The Forsaken's Search

Sometime during the night I retreated back inside to work on the spell a little longer. To my irritation, I didn’t get very far due to a lack of notes. When dawn broke, I squinted out the window for a moment, then scooped up the loose sheets of paper and stuffed them back into my pockets. I rose from the desk’s chair, cracked my spine, and peered out the door into the hallway.

The same guards from last night were still standing there, somewhat alert as well. I supposed they had the night shift. One of them turned to look at me, and the other snapped out of his daydreaming… nightdreaming? Before turning to look at me.

“Morning,” the first one said. The second one was giving me a funny look.

I raised my eyebrow at the second one before turning to the first one. “Good morning,” I responded. “What now?”

The first one frowned and sent a questioning look to the second. The second just shrugged in response. “Don’t know,” he responded. “We should go see Celestia.”

I nodded once, and we set off. Not a word was spoken in the hallways. Nobody but the cleaning staff, a few posted guards, and the odd wandering pony were up at this hour.

I was led to a dining hall, where Celestia, Luna, and a white unicorn were having their morning meal. Luna did a discrete double-take when she saw me.

“...you two talking abou- oh?” the white unicorn said upon seeing me enter. “Who is this?”

“This,” Celestia answered, “is Mr. Icara. He’s here after a magical mishap, and I’ve agreed to help him return home.” I snorted metally. Mishap indeed.

I gave a nod to the unicorn, my face betraying no emotion. I had seen his face in the papers once or twice. Prince Blueblood, if I recalled correctly. Blueblood turned to Celestia and asked, “Is this the guest you were talking about, then?”

Celestia pulled over a cushion for me to sit on, nodding an affirmative to Blueblood as she chewed on a bite of salad. She swallowed and asked me, “Do you want anything to eat?”

“No thank you,” I answered, taking the offered cushion. “I’m not hungry.”

She raised a curious eyebrow at me, but didn’t say anything. Blueblood was too busy studying me to notice. “An accident?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered. “My wife Ira and I were working on an extremely long-range teleportation spell. Something went wrong with the spell circle we were using, and I got dumped into the middle of a forest. I have no idea where Ira went.”

Blueblood hummed in thought; a single low note. “So how did you manage to contact Celestia in the forest?”

Celestia answered. “The poor fellow followed the path Twilight and her friends took as they made their way to the old castle. From what I hear, he had to cross a river, climb a landslide, and walk several miles all by his lonesome.” I nodded in agreement as she continued. “I found him peeking into the room where the Nightmare was defeated, confused and scared,” I couldn’t tell if the glint in her eye was from mischief or sorrow. “After I teleported everyone out, I went back to talk to him. And now here he is.”

I gave her a somewhat flat look as Luna looked to Celestia in curiosity. “Confused? A little bit,” I responded, “but I knew most of what happened. Scared of a forest? Irritated, more like.”

“A brave stallion,” Blueblood commented. “I can see why Celestia took an interest in you.” He took a drink. “But, I’m torn. On one hoof, I’m more inclined to believe Auntie simply because she’s Auntie...”

‘What a great way to describe your aunt,’ I thought.

“...but on the other hoof, she’s known for harmless pranks and jokes at other’s expense.” He shrugged. “Like I said, I’m torn. Auntie Lu-”

Luna snorted, taking a bite of her… I wasn’t sure what she was eating. I think it was a salad, but it was drowned in a red sauce. “We are not thine aunt, Blueblood,” she snipped.

“Er, right,” he stuttered. He muttered something unintelligible under his breath, and Luna glared at him. He threw his hooves up in mock surrender, a sweaty grin plastered across his face. Celestia just sighed in defeat, pushing her empty plate away and rising to her hooves. I followed suit.

“Is this normal?” I asked Celestia after we had left the dining room. The same guards were still following us. Made me wonder if they’d get a break.

She huffed. “I hope it won’t be. I’m busy enough as it is without the extra stress. Luna’s return, the Gala, the Elements, my faithful student, you and your wife…” she trailed off. “I love Luna, but I don’t want her to cause more problems because she can’t get along with Blueblood.” She muttered something else under her breath. I got curious.

“Blueblood is a problem too?” I guessed.

“Only during a party.” Her face suggested that there was more to the story, but she continued before I could ask. “I have no idea what to do with you,” she stated, stopping next to a massive set of wooden doors. “You drop out of nowhere during the busiest month of the year, the millenium, even. I don’t want you to wander off alone, and I can’t send you home in good conscience without your wife.”

“So what do we do?”

Celestia put a hoof to her forehead, rubbing slowly as she screwed her eyes shut. She groaned. “How quickly can you learn new spells?”

“Depends. I’d say I’m fairly adept at it, though.”

She looked slightly relieved at that, but it vanished in an instant. “Wait in the library until morning court is over. I’m going to show you how to use my illusion spell.”

My mouth was halfway open to respond when she zoomed her head forward, her eyes narrowed an inch away from my actual eyes. “Don’t abuse it, and don’t wander off again,” she stated before opening the doors and trotting through.

Inside was the throne room, a massive affair with a red carpet running down the middle of the floor, starting at the doors and leading up to the royal throne shaped like a couch. On the back wall, the couch-throne itself rested up against a giant, light pinkish-purplish crystal that stretched upwards to the top of the ceiling, and down to the raised dais the throne sat on. Four guards were already at attention, two on the base of the staircase leading up to the dais, and two flanking the throne itself. Stain-glass windows lit the room up, depicting important moments in Equestrian history.

“...Okay then,” I finished after she had moved out of earshot. My two assigned guards were still flanking me, their faces impassive.

“I’ve not seen the Princess this frazzled in a long time,” one of them stated. I cocked my head in curiosity as I began to walk towards the library.

I hope I was heading to the library, anyways. This whole place was a labyrinth. “Oh?” I asked.

The other guard also looked at the first one in interest. “The last time the Princess was in this state was when Blueblood decided about a year back that some socialite party wasn’t for him. That was the root cause, anyways. It resulted in so many tabloids and gossip magazines being spread around, all of them accusing Blueblood of doing something raunchy, or accusing him of having an affair with somepony’s wife, or-”

“He’s married?” the other guard asked. His face was twisted in immense confusion.

“No,” the first one continued, “but that didn’t stop the press. Anyways, the airheaded ponies latched onto the most fringe and ridiculous stories. ‘Blueblood’s an alien!’ ‘Blueblood’s a royal brat!’ ‘Blueblood’s sleeping with Nightmare Moon returned and seducing Twilight Sparkle!’ The media had a field day harassing the Princess about her parenting techniques and what sort of influence she would have on little Twilight.”

That made a few questions arise in my head, but I left them be for now. “So how did all of this actually stop?”

“It became old news. Easy as that. I think it was at that point that somepony accused Fleur de Lis of having an affair.”

“And all of this because Blueblood didn’t go to a single gathering?” A small grin was on my face at this point.

He nodded solemnly as we arrived at the library’s entrance. A few mages were up and about, or about to fall over asleep. “Uh huh. Does stuff like that happen where you come from?”

I chuckled softly. “I’d say so, but the stuff I read isn’t nearly as insane as that. How bored do reporters have to get in order to start writing that crap?”

“Not very. Mind you, most of this was printed in tabloid magazines, so not many actually paid any serious attention to it. It was the ponies who did that made all of the fuss, and boy did they fuss. I’m sure the Princess has dealt with this sort of thing before, but I think the fact that Blueblood just made the problem worse by not doing anything about it pushed it over the edge.”

“I think he did it because he thought it would be funny,” the other guard commented before yawning. “I know I would get bored if I had to stand through one of those ‘parties.’”

“He wasn’t laughing afterwards. Whatever the Princess told him, he’s going to every party he gets an invitation for just to make sure that little incident won’t happen again.”

“Any idea what she threatened him with?” I asked.

The first guard shrugged. “Everypony who knows about that little incident thinks that she threatened to drown him in paperwork.”

“Is he allergic to work?”

“You obviously haven’t seen the Princess’ stack of papers she receives daily,” he responded cryptically.

There was a lull in the conversation, punctuated by us moving to a table in the library and the other guard’s poorly-stifled yawn. I cracked my spine, stating, “While I’m normally a patient man, I can get bored if I’m not given something to do. I’m getting a book.”

And that was that. Midway through the morning and a pulp fiction, I realized that I would attract quite a bit of attention sitting around two guards, one of which was nearly asleep on his hooves. I got up, pulled two other books that looked moderately interesting, and placed them down in front of both of them. “Sleepy,” as I now dubbed him, looked at me in confusion while “Alert” raised an eyebrow before the same realization I had dawned on him.

“Try to at least pretend you’re reading,” I told Sleepy. He mouthed an “oh” before picking his book up with his hooves.

Half an hour later, Sleepy was asleep, curled up into a ball on the floor. Alert just rolled his eyes and kept reading the book he picked a while back.

Another hour or so passed, and Celestia arrived in a unicorn disguise. I didn’t notice her until she was at the table, looking much calmer than she did this morning. “Has he been any trouble?” she asked Alert.

He shook his head. “No ma’am. He got a book and fell asleep,” he answered with a wry grin. “This stallion hasn’t been a problem either.”

She blinked in surprise, then looked over the table at Sleepy. She was silent for a moment before she turned to me. “Come with me,” she said.

I nodded, closing the book and taking a moment to put it back on its shelf. Celestia took the time to give Alert some orders as he shook a discombobulated Sleepy awake. That finished, I followed her out of the library.

As soon as I was outside the range of the library’s wards, I flinched backwards as Celestia’s bright flash of teleportation light briefly blinded me. Opening my eyes, I found that I was in the throne room, now empty except for us. Celestia’s disguise was gone, and she had taken off mine.

“Now then,” she began, levitating another tome from over by the throne. She flipped through a few pages before continuing, showing me the open page. “Can you learn this?”

I scanned the page’s text. It didn’t seem terribly difficult, as all it was was an improved illusion. “I can do this,” I stated confidently. “What are you planning?”

“You’re going to go get a job for as long as it’s deemed necessary, which is going to be about three months. Me showing up every so often to refresh your illusion would look suspicious.”

“I’m getting a job? Where am I working?” I asked, rubbing my hands together in preparation for the spell. Channel mana like this, then take it and…

“You’ve got a number of options. There’s an alchemy store that’s hiring, a jewelry shop, metalworking, enchanting… would you like to see the job section of today’s newspaper?”

I paused in my spellcasting, raising an eyebrow at her. “Here I was, thinking you had some special, out-of-the-way place.”

“I couldn’t possibly have prepared for you. I’m no oracle.”

“I suppose I shall take the alchemy job. It’s the field out of the bunch I have the most exposure to, which doesn’t bode well for me,” I said with a self-deprecating grin.

“I thought you would have picked enchanting.”

“I’m no enchanter,” I said, continuing the spell. I started weaving it onto my arm, glamouring up the decay and rot that all undead were plagued with. “I can make portals and such, but I haven’t ever touched the enchanting field. Ira made a few potions on our trips across Azeroth, and I picked up a little bit. So while it’s still not much, it’s better than nothing.”

“So what do you remember?”

I scratched my chin with my arm. The illusioned portion was now visible, while the rest of me still couldn’t be seen. The arm itself looked far better than it did before, but the skin was still gray and disappeared at the wrist. I’ll have to fix that eventually. “Peacebloom and silverleaf make a healing potion.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “That’s it?”

I shrugged. “Cut me a bit of slack. It’s been years since I’ve even seen an herb in my lab.”

A huff. “I suppose that’s all I can ask of you on such short notice,” she said, examining my arm’s illusion. I had gotten my hand down, prettying it up, but it shared the same gray tone as my arm. “It looks like you’ve gotten the basics down...” she commented before poking it with a hoof. The illusion wavered for a moment. “...but you’re lacking in practice. Spend some time working on it, and come see me when you want to go apply for the job.”

I nodded. “I do have a question though. While I can see many reasons as to why you’re having me get a job, won’t I cause a massive scandal if someone finds out that I’m not exactly a pony? Or alive?”

“That’s why I’m having you work on the illusion. To minimize the risk of something like that happening, and to not raise any suspicion by having somepony come by regularly.” she told me bluntly. “If worst does come to worst, however, I can simply hide you somewhere until the time when Ira can be searched for.”

My eyebrows furrowed. “Hmm.”

I didn’t say any more, now focused on getting the illusion right. After Celestia’s little break period, she broke down my slowly-improving illusion and teleported me back to the library with instructions to grab Sleepy and Alert, head back to my room, and work on the illusion spell some more. I found them eating lunch.

The rest of the afternoon passed by slowly. I continued to work on the illusion under the bored gaze of Alert and the drifting gaze of Sleepy, steadily improving. I would make my arm ‘visible,’ then have one of them poke it to see how it would react. I also found out that Alert’s name was Bulwark, and Sleepy’s name was Gold.

This was more studying and homework than I’ve had in a very long time. I wondered how Celestia’s student put up with it.

Come evening, Gold had fallen asleep once more and Bulwark was off to grab Celestia, leaving me alone with my boredom and thoughts. I had gone back to practicing illusions, only this time it was on Gold. I got tired of seeing my gray arm. I discovered that his armor actually had another illusion spell enchanted on it.

‘So that’s why they all look the same.’

So far, all I had done was change the color of Gold from his normal white to looking like someone had dumped a few buckets of paint on him. It was at this moment when Celestia walked in with Bulwark. They looked between Gold, then me, then Bulwark attempted to stifle a grin while Celestia just sighed in exasperation.

“Are you quite finished, Mr. Icara?”

“No. I haven’t gotten the illusion perfect. It still ripples slightly whenever I poke it,” I said, demonstrating on Gold.

Celestia just gave me a flat look before dispelling my hard work with a flash of her horn. Gold snorted, slowly waking up. He blinked at me in confusion before he turned his head and looked to Celestia.

It took him a few seconds, but it finally clicked in his head that he had been sleeping on the job. He bolted upright, snapped a salute, and began apologizing profusely to her before being shushed by Bulwark snapping out an order.

“Anyways,” I interjected, “is there anything else that needs doing?”

Celestia looked to me. “Dinner.”

I pushed myself off of the floor, popping a few joints. “Right. I suppose I should come along?”

“Only if you don’t think you can’t avoid trouble without supervision.”

“I think I’ll stay here then.”

“Hmm.”

With that, Celestia dismissed my guard duo and headed off to dinner, closing the door to my room. I continued to work on the spell halfway through the night, this time using a pillow as a test dummy. The other half was filled with me working on the portal spell once again.

* * *

“Status report?”

“We’ve gotten the basics of his circle down. Someone had a stroke of genius and deduced a fair portion of it, but we got bogged down with trying to figure out how to incorporate a seeker spell.”

“I suppose that’s the best I can ask of you so far. What of his boss and neighbors?”

“Nobody can tell if the magus is upset or happy. I think it’s both. Duran has been silenced. Ira isn’t anywhere to be found.”

“New priority. Find Ira Icara.”

“Yessir.”