he nearly has his head cut off right in front of you? “Why, Antic? Why did you go down there after I told you not to?”

He shrugged. “I-I don't know?” Yeah, even he knew that wasn't going to fly. “I... I just thought that if I... if I talked to the ponies and showed you...”

“Showed me what? That you could trick the ponies? What were you planning to do then?” I didn't have to say what I was really getting at. If he and Revelry thought they could just walk among the ponies, they'd try to rob them blind.

Antic said nothing for a little while, just sniffling and glancing anywhere but to me. “...that maybe we could be friends?”

Zeal, Revelry and I all stared at him. “You're crazy,” Zeal said flatly. “They just want our heads on pikes for their lawns.”

Shaking my head, I said, “He's right. If they knew we were here, they'd be all over the place trying to kill us. It wouldn't be the first time.”

“You don't know that,” Antic said weakly. He looked up at Zeal, wincing from the neck motion. “They-they're not bad. They're just scared.” His eyes floated between us. “They're just scared of us.”

“Scared of us?” Zeal spat, sinking into his cot. “They've got us scared to even all sleep at the same time because one of them might wander up on us! We can't be friends with them!”

“You don't know that!” he insisted. “When have we ever tried to talk to a pony? Huh?”

I tried to avoid raising my voice as I replied, “That's awfully hard to do when they're shooting or stabbing at you on sight.”

He slapped a hand to his chest, warranting another tiny cringe, and said, “That's why I want to try this! If they give us a chance to talk, maybe things would be different! Just imagine: we could fly through their town and they wouldn't even care. We'd never have to move again! Maybe... maybe they'd even trade with us?” Surely even he realized how unreasonably idealistic that sounded, and he deflated a bit. “We won't know until we try...”

“Trying almost got you killed,” Zeal muttered.

“Not by the ponies,” Antic pointed out, much to Zeal's displeasure. He shifted into a more comfortable seated position and said, “I... I listened to them talking. They're not bad.”

Revelry pulled herself upright, braced against her cot with a single arm as she looked hopefully at him. “You... heard them talking? Did you talk to them?”

“Uh... no. I didn't want to risk it. I kinda stayed out of the way as much as I could. The pony illusion was just a backup plan if I got spotted.” He perked up. “Oh, but Yari is alive. She's not doing well, but she's alive.” That prompted a simultaneous snort and groan from Zeal and a look of intense relief from Revelry. I was having very mixed feelings. More than anything I just wanted nothing to do with the ponies, whether they lived, died or whatever. That way was simple and safe. Antic wasn't seeing that, and slapped his chest again. “I can do this! I can talk to them and let them know we aren't going to hurt them.” He raised his hand up to waist height from the floor. “They've got foals. I heard them talking about it. They're scared to even let them outside now. If they just knew we weren't going to hurt them, maybe everything would be okay!”

Zeal was starting to sound like a pig from all of his grunts, but Revelry was almost beaming. Now it was my turn to stifle a groan. Of course she'd be all over this. I just shook my head. “Please... don't do this Antic. You're going to get killed. That goes for you too,” I said, pointing a claw at Revelry.

“Cantrip, listen to me,” he insisted. “Just let me try! Just once!” He had that pleading look of a child on his face that he somehow managed to never grow out of. “That's all I'm asking!”

I sighed and looked down. “I wish it would work. Really, I do.” Who wouldn't accept peace? I didn't think it would work, but I wasn't stupid. “Any other time...”

“Cantrip...” Zeal almost growled. “You're not going to go along with this...?”

“No.” Antic and Revelry pouted and looked like they were going to plead even more, so I stopped them. “If the circumstances were different, I might think it was worth a try, but... not now, please.” Antic's mention of pony foals struck on a topic I hadn't yet brought up with them, but now was as good of a time as any. I rested my hand against my belly, feeling the small but unmistakable bulge. “I'm going to be a mother soon. I... I don't need this right now.”

Yep. That had exactly the reaction I expected. Stunned silence. I don't know how long we all sat or stood there like that, but Antic was the one to finally do something. He just hung his head and muttered, “Oh...”

“Look, can we... can we just forget this business for now? Get something to eat maybe?” I'd nearly been scared to death by my brother, nearly seen him killed, patched him up and then spilled to my siblings that I was about to be a mother. It had been a long day, I was tired and hungry. We could worry about this nonsense another time. Preferably years from now after my whelps hatched and Antic forgot about it.

I was still young and naïve. I could dream.